Featured Pose: Warrior 3 (Wall Version)

by Baxter and Nina

Warrior 3 is the third pose in our upper body strengthening series because this pose provides unique upper body strengthening with little or no weight bearing on your hands. Before providing instructions on how to do the full pose (coming soon), which can be quite challenging, we’re providing an alternative using the wall that is accessible to almost everyone.

Warrior 3 is unique in that in this pose you keep your torso, arms, and one leg parallel with the floor. In this position, gravity challenges you to keep yourself upright instead of folding over your front leg. All the musculature on the back of your body has to work actively to keep you in this position, including your hamstrings and buttocks along with all the spinal muscles up to the base of your neck. You are also building strength the arm muscles required to keep your arms overhead (the position known as flexion), including trapezius, anterior and posterior deltoid, serratus anterior.

To enhance the strength building aspect of the pose when you are using your hands on the wall, use the lightest touch possible on the wall so your arms still have to work to hold themselves up. Touching the wall with just your fingertips is the most effective, but you can still gain strength building with your palms lightly on the wall if you prefer full contact with the wall for support, balance, or even just a sense of security.

Instructions: Start by facing a wall, standing about one foot away. Place your hands on the wall shoulder-distance apart, either with palms or your fingertips on the wall. Depending on your hamstring and hip flexibility, your hands should be somewhere between shoulder height and elbow height. Next, bend your knees and push your hips back away from the wall, and, keeping your buttocks over your heels, slowly walk back until your arms and torso form one long line approximately parallel to the floor.

You are now in Half Downward-Facing Dog pose (see Featured Pose: Half Dog Pose at the Wall for photos and detailed instructions of moving into this pose). From here, push your fingertips or palms firmly into the wall as you press your sitting bones away from the wall. Then shift your left foot to the right, at the mid point between your feet, while allowing your hips to shift a little to the left so you are balancing on the left foot. Then swing your right leg up and back, in line with your arms and torso.

Be careful to avoid letting your chest sink toward the floor, because hanging from your shoulder joints puts a lot of strain on them. Instead of feeling a stretch in the shoulders, you want a feeling of even strength around your shoulder joints. So think about lifting your chest up into your shoulder blades, as opposed to dropping your chest down toward the floor and aim for a feeling of completely parallel line (if you are flexible) or an even slope (if your hamstrings are tight).

One you’re in the pose, try lightening the press of your hands on the wall so you can feel the work of your back body’s musculature keeping you in position. With your raised foot slightly pointed, lengthen through your hell away from the wall. Start by staying in the pose for six breaths or so and gradually over time work your way up to 1.5 to 2 minutes.

To come out of the pose, release your right leg down to the floor, bend your knees, and walk in toward the wall. Repeat on left other side.

Cautions: This pose requires a lot of back strength, so if you have lower back issues, you may need to modify the pose by placing your hands higher on the wall or by keeping your lifted leg slightly bent. If you have a hamstring strain, if you feel any strain in the standing leg, bend it slightly so you don’t aggravate your injury.

Osteoporosis, Balance and Yoga

by Brad

A couple weeks ago, I attended a very interesting seminar on “Bone Marrow Adiposity:  An Age-Associated Phenotype; What's between bone and fat?  New insights into age-related osteoporosis” by Dr. Clifford Rosen, MD.  Dr. Rosen is the Director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough.  His talk was fairly technical and had to do with the regulation of fat in bone and how it increases slowly with age, as well as being affected by other environmental and genetic factors. His data showed that as fat accumulates in bone with age, it appeared to be related to a decrease in bone density, and therefore could be a driver of osteoporosis in both men and woman. He also stated that the clinical manifestation of osteoporosis is bone breakage, and therefore as your bone density decreases, it is the fall and inevitable bone fracture that typically turns people into patients. Avoiding a fall in the first place is possibly the best and for some the only way to avoid the adverse effects of this age-related decline in bone density.

