FERTILITY workshop – Sunday 29 June

The issue of fertility is a silent stress that many women and their partners experience. 
If you or someone you know would like to know about the benefits of practicing yoga when
trying to conceive then please let them know about this workshop.

This workshop is open to all women - no prior yoga experience necessary.

With: Suzi Carson

Time: 9 – 11, 11.30 – 1.30pm

Cost: $60

Venue: Yoga Aravinda centre

11 Vineyard rd, Henderson Valley

Women’s workshop - Tuesday 8 July

A woman’s monthly cycle is of great importance and holds the key to women’s health.
Responding to the natural rhythm is often overridden by our need to carry on no matter what.
This workshop is based around the restorative menstrual practice.

All levels welcome with Suzi Carson.

Time: 7.30 – 9.30pm

Cost: $25

Bookings essential, limited numbers.
 
Have you ever felt your role as a women is overwhelming?
Excerpt from an interview with Geeta Iyengar:

 Qu: Do you think that yoga has a special relevance for women?

Certainly! I think yoga has a lot to offer them. Definitely! Without any doubt! Yoga can definitely help women in different ways, at the various stages of their life, under different situations. It is not only with reference to their health but also to develop their inner capabilities. Their life is very complicated. A woman is always with family and friends. She is the hub of the family and the life of the family rotates around her. She has to give herself, her energy, to fulfill her duties. She has to help her family, and go out to work to lessen the financial burden in order to bring up the family. She has got a strong willpower and with that willpower she puts in all her efforts. She then feels physically and mentally drained. She then requires something to build up he own strength. Here, I find that yoga definitely can play a great role. Yoga is the only art with which her body and mind can be built up to bear the stress she faces.

  There is a great change in her body and mind as she undergoes the different stages in her life especially as compared to men. Men do not experience this sudden change in their physiological and hormonal system as women do. Men do experience the hormonal changes but that is at a later stage in life. But in case of women, the drastic hormonal changes occur now and then. She has to build up her energy throughout and that is why I find that the practice of yoga is very essential to her. She also finds a lot of emotional upheaval. Women are strongly emotional compared to men. If their emotions are hurt somehow then they suddenly feel low, then a kind of inner support is required, a moral support is required which comes through yogic practice.

  I think they lose their self-confidence. I think this is the only art which definitely builds them up strongly. As far as their moral uplifting is concerned yoga brings them up again. They build up self-respect through self-confidence.

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FLEXIBILITY AND STABILITY
An excerpt from an article about Cells by Rajvi Mehta.…..

The technicalities:

A scientist Don Ingber, at NASA has unknowingly made a great contribution towards our understanding of how asanas act at the molecular level. He seems to have an explanation on the mechanisms by which asanas can bring about a change in our genetic expression but of course he himself is unaware of it!

 Don proposed a new model on the structure of living cells in the 1990’,. His model was very different from the concepts prevailing at that time…..Don’s model of a cell demonstrated that cells have flexibility as well as stability. In contrast, if the cells were like balloons (as previously perceived) then they would have flexibility but not stability. This “new” model of the cellular skeleton or cytoskeleton received lot of interest but also criticism. Don had to prove his model with real experiments on living cells, which he performed with cells in the laboratory. With appropriate experiments Don showed “flexibility and stability go together within a cell”. This he referred to as tensegrity, short for “tensional integrity”. Each cell is constantly exposed to lot of mechanical stress. Its skeleton should be such that it is able to withstand the battery of mechanical stresses it is exposed to, such as the pressures of blood flowing around the cells or the movement of organelles within the cell.

 
I wonder how often and for how many decades Guruji has been saying that flexibility and stability should go together when we are practicing our asanas. We possibly only looked at “Flexibility and stability” from the physical and macro level but never understood the impact of this at the cellular and micro level.

 Altering the shape of the cells leading to cell multiplication:  In other experiments, Don forced cells to take on different shapes: spherical or flattened, square or round. The cells that were flat and stretched tended to divide whereas the cells that were round and cramped tended to die. Even a novice in an Iyengar yoga class would accept the fact that there is a lengthening, elongation of the various parts and organs of their bodies in the different asanas. For example in Setu Bhanda Sarvangasana, how much do we elongate the pelvic organs and thoracic region? In Viparita Danadasana, how much does the liver, pancreas, gall bladder feel “stretched” if not anything else. If the organs “stretch” does not anything happen to the cells within these organs? Of course that are also stretched and flattened. Thus, the stretching would change the shape and structure of the cell, cause them to divide and bring about health in that organ. Supposing we want to have more pancreatic cells in a diabetic, can we not by “Stretching” them, get them to multiply?

Thus, by working on specific organs in the different asanas, we alter the shape of the cell and in turn can get them to multiply and divide.

Amazing possibilities…. Don’s research has led to the postulation of amazing possibilities for the modern scientists. Amazing for science but not for “Iyengar Yoga’! The NASA newsletter proposes that doctors might be able to force cells to flatten and stretch covering and healing a wound faster. Or, cells in a tumor could be forced to round and crowd together, causing the tumor cells to die and shrink the tumor. Is that not what Iyengar Yoga is already doing to bring health to different organs?

Teaching cells to respond to external forces:

It is believed that don’s research based on changes in cell shapes could lead to new developmental abnormalities. “Every Tissue in the body”, says Don Ingber “has some disease that results fro cells responding abnormally to outside forces. If cells can be “taught” to respond properly, these devastating diseases could be corrected. Is this not what Guruji is teaching us in asana? Guruji has often said that regular practice makes an imprint we develop cellular memory. Is this not “teaching” the cells on how to respond to external stimulus? Are the cells not being exposed to a variety of external stimuli in the different asanas? Are we not “teaching” the cells on how to respond to the external stimulus through our practice of asanas?