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
1/30/09
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.
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.
1/28/09
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.
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.
1/26/09
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.
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.
1/24/09
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.
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.
1/19/09
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.
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.
1/16/09
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.
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.
1/15/09
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!
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!
10/22/08
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
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
10/14/08
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.
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.
10/11/08
Pelvic Awareness Exercise II: Rolling like a ball
Purpose and Caveats: Rolling like a ball requires us to hold the pelvis in a stable position through an ‘unstable’ motion. It requires keen attention to the details of the movement. You're likely to have an asymmetric roll in the beginning. This will shift as you practice and learn to hold the form with stability. Do not roll if you have osteoporosis or a neck injury, just come into the initial pose and practice holding it for 30 seconds to a minute. (For long time yogis: avoid the tendency to come up to a straight back when you arrive in the balancing position. The focus is different than in navasana: maintain a rounded spine throughout. You'll want to disengage the power centers in the hamstrings and and hip flexors and work from the abs and back instead.)
Focus: Keep your awareness in the sensations of the back of your body as you do this exercise. As the front of the body is curled into itself, let the back of the body be vibrant and awake.
Rolling like a Ball: Come to a seated posture, with your feet on the floor, legs parallel, knees bent, feet on the floor. Catch your hands behind your knees, rock back, lift the feet from the floor and balance on the fleshy area right behind your sitting bones. Tilt your head forward such that your chin is a few inches from your sternum and your gaze is down the front of your body. Engage our abdominal muscles strongly so that your pelvis tilts toward the back of your body, your lower back is rounded and your shoulder blades rotate out to the sides of your body. Tilting your pelvis toward the back of your body will create “the ball” shape you are looking for. Keeping this shape intact throughout the exercise is your goal.
Once you have found your balanced ball-shape it will only take a slight shift in your center of gravity to cause you to roll backwards. Initiate this movement with an exhalation and a deeper tightening of your abs. Roll backward along your spine to your shoulders and then forwards again to come to balance. You should be rocking backing and forth from pelvis to upper back while maintaining the ball shape continuously. Keeping your gaze down the front of your body will help you maintain a healthy and safe neck position throughout the exercise.
Continue to roll 4 to 5 times with your eyes open, then close your eyes and continue for another 4 to 5 rolls with eyes closed. Turn your attention to the back of your body, again and again and again. As you begin to feel confident in your ability to hold the form and stay aligned throughout the exercise try shifting the breathing pattern: inhaling back, exhaling up.
Focus: Keep your awareness in the sensations of the back of your body as you do this exercise. As the front of the body is curled into itself, let the back of the body be vibrant and awake.
Rolling like a Ball: Come to a seated posture, with your feet on the floor, legs parallel, knees bent, feet on the floor. Catch your hands behind your knees, rock back, lift the feet from the floor and balance on the fleshy area right behind your sitting bones. Tilt your head forward such that your chin is a few inches from your sternum and your gaze is down the front of your body. Engage our abdominal muscles strongly so that your pelvis tilts toward the back of your body, your lower back is rounded and your shoulder blades rotate out to the sides of your body. Tilting your pelvis toward the back of your body will create “the ball” shape you are looking for. Keeping this shape intact throughout the exercise is your goal.
Once you have found your balanced ball-shape it will only take a slight shift in your center of gravity to cause you to roll backwards. Initiate this movement with an exhalation and a deeper tightening of your abs. Roll backward along your spine to your shoulders and then forwards again to come to balance. You should be rocking backing and forth from pelvis to upper back while maintaining the ball shape continuously. Keeping your gaze down the front of your body will help you maintain a healthy and safe neck position throughout the exercise.
Continue to roll 4 to 5 times with your eyes open, then close your eyes and continue for another 4 to 5 rolls with eyes closed. Turn your attention to the back of your body, again and again and again. As you begin to feel confident in your ability to hold the form and stay aligned throughout the exercise try shifting the breathing pattern: inhaling back, exhaling up.
