Three Principles of the Brain for Yogis

8/14/2019 Three Principles of the Brain for Yogis

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Maarten A. Immink PhD

eBook

www.integratemindbody.com


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Three Principles of the Brainfor Yogis

Dr Maarten A. Immink BA, MS, PhD

I offer sincere gratitude to Swami Sivananda Saraswati,

Swami Satyananda Saraswati, and Swami Niranjananda

Saraswati who have illuminated me through yoga. Also, to

all fellow scientists who have furthered the understanding

of the nervous system.

Dedicated to all individuals who have chosen to journey on

the path of yoga.

Three Principles of the Brain for Yogis 1 Maarten A. Immink 2007


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Introduction

If you are reading this, then most likely we share a common interest for the

study of the biological basis of the mind and its application to yoga. This is the

area that I have been dedicated to learning about for quite some time.Indeed, for many years I have been searching for the knowledge that would

allow me to comprehend how the brain and nervous system work and how

their function relates to the concept of the mind. This search has taken me

through many years of studying, reading and researching within the

perspective of western science. Although this approach has offered me a

wealth of knowledge, it was not until I became exposed to the science of yoga

that I truly began to see the bigger picture. Western science and yoga

science compliment each other tremendously well in terms of defining and

applying the workings of the body and mind. What I am presenting to you in

the following reading is a highlight of a massive amount of information on the

topic of the brain. This highlight includes three principles of the brain that I

have come to understand as having particular relevance for the practitioner of

yoga.

I have kept this reading as non-technical as possible, limiting the use of

scientific terminology so as to keep the material approachable for all levels of

scientific background. If you find a term or two beyond your understanding, I

invite you to use the various internet resources, like www.google.com, to

search for more information.

I hope that you will find the following principles useful for your yoga journey.

http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/


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Awareness is integration

What determines the depth, to which you allow yoga asanas to integrate into

your nervous system, depends on the ability to implement one factor into your

practices. This factor is awareness and it is a skill that must be developed

over time through training and application.

Asana without awareness is possible

It is actually quite possible to move without any involvement of the brain, and

therefore no awareness. Take for example reflexes. When a finger is placed

on a hot stove, the heat stimulates a sensory receptor which sends its signal

to the spinal cord activating a motor neuron (movement production nerve cell),

which causes muscles to contract and the arm to pull away from the stove.

This movement is triggered without any involvement of the brain and thus,

without any awareness. It is only after the reflexive movement has been

completed that the pain signal moves up the spinal cord to the brain and the

experience reaches your awareness: ouch! Similar to reflexes, it is quite

possible to practice asanas in a rather automated way with minimal

involvement of awareness. The nervous system can operate under an

autopilot-like system because it has the capability to control movements using

brain structures that function without conscious awareness. So while

performing the cat stretch pose, it is possible for your asana autopilot to take

over control of the posture. As a result, awareness drops out and you may drift

off into other non-movement related thoughts like trying to remember if you

fed the catbefore the class, for example.



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Asana without awareness is limiting and dangerous

Using automated movement systems do allow you to perform multiple tasks at

once, like talk and walk, but the downfall is that you fail to be fully aware of the

movement itself. Loss of movement awareness means limited connection

between mind and the body. When an asana is performed, countless sensory

experiences are generated in the body but only a few of these can be

experienced in the disconnected mind. When there are less incoming signals

into the brain from the body, the potential for the asana to bring about any

mental benefits is diminished. Even worse, there is an increase in the

likelihood for injury since awareness is the safety mechanism that prevents

the body from being pushed beyond its physical limits.

Yoga with awarenesslinks body and mind

Performing asana with full awareness enhances the mental benefits of the

practices because the connection between the body and the mind is

maximised. A heightened experience of the body means that there is more

incoming sensory information that is stimulating and activating the various

regions of the brain. More mental stimulation means an increase in the blood

flow to the working parts of the brain (see Figure 1) which is a vital factor in

ensuring the health of individual brain cells. Awareness also allows the brain

to benefit the body. In a well connected mind and body, more neural signals

from the brain can reach the body, allowing the control of asana to become

refined. There is also an increase in the bioelectrical energy flowing through

the nerves which energizes the body. As the saying goes, Energy flows

where attention goes. Where you hold your concentration during asana will

awaken that area of the body and will also activate the associated areas of the

brain.



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Yoga is good for the brain and awareness deepens these

effects

Including yoga asana into your lifestyle is an effective means to improve or

sustain overall health and wellbeing. Part of this means enjoying the benefits

that asana can potentially provide for function of the brain. As the brain is the

major organ which supports the mind, establishing a healthy functioning brain

is key to reaching higher levels of consciousness. Thus, the defining factor

which takes asana from just being an exercise to being a mental and spiritual

practice is the level of awareness that is involved.

