a yoga practice for shoulders and neck

Here is the latest video. I'm still working on the process, so its not 'perfect'. I appreciate comments on how to keep improving these. I tried to post a full 30 minute sequence, but wasn't able to load it. So now I'm trying to cut it in pieces. This is neck and shoulders part 1: warms ups and stretches.

As with any yoga practice, it is exercise and there are always inherent risks with exercise. Check with your doctor first if that is appropriate. But most importantly, pay attention. Stretching sensations ease with time. If pain increases while you are in a posture, or when you repeat, back off. Give yourself some time and space to ease into the work . And come to a yoga class, seek the advice of a teacher if you find this confusing.

This is the first 8 minutes of a 30 minutes guided practice. Get out your mat, a blanket and a strap. Enjoy!

Lisa

Forward Bends from Standing: Pilates Roll Down, Uttanasana, Pandangustasana, and PadaHastasana.

We do a lot of forward bends in yoga. They are great for our bodies. Done well they stretch the entire back surface of the body, from the souls of the feet, through the back of the calves, knees, and thighs, across the hips, up the spine and back of the neck, connecting all the way through the fascia over the head to the ridge of the brows (thank you Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains).

When we stretch the back of the body the nerves themselves get stretched. Within a reasonable tolerance, nerves like being stretched. Even when there is some pull in the muscles and fascia, there is a pleasure sensation in forward bends. They all calm us, help us sleep, and help us deal with stress.

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Forward bends are also risky. More people injure themselves in forward bends than in back bends . If the intervertebral disks are compromised, too much pressure on the back of the disk can cause further disk damage and result in the disk pushing onto the nerve roots and causing pain and sciatica. Additionally, when the spine is cantilevered forward of the body, the lumbar spine (low back) is working at maximum capacity. If the muscles are not strong enough to support the weight of the upper body you risk injury with a flat back (extended spine, number 2 in the video) forward bend. When your abdominal muscles are engaged, they help in the work of carrying the upper body's weight and the risk of injury is greatly lessened. If you think you have weak abs and back muscles, stick with the Pilates Roll Down (number 1 in the video) until you feel yourself gaining some strength in these muscles.

To support forward bends, continuously engage your deep abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. You can find this work with the following exercises: Place a hand on your belly and feel the softness there. Breath in and out of your stomach. As you exhale you will feel the abdomen hollow. This is transverse abdominus engaging. Lift the belly even further back and hold it there while you breath into your rib cage now. This move engages both the tranverse abdominus and the oblique abdominal muscles. Just this breathing move done every day (3 minutes of conscious engagement about 3 times each day) will begin to improve your ab strength. Keep this engagement throughout your forward bends, and engage even more intently when you return to standing.

You also want to engage your pelvic floor to help support the lumbar spine. Pelvic floor muscles span the bottom of the pelvis in a diamond shape between the pubic bone, tail bone and two sitting bones. The muscles engage when you narrow that diamond and lift it gently toward your center. If this is hard to find, try stopping and the flow of urine the next time you use the toilet. They are the same muscles groups. Keep them lifted throughout the exercises.

If your hamstrings and the fascial tissue in the back of the legs and hips is tight, do your forward bends with your knees bent. After you fold forward with bent knees you can slowly begin to work the back of the knees open and invite more length into that region of the body. Be patient. With patient attention the hamstrings will lengthen over many months or years, not weeks.

Finally, when you add the bow of the head toward your sternum you complete the stretch of the back surface of the body and the spinal cord. Rest in your forward bend for a few breaths, or even 2 to 5 minutes, as your body can tolerate. Longer resting in a safe position (perhaps 80% of your range of motion with abdominal and pelvic floor muscles engaged) will result in gradual changes in the body.

Namaste,
Lisa

p.s. the great music is by my friend Sid Rosen. It is from the CD "Not Alone." You can get copies of the CD through cdbaby.com, Gracewinds Music, or Grass Roots Bookstore.

a cellular meditation

You are made up of trillions of cells. The number I learned was 73 trillion, and it is a close enough number. Maybe a few trillion more, maybe a few trillion less. You are trillions of tiny cells. You are trillions of collaborations occurring each moment.

