Frequently asked questions

Yoga practices are at least 5,000 years old and have gained increasing respect in both consumer circles and in health research. The research that has been popularized has focused on physical effects. And yet, everyone who has practiced yoga, is familiar with the mental as well as the physical ease that comes from a good yoga ‘treatment’.

Current diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems focus on three areas of behavior: Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors (Actions). Below are three classic definitions of yoga taken from ancient Sanskrit texts. Notice the parallel to modern psychology:

“Chitta Vritti Nirodaha”: Control of Thoughts is Yoga
“Samatvam Yoga Uchyate”: Equanimity is Yoga
“Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam”: Perfection in Action is Yoga

The similarity to the three levels defined in mental health/illness is not only striking. In the yoga definitions, we see a positive view of health and elegantly stated goals. Moreover, in these (and other) classic definitions of yoga, the emphasis is not on physical techniques or outcomes.

From the beginning of my practice in 1969, it was abundantly clear that regardless of name brand or guru, the teachings of yoga were essentially psychological. As a discipline, yoga practices reflect ‘tried and true’ theories and remedies that address basic human mental (and physical) health problems. Perhaps the stress of life has not changed much in 5,000 years! As I continue to practice and study in both fields, I continue to see parallels.

The word ‘Yoga’ comes from the Sanskrit word ‘Yuj’ from which we get many English words like: Join, Link, Yoke, Union. There are various branches of yoga practice. Yoga practices increase concentration and mental clarity, promote physical health and control the stress response. Hatha yoga focuses on body postures and relaxation training. Meditation emphasizes concentration and awareness. Pranayama is the study and control of the breath. All the techniques complement one another, and aim toward connecting with, and using innate mental and physical wholeness.

No. Yoga, which means “union,” implies harmony of body, mind, and spirit. This state is familiar, natural, and accessible to all. Learning from a teacher with extensive experience in yoga practice and instruction is most useful. However, commitment to a group, or teacher, or particular belief system is not necessary.

Recently my fitness center, my church, and the “Y” have all added yoga classes to their programs, and my friends are all learning yoga with exotic names like: Hatha Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Yin Yoga, Power Yoga, Kripalu Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Naked Yoga (yes – there is a style with this name. .), Iyengar Yoga, Pilates, etc.

Yoga seems to be everywhere, with new “name brands” of yoga featured regularly in popular magazines. However, a word of caution is appropriate: The simplicity and elegance of yoga makes the practice inviting to persons of all skill levels, and with varying interests. To realize the benefits of practice, to progress safely into more difficult techniques, and to avoid injury, it is vital to learn from qualified teachers. When you seek help from other professionals such as doctors, therapists, and lawyers wouldn’t you expect them the meet some accepted standard of practice?

A competent yoga teacher will have a regular personal practice long before getting certified to teach. They should have a broad exposure to the various branches of yoga (especially meditation) and they should be certified in at least one style of hatha yoga (the generic name for the practice of physical postures). Their certification should include a minimum of 200 hours of course work followed by supervised teaching practice. These are the currently accepted national standards.

Experienced yoga teachers know how to transmit the therapeutic effects of practice, and teach with ease, grace, and safety.

Lakshyan began his studies in 1969 and has been teaching since 1971. His yoga studio is independent of any particular guru, or name brand, or religion, and was founded in 1979.

No. Everyone can benefit from yoga practice, even if you are not an athletic. Some name-brands of yoga have much in common with physical conditioning. However yoga has a different focus. In physical conditioning, the goal is to improve or create a condition that needs to be developed. In authentic yoga, the goal is a return to a built-in level of health. To quote one master:

“No change can be made in you.
No instruction whatsoever can be given to you.
You were perfect even before you came here.
And you will be returning absolutely perfect, without even a dent on you.”
– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Thus, Yoga is really about ‘de-conditioning’. Proper yoga practice results in a restoration – a return to a natural and more original sense of ease. In every program at our studio you are encouraged to discover and work with your own limits without strain. Practicing yoga this way will increase your flexibility and improve your general well being, regardless of your level of fitness.

Currently, yoga practice is both influencing, and influenced by many other disciplines, such as dance, gymnastics, and even circus acrobatics. While rigorous Hatha yoga postures might aid in a very high level of physical conditioning and flexibility, yoga is never about going to extremes. We strongly discourage you from learning from teachers who expect you to be a gymnast, acrobat, or contortionist.