10/10/08
Pelvic Awareness Exercise I: Cat/Cow with a Sandbag
The last post was about the mechanics of the pelvis. This is the first in a series of exercises to bring you into deeper awareness of your pelvis and its mechanics.
Cat/Cow with a sand bag: Come onto a hands and knees position on your mat. Then sit back on your knees, hold a sand bag (or other soft lightly weighted object) on your low back with one hand and then tilt forward onto hands and knees again. You should be positioned with the weight of the sand bag primarily on your pelvis and lower back.
Look for neutral spine: neither flexing upward toward the ceiling nor drooping downward toward the floor. Without moving the pelvis, clearly engage your abdominals muscles to help support the weight of the sandbag.
Once you’ve found the support of your abdominal muscles you can begin to work through spinal flexion (cat) and extension (cow) in time with your breath. With your exhalation lift the sand bag up toward the ceiling by tilting your pelvis backward and arching the lower back upward. On the inhale, keeping your abdominal muscles engaged the whole time, come through neutral spine and gentle tilt the top of your pelvis toward the floor while lifting your head to look forward. Cycle through these two positions in time with your breath for a total of 10 to 20 cycles.
When you’ve finished this exploration come into child’s pose with the sand bag still resting on your low back. To come into child’s pose: bring your big toes to touching and your knees a little wider than hips distance apart. Sit back on your heals and rest your forehead on the floor. You arms may extend out over your head or rest alongside you.
As you continue moving into other yoga poses or even just walking around the house you'll have the ghost of the sandbag on your low back. Use this information to keep awareness there alive. You want to look for standing, sitting, working and living postures that support a graceful neutral spine position: a gentle tilt forward of the top of the pelvis such that the forward lumbar curve is alive, neither drooping toward your belly nor flattened toward your back.
Cat/Cow with a sand bag: Come onto a hands and knees position on your mat. Then sit back on your knees, hold a sand bag (or other soft lightly weighted object) on your low back with one hand and then tilt forward onto hands and knees again. You should be positioned with the weight of the sand bag primarily on your pelvis and lower back.
Look for neutral spine: neither flexing upward toward the ceiling nor drooping downward toward the floor. Without moving the pelvis, clearly engage your abdominals muscles to help support the weight of the sandbag.
Once you’ve found the support of your abdominal muscles you can begin to work through spinal flexion (cat) and extension (cow) in time with your breath. With your exhalation lift the sand bag up toward the ceiling by tilting your pelvis backward and arching the lower back upward. On the inhale, keeping your abdominal muscles engaged the whole time, come through neutral spine and gentle tilt the top of your pelvis toward the floor while lifting your head to look forward. Cycle through these two positions in time with your breath for a total of 10 to 20 cycles.
When you’ve finished this exploration come into child’s pose with the sand bag still resting on your low back. To come into child’s pose: bring your big toes to touching and your knees a little wider than hips distance apart. Sit back on your heals and rest your forehead on the floor. You arms may extend out over your head or rest alongside you.
As you continue moving into other yoga poses or even just walking around the house you'll have the ghost of the sandbag on your low back. Use this information to keep awareness there alive. You want to look for standing, sitting, working and living postures that support a graceful neutral spine position: a gentle tilt forward of the top of the pelvis such that the forward lumbar curve is alive, neither drooping toward your belly nor flattened toward your back.
Yoga Anatomy: The Pelvis
Pelvis derives from the Latin word for basin or container. You can imagine your pelvis as basin holding sacred contents sitting atop the twin pillars of your legs. The front of the basin is open and we rely upon our lower abdominal muscles to hold the contents in there. The bottom of the basin is also open. Your pelvic floor muscles support the pelvic contents from below. The pelvic floor muscles functions as a springy support floor rather like a trampoline.
You can also envision the pelvis as a fulcrum between the legs and the torso. It can be pulled and tilted from either side by the muscles of the torso and legs. Working from the bottom of the pelvis: your hamstrings and buttocks muscles pull the basin backward, your hip flexors (psoas, illiacus, and quadraceps) tilt the basin forward. Working from the top of the basin: your stomach shorten to tilt the basin backwards and the back muscles shorten to tilt the basin forward. Additionally you can tilt the basin side to side using the muscles at the sides of the waist and legs.
