The yoga sutras are a lot of fun to read – especially the super-natural ones.  I try not to take them too literally, as you never know what might have been warped in translation, or perhaps included merely to inspire yogis to go the extra mile in their practices.

Occasionally, I come across articles in the science literature that reveal how truly weird and wild the human brain can be – and it strikes me – that maybe the ancient yogis were more in tune with the human mind than we “modern science” folks give them credit for.  Here’s a weird and wild sutra:

III.55 -  tarakam sarvavisayam sarvathavisayam akramam ca iti vivekajam jnanam – The essential characteristic of the yogi’s exalted knowledge is that he grasps instantly, clearly and wholly, the aims of all objects without going into the sequence of time of change.

How can we know things instantly?  and without respect to time (ie. never having had prior experience)?

Admittedly, Patanjali may be referring to things that take place in emotional, subconscious or cosmic realms that I’m not familiar with, so I won’t quibble with the text.  Besides, it sounds like an AWESOME state of mind to attain, and well worth the effort – even if we concede it is knowingly unobtainable.  But is it unobtainable?

Might there be states of mind that make it seem obtainable?  Here’s a fascinating science article that appeared in Science Magazine this past week.  Paradoxical False Memory for Objects After Brain Damage [doi: 10.1126/science.1194780] describing the effects of damage in the perirhinal cortex (in rats) that led the animals to demonstrate a peculiar form of false memory – wherein the animals treated never-before seen objects as being familiar. Hmmm.  An altered form of brain activity where unfamiliar and novel things seem very familiar.  Sounds sort of  like “instantaneous knowing without respect to time” to me.

Given the tremendous similarity in brain circuits and memory systems across all mammals, I wonder if humans (perhaps in deep meditative states or with various forms of hallucinogenic or damaged states) could experience this? Sutra III.55 seems strange, but not, perhaps unobtainable.

Does yoga feel good?  Do you feel good during the practice – moving your body through the bending, twisting, inverting etc.?  Be honest. I mean, since you’re probably sore as hell the next morning … if you don’t feel good during the practice, why would you bother at all?

Now that I have a tad of strength in my arms and shoulders, I think I can say that, “yes” I do feel good and enjoy the practice … but usually just for the first 20 minutes or so before I start playing the frantic “just keep up with the instructor and hope for a break” game.

Some say that their good feelings come from the relaxed meditative state that yoga puts them in.  Some folks just like to move their bodies and are attracted to the strange and exotic beauty of the postures.  I always enjoy the music.

But where do these good feelings come from?   Aren’t they just in my head?  Do I really need to move my body to feel good?  Why not just sit and breathe?

It turns out that there is a scientific theory on this topic.  The so-called Somatic markers hypothesis that suggests that afferent feedback from the body to the brain is necessary for generating our feelings.  For example, stimulation of the vagus nerve (aka Kundalini serpent) makes us feel good, while individuals with spinal cord damage who lack afferent input from the body reportedly have blunted emotions.

In his research review article, Human feelings: why are some more aware than others? [doi:10.1016/j.tics.2004.04.004] Dr. Bud Craig from the Barrow Neurological Institute reviews the science of this topic and lays out the neural circuitry that goes from body to brain and is necessary for us to FEEL.

These feelings represent ‘the material me’, and so this broader concept of interoception converges with the so-called somatic-marker hypothesis of consciousness proposed by Damasio. In this proposal, the afferent sensory representation of the homeostatic condition of the body is the basis for the mental representation of the sentient self.  Recursive meta-representations of homeostatic feelings allow the brain to distinguish the inner world from the outer world. Most strikingly, degrees of conscious awareness are related to successive upgrades in the cortex (a target of visceral afferent activity), supplementary motor cortex (involved in manual responses), and bilateral insular cortices. This pattern supports the general view that a network of inter-related forebrain regions is involved in interoceptive attention and emotional feelings.

Amazingly, it seems that humans have evolved several unique adaptations that make us able to convert bodily sensation into self-awareness.