Figure 1. A functional map of the cerebral cortex. As more awareness is used

during asana, more of these areas become active.



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Principle 2. The brain has its habits

(and what yoga does about it!)

As you are sitting and reading this sentence, are you aware of the sensation

of pressure of your buttocks on the chair or cushion? Having read this now

you probably are, but before you most likely were not! The fact is sensations

do drop out of our awareness and this has implications for the way that we

think and control the body. At any given moment we are probably thinking,

talking, moving, eating and/or breathing in ways that we are not even aware

of. Well, we are not entirely to blame. The nervous system has a tendency to

fall into its own habits.

Habituation affects awareness

Not really habits but actually habituation as neuroscientists and psychologists

call it. Essentially, habituation has to do with the way that sensory neurons, or

the cells of the nervous system responsible for detecting sensations, respond

to a stimulus. At first, when a sensation such as the pressure of the buttockson the chair stimulates a touch receptor on the skin, a strong stimulus will be

sent to the brain. If that touch sensation is maintained over a period of time

the pressure receptor will actually begin to fatigue and decrease the strength

of the stimulus signal it sends to the brain. As a result, the brain will begin to

be habituated to the stimulus, and the sensation will drop out of awareness.

The pressure is still there but the brain has now lost the awareness of that

experience.



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Habituation of the five senses

This process of habituation happens with all the five senses: touch, taste,

smell, hearing, and vision. One example is walking into a room with a foul

smell which at first is very overwhelming only to find that a few moments later

you forget about its presence. At first, the chemicals associated with the

odour are stimulating scent receptors at the top of the nose. These relay the

signal to the brain where the experience of smell and any related reactions are

formed. As the scent lingers, habituation sets in and the brain drops its

awareness of the smelly experience. To your brain it is as if there is no longer

an odour. You can also see for yourself the habituation process taking place

in the visual system by following the exercise in Activity Box 1.

Habituation of body sense

Information about the five senses, relayed by sensory systems to the brain,

keeps us informed of the events taking place in the external world. In

addition, there is a sixth type of sensory system (yes indeed, the sixth sense!)

that keepsthe brain informed about the events taking place in the internal

Activity Box 1Now you see them, now you dont

Move a bit closer to the screen and focuson the image on the left. In particular, holdyour gaze on the small black dot in thecenter of the image. Hold it there for a few

moments until habituation takes over andthe image changes.

Once habituation takes place, you canlook away then back to the image to see ifits possible to reverse habituation.



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world of the body. This sixth sense is called propioception, which means self

perception, and relates to information like position of limbs, posture, balance,

and body segment movement. This type of information is what allows you to

perform actions like walking up steps without watching your feet or standing

upright with your eyes closed. Even though propioception is truly a specialtype of sensory system, it is also susceptible to habituation. This means that

just as we can loose awareness of stimuli from the external world, it is also

quite possible to loose awareness of the body. The possibility of habituation

in the propioceptive system means that when we perform or hold an asana,

we may loose proper form or alignment without even realising it. For example,

when we hold a sitting posture, we may loose awareness of holding the spine

erect and we begin to slouch forward. When awareness begins to drop out,

the benefits of the practice are minimised and the chance of injury is

maximised due to the loss of proper body alignment. Habituation can also

affect the propioceptive information which supports good breathing function.

Often breathing can be less than optimal because habituation allows bad

habits such as open-mouth, shallow chest breathing to take control of this

important body process.

Habituation of thought patterns

Although it would make life a lot easier, there is no direct sensory system for

thought processes in the mind. In fact, it is interesting to note that the brain

has no sensory system for itself. That is, the brain is unable to experience its

own touch, temperature, pressure, pain. The pain of aheadache is not

detected by sensory receptors in the brain but rather by receptors in the blood

vessels and tissue which surround the brain. Since there is no sensory

system for the brain, thoughts can only be detected by observing them with



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another thought. In other words, the mind has to always self-monitor its own

activity to be aware of what it is doing. If you habituate this self-monitoring

process, any awareness of the thought is lost. To the mind, it is as if the

thought no longer exists even though it is still very much active. Once this

happens, the thought has entered the subconscious mind.

