Teaching Yoga….in the Engineering Center!

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Adding to this spectrum of yoga classes and engineering classes I am teaching, a new class starts next week (January 18th) – free, donation-based yoga in the Engineering Center on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The time is tentative, but will be confirmed soon. Exciting to add to my offerings for 2012! Excited to see what happens with this community and if we can all find some more inspiration through our work together.

Also beginning in January is my work with the Boulder High School FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. The season kicked off last Saturday, January 7th, and now we have 6 weeks to build a robot that we’ll take to the state competition March 22-24 at DU’s Magness Arena. Stay tuned for videos of our team’s robot! The competition this year involves shooting foam mini-basketballs into hoops and balancing on a seesaw like ramp!

 

 

 

Legitimacy in Body-Based Examples

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Welcome to 2012!

It’s going to be a big year – my experiments with engineering students and the “body-based approach” will begin in the Fall, with preparation and supporting research commencing in full now.

Excitingly enough, several other engineering educators are thinking about the same stuff! In fact, as part of the ENGAGE Engineering project sponsored by the National Science Foundation, a coalition of engineering professors have been publishing ways to use “everyday engineering examples” to improve teaching and learning. The ENGAGE project is huge, and already has 30 institutions participating to test out these new innovations in teaching!

One of the research briefs published by the ENGAGE project includes a body-based example to teach leverage in an introductory Statics course. Available here – it’s very similar to an example I have used to teach about moments, torques, and forces in the body, as they use the bicep and arm holding weights to show how changing angle affects the amount you are able to hold.

So other people are thinking like me! Notable mechanical engineering professors, even! The next step is to develop a unified set of examples that use the body to each these concepts, then actually teach them to a class of engineering undergraduates in Fall 2012.

Wish me luck! Please let me know if you have other ideas on how to approach and teach these concepts!

On the fullness of the moon!

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Riding the wave of emotion and jubilation following the completion of Jeanie Manchester‘s Level Two Anusara Yoga Teacher Training, I am feeling entirely full and luminous! A few things have clicked in my mind recently:

  • I have met many people who have actually read my writing on this blog. And despite all of the emails I’ve sent and business cards I’ve passed, I never believed that the visitors to my site actually read my writings! Finally! I get it! Thank you for reading and for your support – I am grateful that there is an audience for my ideas!
  • My ideas – I am putting together a series of information regarding “the science of yoga for yoga teachers”. While much has been written about the science of yoga (check out this TIME magazine cover/article from 2001! Do you remember this?!!), it’s rarely applied and consolidated in something useful for practical understanding and instruction. As an engineer, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the systems in the body and how they interact in yoga. For instance…
    • How we engage our muscles, how we consciously activate our feet and hands to ensure full muscle engagement (state of tetanus). What happens when we start shaking “the elvis leg”. How this mirrors the principles of muscular engagement and organic energy!
    • How we actually make our bodies smarter and more energetically aligned – through the nervous system, creating additional synapses (pathways) across the body, regulating hormones and the body’s other signaling molecules for biochemical control, and synchronizing the body’s inner processors to spin as one. Literally! We actually have more than one brain – and depending on how you think about it, we have data information and decision-making centers all over our bodies, through the central channel of the spine! The body intelligence is cultivated through our yoga practice – further, the body intelligence is refined and amplified through repeated efforts and conscious actions – that’s part of the “muscle memory”!
    • How focal points in a pose are very nearly the center of gravity of each pose – or the “line of action” of the body’s weight acts from the center of gravity, through the focal point into the earth! It’s just another way to understand focal points and energy centers in the body – gravity is a powerful force we feel constantly!
    • How the energetic loops of anusara yoga operate like mechanical gears: intermeshing and spinning oppositely at their boundaries
    • How sequencing yoga class is much like improvising on a known tune – finding the riffs to repeat and elaborate on in order to reach a meaningful climax.
    • etc. etc.! Often I feel there is a lot of knowledge in front of us all the time, it’s just hard to pull out what’s relevant and what sticks together as a system – but the engineering experience teaches just exactly that — (brain explosion!) So much interdisciplinary fusion going on, (not sure if this a full moon thing) I feel all my brain centers lighting up.