Each cell is individual. Each cell consumes energy and produces waste. Each cell respirates: inspiring and expiring. Each cell has a job, a task, and a purpose. Each cell communicates, interacts, and does its part. I believe that each cell has its own sentience, its own awareness, its own memory, and its own emotions. You are a colonial organism, a great collaboration of 73 trillion cells.

You are one being. You have a beginning and an end. You can look down and see the physical extent of your body. You can close your eyes and feel the physical extent of you body. This body is you. As far as any truly knows, this body is your only chance at existence. There is no guarantee of any existence beyond this unique opporutunity.

The perception of the self as a solitary being is an illusion. Your very existence is dependent upon the grand collaboration of the trillions of cells that make up your body. The experience of the self as a unique solitary being is an experience of unity, an experience of the many being one.

Each of us on the planet are part of the greater whole as well. Interacting, existing, respirating, consuming, producing, living and dying. Not one of us can exist outside of the earth community. We are but a cell in the intricate existence of the planet.

You are unique. You are part of the whole. This is true. Each of us must come to understand this dichotomy. We are unique and we are one. Only when we can come to terms with our own split personality, only when we can embrace our place in the whole, only when we can take full responsibility for our part in the whole, will we be able to responsibly live out our part in the whole.

In the current global millieu, humanity is living like a cancer. We are consuming way more than our share of the resources. We are committed to growth even when such unabated growth will eventually kill off the organism. We are contriving our own death in our pursuit of growth. We can change this, but each of us must look hard at our place in the whole. We must experience our own existence: individual, collaboration and unity.

Chapter 6: The Thick and the Thin

This is an ongoing story about my life and my body and yoga. I began posting the story on Jan 24, 2009. Scroll back to that date if you want to begin at the beginning. Otherwise, just jump in.

I like to go through the check out lines at the grocery store. I like talking with the clerk and the odd small talk that I have with other people in the check out lines. I like semi-anonymous conversations and the chance to interact with cranky babies and fidgety toddlers. I also like to read the tabloid headlines. I rarely buy them, but this week I bought People Magazine. The cover photo is of beautiful blonde woman, busty, soft bodied with a big smile. The headline reads: “Jessica Simpson weight debate. She’s proud of her body! Stop calling her fat. Inside the star’s bold choice to lead a real life.” The other tabloids on display presented the debate in short head lines. Some mags simply called her fat. Other’s critiqued her clothing choices. Some reported her retorts. The magazines that if you are a famous woman in America you lose the right to have a body larger than a size 0. If you are larger than a 0 you are fair game for sacrifice at the altar of American pop culture. The sacrificial altar is the grocery check out line.

The words on the magazine covers strike me hard. A personal assault that mimics my own internal dialogue: “You are fat.” “I’m proud of my body.” “You look fat in those clothes.” “I love my thighs.” “You are aging and droopy.” “I feel strong and vibrant.” I practice the positive retort. I recite mantras, affirmations, and prayers. I believe in the power of positive thinking. But the inner critique has not been silenced. The inner critique does not need reinforcement and thrives no matter how much I ignore her. She carries on in spite of my trying to listen to her with love and affirm her presence. I would love to give her a quick burial. She has longevity DNA.

I have been on too many diets: Pritikin, the grapefruit diet, vegetarian, fasting (aka short term starvation), raw foods, meat and vegetables only, ice cream only, and many more. Some of the diets were clearly unhealthy and focused solely on rapid weight loss. Some diets carry threads of righteousness and morality. My wise mind knows that diets don’t work. My inner anorexic is ever hopeful.

I avoid placing value words on my diet. I avoid labeling myself good or bad based on what I have been eating. My value is not dependent upon what I eat or how much I weigh. And yet one voice inside me still believes that life would be perfect if I was only 10 pounds thinner. Another part of me believes that a chocolate bar can cure any wounds of the heart, mind or body. I don't want to die still trying to lose "those last 10 pounds."

My body feels good when I make healthy food choices and balance my life with adequate exercise. At 50 years old I feel best if I eat very little wheat or dairy, as much locally grown produce and meat as possible, and a few sweets. I eat chocolate. I occasionally overeat. I weigh myself infrequently. My weight goes up and down by about 5 pounds. When I am 5 pounds heavier I feel beastly and fat. When I am 5 pounds lighter I feel self righteous and 'good.' All of this judging is happening in my own mind. And either end of the spectrum is a dangerous place for my mind.