After his seminar, I had a chance to talk with him after his research and asked him whether yoga might help by decreasing the risk of falling. He immediately said yes, and added that the yoga and tai chi were the two things that he knew that had been shown to have the greatest benefits in reducing this falling and bone fractures (see, for example, the Mayo Clinic web site's Exercising with osteoporosis: Stay active the safe way by choosing the right form of exercise and the New York Times article Ancient Moves for Orthopedic Problems). He implied that this was primarily through an increase in balance as opposed to strength. Indeed, while there is plenty of evidence that strength training is important, an increase in balance and flexibility can make all the difference between a stumble or misstep and a full-fledged fall.

As I sit on my flight to Seattle, I am reminded of how much variation exists in flexibility and balance among adults. Squeezing out of an aisle seat to make your way to the restroom or retrieving a suitcase from the overhead bin can easily become an awkward and precarious—and at times dangerous—act. And it is often not the oldest passengers, but the middle-aged and muscle-bound adults who induce serious cringing from neighboring passengers. Imagine how much more agile they would be if they all practiced yoga!

And for those of us who already do yoga, this is yet another compelling argument that working on balance is critical as we age. So if you haven't done so already, check out Shari's post last week about how to create a yoga practice to improve your balance (see Planning a Practice for Improving Balance).

Planning a Practice for Improving Balance

by Shari

We've had a question about how to practice when you want to work on balance. We're going to take our time addressing this issue because there are several factors involved in balance. When you plan a daily balance practice, it is important to include all six basic balance components:

1.  Strength: Strengthening your legs is critical. Leg muscles that need to be strong for good balance include the quadriceps, hamstrings, adductors, gluteal, and ankle muscles. (Please see Baxter’s recent posts on feet and ankles). In addition, the back muscles specifically the back extensors, are also important.
2. Proprioception: The ability to sense where we are in space is critical for balance. Practicing with an emphasis on proprioception can help maintain or even increase this ability.
3. Central Nervous System Reactivity: The ability to coordinate movements of your eyes is essential to seeing objects in your environment clearly while you are in motion, and other central nervous system reactions help you maintain balance.
4. Postural Control: Standing well is the critical component for maintaining balance.
5. Gait: Varying how fast and slow you walk, as well as the sizes and directions of step, can help you stay more nimble and avoid falling.
6. Vestibular System: The vestibular system is the sensory system that contributes to movement and sense of balance. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes the labyrinth of the inner ear in most mammals, situated in the vestibulum in the inner ear.

You can target your specific “challenge” areas by varying how you incorporate these components in your practice.

Strength

We need dynamic as well as static strength to prevent falling. Simple ways to strengthen your legs can be standing up and down from a standard height chair without using your arms to assist you. How slowly or quickly you do this can add to the variability for the muscles. Holding the position at various points in going down and coming up is also good. Working until your legs feel fatigue is the key to strengthening these muscles. But please remember these types of quadriceps exercises load the knees significantly and they could potentially aggravate an arthritic knee. So be careful.

Another way to build leg strength is a stair-stepping routine of stepping up and down one step with one leg and then changing and doing it on the other leg. You can also side step up and down with one leg as well as back stepping up and down with one leg. Try not to use the handrails unless you absolutely need to. Varying the speed of the step is good, too.

So now to translate this to yoga poses: think Warrior 2, Warrior 1, Extended Side Angle pose (Parvakonasana) and Powerful pose (Utkatasana). Move into and out of these poses first as a flow, pivoting your feet to keep changing directions. Then move into and out of these poses more quickly. Having a friend call out the poses so you can’t anticipate them can be fun—putting together your own sequence to delight your practice buddies! Then working to hold the poses with a timer to build strength. Start with a doable time, for example, ten seconds, and then increase it slowly. Thirty seconds is actually an eternity to hold a pose that is difficult for you. Varying how low you go into a pose is also valuable. Stepping into poses but not taking the actual pose also will challenge your reactions especially if someone else is also calling it out to you.

For back strength (this also includes gluteal muscles), try Locust pose (Salabasana) with arms and legs, as well as an all-fours position with opposite arm and leg lefts (Baxter calls this Hunting Dog pose—see Hunting Dog Pose for complete information on how to do this pose).

For ankles, try lunges with an emphasis on the back foot, toe rises and rocks with no hands (with both legs or one at a time). 
 
