HOW TOP-DOWN YOGA WAS BORN
TOP-DOWN YOGA was created to fill a perceived gap in self-regulation techniques, based on new paradigm philosophy and current biophysical research. It also fits the bill for busy parents, business people, and the infirm. In fact, anyone, especially children can benefit from learning brief self-regulation techniques.

Do you have difficulty adapting, bouncing back, and coping with chronic stress, anxiety or depession, with or without medication? Would you like enhanced well-being, even more fulfilling personal relationships. When we are calmer within our self-esteem and resilience rises, and many of the tensions and problems our stress creates with others dissolves automatically.

Our psychophysical organism embodies not only our “unconscious” in its living matrix, but also the collective intelligence and healing wisdom of millennia. Natural healing is facilitated by relaxing the mindbody so it can recalibrate itself.

But who can relax in this uptight, fast-paced world? Maybe you are deeply concerned that, unless we discover a way to transcend the current state of human affairs our chances of surviving are waning each day? Can we ever put an end to meaningless death and destruction? Do you believe that it is our Destiny to become a successful species? If so, our work begins in our own backyard in our own self-regulation. Do you want to be part of the solution, rather than the problem?

Or, maybe you are already passionate about realizing your full potential and seek a simple, realizable practice that fits your busy lifestyle, and can be done easily, anywhere, anytime. If so, TOP-DOWN YOGA is for you.

New credible medical research shows the old neuronal regulation theories of mindbody interaction are insufficient to account for a variety of factors in our health and behavior.

WHAT IS TOP-DOWN YOGA?

TOP-DOWN Yoga is a universal human process, in self-regulation of living organization, that can be adapted for each individual's unique needs and
capacities. Anyone can learn to regulate their internal processes. Fundamentally, it is not a practice or discipline, it is an in-tuitive form of adaptaion in the organism’s self-organization.

It leads to the development and coordination of motor behaviors which ‘guide’ the process of living organization towards optimal functioning, well-being and pleasure. It is an ‘open’ system which can be be integrated with all fields of human endeavor. It also holds the promise that our collective journey into the future will be more coherent and successful.

TOP-DOWN YOGA is a cost-effective approach to relieving stress, anxiety and other dibilitating chronic conditions. In many cases it can eliminate
the need for therapy and medical intervention. It returns the power to the individual’s autonomous intelligence.

TOP-DOWN YOGA strenghtens the ability to feel and think with clarity, while enhancing innate capacities to have genuine care and concern for others. It also ‘sets’ the body-mind network as-a-whole in a condition of rest, conserving our energy and preserving the organism’s integrity. For those who explore contemplative practice, it regulates cardiac output, and, therefore meditatative equipoise. It aligns the system’s intelligence with the spiritual magma of the living earth, fostering co-evolutionary developmental symbiosis.

TOP-DOWN YOGA does require our enthusiatic attention and partcipation. Behavioral corrections of long-term habits only occur through awareness
and deep conviction. Restoration of coherence in cellular, fluid and nervous systems, and especially in the tiny (neuropeptide) structures within and throughout the body, supports the emergence of peace, safety, knowing knowledge and unitiy of intentionality.

The recent new understanding of a 3rd branch of in the autonomic nervous system (the Social Engagement System) embodying love and fostering deep
connection in social engagement, shines the light of awareness on species-level, “collective”, evolutionary intelligence. “Social bonds”
are scientifically described as a power form of learning leading to long-lasting changes in the endocrine system and brain. This metamorphic
capcity is bio-logically divine!

This new paricipatory knowledge system mobilizes pre-coded human potentials. Celebrating the reinstatment of the natural light that is
our humanity, in the words of Dane Rudyar, “we can begin again together.”

MENTORS AND INFLUENCES

NEUROCEPTION

According to by Dr. Stephen Porges, Brain-Body center, University of Illinois, "the term neuroception describes how neural circuits
distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous or life threatening. Because of our heritage as a species, neuroception takes place in primitive parts of the brain, without our conscious participation. Faulty neuroception might lie at the root of several psychiatric disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, chronic stress and anxiety disorders, ADHD, and Reactive Attachment disorder." Currently, the number of individuals in our human family expressing these symptoms is epidemic in proportion. http://www.zerotothree.org/vol24-5a.pdf

Self-regulation (inter-communication) and social engagement (intra-communication) each require that the individual can be at rest (immobilized in safety) without fear, and feel somewhat balanced in his or her life. Feelings of threat create stress, putting one into a state of fight/flight (moblization) or freeze (immobilization in fear).

