vacation

My turn, I'm off for vacation much of this next month. I'll be practicing yoga and dance in the high Sierra and on a dusty lakebed. See you in September,

Rest Stop Yoga: Sleep

You've been traveling for hours. You unfold your body from the cramped car and walk to the motel reception desk. You wiggle and stretch while you wait for help. Pour your weight from leg to leg. Lift up on your toes. Shake. Then head to your room and unpack. You lie down exhausted but unable to rest. Here are some tips for getting the rest you need:

1) Don't drink too much caffeine. Obvious but true. You probably already know your personal limit. Stick with it. Use asana (yoga postures) as a pick-me-up instead.

2) Eat well. Yes, let yourself have a treat. Enjoy the local offerings. But make sure you get your vegies, fruit, and fiber.

3) Take a nice long walk before you settle in at that motel. Move the big muscles of your legs. Do some big arm circles. Get a bit of real movement back into your muscles, fibers and bones.

4) Get outdoors during midday daylight. Wear shorts and get sunlight on your legs and the back of your knees. Your bodies clock will more easily shut down at night when it clear what day is.

When it is time to settle in to sleep turn off the TV and reduce visual and auditory stimulation as much as possible. Listen to your breath and your heartbeat. Do a body scan ~ tuning into each muscle, each bone, each limb, all of you. Wiggle and stretch then tense and relax. Repeat the body scan an the tense/release cycles until you feel tension dissolve.

Focused Relaxation of the nervous system: Alternate Nostril Breath
This is fabulous way to relax and calm the nervous system quickly. Begin in a comfortable seated or prone position. Rest the first and middle finger of your non-dominant hand on your forehead. Bring your thumb and ring finger to rest on either side of the nose near the transition from nasal cartilage to nasal bone (about mid way along the length of the nose). Take a few long smooth breaths. At the end of an exhalation gently close the right nostril with the pressure of your finger or thumb and inhale through your left nostril. Then close the left nostril and exhale through the right nostril. Inhale through the right then close it and exhale through the left. Inhale left, close, exhale right. Inhale right, close, exhale left. Continue the pattern exhaling and inhaling on one side, then switching to the other nostril.

After a few minutes you may find that you can do the alternate nostril breath without using your hands. Your intention will guide the breath from one side to the other. If you can find the focus and sensation of this you may lay back and continue and not even notice you have fallen asleep.

About five minutes of alternate nostril breath will soothe and balance your nervous system. You can use this as often as you like. I find it particularly effective in the middle of the night to calm the incessant chatter of an anxious mind and get me back to sleep readily.

zzzzzzzzzzz

Road Stop Yoga: Utthita Pandangustasana

Time to unfurl your body from that seat again. Open up the front of your body to make more room for breath, life and possibility. Take a nice long yoga break before you get back in the car!



















Utthita Pandangustasana I:

You'll want a park bench, planter, or even your bumper as a prop for this exercise.

Stand alongside the bench and lift your foot up and out onto the bench surface. The leg will be extended to the side about 45 degrees. Turn your toes and your knee toward the sky. If your hamstrings are tight you'll want your lifted knee more bent than mine is in the photo. Lift and engage from your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles. Then spread your arms broad and open your upper chest. Take a few deep breaths. You can turn your head gently from side to side.

















Add a Backbend:

Same pose, lacing your fingers together behind your back. Extend your arms and lift them away from your back. Lift your heart and upper chest. This is the 'chest expander' variation ~ so take some big full breaths and stretch out the front of your rib cage.

Keep the back of your neck long and comfortable if you choose to turn your gaze upward.

A deeper leg stretch:

Lift the leg onto a higher surface to increase the stretch in your hamstring muscles. Continue to keep the toes and the knee facing skyward, the hips level, the abdominal muscles and pelvic floor engaged. You can twist your chest away from the lifted leg and lace an arm behind your back with the hand resting on your lifted thigh.

Hold the pose for 4 to 8 breath cycles as you like.


Parsva Utthita Pandangustasana:

To add a side stretch rreach your arm down your lifted leg. You can catch the hand wherever it reaches while maintaining good alignment: knee, shin, ankle or foot. Keep turning your chest away from your lifted leg. Try to keep both the left and right sides of your spine equally long as you bend to the side. Use your drishti, steady gaze, to help your balance.








