our-yoga

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by Baxter

The Transmission of Teachings

I’m penning this blog post from 35,000 feet on my way home to Oakland from an amazing four-day convention in Austin, Texas called the SYTAR Convention. I’m writing it now because I am feeling so full of excitement and information and gratitude for the experience that I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to do this! I didn’t want to lose any of the energy I felt from this amazing gathering of yoga teachers from around the world who came together to share the developments in the emerging field of yoga therapy. For those not familiar with this term, it was coined about 25 years ago, when yoga teachers Richard Miller, PhD, and Larry Payne hatched the idea of an organization and journal dedicated to the potential of yoga for both the maintenance of health and the treatment of disease. And slowly over the past 25 years, a community of like-minded yoga teachers, some already working as healing professions and others with the desire to work with those in need, has grown to the point where the International Association of Yoga Therapy, or IAYT, now has over 3000 members, in many countries around the world.
In the yoga tradition, a dedicated community is known as a sanga, and sometimes is also called a kula, per the Sanskrit language of yoga. I wanted to write about this concept as a first installment of things I learned at the conference because it came up on so many levels over the course of the four days in Austin. It began on a personal level in the form of the first person I ran into 10 minutes after my arrival: our own guest writer Shelly Prosko (see Urinary Incontinence and Organ Prolapse and Yoga among others), whom I had never met in person, only via email. What a delight to be welcomed by her amazing smile and kindness! My personal community grew quickly, as I connected with four new colleagues from Omaha and reconnected with old friends I had not seen in some time, like IAYT “Yoga Today” editor Kelly Birch. And at least a dozen people came up to me to thank Nina and me for this blog, which many had been following for years and were finding useful for their teaching and their students—thank you all for this feedback and encouragement! So Yoga for Healthy Aging is now, I feel, a part of the IAYT global community!
I witnessed many smaller communities coming together with common purpose and clarity of purpose: new yoga therapy training programs looking for guidance and support from those that have been at it for a while, yoga therapists specifically interested in bringing more yoga to the armed services, and teachers looking for new ways to work with special populations, such as those with depression or Type 2 Diabetes. If you follow us here at YFHA but are not a yoga teacher, I am hoping this information is helpful in expanding your awareness of what “yoga therapy” is and the kinds of skills these teachers who are learning additional yoga healing techniques beyond their basic yoga teacher training have to offer you.
But perhaps the most powerful use of sanga was illuminated again and again in the research and practical experience that those in the field were reporting on the role of “community” in healing.  Regular support group meetings, weekly and then monthly, are a part of the four pillars of healing of all of the heart studies conducted by Dean Ornish’s group over the last 35 years, along with yoga, exercise and diet. It was part of similar studies on prostate and breast cancer. Michael Lerner, the director of Commonweal, which hosts six week-long residential programs each year for those living with cancer, spoke movingly about the role of the group in the transformations that he as witnessed over the past 20 years at their center near Bolinas, in Northern California. Their program includes yoga, massage, healing arts, group work, and healthy food, all in a beautiful setting. He mentioned the long-lasting transformations he sees arise from one week together, and attributed some of that power to the work that take place in the ideal group size they have come to discover: only eight people! He mentioned two kinds of group dynamics that had strong effects: 

• Generous listening and compassionate attention without interruption that occurred in group sessions for the deep work
• More superficial levels of interaction that occurred in the provided space for conversation 

Another powerful presentation as made by the keynote speaker on the first day of sessions by Lorenzo Cohen, MD, an oncologist from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (whose grandmother just happened to by Vanda Scaravelli!), who presented several studies demonstrating the effects of yoga on cancer outcomes. One clear statement he made regarding the effect of community on cancer outcomes was the social influences on cancer survival: if folks are connected with a social group, they have better survival outcomes. He cited a specific study on ovarian cancer, which showed less norepinephrine, a stress hormone that encourages tumor growth, at cancer sites in those with group support. 

Community, community, community. And even San Francisco yoga therapist Chase Bossart, in his talk on yoga for Type 2 Diabetes, suggested the motivational potential of regular attendance of group classes (sounds like community to me!) in supporting the shift from inactivity to improved physical activity in those with Type 2 Diabetes. It made me reflect on how challenging it was for me in my family practice to find ways to motivate my patients with Type 2 Diabetes to change their habit of inactivity. These days, I know that the sense of community that my students experience in their regular attendance of classes is a powerful motivator, and many positive physical and mental benefits result from that regular practice.

