These powerful arm poses will stretch you in new ways.
By Todd Jones
"No one will ever have the last word about yoga," says Ukrainian teacher Andrey Lappa, who calls his own approach Universal Yoga. "Yoga is like mathematics or physics; there will always be more to discover. And as lifestyles change, the methods of yoga must change, too." Though deeply respectful of traditional yoga teachings, Lappa has never been afraid of extending those approaches with new techniques. Much as he loves the hatha yoga tradition, he thinks there are gaps and imbalances within it.
"No yoga school developed poses equally for the legs and arms," he says, "and most poses that train the arms focus on strength." Of the few poses that focus on arm flexibility, most are active stretches, like Viparita Namaskar, Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose), and Garudasana (Eagle Pose), which use the strength of one set of muscles to stretch others. To create different and much deeper stretches for the arms and shoulders, Lappa developed the series of passive stretches presented here.
An Unlikely Start
The son of a computer expert who worked for the Soviet aerospace satellite program, Lappa came to yoga by an unusual route. At age 12, he moved to Mongolia when his father was sent there to help the government set up its computer systems. Missing the music lessons, sports teams, and clubs he'd enjoyed in Ukraine, Lappa searched for new activities.
Through one of his father's colleagues, he forged a connection with a Russian-speaking Buddhist monk in a nearby monastery, who began teaching him Mongolian and explaining the imagery of the temple paintings. Eventually, the monk invited Lappa to participate in pujas (rituals), instructing him in the significance of the complex mandalas (sacred symbolic diagrams) involved in the ceremonies.
"When I returned to the Soviet Union," Lappa recalls, "where the only idea of growth was better technology, I missed Buddhist spirituality." Unable to satisfy his curiosity about Tibetan culture and religion, the young Lappa threw himself into studying yoga and Chinese martial arts. At age 16, Lappa gave up martial arts, preferring yoga's peaceful path to the way of the warrior.
Over the next decade, he taught himself all the poses in B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga. After finishing his undergraduate studies, Lappa took a job in a submarine science lab while also working toward a doctoral degree. But shortly after he completed his dissertation, Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union, funding for naval research evaporated, and Lappa was shifted to less interesting projects. Already teaching yoga classes almost every evening, Lappa decided his soul was in the studio, not the lab. He quit his day job and became a full-time yoga instructor. Since then, he's spent several years in Asia, visiting more than 70 ashrams and studying with many Indian, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, and Tibetan yoga and Buddhist masters.
Tradition plus Innovation
Lappa's approach to yoga draws deeply on those studies. He sees all spiritual striving as an attempt to overcome the experience of duality, the habit of seeing ourselves as separate and in opposition to other people and other parts of creation. His own approach to returning to unity relies heavily on the traditional Indian concept of koshas (sheaths)—the idea that we consist of a series of ever-more-subtle bodies, ranging from the grossest (the annamaya kosha, or physical body) to the most ethereal (the atmamaya kosha, our karmic essence). All the techniques Lappa employs—asana, pranayama, meditation, ritual, and more—seek to create balance within each kosha, between the different koshas, and between the individual and the universe.
But Lappa's approach to yoga also incorporates the analytic skills of a scientist. Seeking an overarching framework for understanding traditional yoga methods, he has also searched for gaps in past techniques. "For example," he says, "in the annamaya kosha, the physical body sheath, we can train ourselves in seven ways: stretching, static strengthening, dynamic strengthening, static endurance, dynamic endurance, coordination, and reaction." In Lappa's eyes, traditional asanas effectively train the first five qualities, but not the last two. So he developed the Dance of Shiva, a movement practice that draws on ancient Indian, Chinese, and Thai forms of dance and martial arts.
In his analysis of traditional asanas, Lappa divides poses into three categories: those that primarily work passively, taking advantage of gravity to stretch muscles; those that primarily work actively, stretching one set of muscles by engaging others; and those that draw equally on passive and active techniques. He also incorporates the theoretical possibility of eight directions of mobility at each major joint: forward bending, backward bending, side bending in both directions, and twisting extension (creating space between the bones) and compression (bringing the bones closer together). Practically speaking, he says, compression is only desirable therapeutically; extension is the normal aim in all asanas. And while the other six directions of mobility are not equally available—or safe—at every joint, Lappa believes that engaging all the directions of mobility is crucial for creating proper physical and energetic balance.
Yet, according to Lappa, no traditional form of hatha yoga has systematically addressed all the movements of the major joints; instead, they've placed uneven emphasis on various actions and movements. He believes such yoga methods can create imbalances not just on the physical level, but also in the deeper sheaths of our being, including the level of consciousness.
Lappa sees asana practice as stimulating various marma points (much like acupuncture points), which are both key information receptors and activation zones for the nervous system, for consciousness, and for what Lappa calls "our biofield." In his view, asana practice is meant not just to train the physical body, but also to balance the brain, consciousness, and biofield, creating an energetic mandala within us so we're balanced when we come to meditation. The asanas described here are a few of the innovative movements he's developed to balance and complement traditional asanas.
1. Eka Bhuja Swastikasana I
In One-Armed Swastika Pose I, your body looks like one of the crosspieces of the ancient Asian symbol of good luck.
To come into the pose, lie face-down with your arms stretched out perpendicular to your sides, palms down. Make sure your hands are level with your forehead rather than stretched straight out from your shoulders. On an exhalation, without moving your right arm, roll onto your right side and reach your left hand straight back toward your right one. Bend your left knee and bring the sole of your foot to the floor. Draw your spine long, extending down through your tailbone toward your feet and up through the crown of your skull, and turn your head to the left so you look up toward the ceiling. (If this neck position isn't comfortable, experiment until you find one that is.)
If you already experience a strong stretch where your inner upper right arm meets your chest, pause here, breathing smoothly and evenly and allowing the stretched muscles to relax. If you're comfortable stretching further, bend your right knee and place the sole of your right foot on the ground next to your left; then lift your right fingers up and reach your left hand back to grasp them. (It's normal to fumble and feel disoriented at first as you reach for your right fingers.) Either reach your left fingers straight down along your right ones and draw your right hand back toward your body, or for more of a stretch to your left shoulder, grasp your right palm from the thumb side to draw it back, and bend your left elbow down toward or even onto the floor.
Once you find an edge in your stretch, pause and breathe smoothly and evenly for 15 to 45 seconds, then gently release your hands, roll back onto your belly and chest, and straighten your legs. Pause to notice and absorb the changes in your body before performing the pose on the other side.
2. Eka Bhuja Swastikasana II
To come into One-Armed Swastika Pose II, lie face-down with your arms reaching straight up overhead and your palms on the ground, shoulder-width apart. To keep your body integrated and engaged as you enter the arm stretch, place the inner edges of your big toes together and extend energy down through your tailbone and legs and up through the crown of your head. On an inhalation, draw your elbows in toward your torso until they're almost underneath your shoulders, and rise up into a mild Sphinx Pose.
As you exhale, reach your right hand across your body to the left, crossing behind your left elbow, and bring your right palm to the floor straight out to the side from your left shoulder. Gently lower your shoulders until your whole right arm is touching the ground and your chin comes to the floor in front of your upper arm, then swing your left arm down along your side and rest the back of the hand on the floor. Press your weight into your right arm to stretch the outer upper arm and shoulder. Press your left shoulder toward the floor to accentuate the stretch.
This position may be enough of a stretch. For a deeper one, bend your right arm at the elbow until your palm comes to the back of your neck. Then bend your left elbow to reach your left hand up your back, as in Gomukhasana, and catch your right fingertips with your left ones. Pull with your fingertips and work the clasp deeper to create more stretch on your right upper arm and shoulder.
It's fine to stay in this position, but if you want to complete the swastika shape, externally rotate your right leg and draw it out to the side until it is perpendicular to your torso. Work the outer right hip away from your torso to keep the side waist long, just as you would in standing poses like Trikonasana (Triangle Pose) and Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose). Flex your foot to 90 degrees, and press out firmly through your right heel while continuing to extend out through your left toes. Try to keep your pelvis squared toward the floor.
When you reach your final position, remain there for 15 to 45 seconds. Imagine each inhalation bringing fresh energy throughout your body, especially to your right upper arm and shoulder, and each exhalation releasing you more deeply into the pose. Then come out of the pose and repeat it on the other side.
3. Eka Bhuja Padmasana
To come into One-Armed Lotus Pose, begin with the most basic version of the previous pose, Eka Bhuja Swastikasana: right arm crossed under the left and the left arm stretched back along your left side, palm up. Then lift your head off the floor, curl your right fingers around your thumb to form a fist, and bend your right elbow so you can swing your right wrist directly underneath your chin; the whole inner edge (thumb side) of your right forearm, wrist, and hand will come to the floor.
Next, use the point of your chin to press down on your wrist bones and magnify the stretch. Make sure you're not pressing your throat into your arm, or pressing on the hand rather than the wrist. Check to see that your right upper arm is still perpendicular to your torso; there's a tendency to draw the elbow down as you're folding the forearm into the final position. Also, make sure you're releasing and pressing your left shoulder toward the floor. It's easy to unconsciously hold the left shoulder up and thus avoid some of the right arm stretch.
In this pose, as in Eka Pada Swastika-sana II, you can either keep your toes together, extending energy down through your legs and out through the crown of your head, or draw your right leg out to the side. Whichever position you choose, remain in it for 15 to 45 seconds, allowing each breath to create more freedom in your right arm and shoulder. Then come out of the pose and practice it on the other side.
4. Eka Bhuja Virasana
To come into One-Armed Hero Pose, lie on your back with your legs together, arms at your sides, and palms down. Next, bend your right knee, put the sole of your foot on the floor, and roll just a little to your left. Bending your right elbow, bring your right hand and wrist under the back of your right rib cage as close to your right shoulder blade as possible. Then slowly roll back to the right, letting the full weight of your torso rest on your right hand. Make sure your hand is far enough under your body so you immobilize your wrist rather than just rest on your fingers. Then straighten your right leg again.
This position may already provide a very strong stretch. To go deeper, begin to roll to your right. At first, you may just barely be able to lift your left shoulder off the floor. With time and practice, you may be able to rotate your torso until the left shoulder is directly above the right, or even further so it moves toward the floor near your right elbow. In any case, turn your head to look down.
At first, you may find it easiest and most stable to lead this action by reaching your left leg across your body; the knee can either be bent or straight. Over time, as you can move more deeply into the pose, you can again bring the left leg straight down along the right.
When you reach your deepest expression of this pose, remain in it for 15 to 45 seconds, breathing smoothly and evenly. Then roll onto your back again, draw your right hand out from under your back ribs, and repeat the pose on the other side.
5. The Rack
Don't let the name scare you. Doing this pose shouldn't be a painful experience; Lappa swears he simply gave it that label because its shape reminds him of the medieval instrument of torture.
To come into The Rack, sit upright in Dandasana (Staff Pose), spine tall and feet together and straight out in front of you. Then, leaning back, place your palms shoulder-width apart on the ground about 18 inches behind you. Keeping your arms straight by extending energy from your shoulder out through your fingertips, walk your hands back. As you do this, let your upper back round and drop toward the floor, your shoulder blades move up, and your chin sink onto your upper chest. Throughout the pose, keep your body alert and integrated by extending energy out through your arms, keeping your thigh muscles engaged, and pushing gently but firmly out through the heels and balls of your feet. When you reach an edge in your stretch—you may feel this most at your inner upper arm, outer upper chest, and at the crease of your elbow—breathe smoothly and evenly for 15 to 45 seconds; if possible, allow your exhalations to move you slightly deeper into the pose. Then draw yourself back up until you're sitting erect with your spine and chest lifted.
Karma and Freedom
You may be wondering where to fit these unfamiliar asanas into your existing practice. In his approach to yoga, Lappa has developed complex sequencing patterns designed to work symmetrically around the body and thus balance the student's consciousness. But Lappa thinks that rather than simply reproducing set sequences you've learned from teachers, you're better off investigating different sequences experientially and closely observing the results. "If you have no freedom to make decisions, you repeat someone else's karmic goals, rather than your own," Lappa says. "You don't develop. You don't evolve."
So feel free to explore. Try stretching your legs first, then move the focus of your asanas up your body until you arrive at these arm-stretching poses. Or work in the opposite direction, from the top of the body down. For yet another approach, practice arm balances first and follow them with these arm stretches; another day, reverse that order and see what's different in the ease and pleasure of your poses—and in your consciousness during and after your session. While all of us are subject to the same laws of cause and effect, we all come to practice with different histories. Like Lappa himself, we have to innovate and experiment to find the yoga that best balances our lives.
Todd Jones has edited Master Class (formerly Asana) for eight years. He thanks Andrey Lappa for his invaluable help with this article. See www.universal-yoga.com.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Fitness through Yoga
We sent three yogis to the lab to test the theory that yoga is all you need for optimal fitness.
By Alisa Bauman
When it came to the fitness benefits yoga can or can't provide, yoga teacher John Schumacher had heard it all. A student of B. K. S. Iyengar for 20 years and founder of the Unity Woods studios in the Washington, D.C. area, Schumacher was convinced yoga provides a complete fitness regime. But many people, even some of his own students, disagreed. Yoga might be good for flexibility or relaxation, they'd say, but to be truly fit, you had to combine it with an activity like running or weight lifting.
Schumacher just didn't buy it.
He knew three decades of yoga practice—and only yoga practice—had kept him fit. He didn't need to power walk. He didn't need to lift weights. His fitness formula consisted of daily asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathwork). That's all he needed.
Four years ago at age 52, Schumacher decided to prove his point. He signed up for physiological testing at a lab in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As he expected, Schumacher tested near the top of his age group for a variety of fitness tests, including maximum heart and exercise recovery rates. His doctor told him that he was in excellent physical condition and estimated that Schumacher had less than a one percent chance of suffering a cardiac event. "I've always maintained that yoga provides more than adequate cardiovascular benefits," says Schumacher. "Now I have the evidence that regular yoga practice at a certain level of intensity will provide you with what you need."
Evidence of yoga's ability to bolster fitness, however, goes well beyond Schumacher's personal experience. Yoga Journal's testing of three yogis also yielded impressive results. Even physiologists who don't do yoga now agree that the practice provides benefits well beyond flexibility and relaxation. Recent research—though preliminary—shows that yoga may also improve strength, aerobic capacity, and lung function. If you practice yoga, you already knew that. But if, like Schumacher, you've been told by friends, family, doctors, or even other yoga students that you need to add some power walking for your heart or strength training for your muscles, here's evidence that yoga is all you need for a fit mind and body.
What Is Fitness?
Before you can prove yoga keeps you fit, you must first define what "fitness" actually means. This isn't a simple task. Ask eight different physiologists, and you'll hear eight different definitions, says Dave Costill, Ph.D., one of the first U. S. researchers to rigorously test the health and fitness benefits of exercise.
Now professor emeritus of exercise science at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, Costill defines fitness simply as the ability to live your life without feeling fatigued. "For normal daily living you don't need the strength of a football player or the endurance of a marathon runner, but you've got to be able to perform your normal activities and still have a reserve," says Costill. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the largest exercise science association in the world, defines fitness as both related to your ability to maintain physical activity and related to your health (for example, people who become more fit reduce their risk for heart disease). According to ACSM, four types of fitness help to bolster health:
Cardiorespiratory fitness. This refers to the fitness of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. The better your cardiorespiratory fitness, the better your stamina, the lower your risk for a host of diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Your ability to move without feeling winded or fatigued is measured by your VO2max (maximal oxygen uptake), a technical term that indicates how efficiently oxygen enters your lungs, moves into your bloodstream, and is used by your muscles. The more fit you become, the more efficiently your body transports and uses oxygen, improving your overall VO2max.
To test VO2max, physiologists ask you to cycle or walk or run on a treadmill with a tube-like mask over your mouth. The mask gathers the carbon dioxide and oxygen you exhale, and the ratio between the two gasses helps to indicate how efficiently your muscles use oxygen.
There are other tests that measure additional aspects of cardiorespiratory fitness, including a lung function test, in which you take a deep breath and then blow into a tube to measure your lung capacity, and heart rate tests, taken both at rest and during exercise. Since equally fit people can vary as much as 20 percent in heart rate,this measure best indicates your own progress: If you become more fit, your heart rate generally drops.
Muscular fitness. This refers both to muscle strength (how heavy an object you can lift) and muscle endurance (how long you can lift it). Without exercise, all of us lose muscle mass as we age, which can eventually result in weakness and loss of balance and coordination. Because muscle is such active tissue, it also plays an important role in regulating your metabolism, with every pound of muscle burning about 35 to 50 calories a day.
