This article is part of the series : "The Sustainable Developer"
Imagine a traditional picture of a Yogi : A beaming figure in lotus position.
A life spent mastering himself.
Everything else, not important.
He may go days without much food or water. He may sit and meditate for hours.
How about the beaming part ? After all, Yogis have been depicted with radiant beams of light.
Lets talk about their simple (not necessary easy) technique to keep energy at high levels:
In lotus position a Yogi does not move.
He is balanced and relaxed.
By not moving and by being physically at rest, a Yogi solves the first piece of our beaming puzzle: muscles are big consumers of energy and oxygen in the body.
If you don't move, energy created from breathing is going somewhere else other than muscles.
In lotus position a Yogi meditates.
For now, lets simplify the word meditation as the relaxing of our mind.
A relaxed mind solves the second piece of our beaming puzzle: the brain is another big consumer of energy and oxygen in the body.
In other words:
The Yogi energy is not being waste by bad posture, excessive muscular activity, worries or frenetic thinking. All his breathing is going to tissues and organs.
After awhile, energy is overflowing its body.
For us in general, is there a moment in our day that we do something similar?
YES.
When we are sleeping we don't move much and our brain goes to a deeper level of rest.
As result, after a good night of sleep, we feel recharged.
The energy produced by breathing during sleep nurtured our organs and tissues.
Yogis raise self-energy to an optimal state and by a sustainable practice, keep that energy ready for use.
Do we need to go in a cave for 20 years to learn that? If our goal in life is to be Yogi, probably yes. Though, this is probably not our case.
Can we take advantage of some of their teachings by applying these techniques to our own coding practice ?
Absolutely.
As we will see, it goes beyond just breathing without moving. It will need balance, consciousness and a developer’s mindset.
This article is based on a chapter of my "The Sustainable Developer" book.
Check the List of articles related to "The Sustainable Developer" here
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References
Cerebral O2 metabolism and cerebral blood flow in humans during deep and rapid-eye-movement sleep. Madsen PL1, Schmidt JF, Wildschiødtz G, Friberg L, Holm S, Vorstrup S, Lassen NA.
Cerebral oxygen metabolism and cerebral blood flow in man during light sleep (stage 2). Madsen PL1, Schmidt JF, Holm S, Vorstrup S, Lassen NA, Wildschiødtz G.
Cerebral blood flow changes associated with fluctuations in alpha and theta rhythm during sleep onset in humans. Futoshi Kotajima1,2, Guy E. Meadows1, Mary J. Morrell1 and Douglas R. Corfield1,3