Proprioception

Closing your eyes while you practice can help with proprioception. For example, do toe rises and heel rocks but now close your eyes.

You can also work on an unstable surface, such as a foam mat (thick), an inflated air bed, your own bed or a couch (be creative and safe when choosing the unstable surface). Try standing in Tadasana (Mountain pose) with your feet hips-width apart and then with feet together on an unstable surface (first with your eyes open and then closed). After Tadasana, try heel-toe rocks on your unstable surface, first with your eyes open and then closed if possible. If you feel really adventuresome, try some standing poses on this surface, such as Warrior 2, Triangle pose, and Downward-Facing Dog or Hunting Dog pose as shown above. If this is doable, try closing your eyes and doing these poses on an unstable surface. Please make sure that you don’t fall off of whatever you are on because that would really be counterproductive.
 
Central Nervous System

Now let’s add the central nervous system challenge. Standing on an unstable surface, use your eyes to track a moving object. If you are doing this with a friend, he or she can hold a bright object in their hands while you use your eyes to follow their movement in front of you. Do not move your head or body, just use your eyes to track the object’s movement.

Now you can do a dynamic resistive exercise together. Stand facing each other palm to palm with your hands at shoulder height. One person is the leader and the other is the follower. The leader slowly starts to push into the follower’s hands and the follower matches their push into them with an equal push toward them. The leader keeps slowly increasing the force and the follower continues to match it. Then, without warning, the leader with quickly releases the force and move away from the follower. The follower is trying not to fall when the force has been removed. The leader is close enough to steady the follower so they don’t really fall. Change roles and repeat.

Another partner idea is to stand front to front again, but this time one person is holding a light object just out of their partner’s reach. The reacher is trying to lean to grab the object but the partner continues to slowly move the object just out of reach. The reacher cannot move his or her feet but can shift weight or turn without moving his or her feet. High reaching as well as below waist level reaching is good. There will be a point of reach when the reacher will lose his or her balance—that is the whole idea and the person holding the object should be able to assist their partner so no actual fall occurs. Change roles and repeat.

Postural Control

When working on postural control the key is to learn axial (skeletal) elongation as well as peripheral (arm and leg) elongation. The practice of Tadasana (Mountain pose) is difficult because of its simplicity. But learning your own postural habits is something that does affect balance and the ability to right yourself when a fall occurs.

You can address this component with a friend. Get a stick, such as a dowel, that is approximately six feet long and have your friend stand in Tadasana. Place the stick along his or her back body and see how many points of contact there are. Does the back of the head touch the stick? The upper back? The lower back? The buttocks? Do the backs of the knees touch the stick? Then look in an anatomy book to see what ideal posture is. Once you understand what your own issues are, then if you work with a yoga teacher, he or she can help you start to work on those areas that may need some attention.

Another component to address is the ability to safely lift an object off of the floor without falling forward onto your face when doing so. You can try this first with a friend and a light object like a newspaper. Each of you can do the task, which may be easier for some to do than others. Talk with each other to see if you can identify what makes it easy for some of you and more challenging for the others. With this information then you can decide if your personal issues are strength deficits, mobility or flexibility challenges, or other balance issues.

Now back to yoga poses that combine strength proprioception, and posture. Think Tree pose (Vrksasana), Mountain pose (Tadasana), Half Moon pose (Ardha Chandrasana), and Powerful pose (Utkatasana) with eyes open and closed, and with a stable and unstable surface. I am also particularly fond of the all-fours routine (Hunting Dog pose) on an unstable surface with eyes open and closed. Really you could pick one standing pose a week and work it through these variables of changing the surface you practice on, and whether you have your eyes open or closed. Moving into and out of the posture slowly or with variability in the degree of depth of the posture. The choices are endless actually.
 
Gait and Vestibular System

Try varying the speed of your walking—very fast or slow, big steps or small steps, quick changes in directions. You can also try stepping over items and around items, with quick changes again in direction after stepping over objects. Vary the objects you step over; some can be high and some can be low. You could do this with a group of friend, and have one person calling out what to do and the others following the directions. You could add music (like musical chairs) but when the music stops a pose might be called out for you to do.