When your pelvis is aligned well, you will stand your tallest, with strong support for spine and upper body and your weight will be balanced such that your feet, legs and hips are at ease. To find this alignment, the muscles that move your pelvis need to be balanced, long, flexible, strong, and supple. Because many of us spend many hours of the day with our pelvis in a static position, either sitting or standing, we do not equally work and stretch these supporting muscles. The result is accumulated strain, and eventually pain or injury in our low back, hips or even farther afield.
Yoga and Pilates work together to build support and strength across the pelvic fulcrum. In yoga, all of the standing poses challenge the muscles across the pelvis by changing the symmetry and angles of the structure while weight bearing. Both strength and flexibility are increased by working through a full range of standing poses. Seated and prone poses work more passively toward flexibility in this structure. Alternatively, Pilates exercises work torso (core) strength by asking the abdominal and back muscles to hold the pelvis stable while the movement of the limbs create weight bearing challenges to the static hold.
I started by suggesting that the pelvis was a basin holding sacred contents. In the yogic system the pelvis is the seat of the Muladhara Chakra, our root Chakra. This Chakra is our metaphoric ground or tether. It keeps us stable in times of turmoil and stress. It is the pathway by which earth energy is founded in our bodies. Without a healthy secure root chakra we are like a boat adrift in the ocean, bandied about by the currents and waves. A good strong root helps stay clear on our life path.
I'll be continuing this exploration of the pelvis in classes and writings this month. Check back in from time to time for specific pelvic exercises.
You can also envision the pelvis as a fulcrum between the legs and the torso. It can be pulled and tilted from either side by the muscles of the torso and legs. Working from the bottom of the pelvis: your hamstrings and buttocks muscles pull the basin backward, your hip flexors (psoas, illiacus, and quadraceps) tilt the basin forward. Working from the top of the basin: your stomach shorten to tilt the basin backwards and the back muscles shorten to tilt the basin forward. Additionally you can tilt the basin side to side using the muscles at the sides of the waist and legs.
When your pelvis is aligned well, you will stand your tallest, with strong support for spine and upper body and your weight will be balanced such that your feet, legs and hips are at ease. To find this alignment, the muscles that move your pelvis need to be balanced, long, flexible, strong, and supple. Because many of us spend many hours of the day with our pelvis in a static position, either sitting or standing, we do not equally work and stretch these supporting muscles. The result is accumulated strain, and eventually pain or injury in our low back, hips or even farther afield.
Yoga and Pilates work together to build support and strength across the pelvic fulcrum. In yoga, all of the standing poses challenge the muscles across the pelvis by changing the symmetry and angles of the structure while weight bearing. Both strength and flexibility are increased by working through a full range of standing poses. Seated and prone poses work more passively toward flexibility in this structure. Alternatively, Pilates exercises work torso (core) strength by asking the abdominal and back muscles to hold the pelvis stable while the movement of the limbs create weight bearing challenges to the static hold.
I started by suggesting that the pelvis was a basin holding sacred contents. In the yogic system the pelvis is the seat of the Muladhara Chakra, our root Chakra. This Chakra is our metaphoric ground or tether. It keeps us stable in times of turmoil and stress. It is the pathway by which earth energy is founded in our bodies. Without a healthy secure root chakra we are like a boat adrift in the ocean, bandied about by the currents and waves. A good strong root helps stay clear on our life path.
I'll be continuing this exploration of the pelvis in classes and writings this month. Check back in from time to time for specific pelvic exercises.
9/11/08
The Sensory World of Yoga: Pleasure and Pain
I’ve spent a couple weeks on vacation. Although I did yoga, danced, walked and moved my body upon returning to my mat I’m feeling sore. I feel the aches and pains of a good work out. That doesn’t happen to me very often. My consistent and regular yoga practice keeps my sensation levels in the pleasurable realm. What I am feeling right now would be better called pleasant soreness, but clearly soreness. Muscles responding to movement and work, the results of labor reflected in the flesh the next day.