Other realizations:

  • I am strong. I love the message from a wonderful teacher of mine, Shannon Paige: you are stronger than you think you are. I always believed her, but somehow never realized that I was actually, personally, strong. But it’s in some ways stunningly obvious yet unimportant at the same time. The resolve, the fortitude, and the devotion – I hope that is what strength will give me!
  • The writing – I love to write, but I don’t do it nearly enough. I’m used to technical writing – I think you can tell – but I enjoy being personal. Hence!

- Thank you for your continued support -

Looking towards the waning moon and winter chill to inspire greater freedom and expansion to finish out the year!

Torsion through Twisting – Parivrtta Tadasana

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A simple standing twist around the axis of the spine gives a tangible way to understand the concept of torsion as a method of mechanical loading.

As shown at left, torsion occurs when a specimen is twisted along its axis in two different directions, resulting in deformation and eventual failure due to shear stress. (image courtesy of Wikiversity)

We can feel this in our bodies simply by noticing what happens when we twist!

Standing still in tadasana or mountain pose and twisting around the central axis of the spine creates a condition of torsional loading through the body. Since the feet are fixed in the earth, the resulting twisting action through the body is greatest at the greatest distance from the fixed point – the head! In yoga, we see this as twists are taught with hips level, through the spine, with the head twisting last and to the greatest depth.

Twisting through the body is in this way an analog to torsional loading of a metal specimen! But wait, there’s more…

When we twist around the spine, we are twisting around the trunk of our bodies – a relatively circular cross section, if you think about it or check out the photo below:

Weird to see and think about a cross section through the abdomen, but it is fundamentally an almost-circular cross section with the load-bearing components of your spinal vertebrae running right through the center! Similar to the right circular metal cylinders frequently used in torsional testing by ASTM standard. But – we don’t want to stress our spines through torsion until they shear! A concern when twisting is not to over-leverage or torque yourself around, as the strength of the upper body, shoulders, arms can be so great that if you forcefully pull yourself around you can actually shear the joints and connecting tissues of the spinal column – not desirable by any means!! This is why twists are instructed to lead with the strength of the back and spinal column itself into the twist, not the arms, elbows, hands, etc.

Contrast this with the case of twisting your knee – torsional loading in the knee:

You’ll notice, this is NOT a comfortable thing to do! Consider the frequency of knee injuries due to tearing ligaments like the ACL, MCL, and LCL. The knee joint, unlike the spinal column, is a hinge joint and is not designed to accept high levels of torsional loading.

This can be clearly seen when considering the cross-section of the bones (image excerpted from Trail Guide to the Body):

The cross-section of the knee is elliptical and certainly not circular. Furthermore, the main load-bearing components, the bones, are not in the center of the cross-section. As a result, the knee can handle much less torsional loading than the spine, and knee injuries such as tears of the ligaments are much more common than the occasional spinal injury due to over twisting and shearing connections between vertebrae.

For more on torsion in the body, check out this video: Torsion through the body!. An 8 minute teaching demo I did for the Graduate Teaching Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder in May 2011 that derives the fundamental equations for torsion and maximum shear stress based on observations of twists while standing.

EDIT: An additional 4 minute teaching demo is available here: Teaching Torsion to Component Design Spring 2011 – You Tube

Winning the Grad Student Lottery –> support for 3 years!!

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Huzzah! Hooray! Wahoo!

I recently found out that I was awarded a fellowship from the National Science Foundation to follow-through with my proposal to teach engineering through the human body! This means that, starting in September 2011 I will be supported by the government for 3 years to conduct research into teaching and learning mechanical engineering through tangible sensations in the body. In other words, the government believes in Forces in Yoga and recognizes the potential benefit of my approach in making a positive difference in engineering!

Wow, wow, wow. This is a dream come true! A dream that was formulated in Fall 2009, in Boulder, when I was encouraged by wonderful yoga teachers including Shannon Paige Schneider, Jeanie Manchester, and Cindy Lusk to truly understand, accept my svadharma and OWN it! While the path ahead is still uncertain and bound to be filled with obstacles, ups, and downs, I am confident that through it all I will have the support of the kula behind me to carry through.