Unlace the hand from behind your back and lift your arm overhead. Feel this stretch all the way up the open side of your body. Breathe into your extended waist and rib cage. Enjoy the pose for 4 to 8 breath cycles.

As a final spine stretch you can arc the spine over the lifted leg (not shown). If the chest turns down toward the leg you'll enhance your hamstring stretch; if you continue to turn the chest upward (as if you were to lay your spine onto your lifted leg) You'll stretch the sides of the spine in the deep low back.


Once you've completed the poses on one side of your body, repeat them on the opposite side. If you have time, do each side twice through. Then keep this energy of the opening of the front of your body when it's time to return to traveling.

Namaste,
Lisa

Rest Stop Yoga: Hips and Shoulders!

We're futher along in the journey, the stiffness has deepened and we needs some deeper stretches. Oh, and the only prop at this roadside stand is a pole. So here's a way to stretch:

Poledog!

Take your arms up the pole over your head. Step back and let your head rest between your arms. Lift your sitting bones up and allow a gentle arch in the low back. Bend and extend the knees softly. Let your head and neck undulate moving from side to side. Rock your low back. Let the kinks flow out of the body. Switch your arm position so that each hand has a chance to rest on top of the other.

Engage your lower abdominal muscles and pelvic floor, then bend your knees and step toward the pole to come out of the pose.


Knee and Quad Stretch


Stand beside the pole and hold the pole to help with balance. Bend a knee and catch your ankle with your hand. Lift your heal toward your outer hip or buttock to stretch your knee deeply. Keep the lift of your belly, chest and heart. Holding a steady gaze will further support your balance.





Now press your foot into your hand and rotate your thigh bone backward in the hip socket to extend at the hip. Keep engaging your abdominal muscles so that you belly button reaches toward your spine and you resist the tendency to rotate your hips forward.

The stretch will move from your knee into your Quadracep (front thigh) and Hip flexor muscles. The deeper you are able to work your abs the more you will be able to extend the stretch into those hip flexors. Hip flexors get both lax and shortened by extended periods of sitting. Stretching them out will go along way toward having a healthy and happy low back.

Repeat the knee and hip flexor stretch on both sides a few times.

Pectorals and Upper Back:

Reach one arm up the pole. Ground through your feet and reach through your arm. Then slowly turn your body away from the pole and your arm. You'll be stretching from the sternum up through the shoulder and armpit and all along the underside of the arm. You can slowly turn your head right and left to enhance the stretch in your neck muscles as well.








Walk your hand slowly down the pole as you turn your body away. As you move the arm through its rotation from over head to by your side, the stretch will move through various bands of muscle and connective tissue. Linger where the stretch feels especially good.

When you've finished one side stand tall in tadasana. Let your arms hang free and close your eyes. Relish the sense of openness in your shoulder. Then turn and stretch the other side.

Rest Stop Yoga: Twists

You've put a few more miles in, but perhaps you haven't gotten to your destination yet. You need some quick relief before you head back into the car. Twists are a great quick relief for your back, your spine, your belly, and your neck.

Pavritta Trikonasana: Revolving Triangle

Stand facing the back of a bench and take a wide stride with right foot back. Your left foot will face the bench and your right foot will be slightly turned out. Place your left hand on your left hip and reach for the back of the bench with your right forearm. Engage your deep abdominal muscles and lift your pelvic floor muscles as you slowly revolve your spine to the left, over the front leg. Keep your upper chest broad and don't over twist your neck. If it feels good you can gently turn your head left and right as you remain in the pose.

Hold the position for 3 to 10 breaths and repeat on both sides two or three times.


Pavritta Utthita Anjanyasana: Revolved Standing Lunge

Stand behind the bench about two or three feet and lift your right foot up onto the bench back. Your lifted knee is bent to hip height, or higher. Your standing knees is soft and open, not locked.

Take your right hand to your right hip and your left forearm across to the outside of the lifted right knee. Gently press the right forearm into the outer knee as you revolve your chest to the right over the lifted leg. You can use as much strength as feels appropriate in the arm to bring the twist up into your rib cage. Feel how your breath opens up the ribs and the upper spine and allows you to deepen the twist with each inhalation.