In a lab, researchers test your muscle strength and endurance on specialized equipment that looks like an exercise machine at a gym but contains sensors that read how much force your muscles generate as they contract.
Flexibility. As most people age, their muscles shorten and their tendons, the tissue that connects muscles to bones, become stiffer. This reduces the range of motion, preventing optimum movement of your knees, shoulders, elbows, spine, and other joints. Loss of flexibility may also be associated with an increased risk of pain and injury. Tight hamstrings, for example, pull down on your pelvis, putting pressure on your lower back. In general, tight muscles increase the likelihood you'll suddenly move past your safe range of motion and damage ligaments, tendons, and the muscles themselves.
Body composition. Your body composition refers to the percentage of your body made up of fat instead of muscles, bones, organs, and other nonfat tissues. Though the use of body composition as a fitness and health indicator has come under fire in recent years by those who argue that it's possible to be both fat and fit, the ACSM and many physiologists continue to assert that too much fat and too little muscle raises your risk for disease and makes movement less efficient.
Physiologists can measure body composition in several ways. The simplest method uses a pair of calipers to pinch the skin and underlying fat at various spots on the body. This method works best for athletes and others with little visible body fat. For those with more body fat, a more accurate method is hydrostatic weighing—being weighed while submerged in water and comparing the result to your out-of-water weight. Because fat floats, the greater the difference between your submerged and dry weights, the higher your body fat percentage.
Experts have long recommended that we do at least three different types of activity to achieve optimum cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, flexibility, and body composition. For example, the ACSM recommends building cardiorespiratory fitness by exercising at an intensity that raises your heart rate to at least 55 percent of your maximum heart rate (the highest rate you can maintain during all-out effort, generally estimated as 220 minus your age); muscular fitness by targeting each major muscle group with eight to 12 repetitions of weight-bearing exercise; and flexibility by stretching.
No one argues against yoga's ability to satisfy the flexibility requirement. But until recently, few scientists had considered whether yoga could improve other aspects of fitness. Now that's starting to change.
Putting Yoga to the Test
In one of the first studies done in the United States that examines the relationship between yoga and fitness, researchers at the University of California at Davis recently tested the muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and lung function of 10 college students before and after eight weeks of yoga training. Each week, the students attended four sessions that included 10 minutes of pranayama, 15 minutes of warm-up exercises, 50 minutes of asanas, and 10 minutes of meditation.
After eight weeks, the students' muscular strength had increased by as much as 31 percent, muscular endurance by 57 percent, flexibility by as much as 188 percent, and VO2max by 7 percent—a very respectable increase, given the brevity of the experiment. Study coauthor Ezra A. Amsterdam, M.D., suspects that VO2max might have increased more had the study lasted longer than eight weeks. In fact, the ACSM recommends that exercise research last a minimum of 15 to 20 weeks, because it usually takes that long to see VO2max improvements.
"It was very surprising that we saw these changes in VO2max in such a short time," says Amsterdam, professor of internal medicine (cardiology) and director of the coronary care unit at the U. C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He is now considering a longer, larger study to authenticate these results.
A related study done at Ball State University offers further evidence for yoga's fitness benefits. This research looked at how 15 weeks of twice-weekly yoga classes affected the lung capacity of 287 college students. All of the students involved, including athletes, asthmatics, and smokers, significantly improved lung capacity by the end of the semester.
"The athletes were the ones who were the most surprised, because they thought their athletic training in swimming or football or basketball had already boosted their lung capacity to the maximum," says study author Dee Ann Birkel, an emeritus professor at Ball State's School of Physical Education.
From the perspective of a Western scientist, the few additional studies that have looked at yoga and fitness all contain flaws in their research design—either too few subjects or inadequate control groups. One study, conducted in Secunderabad, India, compared a group of athletes taught pranayama to another group who were not. After two years, those who practiced pranayama showed a larger reduction of blood lactate (an indicator of fatigue) in response to exercise; in addition, they were more able than the control group to increase their exercise intensity as well as the efficiency of their oxygen consumption during exercise. Other smaller studies also done in India have found that yoga can increase exercise performance and raise anaerobic threshold. (Anaerobic threshold is the point at which your muscles cannot extract enough oxygen from your blood and therefore must switch from burning oxygen to burning sugar and creatine. Unlike oxygen, sugar and creatine are dirty fuel sources, creating lactic acid and other by-products that build up in the blood and make you hyperventilate, "feel the burn," and lose muscle coordination.)
Although the research on yoga is only starting to build, a convincingly large amount of research has been done on tai chi, an Eastern martial art that involves a series of slow, graceful movements. Many studies have found that tai chi helps to improve balance, cardiorespiratory and cardiovascular fitness, ability to concentrate, immunity, flexibility, strength, and endurance of the knee extensor muscles.
Dina Amsterdam, a yoga instructor in San Francisco and graduate student at Stanford University, is one of many researchers conducting a three-year study that compares the psychological and physiological benefits of tai chi as to those of traditional forms of Western exercise such as aerobics. (The daughter of Ezra Amsterdam, Dina Amsterdam was the inspiration behind her father's U. C. Davis study on yoga and fitness.)
"Though there haven't been a lot of studies done on yoga that are considered valid, there are numerous studies done on tai chi, with the current Stanford study the largest to date," she says. Because yoga shares many elements with tai chi but can also provide a more vigorous physical workout, Amsterdam expects future yoga studies to produce at least similarly encouraging results. But Amsterdam says she doesn't need additional research to prove to her that yoga builds fitness. "I haven't done anything but yoga and some hiking for 10 years," she says. "When I came to yoga, I was 25 pounds overweight and suffering from a compulsive eating disorder. Yoga completely brought me back to physical and emotional health."
Many yoga practitioners echo such thoughts. Jack England, an 81-year-old yoga and stretching instructor at the Club Med in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, says more than 30 years of yoga have kept him flexible, healthy, and strong. He's the same weight and height as he was in high school, and his stellar health continues to amaze his doctor. He delights audiences at Club Med by practicing Shoulderstand and other poses while balancing on a float board in a water ski show. "I'm an inspiration to people of all ages," he says. "I do things that 14-year-old girls can't do."
Stephanie Griffin, a 33-year-old director of business development for a pharmaceutical research company in San Francisco, discovered yoga after years of running marathons, spinning, and weight lifting. Before discovering yoga, she thought her intense exercise habits had turned her into a poster child for health and fitness. During the last four years, however, Griffin began doing more and more yoga and less and less running, weight lifting, and aerobicizing. As she dropped back on her hardcore fitness pursuits, she worried she might gain weight or lose her muscle tone or exercise capacity.
She didn't. "I have maintained my fitness and even enhanced it through yoga," says Griffin, who no longer has a gym membership. "And I like the way my body looks and feels now better than the way it did before."
Why Yoga Works
Exactly how does yoga build fitness? The answer you get depends on whom you ask. Robert Holly, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in the Department of Exercise Biology at U. C. Davis and one of the researchers on the U. C. Davis study, says that muscles respond to stretching by becoming larger and capable of extracting and using more oxygen more quickly. In other words, side benefits of flexibility include increased muscle strength and endurance.
"My own belief is that the small but significant increase in maximal oxygen capacity was due to an increase in muscle endurance, which allowed the subjects to exercise longer, extract more oxygen, and reach an increased maximal oxygen uptake," says Holly.
Then there's the pranayama theory. Birkel suspects that yoga poses help increase lung capacity by improving the flexibility of the rib area, shoulders, and back, allowing the lungs to expand more fully. Breathwork further boosts lung capacity—and possibly also VO2max—by conditioning the diaphragm and helping to more fully oxygenate the blood.
Birkel, Dina Amsterdam, and others are also quick to point out that Suryanamaskar (Sun Salutations) and other continuously linked poses increase the heart rate, making yoga aerobically challenging. And many yoga poses—particularly standing poses, balancing poses, and inversions—build quite a bit of strength because they require sustained isometric contractions of many large and small muscles. Of course, holding the poses longer increases this training effect.
Finally, yoga tunes you into your body and helps you to better coordinate your actions. "When you bring your breath, your awareness, and your physical body into harmony, you allow your body to work at its maximum fitness capacity," says Dina Amsterdam. "Yoga class is merely a laboratory for how to be in harmony with the body in every activity outside of yoga. This improved physical wellness and fluidity enhance not just the physical well-being but also permeate all levels of our being."
Are You Fit?
Given all this evidence, can you now confidently tell your nonyogi friends they're wrong when they insist that you should add other forms of exercise to your practice?
Maybe, maybe not. The answer depends largely on how much you dedicate yourself to yoga. Studies done on yoga have included more than an hour of practice two to four days a week. The yoga sessions included breathwork and meditation in addition to typical yoga poses. Finally, the asanas used in these studies included not just aerobically challenging sequences, like Sun Salutations, but also many strengthening poses, like Virabhadrasana (Warrior Pose), Vrksasana (Tree Pose), Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose), Navasana (Boat Pose), Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), and Plank.
So if you want to become and stay physically and mentally fit, make sure your yoga practice includes a balance of poses that build strength, stamina, and flexibility, along with breathwork and meditation to help develop body awareness. In particular, include a series of standing poses in your practice. As your practice expands, Schumacher suggests adding more challenging asanas such as balancing poses and inversions. "If you are just doing 15 minutes of gentle yoga stretches three to four times a week, you will also need to do some other form of exercise to stay fit," Schumacher readily admits. "I often tell my beginning students that they will need to do something in addition to yoga for a while until they can practice more vigorously."
Holly agrees. If you practice yoga for less than an hour twice a week, he suggests you either pair your practice with moderate intensity exercise like walking, or increase your yoga time or frequency. "But the best form of exercise is whatever you enjoy most and will continue to do on a regular, almost daily, basis," he says. "Should you do more than yoga if you don't enjoy other activities? No. Yoga has a lot of benefits, so do yoga regularly and enjoy it." Beyond fitness, yoga also offers many other gifts. It improves your health, reduces stress, improves sleep, and often acts like a powerful therapy to help heal relationships, improve your career, and boost your overall outlook on life.
All these positives are enough to keep former exercise junkie Stephanie Griffin hooked on yoga for life. Griffin had worried that, unlike her other fitness pursuits, yoga wouldn't give her the emotional satisfaction of aiming for and meeting goals. Soon, however, she realized that yoga offered her a path to constant improvement. "One day it hit me: I realized that my goal was to be practicing yoga well into my 90s," says Griffin. "For me, that is the new finish line. Practicing with that goal satisfies me more than any marathon."
Alisa Bauman stays fit through yoga, running, and fitness ball workouts. She lives and writes in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where she is studying for yoga teacher certification under Mary Rosenberger at Accent on Yoga and Health.
By Alisa Bauman
When it came to the fitness benefits yoga can or can't provide, yoga teacher John Schumacher had heard it all. A student of B. K. S. Iyengar for 20 years and founder of the Unity Woods studios in the Washington, D.C. area, Schumacher was convinced yoga provides a complete fitness regime. But many people, even some of his own students, disagreed. Yoga might be good for flexibility or relaxation, they'd say, but to be truly fit, you had to combine it with an activity like running or weight lifting.
Schumacher just didn't buy it.
He knew three decades of yoga practice—and only yoga practice—had kept him fit. He didn't need to power walk. He didn't need to lift weights. His fitness formula consisted of daily asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathwork). That's all he needed.
Four years ago at age 52, Schumacher decided to prove his point. He signed up for physiological testing at a lab in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As he expected, Schumacher tested near the top of his age group for a variety of fitness tests, including maximum heart and exercise recovery rates. His doctor told him that he was in excellent physical condition and estimated that Schumacher had less than a one percent chance of suffering a cardiac event. "I've always maintained that yoga provides more than adequate cardiovascular benefits," says Schumacher. "Now I have the evidence that regular yoga practice at a certain level of intensity will provide you with what you need."
Evidence of yoga's ability to bolster fitness, however, goes well beyond Schumacher's personal experience. Yoga Journal's testing of three yogis also yielded impressive results. Even physiologists who don't do yoga now agree that the practice provides benefits well beyond flexibility and relaxation. Recent research—though preliminary—shows that yoga may also improve strength, aerobic capacity, and lung function. If you practice yoga, you already knew that. But if, like Schumacher, you've been told by friends, family, doctors, or even other yoga students that you need to add some power walking for your heart or strength training for your muscles, here's evidence that yoga is all you need for a fit mind and body.
What Is Fitness?
Before you can prove yoga keeps you fit, you must first define what "fitness" actually means. This isn't a simple task. Ask eight different physiologists, and you'll hear eight different definitions, says Dave Costill, Ph.D., one of the first U. S. researchers to rigorously test the health and fitness benefits of exercise.
Now professor emeritus of exercise science at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, Costill defines fitness simply as the ability to live your life without feeling fatigued. "For normal daily living you don't need the strength of a football player or the endurance of a marathon runner, but you've got to be able to perform your normal activities and still have a reserve," says Costill. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the largest exercise science association in the world, defines fitness as both related to your ability to maintain physical activity and related to your health (for example, people who become more fit reduce their risk for heart disease). According to ACSM, four types of fitness help to bolster health:
Cardiorespiratory fitness. This refers to the fitness of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. The better your cardiorespiratory fitness, the better your stamina, the lower your risk for a host of diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Your ability to move without feeling winded or fatigued is measured by your VO2max (maximal oxygen uptake), a technical term that indicates how efficiently oxygen enters your lungs, moves into your bloodstream, and is used by your muscles. The more fit you become, the more efficiently your body transports and uses oxygen, improving your overall VO2max.
To test VO2max, physiologists ask you to cycle or walk or run on a treadmill with a tube-like mask over your mouth. The mask gathers the carbon dioxide and oxygen you exhale, and the ratio between the two gasses helps to indicate how efficiently your muscles use oxygen.
There are other tests that measure additional aspects of cardiorespiratory fitness, including a lung function test, in which you take a deep breath and then blow into a tube to measure your lung capacity, and heart rate tests, taken both at rest and during exercise. Since equally fit people can vary as much as 20 percent in heart rate,this measure best indicates your own progress: If you become more fit, your heart rate generally drops.
Muscular fitness. This refers both to muscle strength (how heavy an object you can lift) and muscle endurance (how long you can lift it). Without exercise, all of us lose muscle mass as we age, which can eventually result in weakness and loss of balance and coordination. Because muscle is such active tissue, it also plays an important role in regulating your metabolism, with every pound of muscle burning about 35 to 50 calories a day.
In a lab, researchers test your muscle strength and endurance on specialized equipment that looks like an exercise machine at a gym but contains sensors that read how much force your muscles generate as they contract.
Flexibility. As most people age, their muscles shorten and their tendons, the tissue that connects muscles to bones, become stiffer. This reduces the range of motion, preventing optimum movement of your knees, shoulders, elbows, spine, and other joints. Loss of flexibility may also be associated with an increased risk of pain and injury. Tight hamstrings, for example, pull down on your pelvis, putting pressure on your lower back. In general, tight muscles increase the likelihood you'll suddenly move past your safe range of motion and damage ligaments, tendons, and the muscles themselves.
Body composition. Your body composition refers to the percentage of your body made up of fat instead of muscles, bones, organs, and other nonfat tissues. Though the use of body composition as a fitness and health indicator has come under fire in recent years by those who argue that it's possible to be both fat and fit, the ACSM and many physiologists continue to assert that too much fat and too little muscle raises your risk for disease and makes movement less efficient.
Physiologists can measure body composition in several ways. The simplest method uses a pair of calipers to pinch the skin and underlying fat at various spots on the body. This method works best for athletes and others with little visible body fat. For those with more body fat, a more accurate method is hydrostatic weighing—being weighed while submerged in water and comparing the result to your out-of-water weight. Because fat floats, the greater the difference between your submerged and dry weights, the higher your body fat percentage.
Experts have long recommended that we do at least three different types of activity to achieve optimum cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, flexibility, and body composition. For example, the ACSM recommends building cardiorespiratory fitness by exercising at an intensity that raises your heart rate to at least 55 percent of your maximum heart rate (the highest rate you can maintain during all-out effort, generally estimated as 220 minus your age); muscular fitness by targeting each major muscle group with eight to 12 repetitions of weight-bearing exercise; and flexibility by stretching.
No one argues against yoga's ability to satisfy the flexibility requirement. But until recently, few scientists had considered whether yoga could improve other aspects of fitness. Now that's starting to change.
Putting Yoga to the Test
In one of the first studies done in the United States that examines the relationship between yoga and fitness, researchers at the University of California at Davis recently tested the muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and lung function of 10 college students before and after eight weeks of yoga training. Each week, the students attended four sessions that included 10 minutes of pranayama, 15 minutes of warm-up exercises, 50 minutes of asanas, and 10 minutes of meditation.
