wellness – Natalie Ullmann

February 4, 2025November 4, 2025

Sankhya, sovereignty and the sense of touch

In our investigation of the Sankhya philosophy and asana we begin with a study of the senses. On the map, the senses are on the bottom row, left side – classified under sattva. (see image below) For now we will consider sattva as awareness. Senses are intimately connected to the quality of awareness. Classically, yoga is a discipline through which we access and become aware of our inner wisdom through practices by which we are trained to withdraw our senses from the external world. As we turn them inward – our connection to the sacred and the infinite resources of wisdom and awareness are revealed. The magnificence of asana is that it is a physical practice which results in a state of transcendent experience and understanding beyond the physical. Working consciously with our senses facilitates opening to greater levels of awareness and allows us to realize those more illumined states of awareness in the physical world.

When we practice, keeping measured attention on the breath will develop the objectivity we need to interpret the information we take in through our senses.

We can think of the information that we take in from our senses as data and the understanding and interpretation of that data is done by the mind. Sankhya philosophy identifies different aspects of mind. We’ll get to that later. I just point this out because it’s just like looking at a spreadsheet, The numbers don’t mean anything. The meaning comes from analysis and the purpose with which you observe and work with them. The more we can step back into an objective, non-interpretative relationship with our sense data the more we will understand about yoga. For example, pain can be dangerous, healing, warning, or a clue for a potential adjustment. We need to be in a non-interpretive state to discern the meaning of the pain.

The following five senses organs are enumerated in the sankhya philosophy:

The eye, the ear, the tongue, the nose and the skin.

The disciplines of focus and austerity in the yoga practice are designed so that, just as we might learn to articulate the movement of a limb, we might also manage those sense organs. As our practice evolves into greater levels of subtlety, we become masters of how a given piece of sensory data is interpreted.

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Today I’d like to consider touch. Touch is a very physical sense and the physical body is the asana yogi’s primary vehicle. The fundamental and first level of awakening awareness of touch in the yoga practice comes through the feet on the ground. Consider the following progression:

Tadasana: mountain posture – the feet are both on the ground steady and even – the weight dispersed through the pads of the toes the ball and the heel. Both feet work together as one foot.
Vrksasana – tree posture – we shift the weight to one foot, and connect the sole of the other foot to the inner leg. The weight of the body is evenly dispersed through the standing foot
Virabhadrasana 2 – warrior II -we begin to master weight distribution between two feet with the same sense of dispersion between the toe, ball and heel pads.
Adho Mukha Vrksanana – handstand – all the weight on two hands (look ma – no feet!)
Adho Mukha Svanasana – Both hands and both feet on the earth and separated and new possibilities emerge in terms of weight distribution and articulation of the hands and feet against the earth.

Some things we might note:

The touch of the body against the earth
The touch of two parts of the body against one another
The touch sensation of distribution of weight.
The touch sensation of activation of muscles and pressure.
Add to this the qualities that might be included in the experience of touch:
- pain
- pleasure
- revulsion
- hot or cold
- heavy or light

Through attention and awareness the sense of touch becomes proprioception and kinesthetics – where our awareness of the inner landscape awakens and knowing our purpose in time and space.

Take it further – what is revealed is how the body works – including the internal organs. Through attention to the more overt layers of sensation – awareness of the subtle developes and we awaken into clairsentience. “I have a feeling”. It’s like a gut instinct but much subtler and tuned to a different frequency. Consider laying your hands on someone – a gesture of friendship or love or passion – all different frequencies or “vibes”. Touch also has a relationship with the heart – this “I have a feeling” is a dimension of the emotional heart but also the spiritual heart.

For the asana yogi, the heart is the seat of the nadam, the inner guru, sound vibration, the sound of vibration of Om. Yes. Vibration. Detected by touch.

When we practice asana we open doors to expanded understandings of….well, everything. So as we pay attention to touch in practice – it opens the question of “pain” in yoga practice. Many opposing views of how to relate to pain in yoga are espoused in the yoga community. But through awareness we develop discernment about the sensations in our body – like pain. This awareness is related to our personal sovereignty.

Consider a way of relating to ourselves and the world which relies totally on external sources for interpretation (the doctor, the internet, our mother, the person one mat over from us in class). This way of relating which denies our capacity to interact observe and interpret the signals of our own body.