As above, keep your neck mobile and easy and your core muscles gently engaged. Repeat the twist on both sides, as many times as you like. You can hold the twist for a few breaths or slowly move into and out of the twist with the flow of your breath.

If you feel ready for a little deeper twist, hook your opposite elbow onto the lifted knee. The work of the upper arm pressing into the lifted knee will allow you to deepen the stretch in both the lower back and in the ribs and upper spine. Keep broadening your chest as you twist. You can brings your hands together into Anjali Mudra (prayer hands) and turn your sternum toward your thumbs.

If lifting the leg to the bench back feels too high, you can do these same twists with the lifted leg on the seat of the bench instead.

Happy trails!

Rest Stop Yoga: Pigeon Stretches

You unfold your body from the cramped car seat. You wiggle and stretch and walk a bit but still your low back is aching. Here are three versions of a classic stretch to ease low back pain. I consider all of these variations of Pigeon Pose: Kapotasana. In Pigeon Pose the upper leg bone is externally rotated and the knee is bent. Most people feel this stretch in the outer hip and deep hip rotators (between the sacrum and hip) Experiment and see which variation works best for your body. And don't save this stretch for travel. It is just as effective in your office in the middle of a long work day!

Seated Pigeon: Sit upright on a bench or chair. Feet flat on the floor and parallel. Then bring one ankle to the opposite knee, ideally your lifted foot rests outside the knee rather than on the thigh. While you are sitting up tall encourage the knee of the lifted leg to gently drop away from your chest, thus increasing the external rotation of the thigh and opening up the groins. Do not force the knee, if you feel knee pain you've gone too far.

If you have the flexiblity, gently fold at the hips to take your heart toward your shin. Keep some engagement in your deep abdominals.

Repeat on both sides, as many times as feels good.

Feel ready for a bigger stretch? Try the next variation:

Leaning Pigeon: Stand a foot or two away from a bench. Bending one knee toward your chest, turn the thigh outward and bring the outside of the lifted foot to the bench in front of your standing thigh. Continue to rotate the lifted thigh outward gently letting your knee fall toward the bench seat. Lean forward and place your hands on the bench back and form a plank with your body: ankles, hips and shoulders in a line. You'll want to continue to engage your deep abdominal and pelvic floor muscles and lengthen the sides of your waist and your spine.

In this variation you may get a deeper hip stretch than in the seated variation, along with a stretch of the Achilles Tendon in the standing leg and some strengthening in the core torso muscles.

Standing Pigeon: The hip stretch becomes even deeper if you bring the shin onto a surface at hip height.

All the same cues apply: outwardly rotate at the hip; don't force the knee down; use the lift of your pelvic floor muscles and deep abdominals to lengthen your spine. Breathe.

You might practice this variation with your leg on a picnic table or planter, your hotel room bed, or any surface. Try different heights to find where you can maximize your body's response.

To take the stretch even further, take your hands on either side of the lifted foot and knee onto the surface your shin is resting upon, lean gently forward taking your heart toward your shin. You'll find the limit of your flexibility, don't push toward the very edge. Stay where the stretch feels optimal.

Once you've completed whatever version of pigeon is right for your body, walk around some, then move onto the bench variations of dog pose found in the last post.

Namaste,
Lisa

Yoga for Traveling

You've been driving for an hour or two or three. You pull off at the rest area, use the facilities, and then walk around a bit. Find a bench and do some stretching. It'll do your body wonders.

First pose: bench dog
Ardha Adho Muhka Svanasana

Start standing close to the back of the bench. Reach out and place your palms on the bench back and then step back, stretching through your shoulders and bending at the hips. Knees can be softly bent to allow a slight curve in the your low back. Stretch and wiggle like a puppy dog waking up in the morning. Alternately stretch each
side of your low back, stretch into each armpit, arch and flex your spine, gently rotate the head, and then slowly come into a long deep stretch.

If you have more hamstring and low back flexibility you can do the same pose with your hands on the seat of the bench rather than the bench back. This position brings you closer to classic Adho Mukha Svanasana.