The weight and food battle feels hard wired into my head. I have brief periods of immunity. I am more vulnerable to the battle when my mental defenses are down and when I spend time with my family or in Los Angeles. I start noticing things about myself in LA that I don’t see when I am at home in Corvallis. If I am feeling insecure about my work or my family the battle might rage as well. And there is something about the winter holidays, no matter where I spend them, that can instigate the battle.

And I loathe and judge the battle itself. I don't want to have this battle. I want to rise above it. I want to be better than it. I try hard not to talk about it. I avoid people whose conversation revolves around their weight. And then I judge myself for judging. Argh.

I am coming to accept and appreciate that I am of more than one mind. I don’t have a split personality. But within this mind of mine live conflicting thoughts. Eat. Don’t eat. Be thin. Be who you are. I have to work to find the center between the extremes in my own mind. Yoga helps me find the center. Yoga helps me to observe the thoughts. I don’t have to be my thoughts. I can be this person who exists with many thoughts, many moments, many bodies.

a meditation

Lie on your back on the floor
Get comfortable
Close your eyes
Rest quietly

Tune into the sensations, the presence, of your body.
Notice the awareness of your form.
Notice the places that feel tense, tight, painful.
Notice the rest of you.
Invite youself to shift your position, to release tightness, to find ease, to reduce pain.
Continue to turn your attention to the sensory collage of the body.

Listen to the internal sound of your breath.
Listen to the internal sounds of having a body.
Open up your listening to the sounds in the room around you.
Without attachment or aversion, listen.
Open your listening to the sounds in the world outside the room.
Without attachment or aversion, simply listen.
Imagine you can extend your hearing far away.
Listen to the distant roar of the ocean.
Listen to the wind blowing across mountains, over plains.

Return your awareness to your body. Into your form. Into it's sounds. Into it's sensations.

As you are able, invite the exterior awareness to overlay the interior awareness. Simply. No forcing, no doing, just being in this moment of sensation.

Rest.

Chapter 5: Tenure Denial and Body Affirmed

This is an ongoing story about my back and my body and yoga. I began posting the story on Jan 24, 2009. Scroll back to that date if you want to begin at the beginning. Otherwise, just jump in.

So where am I? A year or so post surgery. We’re still living in Nashville. Summer, my younger son, is just a couple years old. I’m struggling. My tenure case came up for review in the 1998-1999 academic year, just a year and a half post-surgery. I wasn’t the best candidate, but I wasn’t the worst. When I compared myself with my Vanderbilt colleagues I felt more than adequate to the job. I had worked hard and put together a strong portfolio. The pile of my publications measured more than a foot thick. But the thickness of the pile was not what the Dean was judging by. He had an additional agenda. He needed to cut the size of faculty by at least 10%. Since he couldn’t fire tenured faculty it meant a brutal year for those of us coming up for tenure review.

The process of denying tenure means they have to prove that you aren’t good enough. I heard rumors through the grapevine that the Dean set the tenure bar as "tenurable at Harvard" even though I was in a backwater department with few resources at a second tier university. It sounded devastating. I heard nothing directly from the Dean up until the day before the University Board meeting where the final stamps of approval were given. Although the Dean had made the decision to deny me tenure months before, he held onto my paperwork until the very last minute. I don’t remember who told me that I had been turned down, fired in any other business. It was probably my department chair, a rather ineffective and imemorable man. The news put me into a shock. I do remember sitting outside on a bench with Jay (my husband), alternately crying and being stunned. It was an devastating ego blow. I was lost. My career had been my primary definition of myself. The rug had been pulled from beneath me.

My contract with the university required them to pay me salary for the following academic year. So I stuck around and did as little work as possible. I learned why corporations give golden parachutes and buy people out of contracts: my presence in the Geology department was bad for everyone’s spirits and general morale. The graduate students, who had no political power at Vanderbilt, lost more respect for the Department. My colleagues who didn’t have tenure got paranoid and started looking for ways out. I showed up everyday and I taught my classes. I tried to sit outside the fray, have no opinions, and not enter into discussion. People asked me if I would sue the university, but I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t want the job back. I thought about applying for other academic jobs but just couldn’t. I had been beat up and spit out by academics and I didn’t want to enter the arena again.

