Scott Anderson, Ph.D.

While I’ve taught for quite a long time – more than 30,000 hours spent teaching yoga – I also relish being a student. Recently, I’ve been able to merge the roles of teacher and student, and have come away humbled and inspired. Within the Tergar Meditation Community, I’ve been a Practice Leader in our local Madison group since its inception. This role has been clearly defined in terms of guiding meditations and following the curriculum that Tergar International has provided us. Among the various hats that I’ve worn within Mingyur Rinpoche’s organization, facilitator  has not been one of my roles. Until recently. Late last year, I was asked to consider training as a Tergar Facilitator. While the Facilitator role does not involve the depth of teaching required of Tergar Instructors, teaching meditation is an element of being a Facilitator within the Tergar community. And while I have taught embodied awareness (yoga) for many years, I have less experience teaching meditatio...

In my last posting, I mentioned that there is a difference between relaxation and depletion. At first glance, it can be difficult to gauge but with practice, the difference between relaxation and depletion becomes clearly apparent. The first step in gauging the difference between depletion and relaxation is to shift the observational time-scale from the immediate to many hours later. My old yoga teacher, Roger, was the one who taught me the importance of gauging the effect of a yoga pose (or practice) by observing mind and body many hours after the practice. When I first began studying yoga with Roger, I used to love a practice where I'd drop back into Urdhva Dhanurasana and then come back up to standing... 108 times. ( https://youtu.be/RN7mVBSPvF8 ) When doing this practice, my mind felt clear and fresh, and coming out of this practice I felt like one billion bucks (inflation... one million isn't what it used to be). Roger, in his not-so-subtle way, suggested tha...

Relaxation and depletion are very different, yet few yoga practitioners seem to know the difference. Virtually every week I encounter yoga students who speak longingly of their relaxing practice, though when I see their eyes at the close of their relaxing practice, I see a flatness and dullness that suggestions depletion. In discussing relaxation and depletion, we’re squarely in the realm of subjectivity. I don’t think we’re going to find a blood test or fMRI scan that verifies a difference between these qualities, though I think we can all tell the difference. When a family member or close friend isn’t feeling well, we generally can see the depletion and fatigue in their eyes. Sometimes we can see the change before the friend or family member even reports feeling ill or under the weather! This seeing is a transferable skill, and can be very useful for a yoga teacher to cultivate through practice (the subject of another blog entry). Just because a given yoga technique is...

Breathing is one of the body’s many miracles. When we breathe we aren’t simply exchanging oxygen, but also massaging the abdominal organs, exercising the skeletal muscles and massaging the spinal disks. The breathing of the body affects every organ, muscle, joint and nerve. Because each and every cell of the body is involved with breathing, it is the starting point for good health. When we breathe, the ribs should be in constant motion. When we inhale, the ribs expand and when we exhale, the ribs release. Consider what attaches to the ribs: virtually every shoulder muscle and neck muscle connects to the ribs. All the abdominal muscles, in turn, connect to the ribs. Most all the muscles of the back ultimately attach to the ribs. When we’re breathing healthily, the rhythmic movement of the ribs keeps these muscles in constant motion. The motion keeps them in good health. Our muscles are like bodies of water. If there’s no movement in a pond, the water gets stagnant. Stagnant wa...