In the engineering and academic world, this means that I will continue towards work on my PhD in Mechanical Engineering with research focused in Engineering Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder advised by another wonderful supporter without whom none of this would be possible – my advisor, Dr. Daria Kotys-Schwartz. With the promise of funding for three years from the NSF, I am in a more stable position than ever before to continue on this doctoral journey and see what happens along the way! The path towards an engineering degree is not unlike the path of yoga: there is always more ;)

And I am entirely grateful for the opportunity to live this path while in Boulder and in this community. Truly a blessing to be surrounded by amazing teachers, students, and fellow seekers as we journey together towards future possibilities and adventures.

Good Press, Press-Ups, and Forklifts

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January 2011 flew by – the end of the Tiger lunar new year and a so far EVENTFUL transition to the Rabbit year in the lunar calendar! Some exciting news and events to share with you:

  • I’ve been playing with Amy Ippoliti’s 30-day Yoga Challenge – a new pose is proposed each month (with an accompanying eco-challenge) to do every day for that month. January’s was handstand press-ups, a very appropriate way to start the new year? Many teachers (including Shannon @omtime) were also feeling the press-up love and as a result I am getting ever closer. A quick time-lapse photo op also helped demonstrate the differences between my two sides:

    • To tie it all together –> one more thing – I have been working with students at Boulder High School on the FIRST Robotics Team (#1157 – go Landsharks!) on building a robot in 6 weeks to compete in the upcoming Colorado Regional tournament. The goal of the competition this year is to create a robot that can lift up an inflatable tube and place it on a tic-tac-toe like rack, with the highest row being around 10 feet in the air! This past Saturday, the team got the forklift to “lift” for the first time. I took video (available at the link): Forklift Pressing Up !

    Go figure, I spend a month trying to figure out how to press up to handstand while simultaneously building a robot that does something somewhat similar. Quelle coincidence!! Sweet irony? Reminder and encouragement that maybe yoga and engineering aren’t so far apart? Good press? Building momentum? All of the above, I hope. Cheers to 2011!

    New Moon and Happy Lunar New Year!!

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    Tomorrow, Feb 3, 2011 marks the official start of the Lunar New Year! 2011 is the year of the Rabbit, which is said to be more reflective and introspective than the fiery 2010 Tiger year we are just exiting.

    Some of you have asked for my mom’s special sticky sweet rice cake recipe – a New Year’s tradition!

    Sweet Rice Cake with Red Bean
    1. 1 pound of sweet rice powder
    2. 2/3 cup of vegetable oil
    3. 3 large eggs
    4. 2.5 cups of milk
    5. 1-2/3 cups of sugar
    6. 1 table spoon of baking powder
    7. 1 can of red bean paste
    8. sesame seeds
    Method:
    1. preheat oven at 350 degree.
    2. oil and sprinke flour in a 13″x9″x2″ baking pan.
    3. mix ingredients (1) to (6) well
    4. using electric hand mixer, beat at medium speed for 2 minutes, then at high speed for another 2 minutes
    5. pour the mixture into a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ baking pan
    6. use spoon or knife to drop the red bean paste proportionly  into the pan.
    7. sprinkle sesame seeds generously over the cake
    8. bake until golden brown and ready for about 60 minutes. (oven temperature varies  so check it around 55
    minutes.)
    I’ll post a pic here or on Twitter after I make one tonight… Mmmmmm SWEET RICE STICKY CAKE!!!
    Happy New Year all!

    Long Exposure Yoga Photography!!!

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    Recently I downloaded the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK – available at http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki) which, among other things, enables me to take long exposure photographs on my standard point-and-shoot digital camera. I have always thought it would be cool to take a time-lapse photo of a yoga flow – movement between 2 asanas or the path swept out by one’s back, wrist, heart, or shoulder while moving from down dog through vinyasa to cobra pose, or from tadasana (standing mountain pose) dropping back to urdhva dhanurasana (wheel). These long exposure photographs allow for a type of visualization of how the pose moves – and in the few I’ve taken so far, I am already finding some surprising angles and compelling ideas.