I started practicing yoga everyday. I decided to reclaim my physical health. I made my body a priority over my job. I went to the gym daily and took all the yoga classes available there. Yoga was just starting to bloom in Nashville. K-Lea Gifford, had opened 12SouthYoga and I became a dedicated student. I took occasional Ashtanga classes downtown at the Yoga Source. I tried to taste all the flavors of yoga available. I went to yoga workshops with Erich Schiffman and Tim Miller. My shift in focus from geology to yoga started to bring me out of my depression. I was finding pleasure in having a body.

Here is what I learned: movement is essential. The human body is made to be in motion. My spirit could recover in motion. Being confined to a chair for hours at a time is unnatural and leads to ill health and pain. I felt best when I was just living a normal life in motion: walking, talking, cleaning, moving, parenting and prioritizing body over brain. It took a few more years, but I gradually weaned myself from pain and neuropathy medicines. My body got stronger, healthier, and wiser. I learned to listen to it.

Pain is a powerful motivator. To stay out of pain, I practiced yoga everyday. I went for long hikes a few times each week. I learned to stay away from conference room chairs, soft couches, and any sitting support that encouraged slumping. I learned to meditate in motion. Sitting still was, and continues to be, a struggle. Motion is my saving grace.

Here is a short video to underline my point that movement is essential for a healthy life. Enjoy:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/30/timelapse-of-a-9mont.html

My body, Chapter 4: Post-surgery

This is an ongoing story about my back and my body and yoga. I began posting the story on Jan 24, 2009. Scroll back to that date if you want to begin at the beginning. Otherwise, just jump in.

I woke from the anesthetic and felt like I had been run over by a large truck. I hurt everywhere. The very idea of walking seemed an impossibility. It felt as if the surgeons had placed a steel plate in my lower back, rather than rods and screws. I remember asking the nurse if that had happened. She said “nah, that’s what everybody feels like.”

I was in the hospital for 5 days. The first three on was on self-administered intravenous morphine. I didn’t like the morphine. Every time I closed my eyes I’d have horrible visions: a personalized horror movie of being cut up into pieces, mutilated and tortured. I used as little of the morphine as possible. They switched me to high doses of oral codeine on the 4th day.

Here is what I remember from the hospital: My friend Maddie brought me fancy teas to drink and a book with photographs of flowers and beaches. My friend Susie spent the first night = with me. Jay brought the boys to visit. Summer, just 9 months old, was horribly sick and wasn't eating anything. Watching mindless daytime television including a cooking show where they demonstrated how to impale a chicken on a beer can and then BBQ it. My Vanderbilt Dean thought that I should bring my computer into hospital with me, that it would be a good time to get some writing done. Twelve years later I can finally laugh at that suggestion.

The nurses made me walk everyday. I swore at them, but I walked. By the time I left the hospital I could walk, maybe, 40 feet at a stretch. I could get to the toilet by myself, but using it was excruciating. My bladder remained frozen from the morphine and I was self-catheterizing to pee when I left the hospital. I was afraid the bladder damage might be permanent. Opiates really bog down my digestive track. All I wanted to eat was prunes and prune juice, just to keep things moving along. When I had a normal pee I sang halleluiah.

Some friends flew out to Tennessee to help out. Doris, Kate and my Mom each came to stay for a week, one after the other. They helped me through the worst of it. They’d bring Summer to me to snuggle, help get the boys down to bed, help with dinner and cleaning and all those normal life things. They rubbed my feet, my back and my shoulders, helped me in and out of the shower. (Thank you!

Our house was laid out in a circle and my exercise for the first few weeks was simply to walk the loop inside my house every few hours. When I finally made it outside and walked to mailbox I considered it a major milestone. To keep myself entertained I did 'bed yoga,' read books, watched TV, and felt guilty for not writing like my Dean expected me to. I slept as much as I could.