Second Pose: Rotated bench dog
Pavritta Adho Mukha Svanasana

This variation will work better if you are in the deeper variation of bench dog. From the bench dog above you reach your left hand to your outer right calf, knee or thigh. Then rotate your chest to look out from under you right shoulder. Your hips stay level and your spine rotates. Spend some time on each side, continuously lengthening and twisting your spine, opening your shoulder and stabilizing your hips.


This is the first installment. Try these out anytime, at the rest stop, your neighborhood park, in your garden.

This Paradise: A meditation

It is easy this time of year to remember that we live in paradise. Corvallis is warm, blooming abundant. I look out my window at the green, purple, orange, red, pink, yellow, blossoms and new growth of the earth. I listen to the chatter of life: birds and squirrels and bugs and humans. Wednesday I walked up the hill to a friend’s home. Two yearling bucks walked right up to me in the middle of the road. We all stood very still, watching and smelling one another. Then they lazily walked into someone’s front yard and proceeded to have their lunch. Later that day I walked out my front door and flushed a moth from the side of the house. As the moth flew away from me, one of the resident house sparrows swooped right in front of my face and caught the moth. She landed on the top of the fence and ate her snack. Every afternoon the neighbor’s house cat perches herself over the vole’s hole in my yard, sitting perfectly still calling the vole out. In the mornings the young squirrels practice flying as they leap from the fir tree onto the roof of the studio and wake us up from savasana.

Yes, we do live in paradise, every single one of us. No matter where you are, no matter the time of the year. Paradise is not just Corvallis, it is this amazing world we inhabit. Listen to it. Slow down and listen. Paradise is all around you, just waiting for you to notice. Paradise is available in this moment. In spite of the burden and pain and suffering and wounds that each of us carry, paradise is here waiting for you notice.

You can begin to find paradise by simply listening. Listen to the sounds of the world around you:

Begin by hearing the sounds of the room your sitting in,
then slowly open your listening
to the space outside your room,
to the building you are in,
to the world beyond your building
soften to find your far distant hearing,
so that you may hear the distant sounds of
ocean, mountain, desert or plains
then return to the sounds of your own body
the sound of your breath
the sound of your digestion
the sound of your heart beat

Rest with gratitude for this moment and for being alive. You are another blossom on the flowering earth. Let yourself be astounded by that amazing fact.

Where is the Pelvic Floor?

Dear Yogini: What is this pelvic floor you keep referring to? ~ Confused

Dear Confused:
I’m glad you asked. You’re not alone in your confusion. The pelvic floor muscles are important structural core muscles that are largely hidden from view. Many of us have no idea how to find them or why we would want to. What follows is a short primer, if you’d like more information my favorite description of the pelvic floor muscles can be found in the book Body3 by Thomas Myers. (for an image check out: http://lucy.stanford.edu/img/ImageCA_562_2.jpg )

The pelvic floor muscles lie in the floor of the pelvis. Take your awareness to this area of your body, note the position of your sitting bones, your pubic bone and your tailbone. These four bony landmarks bound an area shaped like a diamond. The pelvic floor muscles are a sheath of muscles spanning this diamond. The fibers in the muscles span all directions in the diamond: front to back, side to side, and figure-eights through the space. The area can be thought of as a diaphragm or even a trampoline. To function optimally these muscles need to be taut, resilient, pliable, strong, and able to relax completely.

If we think evolutionarily, these muscles evolved in a vertical position in our four-legged ancestors. In most mammals the pelvic floor is a door through which mating, birthing and waste release occurs. The area needs to be able to open and close, but doesn’t need to bear weight. When humans became upright walking creatures the pelvic floor rotated into its current horizontal position. In this position it bears most of the weight of the abdomen. Pressure changes within the abdomen (breathing, sneezing, jumping, and running) stress the pelvic floor musculature. For women the pelvic floor is particularly stressed during pregnancy and childbirth. Strengthening these muscles has many benefits, from preventing incontinence and hemorrhoids to increased sexual pleasure in men and women.

Western medicine generally teaches these exercises with the name “Kegel” Exercises after the MD who first introduced them to us. The exercises have long been part of yoga practice. The common yogic term for working the pelvic floor muscles is Mula Bandha or the ‘root lock.’ Mula Bandha is variously used to refer to subtle energetic work in the pelvic floor as well as to the engagement of very specific subsets of the pelvic floor musculature. For my purposes, I use the term to generically refer to engaging all the muscles of the pelvic floor.

