Mind / Body Integration
Integral Awareness for Optimal Well-Being
& Elegant Anti-Aging
Yoga-based Bodywork with Physical / Mental Yoga
*YOGIC — Continual & Intentional Enhancement of the Quality of Attention you pay to whatever it is you’re doing, feeling or thinking.
Health & Fitness, Flexibility & Strength with Mindful, In-the-Moment FEELING & Self-Awareness Coordinated with Reflective, Effective, Analytical Thinking.
Mindfulness (a more easily accessible aspect of meditation) in Bodywork, Yoga & Exercise Processes produce Radical (to the Root) Relaxation, in turn providing many profound health & healing benefits as well as enhancing everything our BodyMind engages in.
The Intersection between Philosophical, Psychological & Physiological Principles with Techniques from Integral, Yogic (Conscious, Self-Aware) Perspectives give a strong foundation on which to build the various practices we live and work with every day.
DE-Stressing Your BodyMind while DE-Contracting & Balancing Your Muscles & Fascia, with Low-Intensity, “Homeopathic” activation of “YIN” or Parasympathetic Nerves, reduces or eliminates pain, dysfunction, poor posture and/or limitations on range-of-motion.
Intel-e-Motion is Mind / Body Integration
… refers to the intersection between and integration of psychological insight and the bringing forth of physical action. Self-Awareness is the link between the two. …
Etymologically, the word emotion can be broken down into e-, to bring forth, and motion, or action.
Below, we’ll describe some of the basic principles used in developing this system.
In DSL Edgework we use some basic ideas and principles of homeopathy to stimulate the naturopathic principles, the built-in, natural healing processes of the human bodymind.
This comes especially when you practice physical yoga with a more meditative (mental) element. This leads to a greater sense of bodymind integration internally and with life in general. This in turn leads to reduction of conflicts in the body, and in some cases spontaneously reduces psycho-emotional conflicts, improving one’s sense of well-being. For those who need therapy, greater Self-Awareness can greatly enhance nearly any therapeutic process.
The idea of DSL’s system is for the hands-on process to recreate for the Client, as much as possible, essential elements of doing hatha (the physical) yoga, integrated with jnana (the mental) yoga. Mind / Body Integration is achieved if the Student or Client is using a mindful or meditative state with which to experience their body in the process of doing postures or exercises.
The same can be achieved in the hands-on bodywork process.
The basic tension release technique applies manual pressure into the belly of the muscle, “stretching” the actin-myosin muscle cells and fascial fibers which in turn stimulate the Golgi Tendon Organs and other nerve structures in ways that significantly reduce C.E.M.&.N.T. The Client develops an increasing sense of their body, and how to make their relaxation process more conscious and available. This does require the Client to pay as much attention as possible throughout their session.
In fact, from this point-of-view, it is nearly impossible to do truly effective physical yoga or yoga-based, hands-on bodywork without investing the mind into the process in a “meditative” way — a true mind / body integration phenomena. Many tensions in the body are strictly reflexive* and will dissolve while working at that level. This allows the minds of both Client and therapist to drift off onto other things, like the movies they’ve seen, or what’s for lunch. That’s not the best thing, of course, but meditation can seldom be forced.
Yet many other muscular tensions are more volitional* in nature — Psycho-Muscular, and require a significant, conscious investment of mental processes to relax & release them. And for very deeply held reflexive tensions, investing the conscious mind can be invaluable, even if the volitional mind was not the original cause of the tension.
* Reflexive means the activity is in the automatic neuro- musculo-fascial structures of the body.
* Volitional means in the realm of, or directly accessible by, conscious control, choice and decision.
However, many of our initially and apparently volitional actions fade into the background, into the subconscious* mind. (Please see Appendix on the different levels of consciousness as described by the DSL Method of Yoga & Bodywork and the Philosophy, Psychology & Science of Being Human.)
YOGIC MEDICINE & HEALING
Thinking About versus FEELING the Body
Learning the vast differences between thinking about the body in a dualistic way versus feeling from within the body in a meditative, sensory, non-dualistic way is an important element of the entire DSL Method. Yet one state is not “better” than the other. They are both vital to being fully human, and ideally, we move seamlessly back and forth between the two states.
Relational Yoga
When working with a DSL trained practitioner, whether with hands-on work or asana, Clients and Students are encouraged to communicate such as to keep their therapist informed of where they are on the spectrum of the physical, mental & emotional edges as much as possible.
As the client communicates about pressure being too deep, not deep enough, or just right, the therapist adjusts his or her pressure, and sometimes location of pressure, to facilitate the Client playing their own edges while working with the manual pressure of the therapist. Clients are literally accessing a whole other set of sensory nerve organs and pathways not usually or ordinarily accessed.
This, ideally, brings the Client’s mind further into their body and the internal, let-go yoga process at each moment. This, how the Client and Therapist interact with each other, is one aspect where Joel & Diana’s creation of Relational Yoga comes into the process; at least from my point of view.
[ MORE COMING SOON ]
Thank You for Reading about DSL’s Approach to Mind -Body Integration!
Take Care,
David Scott Lynn (DSL*)
* DSL: Your High Touch Uplink to the Inner-Net*
* Inner-Net: Your Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial Network