YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING

Friday Q&A: Scoliosis

2012-03-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

Patterns in the Sand by Michele McCartney-Filgate

Q: Scoliosis. I have a mild case of it and find that twists and side bends make my back feel good. Any other advice? When I look at my students doing forward bends, it seems that a lot of them have one side of the back of the rib cage that protrudes higher than the other side. Just how common is scoliosis anyway?

A: The conventional wisdom when working with scoliosis is to apply some therapeutic principles to the spinal structural changes. They include to lengthen the concavity, strengthen the convexity, and to try to neutralize the curvature in asana. This isn't as easy as it sounds because most scoliosis patterns that are in an "S" shaped curve will have a more pronounced primary curve and then a compensating secondary curve.

To successfully work with your own scoliosis you need to first know if the curve is from postural imbalances or from structural changes. The quick way for this to be screened is to have someone watch you as you bend into Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana). If the curve worsens, then it is structural. If the curve evens out, then it is most probably postural overlay. But the only conclusive way to know if you indeed have scoliosis is to have an X-ray of your spine from head to tail. A skilled radiologist needs to read it to measure the curve.

That said, your observation that twists and side bends make it feel better are reinforcement that you are probably stretching your concavity. There is a way that spines move that is unconscious (meaning it just occurs) and that is the law of side-bending and rotation. In a neutral spine (like Mountain pose or Tadasana, side bending and rotation occur to opposite directions (we are talking about how the vertebra individually are moving. So, that is why in Triangle pose (Trikonasana) you are asked to rotate your torso over a fixed pelvis. But in forward bends or backbends, spinal movement changes. In this case rotation and side-bending occur to the same side (picture One-Legged Forward Bend or Janu Sirsasana). So this is where the confusion comes in because you need to move the spine differently depending on the asana you are practicing. Also the scoliotic spine is not symmetrical and there are elements of side-bending and rotation already present so when you bend forward in Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana), you are increasing the spinal rotation; this is why the curvature worsens.

So it depends on how much information you want or need to apply to your yoga practice. Some teachers recommend doing your poses three times, starting and end a pose with the problematic side, that is, the side for which twisting is more difficult. I would recommend you obtain Elise Browning Miller's yoga DVD on scoliosis, and, if you live in the Bay Area, try to take her workshops on yoga and scoliosis because they are excellent. See http://www.ebmyoga.com/.
—Shari

A: Regarding the prevalence of scoliosis, out of every 1000 children born in the US, 3-5 will develop an abnormal curvature of the spine serious enough to require intervention. The scoliosis usually first shows up during growth spurts, especially around puberty. In 80-85% of the cases, the cause is unknown, and so it is labeled “idiopathic scoliosis.” Most of these students will not require serious intervention, and yoga could be a great way to address the spinal curve and twist.

Recently loss of bone density has been shown to cause lateral deviations in the spine that may contribute to the onset of scoliosis in postmenopausal women. Estrogen hormones are very important for the maintenance of bone mineral density, and during menopause, the normal levels of circulating estrogen decline. So there is increased risk for losing bone density, and therefore an increased risk for degenerative scoliosis. Recent evidence also suggests that the development of scoliosis in postmenopausal women is much higher than in juveniles and adolescents. One has to wonder if there was a mild scoliosis present, perhaps undiagnosed, that becomes more apparent at menopause. Also, kyphosis, or dowagers hump, is well know to arise at this time as well, and is likely a combination of posture and osteoporosis.

Other stats on scoliosis:

Scoliosis curves measuring at least 10° occur in 1.5% to 3.0% of the population
Curves exceeding 20° occur in 0.3% to 0.5% of the population
Curves exceeding 30° occcur in 0.2% to 0.3% of the population
Small spinal curves occur with similar frequency in boys and girls, but girls are more likely to have a progressively larger scoliotic curve that will require treatment

And I agree with Shari's insights on scoliosis and also recommend Elise Miller's DVD and workshops around the US on yoga for scoliosis. One example of how one approaches this would go like this: if the main curvature is to the right side of your thoracic spine, that is, the convex bulge is easily seen in Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) as a skyward prominence on the right side of the back rib cage, you would likely approach asymmetrical poses like Triangle differently going to the right side and to the left side. When going to the right side, focus on spreading from the spine around the side of the ribs toward the front of the chest, something Elise calls "de-rotation." When going to the left side, focus on lengthening the left side of the waist and torso, from the left hip crease to the left armpit. No specific attention would be directed at the right-side prominence on this side. This same principle could be applied to other poses such as Extended Side Angle, Warrior 2 pose, and Half Moon pose. The principle may change with symmetrical poses, as Shari said.

Another good East Bay resource is Sandra Safadirazieli, who trained with Elise, has been working with her own scoliosis, and offers classes at Piedmont Yoga Studio on an ongoing basis. Teachers from other parts of the country should chime in with recommendations for other teachers and workshops.

—Baxter

Featured Pose: Simple Chair Backbend

2012-03-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

Another one of our five essential office yoga poses, the simple chair backbend is the perfect antidote to the typical postural habits of slumping forward that we develop from sitting all day at our desks, in cars, and airplanes, and from the many everyday activities where we are bending forward, such as gardening or washing dishes.

The basic back-bending shape re-establishes the natural curve of your lower back, correctly aligning your spine in its natural curves, which helps to keep your back healthy. The backbend also lengthens the front of your body, allowing many of us to breath in with greater ease. It helps release stress from your upper body, especially the upper chest. And while stretching the front of your body, the pose strengthens your back body muscles, which tend to be overstretched and weak if they are ignored.

Because backbends in general tend to be uplifting, you may even find this pose helps encourage a more positive mood as you take deep inhalations and exhalations.

The pose can be done almost anywhere. Although a chair without arms is preferable, you can use almost any chair, as long as the back is low enough for you to rest your shoulder blades on.

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

•    Kyphosis of the upper back
•    Chronic lower back pain
•    Head forward syndrome
•    Scoliosis
•    Carpal tunnel syndrome (when symptoms are coming from the shoulders)
•    Sore back from traveling or sitting at your desk
•    Depression
•    General digestive concerns (such as heart burn and acid reflux)

Instructions: If possible, try to find a chair with a back that touches you near your lower shoulder blades. Then move your chair away from the wall or other furniture so you leave some space behind you.

Next sit on the chair, either it the center (if you’re shorter) or near the back (if you’re taller) so the soles of your feet are flat on the floor. If you’re small, you might need to add some support on the chair seat and/or underneath your feet. Align your feet below your knees, with your thighs parallel to the floor. Now, reach your hands around to grab the lower sides of the chair (where it meets the seat) or, if this is not possible, rest your palms on the back of the chair seat.

Root down through your feet and arms, lengthen up from your tailbone to the crown of your head, and mindfully arch your spine up and back until your upper rib cage touches the chair back and rests there lightly. Keep your chin tucked toward your chest.

If you are very comfortable deeply bending your neck, you can take one or both hands behind your head for support as you allow your neck to follow the backbend of your spine, as shown below.

As you inhale, encourage the lift and arch of your spine. As you exhale, maintain your lift and arch. Continue for four to six breaths, working your way up to 12 to 16 breaths as you become stronger in the pose. Come out with a strong exhalation.

Take a moment to notice how you feel. You should feel stretched, strengthened and alive, not painful and miserable. If you experience any pain afterwards in your neck or back, this backbend variation might not be for you.

Cautions: Not all forms of low back pain (such as, spondyolisthis, facet arthritis, spinal stenosis or disc herniation) will be helped by the chair backbend, so you have a back condition, check with your doctor before doing this pose. If you have cervical spine or neck issues, be careful with the position of your neck, keeping your chin tucked toward your chest as you go into the backbend. If you have osteoporosis, adding padding to the top edge of the chair so there is less pressure on your spine is recommended.

Iyengar-Style Sequencing, Part 1

2012-02-29T13:17:00.001-08:00

Flowers in Summer by Michele McCartney-Filgate

by Nina

Before I start delving into some of the more subtle aspects of how to sequence yoga poses in the Iyengar tradition, I thought it would be useful to give you an overview of how to sequence the basic categories of poses. Typically most Iyengar sequences are based on the following template:

1. Starting Poses
2. Standing Poses
3. Headstand
4. Backbends
5. Neutral Pose
6. Twists
7. Shoulderstand (and Plow)
8. Forward Bends
9. Restorative Pose
10. Relaxation Pose

Obviously if you were going to do all those kinds of poses within a single practice, your practice would end up rather long! To create a shorter practice, you simply eliminate certain categories of poses from the list while keeping the remaining ones in the same order as they are on the list. The following examples show typical formats for Backbend, Twist, Forward Bend, and Standing Pose practices.

Backbend Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Backbends
4.    Neutral Pose
5.    Relaxation Pose

Twist Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Twists
4.    Relaxation Pose

Forward Bend Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Forward Bends
4.    Relaxation Pose

Standing Pose Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Shoulderstand (or another inversion)
4.    Relaxation Pose

Although our classes typically include standing poses, they are by no means required. You could, for example, use the inverted poses to prepare yourself for forward bends as in the following sequence.

Forward Bend Practice with Inversions
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Headstand
3.    Shoulderstand
4.    Forward Bends
5.    Relaxation Pose

Or, you could design a seated practice with twists and forward bends.

Seated Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Twists
3.    Forward Bends
4.    Restorative Pose
5.    Relaxation Pose

The Starting Poses and Standing Poses you select for your sequence typically relate to the focus of the practice. For example, if you are focusing on forward bends, you might do leg stretches as your starting pose and the standing poses with straight legs to prepare your hamstrings for the forward bends. For backbends, you would do shoulder openers, lunges, passive backbends and/or standing poses with backbend elements (such as Warrior 1). For twists you might select poses that lengthen your side body (Half Dog pose), that move the spine in all directions (various standing poses), and that incorporate twisting elements (such as Revolved Triangle).

I’ll do a separate post on how (and why) to choose warm-up poses in the near future. But, in general, sequencing is art rather than a science, so start out by practicing some of that “post asana assessment” that Baxter recommended in yesterday's post (and probably some pre-asana assessment while you are at it). You'll soon start to learn which sequences of poses suit your particular body and which do not, and which warm-up poses help you do your subsequent poses with more ease and comfort.

Post Asana Assessment

2012-02-28T11:19:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

One of the most essential skills for yoga asana practitioners to develop is something I like to call “post asana assessment.” And although I wish it were a skill that beginners came downloaded with, my personal experience and what I have observed with my students over the years has shown me that it is a skill you only learn with encouragement and practice. So what, you may be asking, is this PAA? Quite simply, it is the deliberate pause in your asana practice directly after completing a particular pose, the purpose of which is to assess the effects, positive, negative or neutral, of your practice. This may seem pretty straight forward, yet unless post asana assessment is actively encouraged, it is often overlooked or simply not considered as part of practice.

Especially for the new student or even the student whose asana practice is of the faster flow variety, the time and space for such reflection is often not given in formal classes. And when newbies take their practice home for the first time, there is the tendency of the mind to be overwhelmed with planning ahead for what the next pose should be that the actual experience of the present moment is not fully appreciated. It is often the case that the mind is trying to recall a few ways of working in the pose heard via their memory of their last class experience, while simultaneously planning for what is coming next! So the chance to learn more deeply what the effect of the asana has been is lost.

Rock and Reflection by Joan Webster

Today, while reading through one of the many training texts I have collected over the years, I came across one by Esther Myers, a long time student of Vanda Scaravelli. (If you don’t know about Vanda, I would encourage you to read up on her fascinating story.) As I was already ruminating about post asana assessment as I read through the text, one comment by Esther caught my eye, as she talked about the role of breath in yoga:

“Breathing is essential to your Yoga practice. The focus of attention on the breath brings you to a state of quiet attention which is the essence of Yoga.”

This is so simply and beautifully stated. One way to enter into this process of post asana assessment is to initially notice the effect of the pose you have just completed on your breath: calming, speeding up, agitating, slowing down, etc. From there, consider resulting physical sensations in the most objective terms possible, such as, where do I feel sensation now, is there a sense of effort still lingering, am I experiencing fatigue or weakness, vitality or aliveness? And what is the effect on my mood or emotions?

What might initially seem cumbersome and challenging to do after your poses can become quite efficient and fruitful with practice. It can literally guide and help you create wonderful practices that are in alignment with any intention you may have set for your practice on a given day. The feedback may send you in new and unimagined directions as you notice an openness, strength or vulnerability that could easily be missed if you were to work in a more automatic way.

If it seems to daunting to do after each pose of a practice, consider spacing out your post asana assessments after every few poses until it becomes easier to integrate the assessments into your existing practice style. I feel this skill advances you from the beginner to intermediate level of awareness that leads to a rewarding, relevant and safe practice over time.

For more by Esther, see The Ground, The Breath, and the Spine by Esther Myers, Lynn Wylie.

Shari Ser Joins Yoga for Healthy Aging

2012-02-27T13:31:00.000-08:00

We're pleased to announce that Shari Ser, a physical therapist and Iyengar-style yoga teacher, has joined the staff here at Yoga for Healthy Aging. She'll be posting regularly, and will be available to answer questions on a weekly basis. To begin, we've asked her to tell us all a little about her background in physical therapy and yoga. —Nina

Before I trained to be a physical therapist, I had a degree from SUNY Buffalo in Women's Studies/Labor History/American Studies—really useful, no? But it was circa 1978, and I was very involved in the food coop scene, eating healthy, growing your own food, collective households, communes—the personal was the political. I traveled for two years in Asia and ended up in London at a whole foods bakery. So it was either go into nutritional sciences and get married in England for citizenship or come back to the US and go to Physical Therapy school. I was always interested in taking care of your body, women’s health and alternatives, and thought PT would be a venue where I could be covert. Ironically, how wrong I was, because at the time PT's were some of the most conservative individuals I ever met. PT school was grueling and there are no words to describe how hard it was, but maybe that is where the yoga came in because it was a place I could be and not be judged and just explore with my teacher the boundaries of my physical body.

I started practicing yoga in 1980. I was involved with San Francisco Zen Center at the time and someone suggested I check out this class nearby led by Roger Cole. I did and just continued practicing. I liked it and it made me feel good but it wasn't like “love at first sight.” Roger eventually moved on but he directed me to Judith Lasater's class at the Iyengar institute and she became my main teacher after that. At that point I was in Physical Therapy school at University of California, San Francisco, and it was nice to be studying with a teacher who “spoke my language.”

Through the Forest by Michele McCartney-Filgate

I studied with Judith from 1980-1987 till we moved to the East Bay. I was on bed rest for my first pregnancy on IV tocolytics from week #24-36 and Judith would visit periodically. She gave me Geeta Iyengar’s woman's yoga book (Yoga: A Gem for Women). During that time of bed rest, I would do yoga in my mind and had a whole bed routine that I did on my side—out of bed only to pee. Talk about weakness when you are finally allowed up! I had four days of late pregnancy till I gave birth to my daughter but wasn’t allowed to go back to yoga till I wasn't bleeding. That took another six weeks. Judith was very solicitous and kind to me in class when I came back. Then ego took over and I had to progress to her more advanced 3-5 class, and I just had to be able to do handstand!

So then I was in the level 3-5 class and met Donna Farhi. I was also informally taking some of the advanced studies' classes at the Iyengar Institute. We moved and then I found Donald Moyer through Judith. I assisted Donna and Roger at a class they taught at the Institute with my infant daughter in tow (when she began to crawl it wasn't a possibility any more). I also took a body work training that Donna co-taught. Why did I stick with yoga? It just became my time where I could leave my responsibilities of being a mom and working, and have my own time. Going to class was the only thing I did for myself at that time because trying to find time to practice was almost impossible (working full time with an infant).

One pregnancy down, a move to the East Bay and my realization that unless I committed to yoga more formally no one would “take me seriously,” so I enrolled in the Berkeley Yoga Room's Advanced Studies Program. I didn't quite know how to bridge physical therapy with yoga, though at the time I was working in outpatient orthopedics and was doing a lot of back care rehabilitation and taking a lot of continuing education classes for different manual therapy skills. Yoga was something I did in another life. After another pregnancy and another bed rest, I finished the program in 1999. I began teaching at the Berkeley Yoga Room soon after that.

I continued to work in outpatient orthopedics but yoga was creeping into my clinical practice. I changed into home health to allow me the flexibility of raising two children and working. I slowly began to add “more yoga” into the guise of therapeutic exercise. You have to be careful with some people in how you talk to them because not everyone is open to things they don’t understand. I still don't call what I do yoga in the home care setting—it is still “therapeutic exercise” or “Home Exercise Program”—but there is more attention to breathing, awareness and responsibility in health choices.

What I have learned from being a physical therapist is not from my education per se but learning to listen to my patients as they share their lives with me. In home health I am a guest in their homes and I have to learn to be respectful. My agenda and their agendas may not be the same. I currently have a 94-year old retired astronomy professor who sustained a fall in his home and broke his arm and foot. When I first met him he was very persnickety and didn’t want to do anything I said until I changed the wording and it was “what would you like to do today?” or “would it be alright with you if we did....” Once he was given permission to say no and he knew I would respect it, he began to trust me and work with me to regain his mobility and to work with his fear of falling again. That to me is the most valuable lesson I learned is to respect the word “no.”

I suppose that is where I am now. I think that bad things do happen to people who do all the right things; people die too early when they aren't ready, and it still hurts. What I try to do now is give people tools that they can use or not, but allowing them the information by which to make their choices. I do a lot of education about health and how one is part of the team, and a lot of encouragement for people to learn how to talk to their physicians. As to aging: what can I say? It is happening to all of us and I am just like the next person who doesn’t like the limitations that my body is starting to exhibit. I continue to push the envelop so to speak, but am mindful of injury more now than when I was younger, partly because it takes so much longer to heal as we age and prevention is the best path. It isn’t easy to acknowledge one’s limitations but maybe that is the new definition of aging. —Shari

Workshops of Interest: Yoga for the Larger Woman

2012-02-25T09:35:00.002-08:00

Recently Baxter wrote about his experience teaching larger women at the The Yoga Project in Portland, Oregon (see "Larger Women and Yoga: Getting Creative"). Women in the Bay Area now have the opportunity to take a similar workshop at Namaste in Rockridge, Oakland. These days the media is full of stories how excessive weight can be a contributing factor in all sorts of health concerns from diabetes to heart problems to cancer risks. This afternoon session, which was designed specifically for The Yoga Project’s “Larger Woman” Program, will look at how yoga can help us achieve and sustain a healthier and fuller life. Appropriate for yogis of all levels.

Here are the details:

YOGA FOR YOUR HEALTH
YOGA FOR THE LARGER WOMAN
with Dr. Baxter Bell

Satuday, March 3, 2012
1-4 pm
Namaste Rockridge

Cost: $60

You can register on the Namaste web site here.

Friday Q&A: Rotator Cuff Pain

2012-02-24T14:09:00.000-08:00

Q: I've been trying unsuccessfully to resolve a very long term (perhaps a year) of rotator cuff pain. I've modified my yoga practice, but it still hurts. I've tried acupuncture and massage. Neither worked. I'm doing PT, and I think it's addressing the underlying muscular problem but I want to keep my whole body moving and stretching.

A: Thanks for writing in about your journey toward healing! If you have not do so, I’d definitely get the shoulder looked at, and consider requesting an MRI to more clearly identify what is really going on in the joint. Having said that, I would also encourage you to seek the assistance of a local yoga teacher with lots of experience working with shoulder issues. In addition, you may have to consider a longer term modification of how you approach your yoga. You can certainly continue to practice many yoga asana to keep other parts of the body strong and flexible, but use your arms in a more neutral way. This might mean not doing certain poses, such as Downward-Facing Dog, if they continue to cause pain and provoke inflammation of your injured area.

You can also look at several articles in Yoga Journal online, particularly ones written by Julie Gudmestad, Roger Cole and Judith Lasater on the topic. Judith also has an interesting section in her book Yoga Body, a yoga anatomy text, on the “Gleno-humeral Rhythm,” which could prove helpful in deepening your understanding of normal movement patterns in the shoulder. And several years back, Loren Fishman, MD, did a small study on rotator cuff tears and modified Headstand, and found some very encouraging results. I am not suggesting you start doing Headstand today, but would recommend you review the study, which you can find in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, and then discuss with your teacher if this approach is good for you. For now, all the best on your healing journey!

—Baxter

A: I urge you to continue with physical therapy but ask that the physical therapist look at you in a more holistic way, for example, considering how you use your neck in poses that may be problematic and whether you hold your breath either in the anticipation of pain or when in pain. I also suggest that less is definitely better, such as going into problem poses half way and only staying in a pose if it can be done without pain. To practice asana in the midst of pain is not asana. Trying to understand the root of the pain is often the hardest because it may be coming because you are trying to protect another body part from pain (like the low back area). Finally taking a break from active asana and maybe doing more restorative poses with breathing might help progress the healing.

—Shari

Featured Pose: Simple Chair Twist

2012-02-23T15:44:00.001-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

The Simple Chair Twist is one of our five essential office yoga poses. It releases back muscles that are stiff or sore from sitting at a desk or from traveling, or from everyday activities that stress the back, such as gardening and painting, and increases the rotational mobility in your spine. Twisting also helps nourish the spine—movement of the spine helps maintain the health of the discs—and also strengthens the bones themselves as your back muscles pull on the bony insertions of the spine. And it also strengthens the oblique muscles of your core (and we could all use a little of that).

Traditional yoga teachers recommend twists for the health of your internal organs, improving circulation to and function of the abdominal organs, although no studies have been conducted to confirm this. And finally, for many of us, twists can release physical and emotional tension, providing relief from stress.

The Simple Chair Twist has the additional bonus of being accessible to almost everyone in any location, whether office chair, airplane seat, or even a car seat (except, as Baxter noted while sitting in Nina’s backyard, a 50s style butterfly chair).

Baxter prescribes Simple Chair Twist for:

general back tension
stiffness
people with balance issues (or who are unable to stand)
certain low back conditions
digestive difficulties (constipation or sluggishness)
strengthening the oblique muscles
arthritis of the spine
people who engage in sports or other activities that involve rotation (all you golfers can restore symmetry to your body by twisting on both sides instead of one)

Instructions: Side sideways on the chair, with your feet resting comfortably on the floor (if your chair has arms or is attached to another chair, see below for an alternative). Your thighs should be parallel to the floor, so if you’re tall you may need to sit on top of something and if you’re short you may need to place something, like a book, under your feet.

Keeping your thighs parallel to each other, lift your spine and turn toward the back of the chair, placing your hands on either side of the chair’s back. Inhale and create an inner lift from your sitting bones through the crown of your head. Then exhale and encourage the twist from your upper belly (above the navel) and chest. Continue lifting on your inhalation and twisting slightly deeper on the exhalation for about 1 minute. Then change sides and twist in the opposite direction. When you’ve finished the pose, pause for a moment to assess how the pose affected your body.

If you can’t sit on the side of your chair, you can sit facing forward as shown below.

As you twist to the right, place your right hand on the chair’s back and your bring your left hand across your right leg. To twist on the other side, simply switch your arm positions.

Cautions: With certain low back conditions (such as severe arthritis, bulging disc, spinal stenosis or sciatica) you should approach twisting cautiously and skip it entirely if it aggravates your symptoms. If you have osteoporosis, twist gently and don’t move through your full range of motion (stay within 50 to 70 percent). If you feel pain, please stop and when you get a chance, as your yoga teacher for help.