Kegels are introduced by encouraging the student to stop and start the flow of urine. This particular exercise focuses on the urinary sphincter part of the pelvic floor. It is a good beginning. You can also isolate the muscles that contract the anal sphincter and the genital sphincter as you become more familiar with the area. Practice and explore to find the various parts of this region of your body.

For yoga, I encourage students to engage the entire area. If you come back to imagining that diamond shape underneath you, my first cue is to ‘narrow the diamond,’ to make it smaller by drawing front-and-back and side-to-side together. Do this 5 to 10 times. Then relax. As with any exercise the rest phase is as important as the work phase. Needless to say, you do not want these muscles to go into spasm or hyper contraction.

Once you’ve got the first exercise down you can begin to lift the diamond. Imagine the area lifting like an elevator one floor at a time. You might be able to lift 3 or 4 separate floors, stopping for just a second or two on each floor and then reversing the process and resting on the ground floor. Repeat this process 5 to 10 times as well.

In yoga class we engage the pelvic floor and attempt to hold a gentle engagement throughout our practice. We don’t want to clench the muscles but we do want to keep them lifted and taut. This is “Mula Bandha” – the support provided by the pelvic floor lift. You might also notice that when you contract the pelvic floor muscles that the muscles of the lower abdomen also engage. They are hard wired together and provide important support for the low back and spine.

For general health you should do something on the order of 3 sets of 10 Kegels each day. I have known some women who said they practiced every time they waited for a red light, or anytime they were standing in line waiting. You don’t want to make the habit of doing the exercise in the middle of urination because you can prevent your bladder from fully emptying and thus cause bladder infections. Use that technique only to identify the muscle sets and then establish another time and place where you can remember to do this exercise daily ~ maybe while brushing your teeth. I call it the secret exercise as you can practice anywhere, any time. Just make a practice of repeating daily.

Yoga for Grief: Backbends

Dear Yogini: What are supportive postures for grief and broken hearts? from: A Grieving Soul

Dear Beautiful Shimmering Grieving Soul:
When we open our hearts to life our hearts inevitably will be broken by life. Our hearts will be broken for lost love, for friends and loved ones who die, for children who grow up and leave home, for flowers that wilt, for cultures, places and critters lost from the planet, for the violence perpetrated by one human on another, and for the hope that lives on in spite of loss. Life is wrought with heartbreak. We keep opening our hearts so that we can experience love and joy knowing that everything passes in time.

Heart opening postures support the body through the process of grief. They help us feel safe when we are exposed. They let us know that we can care for ourselves in vulnerable situations. When we practice heart openers we experience the physical sensation of an open heart without breaking. Difficult emotions may arise in these postures. Breathe through the emotions. Let them in and don't grasp onto them. Always breathe and let them pass through you.



Backbends can be done standing, seated or lying on the floor. There are belly down and belly up variations. Begin simply. Try sprinkling the seated and standing variations pictured above throughout your day. Invite your heart to lead and your gaze to turn gently up. These poses will counter the habitual forward bending we do in our lives. You'll feel better at the end of your days as a result.




Bridge pose is a larger heart opener that is accessible to most bodies. It is contraindicated for those with neck injuries. Seek help from a qualified teacher if this pose causes you any neck pain.

To begin: Lie on your back on the floor with your arms along side you, your knees bent and your feet parallel. Notice the presence or absence of a lumbar curve, the space between your low back and the floor. Beginners may choose to practice low bridge and pelvic tilting: alternately press your low back into the floor with your exhale and let the low back rise with your inhale. Keep your sitting bones on the floor for this variation. The core all back bends is the arching of the spine towards the front of the body and the lifting of the heart into the front of the awareness.

After practicing pelvic tilts find 'low bridge:' the position where your buttocks and shoulders remain on the floor while the back is arched toward the ceiling. Engage your abdominal and back muscles here to support your lumbar spine as you press your feet into the floor and lift your pelvis upward into bridge posture. Continue to open the front of your spine, lift your heart toward the front of your body and maintain strength and support in your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles. You can work with the arms alongside you or clasp your hands together on the floor under your pelvis. In either case press the arms bones firmly into the floor for additional support. Hold the pose for three to five long smooth breaths. You'll want to repeat the posture about three times.