    From kneeling to ustrasana - path swept by my lower back

    In this exposure, I mounted a red flashing bike light to my lower back and, over the course of about 60 seconds, moved from kneeling to ustrasana (camel pose). Since the room was darkened, the only light source was at my low back and consequently the long-exposure shows the path swept out as I bend backwards. That sharp bend is surprising, no? I like how you can see my feet and calves since they remain stationary with the light illuminating them while the rest of my body (torso especially) vanishes.

    Rolling forward from down dog to plank, lower down, and back up to cobra

    A connecting vinyasa: you can see how the path moves up as I roll forward from down dog to plank, then lower down and rise into a gentle cobra pose. The more intense light indicates longer time in that region. I like here how you can see my hands (they don’t move and they’re lit by the ambient reflection of the bike light) but the rest of the body vanishes as it moves.

    Malasana Squat to Bakasana/Crane Arm Balance

    Starting low in a squatting position, I rise and balance with my knees squeezing my upper arms in Bakasana.

    This photo, among other things, I dig because it is also an illustration of the engineering concept of hysteresis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis) – sometimes things are different going up than they are going down. As I start in a low malasana squat, you see the bottom of the curve – my low back is close to the earth. As I start to tiptoe forward in my malasana, bringing the legs more and more in contact with the upper arms, I gradually rise up from the earth – I think this is the lower part of the path. Then I play with puffing my kidneys and pulling low ribs in, and the beam gets intense as I balance in bakasana (crane arm balance) for a few seconds. Then, as I release, I take a slightly different path on the way down than I did on the way up – the upper limit line. I end up remarkably in the same place.

    Similarly to the previous photo of the connecting vinyasa, my hands are illuminated and stable. Looks very “rooting”!

    Please let me know what you think of these – suggestions for other flows you would like visualized, or ideas for expansion? I hope to keep playing around and posting images as I am able! For details on recreating this at home – go here: http://forcesinyoga.com/PosturalSway/Experimental_Setup/Pages/Protocol_Description.html – I used the same type of long-exposure photography for a class project on evaluating postural sway!

    Thank you Berthoud!!! A personal history…

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    This Friday, August 27 marks my final regular class at the Berthoud Athletic Club. I started teaching there six months ago, back in the cold winter months of February. When I began classes in Berthoud I was in the middle of many changes – still getting acclimatized to the yoga community and styles in Colorado, just starting to understand and recognize my dharma (duty, life path), and also learning how to teach a full and rewarding yoga class in just 60 minutes!

    Prior to getting the opportunity to teach in Berthoud, I had not taught since August 2009 — some 6 months had elapsed and I was becoming very antsy, afraid that I had forgotten how to teach yoga and also feeling like there was a part of my creativity and self that was getting increasingly buried and covered up without the opportunity to teach and express myself on a regular basis. While in Boston, I had primarily taught advanced students over 90 minute class periods, taking them through very linear sequencing focused primarily on anatomical themes. You can see this in my class notes, which have only words (no sketches!) and are predominately linear with no “flow” — see below (click to enlarge):

    I loved teaching in this style, but as I found myself in Colorado and Boulder with teachers and students with different expectations I had the opportunity to increase the range of my teaching – to reconsider my approaches and really, to reconsider and reaffirm the purpose and intentions behind why I teach yoga in the first place!

    Through the last six months, I have had the immense pleasure of teaching the tight-knit and very active community at the Berthoud Athletic Club. Most of my students are women who are also mothers, gardeners, scientists, cyclists, teachers, swimmers, and much, much more. For my students — You have been dedicated and patient with me as I experimented with different “flow” styles, mandala/circular sequencing, and heart-oriented themes; You have been tireless in your efforts and attendance even through the busy summertime; and You have taught me scores more than I have taught you. You have encouraged me, supported me, believed in me, and even been excited for me as I approach these new adventures of school and finding the yoga in engineering. Thank you, thank you, thank you Berthoud! You have always included me and made me feel at home in your community, in your space. They say gratitude is one of the “strongest” human emotions, and certainly the gratitude I feel for the wonderful people I met in Berthoud is both tangible and immense. Teaching in Berthoud also gave me the chance to test out many new ideas and concepts with my students – you encouraged my creativity and inspired me to keep trying!