For instance, a novel cell type, the so-called spindle cell, is exclusively located in these regions of the human brain. Recent evidence indicates a trenchant phylogenetic correlation, in that spindle cells are most numerous in aged humans, but progressively less numerous in children, gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees, and nonexistent in macaque monkeys. Notably, this phylogenetic progression also parallels the results of the mirror test for self-awareness.

The rapid development of right Anterior Insula within a brief evolutionary timescale suggests that nested interoceptive re-representations could be directly related to the advantages of advanced social interaction.

So it seems that we human beings rely on bodily awareness to attain emotional awareness.  This sounds very yogic and something the yoga practice helps to develop.  Feel your body –> feel your emotions!

Please forgive the absurd title here … its just a play on words from a flabby, middle-aged science geek who is as alluring to “the ladies” as an old leather boot.

Like a lot of males (with active fantasy lives I suppose), my interest was piqued by the recent headline, “What Do Women Really Want? Oxytocin” – based on a recent lecture at this years Society for Neuroscience annual conference.

Oxytocin is a small hormone that also modulates brain activity.  Many have referred it as the “Love Hormone” because it is released into the female brain during breastfeeding (where moms report feeling inextricably drawn to their infants), orgasm and other trust-building and social bonding experiences.  So, the premise of the title (from the male point of view), is a fairly simplistic – but futile – effort to circumvent the whole “social interaction thing” and reduce dating down to handy ways of raising oxytocin levels in females (voila! happier females more prone to social (ahem) bonding).

Of course, Mother Nature is not stupid.  Unless you are an infant, there is no “increase in oxytocin” without a prior “social bonding or shared social experience”.  Mother Nature has the upper hand here … no physical bonding without social binding first!

So, what the heck does this have to do with yoga?  Yes, its true that yoga studios are packed with friendly, health conscious females, but, the practice is mainly a solitary endeavor.  Aside from the chatter before and after class, and the small amount of oxytocin that is released during exercise, there is no social bonding going on that would release the so-called “love hormone”.  Thus, even though “women want yoga”, yoga class may not be the ideal location to “score with chicks”.

However, there may be one aspect of yoga practice that can facilitate social bonding (and hence oxytocin release).  One benefit of a yoga practice (as covered here, here) is an increased ability to “be present” - an improved ability to pay closer attention to your own thoughts and feelings, and also, the thoughts and feelings of another person.

The scientific literature is fairly rich in research showing a close relationship between attention, shared- or joint-attention, trust and oxytocin, and the idea is pretty obvious.  If you are really paying attention to the other person, and paying attention to your shared experience in the moment, the social bond will be stronger, more enjoyable and longer-lasting.  Right?

Soooo – if you want the oxytocin to flow – look your partner in the eye, listen to their thoughts, listen to your own reactions, listen to, and feel their breath as it intermingles with your own, feel their feelings and your own, slow-down and enjoy the minute details of the whole experience and be “right there, right now” with them.  Even if you’ve been with the same person for 40 years, each moment will be new and interesting.

Yoga will teach you how to do this.

These are awesome claims, and I’ve certainly found that mediation helps me feel more emotionally balanced and physically relaxed,  but I’m wondering – from a hard science point of view – how legit some of these claims might be.  For example, “#12 Enhances the immune system“ – REALLY?  How might yoga and mediation enhance my immune system?

In a previous post on the amazing vagus nerve – the only nerve in your body that, like the ancient Kundalini serpent, rises from the root of your gut to the brain – AND – a nerve that is a key to the cure of treatment resistant depression – it was suggested that much of the alleviation of suffering that comes from yoga comes from the stimulation of this amazing nerve during postures and breathing.

Somehow, the ancient yogis really got it right when they came up with the notion of Kundalini serpent – so strange, but so cool!