An authentic yoga studio is not a health club. Our yoga studio cultivates an atmosphere of peace, healing, non-competition, and friendship. A health club or gym usually focuses on physical culture (form and fitness), and instruction without much emphasis on the healing state of meditation or relaxation. Health clubs may employ instructors having little or no training, or certification in yoga. Authentic yoga classes will include more than posture practice. Classes should include breathing practices, and relaxation or meditation. The ethic of non-violence, called ‘Ahimsa’ (no force/no harm), is present throughout the class, and makes the practice ‘yogic’. Special attention is given to each student’s capacity. Instruction is not ‘one-size fits all’. If there are more than 20 students in a class, additional trained assistants should be present. A competent instructor will modify practices for you, especially if you are under medical treatment, and your doctor has advised you of any restrictions.

For centuries traditional yoga practitioners have claimed extraordinary control over body functions. Science has verified some of these claims (especially the relaxation effects of yoga practices) and much remains to be researched.

Simply stated: YES! Because, fundamentally, you are already healthy. Yoga practices are aimed at returning you to a natural state of mental and physical ease. Yoga will also aid whatever other healthy habits you cultivate including: cardiovascular health training, sleep habits, managing chronic pain or illness, dietary reform, and general physical conditioning – to mention just a few areas. However, it is important to understand that unless your yoga teacher has been certified in medicine, psychology, physical fitness, physical therapy, nutrition, chiropractic, or any other professional healing art, they are not professionally trained to give you advice in areas outside of their yoga training.

The core of my work has to do with a shift in the way you use attention. Body awareness in both psychotherapy and yoga might be cultivated by turning your attention to the ever-present physical background of experience –without changing it. For example, while you are reading this sentence, you might also notice some tension in the muscles of your face, or even the location of your tongue in your mouth, or even the way you are breathing.

And we can attend even more closely: Let’s use the example of the breath: If you focus on your breath right now, which nostril is more open? Nothing has changed in the way you breathe. But you are taking in more information about your experience. When performing an asana (posture), like the cobra pose, the focus involves watching how your body automatically makes somatic shifts/adjustments. So in this pose I teach how to pay attention and allow the releases that take place in the face, at the back of the neck, etc. This is different from looking in mirror or imitating your yoga teacher demonstrating the cobra, where the technique is from outside to inside- like, just using your arms to hoist your back into a curl up. In my teaching, when you bring this open focus of awareness to include your unique patterns of tension, you notice where the constrictions are, and precisely where your body can release them. So I teach a deliberate attention to the sensory information from the inside out. This enhances communication between the ‘you’ that is ‘doing’, and the ‘you’ is already going on automatically, habitually, in the background of experience all the time. By practicing this way, you admit other levels of experience. You let them ‘leak in’. By shifting attention this way, you ‘tap’ into this ongoing interconnected ‘bodymind’ being, and gradually notice how a physical constriction or relaxation may be connected to emotions, energy, mood, memory, or thoughts. Thus, I promote using your own physical awareness, and this makes the practice more ‘psychological’. In yoga practice I use the release of body to arrive at the release of mind.

In psychotherapy, I reverse the focus. For instance, a client might say that s/he feels is a lot of emotion, but doesn’t want to cry. So I invite them to focus on the physical or mental way that they might be stopping the crying. As soon as they shift attention like this, perhaps to the awareness of tension in the eyes, or in the jaw, they get more information about the need to inhibit the crying. They may also notice other body tension/pain. They get closer to discovering the larger background of experience that is governing the need to control how they feel. They may remember being told to ‘grow up’, or that they would be ‘given something to cry about’, or that they have some other feeling, like anger.

In psychotherapy, I don’t suggest these possibilities. I only invite the shift in attention to these other levels. The client discovers the background and meaning for themselves. Thus, this approach to psychotherapy parallels the approach to asana practice. In both yoga and psychotherapy, I teach how to accept and support the tension, instead of provoking a physical or mental rebellion- which can happen when you are forcing yourself into a position, or in the case of psychotherapy -forcing yourself to emote. In psychotherapy as well as in yoga, the whole bodymind is perceived as an integrated unit. In both yoga and psychotherapy, when you are mentally, emotionally, and physically less divided, you find the power to heal.

If you practice yoga with acceptance of all the levels of your experience, what difference does it make, that your body has changed? Every day is different. Every year is different. It is the practice that is consistent.

The practice is not the posture or technique. The practice is to stabilize your sense of self at the very source of your ongoing experience. That source of your self is on ‘auto pilot. It is an automatic habitual pattern of behavior. It is like a trance. Once (or as many times) as you may catch your self at that ’sleepwalking’ level, you have a chance to break the spell of your own history or what others have told you.

Thus, as you get older, lose flexibility, have ‘replacement parts’, get ill, suffer through chemotherapy, etc, you adapt the technique to allow you to face your new limits with the same attitude used when you had less of a medical history. Of course, common sense dictates that you check with your medical doctor regarding any serious limitations.