The English language has insufficient words for the varying nature of sensation. Pleasure and pain are not enough. I’d like more words to describe the myriad feelings in our bodies. For example, a student came in recently complaining about pain in the back of her legs. She stroked her hamstrings and told me “it hurts here.” As we worked together, it became clear to me her hamstrings were strong, flexible, and feeling pretty good as they moved. I inquired further about the pain and learned that she was experiencing something more akin to sciatica than tight hamstrings. With that awareness I had a whole different approach to her problem. A clearer vocabulary of sensation would have pointed me to the cause of the pain more directly. So here is some discussion of sensation, pain and pleasure, and the various qualities thereof.
Good sensation/good pain: is the sensation of stretch deep in the belly of a muscle. It is a rich long sensation that may radiate into surrounding connective tissue. Stretching pain usually fades as one stays in a stretch with time: as the muscle fibers lengthen the sensation diminishes. For example, when I stretch my pectoral muscles (by rotating my upper arm bone behind me) I feel the locus of stretch in the front of my arm pit and into my upper arm. If I listen more deeply I can feel the stretch through my elbow, forearm and all the way out to my fingertips. It is a gently tugging, a pull, it is not a sharp sensation. The same sensations extend up along my collarbone, along the side of my throat and to my jaw. These are satisfying sensations and I want to linger in them, I want to repeat them by pushing into the stretch when the sensations ease. Another example, when I twist my spine I come up against a structural barrier that feels like pushing on a wall. The twist goes only so far as the small muscles along my spine are working at their full capacity to twist. I can feel the length and pull in my abdominal oblique muscles as well a warm sensation of pull in my shoulders, ribs and hips. If I wait and relax into the twist the sensation subsides. I am then able to deepen the twist a little farther and find new areas of sensation in my spine.
Here is another place to listen for good stretch pain and the cascade of stretch with movement: we’ll do a Pilates Roll Down. Stand upright, tall and strong from your core. Drop your head forward to look down your body while keeping the torso muscles engaged and tall. Now slowly, very slowly, allow one vertebra at a time to roll off the spine and join the relaxed stretch of the head and neck. Everything that is in the forward bend is a rag doll, completely released, All the parts of your body that are still upright are strong and steady. Listen as you go, slowly rolling down the spine. You’ll come up against different parts of your spine where the tightness varies, where the sensations are higher. You can linger in these places allowing them to slowly release, or you can push quickly past them and move onto the next area of your spine. You’ll have the most effective lengthening of your back, the most opportunity to improve your flexibility and posture, if you linger in the areas of stretch until they naturally give way, rather pushing forward and through to the next zone of stretch. Reverse your actions to come out of the stretch, using your abdominal strength to slowly and sequentially lift the vertebrae back into place.
Bad sensation/bad pain is like coming up against a stop sign: your joints or muscles say STOP don’t go any farther, back up, yield, move out of this position. Bad pain can often be sharp, harsh, or sudden but it can also come on more gradually. As I sit here cross-legged there is pain in my knee where I had surgery last year. It is a deep ache in the joint not a sensation of stretch or pull. It tells me to rearrange my posture if I want to stand and walk easily after writing. If I don’t listen to this pain it gets louder and increases with time rather than subsiding. If I slump while I’m sitting here my back gradually begins to ache. Again, this sensation is telling me something: Sit up! It is a dull achy groan in my lumbar spine (lower back). Another clear sign of bad pain is nausea: if I push too extremely into an injury I’ll become nauseous. This is a clear warning sign of that I am causing damage to my body. Come out of what you are doing if you become nauseous.
We don’t want to irritate nerves with our exercise either. Nerve pain can be sensations of tingles, sparks, pin and needles or even numbness. These sensations should be avoided. Nerves like to be stretched but they don’t like to be pinched. Pinching the nerves yields these negative sensations. If you feel nerve sensations radiating through your limbs or body it is a sign to back off and realign your joints and muscles so that the nerve is no longer pinched. Repeated nerve pinching can do damage to the nerves themselves.
