https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q Emily Hayden en-us 2018-07-30 14:29:02 UTC 2025-03-14 02:10:26 UTC hello@padlet.com ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453650 Yama refers to our interactions with outside forces. It includes ideals such as nonviolence, truthfulness, and non-stealing. This sense of moral integrity is the first limb of yoga, because it is the most basic. Without yama, it is nearly impossible to achieve any other limb of yoga. 

The way we interact with the outside world is through stimulus and response patterns. This expresses our behavior to the external world, which is the basis for yama. This stimulus response pattern begins with stimulus identification. For example, a friend spills her morning coffee all over your new blouse. Stimulus clarity, stimulus intensity, and stimulus pattern all affect the rate at which a stimulus is identified. If you're in a dim coffee shop, or if you forgot to put your contacts in this morning, you may not notice the spill for an extra bit of time. Next, we must select a response. This is our decision making process. Do you jump back and stand up quickly in order to get a paper towel? Or stay put, and have your friend get a towel so you don't worsen the size of the stain? Or maybe you yell at your friend uncontrollably (this would not be good Yama!) Hick developed the idea that our response selection is greatly affected by the number of stimulus-response options.

Inspiration to wrestle with: 

In Hick's study, each stimulus had an exact response. In yoga and in life, we often have many acceptable reactions to an occurrence. 

Attached is an article about the 5 basic Yamas, one of two limbs with subcategories.]]> 2018-07-30 14:42:57 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453650 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453671 Niyama is our self discipline and internal forces. Positive upkeep of these internal forces promotes growth and strength of the self. A few ideals within Niyama are purification, contentment, self-reflection, and devotion. 

The eight limbs of yoga allow us to achieve a spiritual yoga practice. Niyama is the focus inward while still maintaining physical existence during the yoga poses. I connected this idea with the cognitive hypothesis of mental practice in Kinesiology 361. This hypothesis states that during the first stages of learning, mental practice allows for practicing of cognitive elements, imagining movement patterns, predicting movement consequences, and ruling out inappropriate movements. These thoughts make up a lot of cognitive activity during the first stages of learning. Understanding self discipline and the inward mind, which is niyama, is an important part to the first stage of learning. 

Inspiration to wrestle with: 

It is estimated that 80% of the contents of our internal mind are negative. How can we change this?

Attached is the corresponding article to the yamas, only with the 5 subcategories of niyamas. ]]> 2018-07-30 14:43:14 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453671 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453701 The Asana is the physical postures of yoga. These include poses like "warrior 1" and "downward dog." This is what you typically think of when you think of yoga.

I connected asana with the kinesiology concept of transfer. Transfer is defined as the gain (or loss) in proficiency of one skill as the result of practice on some other skill. I didn't start yoga until my senior year in high school. Despite this, when I started, some of the poses and yogic ideals  came naturally to me. I was a three sport athlete in high school, and was very in shape when I started yoga. My muscles were strong. One pose that I was very good at from the start of practicing yoga was chair pose. During high school, I lifted weights for sports. I squatted the squat rack just about every week, so I was very used to this motion. Once I got to yoga, chair pose was familiar to me, but still slightly different. The use of my thigh muscles in this squatting pose was transferred from my weightlifting experience to my asana practice. The only difference between the chair pose and squatting a squat rack is the positioning of the feet on the ground. In yoga, the toes touch and knees touch and the motion is static. In weightlifting, the feet and knees are hip width apart, and the motion is fluid. Despite the differences, I came into yoga a pro at chair pose, and I think this was due to transfer of motor skills from weightlifting squats. 

Inspiration to wrestle with:

Chair pose is often called "fierce pose." It promotes a feeling of strength. What poses or settings in your life do you find your strength in? 

Attached is a 10 minute Asana flow sequence. These are some of the basic yoga asana postures. ]]> 2018-07-30 14:43:35 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453701 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453708 Pranayama is breath. One of the main goals in yoga is to link breath to movement. During vinyasa yoga, ujjayi breath is utilized in order to bring energy and strength to the center of the body. This form of breath is characterized by an audible exhale through the nose -an ocean like sound- with lips sealed. 

As a yoga instructor, I cue breath for movement. One thing that stuck out to me in teacher training was the idea that less is more with cues. This connected to verbal instructions in Kinesiology 361. Being precise is one of the main guidelines of verbal instruction. When we were taught as yoga teachers, we were instructed to use a simple "inhale" and "exhale" for verbal cues, instead of something like "as you lift your right arm up and twist is back to set up for dancer pose inhale." Less is more, and precision is key. All of the verbal instruction guidelines of this course, beyond just precision, really resonated with me as a yoga instructor because all of the topics that were talked about were relevant to my teachings. 

Inspiration to wrestle with:

We often times try to control our worries by making them more complex and keeping them at the forefront of our minds. What can we accomplish if we release control by simplifying and give in to breath? 

Below is a four minute video on how to successfully express your ujjayi breath!]]> 2018-07-30 14:43:44 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453708 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453735 Pratyahara is the detachment of external senses. This happens in the yoga practice when breath (pranayama) and asana (postures) are linked, and the Yama and Niyama are intact.

