HOW YOGA HELPS IN CEREBRAL PALSY:
THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF PRACTICE
My psycho-physical condition:
When I was born my head got stuck in my mother’s cervix and for a while I could not breathe. I had high fever after the birth. The doctors called this status *Cerebral Palsy*. Cerebral refers to the affected area of the brain, the cerebrum (however the centers had not been perfectly localized and the disorder most likely involves connections between the cortex and other parts of the brain such as the cerebellum). Palsy refers to disorder of movement.
CP is caused by damage to the motor control centers of the young developing brain . It is a non-progressive disorder, which means that the brain damage does not worsen, but secondary orthopedic difficulties can appear with time. There is no known cure for CP. Medical intervention is limited to the treatment and prevention of complications arising from the effects of this sickness.
Before telling you my practice and what I have obtained from it, I want to write down the theory upon which my sadhana is based and which I am practicing 24 fours a day, which is the sadhana that I have started in the beginning of last year, 2007, joining the Himalayan Institute of Italy here in Florence.
THE THEORY OF MY SADHANA
First of all I shall describe the important points of my program and then I shall go into what I have got from them.
1) Sit in meditation every day, at the same hour, to create news models, new grooves or habits in the mind.
2) Practice self-inquiry with oneself inside one's mind, daily.
3) Develop a steady posture for meditation, still, firm and comfortable.
4) Learn to breathe serenely, with no jerk and, in due time, without a break.
5) Develop a way of cultivating a sankalpa or determination. In doing yoga, the first aspect to realize is full discipline to your practice, which brings you inevitably to the consolidation of your will. Before doing anything, you should form a conviction that you shall do it, that you have to do it, that you are going to do it, and that you can do it. This creates determination, and this point is very important in my, and I think in everybody's daily life, and not only when one practices .
6) Learn to let go of every thought that gets into your mind and distracts you: it should not stay there. You should not think over and over on the same thought in particular, either if it is good or bad. You see, if you prick yourself with a needle, it hurts. But if you don't keep on thinking it hurts, the feeling will not be there. And this method you can use with bigger body injuries, mental woes etc.
7) This is examination of your thoughts, called self-inquiry. This means to observe which are one's thoughts and determine whether to keep on them or not. The yogic manuals talk of aklista and klista thoughts. The first one is useful and the second one is not useful, harmful. You have to examine your thoughts to determinate which ones help you and which are to be eliminated.
8) After self-inquiry, the next practice is witnessing. When you have learned to witness worldly things, in the moment you do not identify yourself with them, you are then at an advanced stage on the path of yoga.
EXCERPT FROM A LIFE OF A YOGI
(I PUT THIS EXCERPT TO GIVE HOPE TO THOSE WHO LIKE ME PRACTICE YOGA NOT ONLY FOR THE ATTAINMENT OF THE SELF. IT IS FROM THE LIFE OF RAMANA MAHARSHI)
"But it was not only submission to regulations; it was submission to all the conditions of life and to pain and sickness which taught us silently that pain cannot disturb the equanimity of one who abides
in the Self. Throughout the long and painful sickness that finally killed his body he submitted loyally, one after another, to the doctors who were put in charge, never complaining, never asking for a
change of treatment. If ever there was any inclination to try a different treatment it was only so that those who recommended it should not be disappointed: and even then it was made dependent on the consent of the Ashram authorities. If there is a tendency today to regard submission as spiritless it is only because egoism is regarded as natural. In itself, but for the Grace of Bhagavan, it would be the most inaccessible to modern man on account of its very simplicity and directness; and yet it is the most accessible, and in many cases the only accessible path, from the contingent point of view, since, because of its very directness, it requires no ritual or forms of worship, no priesthood or congregation, no outer signs or special observances, but can be practiced in the workshop or kitchen or city office as well as in the monastery or hermitage."