After eight weeks, the students' muscular strength had increased by as much as 31 percent, muscular endurance by 57 percent, flexibility by as much as 188 percent, and VO2max by 7 percent—a very respectable increase, given the brevity of the experiment. Study coauthor Ezra A. Amsterdam, M.D., suspects that VO2max might have increased more had the study lasted longer than eight weeks. In fact, the ACSM recommends that exercise research last a minimum of 15 to 20 weeks, because it usually takes that long to see VO2max improvements.
"It was very surprising that we saw these changes in VO2max in such a short time," says Amsterdam, professor of internal medicine (cardiology) and director of the coronary care unit at the U. C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He is now considering a longer, larger study to authenticate these results.
A related study done at Ball State University offers further evidence for yoga's fitness benefits. This research looked at how 15 weeks of twice-weekly yoga classes affected the lung capacity of 287 college students. All of the students involved, including athletes, asthmatics, and smokers, significantly improved lung capacity by the end of the semester.
"The athletes were the ones who were the most surprised, because they thought their athletic training in swimming or football or basketball had already boosted their lung capacity to the maximum," says study author Dee Ann Birkel, an emeritus professor at Ball State's School of Physical Education.
From the perspective of a Western scientist, the few additional studies that have looked at yoga and fitness all contain flaws in their research design—either too few subjects or inadequate control groups. One study, conducted in Secunderabad, India, compared a group of athletes taught pranayama to another group who were not. After two years, those who practiced pranayama showed a larger reduction of blood lactate (an indicator of fatigue) in response to exercise; in addition, they were more able than the control group to increase their exercise intensity as well as the efficiency of their oxygen consumption during exercise. Other smaller studies also done in India have found that yoga can increase exercise performance and raise anaerobic threshold. (Anaerobic threshold is the point at which your muscles cannot extract enough oxygen from your blood and therefore must switch from burning oxygen to burning sugar and creatine. Unlike oxygen, sugar and creatine are dirty fuel sources, creating lactic acid and other by-products that build up in the blood and make you hyperventilate, "feel the burn," and lose muscle coordination.)
Although the research on yoga is only starting to build, a convincingly large amount of research has been done on tai chi, an Eastern martial art that involves a series of slow, graceful movements. Many studies have found that tai chi helps to improve balance, cardiorespiratory and cardiovascular fitness, ability to concentrate, immunity, flexibility, strength, and endurance of the knee extensor muscles.
Dina Amsterdam, a yoga instructor in San Francisco and graduate student at Stanford University, is one of many researchers conducting a three-year study that compares the psychological and physiological benefits of tai chi as to those of traditional forms of Western exercise such as aerobics. (The daughter of Ezra Amsterdam, Dina Amsterdam was the inspiration behind her father's U. C. Davis study on yoga and fitness.)
"Though there haven't been a lot of studies done on yoga that are considered valid, there are numerous studies done on tai chi, with the current Stanford study the largest to date," she says. Because yoga shares many elements with tai chi but can also provide a more vigorous physical workout, Amsterdam expects future yoga studies to produce at least similarly encouraging results. But Amsterdam says she doesn't need additional research to prove to her that yoga builds fitness. "I haven't done anything but yoga and some hiking for 10 years," she says. "When I came to yoga, I was 25 pounds overweight and suffering from a compulsive eating disorder. Yoga completely brought me back to physical and emotional health."
Many yoga practitioners echo such thoughts. Jack England, an 81-year-old yoga and stretching instructor at the Club Med in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, says more than 30 years of yoga have kept him flexible, healthy, and strong. He's the same weight and height as he was in high school, and his stellar health continues to amaze his doctor. He delights audiences at Club Med by practicing Shoulderstand and other poses while balancing on a float board in a water ski show. "I'm an inspiration to people of all ages," he says. "I do things that 14-year-old girls can't do."
Stephanie Griffin, a 33-year-old director of business development for a pharmaceutical research company in San Francisco, discovered yoga after years of running marathons, spinning, and weight lifting. Before discovering yoga, she thought her intense exercise habits had turned her into a poster child for health and fitness. During the last four years, however, Griffin began doing more and more yoga and less and less running, weight lifting, and aerobicizing. As she dropped back on her hardcore fitness pursuits, she worried she might gain weight or lose her muscle tone or exercise capacity.
She didn't. "I have maintained my fitness and even enhanced it through yoga," says Griffin, who no longer has a gym membership. "And I like the way my body looks and feels now better than the way it did before."
Why Yoga Works
Exactly how does yoga build fitness? The answer you get depends on whom you ask. Robert Holly, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in the Department of Exercise Biology at U. C. Davis and one of the researchers on the U. C. Davis study, says that muscles respond to stretching by becoming larger and capable of extracting and using more oxygen more quickly. In other words, side benefits of flexibility include increased muscle strength and endurance.
"My own belief is that the small but significant increase in maximal oxygen capacity was due to an increase in muscle endurance, which allowed the subjects to exercise longer, extract more oxygen, and reach an increased maximal oxygen uptake," says Holly.
Then there's the pranayama theory. Birkel suspects that yoga poses help increase lung capacity by improving the flexibility of the rib area, shoulders, and back, allowing the lungs to expand more fully. Breathwork further boosts lung capacity—and possibly also VO2max—by conditioning the diaphragm and helping to more fully oxygenate the blood.
Birkel, Dina Amsterdam, and others are also quick to point out that Suryanamaskar (Sun Salutations) and other continuously linked poses increase the heart rate, making yoga aerobically challenging. And many yoga poses—particularly standing poses, balancing poses, and inversions—build quite a bit of strength because they require sustained isometric contractions of many large and small muscles. Of course, holding the poses longer increases this training effect.
Finally, yoga tunes you into your body and helps you to better coordinate your actions. "When you bring your breath, your awareness, and your physical body into harmony, you allow your body to work at its maximum fitness capacity," says Dina Amsterdam. "Yoga class is merely a laboratory for how to be in harmony with the body in every activity outside of yoga. This improved physical wellness and fluidity enhance not just the physical well-being but also permeate all levels of our being."
Are You Fit?
Given all this evidence, can you now confidently tell your nonyogi friends they're wrong when they insist that you should add other forms of exercise to your practice?
Maybe, maybe not. The answer depends largely on how much you dedicate yourself to yoga. Studies done on yoga have included more than an hour of practice two to four days a week. The yoga sessions included breathwork and meditation in addition to typical yoga poses. Finally, the asanas used in these studies included not just aerobically challenging sequences, like Sun Salutations, but also many strengthening poses, like Virabhadrasana (Warrior Pose), Vrksasana (Tree Pose), Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose), Navasana (Boat Pose), Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), and Plank.
So if you want to become and stay physically and mentally fit, make sure your yoga practice includes a balance of poses that build strength, stamina, and flexibility, along with breathwork and meditation to help develop body awareness. In particular, include a series of standing poses in your practice. As your practice expands, Schumacher suggests adding more challenging asanas such as balancing poses and inversions. "If you are just doing 15 minutes of gentle yoga stretches three to four times a week, you will also need to do some other form of exercise to stay fit," Schumacher readily admits. "I often tell my beginning students that they will need to do something in addition to yoga for a while until they can practice more vigorously."
Holly agrees. If you practice yoga for less than an hour twice a week, he suggests you either pair your practice with moderate intensity exercise like walking, or increase your yoga time or frequency. "But the best form of exercise is whatever you enjoy most and will continue to do on a regular, almost daily, basis," he says. "Should you do more than yoga if you don't enjoy other activities? No. Yoga has a lot of benefits, so do yoga regularly and enjoy it." Beyond fitness, yoga also offers many other gifts. It improves your health, reduces stress, improves sleep, and often acts like a powerful therapy to help heal relationships, improve your career, and boost your overall outlook on life.
All these positives are enough to keep former exercise junkie Stephanie Griffin hooked on yoga for life. Griffin had worried that, unlike her other fitness pursuits, yoga wouldn't give her the emotional satisfaction of aiming for and meeting goals. Soon, however, she realized that yoga offered her a path to constant improvement. "One day it hit me: I realized that my goal was to be practicing yoga well into my 90s," says Griffin. "For me, that is the new finish line. Practicing with that goal satisfies me more than any marathon."
Alisa Bauman stays fit through yoga, running, and fitness ball workouts. She lives and writes in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where she is studying for yoga teacher certification under Mary Rosenberger at Accent on Yoga and Health.
The Back Bend
The author, Kate Tremblay is a yoga teacher and massage therapist in Birmingham, Alabama. Learn more about her work at www.heartwoodyoga.com.
In backbends, we come face-to-face with the boundaries of our flexibility, patience, and equanimity. But learning to practice with our limitations—instead of struggling against them—can make backbending an exercise in self-acceptance.
Most of us come to yoga seeking sanctuary. We realize how important it is to briefly step away from the demands of life and relax into a spacious quality of mind that allows us to be with ourselves as we are, without judgment. Insulated from the racket of demands and from the need to rush, we become quiet enough to hear the stirrings of our hearts. And in the act of accepting whatever we find there, we replenish our energy and inspiration. Accepting the truth of our selves, our hearts, our muscles, our level of energy in any given moment is the height of compassion, and practiced this way, yoga becomes an exercise in equanimity.
How is it, then, that so many of us quickly abandon these ideals when we practice backbends? If we're not paying close attention, the acceptance and lovingkindness we were working with in other poses suddenly dissipates. Any practice of the yamas and niyamas, those attitudes and behaviors that epitomize the spirit of yoga, falls away. We grasp for a deeper opening, greedy for the glory of a perfect pose. We refuse to surrender to our own body's wisdom. If we're not paying close attention, we can become shockingly forceful and disrespectful of ourselves.
With few exceptions, backbends elicit a passionate response. People either pepper their practice with deeper and deeper ones or they skip them whenever possible, dreading the inevitable discomfort. Those who avoid them mostly do so sheepishly, for what does it say about us if we dread backbends? These are poses that open the heart chakra, build courage and stamina, and give us the sort of energy that propels us to reach out toward others. Do we not value those benefits?
Chances are very good that if you are miserable in backbends, it's not that you don't value the benefits; it's more likely that you have never truly experienced them. Maybe you are stiff along the front body or have weak back muscles, or perhaps you instinctively know to protect a vulnerable heart from openings you are not ready for. If you have yet to find joy in opening the front body, it's time to develop a different approach to your practice.
HONORING RESISTANCE
The discipline of yoga is a purification practice, but not in the sense that we Americans seem so inclined to believe. The goal is purification not for the sake of perfection but for the sake of freedom. If you practice backbends intent upon eradicating aspects of yourself that you see as somehow "not measuring up," such as weak muscles, stiff joints, or protective insulation, you succeed only in beating yourself up. There's no freedom on that path and, incidentally, no purification either. It's a path that leads only deeper into neuroses.
If the discipline of yoga is to bring greater freedom, you must practice backbends in a way that accepts and accommodates your resistance—even values and honors it—while still letting you receive the intended benefits. The point of this practice is not to become someone else but to become more fully yourself, to achieve not the glorious backbend pictured on a yoga calendar but the one that is at once stable and comfortable for your body and glows with an inner experience of joy, exhilaration, and freedom.
You're more likely to choose poses that honor your limits if you keep in mind the point of the practice, which in this case is opening the front of the body. You probably already do this instinctively after long periods of time spent hunched forward, whether over a computer, a patch in the garden, or something else. You know the stretch: arms reaching up and out, chest puffing forward, maybe even accompanied by a yawn or a growl. This informal backbend opens the muscles of the front body that tightened and shortened while you were pitched forward, and it offers the overstretched and fatigued back muscles relief by shortening them, flushing out waste, and bringing in a fresh supply of oxygenated blood. It feels great to open this way, doesn't it?
What makes this most natural of backbends especially pleasurable is that you rarely try to reach beyond your body's natural comfort level. You're not trying to achieve anything in particular, just instinctively going for the relief and exhilaration of the arch. If you can remind yourself that this revitalization is possible with even the simplest of poses, you will gravitate willingly and eagerly toward the practice of backbends.
TAKING ONLY WHAT YOU NEED
But sometimes even that natural impulse to arch backward is accompanied by an unexpected twinge of pain in the lower back. This is the area of the spine that typically bears the greatest strain during backbends, and if you tend to experience compression in the lower back during practice, you may decide that your body just doesn't bend backward with enough ease to garner the benefits of the practice. Fortunately, the breath can be used to create both comfort and control in backward-bending poses. Lifting and arching the chest on an inhalation and drawing the abdomen in to lengthen the lower back on an exhalation intentionally creates a shallower and more uniform arch. This also pulls the apex of the curve up and out of the lower back, where it tends to settle uncomfortably, and gives it a new home in the chest. Practiced this way, backbends are not only safer but easier to hold. Rather than struggling against the pose, you can relax into it and receive the gift of opening it has to offer.
Using the breath to control the depth and apex of a backbend offers an interesting encounter with aparigraha, the attitude that's described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra as the ability to accept only what is appropriate. You make a conscious choice not to take all you could, not to move into the fullest backward bend your body can manage, because you see value in holding back; you value the health and integrity of your body more than the glory of a deeper backbend. You value the primary function of the pose—the opening—more than the final shape or form of the posture.
This kind of restraint is so uncommon in our culture that it can feel quite unnatural. To embrace restraint, you might need to acknowledge how strongly it conflicts with the messages we regularly receive about what it means to be accomplished and successful. Like it or not, the culture we live in has a strong influence on our psyches. If you move into backbends without acknowledging their potential to collide with the values of yogic practice, doing your best can translate into doing your most. Not only can this lead to injury, but it can also sabotage the benefits of the practice altogether. If you want to give backbending your best effort and still remain true to the spirit of yogic practice, you have to remind yourself that success comes with taking only what you need from a pose—only what your body can appropriately use and no more.
If you pay close attention, the breath will tell you what you need and when you've gone too far. The breath is constant, but at the same time, it's ever-changing. It reflects the state of the body and mind in the most honest and direct way. Overeffort, strain, pain, anxiety, striving, frustration—all of these are revealed by the breath, and you can know your own mind better, and learn to work within your limits, if you learn how to interpret the sensation and sound of the breath.
The breath can also be used to connect your intention more fully with your physical body. In backbending, the connection is absolute. To set the tone for a skillful, compassionate backbending practice, start by giving yourself the space and freedom to observe the movement of the breath separately from the actions of backbending. To do this, lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. Place your right hand on your upper chest and your left hand on your lower abdomen. Rest each elbow on a blanket so your arms can relax. As you inhale, feel the right hand move first as the lungs fill and the rib cage lifts and broadens. Gradually move the breath downward until the diaphragm moves down and the belly expands, lifting the left hand with it. Then exhale in reverse, beginning with a gentle contraction of the abdominal muscles under the left hand and then relaxing and releasing progressively upward until the diaphragm and muscles of the rib cage relax and the right hand settles.
Maintain the gentle contraction of the abdomen initiated during the exhalation throughout subsequent inhalations, first filling the upper lungs and lifting the rib cage. Maintain the lift of the rib cage in subsequent exhalations while reaffirming the contraction of your abdominal muscles. This subtle work of using the abdomen to stabilize the lower back and pelvis while reaching the chest forward lengthens the spine. Working backbends this way has a similar feel to opening an extension ladder: The base remains grounded, and the front spine becomes progressively longer. If the back of the ladder were becoming shorter, like the muscles of the back, extending the ladder would create a long and graceful arch. This action becomes the mechanism by which you control how deeply you arch backward and where you locate the apex of your curve.
The breath can be a constant reminder of these actions, which you can work with in every backbend, from the most simple to the most complex. It can also serve as the ground for your intention—on the inhalation, you can extend compassionate care to yourself; on the exhalation, you can revel in pure sensation.
The attitude of compassion can start with choosing the poses that are most appropriate for your body. It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that simply because a pose exists, everyone should work toward being able to do it. Not every pose is appropriate for every body. If you're in pain while practicing a pose and cannot find adjustments that enable you to be in the pose comfortably, even with the advice and assistance of a trained instructor, then you must skillfully accept that the pose is not appropriate for your body at this time.
Most people with a healthy spine and normal flexibility will find variations of Salabhasana (Locust Pose), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), and Utkatasana (Chair Pose) to be comfortably challenging and invigorating backbends. (If these poses leave you feeling unopened or unchallenged, however, your body is likely ready for deeper work and more challenging poses, and it would be unskillful for you to leave this more challenging work out of your yoga practice. Remember, you're looking for what is appropriate for you individually.)