So, I begin my reports from the 2014 SYTAR meeting with this post on the power of sanga with you all, one of my most important communities. I hope to share a few more posts on other exciting aspects on yoga’s healing potential that I learned about in Austin soon. In the meantime, get to that community class you enjoy so much or start looking for one that fosters a sense of community, initiate a gathering of friends and family to share and listen to one another’s stories, or accept an invitation to a gathering you were wavering on. Experience the power of your kula directly, and regularly—it’s good for your health!

by Timothy

Greetings from India! I've come to Kerala once again to study with my Ayurvedic doctor and to get some treatments. It is so nice to be back in this lush, semi-tropical setting and to see my teacher and many old friends. But just before I left the States, I had the privilege of taking part in a weekend symposium on modern and medical yoga at the Smithsonian, in Washington, DC. The symposium was held in conjunction with their groundbreaking exhibition, Yoga: The Art of Transformation. (The symposium is available for online for on-demand viewing.)

The event started off with a keynote by Dean Ornish, in which he summarized his more than 30 years of scientific research that has found that a yoga-based program, including a yogic vegetarian diet, can reverse heart disease. More recently his work has focused on men with prostate cancer, and is again showing very encouraging results. And due the similarities between breast and prostate cancers, Ornish believes that his comprehensive lifestyle program may benefit woman with breast cancer. That's speculation at this point, but other research is finding beneficial effects of yoga for those with the disease, including allowing them to tolerate chemotherapy and other medical treatments with fewer side effects.

The program included Richard Miller and Larry Payne, long-time yoga therapists and the co-founders of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, which has become the leading organization in the field.  Miller has garnered significant experience in recent years using the guided meditation practice Yoga Nidra with veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Payne founded and directs the graduate program in yoga therapy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Also significantly represented were top yoga researchers, including Sat Bir Khalsa of Harvard Medical School and Lorenzo Cohen of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas. As those of you who read my online newsletter know, Khalsa, Cohen and I, along with the world's most prolific yoga researcher (with more than 100 published articles!), Shirley Telles of the Patanjali Yogapeet in Hardiwar India, have agreed to co-edit the first medical textbook of yoga therapy. (We're just getting started, so it will likely be a year or two until it's published.)

The event was hugely popular, filling the Smithsonian's auditorium and selling out months in advance. More than 100 people attended my Yoga As Medicine workshop on Sunday, and I was struck by how many physicians and other health care professionals were present. One incentive was that, under the auspices of the event's co-sponsor, the George Washington University Medical School, physician attendees were awarded Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits, highly unusual for a yoga conference!

All of this speaks to the growing acceptance of yoga as a therapeutic modality. Indeed, there is now so much yoga research being published that Sat Bir, one of about a dozen full-time yoga researchers in the U.S., says he can't keep up with it all. This doesn't mean that yoga is already being fully integrated with modern medicine, but we are getting there much faster than any of us would have predicted 10 or 15 years ago, so stay tuned….

By the way, if you were unable to see the show at the Smithsonian, which was fabulous, it will be coming to San Francisco's Asian Art Museum from February 21 to May 25, 2014  and then travels to the Cleveland Art Museum from Sunday, June 22 to Sunday, September 7, 2014.

The benefits of yoga have become so popularised these days that even my 5-year old niece can rattle a few of them off. But with that popularisation has also come a process of questioning whether yoga is really good for everyone, a discussion in part started by stories of yoga injuries. Generally we associate these yoga injuries with people who are stiff or inflexible trying to push or pull themselves into a pose; but what about the opposite? What about the people who are so flexible that they can fold in half without even trying?

What is hypermobility?

People whose joints have a more-than-normal range of motion are called hyperflexible or hypermobile - the clinical term is joint hypermobility syndrome (HMS), which may also be an expression of the more serious Ehlers Danlos Sydnrome. Research suggests that up to 3 in 10 adults may be hypermobile to some degree, with women being more likely to be affected than men due to the relaxing effects of female hormones. Many people with hypermobility have a 'harmless' variety: that is, they experience no unusual effects except being more bendy than the rest of us. But for others, HMS can be debilitating, causing chronic pain. In either case, people who are hypermobile are generally more prone to injuries, fractures and dislocated joints, because their joints have more mobility than stability.

Yoga and hypermobilility

Hypermobile people may come to yoga because of an injury, one of those inexplicable "I was just walking/running/surfing/playing tennis and then I felt this pain..." injuries that are common among the super-flexible. Or they naturally gravitate to yoga because of their flexibility. Once in a yoga class, super bendy people are often told they are "amazing" by teachers who don't recognise or understand their hypermobility. Some may even quickly want to become teachers themselves, since after only a few months of practice they find themselves doing "advanced" poses with ease. And in a yoga culture that increasingly idolises the physical performance of postures that require extreme flexibility (just do a pinterest search for yoga if you don't believe me!), it may be hard for people to believe that extreme bendiness is not actually what yoga is all about.