And then there is what I call the “Queen Elizabeth walk” Walk at a stately pace while waving with alternating hands and turning your head to look at your adoring subject. The idea here is to make your practice fun!

Balance and Safety

by Shari

A lot of my students tell me that they have balance issues and want to improve their balance with yoga practice. There is no unifying factor on why these students have balance issues. Some are due to injuries with surgical repairs (ankle fractures or other bone fractures, joint replacements of the hips or knees, spinal surgeries). Some are due to soft tissue injuries of muscle, tendons or ligaments. Some are due to brain injuries, such as strokes, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinsons Disease. Some are due to coordination issues, visual issues, inner ear issues. Some are part of medication side effects. I think you are getting the picture. So how does the yoga student and teacher address their own or their student’s balance issues?

I don’t specifically ask people if they have balance issues but instead I observe how they are in class. Then I am very free with using the wall as my favorite prop! I LOVE THE WALL! I can face it with the front of my body, I can have it behind me or I can be perpendicular to it. It depends on what I am working on at that particular time and the needs of my students. If there is a “yoga horse” in the place that you practice then it can be an even better love affair! I use the wall to allow me not to be afraid. Fear of falling can occur in all ages of students. Falling when you are younger is a lot less injurious than when you are in your 50’s and 60’s. Young bones “bounce” but older bones shatter. There are many reasons for this but the simplest can be attributed to osteoporosis and how we fall. Certain body parts are more prone to breaking than others and the surfaces that we fall on also contribute to fracture risks.

Bones of the Right Leg

The other unfortunate thing is that as we age we are less efficient in making new bone through the “remodeling process.” Bone is living tissue and it is constantly being formed and remodeled throughout our lifetime but like all parts of aging things get less efficient and slower (sigh). So falling in yoga class or during practice is not good for anyone’s health or confidence. For standing poses for some students, I may use a combination  of the wall and a chair, having them use both to assist in their balance as they are learning poses and then later on for them to increase their endurance when holding a pose. I think of blocks more as making poses accessible but not as a tool to safeguard from falling because they are too small and unstable themselves. If I have someone in class who is very unsteady I might place them in a corner so they have three points of stability (feet, side and then with a chair).

You may remember from a previous post Nina and I did way back when she interviewed me on balance (see Aging and Balance), we talked about balance receptors being found in hands and feet in large number. Being barefoot in class is really an important component of balance, and whenever possible I encourage my students to be barefoot if possible. Sometimes usage of a sticky mat isn’t as optimal as not using one (it may be easier to balance directly on the floor), so you have to decide what works best for you. Learning how to feel the intrinsic muscles in your feet (which Baxter has been so eloquent on in his recent posts on feet) and hands WILL affect balance in standing poses and some inversions.

Also, remembering to use your eyes in yoga class is also going to affect your balance (again see Aging and Balance about vestibular reflexes). Focusing on a fixed object as you move into and out of one-legged poses helps with stability. Keeping your head in neutral and not compressing your upper cervical spine into hyperextension (thrusting your chin forward) will also improve your balance (there are balance receptors at the base of your skull).

Other factors that affects our balance and safety are our individual levels of flexibility, strength and endurance. Being able to access a pose requires a certain degree of flexibility as well as alignment. When we try to do poses we aren’t ready for, we almost certainly will fall (think Headstand, arm balances, and Shoulderstands). These are truly advanced poses and take years to safely prepare to do them. Fatigue and endurance are factors in balance because we are unable to access the required muscular strength to perform an asana when we fatigue.

Lastly anticipation is also a factor in how balanced you are. The mental mindset “I always fall in Ardha Chandrasana when I do it on my left” pre-programs those pesky neural circuits into anticipating that you are going to fall so they aren’t going to be able to prevent it. Now I am not saying to disregard past experience or history it just that always doing the pose so that you fall isn’t a way to learn how NOT to fall in it. Learning to sense your balance changes within a safe context is extremely important as we try to improve our balance.