Healing from an Injury

2012-02-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

It seems that no matter where we develop an injury, it has a profound effect on the way our entire body functions in everyday life. I myself injured my left rotator cuff many years ago while participating regularly in rock climbing. And although I gradually recovered most of my function in that arm, after giving up climbing and taking up yoga, it is still stiff every time I do my first Down Dog!

And just this past weekend, after doing some home improvement projects which had me doing movement patterns that where not routine for me, I woke up Monday morning with right should pain when taking my arm forward and up or out to the side and up. I immediately modified my usual yoga practice and limited those particular movements, while essentially working around the painful movements in order to allow what ever is aggravated to quiet down. My underlying assumption is that I have strained my right deltoid muscle, the lateral band of fibers. However, if the pain and limitation persists, I will consider a thorough evaluation by an orthopedist.

For any of you who have a yoga injury, I’d recommend following the same advice I gave myself. If you have not already done so, I recommend having your injury looked at by a physician or other qualified health care provider to more clearly identify what is really going on in the muscle or joint.

I would also encourage you to seek the assistance of a local yoga teacher with lots of experience working with your particular issues. In addition, you may have to consider a longer-term modification of how you approach your yoga. You can certainly continue to practice many yoga asana to keep other parts of the body strong and flexible, while using the injured part of in a more neutral way. But this might mean not doing certain poses at all, if they continue to cause pain and provoke inflammation of your injured area. I know that this can be very challenging for many of us, but you may not heal without such a modified approach and a re-framing of your goals with your yoga practice. I have given up running, soccer, and climbing due to the negative effects these sports were having on my body and my desire to avoid uncertain surgeries. At first, I was disappointed and a bit saddened at the prospect of not doing these things that I had previously enjoyed. However, I came to find equal satisfaction with the new activities I explored, including biking, hiking and yoga. And boy, is my shoulder happy about my decisions!

Lonely Rock by Brad Gibson

Finally, I feel compelled to remind our readers that our yoga practice is not static, nor is it designed to keep us in the exact state of physical condition we had at age 25 as we age. It can help us age gracefully, maintaining some strength, balance and openness on the physical plane. But the yoga practice has at its core this paradox of acceptance and change. When I was training in India, they used to chuckle at our American obsession with youth. There, the individual’s yoga practice would gradually change over time, becoming less about physical asana practice and more about breath and meditation, not because you cannot do physical poses, but because you are more capable of diving into the subtle practices as you mature and age, which are felt to be much richer and rewarding than mere asana. I am sure we will discuss this particular aspect of yoga again in the future. For now, all the best on your healing journeys!

Honoring the Process

2012-02-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

by Sandy Blaine

Typically physical exercise is a goal-oriented pursuit; whether the goal is to beat your opponent at tennis, better your time in running, or improve your heart health and increase your muscular strength, you are after results. With yoga, the process, rather than the results, is the point. You will likely improve your strength and flexibility and might even achieve advanced postures along the way, but it is the quality of the experience, and not the outcome, that makes it a yoga practice.

In fact, according to Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford professor and leading stress physiologist, stress reduction activities such as exercise and meditation only work if you enjoy them. So there is little point in forcing yourself through something you don’t enjoy just because it’s good for you; that actually causes more stress and defeats the purpose.

When James Fixx, author of The Complete Book of Running and a leading proponent of the fitness craze in the 1970s died suddenly of a heart attack at age 52, there were a lot of dark jokes, and a lot of second guessing went on. But I wonder, would he really have preferred to have spent his life sitting in a Barcalounger eating chips had he known his fate?

Perhaps that’s the ultimate test: would you regret the time spent if it doesn’t get you the results you’re hoping for? It’s a package deal, the process and the results. That’s another aspect of the yoking together implied by the term yoga. Western culture tends to be highly goal oriented, and it can be hard to wrap our minds around the concept of process. Practicing yoga can yield wonderful rewards, but like everything in life, those rewards are transitory. As blissful as you might feel following your yoga session, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be around to enjoy it again tomorrow. Surrendering the fruits of your labors and being in the moment are tenets of yoga philosophy. And each Savasana is meant to provide a little preparation for ultimately giving up the body altogether.

After the Rain by Joan Webster

We can’t know the answer for James Fixx, but when I ask myself that question, I know I wouldn’t regret a moment of my yoga practice. I might increase my ice cream intake if I was given a fatal diagnosis, but I’m positive I’d continue to practice. I might actually devote more time to my practice, in preparation for letting go of life. In the end, it’s not about achieving anything, not doing more advanced positions, nor accumulating more years. Ultimately I’ll die, and I know whenever that is, there will be plenty of feats in Light On Yoga, the bible of asanas, that I never came close to accomplishing. But when I’m practicing, I have moments of being completely present, and aware of being connected to something larger than myself. That’s how I want to live, for as long as I’m alive.

Sandy Blaine has been practicing yoga since 1986, and teaching since 1993. She has a joyful devotion to her daily yoga practice, and seeks to bring these qualities to her classes, which combine her experience and training in the Iyengar, Ashtanga Vinyasa, and Kripalu methods. Her writing has been published in “Yoga Journal,” “Yoga International” and “Ascent” magazines, and she is the author of two books: Yoga for Healthy Knees and Yoga for Computer Users. Sandy is the director of the Alameda Yoga Station and the longtime resident yoga instructor for Pixar Animation Studios, and as a wellness consultant, she has spoken at Kaiser and Google. Previously, she taught yoga at UC Berkeley for many years, and she is a faculty member of the Berkeley Yoga Room's Advanced Studies Program, from which she graduated in 1995. Find more information about Sandy’s work on her website www.sandyblaine.com. Sandy is at work on a new book about establishing a personal yoga practice, and she blogs about her own practice at www.theyogaguidetohappiness.com.

Stressed Mind, Stressed Cells?

2012-02-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

by Brad

Last Friday I attended a talk by Dr. Elissa Epel called “Telomeres, telomerase and mental states: Stressed mind, stressed cells?” According to the abstract Dr. Epel supplied in advance of her seminar:

"I will discuss our UCSF research on the telomere/telomerase maintenance system and relationships to stress and other psychological states and lifestyle factors. The length of our telomeres is a predictor of health status – early disease and mortality, and may serve as an index of biological aging. We now know from 8 years of research that shorter telomere length is related to states of suffering—anxiety, depression, trauma exposure, and chronic stress. Just how much can people stabilize their telomere length through interventions such as exercise and meditation? I will discuss initial findings, suggesting that this marker appears somewhat malleable."

Dr. Epel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF. She is also a co-founder of Telome Health, Inc., a relatively new company located in the Bay Area to promote the use of telomere testing as a measure of biological age and overall health status. The basic idea that Dr. Epel was promoting is that chronic stress has a negative impact on telomere length, and that stress reduction through diet, exercise, and possibly other lifestyle changes can have preserve telomere length.

You may remember I posted a piece on this subject a couple months ago that discussed telomeres, yoga and aging ("Science, Aging and Yoga"). As a recap, telomeres are sequence of nucleotides or base pairs at the ends of your DNA that serve cap off and protect DNA integrity. One of the theories of aging asserts that decreased telomere length resulting from the failure of certain cell type in the body (immune cells, stem cells, etc.) to properly renew their telomere length after rounds of cell division via the action of telomerases (enzymes that add back lost telomere DNA) can lead to cellular senescence (a terminal, not dividing state) that could play a role in aging, acting as a sort of molecular clock. The question as to whether a reduction or low telomere length is responsible human aging or diseases is still hotly debate (see NY Times article here), despite many studies showing a correlation of shortened telomeres with cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and other chronic diseases of aging.

Ferns by Joan Webster

Personally, I found much of the data presented by Dr. Epel not especially convincing, as it was mostly correlative, and did not provide much if any mechanistic insight. However, I was intrigued by her attempt to link the physical and mental state of “stress” that we experience daily (you know, “I’m so stressed out”) to cellular stress and damage (alteration in the physiological state of cells or tissues that can lead to damage at the molecular and cellular level). Although we are all familiar with the former use of the term “stress,” this second usage of the term “stress” is quite different, and its effects can remain hidden until it manifests into a pathological or disease state.

It is well known that emotional stress can lead to an increase in cortisol and insulin levels, as well as increases in catecholamines and inflammatory cytokines. What is less clear is how these signals are integrated at the cellular and tissue level, especially under chronic stress, some of which are not at all obvious. Most studies measuring telomere length are on carried out on immune cells present in blood, as these cells are relatively easy to collect and originate from actively dividing cells.

The notion that chronic stress could alter telomerase activity in these proliferating immune cell types, resulting in the shortening of the telomeres and causing these cells to lose their capacity to divide (“Immunosenescence”) is certainly an interesting hypothesis. Indeed, immunosenescence is increasingly being seen as a new target for drugs and/or biologics therapy by both pharmaceutical and biotech companies. According to data presented by Dr. Epel, one group of people that apparently has a statistically significant decrease in telomere length are long-term primary caregivers, a group that is regarded as suffering from chronic stress. People with long-term depression apparently also have a similar phenotype.

And as I have discussed in an earlier post, meditation and mindfulness practices have been proposed as ways to ward off the presumed negative effects of telomere shortening. (I say presumed, because it’s still not clear to what extent shortened telomeres are by definition a bad thing, or how much shortening of telomeres is required for any negative consequences.) The science on all this is still in the very early days. It may turn out that telomere length will be one more false lead in the ongoing search for biochemical measures of biological aging. And I would be extremely wary of any company advertising to measure your telomere length or that suggests that taking supplements to increase telomere length makes any sense at all. Unfortunately, there are a growing number of companies out there they do indeed make such claims. (To their credit, Telome Health appears to be considerably more circumspect in their claims and services than most.)

I suppose what interested me the most from Dr. Epel’s seminar is that it once again reminded me of the many avenues of medical research that are converging on the notion that chronic stress is a negative factor in human health and possibly a driver in premature or accelerated aging. While the details of how this actually happens is unclear, it is interesting to consider that one of the main, if not primary, benefits of practicing yoga might be to reduce stress. Who knows, maybe it will turn out that yoga reduces stress at both the psychological and cellular level? Too early to tell, but stay tuned….

Friday Q&A: Hamstring Injuries

2012-02-17T15:08:00.000-08:00

Q: I'd like to know how to manage a nagging pain at the hamstring insertion point. I bend my knees and never stretch to the point of discomfort, and yet it persists.

A: Hamstring insertion injuries are challenging to heal. They can take a long time—I'm talking 6-12 months—due in part to the fact that every time you stretch the hamstrings, even inadvertently, such as when bending down to tie your shoes, you tend to re-injure the area a little bit. This leads to chronic ongoing inflammation at the spot on the sitting bone where the muscles attach. And these attachments points often have poor blood supply, which also slows down healing.

So, in addition to bending your knees in standing forward bends, you need to modify, if not avoid, other forward bend for a while. How long? That depends on the person and the injury, but likely at least a few months. In addition, yoga teacher Roger Cole, PhD, recommends strengthening the hamstring muscles via back-bending poses like Bridge (Setu Banda) and Locust (Salabasana) as a first approach to healing. Unfortunately, I don't know of any studies that have looked at this, but it is worth a try. You can read more about Roger's approach on Yoga Journal's web site in the archived articles section.

—Baxter

Sequencing: An Essential Skill for Home Practice

2012-02-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

We recently received an inquiry about how to sequence a home practice. Although this is a large topic in many respects, it is an essential skill you can develop that will go a long way to make your home practice more enjoyable and rewarding.

Sequencing refers to the way you constructs or put a practice together. In some ways, it is like a mini journey we take each time we come to our mats to practice yoga asana. Like any journey, you want to consider where you are heading on that given day, what you’d like to accomplish and how much time you have to devote to the practice. Time of day can play into designing a sequence, as we tend to be a bit stiffer in the morning, requiring a bit more warm up if we want to do some more challenging poses in our practice; whereas a practice later in the day might be able to forgo too much warm up, as we tend to be more open from simply being up around for many hours.

I find it helpful to start by simply sitting for a few minutes. I get my body centered, become aware of how my body is feeling, how my mind and emotions are operating, how my breath is flowing, and out of that information a plan for the day’s practice will often begin to emerge.

Pathway at Dripping Springs by Brad Gibson

On a very simplistic level, I usually design a practice to follow this plan: a period of warming up movements that may or may not be official yoga poses, often done reclining or sitting or on hands and knees. Then I will work my way toward standing poses, often with some vinyasa, such as a round or two of Sun or Moon Salutations. I will often have a goal pose or two that I have decided I would like to include in my practice, and I usually work on those poses at the midpoint or two thirds of the way through my session. Then, a period of cool down, perhaps with one or two more restorative poses, follows. I will often do some breath work just before taking a rest in Savasana for at least 5, and hopefully 10 minutes.

An additional factor to consider is adding in counter-poses if you have a particular focus on a group of poses that are similar. For instance, this week I have been doing some backbends in my practice, so I have been adding some gentle forward bends, like Child’s pose, to counteract any untoward effects of the backbends.

Each style or system of yoga has general guidelines on how they view proper sequencing, so in a future post, if you all are interested, we can look at some of the systems and how they specifically approach this skill. Until then, give a try, be willing to experiment, and listen to how your body and mind feel at the end of your practice.

Yama Drama: Considering the First Branch of Yoga

2012-02-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

by Nina

In classical yoga (the yoga of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras), there are eight “branches” or “constituents” of yoga.

Moral injunctions (yama), fixed observances (niyama), posture (asana), regulation of breath (pranayama), internalization of the senses toward their source (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption of the consciousness in the self (samadhi) are the eight constituents of yoga.

The five moral injunctions that make up the first branch, yama, are rules regarding our conduct with the outside world.

Non-violence (ahmisa), truth (satya), abstention from stealing (asteya), chastity (brahmacarya), absence of greed for possessions (aparigrahah) are the five pillars of yama.

If you are someone who is pursuing yoga as a spiritual path, conducting your life according to the yamas is the necessary first step on your path to union with the divine. But what if you are just—as many of us are—using yoga for your health and peace of mind? Reading this quote from Georg Feuerstein helped me understand how the yamas apply to way I conduct my own life.

For as long as we pursue a lifestyle that falls short of these moral virtues, our energies are scattered and we continue to harvest the negative repercussions of our actions. —The Deeper Dimensions of Yoga

For a brief time after college, I was addicted to an afternoon soap opera (“The Young and the Restless” if you must know). Ultimately tiring of all-to-predictable drama, I had an epiphany: if everyone on that show just stopped lying to each other, not much would happen on a given day. Sure people would fall in and out of love, have children, suffer from illness, and lose loved ones, but the bulk of the drama, including the violence, was the result of secrets and the lies everyone told to cover them up. Now I have met a few drama queens out there who seem to thrive on all that commotion, but for the rest of us a lot of drama is just plain stressful and disruptive.

And the rest of the yamas? You can probably figure it out. Nighttime television is filled with violence of every kind, and you can see over and over how one act of violence leads to another and then another (killing a second person to cover up the first murder usually turns out to be a rather poor strategy), quite the opposite of peace. When there is stealing, this, too, inevitably leads to harm of all kinds, including lies, violence, betrayal, and so on. Not very relaxing, that’s for sure.

A Hollow Trunk by Brad Gibson

Greed for possessions? Even if you don’t commit crimes to obtain the objects of your desire, the lust for material goods can cause you to overspend, even going into debt, which is not only stressful for you but can be ruinous for your family. Or maybe the desire for material possession simply means you work at a stressful, unsatisfying job or are continually dissatisfied with what you do have, both of which are impediments to peace of mind.

I saved chastity for last, because this is a complex one for our culture. To be honest, the original meaning in the Yoga Sutras certainly meant no sex at all for a yogi. But for us ordinary “householders, I like to think about brahmacarya as sexual responsibility. If you are reckless in your sexual conduct, well, we’re back to the soap opera territory: lies and violence, jealousy and pain. (I learned that lesson back in my college days, when I was under the illusion that there was such a thing as “free love.”)

I started this post a few weeks ago after I received a couple of requests for us to tackle the topic of yama, but it was very hard to write. And in the end, well, I chickened out. I mean, who am I to hold forth on topics of this nature? But some recent events (yama drama, you might say) gave me a little shove. I hope it at least gives you some food for thought.

Featured Pose: Dynamic Arm Circles

2012-02-14T17:56:00.000-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

In the coming weeks, we're going to be introducing a set of poses you can do outside the yoga room (such as at work or the airport) or from a chair (if standing is not possible, for whatever reason). We're starting off this new set of poses with dynamic arm circles.

This pose is great for preparing your shoulders for yoga practice, or for any task where you will be using your arms overhead (such as painting a house) or a sport that involves your arms, such as tennis. It’s also perfect for releasing tension after you’ve worked your arms or sat for hours at a desk or on a plane. And moving your arms within the complete range of motion is the best way to keep your shoulder joints healthy.

You can do arm circles standing in Mountain Pose (which is how we will show it) or sitting in a chair. Because you can do them without props and in your street clothes, it’s possible to do arm circles almost anywhere (especially if you don’t mind people giving you odd looks at the airport).

The pose has two variations: 1) front stroke: moving the arms forward, up over head, and back around to the front and 2) back stroke: moving your arms back, up over your head, and down toward the front.

Baxter prescribes arm circles for:

Gaining flexibility in tight shoulders
Regaining range of motion after an injury
Arthritis, lupus, or other diseases that limit range of motion

Instructions. Start in Mountain pose, with your chest facing forward. Then make circles your arms using either in forward stroke or back stroke motions, moving with your breath (for example, moving forward and up on and inhalation, then back and down with an exhalation). Baxter generally recommends about six repetitions.

Don’t try to make perfect circles. If your shoulders are tight, you may have to allow your arms to go slightly out the side. Listen for pops, clicks and discomfort, and try to find a comfortable range of movement.

You can move both arms at the same time, alternate between right and left, or move one arm forward and up while the other is moving back and down, as if you were swimming. Relax and have fun!

Cautions. If this causes an acute or old injury to flare up, stop the movement. If you’ve dislocated your shoulder, proceed with caution, especially with the back-stroke version. If these movements cause pain, have your yoga teacher or a doctor take a look at your shoulders.

Interview with Steve Cropley: Relief from Sciatic Pain

2012-02-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

Baxter: When we spoke recently, you reminded me of an event that happened to you while attending a week-long retreat lead by JJ Gormley and me. What was going on with your body that week?

Steve: I suffered low back problems from my high school years on. I routinely jumped off of gas tanker trucks onto concrete in leather-soled moccasins. Today they call that sort of thing “Parcorp”; in the 60s it was called “working for Dad.” My back problems got worse over the years. Years of downhill skiing, running, and working added to the problems. Chiropractors were my only saviors until sciatic pain.

In the spring of 2000, I developed sciatic pain. No relief from chiropractors, acupuncture, massage or physical therapy. I was suffering a pain that generally isn’t felt at its source. In my case, I did feel it from its source in the low back, through the hip and knee, through the ankle, top of my foot, toes and the sole of the foot. I couldn’t sit stand or lie down without constant shooting pains. Thinking that yoga might be part of the problem, I stopped my practice except for Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall or Waterfall pose). This pose was the one reliable way to fall asleep; I would plop down anywhere when I needed a break from the pain. I had months of agony before the pain began to recede. I returned to my yoga practice with the occasional recurrence of the sciatic pain, none as severe as the first.

Baxter: You learned a valuable way of working with lower back pain from JJ that you now share with your students. Can you share it with us here?

Steve: It’s July 2004. I am in a weeklong yoga workshop at the Feathered Pipe Ranch with JJ Gormley and Baxter Bell. This particular afternoon, Baxter is teaching and JJ is assisting students. I can feel the tell tale bite of sciatic pain and I am moving in every direction, except the ones that Baxter is guiding us into, trying to find relief. JJ spots me and I tell her my sciatica was acting up. “Which side?” she asks. JJ shows me how to bring the hip points together with a yoga strap. JJ has me to do symmetrical poses. I did easy down dogs, cat backs, child poses and on my back, knees to chest and easy hip raises. Within a few minutes, the pain was gone. JJ answered the question on my face. “I figured this out on myself. “ She too had fought sciatic pain.

I am 60 now and in my life I have hurt all the major joints, broken fingers and toes, ribs, my jaw and my skull. On occasion, I wake up with low back pain. The difference today: I know that within a few minutes of rising, I will have figured out what it takes to make the pain disappear and get on with my day.

I have taught JJ’s belt trick to a lot of people in the last few years. Building extra press boxes at the 2006 Super Bowl, I found one of our electricians moaning and rolling around on the concrete. This guy had been self medicating, using alcohol to help him cope with his sciatic pain for years. Our 12-hour days and 7-day weeks were taking their toll on him. I taught him JJ’s belt trick, and some simple asana. Within a few minutes, he was able to find relief and go back to work.

This August a student came to class with sciatic bite, my term for that mild or beginning pinch that one gets as sciatica acts up. I taught her JJ’s belt method and she continued class pain free. As class continues, I forget about her earlier sciatic bite and guide her into a twist. She has an immediate reaction as her sciatic bite returns. We go back to JJ’s method, belt and symmetric poses. Pain stops. I haven’t seen this student since Thanksgiving, but I know she has JJ’s belt method in her toolbox, another tool to ease the body and calm the mind.

Here is JJ’s sciatic belt trick/method/remedy. Put the belt around the hips with the buckle on the hip point of the affected body side. Hold the buckle in place as you draw the belt tight. The action is to draw the hip points together.

Baxter, I don’t know why this works. Dr. Patty Tobi and I were talking about this yesterday. Does the pull of the strap or compression from the strap make others nerves fire and make the mind reset the brain’s reading of the enflamed nerves? Patty wonders if the strap puts pressure on a meridian.

Baxter: The belt trick is one I have used for stabilizing the pelvis and opening the sacroiliac joints so they can reset. Sacroiliac joint pain can cause sciatic-like pain patterns. It is hard to say what the belting is doing anatomically, but it very impressive in its effect on stopping back pain.

Steve Cropley is Head Custodian, Santosha Yoga, Sheridan WY, CYT 300 RYT 200. Steve read Light on Yoga in 1971 and determined he was already practicing yoga. He found a teacher and began formally studying yoga in the mid 90’s. Steve began studying with Baxter Bell in 2003, and Baxter introduced Steve to JJ Gormley. Steve graduated from JJ’s Special Ed Yoga program, which he practices to this day. Steve has led impromptu yoga classes in Beijing and Inchon Airport in Seoul. You can find Santosha Yoga at the Santosh Yoga web site.

Friday Q&A: When to Eat

2012-02-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

Q: One thing that often has prevented me from having another 1/2 hr. session (at home) in the afternoon is the problem of eating. I seem to remember learning I need to wait at least 1 1/2 or 2 hrs. after I eat before doing my next asanas. Is this true? What is the shortest time one needs to wait before doing a workout - or a session (I hate calling it a workout, but hopefully you get it.) I do my a.m. yoga before breakfast - but each day is different time wise & eating with a wait period before yoga becomes a real challenge. Could you give me some suggestions?