"In the same impersonal way a man can attend to all the affairs of life, knowing that he, the real Self, is unaffected by them; and every attack of greed, anger or desire can be dispelled by vichara,ie self-inquiry. It must be dispelled, because it is no use repeating that one is the Self and acting as though one were the ego. Real, even partial, awareness of the Self weakens egotism: egotism, whether expressed as vanity, greed or desire, is a proof that recognition of the Self is merely mental."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MY SADHANA
The above stages, which are the groundings of beginning Yoga Practice constitute the basis of my sadhana, which I started the beginning of 2007 at the Himalayan Institute of Florence in Italy.
I think it is useful to go into some details: I started like everybody starts trying to sit still, trying to breathe continuously, in-breath, out-breath, etc taking care to watch the touch of the air at the larger, moist, lower nostrils to begin to focus my awareness on the gift that life gives us all, breath. In the beginning my sickness would not let me sit still. Above all, it was my left foot and my left hand and arm which would not let me put my attention on the practice. The more I wanted to sit still, the more they designed chaotic dystonic figures in the air. The left side of the body ached, due to my silliness to force the body to sit still. And, moreover, I had a shallow breath which made my anxiety grow more than it normally was. When I was a small boy I always was afraid of other people, even in my own family. It grew deep inside, so even now there is unconscious fear when I try to do my daily meditation, it comes out again.
The following exercise was even more difficult. Introducing in the breath awareness the universal mantra soham, the mantra that is given to beginners which mimes breath (“ham” when one exhales, “so” when one inhales), the first thing that happened was that I started gasping. Again I made the silly mistake to force the practice, until I was too tired to go on. In the first three months my practice lasted no more than ten to twelve minutes.
But I had one thing on my side, my sankalpa! I DID NOT GIVE UP! And I repeated it more and more “I DON’T WANT TO GIVE UP AND I SHALL NOT GIVE UP!” This is the philosophical basis to my still young sadhana which will bring you very, but very far in whichever your goal in Yoga is, be it kaivalya, be it samprajnata samadhi, or what else. But I had some luck: I literally fell in love with a yoga practice, yoganidra. I read something about it, but the important thing was that I bought a good CD, which dictates the practice, and immediately started practicing. I found and thought “this must be my main practice” and so I did it night and day, sitting, lying on the floor or when it was cold at night in my straight bed. I won't go into the details of the practice, because every good teacher should know it. But only two words I shall say: In the beginning the practice seems like a very long shavasana, and “in some way at the very beginning” it is: it is a relaxation practice, at a first glimpse. The impression is not exact, because one very soon finds out with the 61 point practice, the shitili karana, (or relaxation through breathing with the whole body, which is a very effective technique to relax the body from the crown of the head to the toes), are techniques which go many steps further than shavasana, in one way, and turn out to be a very different practice, in another way. The essential point is that it is very easy to fall asleep. In yoganidra one should not fall asleep but rather remain in a deep sleep while completely awake! It is a “conscious deep sleep”, which, the raw theory says, is a sister to Meditation. They say “it is one level below samadhi”. That is why it has many levels and if one has never been in samadhi, like the writer, when one has a glimpse into it, and it sure is a wonderful experience! The yoganidra practice started giving me positive results doing it. First of all the left side of the body slowly began to quiet down, as did the dystonic movements. Then, with time of about one year, I started sleeping less, a gain of 4 four more waking hours. I was amazed and literally out of myself with joy! Now, when I do svadhyaya, either studying scriptures or doing japa of my mantra, sometimes I just forget that I have a lame body! My sankalpa, which is to ever refine the practice of yoganidra with the help of God and Guru, has been the most important thing I ever did, because it empowers ever so much my activity in my whole life, and I'm learning to use it daily for a wide variety of actions, obviously changing it duly. My goal is to teach this practice to pregnant women who expect a baby who is sick like me or, who is perfectly well, so that baby may lead a better life, either practicing yoga (that would be great, starting practice at a few months of life!), or not!