SALABHASANA
Salabhasana involves an active contraction of the back muscles to open the front body. This feels delicious when the back is strong and the front body is not overly restricted. Remind yourself that the primary purpose of backbends is to release tension along the front of the body, helping you feel more movement of breath and energy in those areas. As an active backbend, Salabhasana also offers the promise of strengthening muscles along the back of the body. In service of these intended benefits, try lifting your body only 50 percent as high as you comfortably can. Use the reserved energy and the mental space created to stay a few breaths longer than you might be able to if you were really pushing yourself. Then use the extra time to observe sensations and to maneuver within the pose.
To come into Salabhasana, lie facedown with your forehead on the floor and your arms alongside your body, palms down. Exhale and lengthen the lower back by drawing the belly gently toward the spine and pressing the pelvis and thighs toward the floor. Hold a subtle tension in the belly as you inhale and lift the chest and head. Exhale and again lengthen the lower back, drawing the belly gently toward the spine. Inhale, expanding the chest forward and at the same time pulling the apex of the arch from the lower back up to just behind your breastbone.
Stay in touch with your level of exertion and any signs of resistance in your lower back. Resistance doesn't necessarily mean you should stop what you're doing, but it is a reminder to slow down and pay attention to what is happening. Lower the chest a bit to slow down and observe. Find space to move within the pose, to work the chest forward on your inhalations and lengthen the back on your exhalations.
Once you've mastered the action, begin to experiment with deepening the backbend, taking care to honor your own comfort level. Is there enough ease in your lumbar spine (in the lower back) to offer it a little more arch? Ideally, you want the lumbar spine and the cervical spine (in the neck) to arch without overcompressing and without compromising your ability to open the front of the thoracic spine (in the middle and upper back).
If you've lifted the apex of the curve upward and your lower back feels fine, release a little of the abdominal contraction at the end of your next inhalation, letting the lower back move a little farther forward. Work to keep the apex of the curve drawing upward, and support the lifting heart from underneath by bringing the shoulder blades firmly against the rib cage. Mirror the action of your chest with the base of your skull, extending it upward on an inhalation so the neck comes to its full length. Then look forward and up with the chin still slightly tucked, as if you were arching up and back over a large ball. The entire spine should lengthen and open into a long graceful bend, with no single part receiving a disproportionate share of the backbend. This feels glorious. Savor it.
If you want to move more deeply into the pose, add your legs, lifting them and stretching back through the heels. Every time you move, take only 50 percent of what is possible. Know that as the body opens, you can take another 10 percent—and another, and another. If you are still comfortable and want a bit more chest opening, lift the arms off the floor too. Keep them by your side and turn the palms to face each other, or interlace your fingers behind your back and stretch the knuckles back toward the heels. Just be sure to keep some extra wiggle room for observing and responding—the ultimate yogic conversation between body, breath, and mind.
Whenever you take all that your body will give, the question of when to come out of the pose never emerges. You come out when your body gasps "uncle." By contrast, working as you are here, and as the Yoga Sutra advises—balancing sthira (steadiness) and sukha (ease)—there is room to observe cues that the quality of your effort is beginning to wane and it's time to rest. Do you have less control over the subtle actions of controlling depth and apex? Is your breath beginning to lose its smooth, easy rhythm? When your resistance to remaining in the pose overpowers the conversation of your body, it is time to come out. Lie down slowly, turning your head to one side and resting your arms alongside the torso, palms rolling up toward the ceiling. Listen to the echoes of the pose reverberating throughout your body. Enjoy the total release of effort and observe the new quality of your energy. After a while, push back into Balasana (Child's Pose).
UTKATASANA
Salabhasana is quite challenging for those who have a long torso, a stiff front body, and weak back muscles. If this is the case for you, try Utkatasana instead. Like Salabhasana, Utkatasana is an active backbend. It can challenge the back muscles to develop strength, but it does so using gravity, which makes it easier for weaker backs. To come into the pose, stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), with your feet parallel and hip width apart. On an inhalation, raise the arms overhead. On an exhalation, bend your knees as if to sit in a chair as you bring your hands to the thighs. To keep your knees safe, be sure they track directly forward in line with the toes. The closer the thighs come to parallel with the floor, the more challenging the pose, both for your legs and your back. Remind yourself to work at 50 percent so you have plenty of space to make subtle adjustments.
On each inhalation, lift the chest away from the thighs, pulling the apex of the curve into the thoracic spine. On each exhalation, gently contract the abdominal muscles, tucking the tailbone under and lengthening the lower back. Stabilize the pose by reaching into the four corners of each foot, most strongly into the inner and outer edges of each heel to encourage length in the lower back.
If your body calls for more opening and a stronger surge of energy, bring your arms straight out in front of you and parallel to the floor. For an even stronger position, reach the arms overhead. Keep adjusting the depth and apex with each position change. When you are ready to come out of the pose, return to Tadasana, releasing your arms down to your sides, and take several breaths.
SETU BANDHA SARVANGASANA
Perhaps the kindest of the lot, Setu Bandha Sarvangasana is a passive arch for the back; it allows the back muscles to completely relax as the front body opens, with the legs and hips taking on most of the work. To come into the pose, lie down on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor hip width apart. Press into the feet to lengthen the lower back, bringing it into contact with the floor. Continue pressing through the feet as the knees reach away from the shoulders, lifting the buttocks and increasingly more of the back from the floor. Remind yourself that this is a pose in which your back muscles can actually relax while your legs do the work of opening the front body. By keeping the effort at 50 percent, you'll find space to enjoy the drape of the back from the pelvis down toward the shoulders, relaxing into the force of gravity.
Let the arms remain passive on the floor or, if your chest is flexible enough to permit, bring them under your back, interlacing your fingers and straightening the arms as much as possible. Either way, reach the arms, like the legs, toward the floor to support the arch of the pose. Once you're situated, settle into a rhythm of breathing in as you extend the chest toward both ceiling and chin and breathing out as you lengthen the lower back. Try reaching strongly through the heels, contracting the hamstrings to pull the sitting bones toward the back knees. As the hamstrings contract, the lower back is pulled long from below.
This is a wonderful action to call upon in any backbend. When you are able to lengthen the lower back by tugging the back of the pelvis down with your hamstrings, the front body becomes more available to lengthen and open. If you struggle with the comfort of your lower back in backbends, however, you may still find the most comfort by continuing to stabilize and lengthen the lumbar spine at least partially through the contraction of your abdominal muscles.
When you are ready to come out of the pose, release the arms out from under you and slowly return the spine to the floor, one vertebra at a time. Rest a moment with the knees bent and the feet on the floor to observe new sensations and to relax.
SEEING WITH COMPASSION
When you practice backbends this way—honoring resistance, working with integrity and sensitivity—the result is not only more access to the benefits of backbends but an inevitable transformation of the elements within you that initially resisted the practice. Your joints open more, you become stronger and more flexible, and your heart opens into greater self-acceptance and compassion for others. So why not start with those intentions? Why not practice with the aims of increasing your flexibility, deepening your arch, banishing your fears? Why should you honor and accommodate your resistance rather than directing your practice of backbends toward eliminating the cause of that resistance?
Because any effort to eliminate a part of yourself or your experience is a treacherous practice, and where it leads depends upon your mental training. Can you acknowledge your resistance without judging it? Are you able to see weak back muscles as simply that and not as somehow connected to your value as a human being? That might seem easy, but what about when you look at something deeper, such as a protective barrier around the heart chakra? Can you observe that with understanding and equanimity? If you seek to eliminate your resistance because you feel it reflects badly on you as a person, your practice will be filled with negativity and self-loathing. That is a practice of purification for the sake of perfection, and it leads only to deeper entrapment in suffering.
But what if you do have the ability to look at yourself closely, compassionately, and with equanimity? Can you then meet your resistance head-on? Well, here's the interesting thing: A mind trained in equanimity doesn't push unwanted things away or grasp desired things closer. It honors and accommodates, knowing that such treatment is transformational. Ultimately, it is only in letting go of what you wish you could be, in seeking greater freedom to be who you actually are at any given moment, that the process of your becoming unfolds. So, practice enjoying the backbends that your body enjoys without forcing yourself into poses that reflect only what you wish your body could enjoy. Let each arch be an exercise in acceptance and equanimity, an active embrace of the sanctuary that yoga can offer, and a simple acknowledgement of a truth that might just change your whole life.
In backbends, we come face-to-face with the boundaries of our flexibility, patience, and equanimity. But learning to practice with our limitations—instead of struggling against them—can make backbending an exercise in self-acceptance.
Most of us come to yoga seeking sanctuary. We realize how important it is to briefly step away from the demands of life and relax into a spacious quality of mind that allows us to be with ourselves as we are, without judgment. Insulated from the racket of demands and from the need to rush, we become quiet enough to hear the stirrings of our hearts. And in the act of accepting whatever we find there, we replenish our energy and inspiration. Accepting the truth of our selves, our hearts, our muscles, our level of energy in any given moment is the height of compassion, and practiced this way, yoga becomes an exercise in equanimity.
How is it, then, that so many of us quickly abandon these ideals when we practice backbends? If we're not paying close attention, the acceptance and lovingkindness we were working with in other poses suddenly dissipates. Any practice of the yamas and niyamas, those attitudes and behaviors that epitomize the spirit of yoga, falls away. We grasp for a deeper opening, greedy for the glory of a perfect pose. We refuse to surrender to our own body's wisdom. If we're not paying close attention, we can become shockingly forceful and disrespectful of ourselves.
With few exceptions, backbends elicit a passionate response. People either pepper their practice with deeper and deeper ones or they skip them whenever possible, dreading the inevitable discomfort. Those who avoid them mostly do so sheepishly, for what does it say about us if we dread backbends? These are poses that open the heart chakra, build courage and stamina, and give us the sort of energy that propels us to reach out toward others. Do we not value those benefits?
Chances are very good that if you are miserable in backbends, it's not that you don't value the benefits; it's more likely that you have never truly experienced them. Maybe you are stiff along the front body or have weak back muscles, or perhaps you instinctively know to protect a vulnerable heart from openings you are not ready for. If you have yet to find joy in opening the front body, it's time to develop a different approach to your practice.
HONORING RESISTANCE
The discipline of yoga is a purification practice, but not in the sense that we Americans seem so inclined to believe. The goal is purification not for the sake of perfection but for the sake of freedom. If you practice backbends intent upon eradicating aspects of yourself that you see as somehow "not measuring up," such as weak muscles, stiff joints, or protective insulation, you succeed only in beating yourself up. There's no freedom on that path and, incidentally, no purification either. It's a path that leads only deeper into neuroses.
If the discipline of yoga is to bring greater freedom, you must practice backbends in a way that accepts and accommodates your resistance—even values and honors it—while still letting you receive the intended benefits. The point of this practice is not to become someone else but to become more fully yourself, to achieve not the glorious backbend pictured on a yoga calendar but the one that is at once stable and comfortable for your body and glows with an inner experience of joy, exhilaration, and freedom.
You're more likely to choose poses that honor your limits if you keep in mind the point of the practice, which in this case is opening the front of the body. You probably already do this instinctively after long periods of time spent hunched forward, whether over a computer, a patch in the garden, or something else. You know the stretch: arms reaching up and out, chest puffing forward, maybe even accompanied by a yawn or a growl. This informal backbend opens the muscles of the front body that tightened and shortened while you were pitched forward, and it offers the overstretched and fatigued back muscles relief by shortening them, flushing out waste, and bringing in a fresh supply of oxygenated blood. It feels great to open this way, doesn't it?
What makes this most natural of backbends especially pleasurable is that you rarely try to reach beyond your body's natural comfort level. You're not trying to achieve anything in particular, just instinctively going for the relief and exhilaration of the arch. If you can remind yourself that this revitalization is possible with even the simplest of poses, you will gravitate willingly and eagerly toward the practice of backbends.
TAKING ONLY WHAT YOU NEED
But sometimes even that natural impulse to arch backward is accompanied by an unexpected twinge of pain in the lower back. This is the area of the spine that typically bears the greatest strain during backbends, and if you tend to experience compression in the lower back during practice, you may decide that your body just doesn't bend backward with enough ease to garner the benefits of the practice. Fortunately, the breath can be used to create both comfort and control in backward-bending poses. Lifting and arching the chest on an inhalation and drawing the abdomen in to lengthen the lower back on an exhalation intentionally creates a shallower and more uniform arch. This also pulls the apex of the curve up and out of the lower back, where it tends to settle uncomfortably, and gives it a new home in the chest. Practiced this way, backbends are not only safer but easier to hold. Rather than struggling against the pose, you can relax into it and receive the gift of opening it has to offer.
Using the breath to control the depth and apex of a backbend offers an interesting encounter with aparigraha, the attitude that's described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra as the ability to accept only what is appropriate. You make a conscious choice not to take all you could, not to move into the fullest backward bend your body can manage, because you see value in holding back; you value the health and integrity of your body more than the glory of a deeper backbend. You value the primary function of the pose—the opening—more than the final shape or form of the posture.
This kind of restraint is so uncommon in our culture that it can feel quite unnatural. To embrace restraint, you might need to acknowledge how strongly it conflicts with the messages we regularly receive about what it means to be accomplished and successful. Like it or not, the culture we live in has a strong influence on our psyches. If you move into backbends without acknowledging their potential to collide with the values of yogic practice, doing your best can translate into doing your most. Not only can this lead to injury, but it can also sabotage the benefits of the practice altogether. If you want to give backbending your best effort and still remain true to the spirit of yogic practice, you have to remind yourself that success comes with taking only what you need from a pose—only what your body can appropriately use and no more.
If you pay close attention, the breath will tell you what you need and when you've gone too far. The breath is constant, but at the same time, it's ever-changing. It reflects the state of the body and mind in the most honest and direct way. Overeffort, strain, pain, anxiety, striving, frustration—all of these are revealed by the breath, and you can know your own mind better, and learn to work within your limits, if you learn how to interpret the sensation and sound of the breath.
The breath can also be used to connect your intention more fully with your physical body. In backbending, the connection is absolute. To set the tone for a skillful, compassionate backbending practice, start by giving yourself the space and freedom to observe the movement of the breath separately from the actions of backbending. To do this, lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. Place your right hand on your upper chest and your left hand on your lower abdomen. Rest each elbow on a blanket so your arms can relax. As you inhale, feel the right hand move first as the lungs fill and the rib cage lifts and broadens. Gradually move the breath downward until the diaphragm moves down and the belly expands, lifting the left hand with it. Then exhale in reverse, beginning with a gentle contraction of the abdominal muscles under the left hand and then relaxing and releasing progressively upward until the diaphragm and muscles of the rib cage relax and the right hand settles.
Maintain the gentle contraction of the abdomen initiated during the exhalation throughout subsequent inhalations, first filling the upper lungs and lifting the rib cage. Maintain the lift of the rib cage in subsequent exhalations while reaffirming the contraction of your abdominal muscles. This subtle work of using the abdomen to stabilize the lower back and pelvis while reaching the chest forward lengthens the spine. Working backbends this way has a similar feel to opening an extension ladder: The base remains grounded, and the front spine becomes progressively longer. If the back of the ladder were becoming shorter, like the muscles of the back, extending the ladder would create a long and graceful arch. This action becomes the mechanism by which you control how deeply you arch backward and where you locate the apex of your curve.
The breath can be a constant reminder of these actions, which you can work with in every backbend, from the most simple to the most complex. It can also serve as the ground for your intention—on the inhalation, you can extend compassionate care to yourself; on the exhalation, you can revel in pure sensation.
The attitude of compassion can start with choosing the poses that are most appropriate for your body. It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that simply because a pose exists, everyone should work toward being able to do it. Not every pose is appropriate for every body. If you're in pain while practicing a pose and cannot find adjustments that enable you to be in the pose comfortably, even with the advice and assistance of a trained instructor, then you must skillfully accept that the pose is not appropriate for your body at this time.
Most people with a healthy spine and normal flexibility will find variations of Salabhasana (Locust Pose), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), and Utkatasana (Chair Pose) to be comfortably challenging and invigorating backbends. (If these poses leave you feeling unopened or unchallenged, however, your body is likely ready for deeper work and more challenging poses, and it would be unskillful for you to leave this more challenging work out of your yoga practice. Remember, you're looking for what is appropriate for you individually.)
SALABHASANA
Salabhasana involves an active contraction of the back muscles to open the front body. This feels delicious when the back is strong and the front body is not overly restricted. Remind yourself that the primary purpose of backbends is to release tension along the front of the body, helping you feel more movement of breath and energy in those areas. As an active backbend, Salabhasana also offers the promise of strengthening muscles along the back of the body. In service of these intended benefits, try lifting your body only 50 percent as high as you comfortably can. Use the reserved energy and the mental space created to stay a few breaths longer than you might be able to if you were really pushing yourself. Then use the extra time to observe sensations and to maneuver within the pose.