Balance like strength and flexibility is not static but improves with practice and time. I have a current student with me who began yoga because his wife told him to. He is a retired physician and told me when he started that he had cerebellar problems and couldn’t balance. Well he was correct the first year. He is now going on his second year with me and is now starting to do Ardha Chandrasana with just one foot at the wall. He can also now balance on each foot when he does tree pose (not very long but the time isn’t the issue but that he is starting to be able to do it). When I recently mentioned to him that his balance is improving he agreed and said, “I didn’t think it ever would and I am as surprised as you by it.”

I am truly humbled by the body’s ability to transform. That's one of the things that gets me onto my mat daily!

Friday Q&A: Glasses and Balance

Q: I always wonder if my vari-lens glasses affect my ability to balance.

A: Dear Vari-lens Wearer:

This is a good question! The answer depends a lot on each individual and how strongly you rely on your eyes for balance and alignment. In general, for new students, keeping your glasses on so you can see what is going on with you and also with the demonstrations you might be using to learn new poses can be essential for your progress. But as many more seasoned practitioners have noted, it is often natural to begin to close your eyes at times as you practice and rely on a more internal sense of awareness and balance for many poses. The obvious exceptions are balancing and arm balancing poses, like Tree and Handstand, but I have found myself on occasion closing my eyes in Headstand and Shoulderstand quite successfully.

The good news is that the eyes are only one of several systems that work together to assist in good balance, and the others can pick up the slack when needed. So I'd probably try periods of practice at home without your glasses, when looking at demos is not an issue. Then try it a bit in class and notice how it goes.

—Baxter


A: I don't know what vari lenses are but I do know what progressives are, as I have been a wearer of them for three years. In progressive lenses, the glass is graduated between far, closer and closest distances. And if you try to look through a part of the lens that isn't made to do that task, your vision is blurred. And if you have a slight astigmatism, this can in turn cause you to overwork certain eye muscles, which leads to head aches/eye aches. I don't understand all the ways new lens are now made, but in my own practice I have found that if I take off my glasses then my balance is more impaired than if I leave them on. However, if I take away all my vision by closing my eyes, it makes me work more with my other balance centers (proprioception, pressure sensation) and it actually improves my balance!

Although we use our eyesight to help us balance, we can indeed improve our balance by removing this or other senses from the equation. And I personally find that if my vision is impaired, it is more stressful for my nervous system because I’m trying to correct something that can’t be corrected. As someone who is extremely myopic, if I can't see clearly, I can't hear as well and I can't mentally focus. But if I close my eyes, my nervous system can focus on strengthening the balance sensors that remain. My other senses are clearer. I hear better because I direct my attention more to my hearing. I feel more, and I direct my breath into improving my sensation and relaxing areas that I might tend to overwork if I am using my eyes.

Like Baxter, I recommend that you experiment with glasses on/off. When practicing with your eyes open, try finding a focal point (something to visually focus on that you can see clearly) and use that to assist in balancing.

—Shari

Featured Pose: Hunting Dog

by Baxter and Nina

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

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

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

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

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

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

Finally, consider reaching your arm forward parallel to the floor.

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

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

Balance and Strength

Today we’re pleased to present a second interview with Shari Ser, a practicing physical therapist and yoga teacher. This time we asked her about strength and balance, as a follow-up to our original conversation about balance in general (see here). 

Nina: Why is strength an important factor in our ability to balance?

Shari: Balance and strength need to go hand in hand like cookies and milk! Muscle strength has to be present in sufficient amounts for us to resist gravity and move our bodies through space, allowing us to sit, to stand, and to walk efficiently. When we are weak, we can’t move efficiently and smoothly, and our effort is often more than the effects we can produce. Strength also has to be reproduce-able and renewable. But muscle strength is very concrete, and it is something that can be improved. Just the act of standing up from a chair 10 times will build your strength. Learning to use your legs instead of your arms to stand from a chair builds strength.

Repetition of effort with your current range of motion builds strength. From coming up from a chair with no arms, you can progress to Powerful pose (Utkatasana) to build back strength as well as arm and leg strength (see here). Using a wall to pike forward over bent knees to come down into Powerful pose is easier than fighting gravity to come up into the pose. But how you use gravity will work differently on your strength. Powerful Pose trains muscles differently depending on how you do it.