I happened to stumble on a paper that explored the possibility that the vagus nerve might also play a role in mediating communication of the immune system and the brain – and thus provide a mechanism for “#12- Enhances the immune system” Here’s a quote from the article entitled, “Neural concomitants of immunity—Focus on the vagus nerve” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.05.058] by Drs. Julian F. Thayer and Esther M. Sternberg (Ohio State University and National Institute of Mental Health).

By the nature of its “wandering” route through the body the vagus nerve may be uniquely structured to provide an effective early warning system for the detection of pathogens as well as a source of negative feedback to the immune system after the pathogens have been cleared. … Taken together these parasympathetic pathways form what has been termed “the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway”

The scientists then investigate the evidence and possible mechanisms by which the vagus nerve sends immunological signals from the body to the brain and also back out to the immune system.  Its not a topic that is well understood, but the article describes several lines of evidence implicating the vagus nerve in immunological health.

So bend, twist, inhale and exhale deeply.  Stimulate your vagus nerve and, as cold and flu season arrives, awaken the serpent within!

You already know this, but when you are stressed out (chronic stress), your brain doesn’t work very well.  That’s right – just when you need it most – your brain has a way of letting you down!

Here are a few things that happen to the very cells (in the hippocampus) that you rely on:

- reorganization within mossy fiber terminals
- loss of excitatory glutamatergic synapses
- reduction in the surface area of postsynaptic densities
- marked retraction of thorny excrescences
- alterations in the lengths of the terminal dendritic segments of pyramidal cells
- reduction of the dorsal anterior CA1 area volume

Thanks brain!  Thanks neurons for abandoning me when I need you most!  According to this article, these cellular changes lead to, “impaired hippocampal involvement in episodic, declarative, contextual and spatial memory – likely to debilitate an individual’s ability to process information in new situations and to make decisions about how to deal with new challenges.” UGH!

Are our cells making these changes for a reason?  Might it be better for cells to remodel temporarily rather than suffer permanent, life-long damage?  Perhaps.  Perhaps there are molecular pathways that can lead the reversal of these allostatic stress adaptations?

Check out this recent paper: “A negative regulator of MAP kinase causes depressive behavior” [doi 10.1038/nm.2219]  the authors have identified a gene – MKP-1 – a phosphatase that normally dephosphorylates various MAP kinases involved in cellular growth, that, when inactivated in mice, produces animals that are resistant to chronic unpredictable stress.  Although its known that MKP-1 is needed to limit immune responses associated with multi-organ failure during bacterial infections, the authors suggest:

“pharmacological blockade of MKP-1 would produce a resilient of anti-depressant response to stress”

Hmmm … so Mother Nature is using the same gene to regulate the immune response (turn it off so that it doesn’t damage the rest of the body) and to regulate synaptic growth (turn it off – which is something we DON’T want to do when we’re trying to recover from chronic stress)?  Mother Nature gives us MKP-1 so I can survive an infection, but the same gene prevents us from recovering (finding happiness) from stress?

Of course, we do not need to rely only on pharmacological solutions.  Exercise & social integration are cited by these authors as the top 2 non-medication strategies.

Most cells in your adult body are “terminally differentiated” – meaning that they have developed from stem cells into the final liver, or heart, or muscle or endothelial cell that they were meant to be.  From that point onward, cells are able to “remember” to stay in this final state – in part – via stable patterns of DNA methylation that reinforce the regulation of “the end state” of gene expression for that cell.  As evidence for this role of DNA methylation, it has been observed that levels of DNA methyl transferase (DNMT) decline when cells are fully differentiated and thus, cannot modify or disrupt their patterns of methylation.

NOT the case in the brain! Even though neurons in the adult brain are fully differentiated, levels of methyl transferases – DO NOT decline.  Why not? Afterall, we wouldn’t want our neurons to turn into liver cells, or big toe cells, would we?