Habituated thoughts are the origin of dis-ease

Thoughts can and do circulate over and over in the subconscious, below the

radar of awareness. As they do so, they still have the power to elicit

subsequent mental, emotional and physical reactions. At any moment, while

we go about our daily lives, externally focused, the stresses and strains of life

can generate subconscious thoughts of worry and angst. Hidden by

habituation, they may be triggering fight or flight like physical reactions to

stress: faster heart rate, shallow rapid breathing, higher blood pressure,

muscle tension, hormonal imbalance and poor digestion. Even though you

may be unaware of the subconscious thought causing nervousness, you may

at first be acutely aware of the related physical reactions: loss of appetite,

Activity Box 2Sensory Perception on AutopilotA majority of our perception of the outside worldtakes place without any of our awareness. Thisimplies that the brain automatically imposes its ownexpectations in placing meaning on the incomingsensory information. In other words, the brain sees

what it wants to see.See the upside down portrait of a popular figure onthe right; do you recognise him? Do you seeanything different about his face? To see how yourbrain automatically adjusts its perception of the face,rotate this page 180 degrees, using the rotatebutton on the toolbar.



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Pratyahara turns on the dormant parts of the brain

Establishment of pratyahara causes a big change in how the brain functions.

Areas of the brain that are usually dormant become activated. These areas

are found in the parts of the brain which are evolutionary the most advanced

and are said to be unique to humans. Their function is associated with the

ability to become self-aware. It is an illuminative process because activating

these higher brain centres is like turning on the lights in the darkened rooms of

a house; we can now see what has been there all this time. You gain access

to more elevated and refined levels of awareness which allows you to bring

thoughts out of the subconscious into the conscious. Pratyahara, which uses

habituation of the external to remedy habituation of the internal, is a way toreally begin to explore yourself, answering that classical question of yoga,

who am I? This knowledge is valuable wisdom and is empowering for it

allows you to have mastery over your mind and your body.



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Principle 3. Yoga can positively re-wire your brain

In order for the brain to be able to carry out its day-to-day functions such as

reading, communicating, and moving the body, it has to rely on well

established neural circuits which have been formed over time. This is the

basis of what is called learning. Not an easy feat when you consider that

there are about 100 billion neurons in the brain and each neuron is connected,

on average, to 10,000 other neurons! One wrong connection and we might

end up tasting colours!

Connections are made before and after birthSo how does the nervous system handle the complicated task of forming

neural circuits? Part of the task is determined genetically so that we are

actually born hardwired with the vital neural circuits that allow us to survive the

first days of life outside the womb. For example, newborn babies have

reflexes that allow them to successfully feed from the mother only minutes

after birth. While some connections are predetermined before birth, the vast

majority of our neural connections are formed throughout our lives. In this life-

long learning process, new neuron connections are formed, while some old

connections are removed, based on our daily experiences.

Neurons that fire together, wire together

The main process, by which connections between neurons are made in the

brain, is called long-term potentiation. Long-term potentiation essentially

follows the rule that neurons which fire together wire together. When, say, two

neurons are active at the same time in the brain, this occurrence is treated as



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an important event in terms of learning and so needs to be repeated.

Ensuring that the same neurons will again be active simultaneously involves

two changes. First, neurons form extensions that branch out to form new

connections with other involved neurons. Second, to improve transmission of

signals, connections between neurons, called synapses, are activelystrengthened using cellular level changes. Over time, many neurons connect

and wire themselves together forming a collective group called a neural circuit.

These circuits perform specific functions such as processing and storing

information.

Your brain is adaptable

Your brain has the property of plasticity, which reflects its ability to remodel

itself and change its functional structure in order to meet changing demands

that are placed on it. Rather than being fixed and unchangeable, the brain is

dynamic and always changing, characteristics that allow you to be remarkably

adaptable.


Figure 2. Neurons establishing neural circuits during learning.

Start 1 week 2 weeks 4 weeks 6 months


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Association facilitates adaptation

The process of learning is one example of plasticity whereby exposure to

events in our lives has the ability to shape your brain. Learning essentially

involves making new associations, linking unknown information to previously

established memories. In the brain, this involves linking new neural circuits

with already established neural circuits. For example, imagine that you have

an established neural circuit for executing a yoga posture called the seated

forward bend. When the yoga teacher calls out, come into the seated

forward bend, your neural circuit for this posture becomes activated and

begins to send signals to turn on some muscles and relax other muscles

allowing you to come into this position. What if the teacher one day calls out,come into paschimottanasana and you have never heard this Sanskrit word

before in class? There is no association between the unfamiliar word and the

posture and so the neural circuit for the asana would not be activated; no

posture just a puzzled look. If the teacher then translates the name into its

English equivalent, then the process of association takes place. A new

paschimottanasananeural circuit becomes associated with the pre-existing

seated forward bend posture circuit. In future classes no translation will be

required since learning has allowed the brain to adapt to a new situation.