A: I tell folks that it depends on their digestion patterns. So I will often have a light meal an hour before practice without any ill effects. Others may find it prudent to wait a little longer, so as to avoid acid reflux or discomfort in forward bending or twisting from the stomach still being full. —Baxter

A: So many rules! It reminds me of the one they used to have when I was a kid about how you had to wait one full hour after eating before going back into the water. Have you ever tried practicing soon after eating a snack? How did it feel? If you felt uncomfortable (or worse), then it's probably not a good idea for you. But if you felt fine, I say go for it. Personally I do it all the time, with no ill effects. And I have heard that in India for people who can't practice on an empty stomach (some people, like me, get low blood sugar), they recommend yoghurt or milk before practice. (Confession: one time my friend and I ate hot fudge sundaes just before an advanced yoga class. Then, for the first time ever, the teacher started the class with headstand. After class, we confessed to the teacher. He was very sympathetic! He said, "Oh, you should have told me. I would started the class with a different pose.") —Nina

New Tricks for Old Dogs: Working with Bunions

2012-02-09T20:17:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

It was my first class with Donald Moyer in the new year, January having flown by and February upon us. I checked in with him before class began and mentioned an unusual aching in the lateral aspect of my left foot that I had been experiencing for about two months. It was not bad enough from preventing me from my normal activities, but I noticed it when turning my left foot out to 90 degrees for many of my standing poses. He gave me some pointers for the day’s practice, and then class began.

About half way through the class, while we were in Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana), Donald had us slip a strap between our big and second toes, and bring the loose end over the top of the big toe and down to the floor to the inside edge of the toe. He asked us to gently pull the strap to move the big toe medially, so that it lined up more evenly with the first metatarsal, the foot bone just before you get to the toe itself (the toe bones are called phalanges, and the big to has two, the other toes all have three).

In addition to re-aligning these two parts of the foot and toe, the bones of the toe rolled a bit medially on their axis. Donald made an offhand remark about this being beneficial for treating bunions (hallux valgus for you Latin lovers) and then we moved on. But treating bunions! Sweeter words were never spoken. I come from a family of bunion formers, my mom’s mother, my wonderful Grandma Lopresto, had an impressive one on each foot for as long as I could remember. Interestingly, I don’t remember her complaining about them much.

What, you may be asking yourself, is a bunion? Well, a bunion is a condition in which your big toe deviates toward your second toe instead of lining up with your first metatarsal. And although bunions have a genetic component and do tend to run in families, another huge factor is shoes that smash the toes together. While these shoes are often for fashion purposes only, I do teach to one group of students whose shoe wear is all about function and their passion for climbing. And while the shoes these folks wear help keep them on razor thin ledges, they do lots of harm to their impressionable toes and feet.

According to the PubMed Health website, bunions occur more commonly in women and people born with abnormal bones in their feet. Certain kinds of shoe wear, specifically narrow-toed, high-heeled shoes, may also lead to bunion formation. And although it can seem a bit unsightly, it is only when pain develops that most people seek help.

How can you tell if you are developing a bunion? You may begin to see a thickening or actual bump forming where the toe and foot meet on the inner edge of the foot. On the opposite side of the big toe, a red callous may form from the big toe and second toe rubbing on one another. Pain can occur in this joint, aggravated by certain shoes.

What is the mainstream treatment for bunions? First off, they often tell you to wear different shoes, ones with a low heel and a wide area for the toes. That alone could do the trick. Sometimes special pads can be placed on the bunion or between the big and second toes, and wearing a toe spacer at night can start to influence the alignment of the toes. If that does not work, there are only a mere 100 different surgical approaches to treat bunions. One of my long time students has had both toes operated on, and says it made a huge difference for her, eliminating the pain. However, it has had an effect on her balance.

So, here was Donald offering up a really simple way to affect the toes! A few years back, my colleague and friend JJ Gormley shared her favorite method to get the big toe back on track, which you can do at your desk. With your feet parallel, place a can of your favorite organic goodies between your inner arches and put a veggie rubber band, one of those strong ones, around the big part of your big toes, so they deviate a bit towards the midline between your feet. You can do this for 10-15 minutes a few times a day, and watch for results.

Obviously, if either Donald or JJ’s techniques result in worsening symptoms, stop them right away! But if not, give it a go. And remember, since a lot of the problem stems from being in shoes, yoga itself can go a long way to help the problem, as you are barefoot and you are strengthening and stretching many of the muscles and other structures that can affect the big toes.

For more information on yoga and bunions, there is a good article by Doug Keller in Yoga + Living Magazine from 2008 that you can find online. I hope the photos of Donald and JJ’s bunion recommendations are helpful in your home practice.

A Week of Yoga Practice

2012-02-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

by Nina

Is anyone else a fan of the brilliant food writer M.F.K. Fisher? I not only love her beautiful writing, but also her ideas. When I first started reading her work, I remember being struck by a simple but profound of advice she had for eating well:

“Instead of combining a lot of dull and sometimes actively hostile foods into one routine meal after another, three times a day and every day, year after year, in the earnest hope that you are being a good provider, try this simple plan: Balance the day, not each meal in the day.”

(You can read her entire advice on this subject on the Less Is Enough blog.)

What Fisher meant was that you did not have to eat every single food group at every single meal (what we used to call a “square meal,” something American nutritionists used to insist on) but rather you could have grains for breakfast, a salad or soup for lunch, and meat or fish with vegetables for dinner. You'd still get all the nutrition you needed—just not all at once! Thirty years later, I still follow her advice.

I recommend applying the same advice to your home yoga practice. Rather than trying to make every single yoga practice like a balanced “meal” by including some of everything, you can focus each day on one or two of the major classes of poses. And by the end of the week, you’ll have done a very wide range of poses, balancing your body by moving all your joints within their range of motion and reducing problems associated with repetitive stress.

So what are the basic pose “food groups” you could think about trying to cover in a week? Leaving out a few poses that don't fit that well into general categories, they are:

Standing poses
Backbends
Forward bends
Twists
Inverted Poses
Restorative poses

Depending on how many days a week you want to practice (and how long you want your practice to be) you could focus on single class of poses each day, or you could combine two or more in a given day. If there’s something in particular you want to work on (such as balancing or abdominal strengthening), you could add that into your practice on a regular basis. Does this mean that even though your teacher always includes standing poses in every single class, you can skip them yourself at home? Yes. That's exactly what I mean.

A Pose You Can Skip from Yoga: The Poetry of the Body by Yee and Zolotow

It does make sense to do a little balancing, however, by adding one or more counter poses to the end of your practice. After doing backbends, it’s helpful to do a twist, leg stretch or another back releasing pose. After doing forward bends or twists, I recommend doing a gentle back bend to restore the natural curve to your spine. And after standing poses, inverted poses or restorative poses can help calm you down and relax your muscles before Savasana.

I hope this helps you feel more comfortable about starting a home practice because the main thing is just to jump right in. I’ll do another post soon on how to plan a single practice, but in general there are no hard and fast rules, and there is no reason why your home practice has to look like a class.

Interview with Baxter Bell by Life Style Maven

2012-02-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Today on the blog Life Style Maven there is an interview with Baxter Bell by Cailen Ascher, a yoga teacher, writer, and blogger. She asks Baxter the following questions:

What does yoga mean to you?
What style of yoga do you teach/practice? Why?
Do you have a favorite yoga sutra?
What is your mission statement as a teacher?
What inspires you and your practice?

So if you'd like to learn more about Baxter's teaching, check it out here!

New Features

2012-02-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

by Nina

I spent a little time this weekend changing the layout of the blog and adding a few new features. If you haven't already noticed, at the top of the blog you'll now see tabs that will take you to special pages on the blog.

The "Audio Tracks" tab takes you to the page where you can stream relaxation tracks (and other audio tracks as we add them) or get access to our Band Camp site to download tracks.

The "About Us" tab takes you to the page where you can find biographical content and links for both the writers and photographers whose work you see on the blog.

The "Contact Us" tab provides easy access to email addresses you can use to contact the bloggers.

On the right-hand side of the blog, I've added a Search function that allows you to search the blog for particular posts by their content and I've also turned on the feature that displays an alphabetical index to the blog posts. Now that we've got a substantial backlog of posts, it seemed like it was time to make it easier for you to find old posts.

Looking Closely by Michele McCartney-Filgate

If there is anything else I can add to the blog to make it more usable, please let me know.

For you technically minded people out there: what I'd really love to do is to create two tabs at the top for searching, one to provide access to the search function and the other to provide access to the index list of labels. But I have not figured out how to get those blogger "gadgets" onto the body of separate pages (and off the home page). If anyone can help me with this, please let me know!

Friday Q&A: Future Topics

2012-02-03T15:32:00.000-08:00

by Nina

No reader questions came up this week on the blog, so today I'll ask you all a question.

Q: What topics would you like us to cover in the coming months? You can ask brief questions for the Q&A, suggest topics for longer pieces, or recommend experts to be interviewed or perhaps write posts as guest bloggers. You can leave your answers as comments on this post (or any other post), send email to me (click the Contact Us tab at the top of the page) or message me, Nina Zolotow, on Facebook (where I'm the only person with that name!).

Stalactites or Stalagmites? I Can Never Remember by Brad Gibson

Never go to bed angry

2012-02-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

by Nina

On Tuesday I read a short little piece in the NY Times questioning the adage “Never go to bed angry” (see here). It was one of those bottom line pieces, and the bottom line was this:

“Going to sleep upset or disturbed preserves the emotion, research suggests.”

In the cited study in The Journal of Neuroscience, scientists exposed 106 men and women to images that elicited various emotions. In some cases the emotions were negative and in other cases the emotions were positive or neutral. The researchers then looked at what happened 12 hours later when the subjects were shown both new images and the previous ones, either in the morning after a night of sleep, or at the end of a full day of wakefulness. The conclusion was:

“The scientists found that staying awake blunted the emotional response to seeing the upsetting images again. But when the subjects were shown the disturbing images after a night of sleep, their response was just as strong as when they had first seen them—suggesting that sleep “protected” the emotional response.”

That doesn’t sound good, does it? Going to bed angry and waking up angry is not only an unpleasant experience for you, but it probably doesn’t enhance your relationships with the people around you. Besides, it's also not a good idea to go to bed angry if you are concerned about getting a good night's sleep. Your stress levels will be high and your sleep, if you can sleep, will be restless—maybe filled with upsetting dreams—and you won’t feel rested in the morning.

But very probably you—unlike the people in the study—can’t just put away an “upsetting image” when you are very angry. In fact, the chances are you’ll keep having one angry thought after another, and with each angry thought you’ll get another jolt of adrenaline (that’s why they call it the “fight or flight response,” people), keeping your stress levels as high as they were before.

Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens: A Detail by Joan Webster

The good news is that Baxter says it takes only about 90 seconds to clear the adrenaline released in your system by an angry thought if you switch to a more neutral topic. So to put away your anger, he recommends a structured breath practice, in which you measure your inhalations and exhalations, and count your breaths to engage your mind. If you combine this type of breath practice with a supported inversion (such as Legs Up the Wall pose) or a supported forward bend (if you find those soothing), both of which help switch your nervous system to relaxation mode, you’ll get a double dose of calm.

You could also use a guided relaxation (see here) as a way to engage your mind and relax your nervous system at the same time.

Airport Yoga: Baxter's Interview on Washington Post Blog

2012-02-01T16:55:00.000-08:00

Baxter was interviewed yesterday by the Washington Post health blogger about the new San Francisco Airport Yoga Room and the benefits of doing yoga at the airport, and you can see the post here.

In his interview, Baxter admits that it is unlikely that anyone would stop at an airport yoga room after they arrive at their destination, however, during the time before you take off or when you layover in an airport between flights, practicing yoga can be beneficial.

"The general tenor of travel these days is so stressful, it’s almost designed to get the blood pressure up and stimulate the fight-or-flight response. Stretching [as in doing yoga] can switch from the sympathetic, fight-or-flight nervous system to the parasympathetic, or rest and digest, system. That could go a long way toward reducing stress."

He even suggests a few inverted poses that you might do in the yoga room. Of course only the San Francisco Airport has a yoga room, so what's the ordinary traveling yogi to do? Well, you know all those chairs you have to sit around on while waiting for your plane to board? You can use them as props for an "office" yoga practice (see "After the Retreat: Office Yoga" right here on our blog).

"I think I have sciatica"

2012-01-31T15:57:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

If I had a dime for every time I have heard this from friends, students and patients, I would be doing all right! Usually, any time someone gets a pain in the back that travels below the buttock, they believe they are suffering from sciatica. And some of them may be right, but others could have something else going on. So before we go any further, let’s step back and try to define what sciatica is, which is easier than that might seem, as it is really a symptom, not a medical condition or disease. What that means is that even if you do have sciatica, you are just at the beginning of a journey to find out the underlying cause of you symptom.

Sciatica gets its name because of the relationship to one of the body’s important nerves, the sciatic nerve, which is really made up of several nerve roots from the lower lumber and sacral region of the spine. These separate nerve roots emerge from the sides of the spine and join together to make a bigger nerve that travels down the back of the legs all the way to the feet. It has a couple of jobs: it supplies sensation to the muscles of the backs of the knees and lower legs, and it also provides sensation to the backs of the thighs, part of the lower legs, and the soles of the feet.

Let’s take a look at what the NIH, National Institutes of Health (see here) have to say about sciatica:

Sciatica refers to pain, weakness, numbness, or tingling in the leg. It is caused by injury to or pressure on the sciatic nerve. Sciatica is a symptom of another medical problem, not a medical condition on its own.

Sciatica usually affects people on just one side of the body. And it turns out that the "symptom" called sciatica is actually a constellation of other symptoms. Here’s what the NIH has to say about that and the pain associated with sciatica:

Sciatica pain can vary widely. It may feel like a mild tingling, dull ache, or a burning sensation. In some cases, the pain is severe enough to make a person unable to move. The pain most often occurs on one side. Some people have sharp pain in one part of the leg or hip and numbness in other parts. The pain or numbness may also be felt on the back of the calf or on the sole of the foot. The affected leg may feel weak. The pain often starts slowly. Sciatica pain may get worse:

After standing or sitting
At night
When sneezing, coughing, or laughing
When bending backwards or walking more than a few yards, especially if caused by spinal stenosis

Okay, so far so good. But that, again, is a pretty broad set of symptoms that could account for this thing we are calling sciatica. So, if we are going to put our finger on the underlying cause, what are the most common culprits?

A few of the more serious and common causes include a slipped disc in the lower lumbar area of the spine, Piriformis Syndrome (a condition associated with a deep muscle in the buttock area beneath the gluts that comes in contact with the sciatic nerve as it heads down the leg), pelvic injury and fracture (which could include sacroiliac dysfunction, a not uncommon problem for yoga students) and tumors.

Interestingly, a lot of cases of sciatica will resolve on their own without a lot of testing or heavy duty treatment. In the old days, they used to recommend bed rest for these kinds of symptoms, but we know now that it is prudent, after a brief period of rest, no more than a few days, that gradual return to everyday activities can be helpful, with gentle spinal movement and core strengthening very helpful for recovery. This is, of course, one way yoga can help. In fact, yoga is an excellent way to promote gentle spinal movements, safely strengthen the abdominal area and the lower back muscles, as well as stretch several muscle groups that are associated with general lower back pain that could include sciatica, such as the psoas and the piriformis muscles.

In addition to acute treatment with over the counter meds like ibuprofen and acetaminophen, as well as ice and heat, the NIH also makes the following recommendations for early treatment:

Bed rest is not recommended. Reduce your activity for the first couple of days. Then, slowly start your usual activities after that. Avoid heavy lifting or twisting of your back for the first 6 weeks after the pain begins. You should start exercising again after 2-3 weeks. This should include exercises to strengthen your abdomen and improve flexibility of your spine. (Go yoga!)

If your symptoms are not improving, you are having weakness in one leg, you noticing a foot is kind of drooping when you walk, or you have difficulty controlling your bowels or bladder, don’t put off a visit to your doc—schedule is as soon as you can. In these situations, you might need more evaluation, which might include X-rays, MRIs or local injections to help reduce swelling around your nerves if they are determined to be the culprits.

And if you are going to utilize yoga as a healing tool, look for the most qualified and experience teacher around to work with. Later this week I will share the experiences of a good friend and colleague of mine who had sciatica arise during a retreat a few years back and the almost miraculous technique he learned to eliminate this symptom.

Thinking about the Wisdom of Yoga

2012-01-30T14:05:00.000-08:00

by Nina

“You have taught the essence of yoga
is equanimity, Krishna; 
but since the mind is so restless, 
how can that be achieved? 

The mind is restless, unsteady, 
turbulent, wild, stubborn; 
truly, it seems to me
as hard to master as the wind.”

—The Bhagavad Gita

In my last post "What is Healthy Aging?" I added “wisdom” to the list of tools yoga provides for healthy aging. But since then, I’ve been thinking about how reading a bunch of wise words in an ancient (or modern) text is so different than actually living wisely. Haven’t you all watched someone close to you—or even yourself—be drawn irresistibly into self destructive behavior, even as they know exactly how unwise they’re being? As Arjuna says to Krishana above, the mind seems to me, too, “as hard to master as the wind.”

In The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna replies to Arjuna’s question above by saying that constant practice and detachment are what allow you to move toward wisdom.

"You are right, Arjuna: the mind 
is restless and hard to master; 
but by constant practice and detachment 
it can be mastered in the end."

Gaudi Stairway by Brad Gibson

It is the regular practice of mindfulness that allows us to observe our patterns of behavior and ultimately begin to make changes. In his book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Stephen Cope describes it this way:

Acknowledge the pattern. Study it. Observe it. Respect its power. And, if possible, make an intention to interrupt it just at its very end point. For most of us, that endpoint is the reaction to the reaction. Self-hatred. Negative self-talk. Moralizing. Guilt. Let’s begin by deleting a little of that, and then a little more.

When we pare away judgment, something remarkable happens. We’re free, for the first time, to observe how the pattern really works.

He says our behavior patterns are samskaras, which are like ruts in a road that deepen through repetition so becomes inevitable that a car will slide into them unawares. But with our newly gained awareness of our patterns, we can use tapas, the energy of restraint, to stop the slide:

Tapas requires a particular kind of attention—precisely the kind required when driving on a rutted road. We need to be awake. We need to be concentrated in order to avoid the edges of the ruts. And sometimes we need to pull the car wheels—with considerable effort—out of the ridges in the road.

Friday Q&A: Yoga Tricks for Better Sleep

2012-01-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

Nina: At the end of my post "Yoga You Can Do In Bed", I asked for additional suggestions from our readers. Caryn Dickman, a yoga teacher at Piedmont Yoga Studio (see here), wrote in with such good suggestions, I decided, with her permission, to post them here. What I love about her suggestions is that she obviously listened to her body and used her creativity to come up with "yoga tricks" that worked for her.

Caryn: I have found a way of doing Child's pose in bed using the pillows that doesn't disturb my partner and allows me to bring the awareness inwards when I can't seem to calm myself through the breath. After 5-10 minutes propped on pillows and still under the covers I find that my mind slows down enough to start benefiting from watching the breath. I eventually crawl back to sleeping positions and then concentrate on watching the inhale and exhale through expanding and contracting the back of the rib cage left to right, etc. I usually fall back to sleep, and a very deep sleep, after doing that.

Another "yoga trick" I do is when I wake up and feel anxiety in my body. I have this need to move some or else sleep will not come. So I stand near the side of the bed in the dark and pay attention to the inhale and exhale. I then very slowly lift my arms towards the sky and then slightly bend my knees as I come forward to a very gentle Uttanasana. I keep bending my knees more so that I come to a gentle squat (very gentle squat) and let my arms dangle towards the ground. When I reach the ground I slowly start to roll into my back body to come on up. I do this a very times. Again, very slowly and gently watching the breath throughout. It tends to get rid of the anxiety in my body and then I can either just go back to sleep or do the Child's pose I mentioned above and I go back to bed.

Nina: I think I'm going to try that under-the-covers Child's pose myself sometime soon. Anyone else have some good yoga tricks up their sleeves?

What is Healthy Aging?

2012-01-26T16:47:00.000-08:00

by Nina

Despite the horrifying vision of “exergames,” Brad’s post on Tuesday ("Successful Aging and the Thinking-Moving-Feeling Triad") got me interested in Dr. Dilip Jeste’s work. After all we’re all blogging away here about “healthy aging” without ever having really defined what it is. And that’s exactly what Dr. Jeste, Estelle and Edgar Levi Chair in Aging and Director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego, is currently trying to do. In an interview on Medscape (here), he said the following:

“Successful aging has not been consistently defined; that is one reason why this area is ideal for research. There have been some studies funded by the MacArthur Foundation beginning in the mid-1980s going on through the mid-1990s. But the [scientific] literature is limited, and there is no consensus on what is successful aging. Our research goals include developing a definition as well as criteria for successful aging.”

Jeste and his colleagues observed that while the components of successful aging typically include: longevity, life satisfaction, absence of physical disease, freedom from disability, mastery/growth, active engagement with life, high/independent living, and positive adaptation, sometimes only physical functioning and disability are considered. But most importantly, very few scientists include “self rating” in their assessments (that is, to put it bluntly, they don’t bother asking the subjects how they feel about their own experience of aging). So they decided to do a study in which “participants’ subjective ratings of successful aging were contrasted with sets of researcher-defined criteria, and correlates of subjectively rated successful aging were examined.” (See "Correlates of self-rated successful aging among community-dwelling older adults".)

One result of this study was this: “Nearly all the study participants rated themselves as aging successfully, but far fewer met researcher-defined criteria for absence of illness and physical disability.” (Note that only participants with higher levels of cognitive functioning were studied.)

Dr. Jeste concluded, as he said in the Medscape interview, “It is also important to say what is not an essential part of successful aging—absence of either physical diseases or physical disability is not necessarily a part of successful aging. I want to stress that people who have physical illnesses or physical disabilities can be aging successfully.” Instead he lists the components for successful aging as:

•    Higher level of cognitive functioning
•    Adaptation to changes associated with aging
•    Socialization—that is, some kind of social activity and/or social contacts
•    Life satisfaction

And in the very same interview, he gives two examples of people he considers to have aged successfully, and they are: Franklin Roosevelt and Frank White, a well-known Los Angeles yoga teacher. Hmmm. It appears we're not on different wavelengths after all. You may want to watch this video of Dr. Dilip, in which he speaks about wisdom and successful aging. Around the 12-minute mark, you can hear him speak about the Bhagavad Gita.

For some time now, I’ve been going around saying that yoga provides two out of the three of the requirements for healthy aging: exercise and stress reduction (the third is a healthy diet). As of today, I’m going to add a new one: wisdom.

Yoga You Can Do In Bed

2012-01-25T18:15:00.000-08:00

by Nina

Did I say “in bed? Yep. It’s normally not a good idea to fall asleep when you are doing yoga (you can overstretch your muscles if you fall asleep in a restorative pose and if you’re practicing conscious relaxation, well, being unconscious pretty much negates the positive effects you’re aiming for). However, there is one exception to this rule of thumb: when you’re lying in bed sleepless due to insomnia.

Whether you have trouble falling asleep initially or can’t fall back to sleep after waking in the middle of the night, instead of working on your To Do list (it’s tempting, I know), try a little yoga. There are a number of yoga practices that just might help you relax enough to finally drift off to sleep and/or improve the quality of your sleep.

Patterns in a French Garden by Brad Gibson

While practicing any of these techniques, be sure to stay warm and keep the lights off to keep stimulation down to a minimum.