To come into Salabhasana, lie facedown with your forehead on the floor and your arms alongside your body, palms down. Exhale and lengthen the lower back by drawing the belly gently toward the spine and pressing the pelvis and thighs toward the floor. Hold a subtle tension in the belly as you inhale and lift the chest and head. Exhale and again lengthen the lower back, drawing the belly gently toward the spine. Inhale, expanding the chest forward and at the same time pulling the apex of the arch from the lower back up to just behind your breastbone.
Stay in touch with your level of exertion and any signs of resistance in your lower back. Resistance doesn't necessarily mean you should stop what you're doing, but it is a reminder to slow down and pay attention to what is happening. Lower the chest a bit to slow down and observe. Find space to move within the pose, to work the chest forward on your inhalations and lengthen the back on your exhalations.
Once you've mastered the action, begin to experiment with deepening the backbend, taking care to honor your own comfort level. Is there enough ease in your lumbar spine (in the lower back) to offer it a little more arch? Ideally, you want the lumbar spine and the cervical spine (in the neck) to arch without overcompressing and without compromising your ability to open the front of the thoracic spine (in the middle and upper back).
If you've lifted the apex of the curve upward and your lower back feels fine, release a little of the abdominal contraction at the end of your next inhalation, letting the lower back move a little farther forward. Work to keep the apex of the curve drawing upward, and support the lifting heart from underneath by bringing the shoulder blades firmly against the rib cage. Mirror the action of your chest with the base of your skull, extending it upward on an inhalation so the neck comes to its full length. Then look forward and up with the chin still slightly tucked, as if you were arching up and back over a large ball. The entire spine should lengthen and open into a long graceful bend, with no single part receiving a disproportionate share of the backbend. This feels glorious. Savor it.
If you want to move more deeply into the pose, add your legs, lifting them and stretching back through the heels. Every time you move, take only 50 percent of what is possible. Know that as the body opens, you can take another 10 percent—and another, and another. If you are still comfortable and want a bit more chest opening, lift the arms off the floor too. Keep them by your side and turn the palms to face each other, or interlace your fingers behind your back and stretch the knuckles back toward the heels. Just be sure to keep some extra wiggle room for observing and responding—the ultimate yogic conversation between body, breath, and mind.
Whenever you take all that your body will give, the question of when to come out of the pose never emerges. You come out when your body gasps "uncle." By contrast, working as you are here, and as the Yoga Sutra advises—balancing sthira (steadiness) and sukha (ease)—there is room to observe cues that the quality of your effort is beginning to wane and it's time to rest. Do you have less control over the subtle actions of controlling depth and apex? Is your breath beginning to lose its smooth, easy rhythm? When your resistance to remaining in the pose overpowers the conversation of your body, it is time to come out. Lie down slowly, turning your head to one side and resting your arms alongside the torso, palms rolling up toward the ceiling. Listen to the echoes of the pose reverberating throughout your body. Enjoy the total release of effort and observe the new quality of your energy. After a while, push back into Balasana (Child's Pose).
UTKATASANA
Salabhasana is quite challenging for those who have a long torso, a stiff front body, and weak back muscles. If this is the case for you, try Utkatasana instead. Like Salabhasana, Utkatasana is an active backbend. It can challenge the back muscles to develop strength, but it does so using gravity, which makes it easier for weaker backs. To come into the pose, stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), with your feet parallel and hip width apart. On an inhalation, raise the arms overhead. On an exhalation, bend your knees as if to sit in a chair as you bring your hands to the thighs. To keep your knees safe, be sure they track directly forward in line with the toes. The closer the thighs come to parallel with the floor, the more challenging the pose, both for your legs and your back. Remind yourself to work at 50 percent so you have plenty of space to make subtle adjustments.
On each inhalation, lift the chest away from the thighs, pulling the apex of the curve into the thoracic spine. On each exhalation, gently contract the abdominal muscles, tucking the tailbone under and lengthening the lower back. Stabilize the pose by reaching into the four corners of each foot, most strongly into the inner and outer edges of each heel to encourage length in the lower back.
If your body calls for more opening and a stronger surge of energy, bring your arms straight out in front of you and parallel to the floor. For an even stronger position, reach the arms overhead. Keep adjusting the depth and apex with each position change. When you are ready to come out of the pose, return to Tadasana, releasing your arms down to your sides, and take several breaths.
SETU BANDHA SARVANGASANA
Perhaps the kindest of the lot, Setu Bandha Sarvangasana is a passive arch for the back; it allows the back muscles to completely relax as the front body opens, with the legs and hips taking on most of the work. To come into the pose, lie down on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor hip width apart. Press into the feet to lengthen the lower back, bringing it into contact with the floor. Continue pressing through the feet as the knees reach away from the shoulders, lifting the buttocks and increasingly more of the back from the floor. Remind yourself that this is a pose in which your back muscles can actually relax while your legs do the work of opening the front body. By keeping the effort at 50 percent, you'll find space to enjoy the drape of the back from the pelvis down toward the shoulders, relaxing into the force of gravity.
Let the arms remain passive on the floor or, if your chest is flexible enough to permit, bring them under your back, interlacing your fingers and straightening the arms as much as possible. Either way, reach the arms, like the legs, toward the floor to support the arch of the pose. Once you're situated, settle into a rhythm of breathing in as you extend the chest toward both ceiling and chin and breathing out as you lengthen the lower back. Try reaching strongly through the heels, contracting the hamstrings to pull the sitting bones toward the back knees. As the hamstrings contract, the lower back is pulled long from below.
This is a wonderful action to call upon in any backbend. When you are able to lengthen the lower back by tugging the back of the pelvis down with your hamstrings, the front body becomes more available to lengthen and open. If you struggle with the comfort of your lower back in backbends, however, you may still find the most comfort by continuing to stabilize and lengthen the lumbar spine at least partially through the contraction of your abdominal muscles.
When you are ready to come out of the pose, release the arms out from under you and slowly return the spine to the floor, one vertebra at a time. Rest a moment with the knees bent and the feet on the floor to observe new sensations and to relax.
SEEING WITH COMPASSION
When you practice backbends this way—honoring resistance, working with integrity and sensitivity—the result is not only more access to the benefits of backbends but an inevitable transformation of the elements within you that initially resisted the practice. Your joints open more, you become stronger and more flexible, and your heart opens into greater self-acceptance and compassion for others. So why not start with those intentions? Why not practice with the aims of increasing your flexibility, deepening your arch, banishing your fears? Why should you honor and accommodate your resistance rather than directing your practice of backbends toward eliminating the cause of that resistance?
Because any effort to eliminate a part of yourself or your experience is a treacherous practice, and where it leads depends upon your mental training. Can you acknowledge your resistance without judging it? Are you able to see weak back muscles as simply that and not as somehow connected to your value as a human being? That might seem easy, but what about when you look at something deeper, such as a protective barrier around the heart chakra? Can you observe that with understanding and equanimity? If you seek to eliminate your resistance because you feel it reflects badly on you as a person, your practice will be filled with negativity and self-loathing. That is a practice of purification for the sake of perfection, and it leads only to deeper entrapment in suffering.
But what if you do have the ability to look at yourself closely, compassionately, and with equanimity? Can you then meet your resistance head-on? Well, here's the interesting thing: A mind trained in equanimity doesn't push unwanted things away or grasp desired things closer. It honors and accommodates, knowing that such treatment is transformational. Ultimately, it is only in letting go of what you wish you could be, in seeking greater freedom to be who you actually are at any given moment, that the process of your becoming unfolds. So, practice enjoying the backbends that your body enjoys without forcing yourself into poses that reflect only what you wish your body could enjoy. Let each arch be an exercise in acceptance and equanimity, an active embrace of the sanctuary that yoga can offer, and a simple acknowledgement of a truth that might just change your whole life.
Forward Bend
The author of this article, Roger Cole, Ph.D., is a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher and a research scientist specializing in the physiology of relaxation, sleep, and biological rhythms. He trains yoga teachers and students in the anatomy, physiology, and practice of asana and pranayama. He is based at North County Yoga Center in Solana Beach, California, and teaches workshops worldwide.
Forward bends teach patience. It takes a long time to enter them deeply. Enlightenment does not necessarily occur when the head reaches the legs, so there is no need to get it there soon, if ever. The realization of yoga is to be fully conscious, present, and content at whatever stage of the practice you have attained. Paradoxically, when you are truly satisfied right where you are, your pose often opens up and you can easily move forward.
The physiological explanation for this may lie partly in the stretch reflex. This reflex causes a stretched muscle to automatically contract in opposition to the stretch. If you try too hard to bend forward, you trigger stretch reflexes in your hamstring muscles. You feel stretching pain and cannot bend further into the pose. Pushing yourself deeper into the pose just makes matters worse. The more pain you feel, the stronger the stretch reflex.
One way around this is to stop moving deeper into the pose as soon as you feel a slight challenge, long before you reach the point of pain. At this point, hold your position constant for a long time, without pushing into or backing out of the pose. Keep your knees straight and don't lose your pelvic tilt. You will find that, without moving, you get more and more comfortable right where you are. This most likely means that the stretch sensors (muscle spindles) in your muscles are getting reset, so that what formerly felt like a stretch to them now feels neutral. At this point, you feel comfortable in a position that previously felt like a challenge, so it's easy to feel satisfied where you are. The paradox is that by maintaining this sense of neutrality, your stretch sensors will most likely become ready to allow you to move deeper into the pose (without causing pain or a strong muscle contraction). You are ready to move to a new point of challenge and wait there, repeating the cycle.
The most important alignment points in Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend) are to fold as much as possible at the hip joints (tilt the top rim of the pelvis forward) and to lengthen the front of the body as much as you can, so the spine only rounds over a little. If you pull the head toward the legs without tilting the pelvis or lengthening the spine enough, the spine rounds too much and you can injure your lower back or sacroiliac joints. Even folding at the hip joints has its dangers-if you push too hard, you can tear a hamstring muscle or tendon.
Regarding hyperextension, if your knees straighten past 90°, you don't want to force them any further. However, forward bends pull on the hamstring muscles, and this tends to bend the knees, providing some protection against hyperextension.
If you are in good physical condition and your alignment is good, one way to progress in forward bends is to vigorously practice standing postures, with a strong Uttanasana between each posture. Standing postures like Utthita Trikonasana (Extended Triangle Pose), Utthita Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle Pose), and Virabhadrasana I, II, and III (Warrior 1, 2, and 3) work well. Do each standing posture twice on each side. Hold each pose (including Uttanasana) for 30 seconds to one minute. But don't do this practice six days a week-three or four is plenty
Again, don't be in a hurry. I know one yoga teacher who struggled with forward bends for about 20 years with little progress. Past age 60, she eased up substantially on her practice and her forward bends suddenly progressed dramatically. She still cannot put her head on her legs, but she is happy. Which is more important?
Forward bends teach patience. It takes a long time to enter them deeply. Enlightenment does not necessarily occur when the head reaches the legs, so there is no need to get it there soon, if ever. The realization of yoga is to be fully conscious, present, and content at whatever stage of the practice you have attained. Paradoxically, when you are truly satisfied right where you are, your pose often opens up and you can easily move forward.
The physiological explanation for this may lie partly in the stretch reflex. This reflex causes a stretched muscle to automatically contract in opposition to the stretch. If you try too hard to bend forward, you trigger stretch reflexes in your hamstring muscles. You feel stretching pain and cannot bend further into the pose. Pushing yourself deeper into the pose just makes matters worse. The more pain you feel, the stronger the stretch reflex.
One way around this is to stop moving deeper into the pose as soon as you feel a slight challenge, long before you reach the point of pain. At this point, hold your position constant for a long time, without pushing into or backing out of the pose. Keep your knees straight and don't lose your pelvic tilt. You will find that, without moving, you get more and more comfortable right where you are. This most likely means that the stretch sensors (muscle spindles) in your muscles are getting reset, so that what formerly felt like a stretch to them now feels neutral. At this point, you feel comfortable in a position that previously felt like a challenge, so it's easy to feel satisfied where you are. The paradox is that by maintaining this sense of neutrality, your stretch sensors will most likely become ready to allow you to move deeper into the pose (without causing pain or a strong muscle contraction). You are ready to move to a new point of challenge and wait there, repeating the cycle.
The most important alignment points in Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend) are to fold as much as possible at the hip joints (tilt the top rim of the pelvis forward) and to lengthen the front of the body as much as you can, so the spine only rounds over a little. If you pull the head toward the legs without tilting the pelvis or lengthening the spine enough, the spine rounds too much and you can injure your lower back or sacroiliac joints. Even folding at the hip joints has its dangers-if you push too hard, you can tear a hamstring muscle or tendon.
Regarding hyperextension, if your knees straighten past 90°, you don't want to force them any further. However, forward bends pull on the hamstring muscles, and this tends to bend the knees, providing some protection against hyperextension.
If you are in good physical condition and your alignment is good, one way to progress in forward bends is to vigorously practice standing postures, with a strong Uttanasana between each posture. Standing postures like Utthita Trikonasana (Extended Triangle Pose), Utthita Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle Pose), and Virabhadrasana I, II, and III (Warrior 1, 2, and 3) work well. Do each standing posture twice on each side. Hold each pose (including Uttanasana) for 30 seconds to one minute. But don't do this practice six days a week-three or four is plenty
Again, don't be in a hurry. I know one yoga teacher who struggled with forward bends for about 20 years with little progress. Past age 60, she eased up substantially on her practice and her forward bends suddenly progressed dramatically. She still cannot put her head on her legs, but she is happy. Which is more important?
Come, Let's Twist Again
If your massage therapist, your shrink, and your yoga teacher ever got together, they'd surely agree that you need twists. Your massage therapist knows that your back muscles are tighter than the strings on a soprano ukulele; your shrink knows that half your tension comes from stress. And your teacher knows that twisting poses are often the best way to untie both physical and psychological knots.
Forward bends, side bends, and backbends bring relief, but twists really get to the core of your tension. Only twists can effectively stretch the deepest layer of back muscles: the small ones closest to your spine. The more you practice twists, the more you realize they don't just release tightness; they also dissipate the frustration, anxiety, or fear that's often behind physical tension. On many levels, twisting is more about what you let go of than what you accomplish. Twists come in many varieties—standing, seated, reclining, inverted, and arm balances—and each twisting pose is powered by a slightly different balance of physical forces, gravity, and the muscles of your arms, legs, waist, and back.
When performed properly, twists have a host of physical and emotional benefits.
By Claudia Cummins
Twists penetrate deep into the body's core, offering potent benefits to the muscles and organs of the torso while encouraging the breath to grow deep and full. Practicing these postures regularly can create a suppleness and freedom in your spine that in turn brings a spring to your step.
Like any yoga posture, though, twists should be practiced with mindfulness and care. Remember the following principles as you move through your daily dose of them.
ELONGATE BEFORE YOU REVOLVE. To create freedom and spaciousness within, lengthen the spine before you twist by extending upward through the crown of the head and downward through the tailbone. Imagine the space between your vertebrae becoming as vast as a clear blue sky, and maintain this spaciousness as you spin.
LET THE BREATH BE YOUR GUIDE. Because twists tend to compress the diaphragm, they leave you with little breathing room. But there are ways to let your breath support and guide you through your twisting explorations. Here's one approach: As you inhale, lengthen the spine; as you exhale, revolve gently into your twisting posture. Pause and lengthen again on the next inhalation, then rotate farther as you exhale. Continue breathing and moving in this wavelike fashion until you feel you've nestled into the very depths of the asana. Breathe as steadily and rhythmically as possible for several breaths, then slowly unfurl out of the pose.
STABILIZE THE LOWER SPINE. Stabilize the lower spine as you move the upper. To avoid injury while twisting deeply, some part of you must be firmly anchored (typically the pelvis, the lower back, and the neck) while another part revolves (usually the upper spine). The irony is that the neck and lower back (just beneath the rib cage) usually spin more freely than the other parts of the spine; without mindfulness, these areas often bear the burden of revolving actions. Each time you move into a twisting posture, be conscious that you don't overtwist in the more mobile areas. Instead, try extending the movement into some of the more resistant areas of the spine.
PRACTICE EVENLY ON EACH SIDE. Practice evenly on each side. Because twists are asymmetrical postures, it's a good idea to spend equal time revolving in each direction to promote balance. That said, if you know that one side of your body is tighter than the other, you might try doing a twist twice on that side.
TAKE CARE. Take care when combining twisting actions and forward bends. For some, these combined movements create a significant strain on the back. If you know your lower back or sacroiliac joints are strained or challenged, seek the guidance of an experienced instructor before exploring forward-bending twists.