For good balance, your muscles have to be both strong enough and coordinated enough to fire on demand, not with a lag time till “everything is set up just right.” So isolated strength training doesn’t translate to improvement in balance. Smoothly transitioning between positions with repetitions will build strength better. Think sun salutations, with countless modifications.

Nina: Are there particular muscles we need to keep strong?

Shari: In order for us to maintain our balance, all our postural muscles need to be kept strong. But gastroc-soleus (one of the calf muscles) is a really big deal in balance, as are hamstring and quadriceps (the backs and fronts of our thighs), quadratus lumborum (a lower back muscle), and the hip abductors, and hip adductors (the inner and outer thighs). And we need the strong back extensors to keep us upright (which is especially important if there is a pendulous abdomen pulling us forward). 

Nina: Can you list some of the key yoga poses for building strength, and explain why you've chosen those particular poses?

Shari: I have touched on Powerful pose already and mentioned Tree pose in a previous post (see here). Warrior 1 and Warrior 2 (see here) are also favorites because any standing pose that puts you into an isometric hold position with a bent knee is going to build strength in the legs. And any pose where a limb is raised up is going to build strength in that limb, and both Warrior poses have raised arms. Warrior 1 is also a backbend, which helps strengthen back extensors.

Nina: This is one of the many reasons why yoga is so wonderful. A well-rounded yoga practice, with an assortment of standing poses, backbends, and twists, helps strengthen the postural muscles you need to maintain good balance as you age. Add to this moving smoothly between poses in some form of sun salutation or moving with your breath between two poses (viniyoga style), and you’re all set!

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

Aging and Balance: An Interview with Shari Ser

BY NINA

After I took yoga teacher and physical therapist Shari Ser’s therapeutic yoga seminar on “Yoga and the Fear of Falling” a couple of weeks ago, I felt that I just had to interview her for this blog! The workshop was so full of in-depth background information about balance and aging, as well as practical yoga solutions for helping students improve and/or maintain good balance. I soon realized that rather than just reporting back to you, it was better for you to get the scoop straight from the expert. Fortunately, Shari agreed to answer a few of my questions.

Q: Why is the ability to balance so important as we age?

A: The short answer is that if we can’t balance, we fall and break bones or hurt ourselves in different ways. Twenty percent of all Americans have balance issues, and falls are a public health catastrophe. They send people to hospitals and may require costly surgeries and months of pain, suffering, and hard work to try to regain prior levels of functional independence.

In addition, if we are afraid to move because we fear falling, this fear affects every aspect of our lives and starts the spiral of further decline and illness. People who fall are afraid of exercise and movement because of the anticipation of future falls. But if you don’t use your physical body the decline is unrelenting.

Unfortunately decline in ability to balance is part of “normal aging.” Physiological changes inevitably occur in aging; the composition of the muscle fibers changes from fast twitch to slow twitch, which means our reaction times decline. There are changes in peripheral nerve conduction speeds, and we may either overcompensate or under compensate when our balance is challenged. The smooth modulation of our central nervous system is affected as we age. There are intricate feedback systems between our cerebellum, brain stem, cranial nerves, and basal ganglia that need to be working smoothly for us to easily execute our locomotion and peripheral body through space.

Our proprioception (the ability to sense where we are in space) also changes as we age as well as our vestibular system (the balance system that is our inner ear). Some hypothesize that this is due to circulatory changes as we age. There are changes in our auditory and visual systems as we age. We get stiffer in our joints and muscles so we loose the full range of motion these joints may have had previously. Cognitive changes occur in our brain also slowing down the in streaming of information. Balance is a reflexive activity, an unconscious response to a change in stimuli, but to improve balance also requires mental concentration.