Breath Awareness. This is the simplest yogic breath practice and one of the most basic forms of meditation. Simply bring your awareness to the sensations of your natural inhalations and exhalations. When you notice your mind wandering to your To Do list or elsewhere, gently return your mind to your breath.

Extending Your Exhalation. After observing your natural breath for a few minutes, you can try extending your exhalation (while inhalations are slightly stimulating, exhalations are naturally relaxing). When you reach the end of your exhalation, instead of immediately inhaling, lengthen your inhalation by one or two beats. Keep it relaxed, and if at any point you find the practice irritating, return to your natural breath.

Silently Reciting a Mantra. Just as you would when you are meditating, you can use a silent mantra or any word or phrase in bed to keep your mind from drifting into anxious thoughts. This is helpful for those of you who don’t find focusing on the breath effective (or when you have a cold!). When you notice your mind wandering from your mantra to your To Do list or elsewhere, gently return your mind to your mantra.

Guided Relaxation. Following the instructions for a guided physical relaxation (see here), with or without ear phones, allows you to focus your mind on a soothing voice and your physical sensations, enabling some people to drift off to sleep.

Self-Guided Relaxation. When you are familiar with the basic instructions for deep physical relaxation, it’s simple enough to skip the relaxation track and just gradually relax your body by following your own instructions. Many years ago, my first yoga teacher recommended this as insomnia practice.

Slight Inversion. Take the pillow out from under your head and lie on your back with your knees bent. Lift your pelvis up and place the pillow underneath it. You’re now in a very low version of Supported Bridge pose, a gentle inversion that naturally triggers the relaxation response. Try to stay in the position for five to ten minutes.

Supported Forward Bend. If you sleep alone or aren’t worried about disturbing your partner and you find forward bends soothing, you could try a supported bend in your bed. Sit with your legs straight or in crossed-legs position (whichever is more comfortable and allows a deeper forward bend) and place a stack of pillows on top of your straight legs or in front of your crossed legs. Then lengthen your spine forward and rest your forehead and arms on the pillow and relax. Try to stay at least three minutes. If you can’t get comfortable in the pose, then this one isn’t for you.

If you suffer from insomnia, I sincerely hope you’ll something on this list that will help. Most of these are techniques are ones I’ve found useful myself (I'm a bit too lazy to sit up and try an actual pose, however). Readers, if you have any additional suggestions, please chime in!

Successful Aging and the Thinking-Moving-Feeling Triad

2012-01-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

by Brad

Early this month I attended a symposium sponsored by the Longevity Consortium at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging on “Environmental, Developmental, and Genetic Factors in Aging and Longevity.” There were lots of interesting presentations, especially on the search for genetic determinants for longevity, or what we call genome wide association studies (GWAS). It turns out that almost nothing survives rigorous statistical scrutiny at this level, suggesting that the genetic factors for long life are very complex and highly dependent on a host of environmental factors.

However, there was one talk on a very different subject that was of particular interest. Dr. Dilip Jeste from UCSD gave a lecture on the meaning of successful aging, and why almost no one asks patients directly to assess their views of their own aging experience. Almost all definitions of successful aging (and again, many prefer the term “healthy aging”, although they are often used interchangeably) are based largely on the absence of age-associated physical disabilities, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative disease, etc. Dr. Jeste made a compelling case that self-assessment of one’s physical and psychological well-being at advanced age is critical for a better determination of what constitutes “successful aging.” Interesting concept, and one that may be more in sync with the yogic idea of the mind-body connection and mindfulness.

Larch Tree in Autumn by Philip Amdal

Intrigued by this, I went on to look at some of Dr. Jeste’s publications on these topics, and came across a very recent editorial published last year in BMJ titled, “Promoting successful aging through integrated care” (see here). I was struck the following statement:

“Another way of dealing with physical and mental health comorbidity may be through use of interventions that simultaneously increase physical activity, cognitive stimulation, and positive affect, thereby affecting all three components of the thinking-moving-feeling triad implicated in poor health related quality of life.”

As I read this I thought this is a pretty good definition of yoga, a “thinking-moving-feeling triad.” Maybe not an especially elegant summation, but pretty succinct. But what followed next took me back a bit:

An example of such an approach is the use of “exergames”—entertaining video exercise games. If such approaches were specifically adapted to the needs of older people, they could conceivably affect obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and depression simultaneously.”

Exergames? Not exactly sure what the meaning of this is (I confess to a horrible vision of a group of seniors playing bingo while clapping their hands to a Lady Gaga video), but if that's the best example they can come up with then something is wrong. Is yoga still met with such suspicion in the medical and academic community that such an obvious and natural connection is not made here? Is it going to take another generation for the current (and aging) yoga practitioners to retire before this can go more mainstream?

As I wrote in my last blog entry, one of the main reason I started practicing yoga at the age of 50 was that I was looking for a more age-appropriate exercise routine that would provide me with more flexibility, balance and core strength without exposing me to injuries. Sounds to me like yoga would be a much better fit here addressing all three of these goals (“thinking-moving-feeling triad”) in a much more integrated and natural fashion….

Yoga for Osteoarthritis: Interview with Shar Ser

2012-01-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

By Nina

Last Saturday, I took a wonderful workshop at the Berkeley Yoga Room on Yoga for Bone Health, with Bonnie Maeda and Shari Ser. We covered yoga for osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, and joint replacements. Because I know that many of you are concerned about osteoarthritis (and I have it myself), I asked Shari if I could do another interview with her, this time about yoga for osteoarthritis.

Nina: Why is yoga so beneficial for people with osteoarthritis?

Shari: Yoga is beneficial for people with osteoarthritis because it is something proactive that they can do for themselves to cope this chronic disease. Arthritis is due to imbalances on the ends of bones in the joints with uneven wearing down of the cartilage that covers the bone ends, which allows the bones to move smoothly on one and other. Arthritis is a wear and tear syndrome, an alignment syndrome, or a result of inactivity as well as obesity.

People stop moving with arthritis because it hurts, but when you stop the joint motion you decrease the nutrition to the joint structures. The body tries to repair the area by laying down more bone to protect the area and the result is spurring, which then cause more irritation from the “bones rubbing.”

When the cartilage has deteriorated and there is no movement, the synovial fluid that bathes the inside of all synovial joints decreases, which then decreases nutrition to the joint and the cycle reinforces itself with pain=no movement=more pain with swelling and inflammation=even less movement.

Yoga is so perfect for arthritis because it can stop that cycle by providing infinite variations in joint mobility and ways to maintain the joint alignment to improve joint weight bearing. You need to keep the joint moving in its full range of motion to keep the joint healthy, and yoga allows you to do that.

Nina: Should you do yoga if it hurts?

Shari: Judicious usage of pain meds to allow movement but not to obliterate the feedback mechanisms that pain provides us with is important. Medication that decreases inflammatory response will allow people to move more, but pain medications that mask pain so people overdo activities are dangerous. Pain keeps our expectations and engagement focused. You don't want to be stoned and do something dangerous!! So a healthy respect for pain is important. You can start out with a small movement and then as fluid in the joint increases you can increase the range of motion slowly till you are at your limit. Deep knee flexion (bending) is very difficult with knee arthritis so modifications to the yoga poses are important are important for people with knee arthritis.

Nina: Is there anything that people with osteoarthritis should watch out for?

Shari: You need to study with a teacher who can observe your alignment when you are doing poses to help you correct your imbalances. Co-contraction of muscles is extremely important. I would not do a lot of jumping into poses but stepping into them instead. Playing with joint position is really key because you may need to change things considerable to minimize your pain. Also being gentle with yourself is important because it took years for the arthritis to develop and will take years to manage and prevent it from progressing. It is true that you CAN remodel cartilage but how long it takes is unknown (at least I haven’t seen any studies).

Nina: What are some of your favorite poses for osteoarthritis and why?

Shari: Favorite poses—hmm, this is a hard one because you have to think about what joint you are focusing on. If I am dealing with osteoarthritis in the spine, I would focus on accessible twists and gentle back bends. If it was hips, balance is the key of co-contracting to keep the joint in good congruency and neutral alignment—maybe Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon pose) would fit. For knees Warrior 2, but not too deep and starting with a chair if it is problematic bear weight in a knee flexed position. Warm-ups are very important to try to get the fluid circulating first, and then adding non weight-bearing isometrics before starting weight bearing activities. Also cool down poses shouldn’t be missed!

Shari Ser has over 25 years of orthopedic experience as a physical therapist and has been teaching yoga for a wide range of medical conditions since 1999. She graduated from The Yoga Room Advanced Studies Program in 1999, and was certified as a “Relax and Renew” teacher by Judith Hanson Lasater. She currently teaches ongoing beginner level and back safe yoga classes, and co-teaches Yoga for Chronic Health Issues at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, California (see here.)

Sunday Update: Loren Fishman's Current Osteoporosis Sequence

2012-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

by Nina

It has been brought to our attention that the osteoporosis sequence designed by Dr. Loren Fishman for the osteoporosis study that we discussed on Friday (see here) is not the sequence he currently recommends. The sequence he currently recommends is described in great detail (with many photographs) on his website under "A Dozen Poses vs. Osteoporosis". This sequence is not only much more accessible (and by that I do mean easier) than the original sequence, but it now excludes forward bends entirely (probably because forward bends are contraindicated for people with osteoporosis rather than due to concern about back strain).

I sincerely apologize for not being up to date on Dr. Fishman's work! However, I do think the exercise Baxter and I went through in evaluating his original sequence was useful because we were able to identify some issues regarding poses that should not be practiced on an everyday basis, which are useful for everyone to consider.

But you may be wondering, is the current sequence safe to practice on an everyday basis? That will have to wait until after Baxter returns to town. (I know you're all dying of suspense, right?) In the meantime, feel free to chime in with your own thoughts.

Friday Q&A: Is Loren Fishman's Osteoporosis Sequence Safe?

2012-01-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

Q: You say that people should not do the same poses all the time. What about programs like Dr. Fishman's osteoporosis study, which has participants doing the same sequence of poses every single day?

A: Thanks for this question. Indeed, if a person does the same sequence day in and day out, you could run the risk of a repetitive strain injury. The fact that Dr. Fishman's sequence is only supposed to take 10 minutes a day to do means that the practitioners are not holding the poses terribly long, which would reduce this risk considerably. However, a review of the poses taught (see here) reveals several poses that I feel could be potentially injurious to the wrists, neck and lower back, these being Upward Bow pose and the deep seated forward bends. I would consider other poses if I were to design such a practice, but Dr. Fishman does mention tailoring the sequence to students individual needs. I would suspect that this had to be done quite a bit.

Recall that the number of patients that started the study was much larger than those that completed the study. (117 vs 11). Interestingly, there is no discussion as to what caused so many to drop out and why they were unable to do a 10 minute practice everyday. One factor could have been boredom, which is why I often suggest that students alternate practices from day to day to help maintain better focus and follow through. And it is possible that some found the sequence too advanced, despite the individual adjustments offered. The bottom line, in real life, when you can vary your practice, I highly recommend you do so.

—Baxter

A: With Baxter's blessing I'm going to tell you why I wouldn't want to do this sequence on a daily basis. I'll start by telling you that the three yoga injuries I've sustained have all been repetitive strain injuries. I was a pretty enthusiastic practitioner for a number of years, and did a lot of standing poses and sun salutations. And the injuries I had were: sacroiliac joint injury (common among dancers and yoga practitioners, but not the general public), tennis elbow (possibly from sun salutations), and housemaid's knee (from kneeling too much on the bare floor).

Now let's look at the sequence:

1. Triangle Pose (Trikonasana)
2. Downward-Facing Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana)
3. Upward-Facing Dog Pose (Urdva Mukha Svanasana)
4. Bridge Pose (Setu Bandhasana)
5. Upward Bow Pose/Rainbow Pose (Urdva Dhanurasana), without or with a chair
6. One-Legged Forward Bend (Janu Sirsasana)
7. Two-Legged Forward Bend (Paschimottansana)
8. Boat Pose (Navasana)
9. Reclined Leg Stretch (Supta Padangusthasana)
10. Marichyasana 1 twist
11. Lord of Fishes twist (Matsyendrasana)
12. Reclined Twist (Jathara Parivarthasana)

After I got over the shock of trying to imagine doing all those poses in 10 minutes, without any warm-ups, I examined the poses in detail. First, two of the poses in the sequence are known for causing sacroiliac joint injuries, Triangle pose (Trikonasana) and One-Legged Forward Bend (Janu Sirsasana), with One-Legged Forward Bend a particularly guilty party. For me, personally, I've concluded it's just not good to do either of those poses every single day. Then, as Baxter mentioned, there is a very deep backbend in the sequence, Upward Bow, and doing this every day could put a lot of strain on the wrists and elbows, but of just as much concern to me is that it is followed immediately by a deep forward bend, taking the lower back into such extreme movements with no rest between. In particular, the Two-Legged Forward Bend is known for causing lower back strain. The combination of the deep backbend followed by the deep forward bend could cause a lot of back strain (personally, I would have moved the forward bends to the end of the sequence). The sequence ends with three twists, asymmetrical poses that are also hard on the sacroiliac joint, with no symmetrical counter pose to finish the sequence. (On the bright side, no danger of housemaid's knee here.)

I understand some of the thinking behind this sequence, which tries to engage all the different muscles of the body to strengthen as many bones as possible, within a short sequence, and uses the twists to "release" the back after the strain of the backbends and forward bends. However, if I were to design an osteoporosis practice, for safety's sake, I would develop five or more different sequences that the practitioner could alternate between on different days, rather than trying to cram everything into one single practice. There are so many wonderful poses in the yoga tradition, why would you limit yourself to just 12?

—Nina

Featured Sequence: Wrist Flossing for Wrist Care

2012-01-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

by Nina

In Baxter's post on wrist care (see "Wistful Wrists: How to Keep Your Wrists Safe"), he recommended a wrist "flossing" sequence developed by Tom Alden that was featured in Timothy McCall's book Yoga As Medicine. This is a wonderful sequence you can do if you over-worked your wrists doing yoga, have wrist problems, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, or just want to give your hands and wrists a break during a marathon typing session. There are three different "flossing" movements:

1. Palms Down. Start by interlacing your fingers and turning your palms to face the ground. Move your elbows out the sides, so both arms are parallel to the floor. Gently pull your wrists apart, so you feel a slight traction, then raise your right arm and lower your left, bringing your right wrist into a forward bend and your left wrist into a backbend. Allow your right arm to do all the work, while your left arm is passive.

Repeat the movement on the other side by using your left arm to do all the work while your right arm is passive. Go back and forth any number of times.

2. Palms Facing You. Start by interlacing your fingers and turning your palms in to face the ground. Move your elbows out the sides, so both arms are parallel to the floor. Now turn your palms inward, to face you. Gently pull your wrists apart, so you feel a slight traction, then move your right arm outward and your left inward, bringing your right wrist into a forward bend and your left wrist into a backbend. Allow your right arm to do all the work, while your left arm is passive.

Repeat the movement on the other side by using your left arm to do all the work while your right arm is passive. Go back and forth any number of times.

3. Palms Facing Away. Start by interlacing your fingers and turning your palms to face the ground. Move your elbows out the sides, so both arms are parallel to the floor. Now turn your palms outward, so they face away from you. Gently pull your wrists apart, so you feel a slight traction, then move your right arm inward and your left outward, bringing your right wrist into a forward bend and your left wrist into a backbend. Allow your right arm to do all the work, while your left arm is passive.

Repeat the movement on the other side by using your left arm to do all the work while your right arm is passive. Go back and forth any number of times.

See http://www.tomalden.com/ for information about Tom Alden. For information about Timothy McCall and his book Yoga As Medicine, see http://www.drmccall.com/.

What is an advanced yoga practice?

2012-01-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

by Nina

A number of years ago, I encouraged a close friend of mine, M, to join me in taking Rodney Yee’s advanced class. Even though she had a muscular, athletic, and stiff body that made doing super bendy poses difficult, if not impossible, I knew that she understood how to take care of herself in class, that she would adapt the poses for her particular body type and keep herself safe, so I wasn’t worried about the class being too hard for her. She was interested, however, she expressed some concerns about not being “advanced” enough for the class. I decided to discuss the matter with our teacher himself, feeling fairly sure of what he was going to say. But what he told me when I asked him if she was “advanced” not only took me by surprise but has stuck with me all these years, transforming my thinking about the asana practice in general. What he said was this:

“Of course she’s advanced enough. M does yoga more mindfully than any student I’ve ever seen.”

And here I’d been thinking that being advanced meant being capable of doing difficult poses, like 10 minute headstands or extreme backbends, at some level or another! But doing yoga “mindfully”—now, here was goal we could pursue for our lifetimes and no matter our level of physical capacity was, we would always have the the ability to go deeper and deeper into the practice.

Year-Old Snow and New Snow by Philip Amdal

I’m thinking about this today because I’m helping a new friend of mine adapt her practice to allow her to heal from an ongoing injury. It’s taken her a long time to even be ready to temporarily give up certain poses and ways of practicing, because she felt such regrets about excluding poses from her practice that she used to be able to do with such great enjoyment.

But as Baxter mentioned yesterday in his post on wrist care (see "Wristful Wrists: How to Keep Your Wrists Safe"), sometimes rest is the best way to heal from an injury. So being willing to adopt mindfulness as a goal in the practice rather than achievement is a necessary element in being able to heal from an injury.

People who are aging may find themselves in a similar position, not necessarily due to injury but simply due to the physical changes that come along with aging. To be honest, I used to have what I sometimes call a “semi-fancy” yoga practice. But in the last few years, I developed arthritis in my right hip that makes it impossible to do seated poses that involve a lot of external rotation. Lotus and half lotus are now impossible for me, and seated forward bends and twists that require certain leg positions are painful and difficult. And I now need props in many of the standing poses now. Still there is no question I consider my practice more advanced these days than it was in the years when I regularly took the East Bay’s most “advanced” yoga class.

Wistful Wrists: How to Keep Your Wrists Safe

2012-01-17T15:41:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

Following last week's hoopla around the New York Times article "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body" and my interview on San Francisco public radio’s KQED last Thursday (see Can Yoga Be Bad For You?), Nina and I realized that it might be helpful to look at the most commonly injured areas of the body (from yoga or otherwise—more often otherwise!), and see if we could recommend a few helpful ways of avoiding injury or working with trouble when it arises.

I already mentioned Loren Fishman’s survey of 2009, in which he identified the areas of the body most likely to get injured. Wrists ranked number one among yogis surveyed. The main risk factor for modern yogis is the fact that contemporary hatha yoga, the practice of postures, relies heavily on poses that bring lots of pressure and force onto the wrists. The list of these poses includes such favorites as Cat/Cow, Plank Pose, Downward-Facing Dog, Upward-Facing Dog, Push-up Pose (Chaturanga), most of the arm balances (which we should rename accurately hand and wrist balances), and even the bottom hand in the asymmetric standing poses like Triangle pose.

There are very few manual labor jobs anymore that require us to have our hands on the ground supporting our weight. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view, we have evolved to our upright posture so having our hands on the ground is no longer necessary for our survival, except for that precious few months before we begin to walk as pre-toddlers. And modern society places our value as workers squarely on having a functional brain and adept hands to plug into our computers and produce! So the rest of our body is superfluous to the economy. Forgive my tendency to be hyperbolic, but we are stuck between and rock and a hard place. Yoga is wonderful way to reconnect with our whole self, and yet we must simultaneously be cautious with the delicate wrist area. And in fact one could argue that yoga asana is helpful in conditions such as osteoporosis in actually requiring us to bear weight on the wrists, a common area affected by thinning of the bones.

A Rock and Beyond by Philip Amdal

What’s a yogi to do? Well, from the start, gradually introduce weight to the hands and wrists if you are new to yoga. This came up again and again in last week’s discussion: beginners should start at the beginning with a competent guide (aka teacher) and gradually advance and integrate the yoga asanas. Secondly, consider the wrists you bring into your practice, taking into account any preexisting conditions that could put you at greater risk of injury while doing yoga, such as a history of carpel tunnel syndrome, other repetitive stress injury to the area, family history of arthritis, and so on.

You might want to invest in slightly thicker yoga mat to give your hands and wrists a bit more padding. When placing your hands on your mat, make sure to have equal pressure on the first knuckle area of your hand (what I call the ball of the hand) and the heel of your hand (which is closer to the wrist joint). It can be helpful to create a slight lift under the heel of your hand using either the front of your yoga mat rolled under tightly, or by placing a wedge under the front of your mat so it slopes toward the front of mat. There are also specialized gloves that have a small built in wedge in the palm of the glove that can be helpful, as well as a prop called the Gripitz. (For the latter, I find it is helpful to go over the use of the Gripitz with students to keep it helping and not aggravating their wrists.)

And there is nothing better than rest for an angry wrist, so if you have one, consider designing a non-hand weight bearing practice with your teacher that you can do as your wrists settle down. It should not be difficult to create a satisfying practice with the myriad poses that do not require much support directly from your wrists and hands.

Another factor to consider as that many of the poses mentioned earlier require your wrists and hands to do a movement called extension (the wrist is bending back toward the arm), and there is a risk of hyperextension if you are not paying attention. Conversely, the opposite action of extension, flexion of the wrist (with the wrist bending forward away from the arm), is sorely missing in the asana practice. Practicing flexion of your wrists is a helpful counter-pose for wrist health. So if you are having wrist problems, you might start practicing the “wrist flossing” exercises described in the book Yoga as Medicine by Dr. Timothy McCall, featuring the wrists of moi. My students and I have found them helpful over the years in balancing our wistful wrists!

Does Yoga Wreck Your Body? A Scientist's Perspective

2012-01-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

by Brad

There’s been a lot of buzz after the Sunday Times article on yoga and injuries, "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body." My own take on this is that this is pretty shoddy journalism. The writer should have looked no further than the New York Times own Science Times format for Q&A. Maybe a question like “Does yoga cause more injuries than similar exercise regimens?” would have been more appropriate? I suspect the answer would have been “no.”

In any case what’s the control here? No exercise at all, running, or lifting weights at the gym? All of these have both intended and unintended consequences on your physical well-being and injury status, especially as you get older. When I was a graduate student at MIT, I remember one of my professors invoking his own law to explain missteps in some scientific papers: “if you think you know the answer beforehand, you will undoubtedly find it.” He used this to explain why some scientists misinterpreted their results by either overly fitting data to some preconceived notion, or ignoring or explaining away other types of information that was inconsistent. Makes for a good story, but this is not good science. Not good reporting, either.

My own experience with yoga suggests a different perspective on this question. I started yoga when I turned 50 because I thought that it would be more age-appropriate and not lead to as many injuries. In my case (Caution! N=1), I never injured myself in nine years of practice. One reason was I had a good teacher (Baxter Bell), who did not push his students too far, and who also paid attention to preexisting injuries to tailor their practice. He was also well-trained and knew about anatomy and physiology. Not all yoga teachers have the appropriate training, so this is one of the most important first decisions in your practice: choose a good teacher. Finally, I did not push myself beyond what I thought was appropriate (if it hurts, back off a bit—you're not trying to prove anything to the teacher or other students).