ENJOY THE AFTEREFFECTS. Enjoy the aftereffects. Moving into a twist feels a little like wringing out a washcloth. Don't miss out on the opportunity to enjoy the sensations of clarity, vitality, and ease once you've emerged from your favorite twist.
Claudia Cummins teaches yoga in central Ohio. Visit www.claudiacummins.com to read a selection of her essays.
Forward bends, side bends, and backbends bring relief, but twists really get to the core of your tension. Only twists can effectively stretch the deepest layer of back muscles: the small ones closest to your spine. The more you practice twists, the more you realize they don't just release tightness; they also dissipate the frustration, anxiety, or fear that's often behind physical tension. On many levels, twisting is more about what you let go of than what you accomplish. Twists come in many varieties—standing, seated, reclining, inverted, and arm balances—and each twisting pose is powered by a slightly different balance of physical forces, gravity, and the muscles of your arms, legs, waist, and back.
When performed properly, twists have a host of physical and emotional benefits.
By Claudia Cummins
Twists penetrate deep into the body's core, offering potent benefits to the muscles and organs of the torso while encouraging the breath to grow deep and full. Practicing these postures regularly can create a suppleness and freedom in your spine that in turn brings a spring to your step.
Like any yoga posture, though, twists should be practiced with mindfulness and care. Remember the following principles as you move through your daily dose of them.
ELONGATE BEFORE YOU REVOLVE. To create freedom and spaciousness within, lengthen the spine before you twist by extending upward through the crown of the head and downward through the tailbone. Imagine the space between your vertebrae becoming as vast as a clear blue sky, and maintain this spaciousness as you spin.
LET THE BREATH BE YOUR GUIDE. Because twists tend to compress the diaphragm, they leave you with little breathing room. But there are ways to let your breath support and guide you through your twisting explorations. Here's one approach: As you inhale, lengthen the spine; as you exhale, revolve gently into your twisting posture. Pause and lengthen again on the next inhalation, then rotate farther as you exhale. Continue breathing and moving in this wavelike fashion until you feel you've nestled into the very depths of the asana. Breathe as steadily and rhythmically as possible for several breaths, then slowly unfurl out of the pose.
STABILIZE THE LOWER SPINE. Stabilize the lower spine as you move the upper. To avoid injury while twisting deeply, some part of you must be firmly anchored (typically the pelvis, the lower back, and the neck) while another part revolves (usually the upper spine). The irony is that the neck and lower back (just beneath the rib cage) usually spin more freely than the other parts of the spine; without mindfulness, these areas often bear the burden of revolving actions. Each time you move into a twisting posture, be conscious that you don't overtwist in the more mobile areas. Instead, try extending the movement into some of the more resistant areas of the spine.
PRACTICE EVENLY ON EACH SIDE. Practice evenly on each side. Because twists are asymmetrical postures, it's a good idea to spend equal time revolving in each direction to promote balance. That said, if you know that one side of your body is tighter than the other, you might try doing a twist twice on that side.
TAKE CARE. Take care when combining twisting actions and forward bends. For some, these combined movements create a significant strain on the back. If you know your lower back or sacroiliac joints are strained or challenged, seek the guidance of an experienced instructor before exploring forward-bending twists.
ENJOY THE AFTEREFFECTS. Enjoy the aftereffects. Moving into a twist feels a little like wringing out a washcloth. Don't miss out on the opportunity to enjoy the sensations of clarity, vitality, and ease once you've emerged from your favorite twist.
Claudia Cummins teaches yoga in central Ohio. Visit www.claudiacummins.com to read a selection of her essays.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Home Remedies for Tired Eyes..Puffy..Dark Circles
Home remedies undo damage to the eyes caused by holiday-season excess.
By Janice Cox
Holiday parties, Internet shopping, and late-night reading can all take a toll on your eyes. But dark circles and puffy lids need not be the result of a busy holiday season. Instead, pamper and soothe your eyes with some old-fashioned remedies.
First, banish puffy eyes with a classic tea-bag remedy that uses the tannins in tea for their anti-inflammatory effect. Steep two black or orange pekoe tea bags in boiled water and let them cool to the touch. Lie down, apply one bag over each eye, and leave in place for at least 15 minutes. You may even take a short nap, which will benefit your whole body.
Other Tips
Drink plenty of water to hydrate the eyes and the whole body.
Use cooling, naturally astringent cucumber slices, raw potato slices, or witch hazel-soaked cotton pads to soothe tired eyes. Or use a chamomile tea bag compress. After infusing the bag for five minutes, cool and place over the eyes.
Wear less make-up (you will look more awake), and avoid reddish eye shadow shades.
Eye Rest Pillow
This pretty silk pillow eases eye strain with soothing darkness and the refreshing scent of lavender. Flaxseeds give the pillow a long shelf life and provide a soft, fluid feel. If you cannot find flaxseeds at your health food store, substitute short grain rice instead. Use old or thrift store scarves as an inexpensive source of silk.
Materials:
2 pieces of 100 percent silk material, 5 x 9 inches each
1 cup flaxseeds
1 Tbsp. dried lavender flowers
Sew the two pieces of silk together (inside out) with a 5/8-inch seam. Leave a 1-inch opening on one side. Then turn the pillow right-side out. Mix together the flaxseeds and lavender flowers and fill the pillow using a small funnel. Stitch the opening closed by hand. Then lie down, place the pillow over your eyes for at least 10 minutes, and relax.
By Janice Cox
Holiday parties, Internet shopping, and late-night reading can all take a toll on your eyes. But dark circles and puffy lids need not be the result of a busy holiday season. Instead, pamper and soothe your eyes with some old-fashioned remedies.
First, banish puffy eyes with a classic tea-bag remedy that uses the tannins in tea for their anti-inflammatory effect. Steep two black or orange pekoe tea bags in boiled water and let them cool to the touch. Lie down, apply one bag over each eye, and leave in place for at least 15 minutes. You may even take a short nap, which will benefit your whole body.
Other Tips
Drink plenty of water to hydrate the eyes and the whole body.
Use cooling, naturally astringent cucumber slices, raw potato slices, or witch hazel-soaked cotton pads to soothe tired eyes. Or use a chamomile tea bag compress. After infusing the bag for five minutes, cool and place over the eyes.
Wear less make-up (you will look more awake), and avoid reddish eye shadow shades.
Eye Rest Pillow
This pretty silk pillow eases eye strain with soothing darkness and the refreshing scent of lavender. Flaxseeds give the pillow a long shelf life and provide a soft, fluid feel. If you cannot find flaxseeds at your health food store, substitute short grain rice instead. Use old or thrift store scarves as an inexpensive source of silk.
Materials:
2 pieces of 100 percent silk material, 5 x 9 inches each
1 cup flaxseeds
1 Tbsp. dried lavender flowers
Sew the two pieces of silk together (inside out) with a 5/8-inch seam. Leave a 1-inch opening on one side. Then turn the pillow right-side out. Mix together the flaxseeds and lavender flowers and fill the pillow using a small funnel. Stitch the opening closed by hand. Then lie down, place the pillow over your eyes for at least 10 minutes, and relax.
Treat Your Skin With Love & Respect
A well-tended, well-loved face is the best canvas for the soul's expression.
By Laurel Kallenbach
When it comes to personal beauty, taking care of your skin—your largest organ and first point of contact with the world—is perhaps the most important daily ritual you perform. This means more than finding the right cream to apply to your face—although that's part of it too. It's a holistic process involving eating right, exercising, and living healthfully. When all these things converge, good health illuminates your face. In treating your skin with love and respect, you reacquaint yourself with your natural being and allow your inner beauty to shine through.
The Science of Skin
Supple, glowing, unblemished skin is something we all want because it's the face we present to others. Your face reveals your emotions. Stress and worry can be etched on it, or if you're in love, color will blush your cheeks. So it's no surprise that your health status can easily be read upon your visage. Illness, poor nutrition, even a sedentary lifestyle will sooner or later show up as dull, lifeless skin, acne, or dark circles under the eyes. If you think of your skin as an indicator of your overall health, you'll understand its purpose within the body as a whole.
Functioning as an organ of elimination that removes waste and toxins, the skin is integral to the body's overall well-being. It protects the body's fluids from the moisture-robbing elements, and acts as a thermostat to cool body temperature via perspiration. A discriminating gate-keeper, the skin allows oxygen and other tiny molecules in while barricading against others. The home of nerve endings, it also helps us experience the world through the sense of touch.
The skin consists of three layers: the bottom subcutaneous layer filled with connective tissues and fat; the middle dermis, containing fibers of collagen (for skin strength) and elastin (for elasticity), hair roots and oil glands; and the outer epidermis, which includes the germinating layer where new cells constantly form to replace the dead cells that congregate on the outermost layer. And our skin reflects our gender: Male skin is generally thicker, with larger pores, and it contains far more hair roots and follicles than women's.
A Clean Slate
To facilitate the function of these complex layers of tissue, you need a holistic approach to caring for the whole body. Many skin care experts recommend detoxification as the first step to glowing, unblemished skin. "Your skin is a reflection of your internal health," says Tara Skye Goldin, N.D., a naturopathic physician in Boulder, Colorado. "It's an eliminative organ, not just a covering for the body." If your diet is full of processed foods, your bowel flora are depleted, or your liver is overtaxed, then the primary organs of elimination—the liver, intestines, and kidneys—require help from the skin, she explains. The result can be eczema, pimples, rashes, a pale or waxy complexion, and dull-looking skin. She often places patients with chronic skin trouble on a liver-cleansing, organic foods diet. She also has them "sweat it out." "Body toxins are expelled through the sweat glands," she explains, "so I encourage patients to sweat often—preferably by exercising, but saunas and steam rooms are also great ways to achieve skin cleansing."
Feed Your Face
A clear complexion depends on a healthy diet. "The skin is the first to show signs of health problems caused by diet," says Melissa Diane Smith, a holistic nutritional counselor in Tucson, Arizona, and co-author of All About Vitamin E (Avery, 1999). "The good news is that skin cells are replaced every few days, so if you change how you eat, your skin will show signs of renewal fairly quickly."
Smith emphasizes the importance of eating whole foods, which supply vital nutrients and fiber, both of which influence your skin. Lack of dietary fiber can cause constipation, and if your colon isn't excreting wastes, that toxic buildup may eventually manifest as blemishes. Since the typical American diet is high in processed foods and low in nutrients, it's helpful to include a few skin-saving antioxidants as well.
Another way to ensure a smooth complexion is by eating healthy fats and oils. "Don't be afraid of fats. The right ones are your skin's best friends," says Smith, noting that people on a fat-free diet wind up with dull skin and hair. Fats make up part of the cell membranes, which form a shield to protect cells from losing too much water. You especially need essential fatty acids (EFAs), including omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which can be obtained by eating flaxseed or flaxseed oil, or cold-water fish, or by taking supplements of evening primrose, borage, or black currant oils.
Triple Threat: Stress, Sun & Aging
Adopting a holistically based skin care routine is the first step to take for maintaining healthy skin. Beyond this, you'll need to factor in the three main challenges to skin that can eventually result in a wrinkled or leathery appearance: stress, sun exposure, and the normal aging process. All three are the result of a cellular chain reaction in which unpaired hydrogen ions called free radicals run amuck in the body. These rogue ions damage the skin cell membranes, causing collagen breakdown, which leads to wrinkles. Free radical damage triggered by the sun's ultraviolet rays can also result in premature aging and skin cancer.
Fortunately, antioxidants such as selenium, vitamins C and E, the bio-flavonoid quercitin, and the herbs green tea and ginkgo can prevent or reduce this cellular damage by gobbling up free radicals, Goldin says. You can increase your free radical fighting power by eating foods rich in these nutrients and using antioxidant skin creams and masks applied directly to the area that needs help. Taking antioxidants internally after a mild sunburn can even help your skin bounce back more rapidly, adds Smith.
Another way to preserve your skin is to minimize stress, which also heightens free radical activity. The skin can be an alarm system for what's happening in your body, Goldin says. For instance, people sometimes get eczema because their adrenal glands are weak due to too much stress or excessive coffee drinking. However, if you deal with stress in a positive, constructive way, the endocrine system will function optimally and the skin will stay in peak condition.
Growing older is a fact of life, but prematurely aged skin doesn't have to be. Collagen, the fibrous protein that creates dermal structure, breaks down with age, so skin gets thinner and begins to sag. In addition, mature skin often becomes dry, since oil production slows down, says Goldin. Antioxidants help slow collagen breakdown while EFAs lessen the dryness. Using beauty products that address dryness and cellular rejuvenation becomes more important for people over 40, says Annemarie Lindner, cofounder of Bˆrlind, a natural skin care line based in Calw-Altburg, Germany. She's living testimony: At age 78, after 50 years of using herbal products for her complexion, Lindner's skin looks firm and supple.
"The most important part of a beauty regimen is rejuvenating ingredients that you find in nature," Lindner says. "It's never too early to look into ways to regenerate your skin, because its function begins to slow already during your 30s." She recommends mild, soothing cleansers and adequate moisturizing properties from botanical ingredients such as calendula (marigold), shea butter, chamomile, and jojoba.
Caring Rituals
Simply spending time every day caring for your skin may ultimately do more to encourage your inner beauty to show than any other measure. If your morning beauty routine is a slap-and-dash affair, then make a commitment to slowing down enough to pamper your skin.
Shafalika Saxena, cofounder of Better Botanicals in Washington, D.C., advocates an Ayurvedic approach to skin care. "In Ayurveda, beauty is all about balance," she says. "When your body is out of whack, you'll notice it first in your hair and skin. Ayurvedic skin care never tries to mask skin problems; it works with rhythm and balance from the inside out. It's care—not camouflage."
Much like the practice of Sun Salutation, Ayurvedic skin care involves a series of movements performed mindfully and ritually to prepare you for the day. Saxena suggests a four-part approach: cleansing, steaming, bath therapy, and full-body massage therapy.
"The first step, cleansing, should be a calm, conscious act, done mindfully," Saxena says. "Don't do it with the radio blasting in the morning." Gently pat facial cleanser onto your skin, and with your fingers, make small, slow, circular motions on your face to relax the muscles. Then splash your face with warm water 24 times to get all the residue off and pat dry.
Practice the next step, steam therapy, once or twice a week to open the pores and detoxify the skin. Prepare a basin of hot water to which you add herbs suited to your skin type. Make a tent over your head with a towel and hold your face over the steam. If your skin has broken capillaries or rosacea, however, don't use steam; it may aggravate the condition, Saxena says. Instead, substitute facial massage for the steaming.
The third step, bath therapy, "helps us reconnect with the key element within us," says Saxena, who prescribes it daily. Don't use bubble bath since the detergent that causes foam can dry your skin. "Throw in milk, essential oils, Dead Sea salts, or even fistfuls of herbs you collect from the garden," Saxena says. Then light a candle and take the time to allow your muscles and joints to relax.
Reduced tension and better sleep are just two rewards of the final step: regular massage therapy. Massage also increases the flow of cerebral/spinal fluid, thereby strengthening the nervous and immune systems, says Saxena. Treating yourself to a weekly body massage may sound like a luxury, but in Ayurveda it's considered a necessity for boosting circulation and accomplishing total relaxation and good health. You need not always visit a massage therapist, but can give yourself this therapy or exchange massages with a partner. Gentle but firm massage strokes should always move toward the heart to help blood return to the pumping organ more easily.
In all you do to care for your skin, remember that lovingkindness and a sense of your own beauty are most important. If you cultivate inner beauty and true health, your face—your whole being, in fact—will express that sense of joy. That's the secret to true beauty.
By Laurel Kallenbach
When it comes to personal beauty, taking care of your skin—your largest organ and first point of contact with the world—is perhaps the most important daily ritual you perform. This means more than finding the right cream to apply to your face—although that's part of it too. It's a holistic process involving eating right, exercising, and living healthfully. When all these things converge, good health illuminates your face. In treating your skin with love and respect, you reacquaint yourself with your natural being and allow your inner beauty to shine through.
The Science of Skin
Supple, glowing, unblemished skin is something we all want because it's the face we present to others. Your face reveals your emotions. Stress and worry can be etched on it, or if you're in love, color will blush your cheeks. So it's no surprise that your health status can easily be read upon your visage. Illness, poor nutrition, even a sedentary lifestyle will sooner or later show up as dull, lifeless skin, acne, or dark circles under the eyes. If you think of your skin as an indicator of your overall health, you'll understand its purpose within the body as a whole.
Functioning as an organ of elimination that removes waste and toxins, the skin is integral to the body's overall well-being. It protects the body's fluids from the moisture-robbing elements, and acts as a thermostat to cool body temperature via perspiration. A discriminating gate-keeper, the skin allows oxygen and other tiny molecules in while barricading against others. The home of nerve endings, it also helps us experience the world through the sense of touch.