There are two common ways to come down from bridge posture. You may reengage your supporting muscles and lower your back to the floor while you maintain the arch of the low back thus bringing the sitting bones to the floor before the low back. This method improves low back and abdominal strength. Alternately, you may slowly drop one vertebrae at a time to the floor from your upper back to your tail bone. This method improves spinal articulation and mobility. Both are good.



For times of deeper grief or when you need restorative rest choose a supported variation of bridge posture. Lie face up on the floor with knees bent and place yoga blocks, folded blankets or a firm pillow under your pelvis. The basic form of the pose is the same and you can release the work of the pose and relax into gravity. If it is comfortable on your shoulders you can let your arms rest in 'cactus' alongside the head and place an eye bag on your eyes and forehead. Remain in supported bridge for five to ten minutes or as long as your low back is comfortable.

The goal of heart openers is not to avoid grief. Rather, to be present for grief, to accept grief, and to weep. Then to wipe your tears away, stand up and embrace life knowing that the more deeply we fall in love the more opportunities we will have to grieve. And the more fully we grieve our losses the more deeply we can fall in love.

Asana and Yoga

A couple weeks ago my neighbor helped to host the Mac Forest Trail Run, a 50k forest race. Many exceedingly fit people come and go from the neighborhood helping prepare for the race. One of these folks dropped by to ask me about the studio. He practices yoga and wanted to talk. He said he needs ‘efficient yoga.’ He quoted his teacher saying: “get real folks, this is exercise.” He likes to be pushed hard. He uses yoga as a tool to keep him running. He doesn’t want philosophy or the meditation. He wanted to tell me about his practice. He was looking for affirmation. I replied: “If it working for you that’s great.” And I told him that I’ll be here practicing for the rest of my life. When he is ready to move deeper into his yoga practice to come give my studio a try.

As I thought about the conversation afterward, it occurred to me this man is studying Asana. Asana, the yoga postures, is one of the eight limbs of yoga. Studying Asana improves health and well being. It makes you stronger, more flexible and improves your balance. It is the door through which we enter Yoga. It is a great beginning and we are always beginners. Yet is only the beginning. Yoga is so much bigger than Asana.

The yogic view sees the self as being comprised of 5 primary sheaths or layers. The outer most layer is Anna Maya Kosha: the physical body. Anna Maya Kosha is the sheath we have most ready access too. We can touch it, see it, taste it, smell it, hear it, and measure it. We can directly observe how Asana changes the Anna Maya Kosha. We feel the pleasure and progress of a good Asana practice in this sheath. We develop kinesthetic delight here and it keeps us coming back.

Asana also improves our proprioception. Proprioception is the awareness of where our bodies are in space. We all have this sixth sense but we are less conscious of it than we are of sight or touch. Proprioception is important for our health and safety and it is tangibly missed when it goes awry. If you have ever had a dizzy spell or become spatially disoriented under water you know what lack of proprioception feels like. Proprioception is controlled in the deeper parts of the brain along with our heartbeat, our organ functions and other physical processes we don’t consciously attend to. But when our yoga teacher asks us to balance on one leg, to negotiate a difficult twisting posture or turn our bodies upside down we begin to discover challenges to our proprioception. This challenge opens the connection between the conscious body and the subconscious body.

Developing proprioceptive awareness is one of the pathways that awakens conscious connection with deeper layers of the self, between Anna Maya Kosha and Prana Maya Kosha. We begin to make the connections between our physical body, our energetic body and our emotional body. The yogis call these three the gross bodies. These are the layers we can learn to touch, perhaps not figuratively, but in a very real sense we feel these sheaths.

As we proceed down the yogic path Asana is an essential part of the process, an important habit like brushing our teeth, but yoga lies in making deeper connections with the self. Touching into the subtle body (the wisdom and bliss body) is not a matter of performing lotus posture while in headstand. Touching into the subtle body is a result of time, patience, deep listening, and practice. Yoga is union of the gross body and the subtle body. Asana is a tool in the yogic tool box, just one of the eight limbs of yoga.