A Crow by Philip Amdal

While I did not injure myself in yoga these last nine years, I can’t say the same about other activities. I have suffered from tennis elbow injury (overzealous gardening and foosball), heel pain (bad shoes as a kid leading to something called Haglund’s deformity), and lower back pain (digging all day with a shovel a year ago to clear a section of the yard). What’s interesting is how yoga has helped to alleviate and moderate these injuries. Downward Dog and other similar poses have helped stretch my Achilles heel and tendon, considerably reducing my foot pain. I use a strap around my arms now for various positions, and this has seemed to both strengthen and better align my arms and elbows. And, lastly, I have noticed that my lower back feels better after a yoga practice than before—as long as I don’t overdo things. So, at least in my case, I can honestly say that yoga has helped alleviate injuries, not caused them. Maybe someone should write a follow up article, “How Yoga can Help You Recover from Injuries?” Not as sensational, but....

And speaking of shoddy journalism, Dr. Timothy McCall tells us that although he was quoted in the article, he was not actually interviewed by the author and that the quote from him was taken out of context, from an old article. To read his rebuttal and his advice about practicing headstand, see his website http://www.drmccall.com/ and read the article "How to Not Wreck Your Body Doing Yoga or, How I Really Feel about Headstand" on the home page.

Friday Q&A: Propping for Shoulderstand

2012-01-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

Q: For years I've read & been told at the Piedmont Studio (great teachers as you know) that I should use a blanket while doing Shoulderstand. Yet, when I'm home on a carpet surface w/mat I'm very comfortable doing the Shoulderstand with no blanket/s. When I use one or two blankets, it's actually uncomfortable on my neck. Yet, I respect what I've been told and am concerned that suddenly one day an injury will pop up just because I was too lazy to get up & get the blankets! I use them at the studio because I know I'm expected to, but at home much more comfortable w/out.

A: Thanks for your question regarding the correct propping of shoulderstand. Shoulderstand may need to be approached differently for different people, due to many factors. These can include age, level of practitioner, history of injury to the neck or other health issues that could require caution, such as newly diagnosed high blood pressure. But to cut the crux of your question, to support the shoulders with blankets or not, let's talk for a moment about the normal range of motion of the cervical spine, specifically in flexion or taking the chin to the chest. If you were to observe a friend or family member from the side as they actively brought the chin toward the chest, you would see that the neck bends about 45 to 50 degrees forward. This is a far cry from the almost 90 degree angle that occurs when we invert in Shoulderstand. This is called active range of motion, that is, how far you can move the joints using just the muscle contraction.

When you come into Shoulderstand, gravity adds an additional amount of movement, resulting in what is know as passive range of motion. But just because you have the potential to bend the neck further does not make it a good idea! Why not? Well, first off, it is not designed by nature to bear your full body weight. And because of that, the neck is at risk for sudden or gradual injury if we are not careful. And that could be anything from a temporary muscle stain to a more serious disc rupture or, even more rarely, a stroke (a few have been reported!). By using one, or my preference, at least 2 firm blankets, you stay closer to the active range of motion of the neck and decrease the chances of injury. So, although the carpeted floor seems to feel pretty good for your head, neck and shoulder today, it ultimately is a risky way to experience this advanced posture. I hope this helps to motivate you to grab those blankets, even at home!

—Baxter

A: I think it's important for you to figure out why you are uncomfortable using blankets because the aim of using props is to make you comfortable (as well as safe). Is it possible your shoulders are positioned incorrectly on the blankets? When you are up in the Shoulderstand, the tops of your shoulders should be near the edge of the blanket, while your neck is completely free of the blanket, sloping down to the floor. In order to make this happen, before you go up, you need to start with your shoulders about two inches from the edge of the blanket (feel with your hands to check your position), because as you go up, your shoulders tend to shift a couple of inches toward the edge of the blanket (and will go off the edge if you start out too close to it). Or maybe you are starting with your shoulders too far from the edge, so some of your neck is flattened on the blanket after you get up. Again, you can try to feel with your hands after you're up (or ask someone to look at you). It's kind of a Goldilocks thing; you've got to get your shoulders positioned on the blanket "just right."

If your shoulder position on the blanket is not the problem, I recommend that you approach your favorite teacher and tell him or her that you want them to look at you in Shoulderstand and recommend better propping for your body type. Maybe a lift under your elbows, a strap around your upper arms, a little something to help you keep the cervical curve in your neck, and so on. With the right propping, your Shoulderstand should feel better, not worse. Good luck!

As to your reluctance to use props at home, I feel you! I used to say that my least favorite yoga pose was "blanket folding." It all seemed so complicated and time consuming. But since it's important for safety as well as comfort, stick with it and eventually it becomes quick and easy, almost automatic, like learning to drive a car. Years of practice later, I can now brag that I am excellent blanket folder.

—Nina

Baxter Bell on KQED's Forum: Can Yoga Be Bad for You?

2012-01-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

Today Baxter participated in one-hour panel discussion hosted by Scott Shafer on public radio station KQED's Forum program. Other members of the panel were:

Glenn Black, yoga teacher featured in the New York Times Magazine article
Jason Crandell, yoga teacher and contributing editor of Yoga Journal
Kaitlin Quistgaard, editor in chief of Yoga Journal
Moshe Lewis, physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at California Pacific Medical Center, St. Luke's Campus

If you want to stream or download the audio, go to the KQED web site http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201201121000.

To read Baxter's blog post on this topic, see Getting Clearer and Yoga and the Risk of Injury.

Getting Clearer on Yoga and the Risk of Injury

2012-01-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

If you have not had a chance to read Nina’s Monday post (see here) about the New York Times article “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,” please do, because she articulates some very important points to consider as you digest all this hype coming from William Broad, a New York Times writer. In addition, you’ll find my take on this issue on Yoga Journal’s blog, where I am an occasional guest blogger (see here).

Before getting into recommendations for modifying specific poses to reduce the risk of injury, I’d like to step back today, and look at what we know about key areas of the body that are at risk of injury from an unbalanced asana practice. What do I mean by an unbalanced practice? In my view an unbalanced practice is one where you are doing one or more of the following:

Practicing at an incorrect level of difficulty for your present level of expertise
Doing the same poses over and over, increasing your risk of repetitive stress injuries
Attending classes with an inexperienced teacher unfamiliar with guiding students who have special vulnerabilities or who is aggressive with adjustments
Attending a class or pursuing a home practice that has an overly competitive quality to it

Well, you get my drift. One of the few studies that has tried to get a handle on this topic of yoga-related injuries was published in 2009 in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy by Loren Fishman, MD, et al (see here). He and his colleagues surveyed 33,000 yoga practitioners from around the world, got back 1336 responses, and compiled the results. In descending order, the areas of the body most affected were as follows, with the number of times reported in parenthesis beside it: neck or cervical spine (674), shoulder, including rotator cuff (661), low back, including sacrum, SI joint, sciatica (644), knee (597), wrist (414), back or spine, any area (392), hamstring (332), hip (112), leg, including ankle and foot (64), and groin (52). There were other areas also mentioned, but at much lower frequency, including elbows, headaches and nausea.

A Clear Day on Mount Tamalpais by Brad Gibson

What does this mean for you and me? Should we be overwhelmed and fearful? Probably not. Remember, only four percent of the surveys sent out were returned, so we still have a relatively small sample of folks here. What we can say is that, just as Nina pointed out Monday, any physical endeavor has some inherent risk of injury to it. However, if we keep returning to the essential quality of mindfulness and honesty in our practice, we can go a long way in minimizing the risks of injury. I can honestly admit that I have injured myself on several occasions, once from inattention in class, once from being in over my head in an advanced class I was not ready for, and once when my ego decided I should do an advanced pose that my hamstring had other ideas about. But I have also had several injuries, yoga related and not, that improved and healed through mindful and attentive practice of yoga asana.

In my next post, I’ll look at Fishman’s number one area of injury, the wrists, with some ideas and recommendations on how to approach poses that are more risky for us ordinary humans! Until then, keep on practicing.

Featured Sequence: Low Back Care

2012-01-10T19:19:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

Several weeks ago, I introduced some thoughts on low back pain and yoga (see here). As I mentioned, the majority of episodes of lower back pain are related to short-term issues of muscle strain or spasm, or other soft tissue and joint situations that usually resolve in six weeks or so. However, it is possible that a regular yoga practice or a special sequence directed at the lower back area can speed up that process and get you back on track a bit sooner. I have frequently observed that for students who come to class for the first time, acute low back strain often requires only a few sessions in my Back Care Yoga class before the student is well enough to return to or advance to a regular yoga class. In this setting, the variety of poses that may be helpful is a bit larger than with more serious lower back injuries or conditions. For example, you can be a bit more comfortable with some twisting and forward bending poses, which often have to be modified in the other situation.

This week I would like to give you a very brief sequence of poses to consider when addressing low back pain. (The poses in the sequence are all poses that we have already featured individually on the blog.) My intention is to add to this basic sequence over time. However, I have found that it is better to start with shorter practices and advance things as you are ready. Some of the poses in this sequence can be done dynamically, with you moving in and out of the pose with your breath, while others are done more statically, with you holding the pose for 30-60 seconds in most cases.

1. Reclined Hip Stretch Sequence (Dynamic). See here for a complete description of pose.

2. Reclined Leg Stretch Sequence (Static). See here for a complete description of the pose.

3. Hunting Dog Pose (Static). See here for a complete description of the pose.

4. Half Dog at the Wall (Static). See here for a complete description of the pose.

5. Locust pose (Dynamic). See here for a complete description of the pose.

6. Knee to Chest pose (Dynamic). See here for a complete description of the pose.

7. Corpse Pose (Savasana) with Blanket Roll Behind your Knees (Static).

Notice how you feel after the practice and how you feel the next day. We’ll eventually add more poses to our back care routine, but these are a good start for you.

Not All Yoga Poses Are Created Equal

2012-01-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

by Nina

If you haven’t read it already, you might want to check out the article “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” in the Sunday New York Times Magazine (see here). So were Baxter and I—we’ve both read it—shocked and surprised to read that yoga can cause serious injuries? Well, not exactly. As teachers and long-time practitioners, we’ve both seen our share of injuries and had them ourselves, too. And for some time, I’ve been talking about wanting to write an article or post called “Not All Yoga Poses Are Created Equal” that would differentiate between relatively safe poses that can be done frequently by most people and other poses that should probably be done less often due to their tendency to provoke injury. (Think about it: you’re probably not going to hurt yourself doing Savasana unless you’re practicing near a bookshelf during an earthquake or something, however, poses that combine external rotation of the leg with a forward bend, such as One-Legged Seated Forward Bend aka Janu Sirsasana and maybe even Triangle and Extended Side Angle poses, if done too frequently really do have the potential to cause some pretty yucky injuries).

Forward bend with external rotation of bent leg

To be honest, there are a couple of myths in the yoga world that are currently in the process of being exposed. The first is that the poses have evolved over thousands of years and are therefore “perfect.” In fact, if you read books like Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton or The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace by N.E. Sjoman, you’ll learn that most of the poses we do in modern-day classes were developed during the early twentieth century. Of course the modern yogis who developed the poses (including Krishnamacharya and B.K.S. Iyengar) were geniuses, but they were also, like us, only human.

The second myth is that if you do a pose “properly” with the “correct alignment” it is always perfectly safe. And, conversely, that if you injure yourself, you must be doing something “wrong.” As you can see in the NY Times article, scientific research is backing up what many of us have already understood intuitively: that while there while there are certain robust individuals who seem to be able to do extreme forms of yoga without serious problems, that’s not really possible for the rest of us. For example, the Ashtanga Primary series is notoriously hard on the knee joints and Sun Salutations that include Chaturganga Dandasana (Pushup pose) are equally hard on vulnerable shoulder joints.

But does all that mean we should stop doing yoga?

Just yesterday a good friend of mine showed me her hand, which was still swollen and black and blue after a fall she took when she was walking her dog. And when I was in the software industry, a significant number of people I worked with seriously injured their wrists sitting at their desks, typing. My point is obvious; almost any physical activity you take up has the potential to cause injury. And we all need to continue being active. So for our practice of yoga, as in our other activities, it’s really of matter of combining knowledge with common sense. I’ve asked Baxter to work on a post where he specifically lists the poses that you should approach with caution, but in the meantime, here are some common sense guidelines:

Don’t do a pose that hurts
Don’t do the same poses or the same types of poses over and over (repetitive stress injuries are not limited to typists, cashiers, and factory workers)
Come out of a pose early if you need to
Use props as needed to help prevent overstretching or strain
Find a yoga teacher who has had a long, thorough training and experience teaching people of your same age and condition
Tell your teacher about any injuries you may have or any relevant health conditions

You may have noticed that for every pose we feature on our blog (and these are generally very safe and accessible poses), we provide a list of cautions. These are based our current best knowledge, but if you have any concerns of your own that we haven’t mentioned, follow your common sense and listen to your body.

Friday Q&A: Yoga After Retina Repair

2012-01-06T17:29:00.000-08:00

Q: I'm interested in discussion regarding yoga and retina issues. Cautions and options for yoga after retina repair and doctor permission to return to class.

A: Thanks for your question regarding practicing safely with eye related concerns, specifically cautions and options for yoga after retina repair and doctor permission to return to class. This is not an uncommon concern among some of my students. In fact it came up again this past month, when a student had to undergo laser treatment to the retina for a partial tear to the back surface of the eye. His doc recommended avoiding inverting for a full two weeks. And I suspect given individual circumstances, you can expect even longer periods of rest from inverting before safely re-introducing poses like down dog to your practice. I suggested to my student that he could modify many of his poses and still practice safely at home and in class. For instance, I suggest half forward fold instead of full forward bend, half dog at the wall versus full down dog. It might also be good to avoid holding poses for a long time, as there could be a corresponding rise in blood pressure that could negatively influence the pressure in the eyes. A focus on restorative poses, calming pranayama (breath practices) and yoga nidra (guided relaxation) would likely support healing.

—Baxter

When Less is More

2012-01-04T20:22:00.000-08:00

by Nina

In Baxter’s post about meditation on Tuesday (see here), he recommended that students who want to start a meditation practice should start out small, with short sessions only a few times a week. This reminded me of a quote from The Wisdom of Yoga by Stephen Cope that not only made me laugh, but also made me really think about how to approach making changes in your life.

As Swami Kripalu often pointed out, Eight-Limbed Yoga begins not necessarily with the admonition to tell the truth, to be generous, chaste and so forth, but rather to be a little less greedy, a little less untruthful, a little less unchaste.

With regard to non-lying, Swami Kripalu said: “Our condition is such that we need not worry about practicing truth in speech, but merely need to delete a little untruth from the mass of untruth we usually speak. Therefore, to practice truth, we should decrease our practice of untruth.

Mushroom Closeup by Brad Gibson

Hey, is that a tiny blade of green grass in this photo?

Featured Pose: Reclined Leg Stretch Sequence

2012-01-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

The Reclined Leg Stretch sequence (Supta Padangusthasana) opens your hips and stretches the backs of your legs. It’s a perfect starting pose for just about any practice, as we usually like to start low (on the ground, that is!) and work up to standing poses. But it also works as a great standalone mini practice, providing relief for lower back pain or release of leg muscle tension due to sitting, traveling, or walking. And if you tend to store stress in your body, it’s also a great anti-stress pose after any stressful event or simply at the end of your work day.

The three variations of the pose take you first through forward folding at your hip joint, then, with your top leg out to the side, abduction of the femur, and finally, with your leg across the midline of your body, into a twist, adduction of the femur and rotation of the lower vertebrae of the spine, so you get overall opening of your hips and some twisting, too.

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

any musculoskeletal conditions that result in tightness in the hamstrings, hips and lower back
chronic back pain
general knee conditioning
stress relief

Instructions: Start by making a loop with the strap and have it ready off to your right side.

Now recline on your back, bend your right knee into your chest, place the loop over the arch of your right foot and straighten your leg toward the sky. Adjust the size of the loop so your arms can be comfortably straight. Press from both your hips to your heels. Stay in this version one for 14-16 breaths.

For the next variation, keep your bottom leg engaged and take the loop into your right hand and extend your left arm out to the side. Now slowly take your right leg out to the right side of the room until your foot is about 12 inches off the floor. If this feels painful or like too much effort is required to hold your leg in position, place a block or folded blanket under your right thigh for support. Stay for 14-16 breaths and on a exhale return to your leg to vertical.

Finally, take the loop into your left hand and extend your right arm out to the side. Then take your right leg across the midline of your body and over to your left side about 6-12 inches, keeping your lower back and pelvis on the floor.

Stay for 14-16 breaths, then release out of the pose, returning to a symmetrical position, either with legs straight or both knees bent, feet resting on the floor. Take a few moments to feel your body, and then repeat the series on your left side.

Cautions: Don’t pull your top leg aggressively toward your chest (although you can encourage it in that direction) as this could result in a strain to the origin of your hamstrings at your sitting bone, as well as aggravating a lower back condition if your lower back ends up flattening too firmly into the floor.

If you have weak wrists and fingers, you may need to modify the strap by making a loop and hooking your fingers over the loop to hold onto the strap—this makes it much gentler and easier for fingers and wrists.

How to Mediate

2012-01-03T17:07:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

Happy 2012 to all of our readers out there! It has been an exciting first few months for Brad, Nina and me, giving birth to Yoga for Healthy Aging. And I’m so pleased to hear from you, our readers, with your questions and contributions to our discussions and topics. Thanks, and I look forward to your feedback this coming year.

My last post of 2011 (see here) dealt with understanding classical yoga’s recommendations regarding meditation. It can be helpful to get the context on where things come from, but it's even more powerful to have some practical guidelines to put meditation onto practice. I often hear from my students that doing asana is so much easier for them than sitting quietly and practicing some form of meditation. It seems “doing” is so much easier than the simple “being” of meditation. Yet, if you need any reasons for meditation, you might check out Pico Iyer’s article "The Joy of Quiet" from this weekend’s New York Times (see here). The sheer pace of modern life cries out for us to stop and find stillness from time to time. With the information we discussed last time, I’d like to shift to some practical ways to begin you home meditation practice. So here we go!

First, don’t get caught up in how long to do a practice. Keep it simple and doable, with just 5 or 10 minutes at first and for a while. Set a timer of some sort so you don’t have to have thoughts about worrying how long you’ve been meditating. Second, don’t get too hung up on how to sit to meditate. In fact, you can meditate in Savasana (Corpse pose), as long as you can remain gently awake. But if you do decide to sit, you can sit in any way that feels comfortable to you (read not necessarily Lotus!). Use a chair or any props to get as comfortable as you can.

Dock at Hadley Cove by Brad Gibson

Third, pick a simple focus for your mind to fix its attention on. This can be as simple as your inhale and exhale. It could be an object that you look at or imagine in your mind. Or it could be a repeated word or phrase that has positive meaning for you, called a "mantra" in Sanskrit. Mantras I’ve explored during meditation include the word “Om,” the phrase “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna,” and my grandmother’s name, Genevieve. If you decide to focus on a mantra, try repeating it on the inhalation and the exhalation in your mind. Don’t be surprised if your mind manages to squeeze a few distracting thoughts in while you are focused on the mantra.

Speaking of thoughts… Fourth, you are not trying to stop thoughts from happening. This is a bit confusing, because if you’ve explored the Yoga Sutras, you know the famous statement about one of yoga’s goals:

1.2: Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodhah

The translation of this phrase is “Yoga is the quieting or cessation of the fluctuations of the heart/mind.” But despite this lofty and difficult goal, at the beginning, allow yourself the opportunity to simply become familiar with the behavior of your thoughts. Consider watching them like you might watch a three year old play at the park, and don’t be surprised if your mind and the three year old seem strikingly similar! And each time you get distracted or absorbed in the thoughts, notice this happening and gently guide yourself back to your chosen focus.

The rewards of consistent meditation practice are varied, but can include a sense of inner peacefulness, even when life is very busy, improved mental focus and concentration, and improved memory, as well as others you will discover on your own. So get started this new year, using the above guidelines, and let us know how it goes for you!

New Releases: Yoga Nidra and Deep Physical Relaxation

2011-12-30T14:40:00.000-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

Happy New Year, everyone! We've been talking for some time about providing you with a few relaxation tracks that you can stream from our site or download onto your own audio devices. Now, at last, thanks to help from Margy Cohea and Quinn Gibson, we're pleased to release our first two tracks, both featuring Baxter Bell.

We're starting out by providing two shorter relaxation sessions, around 15 minutes each, because we know so many of you have busy schedules or aren't quite ready to commit to a whole hour of yoga nidra. You can play these tracks directly from our blog, or, if you wish to download a track, you can go to our new—gotta love it—Band Camp site (see http://yogaforhealthyaging.bandcamp.com/). Band Camp earns money through the donations you make when you download a track, so if you can afford it, help us support this wonderful site.

The first track is a physical relaxation practice, intended to be practiced in Corpse pose (Savasana). Baxter will gradually guide you, step by step, into a deep relaxation of your entire body and nervous system.
&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://yogaforhealthyaging.bandcamp.com/track/deep-physical-relaxation"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Deep Physical Relaxation by Baxter Bell&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;The second track is Baxter's 15 minute version of a yoga nidra practice, which is also intended to be practiced in Corpse pose (Savasana). Baxter will guide you into the state of conscious relaxation that is also referred to as "yogic sleep."
&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://yogaforhealthyaging.bandcamp.com/track/mini-yoga-nidra"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Mini Yoga Nidra by Baxter Bell&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;Let us know what you think! And if you have ideas for other audio tracks you'd like us to provide, be sure to let us know.

On Holiday

2011-12-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

by Nina, Baxter and Brad

The staff here at Yoga for Healthy Aging will be taking a break during the upcoming week, so there will be no posts from us between Christmas and New Year's Day. However, we won't be completely idle, as we're working on a gift for all of you that we hope to have ready sometime very soon. We're not going to tell you what it is, because of course we want it to be a surprise, but here's a hint: it will be very, very relaxing!

Friday Q&A: Ujjayi Breath

2011-12-22T16:32:00.000-08:00

Q: You have written quite a bit about breath, which is both interesting and helpful. I am wondering about ujaya breath (sp?), which I learned about from my first yoga teacher (Kripalu). We used to do this when holding more difficult poses, but I am not sure of why this breath is seen as important, and would like to know more about it.

A: Ujjayi (ooh-JAI-yee), known as the “victory” breath, is a breathing technique in which you slightly constrict the opening of your throat to create a slight resistance for your breath. As you inhale and exhale, this resistance produces a slight, raspy sound, which is compared to the sound of the ocean and/or Darth Vader. It is considered to be a heating or energizing breath.

In the Iyengar school of yoga (which is the style that, I, Nina practice and teach), yoga poses are always done with a natural breath, and ujjayi, like any other form of pranayama (breath practices) is only practiced formally in either a seated or reclined position. However, in some other styles of yoga, including Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, Power Yoga and Flow Yoga, ujjayi breathing is used continuously throughout the practice of physical postures. This theory behind this is that this particular form of breathing enables you to maintain a rhythm to your practice, take in enough oxygen, and build energy to maintain practice, while clearing toxins from your body. This breath is considered to be especially important during transition into and out of poses, as it helps you to stay present, self-aware and grounded in the practice. This is how Erich Schiffmann puts it:

“The main idea is to coordinate your movements with your breathing. This brings a graceful and sensuous quality to your practice and turns each yoga session into a fluid and creative meditation. As you become skillful at this, the breath and movement will no longer feel distinct. You will experience them as one action, inseparably entwined. You will instinctively breathe as you move or stretch, and move or stretch as you breathe.”