Speaking more personally, my own flexibility, strength and physical conditions have varied over time. I have significant limitations in range of motion since I have had hip surgery for a broken femoral neck. While the flexibility of this joint has never fully returned, I continue to practice as before. It was a serious bone break requiring bone cutting and metal parts for reinforcement. In the more recent photos posted at this site, you can see some of these changes/defects in alignment. I am not preoccupied about how beautiful my body appears in these newer pictures, or more importantly, with these physical changes even in my own daily practice. Over time, this body, like yours, will fail completely. Remember, each of ‘us’ comes with a ‘limited factory warranty’. So the goal of yoga practice should not be everlasting preservation. There is nothing wrong with having plastic surgery, various additives, or even replacement parts. But this is not what yoga is about!

Life defies concept. Yet we each have a never-ending stream of concepts about life and our self. The ideas: ‘ I have a. . good body, young body, different body. . sick or injured body. . I am 60, 20, or 90. . I am . .employed. . homeless . . a father. . son. . lover. . boss . . rich or poor. . loveable or unlovable. . better than others . . I have good or bad ‘karma’. . ’ are concepts about our self and our world. And these come and go. Yet some how, it seems that a sense of self is constant.

Thus, in my work we recognize the obvious: That we need to ask: Who or what is ‘it’, that has all these ideas that come and go, that has an idea of a ‘self’ and a ‘self in the world’? Like the lesson from proverbial riddle of the Sphinx- as we investigate this sense of ‘self’, we learn that just like the ever-changing conditions of the body, so goes the mind itself: Constantly creating a self and world concept. In yoga we use our body and mind, our ‘BodyMind’, to reflect on and connect with this sense of self that is central and constant, since it never stops changing. Thus, both yoga and psychotherapy practice are meditations on the center of what we call ‘self’.

Incidentally and to date, scientifically, we do not know if this center is some invisible axis of some grand circle (i.e. soul) or, if there is nothing there but emptiness or innate survival mechanisms. None-the-less, this center is worth investigation. As we face our self, we spontaneously remove physical and mental tension, and we feel connected to life, which as I said, does not need concept. This is what I teach in yoga and what drives my work in psychotherapy. I promote not Hinduism, but ‘Undo-ism’, or the subtraction path.

Life defies concept. Yet we each have a never-ending stream of concepts about life and our self. The ideas: ‘ I have a. . good body, young body, different body. . sick or injured body. . I am 60, 20, or 90. . I am . .employed. . homeless . . a father. . son. . lover. . boss . . rich or poor. . loveable or unlovable. . better than others . . I have good or bad ‘karma’. . ’ are concepts about our self and our world. And these come and go. Yet some how, it seems that a sense of self is constant.

Thus, in my work we recognize the obvious: That we need to ask: Who or what is ‘it’, that has all these ideas that come and go, that has an idea of a ‘self’ and a ‘self in the world’? Like the lesson from proverbial riddle of the Sphinx- as we investigate this sense of ‘self’, we learn that just like the ever-changing conditions of the body, so goes the mind itself: Constantly creating a self and world concept. In yoga we use our body and mind, our ‘BodyMind’, to reflect on and connect with this sense of self that is central and constant, since it never stops changing. Thus, both yoga and psychotherapy practice are meditations on the center of what we call ‘self’.

Incidentally and to date, scientifically, we do not know if this center is some invisible axis of some grand circle (i.e. soul) or, if there is nothing there but emptiness or innate survival mechanisms. None-the-less, this center is worth investigation. As we face our self, we spontaneously remove physical and mental tension, and we feel connected to life, which as I said, does not need concept. This is what I teach in yoga and what drives my work in psychotherapy. I promote not Hinduism, but ‘Undo-ism’, or the subtraction path.

            In many ways, the approach I use resembles traditional psychotherapies such as, nondirective Rogerian listening, cognitive behavior change, gestalt & psychodrama, bioenergetics, and family therapy. I think a little bit about my background and interests may be helpful in understanding the method that I use, and that I’ll describe in just a little bit.            