Yoga for Gardening

It’s spring in the Northwest. Time to plant, till, weed, and dig. Time to haul barrows full of compost to the garden. Time to wake up with back pain and shoulders aches and neck cricks of unknown origin.

Gardening is hard work. Even this body that gets daily yoga and Pilates gets sore from digging and hauling compost. Monday’s classes relieved most of the back pain that landscaping the front yard induced, so now I’m ready to do it again… Here’s some yoga tips for gardeners to help avert the aches and pains:

1) Don’t work too long uninterrupted. Ideally, spread your gardening tasks through the week. Work for an hour a day or so. Weed in small increments. I know, most of our lives don’t allow this pace. So when you do your long weekend gardening binges, make sure you get up and walk around every 30 minutes or so. Those extended periods of time spent bent over weeding are nearly guaranteed to give you a backache. Stretch often. Change your position frequently. Move about.

2) Backbend and side bend to counter stretch your spine. We do almost all our garden tasks in flexion: forward bending the spine. When you come up from your work, stand up very tall. Take you hands behind your back and lace your fingers together. Extend the arms and lift them away from your back while letting your heart rise and stretching the front of your spine. Then sweep your arms overhead, again interlace your fingers and turn your palms to face the sky while extending your arms. Arch side-to-side stretching from your hips through your shoulders.


3) Keep engaging your core muscles: transverse abdominus and pelvic floor. To engage transverse abdominus narrow your middle by taking your belly button toward your spine. Lift your pelvic floor muscles by first narrowing the diamond shaped region between the sitting bones, tailbone, and pubic bone and then lifting this diamond up to support the abdominal organs. Engage these two sets of muscles as often as you remember.

4) Half Dog Pose: Come to stand in front of a bench or garden chair. Sweep your arms up along side your ears, engage your core muscles and then fold forward to place your hands on the chair seat. Step back to find a position where your both arms and legs are extended, your back is easy, your spine near horizontal and your head is in line with your arms. Slightly bend your knees and rotate your pelvis forward and back to find ‘neutral.’ Engage your deep abdominal muscles to support the low back. Keep pressing your hands into the bench and shift your weight back into your feet to stretch your armpits and shoulders. Breath deeply. You can gently bend one knee at a time ‘walking’ the legs in place to enhance the stretch in the hamstrings. You can also rotate the pelvis left and right to stretch the sides of the low back. To come out of this pose bend your knees, take your hands to your knees, extend your spine lead with your heart to rise.


5) Last but not least: Roll down. Stand up very tall. Engage your core muscles. Drop your head to look at your feet. SLOWLY allow one vertebrae at a time to roll forward off the spine, strongly work your core muscles to keep the rest of the body aligned as the spine slowly releases forward. Roll forward into your full forward bend and rest in a long stretch, with passive arms and head, breathing all the while. To come up, first reengage the pelvic floor muscles and feel your tail bone curl underneath the pelvis. Then on an exhale engage transverse abdominus and begin to unfurl the spine, one vertebrae at a time, all the way back up to standing. Repeat roll down a few times.

meditation chorus

Many of you have heard the four little miniature pinchers that live next door to the studio. When they get disturbed it is an incredible falsetto agitato chorus: “yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip….” Then my neighbor’s calm adagio baritone solo pitches in: “Quiet down, be still, enough.” The dogs eventually settle down. And the world becomes quiet again.

I listened to this short opera on Monday afternoon as I meditated. I heard my own brain reflected in the constant high pitched chatter and the calm slow reassurance. "Ahhh," I thought," this is me." Each moment in my meditation I have the possibility of both voices awakening within me: agitation and stillness. I took a deep breath and returned to observing my own mind. I’ll keep cultivating the stillness. One breath at a time.

My dear neighbor Don Ungher died unexpectedly on May 23rd, 2008, less than a month after I originally posted this blog. I will miss his presence in the neighborhood. I will miss his stoic wisdom. I will miss hearing the dogs yip. Blessings Don and Geoffrey and family.

Yoga for Special Conditions

Dear Yogini: I have two medical conditions, Arnold Chiari Syndrome, and the associated Syringomyelia. What these have caused is a loss of sensory input from my peripheral nerves (can't feel much in my hands and feet) which affects my balance. And more importantly, syringomyelia has caused extreme scoliosis. I stand tilted extremely to the right from the waist up and walk slouched to the front and right. The crooked, unbalanced gait is causing damage to my left hip joint. I've tried yoga (with you, actually), but the poor balance and posture made it seem futile from the start.