However, what is less obvious is that the individual may actually feel threatened when there are no "real" threats. This is faulty neuroception. It is possible that the nervous system is so irritated that the one is stuck in fear even though there is no real threat to survival. We find that many people are stuck in a less than optimal state due to a dysfunction in their nervous systems. They are keyed to fight or flee regardless of how safe the actual environment is. In most cases, function can be restored so that the child can feel safe and rest within the experience of mindfulness and awareness, promoting an optimal condition for meditation and social engagement.

Neuroception is a present-centered context for the calibration our relations with the 'extended' environment. Seeing, that is, self-regulating the entire realm of emergent interaction with one's 'social' environment in terms of three autonomic alternatives, provides several advantages; It conserves energy. If the individuals nervous system is functionally operative, the process of calibration itself is an emergent, moment to moment operation. It is not based on any conceptual belief system. It is a natural, 'unconscious', autonomic response of awareness "tuning-in" to its own, autonomus felt sense.

Psychologist and philosopher, Eugene Gendlin, has developed a systems approach for 'decoding' the bodily felt sense. His ground breaking work is well documented in his book, entitled "FOCUSING", and further refined using a process he calls, "Thinking At The Edge." His work presents a major contribution in fulfilling the complex requirements necessary for a coherent transition into a new paradigm of human evolution.

SELF-REGULATION

TOP-DOWN YOGA is an emergent process of self-regulation which awakens the optimal functioning of a neuroanatomical 'order" that has been described as "the wisdom of the body." These easy to learn simple motor behaviors can be performed sitting in a chair, standing or lying down with a pillow
under the head!

TOP-DOWN YOGA is a method of self-regulation that has proven successful in restoring the individual's feeling of safety, providing the present time environment is indeed safe. The two main modes of working are structural, and functional. We work 'structurally' to adjust or change the physical system. For example, most people who are in a psychological state of stress or depression have a rotated first vertebra.

The neural condition of stress is the root somatic cause underlying the increasing degeneration of health and social relations. Stress may be derived from pressure on the cranial nerves when the connective tissue wraps around some nerves as they exit the skull. This local pressure restricts blood flow to the nerve itself, causing dysfunction. It could also be the case that the rotation of the first vertebra reduces blood flow to certain areas of the brain and brainstem. There are several structural methods of approach for returning the first vertebra to a better position and thereby relieving chronic stress.

The Research

One such method is working with special movements of the head. These positions (asanas) are easy to learn and perform, and can be practiced everyone while sitting in a chair, standing or lying down. Holding the positions of the head for short periods of time de-contracts the deep muscles of the neck thus repositioning the first vertebra in relation to the base of the skull. This can relieve pressure on the vagal nerve, which, in turn, can restore proper function of the autonomic nervous system.

A second method is working with movements of the eyes. There is a neuroanatomical link called the occipital-optical reflex, between the 8 sub-occipital muscles at the base of the skull and the 12 eye muscles.

With physiological and psychological trauma a fixation can occur in the occipital-optical reflex system locking the trauma into the mind/body complex. Simple ways of moving and holding the eyes and head in specific positions at the same time releases the fixation, releases the fixation unlocking the holding patterns.

Embryonic Ocean Breathing is another method for releasing the sub-occipital muscles functionally. It entails a subtle adaptation in spinal movement while breathing. The normal way that we breathe engages the limbs, orienting the body to mobilize. This brings the sympathetic system into play. The adaptive movement does not engage the limbs or the sympathetic system. Attending to the simple motor behaviors aligning spinal-field awareness and the head with the gravitational axis simultaneously enhances the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid, thus awakening innate wisdom inhering in the body.

Paying close attention to the subtle undulations and process of aligning with the gravitational axis, spinal-field awareness becomes an optical axis, which "sees", regulates the organismic intelligence. As conscious awareness circulates in fluid systems of the body the affect on the autonomic nervous system is immediately calming. The 'body' abides as a felt sense, an oceanic presence resonating with noiseless intercommunication that governs the organism as-a-whole.

Another important method is working with simple motor behaviors regulating movement and holding of the neck, head and eye muscles in specific positions, brings the mind to a state of stillness, awakening powerful self-regulation of cardiac output. The myelinated vagus is actively inhibitory of the sympathetic nervous system at the level of the heart.