    Since moving to Colorado, teaching in Berthoud, and undertaking several new teacher trainings in Boulder and Denver, my style has changed significantly. I used to avoid drawing stick figures like the plague — now I kind of geekily love it. I am able to “step into the flow” at an entirely new level, and hopefully I am able to take my students even farther. Some of my recent class notes for reference (click to enlarge):

    Ustrasana (camel pose) and Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (pigeon) variations

    Vasistasana (side plank) variations with legs extended, Parighasana (gate pose)

    Fun stuff, right?! Turns out that with practice, stick figures get easier and easier to draw :) . And gradually, they almost become free-body diagrams which are useful for my current engineering practice and identifying the forces in yoga!!

    So, we’ve come a long way. Thank you Berthoud, for changing my life and keeping me centered and focused on finding my path. Please send me an email or leave comments below to stay in touch! I’ll be sending a prettied-up version of a practice template to all of those on my mailing list in case you’d like to continue the type of flow practices we’ve done together over the last few months. Or, come play with me in Boulder on Saturdays in my public classes OR schedule a private session to explore more individually!

    Thank you Berthoud, it really has made all the difference :) .

    Newton’s Third Law: The Spanda of Actions and Reactions

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    the third law of motion Newton’s Third Law of Motion: The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear. This means that whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force −F on the first body. F and −F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This law is sometimes referred to as the action-reaction law, with F called the “action” and −F the “reaction”.

    Newton’s Three Laws of Motion – they explain and govern the basic principles behind all movement…these Laws are often covered in the first chapter of Physics textbooks.

    So many illustrations of Newton’s Third Law (every action has equal and opposite reaction) can be observed in yoga. Yoga offers a particularly and deep understanding of action and reaction, from the simple:

    • Sukasana, Easy Sitting Pose – Your sit bones contact the earth as your mass is pulled down by gravity. At the same time, you can feel the equal and opposite reaction of the earth as it supports your weight, pushing back up exactly equally and oppositely. Notice that your bones do not actually sink down into the earth, and the earth does not actually lift you up — instead, its exactly equal and perfectly matched, rooting and rising equally.

    to the abstract:

    • Breath, inhales and exhales – The volume of air you exhale is the amount of air you inhale is the amount of air you exhale… True or False? One of the principles of tantra is that there is always more – but as you expand one (for example, lengthening the inhale), the other expands to match. As one diminishes, the other follows. But which one is the action and which is the reaction? In the case of the breath, especially, the boundaries are blurred. They need each other, two halves of one whole, pulsating together to create balance! (Now this is the yogic concept of spanda – pulsation, vibration as attributes of the absolute, ultimate reality – as wholly governing as Newton’s Laws! ;) )

    to the concrete:

    • Agonist/Antagonist Muscles Skeletal Muscles are often described as existing in agonist/antagonist pairs in which one muscle causes movement in one direction while the other muscle returns the limb to its original position. For example, when the hamstring contracts, it bends the knee, pulling it towards the back of the body towards the hip. Its antagonist is the quadricep – when your quad engages, the knee joint extends and the leg is returned to straight. These muscle pairs exist all over the body – again, action and reaction. Yet in yoga we are searching for balanced action, it’s never only the quad or only the hamstring firing — it is always a blend of action and reaction simultaneously existing. In yoga, we practice fine tuning that blend of the two different muscle actions to enhance our stability and vitality.

    to so many more:

    • Samasthithi (equal standing pose)
    • rooting to rise
    • lengthening up to twist more (relationship between central spine and side bodies)
    • inner and outer spiral
    • apana vs. prana vayu
    • samana vs. vyana vayu

    Action and reaction are all around us – and which is which is entirely dependent on your point of view, your frame of reference. How do you choose to see the world and act in it? or React in it? And yet, that distinction is precisely what is so interesting…