The skin consists of three layers: the bottom subcutaneous layer filled with connective tissues and fat; the middle dermis, containing fibers of collagen (for skin strength) and elastin (for elasticity), hair roots and oil glands; and the outer epidermis, which includes the germinating layer where new cells constantly form to replace the dead cells that congregate on the outermost layer. And our skin reflects our gender: Male skin is generally thicker, with larger pores, and it contains far more hair roots and follicles than women's.
A Clean Slate
To facilitate the function of these complex layers of tissue, you need a holistic approach to caring for the whole body. Many skin care experts recommend detoxification as the first step to glowing, unblemished skin. "Your skin is a reflection of your internal health," says Tara Skye Goldin, N.D., a naturopathic physician in Boulder, Colorado. "It's an eliminative organ, not just a covering for the body." If your diet is full of processed foods, your bowel flora are depleted, or your liver is overtaxed, then the primary organs of elimination—the liver, intestines, and kidneys—require help from the skin, she explains. The result can be eczema, pimples, rashes, a pale or waxy complexion, and dull-looking skin. She often places patients with chronic skin trouble on a liver-cleansing, organic foods diet. She also has them "sweat it out." "Body toxins are expelled through the sweat glands," she explains, "so I encourage patients to sweat often—preferably by exercising, but saunas and steam rooms are also great ways to achieve skin cleansing."
Feed Your Face
A clear complexion depends on a healthy diet. "The skin is the first to show signs of health problems caused by diet," says Melissa Diane Smith, a holistic nutritional counselor in Tucson, Arizona, and co-author of All About Vitamin E (Avery, 1999). "The good news is that skin cells are replaced every few days, so if you change how you eat, your skin will show signs of renewal fairly quickly."
Smith emphasizes the importance of eating whole foods, which supply vital nutrients and fiber, both of which influence your skin. Lack of dietary fiber can cause constipation, and if your colon isn't excreting wastes, that toxic buildup may eventually manifest as blemishes. Since the typical American diet is high in processed foods and low in nutrients, it's helpful to include a few skin-saving antioxidants as well.
Another way to ensure a smooth complexion is by eating healthy fats and oils. "Don't be afraid of fats. The right ones are your skin's best friends," says Smith, noting that people on a fat-free diet wind up with dull skin and hair. Fats make up part of the cell membranes, which form a shield to protect cells from losing too much water. You especially need essential fatty acids (EFAs), including omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which can be obtained by eating flaxseed or flaxseed oil, or cold-water fish, or by taking supplements of evening primrose, borage, or black currant oils.
Triple Threat: Stress, Sun & Aging
Adopting a holistically based skin care routine is the first step to take for maintaining healthy skin. Beyond this, you'll need to factor in the three main challenges to skin that can eventually result in a wrinkled or leathery appearance: stress, sun exposure, and the normal aging process. All three are the result of a cellular chain reaction in which unpaired hydrogen ions called free radicals run amuck in the body. These rogue ions damage the skin cell membranes, causing collagen breakdown, which leads to wrinkles. Free radical damage triggered by the sun's ultraviolet rays can also result in premature aging and skin cancer.
Fortunately, antioxidants such as selenium, vitamins C and E, the bio-flavonoid quercitin, and the herbs green tea and ginkgo can prevent or reduce this cellular damage by gobbling up free radicals, Goldin says. You can increase your free radical fighting power by eating foods rich in these nutrients and using antioxidant skin creams and masks applied directly to the area that needs help. Taking antioxidants internally after a mild sunburn can even help your skin bounce back more rapidly, adds Smith.
Another way to preserve your skin is to minimize stress, which also heightens free radical activity. The skin can be an alarm system for what's happening in your body, Goldin says. For instance, people sometimes get eczema because their adrenal glands are weak due to too much stress or excessive coffee drinking. However, if you deal with stress in a positive, constructive way, the endocrine system will function optimally and the skin will stay in peak condition.
Growing older is a fact of life, but prematurely aged skin doesn't have to be. Collagen, the fibrous protein that creates dermal structure, breaks down with age, so skin gets thinner and begins to sag. In addition, mature skin often becomes dry, since oil production slows down, says Goldin. Antioxidants help slow collagen breakdown while EFAs lessen the dryness. Using beauty products that address dryness and cellular rejuvenation becomes more important for people over 40, says Annemarie Lindner, cofounder of Bˆrlind, a natural skin care line based in Calw-Altburg, Germany. She's living testimony: At age 78, after 50 years of using herbal products for her complexion, Lindner's skin looks firm and supple.
"The most important part of a beauty regimen is rejuvenating ingredients that you find in nature," Lindner says. "It's never too early to look into ways to regenerate your skin, because its function begins to slow already during your 30s." She recommends mild, soothing cleansers and adequate moisturizing properties from botanical ingredients such as calendula (marigold), shea butter, chamomile, and jojoba.
Caring Rituals
Simply spending time every day caring for your skin may ultimately do more to encourage your inner beauty to show than any other measure. If your morning beauty routine is a slap-and-dash affair, then make a commitment to slowing down enough to pamper your skin.
Shafalika Saxena, cofounder of Better Botanicals in Washington, D.C., advocates an Ayurvedic approach to skin care. "In Ayurveda, beauty is all about balance," she says. "When your body is out of whack, you'll notice it first in your hair and skin. Ayurvedic skin care never tries to mask skin problems; it works with rhythm and balance from the inside out. It's care—not camouflage."
Much like the practice of Sun Salutation, Ayurvedic skin care involves a series of movements performed mindfully and ritually to prepare you for the day. Saxena suggests a four-part approach: cleansing, steaming, bath therapy, and full-body massage therapy.
"The first step, cleansing, should be a calm, conscious act, done mindfully," Saxena says. "Don't do it with the radio blasting in the morning." Gently pat facial cleanser onto your skin, and with your fingers, make small, slow, circular motions on your face to relax the muscles. Then splash your face with warm water 24 times to get all the residue off and pat dry.
Practice the next step, steam therapy, once or twice a week to open the pores and detoxify the skin. Prepare a basin of hot water to which you add herbs suited to your skin type. Make a tent over your head with a towel and hold your face over the steam. If your skin has broken capillaries or rosacea, however, don't use steam; it may aggravate the condition, Saxena says. Instead, substitute facial massage for the steaming.
The third step, bath therapy, "helps us reconnect with the key element within us," says Saxena, who prescribes it daily. Don't use bubble bath since the detergent that causes foam can dry your skin. "Throw in milk, essential oils, Dead Sea salts, or even fistfuls of herbs you collect from the garden," Saxena says. Then light a candle and take the time to allow your muscles and joints to relax.
Reduced tension and better sleep are just two rewards of the final step: regular massage therapy. Massage also increases the flow of cerebral/spinal fluid, thereby strengthening the nervous and immune systems, says Saxena. Treating yourself to a weekly body massage may sound like a luxury, but in Ayurveda it's considered a necessity for boosting circulation and accomplishing total relaxation and good health. You need not always visit a massage therapist, but can give yourself this therapy or exchange massages with a partner. Gentle but firm massage strokes should always move toward the heart to help blood return to the pumping organ more easily.
In all you do to care for your skin, remember that lovingkindness and a sense of your own beauty are most important. If you cultivate inner beauty and true health, your face—your whole being, in fact—will express that sense of joy. That's the secret to true beauty.
Wrist Pain in Yoga Poses
We ask our wrists for strength and fexibility in yoga. Here are some pointers for keeping these complex joints safe and for rehabbing them if they've been strained.
By Julie Gudmestad
Almost every yoga class includes one or two people who complain of wrist problems. Perhaps their difficulties began with long hours at a computer keyboard, or with a hard fall on an outstretched hand, or even with doing asanas. Whatever the cause, the problem may be exacerbated by bearing weight on the hands in yoga.
Yet such weight bearing is a very important part of asana practice. If you've ever had a wrist problem, you know how much it can interfere with your yoga. Wrist injuries can be especially demoralizing if you prefer a vinyasa-based style, in which you place weight on the hands over and over again as you flow through the classic Sun Salutation series—which includes Plank Pose, Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose), Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog Pose), and Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose). If your wrists are strained, such asanas can cause you pain and further injury. Fortunately, a careful and gradual approach to increasing wrist flexibility and strength can help most students avoid problems—or rehabilitate the wrist if necessary.
A Vulnerable Marvel
Weight bearing on the arms seems to bring out the wrist's vulnerability. After all, the wrist is a relatively small joint, and a lot of rather delicate tissues are packed into this small area. These tissues include ligaments that knit the wrist bones together, as well as tendons that connect the forearm muscles to the fingers and help give the fingers their remarkable dexterity. Strain or irritation in these tendons can be a major factor in wrist pain.
To understand what causes this kind of pain, it's useful to consider the structure and function of a normal wrist. The wrist helps with control of the fine motor activities of the fingers and thumb by positioning and stabilizing the hand, which allows us to accomplish uniquely human endeavors like writing, drawing, and sewing. Most of the wrist's movement occurs at the juncture of the radius (one of the two forearm bones) and several of the carpal bones, which sit deep in the heel of the hand. Some movement also occurs at the junctures between the individual carpal bones.
The movements of the wrist include abduction (bending the thumb side of the hand toward the thumb side of the forearm), adduction (bending the little-finger side of the hand toward the little-finger side of the forearm), flexion, and extension. In yoga, by far the most important of these—and probably the one most likely to bring you grief—is extension. To feel this wrist movement, sit in a chair with armrests and position one of your forearms on an armrest, palm facing the floor. Cock your hand up, pointing your fingers toward the ceiling. Your wrist is now in extension. If you let your hand drape over the end of the armrest and your fingers point toward the floor, your wrist will be in flexion.
Most likely, you spend a lot of time every day with your wrist in mild extension. The hand has its most powerful grip in this alignment, and this position is the one we use most often in daily activities. So your wrist probably spends very little time in full flexion or full extension. Since the wrist, like any joint, will lose any part of its range of motion that isn't used regularly, most people gradually lose the ability to move easily and safely into full wrist extension (a 90-degree angle between the hand and forearm).
But as soon as you take a yoga pose in which you bear most or all of your weight on your hands, you demand extension from your wrists. Several of the postures in Sun Salutation—Plank, Chaturanga Dandasana, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana—require full extension, so performing the series over and over can put a cumulatively heavy load on the wrists. Arm balances like Bakasana (Crane Pose) and Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand) add insult to injury by pressing all of your body weight into your wrists while they are fully extended. Combining extreme range of motion with a heavy load and multiple repetitions can easily add up to strain.
Under such conditions, it shouldn't be too surprising if the wrists send up a red flag: pain. I believe that a substantial part of yoga practitioners' wrist pain is caused by soft-tissue strain that occurs when the ligaments and tendons are forced into extension beyond their customary range.
Wrist Rx
If your wrists have become sore from practicing poses in which you bear weight on your hands, you may need to eliminate these poses for a while to allow the inflamed tissues to heal. It will probably take several weeks for the pain and soreness to subside; then you can begin a program of gently stretching the wrists and gradually reintroducing weight bearing.
Before resuming the poses that require 90 degrees of extension—or before embarking on them, if you're a beginning yoga practitioner—it's a good idea to check the range of extension of your wrists. You can do this by coming to your hands and knees with the heels of your hands directly under your shoulders. Your wrists are now at 90 degrees of extension. Are they completely comfortable in this position? If not, you should work to gently and gradually increase your wrist extension.
An easy way to do this is to put your hands together in Namaste (Prayer Position) in front of your chest. Keeping the heels of your hands together and your fingers pointing up, gently press your hands down toward your waist. Don't let the heels of your hands come apart; if you do, you'll lose the wrist stretch. If you regularly hold this stretch for a minute or two as part of your daily routine, you'll gradually be able to move the wrists into deeper extension.
I also recommend that beginning yoga students and anyone with wrist injuries or problems begin weight bearing on their arms slowly. Rather than suddenly launching into dozens of Sun Salutations, start by spending a little time almost every day on your hands and knees. In this position, there is relatively little weight on the hands, so the wrists can become accustomed to weight bearing.
On hands and knees, you can also vary the degree of extension of your wrists. If placing the heels of your hands directly below your shoulders feels too intense, you can move your hands out a little in front of your shoulders, reducing the amount of extension.
As your wrists stretch out over time, begin to work them back beneath your shoulders. Also, as your wrists gain range of motion and endurance, you can put more weight onto them by modifying the position, lifting your knees up briefly into Plank Pose. Gradually build endurance in Plank, then you can begin carefully exploring Sun Salutations.
Other positions can also introduce the wrists to weight bearing. Adho Mukha Svanasana puts some weight on the wrists but doesn't force them into 90 degrees of extension, so the joints feel more open and are less likely to be painful than in full-extension poses. Downward Dog provides an excellent way to build arm and shoulder strength, thus helping prepare you for Plank, Handstand, and other arm balances.
Props to the Rescue
If you are weak not just in your wrists but also in your arms and shoulders, you may find it helpful to begin with modified versions of Downward Dog and Plank using a chair. Pick an armless chair with a firm seat. Put a folded sticky mat over the seat to lightly pad the heels of your hands. Then place your hands on the seat with the fingers pointing out to the sides instead of forward and wrap the fingers around the sides of the seat. Walk your feet back until your body forms a straight line from heel to hip to shoulder to ear, and you will be in the modified Plank Pose.
To avoid wrist strain, make sure the heels of your hands are under or in front of your shoulders. Take a few breaths, then pull back with your thighbones into Downward Dog. As part of your daily routine, a few repetitions of this sequence will build strength in your wrists, arms, and shoulders, and will gently familiarize your wrists with weight bearing.
Other props can also help with weight bearing on the hands. You can take a lot of pressure off the wrists in Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward-Facing Bow Pose) by elevating the heels of your hands on the wide face of two yoga blocks placed shoulder width apart against a wall; place one edge of each block on a sticky mat on the floor and lean the blocks at an angle against the wall. Using a rolled-up sticky mat or a foam or wood wedge under the heels of the hands similarly reduces the sharp angle of extension of the wrist in Plank Pose and arm balances.
You might also find relief from wrist pain in Plank and arm balances by grasping dumbbells placed on your mat, pointing toward the front edge; they allow the wrists to be in a neutral position. (It's best to use dumbbells with square weights, not round ones, so they can't roll around.) A foam-covered yoga prop called Gripitz, which is shaped like a dumbbell, was recently designed for just this purpose; you can buy it at www.gripitz.com. Be very cautious when you begin to explore arm balances using wedges or dumbbells—the props shift your center of gravity and your alignment, so the poses may seem a little unfamiliar or awkward for a while.
Working with the alignment of your shoulders, arms, and hands can also help take strain off your wrists. In Downward Dog, for example, many students take virtually all of their weight on the heels of their hands. Instead, press down with the knuckles where the fingers join the palms. Stretch the fingers forward and at the same time visualize that you are lifting the forearms up out of the wrists. Try to apply this action whenever you're bearing weight on the hands.
The wrist is a complicated structure and can develop many problems other than the soreness that comes from unaccustomed extension. If you have more serious wrist problems—like carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, or previous fracture or surgery sites that are still stiff and painful—please consult your health care provider before attempting weight-bearing poses.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a fairly common, painful condition caused when the narrow tunnel formed by the carpal bones and adjacent ligaments puts pressure on the median nerve and finger flexor tendons that pass through the tunnel. If you think you may have carpal tunnel syndrome, it's important to get an accurate diagnosis from a health care professional. Conventional medicine usually treats the syndrome with medication, splints, or surgery, but you might also want to seek out the asana sequence created by Iyengar Yoga teacher Marian Garfinkel, director of the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Studio of Philadelphia. In a medical study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (November 11, 1998), Garfinkel documented that the program she developed helped the carpal tunnel sufferers who tried it.
Whatever the status of your wrists—currently painful, in recovery, or blessedly problem-free—remember that yoga is meant to be a beneficial, healing practice. Make sure you aren't straining your wrists through yoga. If you have done so, integrate some of the gentler poses mentioned in this article into your routine and give your wrists a chance to build strength, flexibility, and endurance before you take on more advanced or strenuous weight-bearing poses.
A licensed physical therapist and certified Iyengar Yoga teacher, Julie Gudmestad runs a private physical therapy practice and yoga studio in Portland, Oregon. She regrets that she cannot respond to correspondence or calls requesting personal health advice.
By Julie Gudmestad
Almost every yoga class includes one or two people who complain of wrist problems. Perhaps their difficulties began with long hours at a computer keyboard, or with a hard fall on an outstretched hand, or even with doing asanas. Whatever the cause, the problem may be exacerbated by bearing weight on the hands in yoga.