One hypothesis, suggested by David Sweatt and colleagues is that neurons have more important things to “remember”.   They suggest in their fee and open research article, “Evidence That DNA (Cytosine-5) Methyltransferase Regulates Synaptic Plasticity in the Hippocampus” [doi: 10.1074/jbc.M511767200] that:

DNA methylation could have lasting effects on neuronal gene expression and overall functional state. We hypothesize that direct modification of DNA, in the form of DNA (cytosine-5) methylation, is another epigenetic mechanism for long term information storage in the nervous system.

By measuring methylated vs. unmethylated DNA in the promoter of the reelin and BDNF genes and relating this to electrophysiological measures of synaptic plasticity, the research team finds correlations between methylation status and synaptic plasticity.  More specifically, they find that zebularine (an inhibitor of DNMT) CAN block long-term potentiation (LTP), but NOT block baseline synaptic transmission nor the ability of synapses to fire in a theta-burst pattern (needed to induce LTP).

This suggests that the epigenetic machinery used for DNA methylation may have a role in the formation of cellular memory – but not in the same sense as in other cells in the body – where cells remember to remain in a terminally differentiated state.

In the brain, this epigenetic machinery may help cells remember stuff that’s more germane to brain function … you know … our memories and stuff.

On Fridays, after a regular practice session, our shala is open for quiet meditation.  This is a new experience for me, even as I’ve read much about the mental and physical health benefits accrued by experienced practitioners.  As someone who is totally exhausted after practice – indeed, I couldn’t move another muscle even if I wanted – I always think it will be easy to settle in, and pass 30 minutes  in quiet stillness.

Sure enough though, even as my body is spent and motionless, my mind starts to wander, and wander, and wander some more.  “Damn”, I think, “here we go again”. Just a few minutes in, and I’m losing a battle – with myself.  “This is going to be the longest 30 minutes of my life!” What to do?

Some experts say to simply LABEL your thoughts and feelings.  Just find a word to place on the thought or feeling – and then – let it go.  Does this really work?  How does this trick work?

Recent brain imaging studies seem to show that when a word is applied to a negative emotion,  the brain changes how it processes that emotion and shifts processing to neural systems that avoid centers of the brain (the amygdala, in particular) that send neural projections to our face, gut and heart (areas where we tend to physically “feel” our bad feelings).   It seems that our ability to use words is an important tool in how we cope with emotional experience.  Either we succumb to the storms of negative emotions that can well up inside us from time to time (and feel lousy inside), or we can manage these feelings – using our words – and feel less lousy inside.   Apparently, the use of words, alters neural processing - leading us to experience less tightening in the chest, clenching in the gut, etc.,  etc. than we would otherwise feel when negative emotions come over us.  One of the researchers, David Cresswell, remarks: “This is an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha‘s teachings – more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labeling your experience – with modern neuroscience.”

But this is easier said than done.

How do I label a thought?  How do I label an emotion?  I mean, “I feel, um, um, frustrated, lousy, anxious … crap … I’m not exactly sure how I feel?  What’s the word I’m looking for?“

Indeed – the words – the words – as in, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” WORDS.  Do I know enough words?  How many words are there anyway to describe all the possible feelings that a person can feel?  How many do you know?

Check this list out.    There are more than 3,000 words in the English language to describe various feelings.  Thank you Peter Mark Roget (who, ironically, worked on the first thesaurus as a means to cope with negative feelings associated with depression).  I will bring my thesaurus – full of these tools to help me label my feelings – to meditation practice from now on!

Have you ever wondered what is the proper musical note to sound when singing AUM at the beginning of class?

Tonight, I was blessed to chant along with Girish who led a kirtan at my yoga shala.  According to him, “AUM” is traditionally played using a low E-chord.  He played his low E chord on his harmonium and we chanted aum – again and again and again! He also said (just paraphrasing his informal comments tonight), that this E-chord is not just a random choice, but that its also the sound that comes from within our minds when we meditate.  Hmm, I wondered – cool thought indeed – but is he just making this up? I mean, what could he know (or ancient yogis for that matter) about what is really, actually happening in the mind?