Ujjayi is also taught as part of certain practices by Krishnamacharya and his son Desikachar (Viniyoga), as well as the Kripalu school (and possibly some schools I may have overlooked). Whether or not this breathing technique is “important” depends on the particular school of yoga (or teacher) you follow. And, frankly, because all the styles of yoga that we practice in the U.S. were developed quite recently (the 20th century), I’d say it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to incorporate ujjayi into your own asana practice. Does it enhance your practice? Or is it a distraction? (Remember, you can always do it on its own, in a seated or reclined position.)

—Nina (with help from Baxter)

A: From a western physiologic perspective, ujjayi creates a resistance to breathing, making breathing a bit more effort-full than it would be normally. In the world of medicine, respirators in the intensive care unit are sometimes set to something called PEEP, short for positive end expiratory pressure, which helps to keep the lungs from collapsing on themselves. Ujjayi may have a similar physiologic effect on healthy lungs. Whether this is of benefit may need further study. I believe the first mention of ujjayi breath comes in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Chapter 2, verses 51-53. The author claims it destroys defects in the nadis (energy channels), cures dropsy and disorders of the humours!

—Baxter

Pet More Downward-Facing Dogs: Yoga Resolutions for the New Year

2011-12-22T13:41:00.000-08:00

by Nina

"Hear now the wisdom of Yoga, path of the Eternal and freedom from bondage.

No step is lost on this path, and no dangers are found. And even a little progress is freedom from fear." —The Bhagavad Gita

When my son was in the fourth grade, he came to me with a problem. His teacher had asked him to write a list of ten possible resolutions he could make for the new year, and the thought of coming up with ten things he needed to change about himself was making him utterly miserable. But to this dedicated student, skipping the assignment was not an option. “What can I do, Mom?” he asked me sadly. “Well,” I replied, “how about if you came up with some resolutions that would be very easy and fun to keep?” “Like what?” He looked at me doubtfully. “Let’s see,” I mused, “how about something like: pet more dogs?”

Back in the Day: My Brother Danny and Our Dog Nikki

He lit up with a smile and then went off in much better spirits to write a list of resolutions for his teacher (and keeping the “pet more dogs” resolution throughout the year did turn out to be a lot of fun.) I’m bringing this up now, because if you are planning on making any New Year’s resolutions regarding yoga this year, I’d advise you to take the same lighthearted approach.

If you want to start a home practice, rather than deciding to do full-length class everyday—a rather overwhelming commitment—think small. As my son did, try to come up with a resolution that will be easy to keep and fun to do. How about:

Do one Downward-Facing Dog pose a day five days in a row for one week. (You can pet yourself afterward.)
Look through a yoga book and find a picture of a pose you’ve never done and just try it. (Be sure to laugh if you get totally confused or fall out of the pose.)
Download a yoga nidra practice or guided relaxation onto your iPod and try it once. (You might become addicted.)
Clear some wall space, figure out what to use for props, and set yourself up for Legs Up the Wall pose at home. (If you decide to do again some day, you’ll be ready.)
Practice seated meditation for five minutes a few times in a week. (If it feels good, try it for a second week, then a third, then....)
Buy yourself an eye pillow and “test” it at once or twice in Corpse pose (Savasana).

Anyway, you get the idea. The thing is, that resolutions that are too challenging and time consuming are likely to fail, while any small, easy, fun steps can help you get started on the path to a home practice. That’s what happened to me: I started practicing just a few poses at home, and gradually over time my practice grew organically. But even if your practice stays small, as The Bhagavad Gita says: “No step is lost on this path, and no dangers are found. And even a little progress is freedom from fear.”

Readers, I’d love to hear about any yoga resolutions that you’re making for yourself or that you’d recommend for others, especially some simple and/or colorful ones.

Thoughts on Dhyana: Meditation over the Holidays

2011-12-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

by Baxter

As I pass through yet another solstice and the modern winter holiday celebrations, I appreciate my own meditation practice, however sporadic it is at times. So I thought today would be a good day to begin introducing the topic of meditation on this blog.

Even trying to introduce the topic of meditation is a bit daunting, however, because there are many eastern traditions that have varied and unique approaches and emphases when they define meditation. So let’s narrow the scope and look at hatha yoga or even classical yoga, where we first find Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras placing dhyana or meditation within the context of the eight limbs of yoga, or the Ashtanga Yoga.

In this model, meditation is considered the second of two stages, beginning with dharana, or one-pointed concentration, and then moving onto dhyana, or continuous concentration or focus on an object. An analogy that Mr. Iyengar and others have used to explain this goes like this: If the mind were a water faucet and the object of my meditation was the bucket below it, when I first begin to focus, the water comes out in drops and moves towards the bucket, but with breaks in between, which represent distraction of the mind from the object. If my practice gets stronger and steadier, a time arrives when my focus is unbroken, represented as a continuous stream of water flowing toward the bucket. This is the stage of “meditation” or dhyana. I am still aware of “me” as the faucet, and the thing I am observing, the bucket, as separate from me, but I am really starting to understand what “bucket” is on a deep level.

Mushroom at Silver Beach by Brad Gibson

There still exists a subject-object relationship. However, in the process of developing this strong, unbroken focus, the normal everyday mental activity almost completely subsides, leading to a more peaceful yet fully present mind state that yogis felt truly beneficial. Modern PET scan studies of the minds of experienced meditators show dramatic quieting of certain areas of the brain and other brain wave patterns emerging that are often related to the state of consciousness seen just before sleep, as well as patterns seen in creative states of mind observed in artists and musicians.

For us, the process begins on a more practical note, when in our first yoga asana practices we are encouraged to simply follow the flow of the breath with our minds to the exclusion of other possible things to focus on. This is essentially the first stage described above: dharana. Anyone who has tried this, if they are really honest, will admit how hard it is to stay on track. One of my teachers used to say that if you could follow the breath for three full cycles of in and out without another distracting thought breaking your concentration, you would reach enlightenment immediately—his way of saying that this is really hard to do, even though it sounds easy. However, despite this difficulty, I’ve found it to be well worth the effort. On a very basic level, it is one direct way to elicit the relaxation response we’ve talked about in past posts (see here). And if it could eventually lead to some bliss state the yogis also talk about, bring it on!

In future posts we will discuss other meditation techniques, but for the holidays ahead, stick to the basics of simple breath awareness, done seated or in Savasana, and I’ll talk to you in the new year.

Featured Pose: Half-Dog Pose at the Wall

2011-12-20T13:42:00.000-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

The featured pose this week is a version of the classic Downward-Facing Dog pose that is a bit easier to do than the full pose and does not require a clean floor or a prop other than a wall. It’s a fantastic allover stretch, opening your shoulders and stretching your arms, back, hips and legs (in the straight leg version). It also provides a good forward bend of your pelvis over your thighbones without bending in your lower back. It’s accessible to almost everyone, so it’s perfect for students who are new to yoga or who are recovering from an injury.

Half Dog Pose at the Wall is an excellent way to begin a yoga practice. And it’s also perfect as a single-pose practice when you need a break at work or while traveling. If you don’t have wall available, you can do the pose with your hands resting on a desktop or counter, or on the seat of a chair.

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

low back pain
releasing muscle tension due to stress
an alternative to full Downward-Facing Dog for those with hand or wrist problems
an alternative to full Downward-Facing Dog for those with cardiovascular or neurologic conditions, such as hypertension or vertigo
an alternative to full Downward-Facing Dog for those with limited shoulder mobility due
either to stiffness or injury
an antidote stretch for working at a desk, driving, or traveling

Instructions. Stand facing a wall, about one foot away. Place your hands on the wall so they are at either at shoulder height for less flexible people (lessening the impact and strain on the hamstrings, lower back and shoulders) or anywhere below shoulder height down to elbow height for more flexible people (which will result in a 90 degree angle at the hip joint). Press your hands firmly into the wall, mentally gluing them on place.

Bend your knees a bit and slowly walk your feet away from the wall. Keeping your hips positioned over your feet, gradually walk out until your arms are straight and form a long line with your torso and belly. Push your arms strongly towards the wall, while creating an upward lift from your knees to your hips.

You can gradually straighten your knees as long as it doesn't cause pain in your lower back.

Stay in the pose for 14-16 breaths, and then walk back toward wall to come up and out.

Cautions: Although this pose is good for most students, those with significant rotator cuff issues may have to work with a local teacher to find a good modification that does not aggravate their condition. If bending your wrists to 90 degrees is a problem, you can do the pose with just your fingertips on the wall.

Newer students should start out with about six breaths in the pose and work their way up to one to two minutes.

Yoga Philosophy: Contentment

2011-12-19T12:44:00.000-08:00

by Nina

“He who finds happiness only within, rest only within, light only within—that yogi having become one with nature attains oneness with Brahman.” —The Bhagavad Gita, trans. by Mohandas K. Ghandi

When I first started teaching, I was determined to find the right language to help my students come slowly out of Savasana (a bigger challenge than you might imagine!). Eventually I learned that repeating the word “slowly” three times (as in “slowly, slowly, slowly bend your knees and place the soles of your feet on the floor”) did the trick. My point? It’s simply that the language that you use can sometimes make all the difference.

I’m bringing this up today because I’ve been thinking about contentment, one of the qualities the Yoga Sutras encourages us to cultivate.

“2.42 From contentment and benevolence of consciousness come supreme happiness.” –Yoga Sutras, trans. by TKV Desikachar

“Contentment or the ability to be comfortable with what we have and what we do not have.” —TKV Desikachar

To me, this means that here are many unpleasant situations in your life that you cannot change, some minor (traffic jams, not being able to find something you need) and some major (death, divorce, loss of a job). And in these circumstances when you normally would react with anger, anxiety, envy, frustration, sorrow, you might be able to choose to react instead with contentment.

But another thing I’ve learned from teaching is that the words “happiness” and even “contentment” can be a confusing to people. How, students will say, can I be “content” when something bad happens? Or how, a person with depression, will ask, can just tell myself to be “happy?”

Through the Mist by Brad Gibson

For myself, the answer was using different language: “I can be okay with this.” During the last four years, I’ve experienced a lot of loss: both my parents died and both my children moved thousands of miles away. But telling myself that, even while I was sad, I could be also okay with those circumstances did, in fact, help lead me toward contentment.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that I’m a big fan of yoga’s stress reduction tools, including poses, breath techniques and meditation, for cultivating equanimity. But yoga philosophy has also been extremely helpful to me.

In our materialistic and success-oriented culture, we are bombarded with messages telling us we need to do more and buy more. So we become caught up in an endless cycle of desire and dissatisfaction, which benefits the economy but not necessarily our happiness. For me, yoga philosophy is the antidote. Although yoga promises freedom from the bondage of the unending cycle of desire and dissatisfaction, I can’t say I’m there yet. But at the very least, when I notice dissatisfaction taking over, I’ve learned to step back and remind myself there is a different point of view.

“2.42 From contentment, the highest happiness is attained.” —Yoga Sutras, trans. Edwin Bryant

“This sattvic happiness does not depend on external objects, which are vulnerable and fleeting, but is inherent in the mind when it is tranquil and content.” —Bryant’s commentary

Friday Q&A: Sequencing Two Poses

2011-12-14T19:18:00.000-08:00

Q: I love the variation of Viparita Karani with the chair. I also love Knees to Chest, which you featured in an earlier post. What I am wondering is should I do a pose in between these 2 as a transition or is it OK to go back & forth between the 2?

A: There’s no need to do any poses between these two, as they’re both gentle, symmetrical poses. It’s only when you are doing a deep forward bend, backbend, or twist that you might want to consider a counter-pose.

Can you go back and forth between the two? Personally, if I were going to sequence these two poses, I’d do the Knees to Chest pose (see here) first because moving with your breath is slightly stimulating. Even if you don't move with your breath in this pose, you are actively engaging your muscles, which makes this an active, rather than passive pose. I’d follow Knees to Chest pose with the Viparita Karani variation (see here) because this is a deeply relaxing passive pose, and it’s traditional to finish your practice in a state of relaxation. Put them together, and you’ve just created a nice little mini practice for winding down at the end of the day.

In general, a good way to sequence poses is in an arc like this:

1. Warm-up poses
2. Active poses
3. Counter poses and/or cool-down poses
4. Relaxation poses

—Nina

I agree that the poses are fine sequenced as Nina suggested, especially if you are ultimately trying to quiet the nervous system. However, if you needed a rest but wanted to do a mild stimulation of system prior to heading back into your day, you could reverse them. I don’t think any particular pose needs to go between them, but both would be a nice counter-pose sequence at the end of a back bend practice.

—Baxter

Yoga and Your Emotions

2011-12-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

by Nina

I once bet an old friend of mine, a long-time yoga student who expressed some doubt when I told him that yoga poses can have strong effects on our emotions, that I could change his mood by putting him in a yoga pose. He said, “You’re on!” So what I did was set him up in a supported form of Seated Forward Bend (Paschimottanasana) and left him there for three minutes (the amount of time needed for most supported poses to really take effect). When I told him it was time for him to come out the pose and he slowly lifted his head, I knew just by the look on his face—you know, that classic “yoga” look—that I’d won the bet hands down. And my friend did, in fact, concede quite gracefully, because the quieting power of a long forward bend (if you are set up comfortably) was undeniable.

La Sagrada Familia (a detail) by Brad Gibson

Yes, various yoga poses and practices can have a strong effect on your moods and emotions, and this is something you should take into consideration when you practice on your own. I decided to write about this subject today because earlier this week another friend was surprised to learn that doing Sun Salutations before bed affected her ability to sleep. Knowing that certain poses like Sun Salutations and standing poses are stimulating can not only help you chose which poses to do at a particular time of time, but when you know something about how the poses effect you in general, you can actually practice to balance your emotions.

So today I’ve grouped the yoga poses into general categories, and for each category, I’ll list some of the typical emotional effects. In the end, however, don’t just take my word for it. You should always rely on your personal experience to guide you. Baxter and I once had a student who said that twists made her sleepy. That’s not the traditional view of how twists effect us, but if this woman felt they made her sleepy, well, that’s what they did!

Standing Poses. These are considered to be very grounding poses, which immediately engage your body-mind and bring you into the present moment. So they are good poses to do when you are worried and distracted or agitated. Standing poses are also stimulating, because being upright raises your blood pressure and increases your heart rate (ha, ha, the reverse of being inverted). So while these are great poses to do in the morning or afternoon, these are not good poses to do before bedtime if you have trouble sleeping.

Sun Salutations. Poses that are linked together with the breath, including Sun Salutations, moving from Paschimottanasna to Halasana and back, and even just moving from Tadasana to Uttanasana and back, can energize your emotional body and can help lift you out of lethargy, depression, or sadness. Like standing poses, Sun Salutations are stimulating. Moving with your breath increases your oxygen intake and up to standing and then back down again can raise your blood pressure. So like standing poses, Sun Salutations are great in the morning or afternoon, but not good to do before bedtime if you have trouble sleeping.

Backbends. These are considered to be energizing, uplifting poses. They may help create more energy when you are tired and may help lift you out of depression or sadness. On the negative side, they may actually make you too hyper if you are already nervous, and some people have difficulty falling asleep after practicing backbends. Because they literally open the heart area, they may cause strong emotions to arise—sometimes people find themselves crying after doing a lot of backbends. One way to access the energizing, uplifting quality of these poses without over-stimulating yourself it is to do passive, supported backbends.

Twists. These are considered to be cleansing poses. They can help release stress from your body-mind. On the negative side, twists may also release difficult feelings or emotions, so that they may actually leave you feeling a bit yucky—that’s a technical term—although that has never happened to me.

Forward Bends. These are considered to be quieting, introverted poses. They are restful poses that can calm you down when you are feeling agitated or hyper and rest you when you are feeling fatigued. On the negative side, the inward-turning quality of the poses may cause you to brood or feel claustrophobic. Supported versions of these poses that remove the physical resistance from the pose can be extremely quieting and calming.

Inverted Poses. These poses are considered to be soothing and centering poses. Although Headstand is a fiery pose (it warms you physically), it is also very calming. And any pose where you head is on the ground, such as Supported Downward-Facing Dog, Supported Standing Forward Bend, and Supported Wide Angle Standing Forward Bend, is considered to have the same benefits and can be substituted for Headstand. Shoulderstand—if it is at all comfortable for you—is more cooling than Headstand and is considered the ultimate soothing pose (the mother of all poses). Viparita Karani is also very soothing for almost everybody. I think a good reason to do the work to become comfortable with Headstand and Shoulderstand is because the benefits they provide are so valuable.

Arm Balances. Handstand and the other arm balances fully engage your body-mind as they demand your immediate presence of mind. This can help distract you from concerns outside the yoga room and therefore lift your spirits or at least give you a break from your obsessions. (Patricia Walden recommends them for depression for people for whom backbends are very easy.)

Hip Openers and Seated Poses. These poses are considered to be very grounding and centering. They seem to release tension, especially from the legs, and bring you into the present moment. On the negative side, opening your hips can sometimes feel really yucky—both mentally and physically—who knows why?—and you might not feel up to it some days.

Readers, what are your thoughts about the emotional effects of various yoga poses?

Interview with Vickie Russell Bell, Continued: Teaching Yoga to Students with Parkinson's

2011-12-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

Baxter: Can you talk a bit about what sort of experience or training would be optimal for a teacher out there thinking about doing this sort of class for folks with Parkinson’s?

Vickie: Teachers interested in working with PWPD need to have a strong background in teaching asana and adapting classic poses. Assisting a teacher who works with disabilities or special populations (or even someone who is adept at working with seniors) would be very useful. If a teacher is interested in eventually working with a group, starting solo with a PD student who is mobile and only slightly limited might help her begin to understand this population.

There are often local PD organizations that offer classes or info sessions for those interested in furthering their knowledge. I am currently training a number of yoga teachers who want to take this work into the community and I hope to expand this educational opportunity further.

Baxter: And final advice to either students with Parkinson’s, or teachers interested in working with this population?

Vickie: The thing that drives my success in working with this population is this motto: Teach to their possibility, not their disability! Be willing to be light, to play ant, to constantly continue to learn.

Vickie Russell Bell was born and raised in Ohio, and is a journalist by education. She teaches yoga because she loves to. Her intention is to help her students increase their level of daily awareness through their body, breath and experience. She is a graduate of the Piedmont Yoga Studio Advanced Training Program and is a certified “Relax and Renew Trainer” through Judith Lasater’s accredited program. See here for more information.

Interview with Vickie Russell Bell: Yoga for Parkinson's Disease

2011-12-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

In October, we were fortunate to have long-time yoga teacher and yoga writer Richard Rosen contribute a post about his personal journey with Parkinson’s Disease and the recommendations he has for working with the condition. This month, I am pleased to share with you an interview with another yoga teacher, Vickie Russell Bell, who has been involved in serving the Parkinson’s community for several years now. You can learn more about her teaching here.

Baxter: Vickie, I know that you have been offering a Parkinson’s Yoga Class at Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland for some time now. How did that come about, and what’s the class like?

Vickie: I’ve been teaching a yoga class for people with Parkinson’s Disease (PWPD) for a little more than three years now. I started off assisting Richard Rosen, teaching about 8-10 students, and then took over leading the classes. I now offer two classes weekly at Piedmont Yoga Studio through a local organization called PD Active! In a given week there are usually 12-18 participants per class. These students have varying physical abilities. I have two assistants helping in each class.

As Richard Rosen stated in a previous post about PD (see here): it is a progressive degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. Common physical symptoms are loss of muscular flexibility (PWPD become very stiff), loss of balance, loss of strength and often a noticeable resting tremor. Sometimes people who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s are in denial, resentment or rejection of their condition. PD affects the body, mind and spirit and needs to be looked at holistically. Asana practice done regularly can help students to cultivate and refine their body awareness so as to work productively with some of these symptoms.

My students with Parkinson’s definitely need extra attention during classes. I attempt to adapt what I’m teaching in my public classes that week for the classes (for example, Downward Dog with hands on a chair seat, Warrior I with the front knee supported by a block and the wall, Bakasana (Crane pose) lying on the back). Often in class there is an extra emphasis on keeping the feet stretched, open and supple to increase awareness of the base, on balance, on opening the upper back/chest/lungs, and on restorative poses (PWPD are often taking various medications that can make them fatigued or affect sleep adversely).

Baxter: Can you share with our readers any observations of the benefits your students have discovered by regular attendance in your class?

Vickie: I can do even better! Here is some testimonial directly from one of mty PD Active yoga students:

“The yoga exercise class has helped me immensely and I feel it is due mostly to stretching of the muscles. Parkinson’s causes atrophy in our muscles and the yoga exercises are a direct hit against that atrophy. I walk straighter and breathe properly when I walk now. Learning to breathe properly in the yoga class has helped my freezing of feet problem as well. When my feet freeze now I stop, breathe, relax and off I go again. Before, I would go into panic mode, struggle and usually fall. I have had fewer falls since I started the yoga class. I used to fall about three times a week and now it is about twice a month and that’s usually due to my own inability to breathe properly and stay relaxed. Yoga has added to the quality of my life.”

Baxter: In Richard’s post, he mentioned the benefits of supported backbend over a bolster. Where do you see that pose fitting in, and what are two or three other essential poses you find helpful for your classes?

Vickie: I often incorporate the backbend over a bolster that Richard described in my classes. My students also love supported twists over a bolster as well as a Viparita Karani variation. Legs up the Wall is difficult for many Parkinson’s students due to tight hips and hamstrings, and rounded upper backs. So this is how I teach the Viparita Karani variation:

Fold two long, single fold blankets (Shoulderstand size in half long ways) and place them on the floor in front of a chair seat. Have the student sit with their tailbone right on the front edge of the blankets and lie back so that the blankets are perpendicular to the spine and support the lumbar curve and back of the pelvis. Some PD students may need help lying back safely, or may need help adjusting the blankets. The student then hooks the back of their knees on the front edge of the chair seat, resting the calves on the seat. If your student has a rounded upper back they might benefit from a lift under their head so that the chin and forehead are on the same level. Here's a photograph from one of my classes of a student in the pose:

Viparita Karani variation (also called Easy Inverted pose)

This pose allows the low back (lumbar spine) to have a neutral curve or for some a slight backbend and allows the shoulders and chest to gently open. This can be a delicious pose for someone who spends most of their day with the head and shoulders hunched forward! I also teach PWPD adaptations of many standing poses and other beneficial active poses.

Tune in tomorrow for the second half of Baxter's interview with Vickie Russell Bell, in which she will talk about how to teach students with Parkinson's Disease.

Featured Pose: Knees to Chest Pose (Apanasana)

2011-12-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

Knees to Chest pose is a great way to warm up at the beginning of a practice or to cool down at the end of a practice, especially after a backbend or forward bend practice. This pose allows you to check in with the tightness or openness of your hip and buttock muscles and soft tissues, as you gently massage your lower back and abdomen. Because your knees are bent, the tension on the hamstring muscles is greatly reduced, making it safer than straight leg stretches for those nursing a sore or injured lower back. It’s very easy to do, doesn’t require props, and doesn’t take up much space, so this pose is one you can do almost any time or anywhere for quick relief of low back pain or discomfort after sitting for long periods of time, such as at a desk, in a car, or on an airplane.

