Siddhasana-Seer Pose or Easy Sitting Pose
Siddhasana-Easy Sitting Pose
Siddhasana
Sit comfortably on the floor, connect with the earth below you. Find your most comfortable place within yourself, and allow your body to relax. Experience the inflow and outflow of your breath, maintaining a straight spin, relax your hands on top of your knees. Do not press or force your knees close to the earth, just be.
This pose, or asana opens the chest, allowing for your lungs to expand while increasing your sense of stillness and quieting the turbulence of your mind. As you maintain easy sitting pose, contract the spine upward, draw the scapulae towards the midline of your body contracting the rhomboids. Reverse crossed legs whenever you feel the need.
Variation 1: Moola Bandha in Siddhasana is performed by simply sitting comfortably, with your eyes closed and begin contracting your perineum and sphincter muscles. Imagine your muscles being drawn into the pelvic region, and hold this position for 10 seconds. As you exhale, slowly release the muscle contraction in the pelvic region. Repeat root lock about three to six times. This helps hemorrhoids, helps incontinence, and sexual dysfunction. Moola is a Sanskrit word that means root, bandha means to hold, lock, or embrace.
Variation 2: Uddiyana Bandha in Siddhasana is performed by sitting comfortably with your spine erect. Take a deep breath in and exhale, emptying your lungs fully. Make a motion as if you are about to take another inhalation, and instead, lift your abdomen so that you are forming a hollow space below your diaphragm. Hold for about 10 seconds, then release. Repeat three to six times. This bandha removes any blockages in your body so that you more easily translate your desires into manifestation, aids digestive disturbance, and metabolic imbalances.
Variation 3: Siddhasana with Eagle Arms
Eagle Arms
Sitting comfortably, extend your arms out to the sides of your body, and let your breath lift your arms in front of your body – shoulder height, exhale as you bring your palms and forearms together. Notice your arms are in front of your face, and breathe full deep breaths while you maintain the lifting of Eagle Arms. Lift your elbows to shoulder height. As you are breathing, be mindful to keep your shoulders back and down, gently pressing forearms and hands together. Repeat Eagle Arms other side. Your goal is to take three to six deep breaths on each side with Eagle Arms. Slowly unwind arms and release.
Enjoy,
This sequence of exercises, opens your back, throat, helps restore your sense of clarity and feelings of universal connectivity.
Fundamentals of Health
Fundaments of Health for Perfect Fitness
Healthy stresses on living bone may aid prevention of osteoporosis. Bones are reservoirs for calcium, critical in a variety of physiological functions including muscle contraction. The concentration of calcium in the body is tightly regulated through a complex interplay between skeletal, endocrine, and excretory systems (respiration-relaxation). This involves feedback loops between the parathyroid gland, kidneys, and intestines, the skin, liver, and bones. The bones and skeleton link together at joints and act as levers for the muscles that cross the joints.
Long bones such as the femur are used for leverage, (think of warrior poses)-flat bones like the ilium, is used for stability, and the shorter vertebral bones are used to bear weight. Yoga postures become easier as you learn to align the long axis of your bones with gravity. This alignment decreases the muscular force needed to maintain our postures. Bones are dynamic living tissues that take in nourishment, store calcium and provide the calcium to the rest of the body rapidly in time of need. Bones are fed by blood vessels and are connected directly to your nerves. They are constantly remodeling themselves depending on the types of pressures and relative to the excess or shortage of nutrients shared with the rest of your body. Consistent weight bearing exercises will help your bones grow stronger and aid their flexibility.
Healing requires the intelligence of the body to repair itself. This means that you must get in touch with your deepest desires and feelings in all of life to reverse and restore behavior between mind-body-spirit, or health. Established in this mind set, you become aware of all your body’s needs. As your knowledge of how your body works increases, it reminds you to be conscious of how all relationships, work, foods, exercises make you feel. Bring this pure awareness to all area’s of your life. From this knowledge you can heal your body, and maintain it’s best state of well being by becoming conscious of your daily living, breathing and states of being. These states of being alter just like the seasons of the year, so pay attention to your personal ebbs and flows, and rhythms. If you paid as much attention to your body’s needs as you do your cars maintenance; you would most likely be much healthier and what I call a patient active. This practice of knowingness (Devata) a long with pure awareness (Samhita), will bring you to a state of attainable health and fitness.
Remember there are no cut and dry rules, as everyone is different. Become aware of “Ama” a term used in Ayurveda to describe toxins or impurities. Purifying your body requires you to recognize and remove all Ama, physical or mental from your life style and cultivate a life style that supports and enhances full and total health, fitness and well being. The secret of health is to have healthy desires, and remove unhealthy behavior, people and foods. If you keep repeating the same old unhealthy behavior it is most likely the result of a blockage, or are not in touch with your deepest desires and needs of your body. Seek advice, and filter information that support your personal needs. Each person is born with a unique body and mind constitution, (Prakruti). Your environment and diet can change your natural constitution resulting in disease or distress. This science of India is called Ayurveda and when you know your constitution, and body’s needs you can streamline your activities, diet.