Q. How is yoga helpful for maintaining and improving our balance as we age?

A: The maxim  “use it or you loose it” is so true with balance! But if we stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) we are integrating every single one of our balance systems. Our eyes orient us to midline and to the horizon, and they tell us where up and down are. Our vestibular system tells us that the surface is stable and there is no spinning or tilting to compensate for. Our proprioceptors in our joints, muscles, and skin send feedback to the resistance of the floor, and our conscious mind sends information to elongate here, relax there, shift to the right/left, etc. Our brain is never quiet in Tadasana, always tweaking a little bit here and there. The act of standing still is a full body isometric activity, and it is work that is making our bodies stronger.

And if we close our eyes in the pose and the visual centers are absent, our vestibular and somatosensory systems have to work so much harder to maintain our balance. Then add to this any one-legged postures with twisting, and our brain again has to start firing up more neural circuitry, which is stimulating for the brain’s health. The more we access brain centers, the healthier our brains cognitively will be. So not only is Tadasana body centered, but it is brain centered. And walking on a treadmill is not the same flowing through standing poses, smoothly and with coordination.

Q: What is your favorite yoga pose for improving balance?

A: My all-time favorite yoga balance pose is Tree pose. There are countless ways to practice it, and the smiles on my students’ faces when they “get it“ are priceless. Some of the many ways you can practice this pose if you are unable to balance in the middle of the room include:

1. Stand with your straight-leg side next to a wall, and touch the wall with one hand for support.
2. Stand with your bent-leg side close to a wall, and allow your kneecap to rest on the wall for support.
3. Stand with your back to the wall, just for safety and reassurance.
4. Stand with your back to the wall with a chair in front of you, and place both hands on the back of the chair as you shift your weight to one leg.

Even the most minimum version of this pose (shifting your weight from two feet to one foot and bending your other leg slightly, so only the ball of your foot is on the floor) can help you improve your balance and work your way toward doing the full pose.

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

Come On, Stand Up, Get Outta that Chair!

by Baxter

While waiting to put in my order at a café yesterday, I observed a toddler’s delight in sitting down between the café’s coffee bar and a foot rest pole about 12 inches off the floor, then standing right back up and grabbing her mom’s pant leg. She then repeated the process maybe 10 more times, with a huge smile on her face the whole time.

 Standing Baby (from Wikimedia)

I couldn’t help but contrast this with an elderly yoga student I had worked with years before whose main difficulty was in getting up out of a chair without help.

One can only wonder at what happens between the joyful discovery and repetition of the movement of a toddler and the decline that leads to trouble with such an everyday transition as standing up from sitting in a chair. The factors are many, from general physical weakness, loss of balance integration and proprioception (your body’s ability to know where it is in space, where it is moving and how fast), to multiple possible medical problems.

A regular hatha yoga practice may help you avoid this incapacity entirely. But if you do develop some difficulty in getting out of a chair, yoga could help retrain your muscles and improve your proprioception, allowing you greater ease in accomplishing this essential daily transition. 

With a regular hatha yoga practice that includes standing poses, you are both strengthening and stretching your body. But maybe more importantly, you are utilizing the nerve receptors for balance and kinesthetic sense, called proprioceptors, in a very active, conscious way. My theory is that this ability is down-regulated through disuse, but can be reactivated with yoga asana practice, or trained for the first time if your body just has been sedentary most of your life. This translates into greater ease in shifting your weight from a sitting position onto your feet and up through your legs to rise up gracefully out of your chair and out into life.   

In addition, older students are reluctant to get down on the floor, as they have observed that it is getting harder to get back up. Mindful work with yoga could lead to this transition becoming easier also, for the same reasons stated above, although it may take a little longer to achieve due to the increased challenges against gravity.

 

Stay tuned for the featured pose of the week, Powerful pose (Utkatasana), which is a key pose for the sit-to-stand transition. Update: You can see it here.

FEATURED POSE: WARRIOR 2

by Baxter and Nina

This week’s featured pose is one of Baxter’s favorite poses for osteoporosis (see here). In addition to building bone strength, Warrior 2 strengthens your arm and leg muscles. This pose also improves your balance and stretches your inner thighs. The variations we describe below make it accessible to almost everyone (it can even be done on a chair).

