Three Rhythms

I recently heard a teacher talk about three rhythms of our body and became curious in exploring this idea and using it as a way to engage more deeply in our experience of yoga.  

 

The first rhythm is that of the beating heart.  If you take a moment to pause, get quiet with your breath and close your eyes, can you feel the rhythm of your own heartbeat?  I notice it as a pulsation that has a subtle rocking action.  When I get quiet enough to sense it, I notice its beautiful regularity, strength and connection to being alive.  If we think about our hearts simply as physical organs, they are simply amazing.  They have their own circuitry and electrical system which works without us even thinking about it.  Our hearts beat at rest somewhere between 60-80 beats in just one minute. Multiply that out by our lifetime and this incredible pump literally keeps on tickin' without any input directly from us.  It just keeps ticking and thumping and beating.

 

Beyond its physically miraculous structure lie the less tangible energetics of our heart: love, compassion, forgiveness and grief. Our arms are an extension of our heart which is expressed when we hug, give a high-five, shake hands, pat someone on the back, prepare food, clap or gently stroke somebody's face.  Our arms and hands reflect what the language of our hearts is speaking.

 

Yet our heart isn't something we can control.  There are stories of enlightened beings stopping their heartbeat simply by thinking about it, but beyond that they beat to their own drum.

 

The second energy is that of our brain and brain wave patterns. In I.2 of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,  "Yogas Citta Vritti Nirodah", has been translated as "Yoga is controlling the activities of the mind (chitta)" which recognizes that one of the primary objectives of undertaking yoga is to quiet the endless thoughts that bombard our minds.   Our brain activity and resultant brainwaves fluctuate constantly.  The brain waves of a person deep in meditation are distinctly different from those overly dramatic thoughts of an insomniac who is awake at 2:00 AM.  The practice of meditation is about becoming an observer rather than a participant in these fluctuations.  And if you ask even the most experienced and seasoned meditators, they STILL have days in which their thoughts jump around like the proverbial "drunken monkey" that's just been stung by a scorpion.  Bottom line: our thoughts are difficult to control.

 

The third energy is that of the breath. The beauty of this energy is that it is the one that we can greatly control and by doing so has an affect on the other two energies.  As I've written in previous blogs, we do have the capacity to go through our entire lives and be completely unconscious of our breath.  Sometimes it's beginning a practice such as yoga that we are exposed to the idea that we can actually alter our breathing and hence alter how we feel and react.

 

Yoga is filled with breathing practices that respond to and create a variety of responses in the body.  We can calm ourselves physically, energize low vitality, cool ourselves down or heat ourselves up. As we deepen our connection and practice to altering the breath, we can slow down our heart beat, lower our blood pressure and alter our brain waves.  

 

The power that is within to access how we breathe is immense. When these three energies intertwine and mingle, we can alter how we feel.  With what seems to be a constant barrage of bad news and connection to everything BUT ourselves and each other, getting to know our breath and its patterns can literally change how we view the world and how we feel within it.

 

Enjoy tapping into that source of breath that lies within...your heart, mind and soul will thank you for it!