Available on my Yoga and Fitness page is a FREE Dosha quiz. I encourage you to print it out, take the quiz, repeat next season and find out what your primary constitution is, and awaken your potential for a better state of health and sense of well being. Knowing your body type (Dosha) will help you in making conscious choices in all seasons of life. Be flexible like a reed, a principle for maintaining health. A Lisa Coffey quote and book: “What’s your Dosha – Baby?”
Namaste,
Deborah Shemesh
These notes were taken from discourses with Deepak Chopra, David Simon, davidji, and Claire E. Diab, during the summer of 2010. Enjoy the notes, and quotes.
Cancer Survivor
2010-Healing in Sebastopol
We all know that health is the absence of disease. What do you call it when you feel healthy though you have been diagnosed with a life threatening physical condition? My memory tells me that this is a state beyond imagination, beyond shock and denial. I remember that when I was diagnosed at the young age of 26, I felt and looked great. I was modeling, living the life of my dreams, surrounded by creative, flamboyant people. I loved my life, but somehow my genes were not in harmony with my environment. I guess you can say that in part, health is a state of mind, yet my body did not register that message. Was I just acting as if I were really, really happy? When trying to understand why I had this disease, my mind questioned everything. No stone was left unturned as I scrutinized my diet, my relationships, my thoughts, my actions.
Then something I read, or heard from a Doctor stuck with me. To better understand my current state of health, a doctor said that it actually takes about ten years for cancer to be identified as a full blown disease. To wrap my mind around this statement meant that I had to track my history, a subject of great sensitivity. It was also noted that unexpressed, unresolved, incidents left without complete grieving can also manifest into disease years after the traumatic experience. Identifying, recognizing, releasing, all skills that required integration, no short cuts allowed. There were so many incidents that I had tried to bury, yet this theory peaked my curiosity. Turning the clock back ten years, remembering my emotional state – prior to the diagnosis of malignant melanoma was not easy. Truth was, I couldn’t blame melanoma on the sun, and I was curious about the mind-body analogy.
As I turned back the clock to the previous decade; I immediately remembered the tragic, senseless death of my first true love- Michael Reber. Mike was a sharp shooter for the Marines and was killed ten days before his tour of duty in Da Nang Vietnam was completed, he was killed March 12, 1971. We were told that a grenade blew his legs off and he died immediately. Mike was my first love; we met when I was a freshman and he was a senior. His college education was interrupted so that he could serve his country. I remembered how suicidal I felt, how sad I became, the regrets. Perhaps, this is what seeded the growth of cancer, perhaps not.
My point is that complete processing of all experiences, emotions, are vital to experiencing full, and vibrant health. Don’t be intimated, or tripped up by science or statistics, keep exploring the power beyond body, mind, and delve into your spirit for a renewed sense of health. This was my secret ingredient for the crown of survivorship. Examples of strong people who also survived helped me greatly. I remembered hearing how it was important to be with people you wish to be like. In my healing, and in this current day, I am mindful of this advice.
I guess you could say that being a cancer survivor is revered as a most delicate gift. The rewards of survivorship cannot be measured, it’s bigger than receiving an Oscar, or a gold record. The road to survivorship has not been easy. It takes more than just a strong body, and will, it requires listening to the messages of your body, and spirit. It takes a team of medical experts, healers, tons of money, the best technology, supportive friends, and courage, the ingredient for binding the probability of surviving. In spite of having the last rights several times, having to put my business in order, and preparing for the worst, I knew statistics were against me and I had nothing to lose by being honest. Honesty liberates you, and this liberation generates feelings of happiness enhancing the probability of your survivorship. Honesty allows you to goal set, achieve the impossible, and honor the essence of your soul, shame, guilt be gone.
Till this day, cancer survivorship motivates me in every way, everything I do. As I live my life, acquiring more knowledge, diplomas, and developing new areas of expertise, I find that ultimately, being a survivor has gifted me the passion to live fully, authentically, and from the heart. Life motivates me, I feel so grateful, hearing my breath moving in, and moving out; this unconscious action is for me more valuable than all the gold in the world. Cancer Survivor is a title that I proudly wear.
With this precious gift of life, and with the knowledge of survivorship, I want to share my passion for life with others who feel their life is compromised by a diagnosis. Being a survivor of metastatic melanoma, I am living the greatest gift on this earth, this gift is a gift we simply call life. Cancer has motivated to live fully in the present moment. One word of advice, if you know someone who has disease, treat them as you would any other person, don’t segregate someone based on their physicality.
Medical Miracle Case #33,
Beyond science, I remain,
Deborah Shemesh