Consider a way of relating where the sensation itself governs us. For example “Oops I feel something – I’m not going there into that forward bend, back bend, – I’m going to avoid sensation completely”. The healing potential of the posture is never even approached. We give our power of choice away to the sensation.

Consider a different way of relating, different than the ways described above. Consider becoming aware of a sensation, observing, breathing, noticing the quality, and then noticing the quality change as we gently shift the body part a millimeter, or stretch a little deeper. Then we come to know:

“Oh – this pain indicates I need the attention of the doctor”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I need to go deeper in the practice”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I need to be gentle in practice”, or

“Oh, this pain indicates I’ve been slumping at my desk.”

Through careful observation of sensation we reclaim our power of CHOICE. No small thing. Moving into this state of sovereignty by activating awareness and choice – we no longer make the pain all powerful by ignoring, fighting or delegating it. We hold the possibility in our hands and through attention we discern the next best step towards wholeness, healing and yoga.

I always try to create a post and a newsletter to be released simultaneously. They aren’t for marketing purposes. This is just a way to share what I learned in my years of teaching. In the coming releases I anticipate that the information in both will really be useful. You can sign up below. You will not receive anything other than these materials. The newsletters are also available on the NatalieteachesYoga facebook page and on Tumbler.

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October 27, 2024January 12, 2025

sankhya

संख्या

The next map of yoga we will explore here is the Sankhya Philosophy, which maps the terrain from the unified field of awareness to our experience as individuals evolving into knowing ourselves and our place in the infinite universe . We can use it as a guide when we traverse the landscape of the material realm seeking evolution, liberation and peace. We can also use it as a guide as we carve out a pathway for the rivers of pure consciousness to irrigate the material world that we inhabit. Translating into ideas of enumeration and rational decision making it appears to be a highly analytical discipline disconnected from our day to day experience on the mat. But that is far from true. Right discipline in practice creates a crucible for personal actualization. It paves the way from a life lead astray by every passing influence to alive of personal sovereignty – aligned with the will of the infinite, limitless omnipotent loving intelligence that goes by many names.

For an image of the map please see this website Sankhya.

The journey of begins with awareness of our senses – direct experience of our awareness touching the physical world via the physical body and ascends through the individual mind, the collective mind, the wisdom mind through the experience of pure duality (me and you) and then in some maps to a unified field of consciousness beyond that duality. We will take the map beyond duality to the unified field.

The heart of healing exists in the unified field. The heart of yoga (which is a dualistic discipline) is experienced in communion with the unified field.

/*Whereas the koshas or sheaths (the five dimensions of you) are really about the individual, the Sankhya philosophy is about reorienting ourselves into our unique place as an individual within the cosmos. . The practice of yoga asana leads us directly towards, aligns us with and supports us in staying steadfastly and joyfully engaged in this ever changing process of reorientation. /

The practice we will be exploring is using asana to bring awareness to the senses, our actions, the general qualities of nature, the individual mind, the cosmic mind, our sense of separation and yoga or unification.

As we explore these maps we gain the ability to attain mastery in asana, meditation and life.

How can we start to consider this? It helps to explore a new sense of our physicality. Some approaches to yoga work with transcending the physical body, but to really understand ourselves as living as physical bodies from a yoga perspective – we start with physical awareness. When we start our yoga practice we are entombed in conditioning about our physical bodies- that the body is shameful or exalted or it drives us or it pulls us down. The flavors of conditioning about the body are infinite. Open Vogue, or Grey’s Anatomy or unpack your experience of gym class in the second grade. Conditioning is subtle – Habits are generated in our unconscious.

What we do want to do is to open our field of awareness as we practice. Just by giving up preferences and practicing observation we will come to know our conditioning and we may choose to leave it behind. What thought arises as we tumble out of tree posture – or come down with a thud out of headstand. We will break down some of these explorations in asana as we walk through the map in the coming months – but for now you can get ready, just by beginning to notice what arises on and off the mat in a very general sense.

If you’d like to receive a newsletter prepared in conjuction with these posts – illuminating other facets and designed to prompt your creative thinking about your practice Please sign up below. And I promise…you won’t be subject to marketing emails from me…this is just about talking about yoga.

