The Biochemical Basis for a Gratitude Practice Rerun

by Nina

In a Meadow by Melina Meza

 II.33 Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts. —translated by Edwin Bryant

For some time now, I’ve been intrigued by Facebook posts from certain friends that simply list things the person is grateful for. I particularly like the ones by my friend Liz because her lists include very simple things, mostly free and available to almost everyone.

Today's good things:

1. Walked six miles;
2. Dog therapy on campus today, in particular the golden retriever puppy;
3. Watching the bushtits (birds) flit in and out of the trees on campus;
4. Got a lot of items off my 'to do' list at work, moving forward with several work projects and learning new things.

I also happen to know this gratitude practice is a very serious one for Liz, because she suffers from a serious, chronic illness that affects her quality of life and requires quite a bit of time spent in the hospital. She says, “It’s been bumpy, but I saw research that said gratitude practice helps. And I set intentions at the beginning of each day and have seen improvement.”

Today's good things:

1. Three mile walk at lunch, great watching the hawks circle;
2. Very productive day at work, a lot of weeding and organizing;
3. Ran into a lovely friend whom I haven't seen in a while, always great to catch up;
4. Gluten-free ice cream sandwiches

So I was very intrigued when I learned that neuroscientist Alex Korb’s book The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time actually provides a scientific explanation of why this practice works. Apparently, cultivating gratitude actually has a beneficial chemical effect on the brain, boosting dopamine (a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers) and serotonin (a neurotransmitter that affects our mood) levels.

“The benefits of gratitude start with the dopamine system, because feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine. Additionally, gratitude toward others increases activity in social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable …”

“One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. Trying to think of things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex.” —Dr. Korb

When I was thinking about how this practice related to yoga (haha, I figured it must!), I came back to this sutra by Patanjali about cultivating the opposite (pratipaksa-bhavanam).

II.33 Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts. —translated by Edwin Bryant

Bryant explains in his commentary on this sutra that the “negative thoughts” being referred to are those that counter the yamas and niyamas. So thoughts that are the opposite of contentment (the niyama santosha), such as dissatisfaction, displeasure, and unhappiness, would count as negative thoughts that you should counteract. And the practice of being grateful for what you have, which is cultivating contentment, is indeed the practice of cultivating thoughts that counteract dissatisfaction, displeasure, and unhappiness.

Of course, when you are being “harassed by negative thoughts,” it often isn’t easy to find and focus on things you are grateful for. But Korb says, the effort alone provides the benefits.

“It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be grateful is a form of emotional intelligence. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as emotional intelligence increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful.”

Fascinating, isn’t it? Just like strengthening a muscle, a regular gratitude practice makes you stronger at being grateful over time. So that means getting better as it as you age, and eventually more time spent in a state of contentment. And those brain density changes? That sounds to me like the gratitude practice is improving brain strength—always a good thing.

And by the way, thank you Liz for agreeing to share your story with us. I'm grateful for your friendship and your honesty.

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Drawing Inside and Quieting Roger Cole on Savasana Part 2 Rerun

Drawing Inside by Melina Meza

Here is the second excerpt from the interview that Leslie Howard did in 2008 with yoga teacher Roger Cole. In this excerpt he talks about his own practice of Savasana, compares seated meditation with Savasana, and gives his recommendations for setting up and practicing the pose. 

 Leslie: Have you had any special experiences with the pose, either in your own practice or with students?  

Roger: Not really. There isn’t one that stands out for me. Restorative asana experiences—Ssavasana being one of them—many times I have had resting poses or Savasana in which I just really feel like this is exactly what I need and what everyone needs—everyone needs to do this sometime. Take the time when you would not ordinarily be sleeping, and lie down and just stop. It is different from seated meditation. Seated mediastion is wonderful in its own way. In Savasana and the other more reclining poses, the brain just shuts off. In the seated pose you are very, very alert. Seated meditation is really good for this deep realization in which you you see the connection between things. In Savasana it is more like you are drawing inside and quieting, and you are observing the quietness. There is a lot less activity in Savasana.  

Leslie: Do you always practice Savasana in your own practice?

Roger: Ideally, yes but in reality no.   

Leslie: When you take the time to do it, what is your preferred method?

Roger: First of all, I am very big on restorative poses and sometimes I will substitute a restorative pose for Savasana. Now ideally Savasana is the last pose because it is the most neutral; no part of the body is elevated over the other, nothing is particularly stretching, especially if you support the arms and stuff. So if I had the ideal Savasana, I would be almost completely neutral, with maybe a little elbow flexion so I could stay longer, maybe padding under the head not to lift the head but to make it not hurt. I personally don’t need padding under the knees but padding under the heels so that the heels don’t hurt. So I make it comfortable. 