Yet such weight bearing is a very important part of asana practice. If you've ever had a wrist problem, you know how much it can interfere with your yoga. Wrist injuries can be especially demoralizing if you prefer a vinyasa-based style, in which you place weight on the hands over and over again as you flow through the classic Sun Salutation series—which includes Plank Pose, Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose), Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog Pose), and Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose). If your wrists are strained, such asanas can cause you pain and further injury. Fortunately, a careful and gradual approach to increasing wrist flexibility and strength can help most students avoid problems—or rehabilitate the wrist if necessary.
A Vulnerable Marvel
Weight bearing on the arms seems to bring out the wrist's vulnerability. After all, the wrist is a relatively small joint, and a lot of rather delicate tissues are packed into this small area. These tissues include ligaments that knit the wrist bones together, as well as tendons that connect the forearm muscles to the fingers and help give the fingers their remarkable dexterity. Strain or irritation in these tendons can be a major factor in wrist pain.
To understand what causes this kind of pain, it's useful to consider the structure and function of a normal wrist. The wrist helps with control of the fine motor activities of the fingers and thumb by positioning and stabilizing the hand, which allows us to accomplish uniquely human endeavors like writing, drawing, and sewing. Most of the wrist's movement occurs at the juncture of the radius (one of the two forearm bones) and several of the carpal bones, which sit deep in the heel of the hand. Some movement also occurs at the junctures between the individual carpal bones.
The movements of the wrist include abduction (bending the thumb side of the hand toward the thumb side of the forearm), adduction (bending the little-finger side of the hand toward the little-finger side of the forearm), flexion, and extension. In yoga, by far the most important of these—and probably the one most likely to bring you grief—is extension. To feel this wrist movement, sit in a chair with armrests and position one of your forearms on an armrest, palm facing the floor. Cock your hand up, pointing your fingers toward the ceiling. Your wrist is now in extension. If you let your hand drape over the end of the armrest and your fingers point toward the floor, your wrist will be in flexion.
Most likely, you spend a lot of time every day with your wrist in mild extension. The hand has its most powerful grip in this alignment, and this position is the one we use most often in daily activities. So your wrist probably spends very little time in full flexion or full extension. Since the wrist, like any joint, will lose any part of its range of motion that isn't used regularly, most people gradually lose the ability to move easily and safely into full wrist extension (a 90-degree angle between the hand and forearm).
But as soon as you take a yoga pose in which you bear most or all of your weight on your hands, you demand extension from your wrists. Several of the postures in Sun Salutation—Plank, Chaturanga Dandasana, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana—require full extension, so performing the series over and over can put a cumulatively heavy load on the wrists. Arm balances like Bakasana (Crane Pose) and Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand) add insult to injury by pressing all of your body weight into your wrists while they are fully extended. Combining extreme range of motion with a heavy load and multiple repetitions can easily add up to strain.
Under such conditions, it shouldn't be too surprising if the wrists send up a red flag: pain. I believe that a substantial part of yoga practitioners' wrist pain is caused by soft-tissue strain that occurs when the ligaments and tendons are forced into extension beyond their customary range.
Wrist Rx
If your wrists have become sore from practicing poses in which you bear weight on your hands, you may need to eliminate these poses for a while to allow the inflamed tissues to heal. It will probably take several weeks for the pain and soreness to subside; then you can begin a program of gently stretching the wrists and gradually reintroducing weight bearing.
Before resuming the poses that require 90 degrees of extension—or before embarking on them, if you're a beginning yoga practitioner—it's a good idea to check the range of extension of your wrists. You can do this by coming to your hands and knees with the heels of your hands directly under your shoulders. Your wrists are now at 90 degrees of extension. Are they completely comfortable in this position? If not, you should work to gently and gradually increase your wrist extension.
An easy way to do this is to put your hands together in Namaste (Prayer Position) in front of your chest. Keeping the heels of your hands together and your fingers pointing up, gently press your hands down toward your waist. Don't let the heels of your hands come apart; if you do, you'll lose the wrist stretch. If you regularly hold this stretch for a minute or two as part of your daily routine, you'll gradually be able to move the wrists into deeper extension.
I also recommend that beginning yoga students and anyone with wrist injuries or problems begin weight bearing on their arms slowly. Rather than suddenly launching into dozens of Sun Salutations, start by spending a little time almost every day on your hands and knees. In this position, there is relatively little weight on the hands, so the wrists can become accustomed to weight bearing.
On hands and knees, you can also vary the degree of extension of your wrists. If placing the heels of your hands directly below your shoulders feels too intense, you can move your hands out a little in front of your shoulders, reducing the amount of extension.
As your wrists stretch out over time, begin to work them back beneath your shoulders. Also, as your wrists gain range of motion and endurance, you can put more weight onto them by modifying the position, lifting your knees up briefly into Plank Pose. Gradually build endurance in Plank, then you can begin carefully exploring Sun Salutations.
Other positions can also introduce the wrists to weight bearing. Adho Mukha Svanasana puts some weight on the wrists but doesn't force them into 90 degrees of extension, so the joints feel more open and are less likely to be painful than in full-extension poses. Downward Dog provides an excellent way to build arm and shoulder strength, thus helping prepare you for Plank, Handstand, and other arm balances.
Props to the Rescue
If you are weak not just in your wrists but also in your arms and shoulders, you may find it helpful to begin with modified versions of Downward Dog and Plank using a chair. Pick an armless chair with a firm seat. Put a folded sticky mat over the seat to lightly pad the heels of your hands. Then place your hands on the seat with the fingers pointing out to the sides instead of forward and wrap the fingers around the sides of the seat. Walk your feet back until your body forms a straight line from heel to hip to shoulder to ear, and you will be in the modified Plank Pose.
To avoid wrist strain, make sure the heels of your hands are under or in front of your shoulders. Take a few breaths, then pull back with your thighbones into Downward Dog. As part of your daily routine, a few repetitions of this sequence will build strength in your wrists, arms, and shoulders, and will gently familiarize your wrists with weight bearing.
Other props can also help with weight bearing on the hands. You can take a lot of pressure off the wrists in Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward-Facing Bow Pose) by elevating the heels of your hands on the wide face of two yoga blocks placed shoulder width apart against a wall; place one edge of each block on a sticky mat on the floor and lean the blocks at an angle against the wall. Using a rolled-up sticky mat or a foam or wood wedge under the heels of the hands similarly reduces the sharp angle of extension of the wrist in Plank Pose and arm balances.
You might also find relief from wrist pain in Plank and arm balances by grasping dumbbells placed on your mat, pointing toward the front edge; they allow the wrists to be in a neutral position. (It's best to use dumbbells with square weights, not round ones, so they can't roll around.) A foam-covered yoga prop called Gripitz, which is shaped like a dumbbell, was recently designed for just this purpose; you can buy it at www.gripitz.com. Be very cautious when you begin to explore arm balances using wedges or dumbbells—the props shift your center of gravity and your alignment, so the poses may seem a little unfamiliar or awkward for a while.
Working with the alignment of your shoulders, arms, and hands can also help take strain off your wrists. In Downward Dog, for example, many students take virtually all of their weight on the heels of their hands. Instead, press down with the knuckles where the fingers join the palms. Stretch the fingers forward and at the same time visualize that you are lifting the forearms up out of the wrists. Try to apply this action whenever you're bearing weight on the hands.
The wrist is a complicated structure and can develop many problems other than the soreness that comes from unaccustomed extension. If you have more serious wrist problems—like carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, or previous fracture or surgery sites that are still stiff and painful—please consult your health care provider before attempting weight-bearing poses.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a fairly common, painful condition caused when the narrow tunnel formed by the carpal bones and adjacent ligaments puts pressure on the median nerve and finger flexor tendons that pass through the tunnel. If you think you may have carpal tunnel syndrome, it's important to get an accurate diagnosis from a health care professional. Conventional medicine usually treats the syndrome with medication, splints, or surgery, but you might also want to seek out the asana sequence created by Iyengar Yoga teacher Marian Garfinkel, director of the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Studio of Philadelphia. In a medical study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (November 11, 1998), Garfinkel documented that the program she developed helped the carpal tunnel sufferers who tried it.
Whatever the status of your wrists—currently painful, in recovery, or blessedly problem-free—remember that yoga is meant to be a beneficial, healing practice. Make sure you aren't straining your wrists through yoga. If you have done so, integrate some of the gentler poses mentioned in this article into your routine and give your wrists a chance to build strength, flexibility, and endurance before you take on more advanced or strenuous weight-bearing poses.
A licensed physical therapist and certified Iyengar Yoga teacher, Julie Gudmestad runs a private physical therapy practice and yoga studio in Portland, Oregon. She regrets that she cannot respond to correspondence or calls requesting personal health advice.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
A Twist A Day
Twisting Poses will help restore your spine's natural range of motion, cleanse your organs, and stimulate circulation.
By Julie Gudmestad
Try asking some non yogis what they think happens in a yoga class, and at least one will answer that people get "all twisted up like a pretzel." In fact, we yogis do twist a lot in a well-rounded yoga practice: We twist while sitting, standing, and standing on our heads. Because there is such an intriguing variety of twists, you might guess that twists provide an abundance of benefits. And they do. There are physiological benefits to the circulatory system and internal organs, structural benefits to the musculoskeletal system, and focusing benefits to your consciousness.
Indian yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar describes twists as a "squeeze-and-soak" action: The organs are compressed during a twist, pushing out blood filled with metabolic by-products and toxins. When we release the twist, fresh blood flows in, carrying oxygen and the building blocks for tissue healing. So from the physiological standpoint, twists stimulate circulation and have a cleansing and refreshing effect on the torso organs and associated glands.
While these physiological benefits are undeniably valuable, this column will focus primarily on the functions of and benefits to muscles and joints used in twists. Yoga twists involve the spine, as well as several major joints, including the hips and shoulders. In fact, full range of motion in spinal rotation is essential to many yoga poses. Unfortunately, many people lose full spinal rotation in the course of living a sedentary lifestyle. Some losses can occur if joints fuse due to trauma, surgery, or arthritis, but most range of motion loss comes from the shortening of soft tissues. If you don't lengthen the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia (connective tissues) to their full length at least a few times a week, they will gradually shorten and limit the nearby joint's mobility. In the case of twisting, the limitation is usually in soft tissues around the spine, abdomen, rib cage, and hips. If you regularly practice yoga twists, there are some clear benefits to these same joints and soft tissues. Not only do you maintain the normal length and resilience of the soft tissues, but you also help to maintain the health of the discs and facet joints (the small pair of joints on the back of the spine where each two vertebrae overlap).
A Twist a Day
To maintain or restore the normal spinal rotation, I recommend that you practice a simple spinal twist once or twice a day. (Note: If you have a spinal disc injury, consult your health-care provider before practicing twists of any kind.) A variation of the twist Bharadvajasana (Pose Dedicated to the Sage Bharadvaja) done sitting on a chair is an excellent option because it is so easy to integrate into everyday life.
Even in such a basic twist, however, there are a few anatomical points to keep in mind. Most important is to elongate the spine; a slumped-over posture significantly limits spinal rotation. So begin by sitting sideways on a stable, armless chair, and take a moment to ground your sitting bones and draw your spine straight up toward the crown of your head. Also, make sure that your spine is perpendicular to the chair seat, neither listing to the side nor to the front or back. The second important point to remember is that each section of the spine has a different rotational mobility. The cervical (neck) vertebrae, for example, are the most mobile in twisting. Because the 12 thoracic (midback) vertebrae have ribs attached, they can't twist as freely as the neck vertebrae. And because of the orientation of the lumbar (lower spine) facet joints, the rotation of these five vertebrae is the most limited. So to ensure that you don't overtwist in the more mobile parts of your spine, begin your seated twist by bringing your awareness into your lower back and beginning the twist from there. Let the twist gradually unfold up your spine, as though you were walking up a spiral staircase, so that each vertebra participates in the twist. If instead you twist quickly and without awareness, your neck will likely do most of the twisting, and whole sections of your spine can remain "stuck" and unmoving.
Once you've begun to rotate toward the back of the chair, you can use your hands on the corners of the chairback to deepen the twist in your spine and rib cage. Pull gently with the hand on the near corner and push with the hand on the far corner. Continue to sit tall, and don't work so hard with the pulling hand that you draw that shoulder forward. As the twist unfolds all the way up into your neck, your head will turn, but be sure to keep your eyes and gaze soft. Hold the twist on each side for a minute or so, and use your breathing to help deepen the twist: On one exhalation, draw yourself taller; on the next exhalation, twist a bit more. With regular practice of this and other simple twists, your spine will regain its full potential for twisting.
Criss-Cross Action
Now that you know the basics about restoring your spine's rotational range of motion, let's take a look at muscle activity in twists. Many, many muscle groups are involved in twists, contracting and shortening or stretching and lengthening. There are several groups of back muscles of varying length-the rotatores, semispinalis, and multifidus-that contribute to spinal rotation. Some of the muscles that actively rotate the torso are quite small, like the intercostals, the layers of muscle between each two ribs. And several sets of muscles contribute to your ability to turn your head; the easiest to see is the sternocleidomastoid. The two SCMs sit on the front of your neck, forming a "V" starting at the top of the breastbone and running to the base of the skull just behind each ear. Look in a mirror: If you turn your head to the right, you'll see your left SCM contract, and vice versa.
Probably the most important muscle group in active twisting is the abdominal obliques. The obliques form two layers of muscle on either side of the better-known rectus abdominus, the "six-pack" muscle that runs vertically up the center of the abdomen from the pubic bone to the rib cage. The two internal obliques, left and right, originate primarily from the pelvis and travel diagonally up across the abdomen, while the two external obliques originate primarily from the lower rib cage and travel diagonally down across the abdomen. All of the obliques have strong attachments to the substantial fascia of the lower back and to the abdomen.
Taken together, the four obliques form a diagonal cross that girdles the abdomen, and they have important functions in supporting the lower back, pelvis, and internal organs. The diagonal lines of the muscles also give them strong leverage in rotating the torso. When you turn to the right in Bharadvajasana, for example, the left external oblique will team with the right internal oblique to rotate your torso. At the same time, the opposite pair of obliques will have to lengthen. And so your twisting range of motion can be reduced by the inability of one pair (one external oblique and the other opposite internal oblique) to lengthen, while weakness in the opposite pair could limit your ability to actively draw yourself into the twist.
The obliques have a big part to play in yoga poses, and sometimes that role can be extremely demanding. Twisting arm balances such as Astavakrasana (Eight-Angle Pose), and Parsva Bakasana (Side Crane Pose) require big work from the obliques. If you're not quite ready for the difficulties of arm balances, you can still challenge your obliques in standing poses like Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose), Parsvakonasana (Side Angle Pose), and Parivrtta Trikonasana (Revolved Triangle Pose). Each of these poses requires a strong rotation of the torso against the pull of gravity. For example, when you perform Trikonasana to the right, your muscles actively twist your trunk and neck to the left so that your heart looks straight ahead, not at the floor, and your eyes look up at your left hand. But when you do Parivrtta Trikonasana to the right, your torso and neck twist strongly to the right, requiring strong contractions of the obliques, the spinal rotators, the intercostals, and the left sternocleidomastoid.
In addition to the regular practice of standing poses, you can help keep your obliques strong by practicing the full or modified versions of Jathara Parivartanasana (Revolved Abdomen Pose). For the modified, milder version, lie on your back, with arms stretched out to the sides at shoulder height and knees pulled up toward your chest. Exhaling, smoothly drop both knees to one side, keeping your knees pulled up toward your arm. On your next exhalation, lift your legs back up toward your chest, flattening your back waist into the floor. For the full pose, lie on your back, arms outstretched again, and stretch your legs straight up toward the ceiling. Lower your straight legs toward the floor on one side (for the maximum challenge, don't quite touch the floor). Keep stretching out through the soles of the feet; also, when you lift the legs back up to vertical, be sure to press the lower back flat. Since this can be quite a challenging pose, you may want to consult with your health-care provider before trying this if you have lower back or sacroiliac problems.
Now that you know how to reap the physiological and structural benefits of twists, you might also notice the centering benefits to your consciousness. As the layers of muscle and bone revolve deeply, your attention is drawn into the stable, unmoving center of the pose. And this ability to stay centered as the hubbub of the world swirls around you will pay obvious dividends in the yoga of daily living.
A licensed physical therapist and certified Iyengar Yoga teacher, Julie Gudmestad runs a private physical therapy practice and yoga studio in Portland, Oregon. She regrets that she cannot respond to correspondence or calls requesting personal health advice.
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