How can you enjoy anything in a sick body?

During my yoga training, we had this beautiful approach to anatomy, from a yogic point of view. And it is very interesting to acknowledge what is happening to your body, understanding how the physical aspect of yoga is influencing your health.

Even if 99% is still magic.

One of the most important subjects during anatomy classes was to understand how your mind is connected to your body, and how thoughts influences your body.

So I took a special time trying to explain the functions of hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus is a part of your brain that has a vital role in controlling the mainly bodily functions including the release of hormones in your body. So this pea size part of the brain is there to maintain homeostasis, keeping the body in a stable condition.

The hypothalamus responds to the exterior and interior environment, sending different signals like regulating temperature, hunger, feelings, telling the body when it should stop eating, sleeping, how to regulate blood pressure etc. He is like the headmaster, CEO of hormones, he has under other glands that take orders from him, one of the most important ones is the pituitary gland.

So on a gross level everything you are feeling in the body is due to this small part of the brain. So love, pain, excitement, sickness, joy, everything that is felt by the body is either an command from your automatic nervous system or your unconscious-conscious thoughts.

So you can either blame yourself, Karma, or this little fellow. But instead of wasting time on blaming it is better to find solutions and the source of the imbalances in our body.

You can numb your senses, using different inhibitors or slowly and gradually ignoring the pain, not paying attention to your body, and eventually creating all kind of disorders inside. Like a doctors can give a pre-op sedation, then cut all your body and you will feel nothing. The same way you  are slowly losing connection with your body.

You may see a desert, and your mind starts thinking “oh that looks so delicious”. Your are creating a chain of thoughts, that will create a demand to your hypothalamus which will eventually generate hormones to travel to your stomach telling “there is a space to be filled”, or “you are hungry”. Even if you already had a copious diner 2 h ago, enough for the whole day.

Why is it so hard to stop eating peanuts, chips, or other kind of foods?

There are foods that contains neuron-inhibitors that block your brain from stop eating. It is like your are always sending signals, commands for more, but nothing is sent back to tell you it was enough. As a late response you get your stomach tissue yelling he is going to explode if more is sent, which is the last resort.

There is a delay between your stomach and your brain. It takes some time for the signals to reach the brain and tell him, that it was enough. But we have a habit to fill our stomach with as much as we can as fast as we can, so we don t feel hunger anymore.

I loved when my teacher used to talk about diseases, and he said diseases are just another word for imbalance. So overweight is not a disease is an imbalance that takes part due to imbalance of your hormones. Is like somewhere on the way a connection was lost.

Instead of having a signal from your stomach telling that all the vitamins, fibers, proteins, where provided, you get a late signal that your belly is about to explode. Try eating slowly, chewing slowly, and give time to your stomach to reach the brain and tell that one plate was enough.

So overweight may be an imbalance due to your thyroid, sedentary life, way you are eating, or what you are eating.

The length of your whole circulatory system,veins nerves etc, is 2 times the distance around the earth. Sometimes the connection between one system of your body and another may be blocked, and the body loses control over some senses, and that is how you get imbalances that creates “diseases” in your body.

Yoga is there for you to reconnect with your body, you “clean” the electric circuit through all the body so you may get the right signals for the body to balance itself. It is like a reset to your body for all its functions. Using simple movements, you create a better connection between your mind and body.

So like “flexibility” is an outcome in yoga, the same  other imbalances will regulate.

Before you could have easily went to McDonald having a big happy meal with no problem. Now you are going to feel pain when you eat something that is not good for your body, and the pain will increase because you are more connected to your body.

So yoga is balancing yourself without any big efforts, you are just practicing and everything else will come. Yoga postures are the external work you do for your body to repair, or remember whatever was forgotten.

Using breathing and postures you’re strengthening the connections through your body, so all the organs, tissue, brain, muscles, nerves, cells can perform their job easily. You are cleaning your body of all the blockages due to the interior or exterior world, all the imbalances you have created due to your choice of life.    

The same amount of time you spend investing in your future,Relationship, financial security, retreat, or other projection, start investing time in your body. How can you enjoy any of them in a sick body?