Are you afraid of losing your job?  Losing your spouse or partner?  Creditors who who leave threatening messages?  A physical ailment that could be serious?

If you are an American, you are (statistically) likely to be overweight, over indebted and under increasing threat of losing your job and health benefits.  You may have friends that have “dropped out” of the social loop while being overwhelmed with these many adversities.  They themselves may feel stigmatized or too ashamed to face their usual circle of friends, and might rather stay out of touch.  Its an awful irony how feelings of shame and fear can cause our social relations to deteriorate just when we need them most.

Even if you haven’t dropped out, you may eat, drink or otherwise seek to numb these feelings of fear or shame.  But, deep down inside you may already be aware that by numbing your feelings of fear and shame, you also suppressing other emotions such as affection and joy – and thus undermining the social-familial bonds you are so afraid of losing.  Again, its an awful irony how fear, shame and anxiety can lead us to self-inflicted ruin.

Nevertheless, the grim reality remains.  Our bodies are unsightly, unfit and falling apart as we age.  Our careers paths are no longer certain in the new global economy.  We owe a lot of money and have barely the means to pay it back.  We do not have the resources to pay for old age.  Holy crap!  This is a dire view of the world hunh?!

What to do?  How to avoid the downward spiral of fear and anxiety?  Is there an upside to a deteriorating body?  a loss of career?  a down-shift to a much lower standard of living?

Check out this lecture by Dr. Brene Brown, who has carried out a great deal of social science research on this topic.  You will be amazed.  You will be uplifted.  You will begin to see that THERE IS an upside, and a way to break out of the cycle (unlike corporations, we won’t be getting a bailout).

Yoga and meditation practitioners may enjoy the parts of her talk on “self-love” and “courage” – a word whose origins lie in “cor” the word for “heart” and an ability to look inwardly and face the truth – a common theme, especially in Anusara yoga.

Note to readers:  Lately I’ve been focused on various personal and introspective themes, rather than the usual molecular-cognitive science-ology.  These themes set a base for exploring the basic biology of our emotional and cognitive lives and I’ll be digging into the brain-biology of these themes in the year to come.

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.

The article,  Targeting abnormal neural circuits in mood and anxiety disorders: from the laboratory to the clinic discusses a number of “nerve stimulation therapies” wherein specific nerve fibers are electrically stimulated to relieve mental anguish associated with (drug) treatment-resistant depression.

Vagus nerve stimulation therapy (VNS) is approved by the FDA for treatment of medication-resistant depression and was approved earlier for the treatment of epilepsy²⁰.  …  The initial reasoning behind the use of VNS followed from its apparent effects of elevating mood in patients with epilepsy²⁰, combined with evidence that VNS affects limbic activity in neuroimaging studies²¹. Furthermore, VNS alters concentrations of serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA and glutamate within the brain^22–24, suggesting that VNS may help correct dysfunctional neurotransmitter modulatory circuits in patients with depression.

This stuff is miraculous in every sense of the word – to be able to reach in and “touch” the body and bring relief – if not bliss – to individuals who suffer with immense emotional pain.  So who is this Vagus nerve anyway?  Why does stimulating it impart so many emotional benefits?  How can I touch my own Vagus nerve?

The wikipedia page is a great place to explore – suggesting that this nerve fiber is central to the “rest and digest” functions of the parasympathetic nervous system.  As evidenced by the relief its stimulation brings from emotional pain, the Vagus nerve is central to mind-body connections and mental peace.

YOGA is a practice that also brings mental peace.  YOGA,  in so many ways (I hope to elaborate on in future posts),  aims to engage the parasympathetic nervous system (slowing down and resting responses) and disengage the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight responses).  Since we all can’t have our very own (ahem) lululemon (ahem) vagal nerve stimulation device, we must rely on other ways to stimulate the Vagus nerve fiber.  Luckily, many such ways are actually known – so-called “Vagal maneuvers” – such as  holding your breath and bearing down (Valsalva maneuver), immersing your face in ice-cold water (diving reflex), putting pressure on your eyelids, & massage of the carotid sinus area - that have been shown to facilitate parasympathetic (relaxation & slowing down) responses.

