Yoga Panic

I like the way the words “Yoga Panic” go together. They juxtapose in a very pleasing way to me and represent an idea I have been thinking about for the past two days.
“The Art of Failure” is article written by Gladwell and is included in his collection What the Dog Saw. I found the dissection of the terms “choke” and “panic” in such detail intriguing and though why not take it a step further and ask when is panic a good thing. I think an example of such a time is during the practice of yoga… let me explain.
Panic … causes what psychologists call perceptual narrowing. In one study, from the early seventies, a group of subjects were asked to perform a visual acuity task while undergoing what they thought was a sixty-foot dive in a pressure chamber. At the same time, they were asked to push a button whenever they saw a small light flash on and off in their peripheral vision. The subjects in the pressure chamber had much higher heart rates than the control group, indicating that they were under stress. That stress didn’t affect their accuracy at the visual-acuity task, but they were only half as good as the control group at picking up the peripheral light. “You tend to focus or obsess on one thing,”
“Panic, in this sense, is the opposite of choking. Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.”
I find in my own practice that careful and mindful “perceptual narrowing” is what allows me to make the most progress with my technique. When beginning or deepening into a posture it’s the narrowing of focus to minute details and excluding other thoughts that makes the big difference.
EG: Warrior II
Is my back arm in line with my body and are my fingers straight and reaching? Yes? ok next…
Is my bending knee beyond my front toes? If so move the back foot further back… Is my front heel in line with my back foot, does an imaginary line from my heel bisect the middle of my back arch? Yes? ok next ….
and so on…
I don’t rely on subconscious thoughts taking over to perform each pose. I quiet my mind and instead focus on minute details almost as if I were to “choke” in the sports sense of the word.
I panic by thinking too little about what the rest of body is doing. I choke by focusing too much on one small detail. Now this is now how choking and panic usually happen, with a mindful degree of control, yet are there not similarities?
Your body might be screaming from a certain stretch but you turn off that thought and instead focus the find. An important aspect to my practice is to turn off that one thought that is trying to capture the attention of the mind and then focus the mind elsewhere.
Perhaps by cultivating panic we can hope to move further towards controlling it in other areas of our life.
Posted at 2:00 PM (4 weeks ago) | Link | Comments (View)

