Chemistry of Yoga by Dan Moran

Just as stress releases chemicals in the body, joy releases its own powerful brand of chemicals--powerful chemicals that help dissolve pain and fill you with feelings of happiness. For those who enjoy a connection with a scientific explanation, these chemicals are the science behind yoga. These joy chemicals are also highly addictive, and you will come to enjoy and crave them, which helps make it easier and easier to practice. In the beginning, it requires effort and discipline to unroll your mat to practice. Eventually, the thought of not practicing yoga seems strange and unnatural.

Tension’s chemical origin
So, how does tightness or tension get created and stored in the body in the first
place? Here is where the connection between the mind and the body and the wonderful chemistry linking them emerges.

How you think about the world is characterized as being either negative or positive. If, through conditioning or other experiences, your thoughts tend toward negativity, those negative thoughts generate negative feelings that cause stress in the body. Negative thoughts always have at their root some fear or perceived threat to your security.

When you feel stressed due to some real or perceived threat to your security, you feel fear, and adrenaline is released in the body. The release of adrenaline triggers the flight-or-fight response, preparing the body for great physical exertion. A greater real or perceived threat results in a greater accompanying feeling of fear, as the amount of adrenaline secreted will be in direct proportion to the intensity of the fear-based feelings. Consequently, a greater accompanying feeling of fear results in a greater amount of adrenaline being released into the muscles. The intensity of these fear-based feelings is governed solely by the intensity of the fear-based thoughts.

In situations and societies where running and/or fighting are inappropriate, the adrenaline, with no accompanying physical exertion to burn it off, creates poisonous by-products that are stored in the major muscle groups to which the adrenaline is distributed. The result is tension--tension proportionate to the amount of accumulated by-products. Just as unexpended calories result in stored fat, unexpended adrenaline by-products result in stored tension.

Remember to label the underlying feeling behind the tension that occurs. The negative thoughts generate the feeling of fear. Your thoughts--and your thoughts alone--have the power to create feelings of fear. Real or perceived threats to your security, whether they are threats to your physical or emotional security, cause the release of adrenaline. Your body doesn’t know the difference between a real or perceived threat or physical or emotional security.

It is simple cause and effect:

a. you see something
b. your mind interprets that something as a threat, and
c. your body feels a discomfort called fear

The body responds as follows:

a. adrenaline is released to power the fight or flight, but
b. you don’t run or fight because it’s not appropriate in the situation, so no physical energy is expended, therefore,
c. adrenaline is released, and with no accompanying physical exertion, the adrenaline by-products become toxins in the body, which are stored in the major muscle areas, like the shoulders, neck, hips and legs.

There’s your tension.

Negative memories and feelings find “rooms” in the house, or areas of the body, to take up residence. All like memories and feelings store themselves in the same rooms. The body develops its own routine for processing your cycle of negative thoughts, negative feelings, proportionate adrenaline release and storage location for the resulting tension. Eventually, these rooms become cluttered from these repeated negative thoughts, negative feelings, released adrenaline and stored tension cycles. All the events and perception memories and feelings become part of the physical component of what makes your back, legs, neck, shoulders and other body parts feel stiff or tense. Your “feelings” about your boss, dad, spouse, sense of isolation, etc., are in your stiff back, neck, hamstrings or shoulders. Living with this stiffness or tension and the accompanying pain can be a constant, nagging discomfort. Whole wings of your house become cluttered, affecting your ability to love and be kind to yourself and to others. Since your negativity rubs off onto other people…soon, there goes the neighborhood…

A bath of compassion
While you are practicing yoga, feel where you are tight in an asana. Is it your hips? Is it your shoulders, your arms, your waist, lower back, hamstrings, ankles or neck? The tension you encounter through the asanas is all ultimately the result of your negative thoughts—thoughts that generated negative feelings or fear.

Welcome those discoveries of tightness with a mother’s compassion. Imagine there is a part of you that has witnessed all your hurts, sufferings and fearful reactions (but not shared or felt them) since you were a child. Imagine this witness has a mother’s compassion and is bathing your body. Let your witness teach you and encourage you to take deep breaths, and imagine those deep breaths are fresh water, cleansing and purifying those areas of tension.

Draw your attention to your arms, legs, neck, torso and all the places where you feel tension. Imagine bathing your areas of tension with compassion instead of labeling them in your mind as tightness or thoughts of “I'm stiff there.” Acknowledge the tension is there, and each time you breathe, feel the tension releasing; let it go.

Letting go--it’s your choice
Sometimes, in these moments of discovery and release, channels previously blocked become unblocked, and as a reward for your efforts, you feel joy. It’s so simple, but for some people, the pain they feel can remain a lifelong, elusive mystery. They believe that the cause is some person, place or thing in their past, present or future. The sad thing is that they don’t know they are literally manufacturing the pain themselves.

It’s said that our greatest power is our power to choose. Why do we choose negative thoughts? Negative thoughts generate negative feelings. Negative feelings generate tension--simple cause and effect.

If you desire a life of ease and comfort, choose positive thoughts, which generate positive feelings, which stimulate the release of endorphins and other chemicals that make the body feel good and bring a gentle smile to the face.

If you find tension and discover that behind it are stored painful memories, someone you need to forgive, grief, sadness, hatred, frustration, anger or any other fear-based emotions, I invite you to let them go.

In order to change your feelings, you need to change your thoughts.

So you can feel happy.

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