When learning about proprioception in Kinesiology 361, I thought about pratyahara. Proprioceptors are specialized mechanoreceptors in the muscles, tendons, joints, and vestibular apparatus that provide us with uninterrupted knowledge of the body position and orientation. These receptive processes are the only possible way that a yogi is able to detach from their external senses in order to achieve this limb of yoga. This is through our ability to understand where our body is in space without actually thinking about where we are on a conscious level.

Inspiration to wrestle with:
 
"Your heart must become a sea of love. Your mind must become a river of detachment." - Sri Chinmon

Below is a pose called crow pose in yoga. It explains proprioception in terms of this pose! I came across this and thought it was an interesting and relevant photo.

source: https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/senses/proprioception/]]> 2018-07-30 14:44:06 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453735 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453868 Dharana is another word for drishti, or gaze. This is a very important aspect of yoga, especially during balance postures. The yogi sets their eyes to a point on the environment in front of them in order to focus. 

Setting our gaze is sometimes a difficult task depending on the environment we are practicing in. At the studio I practice in, I set my gaze at the same spot  (provided that my usual go-to spot in the studio isn't taken), the righthand corner of a window across the street. This changes with weather and sunlight, but is usually pretty consistent. I feel very balanced with this gaze point. However, when I go to the studio in my hometown, the front wall is not a window, but rather a white wall. It is difficult to find a gaze point ahead of me because it is so plain. Often times, I feel myself scrambling to set my gaze here. When I read about saccades, rapid movements of the eye to different fixation points, in the lecture notes I immediately thought about this white wall and my difficulty in setting my gaze. Our lecture notes state that saccades can occur at speeds up to 600 degrees/second. I thought this was super interesting, because in yoga, we often are scrambling to find a dristi when balancing. This statistic backed up that our eyes are hard at work!

Inspiration to wrestle with: 

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for" - John Lubbock

During my yoga teacher training I came across this article about setting a dristi. It was a great spiritual read! The photo on the cover of the article is one of my favorite poses: warrior 2. This pose is so empowering because of the dominance of the dristi. ]]> 2018-07-30 14:45:42 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453868 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453972 Dhyana is meditation, or an uninterrupted flow of concentration. 

I connected this concept with attention and more specifically, a primary and secondary tasks during movement. The reason that many people practice yoga is to get out of their heads. And while they are focused on this complex primary task of the physical practice, they are not able to focus on what's bothering them with their daily lives. These postures create an uninterrupted flow of concentration, or dhyana. This is often times brought up in a yoga class and I am guessing many people brush it off, but the data about primary and secondary tasks during movement in relation to attention really brings this concept into context. 

Inspiration to wrestle with:

"When you really pay attention, everything is your teacher" - Unknown


]]> 2018-07-30 14:47:04 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271453972 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271454037 Samadhi is the eighth limb of yoga because it is the most difficult to attain. It is defined as a feeling of wholeness and connection to the universe. 

When learning about Neurological measures in Kinesiology 361, I thought about some research that I read about that is happening at the Center for Healthy Mind's here in Madison. The article is called "Meditation affects brain networks differently in long-term meditators and novices." In this study, a monk (who has a very strong connection with the universe, or samadhi) a somewhat experienced meditator, and a non-meditator (both of which who doesn't have meditation practice or a strong connection to samadhi) were placed into different fMRI machines. They were flashed emotionally positive, emotionally negative, and emotionally neutral images, and were asked to label them as such. One result to this study that stuck with me was that the monk, who has a strong spiritual connection to the universe, had a reaction in the amygdala (emotional center of the brain) that was substantially smaller than a non-meditator. To me, this shows that Samadhi is important for emotional health. Scientists are using neurological measures such as MRI machines to show these important advances. 

Inspiration to wrestle with:

“Samadhi is the journey from individual to collective consciousness. The steps of Samadhi are the steps towards reaching the collective consciousness. In meditation, the more we radiate love, compassion, peace, harmony and tranquility, the more is our contribution towards the collective consciousness. The more we positively contribute towards the collective consciousness the more is our progress in Samadhi.”  - Amit Ray

Attached is the article from UW - Madison. ]]> 2018-07-30 14:47:43 UTC https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271454037 ehayd794 https://padlet.com/ehayd794/j0022i6trz5q/wish/271454099 Hello there! Throughout  Kinesiology 361 I was also enrolled in a 200 hour yoga teacher training  course. I began to notice that some of the content in Kinesiology 361 made me think about the content in the yoga teacher training, and vice versa. I decided to create my motor scrapbook on one concept that I learned during the teacher training: Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga. 
This eight-fold path guides the yogi into a meaningful and purposeful spiritual life. 

This padlet will take a very holistic approach to the comparison of Kinesiology 361 concepts and the eight limbs of yoga. I am a very symbolic thinker, so some of the concepts wont directly relate, but will be loosely related. I hope you enjoy! 

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