Recovery was slow. I did my physical work religiously: walking, abdominals, physical therapy, stretching. I wore a full body brace for the first 6 weeks. I remember someone who had had the same surgery telling me “I still use the brace when I do heavy lifting.” That scared me, I did not want the brace to become a permanent fixture in my life. I did gradually get stronger, I could walk farther and do more. My life began to look normal. But I still had sciatica. In addition I had peripheral neuropathy that I didn’t have before the surgery. The sciatic nerve must have been injured in the surgery. The neuropathy resulted in numbness and ‘voodoo’ pains in my left foot: sudden sharp shooting pains between the long bones of the first and second metatarsals that would stop me in my tracks. I wore a brace on my left foot for a quite a while. I didn't stop wearing it at night until 2004.

The orthopedist said that it would take a year to completely recover. At the end of the year he pronounced me better, prescribed amitriptyline for the lingering neuropathy, celebrex for the back pain and dismissed me from his care. I guess I felt better than I had before surgery, but I didn’t feel great. My life appeared normal, but I wasn’t who I wanted to be. I was depressed and grieving my old body. I was still pretty weak. I still had sciatica and back pain. I couldn’t sit for more than 30 minutes at a stretch. I couldn’t stand still for more than 15 minutes. Movement, slow movement, felt best. I wasn’t in good health and could not embrace my job. In fact, I struggled alot with my job because it was so painful to sit at a desk all day. My frustration with the orthopedist and where he left me drove me first to a therapist (officially diagnosed with situational depression.) and then to better self care.

This is the remains of my body brace, with the straps removed, resting quietly in the garden. I'm thinking maybe I should add a cross over them to mark their passing.

My Body, Chapter 3: Surgery

This is an ongoing story about my back and my body and yoga. It begins on Jan 24, 2009. Scroll back to that date if you want to begin at the beginning. Otherwise, just jump in.

In 1996 the Spondylolithesis had become sufficiently pronounced to limit my life. I was managing to get to work everyday and do the fundamentals of my job, but I wasn’t doing all the other parts of my life that kept me vibrant. My family, friends, home and spiritual life were bearing the brunt of my disability.

I had used yoga and exercise to keep the condition manageable for most of the preceding decade. Having two young children and a 60-hr/week job left no time for self care. The pregnancies and childbirth pushed my back to the edge. I was hiking one day in 1996 with my son in a back pack on my back. I twisted my ankle and fell. That fall was the injury that pushed my back over the edge.

First I went to see a chiropractor. He did his adjustment magic but everything just seemed to worsen. He took more x-rays and told me I should see an orthopedic surgeon.

I don’t remember the orthopedist’s name. He clearly found himself to be important and well known. He looked at my x-rays and advised me to have surgery. He said that the next time I took a fall, got in a car accident, or had some other minor trauma to my spine I was liable to lose bladder and bowel control. He said that if I left my spine untreated I would eventually wind up in a wheelchair.

I went to a neurosurgeon for a second opinion. The neurosurgeon also found him self to be important and well known. Jay went with me to the appointment, so I could have another set of ears in the room. The neurosurgeon said I could probably postpone the surgery for a while, but that I would eventually need it. He didn’t offer any way of dealing with the ongoing pain. He didn’t even talk to me, he addressed all of his comments to Jay. I left that appointment angry and still in pain. He offered little hope for change.

I called my old friend Agi for advice. She concurred with the orthopedist: it was time for surgery. There was at least some hope of improvement with this solution. I don’t know how long it took me to make the final decision, but on April 1st of 1997 I had a spinal fusion with bone graft and instrumentation. The orthopedist placed 6 titanium screws into my vertebra, two each into L4, L5 and S1. The screws are joined together by two long titanium rods that run along either side of my spine. The orthopedist shaved live bone from my right illium and laid the bone between the wings of L4 and L5, and L5 and S1. The surgery fused together my spine from L4 to S1 and is referred to as a spinal fusion with instrumentation. I think of it as if I just had a very large sacrum. I have no mobility in my lower back. All of my bending here arises either above L4 or below the sacrum.

The image below is not my spine but comes from an online website. I once had copies of the x-rays of my own back, but they got left behind in one move or another. This is the closest image to my own surgery that I could find.

