Alright! Hello everyone it's me Ethan and in this video we will take a close
look at coffee: How it works, why it is so commonly used by yoga students, how to
use it and I'm going to tell you how I personally elevate my energy in the
morning and start to ease into a state of euphoria before I even step on my mat
for practice - and I will give you the answer to whether there is truth in the
famous quote "no coffee, no prana" spoiler alert: No
so the phrase no coffee no prana was obviously originally intended as kind of a joke
or at least a half
joke and it's clearly one that people really liked because here we are, decades
later still using it to justify guzzling pots and pots of coffee before practice
every morning
I will say that the one area there may be a little bit of truth in it is that
if coffee is a big part of your regular routine like it is for a lot of
Ashtangis then suddenly going without morning coffee could make you feel a
little bit dragged through the mud but of course prana and the ability to
thrive is there in the absence of exogenous or externally sourced'
stimulants. Coffee's active ingredient, so to speak, is of course caffeine but what
actually is caffeine well caffeine is a central nervous
system stimulant so it makes you feel wide-awake it increases your reaction
time and your feeling of focus when your bio mechanical system is alert and
active you are capable of producing greater force output through the nervous
system - more specifically and more powerfully create muscular contractions
so by extension to that caffeine can make you noticeably stronger and faster
it is very widely used to enhance both physical and mental performance. It also
temporarily increases your levels of dopamine which is known as the feel-good
neurotransmitter. Caffeine is a diuretic which i think is one of the hidden
things that Ashtangis really tend to like about it - it makes the body release
water that it might be holding onto so you might feel light and agile during
practice so lighter more energetic more
clear-headed more focus seems kind of perfect for ashtanga yoga right? well, yes
and no - for some people those effects are really profound and really beneficial
and enjoyable but it's not always the case that feeling more light more
flexible and more active in the nervous system is what the student needs to
create balance in the body and mind and for them the experience could be just
kind of ungrounding and unsettling - so the devil is in the dosage and you will have
to experiment to find your sweet spot and be open to the fact that your sweet
spot - your ideal amount - might be zero. In that case I would still recommend having
a caffeine-free hot drink in the morning which would be kind of uplifting and get
things going ultimately your decision on how to use
caffeine should be based on being well informed and aware
of how it interacts with your system under various circumstances rather than
basing it on fear of doing anything different than what you usually do
caffeine works by blocking adenosine which is a chemical in the brain that
makes you feel sleepy. To work adenosine needs to bind to its receptor so it
floats around your system - this is adenosine - floating around your system
and it sees the receptor and it swims up to the receptor and they bind, they fit
together perfectly and then you start to feel awfully sleepy
if caffeine is put into the system it will swim around and slot into adenosine
receptor in place of the adenosine molecule and the central nervous system
will run wild - uninhibited - or rather more accurately less inhibited temporarily
and the problem lies in the fact that continuously overriding the natural
function of your system might then leave you feeling fatigued or overworked. You
will initially have a lot of success in occupying most of your receptors with
glorious caffeine but the body is highly adaptable and over a long period of time
it will develop more receptors and you will have to take more and more caffeine
to get the same effect from your morning drink
sleep expert dr. Matthew Walker has one very valid concern with caffeine in that
studies indicate that it has a half-life of six hours meaning that its effects
are really intense just after you drink it and then it's still in your system
acting at about half the intensity six hours later what that also means is that
twelve hours after the initial dose it's still in there acting at about a quarter
of the initial intensity dr. Matthew Walker quite profoundly compares the
effects of a cup of coffee at midday to being the same as a quarter cup of
coffee at midnight think about that but in my experience there is a way to
reduce the negative effect of this so for me personally based on my own
experimentation on my own body and nervous system getting the benefits of
caffeine with minimal side effects can come from this specific set of
circumstances - Firstly - I will take caffeine in a fasted state, that means
taking nothing with any caloric value - with any calories - since the previous day
I will also mean that the morning drink itself needs to be either plain black
coffee or a tea without milk or sugar that might also be an easy way to
introduce an intentional intermittent fasting routine which I would recommend
for most people, but perhaps that's a conversation for another day, but a
fasted state will reduce the length of caffeine's half life and will also
probably make the initial effects more intense so if you don't like that you
could play with reducing the the amount of caffeine taking in that initial dose
which would also be a good thing. So okay so that's thing one - thing two - is that
the morning drink will be the only caffeinated substance that I will have
during the day I use it to direct the energetic lift specifically to this
point in the day before starting my practice and then having a powerful
practice builds the energy to have me feeling good throughout the rest of the
day so won't need to continuously take caffeine and keep taxing the nervous
system. I don't use caffeine on rest dates because I don't just consider rest
days to be days off but rather an opportunity to consciously rest the
physical body and the nervous system. So, I love coffee
but decaf coffee works fine when I'm not looking for the boost that comes with it
decaf gets a bit of criticism for not being a hundred percent caffeine free
but it's like two to five milligrams of caffeine compared to a mild coffee like
an espresso capsule which has about 100 milligrams. A bigger stronger coffee could
even have like 3 maybe 400 milligrams of caffeine in it. If you are
like my friend Johnny you only need to take a whiff of the steam of somebody's
coffee as you walk down the street and you'll fly through the Ashtanga Yoga
third series effortlessly in twenty five minutes and then go into a coma
other ways to elevate in the morning that can be used instead of stimulants
or in combination listen to music it doesn't need to be Guns and Roses on
full volume but this should be music that stirs up something in you music
that will elicit an emotional response is a really powerful way to stimulate
the nervous system use this to set the tone for your morning and give you what
you need you'll then get on the mat in the right frame of mind
don't blare the music out loud during your actual practice - use this to elevate use
the practice to meditate - and also use a good pair of headphones it really does
enhance the quality and the power of your music. Spending a bit bigger on this
item in particular is something that I am always happy to do, so if you are
someone who just uses the plastic headphones that comes with your phone
then this is an obvious opportunity for you to massively improve your all-round
quality of life - seek out powerful music and listen to it in the best quality
that you can. Okay final tip of the video and this one is one that you absolutely
must bring into your routine - Go outside! this one has been huge for me and I
always make a point of doing it because the effect is amazing so no-matter if
you feel that the environment out there the weather is amazing or not go out
onto the balcony step out into your garden step straight out into the street
if you have to the air out there is different the energy is different spend
a moment outside before you begin to practice and take it all in - it can be
tremendously powerful