There is a pain in hard work that can be bad or good depending on the situation. For example when you are doing push ups or chataranga dandasana, your pectoral muscles might start to ache, even scream. Listen to them. You can push a into work for a while, but stop before the muscles scream or fail. When you are working at the edge of muscle failure you are much more vulnerable to injury, particularly if the muscle is bearing weight in a precarious position (eg. arm balances, inversions, chataranga, or one legged balance postures).
Joint popping is generally a neutral sensation, neither good or bad unless it is painful. I have noisy joints and most of them don’t cause me any problems. But if my jaw pops repeatedly, perhaps from eating a large crisp apple, then the pain lingers and is severe. You should avoid any joint popping that causes pain. The same is true for the sensations of ligaments or tendons ‘thunking’ as they cross joints. If the thunk sensation is neutral you are unlikely to be causing any damage. However, you can often realign a joint to avoid the thunking sensation, that is generally a better alignment and healthier for the joint.
Finally, I’d like to address post exercise pain. Normal post exercise pain will peak about 24 hours after you have worked the muscles and resolve completely within 48 hours. Ice, anti-inflammatory medicines, and Epsom salt baths can all be used to treat post exercise pain. Professional athletes routinely ice their muscles and joints after working out to prevent post exercise soreness and reduce the accumulated strain of repeatedly working the same muscles. If you have pushed yourself particularly hard, you can use ice before pain sets in and you might avoid it all together. If post exercise pain does not resolve within a few days, you may have injured yourself. Take a break and rest those muscles for a few more days, if the pain does not resolve it may be time to see a health care provider.
My students sometimes laugh when I refer to sensation rather than pain. I don’t want to avoid the reality of what they are feeling. I do want you to look closely at the sensations you are having. If you listen closely to your body during yoga you are very unlikely to injure yourself. Most injuries occur because we push too hard against our body’s wisdom. But don’t avoid the sensations that yield good change, the pull of a stretch, the work of a muscle. Those sensations will yield longer and stronger muscles as well as deeper awareness in the body.
The English language has insufficient words for the varying nature of sensation. Pleasure and pain are not enough. I’d like more words to describe the myriad feelings in our bodies. For example, a student came in recently complaining about pain in the back of her legs. She stroked her hamstrings and told me “it hurts here.” As we worked together, it became clear to me her hamstrings were strong, flexible, and feeling pretty good as they moved. I inquired further about the pain and learned that she was experiencing something more akin to sciatica than tight hamstrings. With that awareness I had a whole different approach to her problem. A clearer vocabulary of sensation would have pointed me to the cause of the pain more directly. So here is some discussion of sensation, pain and pleasure, and the various qualities thereof.
Good sensation/good pain: is the sensation of stretch deep in the belly of a muscle. It is a rich long sensation that may radiate into surrounding connective tissue. Stretching pain usually fades as one stays in a stretch with time: as the muscle fibers lengthen the sensation diminishes. For example, when I stretch my pectoral muscles (by rotating my upper arm bone behind me) I feel the locus of stretch in the front of my arm pit and into my upper arm. If I listen more deeply I can feel the stretch through my elbow, forearm and all the way out to my fingertips. It is a gently tugging, a pull, it is not a sharp sensation. The same sensations extend up along my collarbone, along the side of my throat and to my jaw. These are satisfying sensations and I want to linger in them, I want to repeat them by pushing into the stretch when the sensations ease. Another example, when I twist my spine I come up against a structural barrier that feels like pushing on a wall. The twist goes only so far as the small muscles along my spine are working at their full capacity to twist. I can feel the length and pull in my abdominal oblique muscles as well a warm sensation of pull in my shoulders, ribs and hips. If I wait and relax into the twist the sensation subsides. I am then able to deepen the twist a little farther and find new areas of sensation in my spine.