My Body, Chapter 2: Some History

The first time I remember seeing a doctor for low back pain I was in graduate school, maybe 1985. We had moved from one apartment to another and the day after moving furniture I couldn’t move. I had a deep low pain in my back and I knew that something was wrong. I went to Stanford University Health Care. The doctors looked at my back, made me to a few forward bends while they examined me and told me to take anti-inflammatory meds and come back if the pain didn’t go away within a week or two. It was a generally unhelpful session. I felt like something more was wrong, but didn’t know what else to do. If the doctor’s said it was okay, it must be okay

About 5 year’s later as a new faculty member at UC Berkeley I took an aerobic exercise class. At the end of the class the instructor lead some abdominal exercises. We began with a ‘reverse crunch,’ or what I would now call a partial Pilates Teaser. We began in a seated position with our knees bent and our feet on the floor, our hands clasped behind our head. She had us hinge backwards about 30 degrees and then return to sitting. I don’t know how many reps she had us do, but before we were through I had sudden severe back pain and I just lay down on the floor. I was embarrassed, the pain was in my body but my mind went into self criticism: I was out of shape, fat, bad. I stayed still on the floor for a little while, then tried to get up and sneak out of class without anyone noticing. I tried to pretend that nothing had happened. I took Tylenol, or something similar, but the pain didn’t go away.

I don’t know how long I waited before calling my friend, chiropractor Agi Ban. Maybe it was a few days but more likely a few weeks. Denial was not making the pain go away. I have to admit, part of me still thinks denial is the best medicine.

So, I called Agi. She looked at my back and took x-rays. She diagnosed that I had spondylolithesis, grade 1 or 2 at that point. I don’t remember. She did her chiropractic adjustments and gave me exercises. She encouraged me to start taking yoga classes, to get fit and to lose weight. There wasn’t a fix for this condition, only maintenance. I needed to learn how to live with it. I used my denial medicine liberally. I acted as if nothing was wrong.

No one knows for sure how I came by this condition. It can be genetic but no one else in the family has it. It can be caused by trauma and that I did have in fair measure. Somewhere I read that backs are particularly vulnerable to a spondylolthesis rupture in the age range of 7, 8,or 9ish. And somewhere in that age range I had a major a trauma.

I don’t remember how old I was. Grade school. My sisters were at least walking age (they are 4 and 5 years younger than me). We had gone to the beach for the weekend. We had a second floor apartment with a balcony over the sand. My Dad and I had gone pier fishing in the morning and I remember it being cold and that we had to bundle up. Dad and I were the early birds in the family and we’d do early morning things together, watch tv or explore.

Dad liked to ‘tease.’ You could call it ‘extreme teasing’ or you could call it sadism. He did leave bruises and I remember being shocked to learn in therapy that leaving bruises qualified the teasing as abuse. Dad also liked to drink. I assume he was drinking on this day.

He was teasing my sisters and I, pretending that he was going to drop us off the balcony. There was some struggling. Squeals of fear and laughter combined. He was dangling me from the balcony and he dropped me. I don’t know if it was on purpose or an accident. I never asked him. He was dead before I started having serious back problems. I really don’t remember anything else from the day. I know that I wasn’t taken to see a doctor and that no x-rays were taken. I know that I never went pier fishing again. My story was “pier fishing isn’t fun, all I ever catch is starfish.” I believed that story and conveniently forgot being dropped from the balcony.

My Body, Chapter 1: Spondylolithesis

I have a large scar on my back. I can’t see it. I have to describe it by touch. It roughly traces my lower spin, from the middle of my sacrum to about the base of my ribs. It isn’t perfectly straight. There are some small lumpy fat deposits along the side of it. It feels like a narrow valley lined with a tightly stretched bit of plastic. I’ve had the scar for 12 years.

Occasionally someone notices the scar when we are dancing or doing yoga. “What happened to your back?” they ask. It reminds me. I don’t think about my back very often any more, and yet much of my life these days is somehow tied into the story of my back.

The technical details: In 1996 I was diagnosed with Grade 3 Spondylolithesis. The facet joint between my 4th and 5th lumbar vertebra had broken and the L4 vertebrae had slipped forward over L5 by 2 cm, about 65% of the width of the vertebra. The facet joints are the joints between the wings of the vertebra, on which the spine hinges. They hold each vertebrae in place over the one below while allowing the magnificent range of motion of the spine. The joint was unstable and mobile, meaning that through the day the L4 would slide back and forth over the top of L5 with about a centimeter’s range of movement.