This pose goes by different names Sanskrit names, depending on the yoga lineage. In the Krishnamacharya tradition, it is called Apanasana, with apana referring to the downward moving inner energetic wind of the body. So the pose is associated with anything that needs to exit the body from the perineum, including waste from the GI tract, as well as reproduction functions (it is sometimes recommended for menstrual irregularity, although Baxter knows of no evidence to support this). In other traditions, the pose is called Pavanmuktasana, which means wind-relieving pose. That name is self explanatory!

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

•    low back relief
•    tight hips
•    GI conditions where sluggishness is a problem (such as constipation)
•    general relaxation prior to Savasana

Instructions: Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet on floor.

Next, hold onto your knees with your hands, keeping your arms straight. On an inhalation, lift your feet up just a bit. Completely relax your leg muscles and let your arms do all the work.

Then, on your exhalation, bend your elbows and draw your knees toward your chest.

On your inhalation, straighten your arms and release your knees to the starting position. Repeat six times, moving with your breath.

Baxter recommends the dynamic version of this pose (moving with your breath) for low back pain, but if you are using the pose for other reasons and you prefer holding the pose for a longer period of time, you can keep your knees to your chest for 30 seconds to one minute.

Cautions: If you have knee problems, hold your hands behind your knees (between your calves and thighs). If the bones of soft tissues of your lower back or pelvis are sensitive, lie on a folded blanket or other padding.

Friday Q&A: Restorative Yoga

2011-12-09T13:24:00.001-08:00

Q: Thanks to your blog, I’ve been practicing Legs Up the Wall pose on a regular basis now, and I just love it. However, I have a friend who can’t do inversions due to blood pressure concerns. What are some relaxing poses that she can do?

A: Restorative yoga is perfect for someone like your friend, as well as anyone who is sick, stressed out, or low on energy, or who just wants to experience a soothing practice. Restorative yoga is a form of yoga that was specially designed to provide deep rest and relaxation. In restorative yoga, you use props to support yourself in the shape of a classic yoga pose, including forward bends, backbends, side stretches, twists, and inversions. For example, in Child’s Pose, rather than folding forward all the way on to the floor, you use a bolster or stack of folded blankets to support your entire front body.

Standard Child's Pose

Restorative Child's Pose

The props you use in restorative yoga not only make the pose more comfortable but they take the effort out of the pose. Rather than using your muscles to hold you in the shape of a pose as you would normally, the props hold you in the pose so you can simply let your muscles relax. With your muscles completely relaxed, you can then turn your attention inward, focusing on your breath, physical sensations, or any other object of meditation, which allows the relaxation response to switch on.

Now you might ask, why would you go through the trouble to put yourself into a restorative yoga pose when you can just do Savasana (Corpse pose)? In Savasana your body is in an anatomically neutral position, so that no muscles are being released or stretched. In a restorative pose, however, you still receive many of the benefits of the pose itself. For example, in a restorative backbend, you are opening your chest and stretching many of the muscles that become tight after driving long distances or sitting hunched forward at a desk all day. Passively stretching your muscles as your relax increases your feeling of relaxation, as some of the stress you have been holding in your body is gently released. And because you are completely comfortable and relaxed, you can stay in the pose for much longer amounts of time. So restorative poses are actually a good way to work on flexibility, as well as relaxation.

We definitely plan to introduce some restorative yoga poses and sequences on this blog in the future, but until then, three of the books on our list of recommendations yesterday (see here) are good resources for information on restorative yoga: Moving Toward Balance, Relax & Renew, and The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health.

—Nina

Shopping List: Yoga Books We Can’t Live Without

2011-12-08T14:17:00.001-08:00

by Nina and Baxter

For most people who practice yoga at home, yoga books are indispensable. When you have questions about poses, you can look at photographs. When you don’t know what to practice, you can find a sequence to try. When you need inspiration, you can turn to classical yoga philosophy or read advice and wisdom from any number of well-known teachers. At Nina's house, they even have two copies of the same book (which they fondly refer to as “The Red Leotard Book”), so she and her husband can be sure of having a copy with them for reference when they practice.

Yes, We Have 2 Copies of This Book

Since it’s, well, the time of year when you are probably wracking your brains trying to finish your own lists, Baxter and I thought this might be a good time for us to list our yoga favorite yoga books for your shopping pleasure. So without further ado:

Nina’s Picks

1.    Yoga the Iyengar Way, Silva, Mira, and Shyam Mehta, Alfred A. Knopf. When you have questions about the alignment for a pose and want to see a photograph of it, this is by far the best resource. Beautiful!

2.    The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health, Linda Sparrowe with Patricia Walden, Shambhala Publications. By far, my most used yoga book. I love the sequences, and the propping Patricia recommends is some of the most helpful and useable.

3.    Yoga: Awakening the Inner Body, Donald Moyer, Rodmell Press. If you want to read alignment details about the classic yoga poses, this book does a great job of explaining them (and just happens to be by my favorite yoga teacher).

4.    Relax & Renew, Judith Lasater, Rodmell Press. The best introduction to restorative yoga, with a large number of sequences for different conditions.

5.    The Yoga of Breath, Richard Rosen, Shambhala Publications. A very good introduction to yogic breathing.

6.    The Yoga Tradition, Georg Feuerstein, Hohm Press. A scholarly, somewhat intimidating but very worthwhile history of yoga, including translations of many seminal yoga texts.

7.    Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, B.K.S. Iyengar, HarperCollins. Among the many different translations with commentaries, this is one of the most accessible.

8.    The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Juan Mascaro, Penguin Books. This translation is powerful and poetic, and the introduction is very helpful.

Baxter’s Picks

1.    Moving Toward Balance, Rodney Yee with Nina Zolotow, Rodale Books. With three versions of every pose, sequences designed for the home practitioner, and advice about home practice, this book is the one I recommend to anyone who wants to practice at home.

2.    The Heart of Yoga, T.K.V. Desikachar, Inner Traditions. A wonderful introduction to the yoga of the teacher who developed so much of what we now practice in the west.

3.    Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Stephen Cope, Bantam. A lively, easy-to-read introduction to basic yoga philosophy.

4.    The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extraordinary Living, Stephen Cope, Bantam. A very accessible introduction to the philosophy of the Yoga Sutras.

5.    The Yoga Sutras: An Essential Guide to the Heart of Yoga Philosophy, Nicholai Bachman, Sounds True, Inc. A true splurge, this complete kit features seven CDs, a 200-page workbook with color illustrations, and 51 meditation cards.

6.    Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold, Krishna Das, Hay House, Inc. For those who want to learn something about bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion), this book includes a bonus CD of chanting.

Your Key to Your Nervous System: Your Breath

2011-12-07T10:57:00.001-08:00

by Nina

Have you ever wondered why you tend to yawn when you’re sleepy? Well, a yawn is a great big inhalation. And because your heart rate tends to speed up on your inhalation, that yawn in the middle of that boring lecture or business meeting is little message to your nervous system: wake up! On the other hand, when you are upset about something, you tend to sigh. That sigh—try one!—is an extra long exhalation. Because your heart rate tends to slow on your exhalation, that sigh while you are feeling emotional turmoil or are just stuck in traffic is a little message to your nervous system: take it easy, buddy, slow down a bit.

Your autonomic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that controls the functions of your body, such as digestion, heartbeat, blood pressure, and breathing, that are “involuntary,” meaning the functions that you don’t have to think about. The autonomic nervous system is also the part of your nervous system that sends you into stress mode (fight or flight) and that triggers the relaxation response. And while you cannot tell your nervous system directly to slow your heart beat, digest your food more quickly (that would be nice, wouldn’t it?), or to start relaxing right this minute, you can control your breath.

Think about it: even though you breathe without thinking about it, you can intentionally hold your breath, speed up your breath, slow down your breath, breathe through one nostril instead of the other, and so on. And this ability to alter your breathing is what gives you the key to your nervous system, providing you with some control over its “involuntary” functions.

Tide Under First Bridge by Brad Gibson

In my post on the stress response (see "Chronic Stress: An Introduction"), I mentioned that in stress mode your body uses more oxygen (for fighting or fleeing) while in relaxation mode your body needs less oxygen (for resting and digesting). It turns out that by intentionally taking in more oxygen (either by speeding up your breath or by lengthening your inhalation) you can stimulate your nervous system and that by taking in less oxygen (by slowing your breath or lengthening your exhalation), you can calm yourself down. It’s that simple. (See "Stress Test" for my example of using breath practice to stay calm during oral surgery.)

Yogic breath practices have evolved over thousands of years as yogis experimented on themselves and passed on their discoveries their students. And while some schools of yoga teach yogic breath practices (pranayama) to beginners, the type of yoga that I’m trained in, Iyengar style, considers breath practices to be so powerful that pranayama is introduced very gradually.

We’ll be introducing some simple breath practices in the coming weeks, but until then start by tuning into your breath throughout the day. When you’re standing in a long line at the post office, fighting the crowds at the grocery store, or are stuck in traffic, are you taking quick breaths, deep breaths or sighing? When you’re taking a hot bubble bath, petting your dog, or chatting with your partner after a good dinner, are you taking slow breaths, shallow breaths, or—oops!—yawning?

A Pair of Serendipities Re: Spinal Stenosis

2011-12-06T10:22:00.001-08:00

by Baxter

One fortunate thing about teaching a lot of yoga is that students are always coming up and asking me about interesting things that are happening with their bodies. And now our readers here at Yoga for Healthy Aging are also chiming in with intriguing questions about themselves and their students. (Thanks, by the way. We were hoping you would do just that!) Just last week, one such reader wrote in asking about a student with a condition called spinal stenosis. Then on Sunday, the final day of a three-day workshop I was leading in Billings, Montana (burrrrr…24 degrees), one of the students asked about his unusual back pain symptoms. On the list of possible causes that came to mind as he related his symptoms was spinal stenosis. With that, I decided to address this topic on our blog, as it is often, but not exclusively, a result of aging changes around the spinal column.

The condition is one that usually affects the lower back region of the spine, but can also be seen in the cervical or neck area as well. Backing up for a moment to relate some basic anatomy, the vertebral column or spinal column, your backbone, not only essential to our upright posture, but houses within it the spinal cord, or the extension of the brain that connects to the rest of our body. It descends down from the brain via the central canal all the way down to our sacrum bone. As it descends, it sends off nerves at every level of the bony spine to the right and left through small lateral openings called intervertebral foramen.

The Spinal Column

According to the Cleveland Clinic, with age the spinal canal can narrow, resulting in spinal stenosis. The narrowing process, which is gradual, reduces the space available for the spinal cord and nerves. If only a small amount of spinal narrowing occurs, no pain will result. However, if narrowing continues, the nerves that travel through the spinal column to the legs become squeezed, leading to back and leg pain, numbness and leg weakness. And the pain and other symptoms are more pronounced with standing and walking, and often improved when sitting or lying down. So what does this have to do with aging? Well, spinal stenosis occurs when bulging discs, arthritic spurs, and thickened tissues combine to "compress" the nerves traveling through the spinal canal or try to exit through the side openings, all of which are more likely to occur as we age. It typically occurs among older adults, and arthritis and injuries can also cause the spinal cord to narrow. I should note that there are also cases in which the condition can arise in much younger adults, but that is another discussion.

And short of strong pain medications and anti-inflammatory drugs, traditional physical therapy, and lastly, invasive surgery, what’s a person to do? Well, thanks to the use of yoga for a variety of back pain syndromes in several studies in the recent past, yoga is now recommended by the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society as an alternative or complementary treatment.

That’s all well and good, but there are a lot of yoga styles and poses, and if you are already in pain from spinal stenosis, you might be just a bit hesitant to head off to your local gym or public yoga class. And, rightly so. It would better serve you to look for a specialty class that deals with back pain, or better yet, find a qualified instructor or yoga therapist who you could do some private sessions with you to determine which asana and styles of practice would serve you best. Two styles of yoga that have a stronger attention to good healthy alignment of the spine and body are Iyengar and Anusara yoga. Viniyoga or the yoga of Krishnamacharya are also therapeutically focused and designed to work one on one for your unique needs.

With that in mind, there are several recommendations I can make. If a particular group of poses worsen your symptoms, avoid them. If they improve or are neutral in effect, proceed with awareness as you do them. Because back bending tends to narrow the central canal, doing backbends when you have spinal stenosis is usually not recommended, but small amounts of back bending might be tolerated. The opposite movement, however, can often open the canal, so forward bends can be quite beneficial. And if the lateral openings are the issue, lateral side bends and twist away from the side of involvement can also be helpful. Any poses that encourage a long, balanced spine and optimal posture are also worth practicing, such as Mountain pose, Staff pose, Downward Dog, and so on. And because reclining is often the position of relief for spinal stenosis, Legs Up the Wall pose and Savasana (Corpse pose) would likely end up as favorites. Restorative practices and yoga nidra are also helpful, as they have the added benefit of calming the nervous system, which is usually on high alert in chronic pain conditions such as spinal stenosis.

Thanks to my students and you readers for today’s topic!

Okay. Back to Aging.

2011-12-05T09:10:00.001-08:00

by Brad

Okay. It’s been a while, as I’ve been busy with writing NIH grants and papers, as well as traveling. So it's time to get back to one of the central points of this blog: what is aging? It turns out this is no more clear than trying to define yoga. When I joined the Buck Institute for Research on Aging some 11 years ago, I was surprised and a little chagrined to discover how unsettled and wide open this central question of aging biology was.

This was not my original field of study, but as a chemist and structural biologist working at a major teaching university, I saw a prime opportunity to make a career shift by joining the Buck Institute and using my skill to elucidate molecular mechanisms of aging. But I had no idea how many competing theories existed on this subject, ranging from rather oblique terms like ”antagonistic pleotrophy” to more familiar ones—at least to a chemist—like “entropy” and “free radical damage.” So the other day when there was some news coverage in the New York Times of a breakthrough in aging research (see NY Times article here), I saw this as a chance to tackle this subject. The article, titled “In Body’s Shield Against Cancer, a Culprit in Aging May Lurk,” came out of the Mayo Clinic and looked at the role of senescent cells in aging (see original research here).

When cells reach a point of pathological state, either through telomere shortening or some other aberration or damage, a sequence of events are put into place that either sends these cells into a cell death pathway, or into a state of senescence, a kind of limbo non-dividing state. One reason this occurs is to avoid the formation of a cancerous cell, which the organism obviously wants to avoid. Cells that become senescent were usually thought of as sequestered cells that no longer posed a problem to the organism, but were also no longer productive. However, what this new study showed is that these senescent cells appear to have more damaging effects on neighboring cells and tissues, possibly through a secreted inflammatory signal.

Manzanita by Brad Gibson

By constructing a mutant mouse strain where the researchers could target and kill these senescent cells without harming the healthy cells, researchers found that it had a significant beneficial effect on the health of the mice, and that they lived longer. There is a lot of follow-up work to be done to confirm these studies in “normal mice” as well as in humans. In any case, the data are highly intriguing. It is also worth pointing out that when asked whether this would cure aging, the scientists were much more cautious, as they clearly understood that this is probably only one of many mechanisms that are contributing to aging. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how inflammation comes up repeatedly as a cause or at least a driver of many age-related disease, from Alzheimer’s disease to diabetes.

One question that I would like to get back to is: what can we do as individuals to influence this process? What are the conditions that lead to cellular senescence versus cell death, for example, and what are the physiological and environmental determinants that cause as a cell to enter this critical state in the first place? If we knew the answers to these questions and as well other questions of this type, we might be able to critically examine how we can influence are own rate of aging. This question is related but separate from how we can reduce and/or cope with various age-related losses and pathologies as they emerge. Both questions will be critical to answer to reach an understanding on the practice of healthy aging. How yoga might be a part of that practice is what we are trying to address here….

Friday Q&A: Larger Women

2011-12-02T13:49:00.001-08:00

Q: Do you know if Baxter is going to talk more about teaching to larger women? I had a class at Piedmont Yoga Studio for larger women and I think one problem that was overlooked was that larger women “seemed” to be more flexible in certain areas where they oftentimes were hanging on their ligaments from bearing the weight. I remember at the beginning these women were so “proud” that they were able to do certain things but we had to work on containment. At the time I was one of the larger students and so I learned this firsthand.

Briefly it happens most in poses that require external rotation in the legs as many larger people are already overly externally rotating. The solution is to make them consciously aware of this and start to work on not going to the extreme in these rotations and then working on internal rotations (oftentimes using straps and blocks) to build those muscles up so there’s more balance.

This happens both in standing poses as well as others, such as Supta Padangusthasana and even Child’s pose. The knees in Child's pose are so externally rotated that it’s no wonder there are so many knee problems. Baxter can probably address the knee problems too as I've seen many larger people hyper-extending in the knees, again putting so much stress.

A: Thanks so much for your helpful comments! It’s always great to get feedback from someone who has worked first hand with a particular group and who also has personal experience. Yours are very accurate observations. It seems to me that people with larger body mass in the lower belly and thighs, either because recent weight gain or a lifetime of being heavy, tend to push the belly and thighs apart through external rotation. The result is a “functional” imbalance (overly externally rotating) that can be brought back into balance, as you have pointed out.

But I would also like to add that I’ve also observed among the larger students that, just like any group of students, there are some people that have the opposite problem: very limited mobility. This is due to stiffness in their muscles, as it is for the general population, and is not related to their weight. So until we have more evidence about trends for larger people, it is best for all of us not to make assumptions about any individuals or ourselves. Instead, always start with your own observations about yourself (or your students).

—Baxter

Featured Pose: Locust (Dynamic Version)

2011-12-01T13:18:00.001-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

Locust pose (Salabasana) is a simple backbend that strengthens the entire backside of your body, from the nape of your neck to the backs of your heels. Baxter loves this pose because it’s helpful for such a wide range of problems, including lower back pain, postural problems, and weakness anywhere along the chain of your back body, including your , including hips and hamstrings. And because the backbend is shallow and doesn’t put pressure on the wrists, it is accessible to almost everyone.

We’re recommending two versions of this pose: one with your hands on the floor and the other with your arms parallel to floor and hands lifted. The version with your hands on the floor provides more support, making the pose less demanding. The version with arms raised increases the amount of strengthening in your arms and shoulders.

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

•    lower back pain (it strengthens the muscles along the sides of your lower back)
•    hamstring injuries
•    arthritis of the knees (it strengthens the leg muscles)
•    postural problems (such as excessive rounding and head-forward syndrome)
•    arm strength (in the version where you lift your arms)
•    depression (accessible even when your energy is low)
•    general weakness

Instructions: Lie on your belly, with your head resting on the floor, your arms resting at your sides, hands palm down, and your legs stretched evenly back behind you, toes gently pointed. If your lower back feels vulnerable, press your hips gently down to the floor.

Think about your right leg being a bit longer then your left, and on an inhale, lift your right leg up a few inches off the floor without bending your knee knee, while also lifting your head and chest up a few inches. As you lift your chest and head, be careful not to overextend your neck (throwing it back) because this could cause neck strain. If you wish, raise your arms and hands so your arms are parallel to the floor and your palms are facing the floor.

Exhale and release back to the starting position. Repeat the process with your left leg.

Alternate right and left with every round of breath. Do about six times, side to side. Then rest.

Cautions: As with any pose, Locust might aggravate an existing problem or condition. In particular, if you have a pronounced lumbar curve, your back problems could be aggravated. Consult your favorite teacher for an alternative is you have any trouble. If you have asthma or any other breathing difficulties, this pose might make you short of breath. If this happens, come out of the pose and rest.

Arthritis, Exercise and Yoga

2011-11-30T16:35:00.001-08:00

by Nina

Hey, I heard this really nice little piece on arthritis and exercise on NPR that I wanted to share with you. Fortunately, NPR has both the audio and a transcript of the piece on their web site (see here). What I liked so much about this particular piece was how simple and clear it was about why it is important to continue to exercise when you have arthritis (even though most people don't) because exercising, while it cannot reverse arthritis, is the only way to prevent the arthritis from getting worse. Here's why:

1. Arthritis breaks down your cartilage, the natural shock absorbers in your joints. As a result, blood doesn't circulate as freely and doesn't deliver adequate nutrition to your cartilage. Exercise massages the joints, improving the blood supply to the joints, providing your cartilage with more nutrition.

2. The stronger the muscles are around the joint, the more protection your body can provide for the joint. Your muscles take up the weight and pressure, instead of the joint itself.

The end of the piece even mentions yoga as a good way to improve the strength of the muscles around your joints! (That's refreshing because most people are under the misconception that yoga is only about stretching.) But yoga is also a good way to massage your joints to get the blood flowing because in a well-rounded practice you move your joints in every direction. Just think of all the directions in which your hip joints move in the various standing poses. And your knee joints are bent or straight, turning out to the side or even turning in slightly (such as in Eagle pose). Your shoulder joints really get a workout, too, as you hold your arms overhead, out to the side, behind your back, or across your body (again, as in Eagle pose).

For strength building, it's easy to think of standing poses (especially those with bent knees) and balancing poses that strengthen the muscles around the knees and hips. But what about your shoulder joints? Downward-Facing Dog and Plank pose spring immediately to mind because you are bearing weight on your arms as they extend forward. But there are also other poses that you can use to strengthen your shoulder joints in which you bear weight on your arms reaching sideways (such as Vashistasana, sometimes called Sideways Plan pose) or behind you (such as the backbend Purvottanasana, sometimes called Upward Plank pose). Here's Esther doing Purvottanasana:

That looks like it does a good job strengthening the hip joints, too! Yeah, it can definitely be a challenge to practice with pain in your joints or to practice modified versions of poses you used to be able to do without props (I know because I have mild arthritis in one of my hip joints), but enjoying more mobility in your daily life and possibly avoiding joint replacement surgery, well, that's a pretty big payoff.

What is Mindfulness?

2011-11-29T14:39:00.001-08:00

by Nina

In Baxter’s post yesterday (see here), he described how a student of his, after a day of mindful yoga, was able to achieve a state of detached awareness that helped her deal more effectively with her teenaged son. And in my original post on the relaxation response (see here), I mentioned mindful yoga practice as one of several ways to trigger the relaxation response. So today seemed like a good day to explain what we mean by mindfulness and to say a little about how it helps.

“All of us have the capacity to be mindful. All it involves is cultivating our ability to pay attention in the present moment.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn

Poppy by Joan Webster

You might not realize this, but your thoughts alone can make you stress out. Worries about the future, regrets over the past, and judgments about yourself and others can trigger the stress response because you are essentially telling yourself that you are danger! In fact, in many cases, it is your thoughts about what’s going on that makes you stress out, not the situation itself.

Practicing mindfulness means becoming an impartial witness to your thoughts and experiences as you have them. To do this, step back and tune into the constant judging and reacting to inner and outer experiences that constantly stream through your mind.

“The eye is for seeing; the mind creates doubt; the wisdom faculty is for ascertaining [the nature of things]; the Field-Knower abides as the witness of all these processes.” —Moksha-Dharma

Yogis believe that there is a witness or drashtri (the Field-Knower, the Seer or Pure Awareness) present in all of us. And this witness is the spark of the divine, the single, incomprehensible consciousness that unites all beings, that dwells within.

So how does this witness help with stress levels? Being in mindful state gives you a break from obsessive thoughts about the past or anxiety about the future. And when you are free from stressful thoughts of danger, the relaxation response kicks in.