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April 29, 2024September 22, 2024

Deep Asana: Understanding your joints for deep healing.

/*This is the first in a four part series about deep asana and creating personal sequences*/

In the classical schools of yoga the healing power of deep asana Is a powerful rubric. By deep asana I am referring to the classical spinal twists (i.e., ardha matsyendrasana) , lotus (padmasana), and all the various binds. These deep squeeze postures are purposeful in their intensity in a way that large muscle strengthening or or deeply relaxing postures are not. To practice them effectively we must understand how the joints function – and what the deep asana does.

For example

Padmasana. The knee is a hinge joint. The ankles are mosaics of tiny interconnecting bones that move like ball bearings to allow maximal movement – but the structural stability of the joint is borne of the way those joints fit together, fettered together by soft tissue – fascia, ligaments, and such. When we do padmasana – the deep exterior rotation of the legs must emerge from the hip socket to protect the functioning of knees and ankles. If we are practicing padmasana – we must balance that deep external rotation of the hip joint with stabilizing strengtheners in our standing practice. Particularly the internal rotations which connect the feet to the earth through the inner ball of the foot. These inner rotations, while originating in the connection to the earth travel up the leg and into the hip socket and pelvic girdle. Stable hip/pelvic girdle structure is needed for standing, walking, and containing the soft internal organs. a correctly activated inner rotation will strengthen whatever tiny muscles which need to be strengthen and will establish ease in those which have been acting as supports when it wasn’t their function. So we must understand how the joints work – and what their purposes are and how they relate to each other.
Ardha matsyendrasana: Vertebrae spin gently in restricted rotations around a central axis. Each vertebrae is uniquely shaped for its perfect placement in the column of the spine. The shape of each one contributes to the moving stability of the spinal column. When performing a deep asana form of a spinal twist, we are invited to gently explore the boundaries of the vertebral rotation. The spine must be lifted and relatively straight to protect the cushions between the vertebrae, which protect the nerves. Remember important components of the nervous system travel through the spine – your central nervous system! A classical spinal twist is not a full body twist – it is focused on the spine. The sacrum does not participate in the twist. Instead, the pelvic girdle is given structural stability built from the ground up either through knowledgeable activation of appropriate muscles or through placement i.e., through sitting squarely on the ground.

The pelvic girdle is a bunch of moving pieces. Yep. It’s not a solid bowl. Those moving pieces can misalign in subtle ways, impact the alignment of the vertebral column and the ability of the vertebrae to turn. The stability in the alignment of your feet and knees supports this structure. Building the asana from the ground up helps with this.

Deep asana is not forceful asana. There are lineages where force was used effectively but I am not aware of any school that currently works successfully with dramatic deep quick forceful adjustments into deep asana. Gentle knowledgeable movement is as effective, if not more so in the stable ongoing practice of deep asana.

Modifications and simpler postures are your friends. You can design or learn modifications that will work specifically on the joints which present obstacles in our practice of deep asana. In my practice I work for long periods of time in specific modifications to open joints, like the hip or the turning of the spine, before moving into the deep posture. This creates a stable foundation for the deeper postures which is safe and healing.

Note – the relationship with deep asana is very different for those who started yoga before their bone structures were fully formed. Yeah. The sacrum is still forming up to age 5. For the rest of us – bones remain malleable through our lives, depending on lifestyle – so change is possible, but it is best executed gradually and consistently.

Through the squeezing wringing of soft tissues in the joints – deep seated stress patterns in the fascial tissue are released, and structures in the pranamayakosha – the pranic body are aligned and rejuvenated. After squeezing – fresh blood and prana will flow into a joint to nourish it.

I encourage you to learn more about the way your joints function and how each posture – in its classical form (see Light on Yoga) articulates the joints. Note that Mr. Iyengar who is depicted in the pictures in this book, started very young. He’s like a gumby. But you can still see external rotations, internal rotations, deep spine twists, in those classical images. Gently experiment with what you learn – so it is no longer an academic exercise to learn about your yogic anatomy.

My Mailchimp newsletter is sent concurrently with this – it’s designed to illuminate related ideas to stimulate understanding and spark your thinking about your practice. I promised I won’t send you marketing emails.