Thoughts and emotional states are associated

As you go about your daily tasks, your brain keeps itself busy reshaping itself

and making new associations based on experiences. Yoga philosophy says

that all of the experiences that we are exposed to form an impression, called a

samskara, in the mind. Whether or not we are aware of it, the mind is being

constantly shaped by the events that take place around us. We are also

shaped by the events that take place within us. Western science has provided



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support for this latter notion by demonstrating that our emotional state is an

important event that is associated in the learning process. This implies that

neural circuits that generate certain emotional states like love, happiness,

anger and anxiety become associated with the neural circuits that generate

thought processes like decision making, perception, communication, andmovement production. For this reason, our emotions have the ability to shape

our brain in a way that influences what decisions we make, how we perceive

our world, how we communicate and how we utilise our bodies. The

association is self-reinforcing since the emotion maintains a particular pattern

of thought and in turn, the pattern of thought encourages the linked emotion.

Additionally, each time the neural circuits are activated, their association

becomes increasingly stronger. If the emotions happen to be negative and

the thoughts cynical or unconstructive, their perpetuation could create a shift

of the mind towards unhappiness. It is easy to blame external sources for

discontentment, yet the real source often comes from within.

Stress shifts the brain into survival training mode

Your brain has built-in systems for detecting negative events in the

environment. In terms of survival, it is good to be aware of any threats to your

existence. The presence of negative events, which causes the experience of

stress, causes the brain to produce a particular set of emotional reactions:

fear, anxiety, anger, sadness and so on. These emotions, in turn, cause

physiological changes (faster heart rate, increase blood pressure, sweating,

muscle tension) and cognitive changes (vigilance, irritability, dwelling,

overactivity). These changes cause a functional transformation of the mind.

The higher qualities of reason, love and compassion are exchanged for lower,

animalistic, qualities which are instinctual and survival driven. Stress, whether



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it is truly life threatening or not, shifts the brain into survival training mode.

Events and experiences, even if they would normally be inoffensive, are now

interpreted as being threatening. Consequently, self-protective judgements

cause defensive reactions to be played out. Negative emotions, neurotic

thoughts and retaliatory deeds all become associated to the extent that thebrain has learned to view life as a struggle.

Meditation changes mental function

Yoga offers a way to step out of the struggle. The practices of meditation are

an effective antidote to the stress response. When the mind relaxes, objective

awareness increases and the higher qualities of the brain remain in control.We behave as more evolved beings and life becomes an inspiring journey, not

a struggle. The influence that meditation has on brain function has recently

received quite a substantial amount of research attention. With all this

attention has come extensive scientific proof that meditation is effective for

establishing mental health. Additionally, scientific research is beginning to

shed some light on the mechanisms through which meditation changes the

brain.

Meditation relaxes the nervous system

The first influence that meditation has on the nervous system is by reducing

sympathetic drive. This is a technical way of saying meditation lowers mental,

emotional and physical tension. During meditation, the nervous system

experiences a relaxation response (parasympathetic drive) and heart rate,blood pressure and muscle tension decrease. The body experiences other

benefits as well. Digestive, hormonal, metabolic, respiratory, sleep, and

reproductive functions all have physiological improvements. The brain itself



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Figure 3. A Tibetan Buddhist monk preparing to advance brainscience.

trauma as a result of the invasion of the Chinese Army into Tibet. Strong

trauma has a definite ability to influence and shape the brain in negative ways.

This is usually seen as greater activity in the right prefrontal lobe, which has

been associated with unhappiness and depression. So it seems that these

monks were able to use meditation to counteract traumatic mental debilitation

and instead learn to have a positive outlook on life, full of compassion and

forgiveness. In other words, meditation re-wired the brain to develop and

support the higher qualities of the mind.



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Figure 4. Scans of brain activity taken from a Tibetan Buddhistmonk at rest and while meditating. Note the increased levels ofactivity (red areas) in the left hemisphere of the brain particularly inthe prefrontal lobe.

If you are interested in the effects meditation has on the brain, read:

Just Say Omby Joel Stein published in TIME magazine July 27, 2003

You can find this article on the World Wide Webhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,471136,00.html

Interactive display of how meditation influences the brain:http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030804/om/
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,471136,00.htmlhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,471136,00.htmlhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,471136,00.htmlhttp://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030804/om/http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030804/om/http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030804/om/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,471136,00.html

Three Principles of the Brain for Yogis

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