The other thing that a lot of people don’t realize about Savasana and other restorative poses is that temperature is extremely important. You get cold. And if you get cold it is just not a relaxing experience. So I am very conscious of the room temperature, and if you need to be covered with a blanket in Savasana and other restorative poses, you need to cover the hands and feet. Don’t just cover the trunk and have the hands and feet sticking out. So in my practice of Savasana ideally it would be the last pose even if I do a lot of other restorative poses. But in reality there is a time limit so if I end up staying in another pose longer well than Savasana gets shortened. Same thing when I am teaching; ideally I would like to put it at the end of every class but sometimes I just run out of time.   

Leslie: Are there any special circumstances or conditions for which you think Savasana is particularly valuable? 

Roger: One of things is that Savasana is the quickest, most generic pose. When it comes time to relax, just lie down. You can do it on a bed, which is actually very important. Bedrooms are set up with a bed so you can lie on them. Of course they have blankets and such, but the availability of having a space to do it is extremely important. If you just lie down on a dirty floor you might not relax, or if its cold or too light or in a traffic area, the bed takes care of all that. Of course, it is a little soft but its there and its available. 

In a yoga class situation, with students that have never done yoga you don’t what to do some strange thing with them in Savasana, maybe with support under the knees because that is very non threatening and it’s very intuitive. So, it’s got a lot of benefit. It doesn’t have a lot of the problems of being uncomfortable or they can’t hold it or their knees hurt or whatever. But if you are going to put people in it a long time, you are going to have to prop them up. So I think it would be particularly valuable for quick relaxation. Also, some kind of relaxation is valuable, but it doesn’t always have to be specifically Savasana. 

You asked me if there were times Savasana should be avoided. So with some kinds of back pain, such as when people have a facet joint injury, it’s too much back bend, but you can modify the pose. Generally it is a pretty easy pose to do. Also if the nose is congested, prop them up and it can be used to drain the nose. 

What about emotionally? Emotionally if someone has had a trauma, like after an earthquake or something like that or a terrorist attack, people are often afraid to close their eyes, to lie there with their eyes closed is very frightening. Also I have had a couple of deaf students and they don’t like to close their eyes because once they close their eyes in Savasana, they don’t know what is going on in the world, although they will do it. They can hear enough through their hearing aid to know when there is shuffling around, but it’s a little tricky. 

So in those instances Savasana with eyes open is a good pose and if their eyes close, apparently they have gotten over it. 

Leslie Howard is an Oakland-based yoga teacher, specializing in all things pelvic. She leads workshops and trainings nationally and internationally, and is the director of the 200 hour Deep Yoga program at Piedmont Yoga. With a state certification in massage, she also practices cranial sacral therapy. To learn more about Leslie, visit: www.lesliehowardyoga.com.  

Roger Cole, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized, certified Iyengar yoga teacher trained  at the Iyengar Yoga Institutes in San Francisco and Pune, India. He is also an accomplished scientist educated at Stanford University and the University of California, with specialties in the science of relaxation, sleep, and circadian rhythms. Roger has taught yoga since 1975. He has authored dozens of articles on yoga teaching, practice, biology and therapeutics, including Yoga Journal's Anatomy Column, Master Class Column and Ask Our Expert Column, Yoga International's Asana Solutions Column, and special feature articles on the prevention of yoga injuries, the physiology of stress, relief from back pain, and the science of keeping your balance. He has trained thousands of yoga teachers and taught yoga as a healing art to physicians, physical therapists, medical students and patients. He offers weekly classes in Del Mar, California, and conducts workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad. His specialties include yoga teacher training, yoga anatomy, yoga physiology, restorative yoga, and promotion of better sleep. See rogercoleyoga.com for more information.

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Friday Q A Practice for All Seasons Rerun

Swimming Hole by Brad Gibson

Q: Practice and the seasons: Does your practice change with the seasons and if so how?

A: Where I live, there are seasons (though some people might argue differently), but rarely extremes of weather. But one summer day that was actually hot, I went to my regular Friday morning yoga class, expecting backbends because my teacher always teaches backbends the second class of the month. Our studio, though in a beautiful old building, had no insulation and very little climate control, with poor heating in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer, so it was unusually warm in the studio.

The teacher opened the class with a little smile, saying, “Today we’re going to do some nice cooling backbends.” Everyone laughed, because, of course, backbends are typically not at cooling. But guess what. We did do backbends, but our teacher modified his typical sequence so we did a cooler practice of stretches, passive backbends, and the less effortful, active backbends, rather than a “hotter” practice of standing poses and very active backbends.

That memory of that still makes me smile, but I bring it up today because I don’t necessarily change my practice with the seasons per se, but I’m definitely change my practice to fit the weather and the temperature in the space where I’m practicing.

