Generating Internal Heat. Why I am Grateful For Ashtanga Yoga Reason #3

A famous Teacher/Guru once landed in a cold German winter dressed only in a piece of cloth. Dignitaries who were there to receive him offered a coat, but he answered he did not need it because he generated his own internal heat.

Mount Kailash in Tibet, where Shiva is said to be
sited at the top, constantly meditating

I cannot remember where I read that or who the Guru in question was, but the story has been powerful enough to stick with me.  Can you imagine? Landing in Kennedy Airport in February and going: nah! I don't need a coat, thank you.

GENERATING INTERNAL HEAT

This was one of the most mind-blowing things I came across while taking up Asthanga yoga: the instruction that by using proper breathing (ujjaji breath), I would actually help my body generate enough heat to not only sweat, but by the time the core poses came around (Bujapidasana, Kurmasana and Supta Kurmasana, Garba Pindasana and Badokonasana), have enough liquid pooring from my pores that I would be able to, say,  slide my hands easily into garba pindasana.

Sliding hands in while attempting Garba Pindasana

I am amazed by how long it took me to surrender my pre-conceptions of what I thought proper breathing was, and actually take on the technique.  Even though it was offered from day one:

• Breathe slowly, and in a controlled way, 
• Count 5 for inhale and 5 for exhale -this helped me in the beginning, while trying to "get it"-
• Close the glottis gland so you will make the Darth Vader sound
• Engage bandhas
• Don't make it so loud that it can be heard from the street, if you can hear it that is enough

The good old mind! Oh! It loves to resist, to think it knows better.

Since it took me so long to surrender to the technique, it also took a while to learn to generate internal heat, but eventually, as it is the case with all practices over a long dedicated period of time, it all came together. These days I find myself sweating right away. It does happen!

Of course winter does not help, and sometimes, when the weather is very cold and the heaters don't quite work as hard a practice may come and go with no sweat, but this is more the exception.

A great way to notice how much internal heat is generated, at least for me, it is when I am trying really hard and working on the practice in the cold winter of New York's December and then suddenly the find myself in the drenched humid and extra hot Mysore room of, well, Mysore, South India at the Asthanga Yoga Research Institute. 

Sweating the intermediate series in Mysore.

As the temperatures change so abruptly, and the Mysore shala is so incredibly hot, one can find oneself sweating in places like the skin around the tibia (front of the lower leg below the knee), yes that area can sweat!

Yoga turns the practitioner into a scientist of its own body. It makes us go within and explore our inner landscape and how it is deeply connected to our mind. It shows us clearly and in every practice: the places that scare it [mind], the places where it refuses to go, the places where it throws tantrums.

Then, through proper technique we learn to go further into the laboratory while keeping an equanimity attitude towards whatever the mind comes up with.

Learning that heat is generated internally is one of the ways we turn the laboratory in fire and work with these new, sometimes extreme conditions.  It is practice for what comes afterwards, when we step out of the mat and the fires fee; more real, and even hotter in the world outside the Mysore room.

REASONS WHY I AM GRATEFUL FOR ASHTANGA YOGA:

1-  Eye-Focus, Breath and Bandha in Every Practice
2-  Generating Our Own Internal Heat

3-  A Very Personal Practice

4-  Commitment

5-  A Real and Clear Way to Happiness

6-  A Real, Clear Way to Happiness

7-  Becoming Super EfficientA Real and Clear Way to Happiness
8-  I am Grateful for My Gunas
9-  What Yoga in Mysore Means to Me

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