Wednesday, September 03, 2003


caramel candy & yoga nidra

please bear with me. i have not yet gone off the deep end. . .

"the right prefrontal cortex, for example, communicates with certain types of immune cells, and stress appears to alter the functioning of a chemical messenger, dopamine, in the region," the ny times reports.

"in addition, the right prefrontal cortex interacts with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, a major player in the body's stress system, which in turn is linked to the immune system."

what made me take notice was that i was reading pretty much this exact statement last night in swami saraswati's book, yoga nidra.

this is wigging me out as i sip my morning caramel delight, don schoenholt's gillies perfect yrg, which with a pinch of raw sugar and a touch of light cream becomes the perfect yummy center for a new kind of dark chocolate candy. (hint, hint, richard donnelly. . .)

i've been doing the "short" yoga nidra from swami janakananda's cd and it is an intense experience. few things can so powerfully change the way you feel in so short a time.

i'm working with the 20-minute "condensed" version for a while before going on to the 45-minute "big" one. as i've been working through it. but while the emotional effects cannot be denied -- i certainly can believe that over the course of several months the effects would be both subtle and profound -- i was um, at best, uncertain about the scientific claims the swami makes.

[note to self: there has to be a better title than swami. with all due respect, it's just a humorous-sounding work in english and so works against acceptance and credibility. . .]

and then in one of those funny co-incidental synchronistic moments, i read it in the times. "the brain has the capacity to modulate peripheral physiology," the doctor says, "and it modulates it in ways that may be consequential for health." (log your own bad self in: saute, wednesday. hiya bruce!)

but if all this could possibly be true -- and it seems very much as if it might be -- then using yoga nidra to soothe the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis could very well form part of the treatment for many disorders, from depression to even obesity!

posted by fortune | 7:16 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | |