Broken toe- need cardio ideas

Hi, I broke one of my little toes recently (holy cow who knew it would sideline me this much!) and I'm desperate to work out more to lose this awful weight I've put on going back to school. I'm trying simple yoga, but even then you have to put a lot of load bearing weight on your feet. 



Try to find a Bike or Life Cycle that doesn't have foot straps.
This way you will use the balls of your feet to push on the peddles.

Or

If you're a member at a Gym you can also hit a Rowing machine to kick your ass in a completely different way.

Or

Some Gyms have an Arm peddle machine, it's like a Life Cycle but your arms are turning the peddles


bike, life cycle, rowing machine, arm peddle machine is a new one, thank U. I do agree, whole-heartedly, cardio is a great way to go, any vigorous exercise to increase that heart rate. I'm working with, and I am, a post-stroke or I prefer the older term CVA but it was no accident it was an awareness, a do I have your attention, moment. I was aware of ALL of this before but after that you could say I was extremely attentive:) I know cardio is not the only way to go but it sure is One great way.

 I was at the Gym yesterday and flashed back to this question, you can also throw the Precore or Elliptical into a group you can use.


Because, unlike a Bike with straps, these machines have a big flat spot to put your whole foot into. Therefore you're not pushing off with the ball of your feet because you're staying flat footed

 It's the most effective exercise for fat loss anyway and your toe will have minimal impact.

nutritioni

Here is something parents do: "the clean plate club" - teaches kids to over eat when they are full. Wrap it up put it away for sanitation purposes and re-heat if/when the child says they are hunger. On the child's part it is sometimes away to avoid eating something, only to want candy later, that is a not OK. The other thing we tend to do is reward our kids with "ice cream and candy" creating a conditioned response that candy and ice cream will make us feel better. So when adults get frustrated and down and looking for something to make them feel better, what do you think people seek out? The "sometimes" food rule fits in well for kids too. Ice cream and candy should not be treats they should be something that is eaten sometimes, as a choice.

If there is one food I would ban from every diet, it would be soda, even the diet type. You would not sit in a garage with your car running; carbon dioxide is what gives soda it's bubble and fizz. I have an entire article on what soda does and it's ill effects. BTW manufactures ADD caffeine to soda to make it addictive, so if you drink a lot, you will have to cut down over time to avoid headaches. I would cut consumption in 1/2 each week. It will save you money too.

I added this post to be helpful. I have a certification to teach it. I often get people who want to argue with me (one sided by the way) because they have learned some crazy thing on a infomercial of from a friend or some unreliable source. I have a degree and multiple sources, like I said it is just meant to b
e helpful. Eating right and being in shape may not be easy, like I said if it were as easy as taking a pill, it would make world news and the obesity rate would be way down.

nutritionist

The diet industry is a multi-BILLION industry. If “diets” worked we would not have at 60% obesity rate. So it is about choices and eating good food. If we could have a good body by taking a pill, I think we might all know it, and the obesity rate would be far lower. Pre-made diets and plans usually do not work, and are usually not good for you. FACT: 90% of people who loose weight gain it back, PLUS more. I will say weight watchers, with the choices and counting calories, MAY BE helpful because it does have you making choices and teaching you to eat balanced diet with the accurate amount of calories and food groups.

I teach nutrition and here is my best tip: There are every day foods and sometimes foods. It is ok to eat ice cream occasionally at a birthday party, but not ok to eat everyday for breakfast. Counting calories and good choices are key.

Exercise is also important. Do not rationalize you can eat a muffin (super-sized to 600 calories by the way) because you are going to use the treadmill later - unless you plan on doing an extra 45 minutes that you do not normally do. Six days of an additional 45 minutes, will give you enough to loose a pound. How many people try to rationalize that? Have you? How often? Too busy to exercise, you think? Playing basketball, Riding bike with your kids, or push mowing your lawn can all be exercise, as long as it elevates your heart rate.

Breakfast should be high fiber, oatmeal, whole wheat toast, etc; it tends to make us less hungry for the rest of the day. Fruits and vegetables are your best choice; they are low calorie (exception avocados), and highly nutritious. I would be surprised to find someone over weight who ate all fruits and vegetables.

Trying Something Different. Free Diet Technique

Metabolism slows as we age, so you may need to adjust things to match.

 Have any of you had surgery for weight loss?
I can lose weight but then I put it back on.
I am interested if any of you have any idea's about weight loss surgery.
If yes, what are your positive experiences and negative experiences?
What kind of emotional experiences did you have?
Were you still hungry after the surgery?
What kind of surgery did you have?
Would you recommend it to your best friend?
Thanks, 

After the flu bug last WE where I lost 3 lbs total, mostly water. Gained only one pound back. Did not go to the gym but made some life changes. Now walking more and limiting food intake throughout the day. Very hot here right now.
Still craving sugar at night prior to bed and in middle of the night but not as much.
Praying before meals to be a more conciouse consumer. 

 So, I tried the food lovers diet where you eat small portions for breakfast lunch and dinner and have small snack in between. That was working OK but I was hungry all of the time and couldn't wait for the next (eh-hem) big meal.

About 4 weeks ago I started a diet that I can live with. It's a two day per week fasting diet and already I have lost 16 pounds on it.

Basically, for the two days that you fast you only eat one meal (no snacks) each day and it can not total 600 calories. This includes drinks. I only drink water on these two days to help keep my calorie count down. Eat what you want for dinner but watch the calorie count. Then the rest of the 5 days eat whatever you want. As many calories as you want.

For example I fast on Wednesdays & Thursdays each week. On Wednesday I had a 6" Subway sandwich which was 350 calories and I had a small bag of baked Lays which was 170 calories along with a glass of water. So that totaled 500 calories (under 600 allowed). Tonight I had 2 servings of Pasta (200 per serving equaled 400 calories) and I had 2 servings of corn (70 calories per serving equals 140 total) giving me 540 calories for tonight. AND I was pretty full. You'd think that after not eating all day you would be pretty hungry but I'm finding this isn't the case.

Tomorrow I will be back to my normal eating habits for the next 5 days.

I lose about 4 - 5 pounds per week. BTW, I am 182 pounds. Not too terribly overweight but still a little overweight. I usually weigh in on Wednesday and then I will probably check and see how much I lost tomorrow morning. Then I won't check it again until next Wednesday.

To me, this is so much easier than trying to cut back every day of the week and being self conscious about what you eat all of the time.

It's pretty easy to do. I chose Wednesday and Thursday because it's the middle of the week and it doesn't interfere with weekend cookouts and get togethers either. :)

So if you're trying to lose weight you might want to give this a try for a few weeks. I hope to lose another 25 - 30 pounds before I hit the dreaded plateau.

 and fasting means NO intake, not just a little. I fasted many years ago and lost about 100 lbs very quickly, but I truly fasted and for a long time. Not recommended by DRs, but I felt great so I went with it. If what you're doing works for you then go for it!

Friday Q&A: Helping a Student with a Hip Replacement

Hip Joint from Behind

Q: I am a relatively new yoga instructor that teaches Gentle Hatha to (mostly) seniors.  Recently, a gentleman came in with bilat hip replacements from 10 and 12 years previous. He rides his bike and is in pretty good shape for a gent in his 60's. His hips were replaced by a posterior approach. How cautious do I need to be with this man? Do we modify mostly in the early days after the operation? Of course, I've modified the asanas to his ability and told him to not push it to the extreme. So is it fresh post op that we worry mostly about or for decades following? Thanks!

A: This is a great question and I am glad you asked it. In most cases, the hip replacement should outlast an individual’s lifespan. The literature states that total hip replacements typically last from 15-to-20 years after the initial surgery, but in some instances they can last over 30 years. But this is neither a guarantee nor assurance, for the simple reason that life is unpredictable.  Many factors affect the future of a hip replacement, such as accidents, fractures, late infections, and deterioration in overall health. Also, how well you take care of yourself down the road is something the surgeon cannot control. The longevity of a hip replacement thus depends on many factors, including the following:

• Surgeon skill in implanting the components
• Known history or track record of the implants
• How well you take care of yourself and your health
• Understanding and respecting the limitations of a prosthetic lifestyle
• Your activity level and body weight
• Avoiding high impact or extreme sports

Medical literature states that the most common reasons for individuals needing subsequent hip replacement surgery include:

• Loosening of the implant. 
• Dislocation of the implant
• Infection, such as staph infections either around the time of surgery or later through the introduction of the bacteria into the blood stream.

It is believed that the most common reason why hip replacements fail is because the weight-bearing surface wears out and the prosthesis begins to loosen. So, what is hip replacement loosening? When a hip replacement is placed into the body, it is either press-fit into the bone or cemented into position. Either way, it is fit tightly into the bone of the thigh (femur) and pelvis so that the implant cannot move. Hip replacement loosening occurs over time, and can cause problems with the normal function of the hip replacement prosthesis. When implants loosen, the hip replacement can begin to move small amounts. This can be caused by the shaft of the prosthesis becoming loose in the hollow of the thighbone or due to thinning of the bone around the implant.

Loosening of the joint can occur at any time, but it normally occurs 10-15 years after the original surgery was performed. Signs that the joint has become loose include pain and feeling that the joint is unstable and that there is increased loss of hip mobility. Another operation (revision surgery) may be necessary, although this cannot be performed on all patients.

Both physicians and patients are very concerned about the problem of hip replacement loosening because a hip replacement revision surgery (replacement of a joint replacement) is a much more difficult operation and hip replacement revisions are often not as successful as the first operation. After revision operations, patients tend to recover less overall motion of the joint. Also, the longevity of the implant decreases with each revision. Therefore, physicians tend to avoid joint replacement surgery until absolutely necessary, and try to get as much mileage out of each replacement as possible.

In about 1 in 20 cases, the hip joint can come out of its socket. This is most likely to occur in the first few months after surgery when the hip is still healing. But, unfortunately some people’s hips will dislocate very distant to the original hip replacement. My advice here is that a hip doesn’t typically dislocate without warning signs. Pain that increases as an activity is continued is the most prevalent symptom.

So how cautious should you be with your student? The surgical hips will have a certain degree of motion that is limited by their soft tissue, hip capsule, how the prosthesis sits in the acetabulum, and so on. Start by checking your student’s range of motion while he is lying in a supine position. Test all the movements of the hip (hip up toward chest with knee bent, same knee position but bring it out to side for abduction, and turn the hip out in abduction for external rotation by bringing the bent knee up toward the armpit. Then look at his hip mobility while standing: hip flexion, abduction, external rotation and extension. You should also see if he tolerates adduction by having him sit on a chair and cross one leg over the other. If he can't do this, then any pose that has internal rotation must be modified significantly. You should have your student do this for both hips to get a sense of how it feels to his hip and see if there is any pinching or grabbing. Then you can modify the asanas accordingly.

If you ask a surgeon if his patient has any precautions after three months post op, he will generally say no, but he will modify his statement telling the patient to “use your own judgment.” So do we continue with precautions forever? Well, that is an area of disagreement. I err on the side of moderation saying, “If it makes you anxious or causes pain, discomfort, pulling, or pinching, please stop.” A student can have the potential of dislocation forever if they are not mindful on how they move and move repeatedly into discomfort. And remember the combined positions of flexion, abduction and internal rotation are the holy triad. If your student can tolerate the movements separately then you can find his limits and slowly challenge his hips, but both you and he must be aware of how the hip feels. NO PAIN should be elicited from asana and that means soreness after class or the next day. Learning how to ask how a movement feels is tricky because not everyone will say something hurts, so this includes learning which words your student uses to describe sensation changes.

So for your student, keep making sure that he observes his body’s limits and doesn’t push beyond his current activity. And congratulate him for coming to your class and investing in his continued health!

—Shari

Yoga and Dementia: Welcome News

by Nina

A Rainbow at the Dam by Melina Meza

"Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply, as Forecast”

Now that’s the kind of headline I like to see! Yes, an article in the New York Times this week Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply, as Forecast announced the results of two different studies that showed that the incidence of dementia—in one case in England and Wales and in the other case in Denmark—was declining. And the reasons for this are very exciting to us here at Yoga for Healthy Aging.

“Yet experts on aging said the studies also confirmed something they had suspected but had had difficulty proving: that dementia rates would fall and mental acuity improve as the population grew healthier and better educated. The incidence of dementia is lower among those better educated, as well as among those who control their blood pressure and cholesterol, possibly because some dementia is caused by ministrokes and other vascular damage. So as populations controlled cardiovascular risk factors better and had more years of schooling, it made sense that the risk of dementia might decrease.”

So what they are saying here is that, along with being better educated, controlling blood pressure and cholesterol can help prevent dementia. And that means yoga can help. Foremost, yoga’s stress management tools can help you keep your blood pressure low. As I discussed in Chronic Stress: An Introduction, living with chronic stress can cause high blood pressure. So practicing stress management (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga and Stress, Your Health and Yoga will help you keep your blood pressure in check as it benefits your health in many other ways. Stress management can also help you maintain a low cholesterol diet by reducing stress eating and giving you more willpower to stay away from high cholesterol foods (see Yoga, Stress and Weight Management and Healthy Eating, Stress and Self Control). Healthy eating is also fostered by mindfulness (see Meditation and Healthy Eating) so if staying away from high-cholesterol foods is a problem for you, a meditation practice may be helpful.

For me, yoga even provides an ongoing education. Yoga philosophy is food for my intellect as well as providing inspiration for living my life with greater equanimity. Why, just this week I learned a lot from Ram’s post LINK, and the week before I learned from writing my own post Modern Yoga and Hinduism. So if yoga philosophy and history are of interest to you, a whole world of new knowledge and intellectual stimulation awaits you.

The New York Times quoted Dr. Anderson, of the National Institute on Aging, saying:

“With these two studies, we are beginning to see that more and more of us will have a chance to reach old age cognitively intact, postponing dementia or avoiding it altogether. That is a happy prospect.”

Yoga and Healthy Eating: How Yoga Helps You Tune in to the Effects of Your Dietary Choices

by Baxter

Fresh Bread and Fresh Butter
made and photographed by
Rosie Gibson

It is always a bit bittersweet for me come mid-July when I return from my annual yoga retreat at the Feathered Pipe Ranch  in Helena, Montana. It is a magical place for my students, and me, and most of our every-day needs are met by the staff at the Ranch, freeing us up to dive deep into the yoga and community. 

At this year’s retreat, I focused on many of the concepts we talk about here at Yoga For Healthy Aging, including therapeutic sessions on topics ranging from arthritis to digestion. One of the lovely things about going on these sorts of retreats is that all of your meals are prepared for you, and all you have to do is show up for meal times. The Ranch is no different, and they pride themselves of the variety of healthy, mostly organic foods that they prepare for us each year, from Indian to Thai to Mexican, to the “Toledo Lunch” (a throwback to my childhood favorite, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup). In addition, they always have tempting desserts, from fruit cobbler to fresh baked cookies and cakes to something outrageous called Chocolate Decadence! The downside to this, at least from my perspective, is that the food is served buffet style, so there is the daily opportunity to overeat, despite the overall healthy options provided (minus some of the desserts, of course!)

I have to remind myself to be more mindful about my eating when at the Ranch. It is very easy to make a second trip up for some more of my favorite things, even when my first plate of food was more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. Satiety is different than eating until I feel “stuffed.” which unfortunately happened a few times last week. But because I was also on retreat in my own way, even though I was teaching twice each day, I was able to have the time to meditate consistently first thing in the morning for about 15 minutes. I found that as I sat quietly focused on my breath or simple mantra (see How to Start a Meditation Practice), I became acutely aware of how my body was feeling and responding to the previous day's food choices. I also would recall if I woke in the middle of the night with indigestion, gas, bad dreams, or the urgent need to use the bathroom. This feedback allowed me to more consciously set an intention around my food choices for the rest of the day.

Since I tend to desire more processed sugar than is healthy for me, (is it really healthy for anyone?), I began to modify my breakfasts, the only meal I prepared for myself in the little teacher’s cabin kitchen, leaving out the jam on my toast and adding in a piece of fresh fruit to satisfy that sweet taste desire that I have. And I began to notice that my energy levels were higher for the rest of the morning as the week progressed. Quite motivating! I have to admit that dessert time was still a tough one, but was at least more mindfully dished and consumed than earlier in the week. 

Surprisingly, I realized I was looking forward to being back in my own kitchen where I could more easily design my meals for not just quality, but also quantity.  All these insights about behavior changes and choices arose directly out of the introspective practices of yoga, like simple breath awareness. They were there for me, and they are available for you, too. As we keep reminding you, consistent practice is a key feature of transformational practice. I did my meditation first thing today again, and my continued healthy, well-proportioned meals choices are reflecting it!

I've been thinking a lot about healthy eating and healthy digestion because my two-part online course at Yoga U is coming up soon. To sign up for the course, you can register here. For a free audio interview with me on yoga for healthy digestion, download the interview here.

Medical Conditions Benefited by Yoga

by Nina

Just a quick post today to let you know that Timothy McCall has updated his list of medical conditions that are benefited by yoga (as demonstrated by scientific studies). There are 75 conditions!

1.    Alcoholism and Other Drug Abuse
2.    Anxiety
3.    Asthma
4.    Atrial Fibrillation
5.    Attention Deficit/HyperactivityDisorder (ADD/ADHD)
6.    Autism
7.    Back Pain
8.    Balance Problems
9.    Breast Cancer
10.    Cancer (General)
11.    Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
12.    Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
13.    Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) e.g. Emphysema
14.    Congestive Heart Failure
15.    Depression
16.    Diabetes
17.    Drug Withdrawal
18.    Eating Disorders
19.    Epilepsy
20.    Fatigue
21.    Fibromyalgia
22.    Gait (Walking) Problems
23.    Guillain-Barré Syndrome
24.    Heart Disease
25.    Hemorrhoids
26.    High Blood Pressure
27.    HIV/AIDS
28.    Hypothyroidism
29.    Infertility
30.    Inguinal Hernia
31.    Insomnia
32.    Irritable Bowel Syndrome
33.    Kidney Failure
34.    Lymphoma
35.    Mental Developmental Impairment
36.    Menopausal (and Perimenopausal) Symptoms
37.    Menstrual Disorders
38.    Metabolic Syndrome
39.    Migraine and Tension Headaches
40.    Multiple Sclerosis
41.    Muscular Dystrophy
42.    Neck Pain
43.    Neuroses (e.g. Phobias)
44.    Obesity/Overweight
45.    Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
46.    Organ Transplant
47.    Osteoporosis
48.    Osteoarthritis (Degenerative Arthritis)
49.    Ovarian Cancer
50.    Pain (Chronic)
51.    Performance Anxiety
52.    Pleural Effusion (Fluid in Lung Lining)
53.    Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
54.    Post-Heart Attack Rehabilitation
55.    Post-Joint Replacement
56.    Post-Polio Syndrome
57.    Post-Operative Recovery
58.    Post-Stroke Rehabilitation
59.    Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
60.    Pregnancy (both normal and complicated)
61.    Psoriasis
62.    Restless Leg Syndrome
63.    Rheumatoid Arthritis
64.    Rhinitis (Inflammation of the Nose)
65.    Schizophrenia
66.    Scoliosis (Lateral Curvature of the Spine)
67.    Sexual Function
68.    Sinusitis
69.    Smoking Cessation
70.    Stroke
71.    Total Knee Arthroplasty
72.    Traumatic Brain Injury
73.    Tuberculosis
74.    Urinary Bladder Dysfunction
75.    Urinary Stress Incontinence

Timothy has created a special PDF document that lists these conditions along with the scientific publications that confirm the benefits that yoga provides. And he has generously granted permission for copying and distributing this document. You can find it on his web site: http://drmccall.com/yoga/YAM--75Conditions.pdf.

Friday Q&A: Modern Yoga and Hinduism (and the Encinitas Ruling)

Arjuna Listening to Krishna

“Yoga is an art, a science, and a philosophy. It touches the life of man at every level, physical, mental, and spiritual. It is a practical method for making one’s life purposeful, useful and noble.” —B.K.S. Iyengar from Light on Yoga

 Q: There's been a news story this past week about parents in a school district somewhere who tried to shut down the teaching of yoga because it was, supposedly, religious indoctrination. The story said that the school board disagreed, the explicit parts of the classes that mentioned (discussed? preached?) Hinduism were eliminated, and yoga continues to be taught there.

I've taken yoga for a long time and in none of my classes has there ever been anything said that I could identify as Hindu. What is the connection between Hinduism and yoga? and hatha yoga in particular? and Iyengar yoga in particular?

A: This question has been in the news lately due to the case in Encinitas, California, where parents sued the school system for including yoga in the schools (see the Washington Post article). The ruling was very clear, as San Diego Superior Court Judge John Meyer said:

"Yoga as it has developed in the last 20 years is rooted in American culture, not Indian culture. It is a distinctly American cultural phenomenon. A reasonable student would not objectively perceive that Encinitas school district yoga advances or promotes religion."

In my opinion, the answer to this question isn’t quite so clear and is a lot more like that icky relationship status on Facebook: It’s Complicated. In fact, it’s so complicated that Ram Rao and I will both be addressing this question (look for a separate post from him next week). Today I’m going to try to give a little background that will hopefully shed some light on this issue.

To start, it’s important to understand that while no one really knows for sure exactly how old yoga is or how it began, yoga clearly evolved as a part of Hinduism. The early yoga scriptures, the Upanisads, are definitely religious. Yoga is defined in the Svetavatara Upanisad as:

"When, by means of the true nature of atman, which is like a lamp, a person perceives the truth of Brahman in this world, he is freed from all bondage, because he has known the Divine, which is unborn, unchanging, and untainted by all things." —trans. by Edwin Bryant

The famous yoga scripture The Bhagavad Gita, written between the ninth and fourth centuries BCE, is an explicitly Hindu text, portraying the Hindu god Krishna as the source of yogic wisdom and recommending devotional yoga as a path to liberation. This work, which Mohandas K. Ghandi referred to as his “mother,” is an essential part of modern yoga, though people often—as is done with The Bible—pick and choose the quotes they use.

However, the other famous and essential yoga scripture, the Yoga Sutras (written in the second century BCE) while theistic (referring to Isvara or “The Lord”) is not explicitly Hindu text in the same way. As Edwin Bryant says:

"I might add here that Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is not an overtly sectarian text in the sense of prioritizing a specific deity or promoting a particular type of worship as is the case with many Hindu scripture, including The Bhagavad Gita. Therefore, as a template, it can be and has been appropriated by followers of different schools and traditions throughout Indian religious history and certainly continues to lend itself to such appropriations, most recently in nonreligious contexts in the West." —from The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali

In fact, as yoga evolved, several other religions adopted the yoga techniques and philosophy, including Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism.

Regarding hatha yoga, which came much later, we can look to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (written in the 15 century CE), as it is the classic manual on hatha yoga. This document is considered a Hindu text but is similar to The Yoga Sutras in not being an “overtly sectarian.” Ram will discuss this text in detail in his upcoming post.

So far, however, the yoga described in these texts does not much resemble the yoga we are currently practicing in the West, especially the asana part. It was only in the 20th century that pivotal figures such as T.K.V. Krishnamacharya and B.K.S. Iyengar developed the modern asana practice as we now know it (see Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton). During this period, for many practitioners in the west, “yoga” became disassociated from its spiritual aspects and the asana practice was adopted as an exercise system. Thus, many of us have the experience that our questioner referred to of attending yoga classes that do not include any spiritual practices or any references to Hindu yoga scriptures of the past.

And even for those teachers who regularly teach the spiritual aspects of yoga, the general consensus is that yoga is not a religion per se, and that anyone of any religion or non-religion can practice it. Since the questioner asked specifically about B.K.S. Iyengar, I will confirm that this is his point of view. He recently said:

Yoga is an Indian heritage, not a Hindu property. Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, which forms the basis of the system, addresses all humanity not just Hindus. Just because yogis did not travel as widely as they do today does not imply that the practice belonged to one community or place. Patanjali calls yoga sarva bhauma, a universal culture. And yoga is an individual's evolutionary journey as a sadhaka (seeker) from the body to the self. Where is the room for doubt here?

The complicated part comes when you face the fact that the famous Indian teachers who profoundly influenced modern yoga as we know it were/are Hindus themselves. Regarding Iyengar, he, himself, is a Hindu Brahmin and much of his writing is, in fact, very theistic (see Light on Yoga and Light on the Yoga Sutras). And in some yoga traditions, even those taught in the west, Hindu practices, such as chanting and reading from the scriptures, are included in the classes. Regarding the Encinitas case, I was surprised to read this:

Yoga instructor Jennifer Nicole Brown, who demonstrated some of the yoga positions in court, said when parents complained about their children chanting, she removed it from the lesson.

It turns out that the type of yoga that was being taught in Encinitas was Ashtanga Yoga, the yoga system promoted by K. Pattabhi Jois, a student of Krishnamacharya, who was a Hindu. So what were these children chanting? I decided to check it out. The translation for the opening chant for the Ashtanga series is:

I bow to the lotus feet of the Supreme Guru which awaken insight into the happiness of pure Being, which are the refuge, the jungle physician, which eliminate the delusion caused by the poisonous herb of Samsara (conditioned existence).
I prostrate before the sage Patanjali who has thousands of radiant, white heads (as the divine serpent, Ananta) and who has, as far as his arms, assumed the form of a man holding a conch shell (divine sound), a wheel (discus of light or infinite time) and a sword (discrimination).

That sounds the teeniest bit Hindu to me, I have to say. And I can see why the parents complained about the chanting. So that’s what was removed from the school’s curriculum. Also—and this seems kind of silly—some of the names of poses were changed.

So I believe that while it is completely possible to practice yoga without being a Hindu or participating in Hindu religious activities, it is naive to say that modern yoga is totally “American” and has nothing at all to do with Hinduism. How you make your peace with this is up to you. I’ve known people who actively embrace the connection between yoga and Hinduism. Others may wish to be selective about the type of yoga they do, and choose their teachers and classes with care.

—Nina

Meditation and Compassion

by Nina 

Lake Tahoe by Melina Meza

“Nonetheless, the current finding is the first to clearly show the power of meditation to increase compassionate responding to suffering, even in the face of social pressures to avoid so doing. As such, it provides scientific credence to ancient Buddhist teachings that meditation increases spontaneous compassionate behavior.” —Paul Condon, et al

Just a quick heads-up today about a recent scientific study about the effects of meditation practice on compassion that was written up in last Sunday’s NY Times The Morality of Meditation.

In my post Practicing Yoga Off the Mat, I wrote about my desire to cultivate compassion toward others in my life to foster better relationships. In that post, I cited Yoga Sutra 1.33 in describing my off-the-mat practice:

By cultivating an attitude of friendship toward those who are happy, compassion toward those in distress, joy toward those who are virtuous, and equanimity toward those who are nonvirtuous, lucidity arises in the mind. —trans. by Edwin Bryant

Lately we’ve also been addressing meditation on the blog. In Is Meditation an Essential Part of Yoga Practice, Timothy wrote about the importance of meditation, describing it as “a fabulous tool to study your mind and slowly gain more control over it.” But according to Buddhist tradition, meditation also provides important inter-personal benefits as well. This is why a group of people, including psychologist Paul Condon, neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and Buddhist lama Willa Miller, decided to conduct a study looking at these particular benefits to the practice:

“Contemplative science has documented a plethora of intra-personal benefits stemming from meditation, including increases in gray matter density (Hölzel, Carmody, et al., 2011), positive affect (Moyer et al., 2011) and improvement in various mental health outcomes (Hölzel, Lazar, et al., 2011). Strikingly, however, much less is known about the inter-personal impact of meditation. Although Buddhist teachings suggest that increases in compassionate responding should be a primary outcome of meditation (Davidson & Harrington, 2002), little scientific evidence exists to support this conjecture.” —Paul Condon, et al

For this study, the scientists recruited 39 people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). They randomly assigned 20 of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home with recordings, while they told the remaining 19 that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course.

After the eight-week period of instruction, the scientists staged a situation designed to test the participants’ behavior before they were aware that there was an experiment. Would a participant who was waiting in the lab’s waiting area give up his or her seat when a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighing in pain entered the room in which all seats were taken and the other two people ignored her? The scientists reported that the results were significant because while only 16 percent of the non-meditators gave up their seats, the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. And this after only eight weeks of practice!

Of course, the question that immediately arises is: why would eight weeks of meditation have this effect on a person’s compassion for others? At this point, they can only speculate. David DeSteno, one of the scientists, wrote in the NY Times article:

“Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected.”

Regardless of why it works, using meditation to cultivate compassion will no doubt help foster better relationships not just with total strangers but also with people in your life. If you’re not already meditating and want to start, see Timothy’s post Starting a Meditation Practice.

Digestive Health: Online Course and Free Interview with Baxter Bell!

by Nina

In his recent post Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Yoga, Baxter mentioned that he’s going to giving a two-part online course on Yoga for Digestive Health via Yoga U. It’s coming up soon, everyone! And it’s going to be good. (I know because—ssshh!—I’m helping with the presentation.) Here’s the course description:

Learn about the digestive system and how you can use yoga to improve digestive health. In this 2-part online yoga course, Baxter Bell, MD offers an overview of the organs of digestion, their basic functions and how you can use yoga to impact digestive health, from his experience as a western trained doctor and a certified yoga instructor. Dr. Bell will discuss the common digestive disorders and the early signs of digestive disturbances.

To take this online course, you’ll need to register (and pay) here. But Baxter has also done a special interview on digestion for Yoga U interview and this is completely free. Here’s a description of the interview:

In it, Dr. Bell discusses how the digestive system interfaces with other body systems, particularly – the immune system and the nervous system. The digestive system has a separate network of nerves called the enteric nervous system, which works independently of the central nervous system and the brain. Early research even suggests that the digestive system could even impact our mental, emotional, overall well-being.

Dr. Bell further discusses some of the common early warning signs of digestive disorders to be on the lookout for, and how to check whether your digestive function is normal. He also offers insights into the different ways in which our yoga asana practice can have an impact on digestive health, and which groups of postures are particularly important.

To download the interview with Baxter, go here. For those of you who can't practice in person with Baxter, this will give you a little taste of what his workshops are like.

Caregivers: The True Karma Yogis

by Ram

Last Leaves by Melina Meza

You could be a sister, brother, parent, relative, friend, or neighbor who provides care and assistance to a recipient without receiving any payment for such services. You are a true karma yogi. Karma Yoga, as we know, is a path of yoga that allows for an individual to carry out his/her duties selflessly as a service without looking to reap any benefits from such service. Such individuals have the opportunity to directly experience the inner joy and wellbeing that selfless service brings. These individuals are also known as caregivers since they provide a wide variety of selfless services to a recipient, including assisting with daily tasks like personal care, providing meals, helping the recipient with their daily physical activities, administering medications, meeting with healthcare providers, daily supervision and activity, coordinating treatment regimens, management of the recipient’s medical care and health insurance, etc.

The following subset of statistics mentioned below and drawn from the National Alliance for Caregiving speaks volumes of the caregivers’ true act of karma yoga:

1. More than 65 million people (representing about 1/5 of the U.S. population) are caregivers providing care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend during any given year and spending an average of 20 hours per week providing care for the recipient. Approximately 66% of caregivers are women. More than 37% have children or grandchildren under 18 years living with them.
2. The value of the free services caregivers provide for older adults is estimated to be $375 billion a year.
3. Twenty hours per week is the average number of hours family caregivers spend caring for their loved ones while 13% of family caregivers are providing 40 hours of care a week or more.
4. Thirty-six percent of family caregivers care for a parent and 7 out of 10 caregivers are caring for loved ones over 50 years old.

On the disturbing side are the statistics drawn from the same National Alliance regarding the impact of care-giving on a caregiver’s health that is a serious cause for concern:

1. Women caregivers are 2.5 times more likely than non-caregivers to live in poverty and five times more likely to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
2. Forty-seven percent of working caregivers indicate that an increase in care-giving expenses has caused them to use up all or most of their savings.
3. Nearly 25% of caregivers caring for 5 years or more report their health is fair or poor. 20% of employed female caregivers over 50 years old report symptoms of depression compared to 8% of their non-caregiving peers. 40-70% of family caregivers have clinically significant symptoms of depression. 1 in 10 caregivers report that care-giving has caused their physical health to deteriorate.
4. Sixty-three percent of caregivers report having poorer eating habits than non-caregivers.
5. Family caregivers experiencing extreme stress have been shown to age prematurely. The level of stress can take as much as 10 years off a family caregiver's life.

Thus, while care-giving may be rewarding mentally, spiritually and emotionally, for a majority of caregivers it is undoubtedly stressful. Caregivers were found to have a 15% lower level of immune response and a 23% higher level of stress hormones compared to non-caregivers, suggesting that the stress encountered by primary caregivers greatly impacts their health and ability to recover from any illness. The stress associated with caring for persons with chronic degenerative diseases has been shown to drastically reduce caregivers' immune system thus increasing their chances of developing a chronic illness themselves.

There are several strategies that caregivers can use to reduce the effects of this added stress. One such strategy that is receiving a lot of attention is yoga and meditation. While yoga has been shown to help people with a multitude of health problems, several recent studies indicate that yoga could help the caregivers as well. Research studies involving caregivers (see here and here) have shown that yoga and meditation can help lower depression, reduce fear, worry and anxiety, improve cognitive functioning, decrease overall stress and slow down cellular aging associated with stress among caregivers. A majority of caregivers find the yoga and meditation strategy useful and report improvements in physical and emotional status.

As a researcher working to understand the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, I am saddened to hear that a majority of the Alzheimer's caregivers experience high levels of stress. Caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease is an extremely difficult task and can become overwhelming, especially when the disease is at its late stage where the patient has completely lost memory and other cognitive functions. Performing basic activities of daily living becomes difficult to manage for the Alzheimer's patient and the caregiver. Each day brings new challenges for the caregivers as they try to manage care with the patient’s new patterns of behavior. This puts the caregivers at a greater risk for developing depression and other chronic illness unless they seek remedial measures.

A recent study on caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease confirms the therapeutic benefits of yoga and meditation. For the study, researchers recruited a total of 46 caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease to participate in a stress-reduction program for a 2-month period and randomly placed them in one of two groups. 25 volunteer caregivers were assigned to receive a yoga and meditation program and the other group of 21 served as a control group and did not receive any specific treatment.

The program lasted two months, with the yoga and meditation sessions lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes (25 minutes yoga, 25 minutes pranayama and 25 minutes mindfulness meditation), three times per week. The participants had to attend one live training session per week, whereas the other two weekly sessions were performed at home with the aid of a DVD. The levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and morning salivary cortisol of the participants were measured before and after the intervention. At the end of the two-month program, the group that received the yoga, meditation and pranayama training had significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and greater improvement in mental health and cognitive functioning, compared to the control group. The intervention group also exhibited a statistically significant reduction in the stress and anxiety scores, thus indicating that yoga and meditation type of intervention is very useful in reducing stress in caregivers directly involved with patient care tasks.

It is believed that the beneficial effects of yoga and mediation are due to a reduction in sympathetic activity with a concomitant increase in parasympathetic activity. These changes result in increases in GABA, serotonin and melatonin concentrations and a reduction in the levels of adrenalin and noradrenalin, all of which result in improvements of mood, reduction in body temperature, reduction in stress and anxiety, and greater improvement in mental health. The study also draws attention to the close relation between mental and physical health by documenting the mechanistic links at the cellular level. While there are many psychosocial interventions that enhance mental health for caregivers, the yoga and meditation intervention seems attractive as a simple therapeutic practice that could be distributed and applied for use in clinical practice not only for patients but for caregivers as well.

Starting a Meditation Practice

by Timothy

Berries by Melina Meza

In my last blog post (Is Meditation an Essential Part of Practicing Yoga?), I wrote about why meditation may be the most powerful tool in the yoga toolbox for improving health and well-being. Yet meditation is not part of most yoga classes, which tend to focus almost exclusively on asana. Indeed, many yoga practitioners who have become interested in meditation have looked to Buddhism or elsewhere to learn how to meditate because they weren’t finding it in the yoga world.

But, as I mentioned previously, meditation was traditionally an integral part of yoga practice, and within the yoga tradition there are dozens of different techniques. Contrary to popular belief, in yogic meditation you are usually not trying to make your mind empty, but instead the process begins by learning how to concentrate your focus. To facilitate this, it helps to focus your attention on one thing, perhaps a word or phrase (a mantra), an object like a candle or a picture of a teacher or deity, or simply on your breath itself. With sustained attention, you may slip into a meditative state.

So, strictly speaking, we do not sit down to meditate, but rather we sit to foster the state that may lead to meditation. Since the mind tends to wander—even among experienced meditators—there may not be much (or even any) actual meditation in any particular session of sitting. Still, this movement towards meditation all by itself brings physiological and health benefits. And, of course, with sustained practice, more and more actual meditation can happen. At first, it may just be for a moment now and again, and that’s just fine.

The first question then is how do you sit? Despite the pictures you’re likely to see of people meditating, you do not need to sit cross-legged on the floor, though if you can that may be one of the best ways. Kneeling in Virasana (Hero pose), perhaps with a block under your sitting bones, is an excellent alternative. What’s important is that you maintain your normal spinal curves, particularly the inward curve of your lower back (the lumbar curve). This is difficult for most people to do if they try to sit cross-legged on the floor, which is why one or more cushions should be placed under the sitting bones, allowing the healthy forward tipping of the pelvis that facilitates maintaining an easy lumbar curve. When you’ve got the height right, your thighs will angle down slightly toward the floor. If you've propped yourself up high to do this, you may need to put additional support underneath your thighs to remain comfortable. Getting all of this right is an art, and if you’re not sure how to proceed I suggest you seek the help of an experienced yoga teacher.

For many people, it will be much easier and much more effective to sit in a chair for meditation. You’re only going to be able to concentrate and/or meditate if you can remain in a comfortable upright position, and if you’re not comfortable sitting on the floor, it’s best to try a chair. For those sitting in a chair, I recommend scooting to the front of the seat, because if you sit back, most chairs encourage a flattening or rounding of the lumbar spine. If your feet don’t reach the ground comfortably, place blocks, thick books, or folded blankets under them. If your legs, like mine, are long, you may need to place a folded blanket on the chair to raise the seat. But no matter the position you choose, if possible, your head should be directly over your shoulders and pelvis. If you get it right, there should be very little work required to stay upright.

Although it may not be ideal, for those who can't sit comfortably, it is possible to meditate lying down. Some people in the yoga world would take exception to this, but I have found it to be useful in the yoga therapy work I do. One of the principles of teaching yoga is that we try to meet students where there are, and this is where some people are: they cannot sit comfortably. Yes, there is a greater tendency to get sleepy or zone out while supine, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The simple yet powerful practice I often suggest for beginners (and experienced students as well) is a meditation technique known as So Ham (sometimes written So Hum because that’s how it's pronounced). Settle into a seated position that balances ease and an upright spine, and notice the flow of air in your nostrils. Begin to focus on the sound of your breath. The ancient yogis felt they could hear in the inhalation the sound “Soooooooooh” and in the exhalation “hummmmmmmmm.” They didn't make the sound so much as they tuned into the sound that the breath naturally makes, believing it to be a mantra that’s built in. In Sanskrit so ham means “I am that,” which to the yogis signaled their connection to the greater whole. Try to stay focused on that sound, noticing your breath but not trying to control it. If you discover your attention has wavered, simply observe that without judgment, and gently bring your focus back to So Ham.

I'd recommend trying to stay for 3-5 minutes initially, working up gradually to 20 minutes or longer daily. As with all yoga practices, a little bit every day will bring greater benefits than longer sessions done intermittently.

Friday Q&A: Creaky Knees

Q: I just started working with a student who has a lot of issues with her knees, and also has a total hip replacement. Whenever she flexes her knees even the smallest amount while weight bearing they make this loud creaking noise. What is the cause of this and how should I work with her from a yoga standpoint?

A: The sound that joints make when they move can often be scary. When do we need to be concerned about these sounds? Whether or not we should ignore them is the crux of this question and our medium of exploration is asana.

It would seem that if you asked this question to a physician or other health practitioners, you would probably get an answer that sounded like this (now remember I now have my physical therapist’s hat on). Often sounds in knees are called crepitus. Crepitus may show up suddenly with no associated pain and it may be persistent every time the motion is performed. These joint noises are considered “benign” because there is no associated pain. Some theories of what causes these sounds (and the medical term is cavitation) are that when the knee joint moves there are changes in joint pressure in the synovial fluid. The changes in joint pressure cause tiny bubbles of gas to form slowly in joints. When these gas bubbles burst quickly, they make a popping sound similar to when you pop bubble wrap. The myth that states that these joint sounds will lead to arthritis is not medically proven.

Okay, so now let’s explore the sounds a bit more. Remember, the ends of the bones in the knees are covered with cartilage. This cartilage protects the joints as we bend and straighten them. If this cartilage becomes worn or frayed, the normal and smooth sensation that accompanies knee motions can become rough, leading to catches or popping sensations. If the cartilage becomes severely damaged, severe painful catches and swelling can occur.

Another cause of joint noise is the snapping of tendons or scar tissue as they are stretched slightly as they go over a prominence around the knee joint and then snap back into place making that popping sound. Again, medical opinion is that there is no harm with this knee popping as long as it isn’t causing pain, and it will not put you at risk or make you more prone to injury.

Finally, sounds in the knee may be due to small fragments of cartilage or other tissue that move freely around the joint, and these small bodies can cause complaints of popping and catching although they are most often associated with pain with movement or loss of movement due to catching.

But now let’s address this teacher’s question. She states that the student “has a lot of issues with her knees, and also has a total hip replacement.” Well, “a lot of issues with her knees” is pretty vague, but after a hip replacement it is probably that this student’s mobility has been limited for quite some time. When hips are in pain, it significantly changes how we walk and stand. Our physical abilities decline and we become much more sedentary. So we have the surgery to fix the main limiting problem but our body has to learn how to move again without the fear of causing the pain that we had for such a long time prior to surgery.

I would recommend that you first look at your student in Tadasana (Mountain pose) to get an idea how she distributes her weight on her feet and her knees and whether her kneecaps (patellas) are facing in the same directions. Looking for asymmetries in her knees and feet will help you learn what might need to be addressed in her asana practice. I also would watch her walk, and see how she moves in space and how easy and smooth her walking is. I would also assess her balance.

Of course, knowing her hip limitations and restrictions is paramount before she begins an asana practice, and if she herself doesn’t know, she may have to either give you permission to call her surgeon. or you can ask her to call herself (but be specific in the questions she has to ask).  As to her particular practice limitations, I might start her practice in a chair first so she can learn how to move her body with support. By having her practice in a chair, you can figure out if moving her knees in sitting has the same effect on the knee noise as loading her knees (standing in weight-bearing positions). Next, have her progress to standing poses but only with small, partial knee bending not full bending, seeing if there is a point that no noise occurs in the movements. She can work this way until she is ready to move onto the full poses.

—Shari

You must not seek, you must search...

A Bee by Melina Meza

"You must not seek, you must search. You must not see, you must look at. You must not hear, you must listen to. You must not touch, you must palpate. You must not smell, you must sniff." —B.K.S. Iyengar from Sparks of Divinity

Balancing Your Emotions with Your Breath

by Nina

Close-Up of the Falls by Melina Meza

As I wrote in Your Breath: The Key to Your Nervous System, while you cannot tell your nervous system directly to slow your heart beat, digest your food more quickly or to start relaxing right this minute, you can control your breath. And because your heart rate tends to speed up on your inhalation and your heart rate tends to slow on your exhalation, this enables you to consciously access your nervous system. By intentionally taking in more air (either by speeding up your breath or by lengthening your inhalation) you can stimulate your nervous system. And by taking in less air (by slowing your breath or lengthening your exhalation), you can calm yourself down.

Last week, I wrote about emotional counter-poses that you can use to balance your emotions. You can use various yogic breath practices in the same way. You can use breath practices when nothing serious is wrong but you’re just feeling slightly hyper (see anxiety or stress) or slightly down (see clinical depression). And you can also use them as a supplement to other treatments if you are suffering from anxiety, agitated depression, clinical depression or chronic stress.

(Note that yogic breath practices have evolved over thousands of years as yogis experimented on themselves and passed on discoveries their students. And while some schools of yoga teach yogic breath practices (pranayama) to beginners, the type of yoga that I’m trained in, Iyengar style, considers breath practices to be so powerful that pranayama is introduced very gradually. So if you start experimenting with breath practices to balance your emotional condition, do take it easy.)

Anxiety and agitated depression. Because anxiety and agitated depression—which is anxiety based—are so often related to an overactive sympathetic nervous system, for these two conditions it’s best to focus on your exhalation. You can simply work on exhaling completely or lengthen your exhalation a beat or two (by pausing after your exhalation is complete). Or, you can try a more formal practice that focuses on lengthening the exhalation, such as Viloma with interrupted exhalation, where you actually pause twice during your exhalation and once at the end. This is the practice that Iyengar himself recommends in Light on Life in his “Asanas for Emotional Stability” practice.

If manipulating your exhalation causes you to feel any agitation whatsoever, stop the practice. In addition, practices that lengthen your inhalation or even that bring your awareness to the inhalation (which can cause you to unintentionally lengthen or deepen your inhalation) may aggravate your condition, so you may want to avoid them.

If you’ve noticed that you are a chest breather—a type of breathing that seems to be associated with anxiety—and it doesn’t make you feel more anxious to work with your inhalation as well as your exhalation, you could practice abdominal breathing. In abdominal breathing, you focus on slowly inhaling into and exhaling from your belly rather than your chest, as you intentionally keep your abdominal area relaxed. You could lie on your back, and place a block or other light weight, such as a 1 pound bag of rice, on your belly to bring awareness to your abdomen, and keep your abdomen relaxed as you slowly inhale and exhale. Or, if lying on your back makes you anxious, you could lie in Crocodile pose (on your belly with your arms out to the sides, elbows bent, and forehead resting on stacked hands) so you can feel your abdomen moving toward and away from the floor as you slowly inhale and exhale.

You can also use any of these techniques if you're just feeling mildly hyper and want to calm down.

Clinical depression. For clinical depression, which tends to make people feel heavy and lifeless, focusing on your inhalation or breathing more quickly can stimulate your nervous system and bring you out of your lethargy. This is one reason why an active vinyasa practice, such as the Ashtanga series or Sun Salutations, can be helpful to those with clinical depression because when you move with your breath, you tend to breathe more quickly and take in more oxygen. So for you, it may be helpful to focus on your inhalation. You can simply work with inhaling more completely or lengthen your inhalation by holding it for a beat or two. Or, you can try a more formal practice that focuses on lengthening the inhalation, such as Viloma with interrupted inhalation, where you actually pause twice during your inhalation and once after. In Yoga As Medicine, Timothy McCall recommends Ujjayi breathing, which tends to lengthen both the inhalation and exhalation, as well as the version of Viloma with interrupted inhalation

Some people who are depressed tend to have a slumped posture, with a collapsed chest, so focusing on opening your chest and inhaling into that area can be beneficial. In Yoga As Medicine, Timothy quotes Patricia Walden, who herself has suffered from clinical depression, saying:

“When you start focusing on your breath, and taking the breath into your chest and breathing deeply, you begin to feel the presence of your breath. What comes with that is a feeling of life returning, a feeling of warm that percolates throughout your chest at the beginning, but then throughout your entire body.”

You can also use any of these techniques if you're just feeling mildly depressed or blue.

Because stress is often a trigger for clinical depression, it’s possible that working with your exhalation as described for anxiety rather than your inhalation, could be helpful for you. So don’t hesitate to give it a try if you feel so inclined. As I said in my post Anxiety, Yoga and the Front Body, when it comes to emotional balance, anything that makes you feel better is working.

Stress. Because chronic stress is the result of an overactive sympathetic nervous system, it makes sense to focus on pacifying your nervous system by working with your exhalation as I described for anxiety. However, from my observations of people doing pranayama, some people find any kind of pranayama relaxing (I, myself, do not, by the way). If you do find all breath work relaxing, go ahead and do whichever breath practice quiets your mind and relaxes you. Simply slowing your breath in general, with long, slow inhalations as well as exhalations, could be helpful in reducing stress. Practices where you speed up your breath will no doubt stimulate your nervous system. So if you are doing an active vinyasa practice to burn off your excess energy, end your yoga practice with a calming breath practice or an emotional counter-pose (see Balancing Your Emotional Body With Counter-Poses) that triggers the relaxation response.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Yoga

by Baxter

As I am preparing for my upcoming web talks on Yoga for Healthy Digestion for YogaU Online scheduled for July 23rd and 25th, I am rediscovering a lot about  both our digestive health and illness. Of particular interest is a very common gastro-intestinal (GI) condition called Irritable Bowel Syndrome, sometimes abbreviated IBS. The last time statistics were taken for this condition in the US, it was estimated that 15.3 million people suffered with IBS. It accounted for three million doctors office visits in 2004, 212,000 hospitalizations the same year, and 5.9 million prescriptions. Before we look at yoga’s potential impact on IBS, let’s take a look at how IBS shows up and what we know about its causes. According to the Mayo Clinic website:

“Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common disorder that affects your large intestine (colon). Irritable bowel syndrome commonly causes cramping, abdominal pain, bloating gas, diarrhea and constipation. Despite these uncomfortable signs and symptoms, IBS doesn't cause permanent damage to your colon.” 

For most students and patients of mine with IBS, it is a chronic condition that they have had since childhood or teenage years that fluctuates from day to day, week to week or month to month. I want to bring special attention that last comment in the quote: IBS does not cause permanent damage to your colon. This in contrast to the less common but more serious GI conditions like Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases that do damage the gut and can have life-threatening consequences. Maybe because IBS does not have such serious consequences, some health care professionals may minimize the impact of IBS. But those who suffer from it know it can be a source of daily discomfort and challenge.

Another aside: since the recent recognition of Celiac disease, gluten allergy and sensitivity and the ability to test for them, many patients previously with an IBS diagnosis have been found to actually be gluten allergic, or have Celiac Disease. This has resulted in a huge improvement in symptoms for these folks as they eliminate gluten-containing foods from their diets. So, if you have been told you have IBS and have not been tested for gluten, do so soon. Also, know that there are newer and more sensitive tests for Gluten allergy, and to learn more, listen to this KPFA broadcast from last week. The discussion is on Lyme disease, but gluten allergy/Celiac testing is also addressed at the start of the program from minute 8 through 22.

It is unclear what the cause of IBS is, but it may have something to do with the smooth muscle lining of the gut walls that helps to move digesting food downstream. In some people the wave of contractions may be too fast or too slow.  It may also be that the neurotransmitter serotonin may play a role in IBS, as a lot of it is found in the gut. The balance of gut bacteria may also be off in IBS. Triggers for IBS are varied and variable from person to person, and include gas or pressure on your intestines, or certain foods, medications or emotions. Hormone fluctuations, especially female ones (IBS is more common in women than men) and stress are also common triggers. The risk factors for IBS include age of onset before 35, being a woman, and having a first degree relative with IBS.

The yoga approach to IBS is similar to some of the posts where we have discussed healthy digestion and eating (see Healthy Eating and Your Digestive System, Meditation and Healthy Eating, and other posts under the label "healthy eating". 

• If you think you may have food triggers, the increased awareness of your body and its reactions to foods you eat that develops with regular yoga practice can help you identify and eliminate your personal food triggers.
• In my practice, I noticed that flares of symptoms are very often related to increased periods of stress in my students’ lives. The effective stress reducing benefits of yoga, either via a well balanced yoga asana practice, or a more focused restorative practice, yoga nidra or simple mindful meditation practices could all help bring your gut into better balance and reduce your symptoms. (See The Relaxation Response and Yoga.)
• For a sluggish gut, with bloating and constipation, try Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclined Cobbler’s pose or Queen’s pose), and for an overactive gut with cramping and tendency for diarrhea, try Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall pose). 
• If you have not taken the “tour of your GI tract” we posted a while back, you could use it as a guided meditation while setting yourself up in a supported Savasana (see the Audio Tracks tab at the top of the page to find this audio track). 

And if you want to learn more about Yoga for Healthy Digestion, look for the free interview coming up in the next week or so on YogaU Online, and my more detailed two-night lecture on July 23 and 25th, 8:30-9:30 EST (see here).

Coming to Yoga Later in Life: A Personal Story

by Andy

Beach Road Adventure by Melina Meza

In 2006, life handed me a double whammy. I was diagnosed with both emphysema and Crohn’s disease. I had probably been living with these two conditions for years, but because I had grieved so long and hard after the loss of my husband to cancer in 1998, I had not paid attention to the slow but relentless worsening of my symptoms.

Also that year, two different friends told me, during two separate lunch conversations, “You need yoga!” Me? Yoga? I hadn’t even gone for a walk in nearly eight years. But the universe works in mysterious ways, and as luck would have it, in late 2007, I moved into a condominium that had a fitness center, Anytime Fitness, next door to my building. My 61-year-old body joined the gym, and I began working with a trainer twice a week. Over about six weeks, I was able to gradually increase my hold time in a forearm plank from five seconds to 20 seconds. (This was no picnic, believe me. After 20 seconds, I was completely out of breath and had to rest.)

Soon after I started strength training, Anytime Fitness started offering yoga classes. It was as though the advice of my friends had dropped from heaven into my lap! From the moment I found the mat, I felt like a duck in water. What amazed me was that the negative stories I had been telling myself about my physical abilities seemed irrelevant when it came to yoga. I’ve never been particularly athletic; I’ve never been good at sports. Back then, I spent most of my day at my desk or in meetings, and in the evening, I turned into a couch potato. But yoga changed all that.

The teacher, a gifted young yogi named Maren Marks, had the patience of a saint and the instincts of a master teacher. I studied with her for almost three years, even when I was taking classes from other teachers. On the mat, the optimist in me overcame the inner critic. I still don’t fully know why, but here is what I believe. Even though Hatha yoga is an embodied practice, it is facilitated by the breath and mind in concert. I had happened on an open-hearted discipline that required me to pay attention to my breathing, and that attention turned out to be critical to living well with emphysema. At the same time, yoga was teaching me to fully focus my mind on the activity at hand—I had no choice if I didn’t want to topple over!—and that helped me emerge from a seven-year funk following the death of my husband.

As I just suggested, when I started yoga in early 2008, I could not balance on one foot, so classic poses like Vrkasana (Tree Pose) and Warrior III were unavailable to me, and even front-facing, two-legged poses like Warrior I and crescent lunge—a high lunge with arms overhead or in namaste—had me swaying from side to side while my toes kept grasping for the mat. Adding a twist to a crescent lunge was unthinkable for me.

In every class I took, I immediately fell out of every balance pose I tried. And me with significant osteoporosis! So, one of the first things I learned as an older student was that I had to take care of myself, and that meant increasing my body awareness. After years of self-avoidance, I finally found a reason to reconnect with my body—to get to know it in age, and to use that knowledge to help keep me safe and confident. If I have learned anything at all from starting yoga at an older age, it is that.

Just as I learned that I could improve from five to 20 seconds in forearm plank, I began to realize that yoga was something I could get better at through practice. This was a profound realization for me, and offered a deep motivation to stay with my practice, to be persistent and patient, and to let greater comfort and proficiency come naturally over time. I discovered that in yoga, it always does. Over time, not only can you literally see and feel the positive changes in your body, you also find yourself feeling better in general—enjoying enhanced well-being. 

What I learned in class offered the healthy foundation I needed, but my deepest learning came in private, at home, where I could practice at my own pace. I was always years older than the next oldest person in my classes, and with my breathing and balance issues, I was often not able to keep up with my teacher. But she made me feel so welcome and supported that I didn’t care. I simply thought, “Oh, goodie! Here’s something I can practice at home.” For me, that was a completely new approach to learning. Truly, yoga had allowed me to let go of my ego (my younger self?) in order to open myself to deeper self-knowledge.

If you come to yoga in your 50s, 60s, or 70s, you’ll carry the richness of your life history with you to the mat. There, to my surprise, I learned that my history didn’t limit me at all, nor did my age, nor did my myriad diseases and conditions. But to keep myself safe as an older beginner, I did need to pay closer attention to the postural alignment of my body and the rhythms of my breath, both in movement and stillness, than my younger, softer-boned classmates.

If you are teaching older beginners, know that as we age, our body’s balance systems don’t work quite as well, and people new to yoga need help to safely reclaim those skills. For example, I have learned that for older beginners, one-legged Utkatasana (Chair pose) is an easier one-footed balance than Vrkasana (Tree pose). Know that your older students will have more complicated and diverse physical histories than your younger ones—as we age, our bodies become more unique and less like each other’s. But know, too, that older students are wise and have learned to make thoughtful decisions about themselves. Practice sensitive watchfulness and offer individual guidance, but respect the fact that older students know their bodies better than you.

It’s now been six years since I found yoga, and guess what? I can now enjoy Vrkasana any darn time I please! And Warrior III! And for dessert, I think I’ll have a crescent lunge with a gentle twist. Yoga is for all of us. May your yoga experiences be as fulfilling and sustaining as mine, no matter your age when you start.

Andrea (Andy) Gilats, Ph.D., R.Y.T., is an educator, writer, and certified yoga instructor. She specializes in working with people seeking a body-sensitive, age-appropriate approach to practice. She calls her approach Third Age Yoga  (www.thirdageyoga.net) as a welcome mat to all of us in the Third Age, a sustained era of life beyond midlife but before true old age, in which active engagement and personal fulfillment take center stage. As a writer, Andy has published a variety of articles on wellness and positive aging, and she is the author of Life Slices, a lushly illustrated card deck that invites us to contemplate eight timeless life themes and 52 pathways toward creating a life of purpose and meaning.