But these “Vagal maneuvers” are not incorporated into yoga.  How might yoga engage and stimulate the Vagal nerve bundle? Check out these great resources on breathing and Vagal tone (here, here, here).  I’m not an expert by any means but I think the take home message is that when we breathe deep and exhale, Vagal tone increases.  So, any technique that allows us to increase the duration of our exhalation will increase Vagal tone. Now THAT sounds like yoga!

Even more yogic is the way the Vagus nerve is the only nerve in the parasympathetic system that reaches all the way from the colon to the brain.  The fiber is composed mainly of upward (to the brain) pulsing neurons – which sounds a lot like the mystical Kundalini Serpent that arises upwards from within (starting at the root – colon) and ending in the brain.  The picture above – of the Vagus nerve (bright green fiber) – might be what the ancient yogis had in mind?

some updates:

- here’s a great post on the importance of, and teaching of exhalation

We – as human beings – have a very poor sense of time.  Intensely new and wonderful experiences may pass too quickly, but remembered years later, seem greatly expanded.  In flashes of intense fear, time has a way of moving very slowly, yet un-recallable in repressed memories.  Sitting and waiting for a bus makes time pass so very slowly, until an attractive or interesting person sits next to you.

Somehow its not time, per se, that we measure, but rather the intensity of our emotional experience that makes time expand and contract.

Yoga texts are chock full of references to “consciousness” and the “illusions” of everyday thinking.  Sometimes, these notions can sound hokey when spoken in the NJ suburbs where I practice, but that doesn’t mean they are not true.  Just consider how illusory your perceptions of time are.  Your sense of time is just a by-product of your experience – its not an absolute “thing” you can measure.  Your sense of YOU and the events in your life – as they stretch out over time – the mere jumble of memories – is very far from the objective reality you might want think.  We all live in the illusions created by our own minds.

When it comes to the illusions of time, somehow, it seems, our perception of time is tied mainly to the intensity of our emotional experience.   People seem to understand this.  Folks like Marcel Proust who wrote, “Love is space and time measured by the heart.”   And folks like Craig Wright who wrote the play – Melissa Arctic – that made me acutely aware of the illusion of time in our all too brief lives.  Check it out if you ever get the chance.  The play – wherein a young child plays the role of “time” – pulls you through the course of one man’s tragic life and deeply into your heart to realize that time is, indeed, measured by the heart – captured and measured by the intensity of emotional experience.  Consider how Time, the young child, invokes the audience at the start of the play, “Everything be still. Can everything be perfectly still?”

Needless to say, this all sounds much like the common yogic counsel to “stop thinking and start feeling” and “live in the present moment“.  Perhaps its worth recognizing how fallible, illusionary and fanciful our sense of time really is.  Perhaps also, emotions are the key here.  Perhaps I should try harder to engage my heart in life (and in yoga class) -  the key to really experiencing now and living in this present moment.

One of the most mysterious aspects of modern medicine is the so-called placebo effect.  Imagine a drug company that has a new pill.  To see if it works, they give one group of people (the “test” group) the real pill and they give another group of people (the “control” group) an identical looking pill that does not contain any medicine (sugar pill).  If the the “test” group improves in health and the “control” group does not – voila! – one can conclude that the medicine works.

What happens when the “control” group gets better?  Hunh?  but there was no medicine … how can they get better? This is known as the placebo effect – wherein a persons EXPECTATIONS lead them to feel better.

Believe it or not, it happens all the time in scientific research and in the pharmaceutical industry.  Apparently the brain has a way of convincing the body that things are getter better (or worse).  You probably have probed this complex mind-body interface at some point … “is the pain really in my back, or perhaps just in my head?” Indeed, you can almost hear the frustration among the blue suits in a big pharma board room,  “Mind and body are connected?” “How much is this damned mind-body problem going to cost us?“  Its a multi-billion dollar problem!