It turns out that modern science can actually “listen” to the brain when it is meditating – by placing listening devices (small electrodes on the scalp) and measuring oscillations of neuro-electrical activity (electroencephalography or EEG).  Experienced meditators show an increase in the strength of one particular “note” or frequency – a so-called gamma wave, or gamma frequency of about 40Hz when they reach deep meditative states.  According to wikipedia:

A gamma wave is a pattern of brain waves in humans with a frequency between 25 to 100 Hz, though 40 Hz is prototypical. … Experiments on Tibetan Buddhist monks have shown a correlation between transcendental mental states and gamma waves.  A suggested explanation is based on the fact that the gamma is intrinsically localized. Neuroscientist Sean O’Nuallain suggests that this very existence of synchronized gamma indicates that something akin to a singularity – or, to be more prosaic, a conscious experience – is occurring.

OK, so modern science measures brain activity in deep meditators and finds that 40Hz is the vibration associated with deep meditative states.  Girish says AUM is also the vibration of deep meditative states and is traditionally a low E-chord.  OK, so then, is he right?  What’s the frequency of low E?  Is it 40Hz?

41.2Hz! Pretty darn amazing!

Well, on the other hand, it IS yoga class we’re talking about – not Gold’s Gym.  Its not supposed to be a biceps and triceps workout, but rather a WHOLE BODY-MIND workout.  Technically, the face IS part of the body, so I guess while I’m straining every other muscle in my body, I’m obliged to include the face.  OK fine,  I’ll relax my face – but no way am I going to smile.

Am I missing something here?  What’s the point of smiling anyway?  I’m not exactly happy.  Isn’t it the case that you feel happy and THEN you smile.  Its not the other way around – smile and THEN you feel happy.  Or is it?

According to a recent research article,  How does facial feedback modulate emotional experience? by Joshua Davis, Ann Senghas and Kevin Ochsner from Columbia University – the intentional act of relaxing the face and/or smiling can indeed mildly influence a person’s mood.  Apparently there are neural pathway(s) that allow the muscles in the face to send signals back to the brain and modulate one’s emotional experience – described in the Facial Feedback Hypothesis.  From their experiment where they asked 142 participants to watch positive and negative video clips while either inhibiting their facial expressions or not, the authors note:

This study sought to examine whether inhibiting facial expression influences emotional experience, particularly when participants are unaware that their facial expressions are being manipulated. Moreover, we sought to examine this relationship while controlling for the potential role of distraction due to a cognitively demanding secondary task. Overall, we found that no movement instructions, to inhibit facial expression, led participants to both show less emotion on their faces and to experience weaker emotions, whereas distraction instructions did not. This pattern held more clearly for our negative and neutral video clips, but was less clear for our positive video clip.

Their data provide support for the Facial Feedback Hypothesis – namely that contracting muscles involved in facial expressions (e.g. smiling or frowning) can make emotions more intense.

In a follow-up study, the investigators queried the effects of blocking these facial feedback pathways – via BOTOX injections.  Might the BOTOX (which paralyzes muscles in the face) prevent the facial feedback from modulating one’s emotional experiences?

In their article, “The Effects of BOTOX Injections on Emotional Experience“, the research team compared the impact on self-reported emotional experience of BOTOX injections and a control Restylane injection (a cosmetic filler that does not affect facial muscles).  They report:

When examined alone, BOTOX participants showed no pre- to posttreatment changes in emotional responses to our most positive and negative video clips. Between-groups comparisons, however, showed that relative to controls, BOTOX participants exhibited an overall significant decrease in the strength of emotional experience. This result was attributable to (a) a pre- versus postdecrease in responses to mildly positive clips in the BOTOX group and (b) an unexpected increase in responses to negative clips in the Restylane control group.

So it seems that the facial feedback hypothesis has some merit.  Did the old-time yogis work out this connection between body-to-mind intuitively?  I’ll bet they did!

Relax the face & smile.  Sage advice!