Is there a level of yoga practice which can give me the benefit of limbered joints, better muscle tone, improved balance, decreased pain levels, etc.? I guess part of it is my "look good". Trying to practice in a room full of lithe young bodies makes me feel older and more physically broken than before I came to class!


Dear Friend:

I hadn’t heard of Arnold Chiari Syndrome before your letter. I did a little research and it piqued both my curiosity and my empathy. While my condition is nowhere as severe as yours, you might want to know that I too suffer from peripheral neuropathy related to spondylolisthesis. Yoga has been the best medicine ever. All of the side effects are good. Yoga keeps me active and happy in my body.

I believe that Yoga can give you the benefits that you seek: limbered joints, better muscle tone, improved balance and decreased pain. And you are correct, yoga won’t transform you into one of the lithe young bodies on the cover of yoga journal. That isn’t your path. Yoga can make experiencing life in the body you have a more pleasant journey. (See the next post for some research on the impact of yoga for improved balance, height and strength in seniors.)

It is important that you find a class and a teacher who resonate for you. You will want to look for gentle yoga, therapeutic yoga, or perhaps a class for seniors. In an appropriate yoga class the teacher will give modifications of the yoga poses and use props to make the yoga poses accessible to you and others. If you find the right class you’ll meet others who are also working with and through physical limitations. Having a sense of belonging helps all of us be motivated to practice regularly. Try different classes and different teachers until you find the class that fits your body, your temperament, and your life.

One of my favorite books of the last year is Waking, by Matthew Sanford. Matthew is a paraplegic and a yoga teacher. He describes how yoga reawakened awareness in his body after many years of disconnection. His sensation has not returned. His mobility has not returned. But his sense of prana, of life force, in his immobile body has returned. He is happier and at ease in the body that he does have. Each of us can find this. We can tap and sense our pranic bodies (prana maya kosha) and have live healthier from this awareness. Sensing the prana maya kosha may even be easier as we age and the rush of sensation accompanying youth dissipates. We can become aware of the slower and deeper rhythms of our bodies. We can find peace and joy in the body we have, in this moment.

Yoga makes you taller

This week a student came to class telling me that she had read that yoga would make you taller. She had read a news article about research that showed that 100% of the participants in a study got taller doing yoga. I found that astounding. Could it really be true? 100% of the participants got taller? I went in search of the data. And she was right.

Dr. Jinsup Song conducted the research at a Temple University. He studied 24 women over 65 years old who had not been active before the study. He introduced an Iyengar Yoga routine to the group. They worked on a set of poses that Mr. Iyengar prescribed specifically for this study. Dr. Song describes the practice as a ‘very basic regimen” and contrasts it with more active yoga practices in other studies. The women were observed over the course of 9 weeks. At the end of the 9 weeks all of the women were one cm or more taller than they had been at the beginning of the study Dr. Song believes that postural improvements account for their increased height in the participants.

They also showed significant improvements in gait, posture, flexibility, and strength. They carried their weight more effectively on their feet. They had a faster stride with fewer falls and stumbles. This later improvement is considered one of the most valuable outcomes of the study as falling can be a significant cause of loss of independence for seniors. The participants enjoyed the program and were motivated to continue as they had a better outlook on their day-to-day lives, found the classes engaging and missed it when they couldn’t attend.

I mentioned the study to my students this week. And they all shook their heads in agreement. They started telling me their stories of improved health. Here are some reports of the benefits my yoga students have found from their practice:
“Yes, I am taller now.”
“My doctor measured my breathing, and I have more breath volume than I did before I started practicing.”
“I have less pain and I just feel better when I attend.”
“I don’t need to go to the chiropractor anymore, I can take care of my own back now.”
“My neck pain is gone.”

Yep, it’s good for us. Yep, it makes you feel better in your body. Yep, you’ll age more gracefully. Yep, you’ll be more comfortable on your feet.

I’ve written to Dr. Song to find out the specific routine he used. I’ll report more soon.