Pineapple Sage by Joan Gibson

Being mindful also teaches you to recognize the physical and mental symptoms of stress so you can nip them in the bud by using your favorite stress management techniques. And it teaches you about your thought patterns, so you can learn not to react on “auto pilot” (Baxter’s story about Maleena is example of this), which can give you the ability to live more peacefully.

To practice mindful yoga, simply bring your witnessing frame of mind into your yoga practice. Jon Kabat-Zinn expresses how to do this so well that I’m going to quote him:

“We practice yoga with the same attitude we bring to the sitting mediation or the body scan. We do it without striving and without forcing. We practice accepting our body as we find it in the present, from one moment to the next. While stretching or lifting or balancing, we learn to work at our limits, maintaining moment-to-moment awareness. We are patient with ourselves. As we carefully move up to our limits in a stretch, for instance, we practice breathing at that limit, dwelling in the creative space between not challenging the body at all and pushing it to far.”

You can also practice yoga as a moving meditation by focusing on your breath during your practice or on a particular physical sensation, such as spreading your toes evenly on the ground in all your poses. Mindful yoga is one of my favorite ways to de-stress, as I bring into my home practice subtle physical alignment tips I learn from my regular teacher, and then just experiment and feel....

Detachment, Discrimination, and Mindful Yoga

2011-11-28T13:51:00.001-08:00

by Baxter

At my recent workshop at The Yoga Project in Sellwood (see here), many insightful stories were shared among students over the course of our two days of practice together. One of my favorites came from Maleena on Saturday at the start of class. Maleena was one of the students who had taken both sessions on Friday. The practices we did that day included slower, introspective practices that involved noticing and feeling without jumping to judgment on the insights we perceived. An emphasis on grounded observation was encouraged throughout. Pranayama practices that were cooling, and long Savasanas were also a part of our work that first day.

Maleena mentioned a shift in reactivity that she had noticed upon returning home to her family on Friday evening. Maleena is a mother of three sons, ages 13, 15 and 18, and this night the 18 year old was up to some old patterns of interaction that would normally get Maleena stressed and worried, and could lead to a confrontation. But, to her surprise, she found that she was able to listen, observe and find curious the behavior her son was displaying without her usual emotional reaction.

Clouds Blowing By by Brad Gibson

As we explored this quite welcome discovery, it seemed that the slower, introspective yoga practices had grounded her is such a way that her old pattern had shifted. In yoga philosophy, this skill is known as vairagya, or detached awareness. The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali tells us that the practice of detachment is an important part of what it means to be a yogi:

“Renunciation is the practice of detachment (vairagyam) from desires.” Yoga Sutra 1.15, trans. B.K.S. Iyengar

This “detached awareness” does not imply Maleena did not care deeply about what her son was saying or feeling. But vairagya permits a yogini to have some space with which to apply another essential component of yoga, viveka, or discrimination, in order to chart a beneficial course of action for all involved.

“The ceaseless flow of discriminative knowledge (viveka) in thought, word and deed destroys ignorance, the source of pain.” Yoga Sutra 2.26, trans. B.K.S. Iyengar

And, of course, the more one mindfully practices, the more readily these new habits, or beneficial samskaras, supercede and eventually replace the older, obsolete reactions. This is one of the many milestone changes that take place as we deepen our practice that let us know we are on the right path. Thanks, Portland yoginis! I’ll see you in March!

For those of you who are interested in learning more about mindful yoga, Nina will be writing a separate post on the topic this week.

Friday Q&A: Cautions for Inversions

2011-11-25T20:27:00.001-08:00

Q: I’ve heard that some people should not do inversions, but you didn’t mention this in your post on Wednesday about inverted poses. Could address this?

A: Oops! My bad, as Buffy would say. It’s true that for certain medical conditions, inverted poses are, as they say, contraindicated. So I’m sorry I did not mention this earlier in my post "Just in Time for the Holidays: Inverted Poses".

First off, the poses you may need to be concerned about only include the full inversions and some of the partial inversions that are held for long periods of time.

If you have high blood pressure that is uncontrolled with medication, you should not do inverted poses, because, as I explained in my post (see here) they temporarily raise your blood pressure. And even if your high blood pressure is controlled with medication, talking with your doctor before doing full inverted poses is probably a good idea. People with heart problems should also consult their doctors.

If you are having eye problems, such as glaucoma or detached retina, inversions should also be avoided. Likewise, if you've recently had oral surgery. And those with neck problems should avoid the inversions that put pressure on their necks.

People with back problems will probably find that at least some of these poses may cause back pain, in which case, you should please come out of the pose and find an alternative (I’ve noticed Supported Bridge pose and Legs up the Wall pose can cause difficulties for people with lower back problems).

There are many yoga teachers who do not recommend inverted poses for women who are menstruating. However, as far as I know, there are no scientific studies to back up their concerns. What I recommend is that each of you do your own research on the subject, talking to your teachers, your gynecologist (I did that), and other female practitioners, and make up your own mind based on their advice.

Finally, if you are pregnant and not already experienced doing inverted poses, this is probably not the best time for you to start.

—Nina

Just in Time for the Holidays: Inverted Poses

2011-11-23T14:50:00.001-08:00

by Nina

In my original post about the relaxation response and yoga (see here), I mentioned that inverted yoga poses are one of the many ways you can trigger the relaxation response. Inverted poses are my personal go-to stress busters of choice, and if I could get my hands on Paul Weston (see here), I’d certainly teach him one or more of these amazing poses. So today I’m going to explain what I mean by “inverted poses,” and I’ll also provide some scientific background on them because understanding why these poses work can help you get the most out of them. Okay, here goes:

Any yoga pose where your heart is above your head is considered to be an inversion. Inverted yoga poses include full inversions, such as Headstand and Shoulderstand, where your heart is directly over your head and the rest of your body is also fully inverted. Also included as inverted poses are partial inversions, such as Downward-Facing Dog pose and Standing Forward Bend, where your heart is less directly over your head and your legs are either not fully and not at all inverted.

Standing Forward Bend from Yoga: The Poetry of the Body

The reason these poses trigger the relaxation response turns to be related to the mechanisms that control your heart rate and blood pressure. The nerves that control your heart rate and blood pressure are regulated through pressure sensors called baroreceptors. Your baroreceptors are located in the wall of each internal carotid artery at your carotid sinus (the arteries on each side of your neck that carry blood from your heart to your brain) and in the wall of your aortic arch (just above your heart). These baroreceptors detect any changes in your blood pressure, stretching when blood pressure is high and shrinking when blood pressure is low.

If your baroreceptors detect a fall in your blood pressure, they send signals via your nerves to increase your heart rate, constrict your blood vessels to raise your blood pressure, and switch your nervous system to fight or flight mode. Likewise, if your baroreceptors detect abnormally elevated blood pressure, they send signals to slow your heart rate, relax your blood vessels to lower your blood pressure, and switch your nervous system to relaxation mode.

In an inverted pose, your heart is higher than your head, the opposite of its position when you are upright. With your heart higher than your head, gravity causes more blood to flow in the direction of your head, creating more pressure than usual on your carotid sinus and aortic arch. As the arterial pressure is increased, your baroreceptors are stretched and signals are transmitted to your central nervous system as if your blood pressure was high throughout your body. Feedback signals are then sent back to your body to reduce the arterial pressure, slowing your heart rate, relaxing your blood vessels, and releasing hormones that decrease adrenaline production. This automatically switches your body to relaxation mode.

In addition, inverted or partially inverted poses where your neck is flexed (that is, your chin is pointing toward your chest), as in Shoulderstand, Plow pose, or Bridge pose, puts additional pressure on your carotid sinus (the arteries on each side of your neck that carry blood from your heart to your brain). This added stimulation of your baroreceptors may enhance the calming effects of the inversion.

How simple is that? As long as you are warm, quiet, and comfortable in the inverted pose, all you have to do is let pose work its magic! Naturally, supported versions of the poses (such as Shoulderstand with a chair or Bridge pose on blankets) are more relaxing than straight versions of poses in which you must support yourself, so if you’re practicing inversions for stress reduction, choose the supported versions.

In the coming weeks, I’ll provide details about the various inverted poses, but until then, the following is classic sequence of calming inversions. You can do any or all of these poses, but if you do more than one, I recommend doing them in the order shown below.

1.    Downward-Facing Dog pose, with your head resting on a block or folded blankets (1 to 3 minutes)
2.    Standing Forward Bend, with your head resting on a block or with folded arms and head resting on a chair seat (1 to 3 minutes)
3.    Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottansansa), with your head resting on the ground, a block, or the seat of a chair (1 to 3 minutes)
4.    Headstand (3 to 10 minutes)
5.    Shoulderstand, with a chair (3 to 10 minutes)
6.    Half Plow pose, with your legs supported by a chair seat (1 to 3 minutes)
7.    Supported Bridge pose, with your shoulders and head resting on the floor, your torso and legs supported by blankets or bolsters (5 to 15 minutes or longer)
8.    Legs up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani) with your pelvis supported with a bolster or blankets (5 to 15 minutes)

I’ve taught this sequence many times, and there are always people in each class who have difficulty with one or more of these poses. So I always teach a non-classic pose as well, Easy Inverted Pose (see here), because this is one pose almost everyone can do. Use this as a substitute for Shoulderstand, Plow pose, Bridge pose, or Legs Up the Wall pose, or just use it on its own.

Caution: Inverted poses may be unsafe for those with certain medical conditions (see here).

Larger Women and Yoga: Getting Creative

2011-11-22T17:52:00.001-08:00

Tarot Garden by Baxter Bell

by Baxter

On my last teaching trip to Portland, Oregon, in February 2011, I was asked by studio owner Vilma Zaleskaite of The Yoga Project in Sellwood (see here), if I would be willing to offer a three-hour session to the students in her Yoga for the Larger Woman class. You can imagine that as a skinny fella from Toledo, Ohio, I might think twice about such a proposition; but once I got grounded, I realized there was a lot I could share about my experience teaching students of all shapes and sizes, male and female, as well as my insights on how yoga could be a positive transformational practice for healthy aging.

Our first go around in February of this year was so well received that the students expressed interest in having an entire weekend experience of yoga. So I returned this past weekend for a 10-hour workshop with this enthusiastic group of practitioners. Topics we covered included healthy joints and improved mobility, and yoga for insomnia, digestion and metabolism, as well as stress and productivity. In addition to what I had to offer, I opened the floor up to discussion so I could also learn from this group of bright, intelligent and compassionate people.

What may seem obvious, but was often overlooked when these students attempted to take regular classes, is that most modern asanas are not that accessible to larger students, at least not the way they are usually taught. A lot of our work together focused on redefining the poses so that instead of cramming their bodies into the pose, the pose could be slipped onto them in a very appropriate way. I tried to encourage them to be creative, to think outside the “exact” structure of any given asana, and come up with ways to personalize the poses, so they will be more inclined to not only participate in class, but start to practice at home. One of the more experienced students echoed an idea we share with you here often: when she practices at home regularly, she feels better on many levels, but when she doesn’t, all bets are off. And it was so exciting to hear so many of the newer students already discovering positive benefits to the practice: improved sleep, mobility and ability to handle everyday stresses, and an improved relationship with their bodies.

Stay tuned for my next installment about how the practice changed the way one of these students dealt with unexpected stress....

Featured Pose: Hunting Dog

2011-11-21T13:20:00.001-08:00

by Baxter and Nina

This week’s featured pose is one of Baxter’s favorite posesfor lower back pain. Hunting Dog pose, which is a great precursor to strongposes like Warrior 3, is a wonderful way to tone and strengthen your upperbody, especially the serratus anterior muscles, as well your pelvic stabilizersand core belly muscles. It’s also a good pose for anyone trying to improve corestrength as well as strengthening the lower back.

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

lower back pain
balance issues
fatigue (when standing poses are too tiring)
improving right/left coordination
building arm strength

General Instructions: Start by placing a folded blanket on the floor. Then come into a hands-and-knees position, with your knees on the blanket and your hands on the floor or yoga mat. Keep a neutral curve in your lower back and strong arms.

Next, slowly take your right leg back behind you into a lungeposition, with your toes turned under and the ball of your foot on floor. Tryto keep your pelvis area and lower back in the starting neutral position at alltimes—no tip, tuck or turn.

If you are feeling stable, lift your right leg up until itis about parallel with the floor, but no higher. Again, no change to pelvicalignment!

Finally, consider reaching your arm forward parallel to thefloor.

Hold the position for at least 6 breaths, and up to 16 breaths. When you release, shake out your left hand and wrist. Repeat on the second side.

Cautions: If you arehaving lower back pain, keep the toes of your straight leg on the ground ratherthan lifting your leg. If you have wrist pain, bend your elbows and rest yourforearms on blocks, rather than putting weight on your hands.

Any Activity is Better than None

2011-11-17T16:43:00.001-08:00

by Nina

A recent article in the New York Times "Aging Well Through Exercise" (see here) cited several studies on exercise and aging that confirm, once again, that through exercise you can preserve your muscle mass and your strength, and thereby avoid declining from vitality to frailty as you age. Here's a brief quote from the article:

“We think these are very encouraging results,” said Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who oversaw the study. “They suggest strongly that people don’t have to lose muscle mass and function as they grow older. The changes that we’ve assumed were due to aging and therefore were unstoppable seem actually to be caused by inactivity. And that can be changed.”

Yeah, well, we've pretty much all heard that by now. So what really struck me about the article, was the fact that all those scientists still haven't figured out what kinds of exercise are best for healthy aging, how much you need to do, or how intense the exercise needs to be. They're still researching questions such as: Is endurance exercise necessary for muscle sparing? Or weight training?

In the end, the article concluded rather lamely: “What we can say with certainty is that any activity is better than none,” Dr. Wright says, “and more is probably better than less."

From Yoga: The Poetry of the Body by Yee with Zolotow

I pondered this for a couple of days, wondering how it applied to all us yoga practitioners. And I realized that the good news for us is that if any activity is better than none, we get to do whatever we want! So if you're thinking of starting a home yoga practice, go ahead and just do whichever poses make you happy. Or whichever poses intrigue you. Or whichever poses calm you down. Or whichever poses you want to learn to love. Or all the poses with animal names (I once did a practice like that with some children).

Hey Doc, What I Can I do About this Ringing in My Ears?

2011-11-16T18:46:00.001-08:00

by Baxter

In the 20 odd years I havebeen working with patients, this question comes up a lot! And the challenging part for me as ahealer is that western medical treatments don’t have much to offer the problemof Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. Often related to exposure to loud noise over time (whether from worksetting, environment or loud music), and therefore more common as we age,Tinnitus can range from a mild annoyance to a truly disruptive condition. I was hopeful for a while thatacupuncture might provide some relief for my patients, but that modality hashad minimal impact for those I have tried it with. So you can imagine my delight when a friend of mine, whojust happens to be a research psychologist at UCSF, mentioned in passing astudy she had just completed, applying Mindful Meditation (MM), a systemdeveloped by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, to Tinnitus.

Although our resident scientist will immediately pointout that the number of participants (only eight) makes predicting benefits to allsuffers of Tinnitus a bit premature, I am still pleased to see that there wassignificant improvement for those in the study. If you don’t know about MM, it involves sitting meditationpractices, breath awareness techniques and gentle movement practices--wow, thatsounds like some other system I have heard of…yoga! And not surprisingly, since it is based on yoga asana andBuddhist meditation techniques. Toread all about the study by Jennifer Gans and Robert Sweetow, click here. Andto learn more about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work, check out one of my favorite of hisbooks, Full Catastrophe Living, while listening to your favorite music at areasonable volume.

You're Too Late

2011-11-14T15:54:00.001-08:00

by Nina

“From contentment, the highest happiness is attained.” Yoga SutraII.42 (Edwin Bryant)

“This sattvic happiness does not depend on external objects, whichare vulnerable and fleeting, but is inherent in the mind when it is tranquiland content.” Edwin Bryant

Too Late by Brad Gibson

We started out with an agenda. The plan was to go to the JapaneseGarden in the Seattle Arboretum to see the Japanese maples in their brilliantfall glory. But we we arrived, the garden was closed until February. We peekedin through gate—what we could see through the bars looked gorgeous. Thearboretum itself was open and we could see from the road that mixed in with theevergreens there were still trees in brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, soI asked the gardener just outside the gate of the Japanese Garden where weshould go to see the best fall color. But he just waved his hand dismissivelyand said, “You’re too late. It’s over.” I said, “Not to us. And what I can seeof the Japanese Garden through the fence still looks beautiful.” He shruggedand said, “You should have been here last week.”

On our late fall walk along the Azalea Path, we not only sawbeautiful fall leaves, but also mushrooms and berries and moss and even a fewlate flowers. Look!

Moss and Berries by Brad Gibson

Thursday Q&A: Head Rolls

2011-11-10T15:18:00.001-08:00

Q: I note that you don’t recommend 360 head rolls, butthere seems to be great variation in this among yoga instructors (as well asother types of instructors). Could you please explain the issues withparticular reference to us older folks?

I don’t do neck rolls that move the head back into extension,especially if I have older students in class, as there is a risk of causingpain in the neck from several sources, including the facet joints, nerves andvertebral artery.

I prefer to introduce gentle neck extensionagainst gravity via poses like Locust and Cobra, where there seems to be lesschance of trouble arising in this area. I also teach to variations of neckreleasing movements to my students. One, called Owl Turns, involves looking tothe right or left as far as you can go with a bit of stretch. The second one, calledCurious Dog Tips, involves tipping the head to right or left as far as you can go with abit of stretch, ear to shoulder on that side.

--Baxter

Friday Q&A: Feet and Comments

2011-11-10T15:16:00.001-08:00

Q: I have a lot of trouble with Tree pose, which I know Ineed to do to help my balance. I find that I have problems with my feet feelingwobbly and insecure, not the rest of me, my feet, like I can’t get them flatand in solid contact with the floor. I usually wear custom orthotics because ofmy knees/arches, so I wondered about this being a factor in my feet feeling soweird (I love being barefoot but find it is harder on my knees). So I triedTree pose with my shoes on, and found I could do it much, much better. Justfelt so much more solidly rooted. However, I don’t really want to do yoga withmy shoes on for part of it. I think many of us have trouble with our feet, andI am wondering if there is anything I can do to just help my sorry feet whendoing Tree pose. I do try to do “yoga toes” first, making sure my toes arespread out, etc. I suspect others may also have feet problems, of varioussorts.

A: If you wear orthotics in my mind it might be good toexplore in yoga wearing them in some type of non-skid sock so your toes canstill feel the floor when you are practicing your balancing poses. It soundslike you have very high arches so to contact the floor without your orthoticswill be difficult. I might suggest that you explore doing the balancing poses(such as Tree pose) with your orthotics and non-skid socks, then take them offand try in your bare feet directly afterwards. Sometimes this can work to buildmuscle memory to teach your feet what to do. I wouldn’t push your feet to hurtyour knees though. Be patient and kind to yourself when you try this. — ShariSer

A: Interestingly, I had a woman in my workshop on Saturdayin Petaluma who also wears orthotics, and is now using a special pair that shewears when not in shoes in her yoga classes. She can get away with not usingthem at times, and in fact did the workshop with out them.

As abalance exercise, instead of Tree pose, we did the Tadasana (Mountain pose) toUrdhva Hastasana (Upward Arms) dynamic series, where you lift the heels of bothfeet off the floor as you swing your arms up, and then lower your heels down asyou exhale your arms down. The idea is to keep the ball of your foot even onthe floor as you lift and lower your heels, as folks with stiff, high arches orflat, collapsed arches tend to roll in or out. This can also strengthen thefoot muscle that associated with a healthy arch. In addition, I find thatkeeping the ball of the foot grounded and lifting the toes off the ground canencourage strengthening of the medial and lateral arches of the foot, so Irecommended students with flat feet to do this in their standing poses. —BaxterBell

Q: Can you tell me how to leave a comment on a blog post?(I can’t quite figure it out.)

Don’t feel bad—it’s not particularly obvious. Here are thebasic steps:

Find the post you want to comment on.

Scroll down to the end of the post and look for the signature on the post. To the right you’ll see the word “comments” preceded by the current number of comments on the post. That phrase is a link.

Click on the comments link. A new window will open showing the current comments (if there are any) and a space for you to write your own comment.

Type your comment in the “Leave your comment” box.

Type the word verification letters you see displayed in the “word verification” box. (This helps prevent spam from appearing in the comments.)

Choose an identity. You can use a Google identity (if you have one), you can enter your name, or you can choose to be anonymous.

Click the Preview button if you wish to see how your comment will look before you submit it (in case you want to edit it).

Click the Publish button to submit your comment to the blog.

The comment will not appear immediately on the blog. Emailwill be sent to the moderator (that would be me, Nina), who will then approvethe comment. (I have chosen to moderate the comments in order to screen them.So far, I’m happy to say, I have not needed to censor anything.)

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Featured Sequence: Dynamic Reclined Hip Stretches

2011-11-10T14:31:00.001-08:00

by Baxter

Last week I introduced somethoughts on low back pain and yoga (see here). As I mentioned, the majority ofepisodes of lower back pain are related to short-term issues of muscle strainor spasm, or other soft tissue and joint situations that usually resolve in sixweeks or so. However, it is possible that a regular yoga practice or a specialsequence directed at the lower back area can speed up that process and get youback on track a bit sooner. I have frequently observed that for students whocome to class for the first time, acute low back strain often requires only afew sessions in my Back Care Yoga class before the student is well enough toreturn to or advance to a regular yoga class. In this setting, the variety ofposes that may be helpful is a bit larger than with more serious lower backinjuries or conditions. For example, you can be a bit more comfortable withsome twisting and forward bending poses, which often have to be modified in theother situation.

This week I would like togive you a very brief sequence of poses to try when addressing low backpain. This is a great little sequence that Raven, my wife, cam up with a few years back.

My intention is to add to this sequence over the next few weeks. I have foundthat it is better to start with shorter practices and advance as you areready.

The Reclined Hip Stretches sequence allows you togently release tension around your hip joint and hamstrings, which may help relieve lower back pain. This sequence isa good general warm-up you can do at the beginning of any asana practice. Ittakes your hip joint through most of its range of motion, so it could behelpful for conditions from mild joint stiffness to arthritis. It is also a greatway to begin stretching your hamstrings, and because your arms move up andoverhead at the start of the sequence, it can help loosen up tight shoulderjoints.

Caution: If you havesignificant lower back problems, make sure to take your knee across your mid-lineslowly and keep it on the easy side for a while. Allow your lower back andpelvis to stay flat on the floor.

1. Start by lying on your back, with your legsstraight. You can set yourself up near a wall, so your feet can press into thewall.

2. Inhale and raise your arms overhead and back toward thefloor.

3. Then exhale and bend your right knee to your chest, bringing your handsto meet the knee.

4. Inhale, and gently guide your right knee towardthe right using your right hand.

5. Exhale, and guide your knee back to center, then,changing to your left hand, guide your knee 6-12 inches over to the left.

6. Inhale, and guide your knee back to center. Then exhale, and holding onto the back of your leg,straighten your leg toward the ceiling as much as you can.

7. Inhale, bend your knee, release your foot to thefloor, and straighten your leg along the ground.

Repeat the entire sequence on your left side. After that, if you wish, you can repeat the sequence on both sides a few more times.