"The vagal brake provides a neural mechanism to rapidly change visceral state by slowing or speeding the heart rate. The vagal brake contributes to the modulation of cardiac output. Neurophysiologically, the vagal brake provides a mechanism to support the metabolic requirements for mobilization and communication behaviors.

Functionally, by modulating visceral state, vagal brake enables the individual to rapidly engage and disengage objects, and to promote self-soothing and calm behavioral states.

Biophysicst and leading proponent of the theory of quantum coherence in living organization, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, postulates that, "a pure coherent state for the entire system would be a many-mode quantum
electrodynamical field with a collective phase over all modes. It may be attainable only under very exceptional circumstances, as during an aesthetic or religious experience when the "pure duration" of the here and now becomes completely delocalized in the realm of no-time and no-space.

Based on his own direct experience and observing others, Kiely suggests that the vagal brake is the "master switch" by which mammalian neuro-biological intelligence de-couples from its time and space binding modes of operation and enters into the quinessential resting phase of pure duration. Normally "duration" implies time, here it refers to the inner timing of the essential nature of the organism.

All of these methods often bring about the desired results in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds. These methods have been developed
over many years by Stanley Rosenberg. www.stanleyrosenberg. com/

They have been expanded and refined into the system called TOP-DOWN YOGA by Lorin Kiely.

The techniques actually move the recipient out of stress, anxiety and depression, the experience of states of fear, irritation/anger and apathy/hopelessness. They move one toward being centered in openness and clarity, the integrated state of stillness in both body and mind, the foundation of 'enlightened' social engagement.

THE WISDOM OF THE BODY

The basis of mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic one of real-time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the head since it is rooted in the body-as a-whole and in the extended environment where the organism finds itself."
Francesco Varella

"In spite of a century of neuroscience and a decade of the brain, mainstream science is still unclear about he nature of consciousness and its relations to learning, memory and intelligence." Paradigm making research in the field of biophysics by Mae Wan Ho, and Dr. Jim Oschman, among others, demonstrates that ontologically speaking, the evolution of intelligence, at the level of the human organism has its origin in the so-called 'body' consciousness.

"The matrices within and between the cells in the human body, collectively called the living matrix, give rise to the primordial and evolutionarily ancient form of intelligence or consciousness that predates the nervous system. The living matrix is the molecular system that is the actual biophysical locus of the so-called subconscious, unconscious and intuitive processes described in the psychological literature." Jim Oschman, Evolution of the Intelligent Body

THE BRAIN IS IN THE BODY

The "body consciousness" works in tandem with, but independently of the "brain consciousness" constituting the nervous system. Mae Wan Ho has suggested that instantaneous coordination of body functions is mediated, not by the nervous system, but by the body consciousness inhering in the liquid crystalline continuum of the body. Ho and Knight following Oschman, review evidence suggesting that this liquid crystalline continuum is responsible for the direct current (DC) electrodynamical field, permeating the entire body of all animals, that Becker and others have detected.

Becker has further demonstrated that the DC field has a mode of semi-conduction that is much faster than nervous conduction. During a perceptive event, local changes in the DC field can be measured half a second before sensory signals arrive in the brain, suggesting that the activities in the brain may be pre-conditioned by the local DC field."
Mae Wan Ho, Quantum Coherence and Conscious Experience

"There is a 'consciousness' residing in the cellular and extracellular matrixes found throughout the human body. The living matrix is a continuous, global or whole-person system that outdates the nervous on hormonal systems in terms of evolutionary history. It is composed of biopolymers with enormous capacity to store information. The relationship of the matrix to the nervous system is that the nervous system is actually composed of this primordial system. The matrix actually reaches every portion of the organism that is reached by nerves, and the matrix also reaches places where nerves and capillaries do not reach."
Jim Oschman, Evolution of the Intelligent Body

The human physics underlying the dynamics of the Social Engagement System, and quantum coherence in living organization, provides a new Autopoeitic landscape for species-level evolution. Knowledge and means for embodying the living intelligence of the Social Engagement System and the 'condensation' processes of polymerization and macro- molecular
formation leading to the development of the body-mind phenomenon, provide the founding stratum of a new participatory knowledge system for awakening the evolutionary learning process of humankind-at-large.

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