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December 28, 2023March 18, 2024

Digesting Trauma: The powerful medicine of Hatha Yoga

“PTSD is the inability to forget” Dr. Ellen Kirschman ¹

Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.1

Yoga is the ability to digest and transform our thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences so that our clear and sacred selves will shine through.

Yoga is the experience of peace that emerges when our afflictions have been overcome.

Yoga is the freedom that arises when our past has been processed and we are fully present.

Some experiences are very difficult to forget. If, at the moment of trauma, we are unable to fully process and digest what is happening, that experience can be held in the physical body (also identified as the “Food Body” or Anamayakosha in the yogic anatomy map known as the koshas) Sometimes food and experiences are indigestible – uncomfortable, painful, difficult to absorb and process. The blockage caused by the undigested matter can obstruct our access to the other dimensions of our being – our knowledge, wisdom and joy. Through understanding this we can use our yoga practices to digest and heal traumatic memories stored in the physical body.

There is an inherent wisdom in the process of yoga practice. We can buzz along in our lives just fine, and then, one day the blockage becomes apparent and it’s time to heal it. We’re not defective if we have issues. It’s pretty normal to have a degree of trauma in the body. Yoga is a fairly sophisticated method of dealing with the residue of trauma due to this potential for digestion and transformation. We could just manage our symptoms. But we are invited – in the deeper levels of yogic experience – to transform what was not processed into insight and wisdom. It takes deep willingness, an open mind and considerable bravery. But the rewards are ample.

There are multiple approaches to processing trauma through our yoga practices. We may be experiencing the impacts of the trauma on the psychological level, and our yoga practice restores equilibrium. But going further - by breathing and feeling and observing arising memories on the mat – if we are spacious enough – the memories are released from the physical body and new understandings of experiences awaken. The experiences are digested. We can use those same techniques in the presence of physical symptoms which can range from tightness to chronic misalignment to pain or acute injury. Wise presence in yoga asanas can resolve physical trauma through wise practice. This can be approached well by experimenting gently with specific postures that intuitively, or as a result of research and study, we believe will be related to the anatomical structures involved.

As we use the tools of yoga to train ourselves to be calm, objective and present to reawakened memories of traumatic feelings and experiences, we mitigate the cycles of recurrence. We move from the experience of being bombarded by the repetitions of memory and subconscious patterning to creating new relationships with the stories we have lived. The charged quality of the memory becomes neutralized and laid to rest. We may never “forget it” – but we can transform it into a tool for awakening, empowerment, deepening and opening to ourselves.

Just as digested food nourishes the cellular structure of the body, digested experiences nourish the stability and robustness of our neural landscape. They transform the very mechanisms through which we understand the world. We become less fragmented, less dissociated and more integrated. We become whole. In this way well-practiced yoga can be a powerful tool in the management and healing of PTSD. Some tips for practice are:

Work with the quality of your breathing. Begin with gentle but focused breath and explore how the different qualities of breath impact the physical experience of a posture. Look for the quality of breath that is in effect when you feel a muscle release.
Work with the quality of your attention. Begin with gentle but focused presence. You can train specifically in this – take a posture and maintain your gentle receptive attention on the bones, the flesh, the skin. The moment when a memory arises and you stay present rather than becoming lost in it is a power point for healing.
As you train in this way, it’s important to notice your reactions to the awakening of trauma in the body. The most common reaction is to attempt to control it by pressing it down – psychologically, physically – a kind of powering through. This will interfere with the release of stress pattern in the body. Allowing is key to healing. Assuming you are practicing with moderate intensity – you can practice staying present to discomfort. Of course – don’t force.

.Through a carefully cultivated yoga practice we reintegrate the parts of ourselves that have been locked away through trauma. No longer fractured in this way, we become whole, and the experience of PTSD can be transformed into a process of healing. While the knowledge of the experience still remains, we are now no longer bound by it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT40YKvLBTg ↩︎

Each blog post is associated with a related newsletter with related commentary, suggested reading and maybe a song or two. You can find past newsletters (and the current one )on my Facebook page NatalieteachesYoga. Sign up below to receive newsletters in your inbox. No marketing, I promise! Just content that I hope will open your mind to deeper levels of yoga practice.

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