            My childhood interests preceded yoga & meditation. As a child I was curious about being able to shift from dreaming to waking and back again. I also was interested in the soothing focus derived from many ordinary activities, like: Longs walks, long distance running and long distance bike riding. I was also interested in how other kinds of focused attention like reading and playing music could alter my sense of time. I found that hours could feel like minutes and sometimes a few minutes of focus could be as refreshing as hours of rest.  I always thought these interests were just my own hobbies. But then in the 1960’s, I was lucky to meet and study with many yoga and meditation masters, including Swami Satchidananda of Integral yoga who opened of Woodstock, BKS Iyengar with who I studied w/directly in his teacher training, and Nisargadatta Maharaj, the only living Jnana yoga master of that time. The deeper I got in my practice and teaching, the more I realized that great insights, and psychological healing were happening for me as well as for my students – given my approach to practice and teaching. I realized that I needed to learn more about traditional psychotherapy. Again, I had the good luck of being in the right place and right time to learn methods from great teachers. I pursued a master’s in counseling and many years later, a doctorate in professional psychology. Thus, eastern and western approaches, have contributed to the method I use with my yoga and meditation students, and with my clients in psychotherapy.

            The method I use can be easily summarized with the five fingers of your hand:

The first is the thumb, which in my approach represents Mindfulness or the meditative state. In us humans, the thumb potentiates the way we use our other four fingers. The thumb allows us to grasp. We get the word: ‘Intelligence’ from the Latin word for ‘Grasp’. For me, mindfulness or a meditative state, allows us to grasp what is going on within us, and thus, mindfulness is a state of mind that potentiates healing, particularly in psychotherapy. This state is built-in. While it is extremely useful to cultivate and develop meditative practices, mindfulness is not something that you need to acquire, since you already have it. For example if you to close your eyes, you’ll notice that there’s a shift in the way you experience yourself. As soon as you close your eyes, the back of the brain begins to generate a default alpha rhythm that is associated with a meditative state. Similarly, with eyes open, if I ask you to check which nostril is more open right now, you’ll notice that you don’t have to do anything. You simply attend to that information. So, this deliberate direction of attention toward the information of inward experience is an activating ingredient we callMindfulness. Mindfulness is also based on an essential ethical principle in the practice of yoga: Satyagraha: Be present with your truth, Be as you are. So when the therapist asks you questions that take you to your internal, mental, physical and emotional experience, you will be on the track of healing experience.

            The next finger is the index finger.  In my approach, this means that we are self correcting.  This principle of self correction represents a fundamental principle that is in East, as well as in the West: Ahimsa. It is the same as the Hippocratic oath that every doctor takes: ‘Do no harm’. In other words, you can’t impose healing. No one heals you but yourself.   So my stance in psychotherapy is not to tell you what to do. Anybody can give advice. You can tell a smoker or alcoholic that they need to stop. And they will agree. You can tell them how to do it. What actually makes the abuse stop, is not only the variety of helpful techniques that are available, but also the recognition that the healing power to change is within the client. So my approach to psychotherapy includes cultivating a relaxed meditative and inwardly focused state, and the recognition that the therapist job of reflecting the client’s patterns is relatively easy, compared to the client’s job of self-reform.

            The remaining three fingers constitute another principle taken from Systems Theory. The best way I can describe the idea of systems, is to refer you to look at a Calder sculpture, or what most people know as ‘mobiles’. Where there is a tree of multiple and opposing points in a balance. Any movement of any one element in the tree of balance affects the entire system of the mobile.  So the remaining 3 fingers reflect the balance of interrelationship of thoughts, emotional feelings, and behavior or action. These three levels of our experience are also represented in three fundamental definitions of yoga: Yoga is controlling the wavering in mind (thoughts); Yoga is having equanimity even though you have strong feelings, and Yoga is skill in action. For yoga students, notice that none of these definitions say anything about physical posture practice. Also, for clients, note that these 3, thinking, feeling, and action, are the standard pillars of successful change in psychotherapy. When you take a meditative seat, and recognize that the person who needs to change is in charge of the change, we can begin to see how our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are all interrelated and where balance is needed within the person.

            For example, we know that a very strong emotional feeling is accompanied by physical/bodily sensation. So in my practice, I direct attention to body sensation as a part of the talk about a strong feeling. Similarly for a person who has chronic pain or chronic illness (which is another group of people that I work with) the physical problem is not separate from the thoughts and feelings that accompany it.  So, I apply a systems approach help the individual understand how their thoughts and their feelings and their actions are interrelated. 

            The idea of a system of balance applies to outside of the person, as well as within. So I use systems theory to help me in my role as therapist. I understand, according to systems theory, that I am not separate or detached relationally from my client. Since we are all connected and affect each other, I realize that since I am part of a larger system, I can use of my role in the process of change/rebalancing. So, I actively engage my clients in the therapy session process. As in some family therapy approaches, I want my client to know that they are not alone in uncovering dysfunctional patterns. Moreover, by joining them in their process of discovery and change, I learn from their healing. I am ever grateful for what I learn about being human from my clients, their healing, and their learning and accomplishments.