Ancient yogis seemed to understand the placebo/mind-body phenomenon.  Its a part of what makes yoga so interesting.  Its ALL ABOUT THE CONNECTION between mind and body – not one vs. the other.

Most folks who practice yoga will attest to its mental and physical benefits.  This is true.  However, one can still ask the valid question of whether the actual benefits are real?  The purely physical benefits (muscles) are not in doubt.  But, does yoga really improve a person’s mental life – or do we just want to think so (a placebo response)?  I mean, have you left the yoga studio (fully relaxed) only to honk the horn after being cut off in traffic?  Did yoga really change you?  Is there evidence – in the scientific sense – that yoga leads to mental well-being?

Hats off to Dru worldwide – an organization that is “passionate about positive health and wellbeing. With yoga and meditation at [its] core.” – for taking on this important question!

In an article entitled, “The effectiveness of yoga for the improvement of well-being and resilience to stress in the workplace“  [PMID: 20369218]  published in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, researchers from Dru Education Center, University of Gothenburg, Harvard Medical School and Bangor University used the scientific method and compared 24 people (mostly women with mean age of 39) who participated in a 1 hour yoga class each week (for 6 weeks) to 24 people who did not participate in the yoga training (the control group).  Importantly, these groups were selected at random and showed similar profiles for age, prior yoga experience and health condition.

Specifically, the investigators sought to “measure” the effects of yoga using 2 instruments:  the Profile of Mood States Bipolar (POMS-Bi) and the Inventory of Positive Psychological Attitudes (IPPA – you can take the assessment here).  As noted by the researchers, these questionnaires allow investigators to track changes in both positive and negative feelings.  To determine whether the yoga experience conferred a psychological benefit, the investigators measured the POMS and IPPA scores at the start and at the end of 6 weeks and then asked whether the change in score was different between the “test” and “control” groups.

The results (nice graph on the Dru website) show that the improvements in score (benefits) were higher in the yoga “test” group than the “control” group (who were on the waiting list for the 6 weeks).

In 7 of the 8 POMS-Bi and IPPA domains, scores for the yoga group improved 2–5 times more than those in the control group over the course of this study. The interaction term from a two-way ANOVA showed that in comparison with the control group, the yoga participants at the end of the program felt significantly less anxious, confused, depressed, tired, and unsure, and had a greater sense of life purpose and satisfaction and were more self-confident during stressful situations. Although the yoga group reported feeling more agreeable (less hostile) than the control group at the end of the program, this difference was not statistically significant.

Thus, the research team validly concludes that the yoga experience was associate with improvements in mental well-being.   This is remarkable given the small size and short duration of the study.  I do recall, when I first started yoga (9 months ago) that I felt sooo much better, so I think I can understand what the participants might have been feeling.

BUT, was this just the placebo response?  Like me, did the study participants want to THINK that it was the yoga that made the difference?  In other words, were the mental wellness benefits due to the EXPECTATION of feeling better – the placebo effect?  The investigators are not unaware of this issue:

Because participants in our study were self-selected, it can be assumed that they were a highly motivated group who wanted to practice yoga. Participant expectations may have included a desire to feel less stressed by the end of the six-week sessions and this may have contributed to their perceived benefit.

So, the data suggest that yoga made a contribution to the mental well-being of the participants.  This is a valid conclusion – and hats off to the research team for conducting the study.  Are the effects “real” or “just in the mind” of the participants?  Does it really matter?

Personally, I don’t think so.  That’s the fun of exploring the mind-body interface via yoga and meditation.  Not “knowing” but rather, just “feeling”!

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!

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!

These are the very themes of yoga.  Beautifully captured in picture and sound in the 2003 film “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus“.