Here is another place to listen for good stretch pain and the cascade of stretch with movement: we’ll do a Pilates Roll Down. Stand upright, tall and strong from your core. Drop your head forward to look down your body while keeping the torso muscles engaged and tall. Now slowly, very slowly, allow one vertebra at a time to roll off the spine and join the relaxed stretch of the head and neck. Everything that is in the forward bend is a rag doll, completely released, All the parts of your body that are still upright are strong and steady. Listen as you go, slowly rolling down the spine. You’ll come up against different parts of your spine where the tightness varies, where the sensations are higher. You can linger in these places allowing them to slowly release, or you can push quickly past them and move onto the next area of your spine. You’ll have the most effective lengthening of your back, the most opportunity to improve your flexibility and posture, if you linger in the areas of stretch until they naturally give way, rather pushing forward and through to the next zone of stretch. Reverse your actions to come out of the stretch, using your abdominal strength to slowly and sequentially lift the vertebrae back into place.
Bad sensation/bad pain is like coming up against a stop sign: your joints or muscles say STOP don’t go any farther, back up, yield, move out of this position. Bad pain can often be sharp, harsh, or sudden but it can also come on more gradually. As I sit here cross-legged there is pain in my knee where I had surgery last year. It is a deep ache in the joint not a sensation of stretch or pull. It tells me to rearrange my posture if I want to stand and walk easily after writing. If I don’t listen to this pain it gets louder and increases with time rather than subsiding. If I slump while I’m sitting here my back gradually begins to ache. Again, this sensation is telling me something: Sit up! It is a dull achy groan in my lumbar spine (lower back). Another clear sign of bad pain is nausea: if I push too extremely into an injury I’ll become nauseous. This is a clear warning sign of that I am causing damage to my body. Come out of what you are doing if you become nauseous.
We don’t want to irritate nerves with our exercise either. Nerve pain can be sensations of tingles, sparks, pin and needles or even numbness. These sensations should be avoided. Nerves like to be stretched but they don’t like to be pinched. Pinching the nerves yields these negative sensations. If you feel nerve sensations radiating through your limbs or body it is a sign to back off and realign your joints and muscles so that the nerve is no longer pinched. Repeated nerve pinching can do damage to the nerves themselves.
There is a pain in hard work that can be bad or good depending on the situation. For example when you are doing push ups or chataranga dandasana, your pectoral muscles might start to ache, even scream. Listen to them. You can push a into work for a while, but stop before the muscles scream or fail. When you are working at the edge of muscle failure you are much more vulnerable to injury, particularly if the muscle is bearing weight in a precarious position (eg. arm balances, inversions, chataranga, or one legged balance postures).
Joint popping is generally a neutral sensation, neither good or bad unless it is painful. I have noisy joints and most of them don’t cause me any problems. But if my jaw pops repeatedly, perhaps from eating a large crisp apple, then the pain lingers and is severe. You should avoid any joint popping that causes pain. The same is true for the sensations of ligaments or tendons ‘thunking’ as they cross joints. If the thunk sensation is neutral you are unlikely to be causing any damage. However, you can often realign a joint to avoid the thunking sensation, that is generally a better alignment and healthier for the joint.
Finally, I’d like to address post exercise pain. Normal post exercise pain will peak about 24 hours after you have worked the muscles and resolve completely within 48 hours. Ice, anti-inflammatory medicines, and Epsom salt baths can all be used to treat post exercise pain. Professional athletes routinely ice their muscles and joints after working out to prevent post exercise soreness and reduce the accumulated strain of repeatedly working the same muscles. If you have pushed yourself particularly hard, you can use ice before pain sets in and you might avoid it all together. If post exercise pain does not resolve within a few days, you may have injured yourself. Take a break and rest those muscles for a few more days, if the pain does not resolve it may be time to see a health care provider.
My students sometimes laugh when I refer to sensation rather than pain. I don’t want to avoid the reality of what they are feeling. I do want you to look closely at the sensations you are having. If you listen closely to your body during yoga you are very unlikely to injure yourself. Most injuries occur because we push too hard against our body’s wisdom. But don’t avoid the sensations that yield good change, the pull of a stretch, the work of a muscle. Those sensations will yield longer and stronger muscles as well as deeper awareness in the body.