The result of the movement was a gradual shearing of my spinal cord and a lot of pain. I was beginning to have foot drop, meaning that it was difficult to keep my left foot in flexion when I lifted the foot from the floor to walk. I had severe sciatica in my right leg. My entire low back hurt all the time. I was losing mobility, flexibility, and the ability to experience joy. I felt like there was a spigot on my low back that allowed all my energy to flow out. Because of my lack of mobility, emotional depression, a body type that easily holds extra weight and a tendency to use food as medication I was also about 30 pounds overweight. The extra weight exacerbated the back pain. I felt and looked bad and that helped feed a negative feedback loop of emotions and eating. I was a mess.

I was working as a faculty member at Vanderbilt University as this time. Most of my duties were desk-work. Research, writing, planning classes, and general faculty duties are largely completed in front of a computer screen. I was preparing to come up for tenure the following year. The expectation was that I was to perform as one of the best and brightest researchers and educators in my field. To quote my Dean at the time: to get tenure at Vanderbilt, I should be able to get tenure at Harvard. The work expectations alone were daunting and stress inducing, without the added physical obstacles. The tenure process at high ranking universities has a tendency to kill marriages and deform psyches.

In addition my sons were very young, aged 1 and 4. We’d pick up the kids from University childcare, come home, eat dinner, and I’d collapse in bed, thoroughly spent and guilty that I had no energy left to give to them the attention they deserved. They watched alot of tv that year. It was hard on my whole family. Blessings to my sons and Jay for sticking with me through this.

Wooo Hooo!

It is a hope filled week. I can feel it in the air. Everyone is smiling. The sun is shining. We are happy.

Yesterday I was listening to the concert at the Lincoln Memorial on the radio. When Pete Seger and Bruce Springsteen sang "This land is your land" I found myself in tears. Unexpected tears just like when I watched Obama's acceptance speech. I am moved by this moment in history. I can feel my breath and open my eyes and yell WOOOOO HOOOO!

So, do some joyful yoga. Get out your mat. Do a sun salute or two. Let your heart open wide and full. Breath deep. Inhale, exhale, yell, dance, and celebrate.

Here is a quick little Vinyasa to tide you over. I'm working on getting video and stills up for my posts, but I think many of you will be able to follow this:

Come into Dog Pose, well grounded and alive.
Look between your hands and step or jump forward to a squat and then sit down on the floor.
Extend your legs out in front of you and stretch forward into Paschimottonasana (full forward bend).
If your able, hold your big toes with the first two fingers of each hand, if your feet are too far away, hold your ankles, shins or the backs of your knees.
Bend your knees and pull your feet in toward your chest while you come up to balancing on your sitting bones.
Then keeping your hold, extend your legs into a navasana stance and balance there for about 5 breaths.
Gently rock forward, cross your ankles into sukhasana, bow forward and place your hands on the floor in front of your legs and then step your legs back and lift up into Dog Pose again.
Hold Dog pose for 5 breaths before repeating the sequence. Repeat the entire sequence 5 times.

Songs to myself and to you!

The storm gods, the gods of light, of sky, dawn, and wind, the angels, the saints, the demigods and demons, all gaze at you in amazement.

You, your form: seeing you the worlds tremble and so do I.

As you touch the sky my breath stops. (adapted from the Bhagavad Gita)
_

The heated horse recognizes the taste of cold water
When he comes down to the stream, falling from the mountains,
And when I ride to you, to reach down to your lips, I recognize the delight
of living on earth (Raimaly-aga in Chingiz Aitmatov)

_


This moment is the life you have. You are a source of wonder. You are the dream. You are a reflection of God.
Use your life well.

The world is Heaven, if we choose to make it so.

Pranayama: sit still, breath into the full expanse of your lungs. Follow your exhale to its final end. Rest in the pause at the end of the exhale. Receive the next inhale as a gift. Fill your lungs with that gift. Rest on the crest of the breath. The exhale till you are completely empty. Pause and then begin again.

shoulders!