Today is a cold and rainy day in Berkeley, California and my house is a little bit drafty, so I would incline toward an active, heating practice rather than a passive cooling practice. Trying to do, for example, a restorative practice in a cold room is not only very challenging because you get colder and colder the longer you stay still, but it is also not very effective, because being cold stimulates your nervous system, alerting your body and mind that you may in danger. So it’s very difficult to relax. On the other hand, the active poses warm up both you and the room quite nicely.

Likewise, being too hot is very stimulating for the same reasons; your nervous system warns your body and mind there may be danger. So when it’s hot, it’s a good time to do more passive and relaxing poses. Or, slowly work up to the active poses and take time to rest and cool down.

Naturally you don’t want to do only active practices all winter and only passive practices all summer, but as my teacher did that day, you modify any sequence by adding more cooling poses or heating poses to accommodate the climate, both outdoors and indoor. For your convenience, I’ve categorized the general groups of poses into Heating and Cooling.

Heating Poses:

• Sun Salutations
• Standing Poses
• Active backbends
• Headstand and arm balances
• Twists and abdominal strengtheners

Cooling Poses:

• Restorative poses
• Reclined poses
• Forward bends
• Supported inverted poses

Some other considerations: Your body is stiffer when you are cold, so that’s a time when you may need more stretching. When it’s hot and your muscles are more relaxed, you may not need to stretch as much. The weather also influences how physically active you are outside the yoga room. I also tend to be more physically active outside during warmer, drier months, walking, gardening, and so on. So to balance my body on more active days, I’ll focus more on poses that complement those activities (see Deciding What to Practice). During the rainy season when I spent more time in the house, I’ll naturally gravitate toward more active poses to compensate for being more sedentary. However, some people may spend the winter skiing (yes, I’ve heard tell of that) and the summer hiding out in an air-conditioned apartment (heard of that, too), so each person needs to find his or her own way with figuring out the best practice on a given day.

—Nina

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9 11 Anxiety and Yoga Rerun

by Baxter

Some years ago, when Nina and I were working on a series of yoga classes for stress management, I read the book The Relaxation Response by Dr. Herbert Benson, and an interesting finding from the work he did has stuck with me. He noted that his blood pressure patients who meditated regularly not only saw improvements in their blood pressure readings, but they also had certain substances in the blood stream that increased or decreased. One of those substances was lactate, or lactic acid, which is a byproduct of cells using sugar or glucose for fuel. It had already been noted back in the 60s that folks with anxiety disorders often had elevated levels of lactate in their bloodstream compared to individuals without anxiety. Since meditation seemed to lower lactate levels, it seemed like a great potential treatment.

More recently, an article in Scientific American looked at lactate and other markers in the body that could account for why some folks develop panic disorders, an extreme form of anxiety. Studies done in the last two years point to the pH in the brain as a possible causative factor in the experience of fear, and by extension, anxiety. It seems a more acidic pH in the brain is associated with more active trigger of the fear centers in the brain. In fact, there are receptors at individual synapses, the spaces between two nerve cells, that respond to elevated levels of acid. In the area of the brain strongly associated with the emotion of fear, the amygdala, this increase in local pH can trigger fear responses.


They also noted that carbon dioxide levels, when increased in the blood stream and the brain, lead to greater acidity. Other studies have demonstrated that patients with panic disorders are more likely to have an event if they inhale a higher concentration of CO2, compared to non-anxious individuals. These researchers also addressed the lactic acid phenomena that Dr. Benson noted years before: patients with panic disorder tend to generate excess lactic acid in their brains. We all generate lactic acid in our brains as sugars are burned as fuel, but for people with panic attacks, even normal mental activity to lead to an accumulation of lactic acid in the brain.

So if a decrease in pH in the brain—whether due to CO2 build up or lactic acid build up in certain areas of the brain—could be a trigger for anxiety and panic attacks, how could yoga diffuse this situation? Well, way back in the 60s it was already observed that the “relaxation response” that arose from simple meditation practice could lower the pH in the blood stream. This might indicate that it could be lowered in the brain, too. So I’d give high marks to establishing a regular meditation practice, even if only for ten minutes at a time. Secondly, certain pranayama practices could theoretically lower blood CO2 levels slowly and gradually, but whether that would lower CO2 levels in the brain is uncertain. That sounds like it would be worth a trial, however. And finally, the authors of the study noted that “one of the many beneficial effects of aerobic exercise training (like running or cycling) is that metabolically active tissues (including the brain) become more efficient at consuming–removing—lactic acid.” And although not all yoga asana practices are aerobic, some are to a certain degree. So, physiologically, your asana practice, especially if it is more vigorous, could be the third prong in your yoga tools approach to anxiety, panic attacks and fear.

Here is a link to the 2010 Scientific American article here so you can get more details: scientificamerican.com. And may you and yours be safe and anxiety free this 9/11 anniversary. 

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