8/17/08
karma yoga
Karma: seems I’ve heard this word bandied about most of my life. Good karma, bad karma: your life reflects your actions, you are what you eat, you reap what you sew. The word also carries the implication that the results of our actions can carry over from life to life. I don’t know anything about that particular detail. I do know that how I choose to act in this moment has clear repercussions in the day-to-day quality of my life. My contentment is a reflection of how I act. In the 12-step tradition there is a phrase “acting as if” that reminds us that action transforms us faster than thought.: we become our actions. What do we want to become?
Our yoga may begin on our mats. We show up in yoga class, breath, stretch, strengthen, and become aware of ourselves as incarnate being. We have bodies. Paying attention to the sensation of the body our spirit can change. For me, paying attention and practicing yoga not only reduced the pain that brought me to my mat, it calmed something deep in my center. It calmed my heart and my spirit in a way that nothing else had. I stopped seeking self-fulfillment through external sources, be that objects or external approval and gratification. I started to realize that being of service in the world was my personal path to contentment and freedom.
My personal path of service is teaching. I teach my public yoga classes that many of you attend. And I regularly teach in a service setting. Currently I’m teaching at an alcohol and drug recovery center for mothers with young children. I’ve taught in middle school alternative classrooms and to low income teenagers. While I’m bringing what I know to these classes, I learn an incredible amount there. Sometimes these classes don’t feel like a traditional yoga class at all. No one can settle down or everyone just wants to sleep. We listen to their rooms being searched while we practice or there is a fire alarm. Someone is in crisis as the court threatens to remove a child from the home or or the student herself has been removed from her home. Now we really practice yoga although it may look nothing like the yoga in the videos. We find an asana, a spiritual seat, at the center of the storm. And we look to find ourselves amidst the crisis. We seek a voice and the action that knows how to proceed in times of trouble.
This is yoga: the yoking of the self to a greater self. Yes, yoga is physical exercise, but not only the physical exercise. It is giving oneself to the greater good. It is making the world a more peaceful place by being a more peaceful person. It is about standing up and getting angry when that is the only appropriate response. It is about listening to each cell in your body and acting from that deep inherent knowledge. It is about listening to the people and the world around you. It is about being a right sized being on this beautiful planet. It is about acting without the expectation of a reward.
Our yoga may begin on our mats. We show up in yoga class, breath, stretch, strengthen, and become aware of ourselves as incarnate being. We have bodies. Paying attention to the sensation of the body our spirit can change. For me, paying attention and practicing yoga not only reduced the pain that brought me to my mat, it calmed something deep in my center. It calmed my heart and my spirit in a way that nothing else had. I stopped seeking self-fulfillment through external sources, be that objects or external approval and gratification. I started to realize that being of service in the world was my personal path to contentment and freedom.
My personal path of service is teaching. I teach my public yoga classes that many of you attend. And I regularly teach in a service setting. Currently I’m teaching at an alcohol and drug recovery center for mothers with young children. I’ve taught in middle school alternative classrooms and to low income teenagers. While I’m bringing what I know to these classes, I learn an incredible amount there. Sometimes these classes don’t feel like a traditional yoga class at all. No one can settle down or everyone just wants to sleep. We listen to their rooms being searched while we practice or there is a fire alarm. Someone is in crisis as the court threatens to remove a child from the home or or the student herself has been removed from her home. Now we really practice yoga although it may look nothing like the yoga in the videos. We find an asana, a spiritual seat, at the center of the storm. And we look to find ourselves amidst the crisis. We seek a voice and the action that knows how to proceed in times of trouble.
This is yoga: the yoking of the self to a greater self. Yes, yoga is physical exercise, but not only the physical exercise. It is giving oneself to the greater good. It is making the world a more peaceful place by being a more peaceful person. It is about standing up and getting angry when that is the only appropriate response. It is about listening to each cell in your body and acting from that deep inherent knowledge. It is about listening to the people and the world around you. It is about being a right sized being on this beautiful planet. It is about acting without the expectation of a reward.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