I'm back. November and December had lots of distraction. Here is the yoga of returning to this commmitment. I don't know what to write, I don't know what to say. My mind says "you don't have anything to write." But I come to the page. I come back to my yoga and offer you a pose or two for the day:

Zombie Arms and Pulling Straps

Zombie arms: 1) lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Reach your arms straight up to the ceiling holding a block between your hands . Now allow your shoulder blades to roll to the sides of your back as you lift the block as far toward the ceiling as possible. Keep your arms extended toward the ceiling and drop your shoulder blades back down to the floor. Repeat 5 to 10 times. 2) Press your low back and lower ribs firmly into the floor. Keep your awareness in the grounding of the back of your body as you rotate your arms in the shoulder socket and as if you were going to set the block on the floor over your head. It is more important to keep your low back and lower ribs on the floor than to set the block on the floor. You can make the move more challenging by extending the legs along the floor.

Pulling Straps: 1) lie face down on a bolster or folded stack of blankets. You want a long and narrow lift that extends from your lower ribs to your hips (i.e. the bolster is longwise under your torso). 2) lift the legs parallel to the floor either with the toes touching the floor or with the toes pointed and legs extended. 3) Lift the head and chest, gazing at the floor, so that the head is just above the level of your shoulders. 4) Reach your arms forward along side your ears, then sweep the arms back toward your sides in a 'snow angels' motion. Keep your spine steady and your abdominal muscles engaged as you sweep the arms foward and back 6 to 8 times.

Happy Shoulders!

Heart Opener: an antidote to long hours at the computer

This is a simple exercise that can be performed seated or standing. I'll describe the seated variation first, since you are probably sitting at your computer right now. It is a great antidote to the aches and pains in your upper back and neck accrued while spending long hours at your computer.

Come to sit a little forward in your chair. You'll want to have your pelvis clearly on the seat of your chair but not be leaning into the chair back. Close your eyes and sit up tall. In your mind's eye see the side of your body: hip points, shoulder socket and ears in one long vertical line. Gently engage your pelvic floor muscles (drawing pubic bone to tail bone and sitting bones toward one another) and lift from your pelvic floor through the crown of your head. Your abdominal muscles will gently draw up and under your rib cage.

Lift your arms and take your fingertips to rest on the back of your head behind your ears. Keeping your fingertips on your head, stretch your elbows in opposite directions, like you were trying to touch the walls on either side of the room. Now slide your head straight back into your finger tips, just like sliding a drawer backward onto its shelf. Depending on the mobility of your neck, your head might move anywhere from half an inch to 2 inches. Keep lifting your pelvic floor and your belly up and under your ribs and hold the stretch for 4 to 8 breaths, then release and relax. Repeat the stretch 2 or 3 times. To release your back during long days of computer work, repeat this exercise once every hour or two.

You can use this upper body position as a variation in warrior poses, triangle poses and parsvokonasana (forward facing triangle). In addition to opening up the chest and shoulders it will build abdominal strength and balance as a variation in standing poses.

Namaste,
Lisa

Finding your Hip Flexors

For this first exercise it will be best if your feet are not on the sticky mat, but rather on the floor itself. So, rotate your body such that your feet are on the floor and your spine is still well aligned. Begin with your knees bent, your feet flat on the floor, you shoulders and hips on the mat.

Notice the shape of your lower back: is your back arched or flat? Notice the sensory presence of your lower back: pleasure, pain, neutral?

Now slowly let your legs slide out to full extension, legs lying flat on the floor. Return to a sense of your lower back: : is your back arched or flat? Is there pain, pleasure, any sensation in the low back? What is the position of the legs and thighs? Are the thighs pressed to the floor or lifted and higher than the hips. There is no right or wrong here, the intention is to notice what your body does. Slowly switch back and forth between legs extended and knees bent. Watch the movement of your low back as you move, stay aware of the sensations of the hips, pelvis and thighs, and perhaps farther a field as well.

After repeating the cycle 5 to 6 times rest in whichever position, legs extended or knees bent, is more comfortable for you.

Your psoas and illiacus muscles are the primary hip flexors. They attach to the front of your thigh bone, extend up into the pelvis, lay behind the pelvic organs and attach to the lower spine (psoas) and the back crest of the pelvis (illiacus). When you are lying on your back they are at their longest and they therefore pull forward on the low back and top of the pelvis. The result is forward tilt of the pelvis. If your hip flexors are short and your weak abdominal and back muscles the constant tilting forward of the low back increases your risk of back injury and pain. We want to work toward length and strength in all of these muscles sets: hip flexors, back muscles and abdominals. We want strength and length to be balanced.