Baxter prescribes Warrior 2 for:

• osteoporosis
• balance problems
• anxiety (it burns off excess energy and is “grounding”)

Warrior 2 Pose (from Moving Toward Balance)

General Instructions:Step your feet wide apart (about the length of your legs). Turn your right foot out about 90 degrees and your left foot in slightly, so the toes of your back foot line up with the long edge of your yoga mat. Inhale and extend your arms out to your sides. Then exhale and bend your right knee toward 90 degrees (but not further), making sure your right knee is aligned with your middle right toe. If it’s comfortable for you, turn your head to gaze over your right hand. Repeat the pose on your left side.

Recommended Timing:30 seconds (8 breaths) for beginners, working up to 1 minute (12 to 16 breaths)

Some helpful variations:

1. To build arm strength, leave your arms up while changing from the right side to the left.

2. If you have balance problems, practice with your back to a wall, with the hip of your front leg touching the wall. If balance is a serious concern, you can touch your hands to the wall as you bend your knee and while you stay in the pose.

3. If you are generally weak or tight in the hips, practice the pose with your back heel touching the wall. This is also useful to get a clear sense of the straightness of your back leg.

Cautions: If you have knee problems, don’t bend your front knee quite as deeply. Make sure it stops just shy of being over the front ankle. In addition, standing with your feet a bit closer than the 4 to 4 1/2 feet apart that is usually recommended can also help. And if your knee is acutely painful, you could sit on a chair with your front thigh supported by the chair seat to take all weight off your front knee.

Warrior 2, with feet closer, knee less bent (from Moving Toward Balance)

POSES FOR OSTEOPOROSIS

by Baxter

As promised, today’s post will address a few of my recommendations for yoga for osteoporosis. As many of you know, OP is a very common condition that increases in incidence as we age. And before you fellas tune this out with the common misconception that OP is just a woman’s condition, it might surprise you to learn the following statistic from the Mayo Clinic: 1 in 8 men over the age of 50 will suffer an osteopenic fracture! And what are the most common fractures in men and women? The hips, spine and wrists are the areas most commonly affected.

The easiest lifestyle recommendation to have a positive impact on the progression of the condition is weight-bearing exercise. And although there are other forms of physical activity and exercise that fall in that category, all of yoga’s poses or asana fit the bill, and unlike walking, yoga actually requires that we bear weight on not just the feet, but the wrists and the spine as well, so in my estimation yoga is far superior to walking alone.

Three classic modern poses that are well known to most yogis are good examples of poses that are good for OP:

Warrior 2: I like this one because you are balancing on both feet, which is easier than on one foot, yet it is still a challenge for your balance receptors. And not only are you bearing weight, but if you do the pose for 1-2 minutes, you notice that you are also building strength and endurance in your legs and arms. (Later this week, we’ll talk about this Warrior 2 in detail. See here.)

Warrior 2 Pose from Moving Toward Balance

Downward-Facing Dog: Since all four of your limbs are in contact with the floor, balance is not much of an issue, but you are now bearing weight on your hands, wrists and arms as well as your legs. This will stimulate the bones of the upper extremities and could lead to increase density in these areas.

Downward-Facing Dog Pose from Moving Toward Balance

Tree Pose: For immediately obvious reasons, Tree pose will challenge your ability to remain balanced on one leg. The supporting leg must really work and be strong and stable to keep you upright, and the other leg’s hip gets a bit of opening from its position. And although this or any yoga pose will not eliminate the chance of a fall at some time in your future, more than one of my students has reported that after taking an unexpected spill, they felt their yoga practice prepared them to fall more gracefully and minimize the injury they sustained.

Tree Pose from Moving Toward Balance

Keep in mind that if you are young and/or without evidence of OP at this time, a regular practice could be preventative. If you have been diagnosed with osteopenia, the precursor to OP, it is possible that your regular practice could stabilize or even reverse the trend of thinning of the bones, at least according to a recent pilot study by Loren Fishman, MD. The same is true if you already have OP, but have not suffered fracture; but you will need to be a bit more cautious as you practice, and I’d recommend that you take class with an experienced teacher familiar with modifying the poses to fit your individual needs.

Even 10 minutes a day may be enough yoga asana to impact OP, so why not start today with these 3 poses?