However, underneath that ease in bending a hyper-flexible body is the danger that hypermobile joints are lacking the muscular resistance to properly support the joints in the range of motion that yoga puts us through. This may manifest slowly, through unexplained aches and pains after a seemingly "easy" practice; or it may manifest all of a sudden through an injury: a dislocated joint, a chronic pain, or a repeatedly inflamed muscle or tendon.

And yoga is not a miracle-cure: over time, the sustained practice of yoga without counter-balancing hyperflexibility can lead to a dangerous instability in the joints, that can manifest in chronic joint pain and even symptoms of early arthritis.

How can I tell if I'm hypermobile?

You may be hypermobile to some extent if any of the following sound familiar to you:

• You have always been able to place your hands flat on the floor in a forward bend or flop into the splits
• Your friends and family all remember your "crazy" flexibility as a child
• You feel a constant need to stretch but it never seems to satisfy you
• You are deep in a pose that is supposedly challenging, but you don't "feel" anything
• After hardly any time at all, you put your body into the positions of 'advanced' yoga poses such as the splits, one-legged king pigeon pose, or touching your head to the ground in wide-legged standing forward bend
• You sometimes feel fatigued after simply stretching or doing gentle yoga
• You find it hard to sit comfortably in a chair for a long time and are constantly folding yourself into different positions

In addition, you may be hypermobile in some joints while having a normal or less than normal range of motion in others.

So, should hypermobile people do yoga?

It's easy to understand why many doctors and physiotherapists who work with hypermobile people advise against doing yoga. However, many hypermobile people find that the right yoga practice can help them a great deal by building body awareness and helping them to develop the strength that they will need to balance their natural flexibility. The key thing to remember is that yoga is about balance: in this case, achieving a balance between flexibility and strength.

Guidelines for choosing a yoga class if you are hyper flexible:

• Find an experienced and well-qualified teacher, preferably someone with some yoga therapy experience or someone familiar with hypermobility, and make them aware of what you are working with. Get them to help you create some goals for your practice that don't rely on flexibility alone.
• Avoid styles of yoga that emphasise short, fast movements, such as ashtanga or vinyasa flow, until you have built up a solid foundation of strength that will keep you stable and safe from injury in these movement-oriented styles.
• Instead, choose styles of yoga that emphasise proper alignment, stability and strength, such as Iyengar yoga or Viniyoga.
• Complement your yoga with simple strength and resistance training, and with core strength building exercises like pilates (again, with an experienced teacher who understands hyper mobility) that will help you isolate important muscles and begin to build strength in key areas.

Some advice for practicing yoga if you are hypermobile:

• If you can, see a qualified yoga therapist for a one-on-one session to get a personalised assessment and advice.
• Avoid starting a practice on your own or with a DVD: until you have more experience, you should work with a teacher who can tell you if you are hyper-extending.
• Don't move too quickly in and out of poses. Take your time to get into poses, making sure you are engaging your muscles during the transitions. For example in any forward bend, strongly engage your quadriceps and feel as if you are trying to "suck" the floor up through your leg muscles.
• Once you are in a pose, avoid the temptation to go as deep as you can. Try practicing to the "80%" rule - only going 80% of the way into a pose, and stopping there to work on stability. Focus on engaging the muscles around your key joints: ankles, knees, hips, shoulders to make sure they are all strongly supported.
• Make sure you always put a micro-bend in your knees and elbows to avoid putting too much stress on your joints - combine this with muscular engagement, and you will be properly supporting your joints!
• Keep your head supported by your neck muscles, and avoid the temptation to let your head flop all the way back in upward-looking poses or backbends.
• Consider 'gapping' your joints - for example placing a small rolled up towel in between your belly and your thighs in a standing forward fold, placing your hands behind the backs of your knees in a seated forward fold, keeping your feet on "railroad tracks" for Warrior I and other front-facing poses.
• Avoid hyper-extending backwards in backbends by strongly engaging your abdominal muscles and focusing on the sensation of lengthening your spine instead of letting yourself "flop" backwards.

 Advice for teaching hypermobile students:

Check out this great article for lots of advice, written from the perspective of a hypermobile person who is herself a yoga teacher.


Readers, are you hypermobile or do you think you might be? What have you learned along the way in your yoga practice?

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Today I am most lucky to have not one, but two guest posts up on some of my favourite yoga blogs.

Please check out the blog of the fabulous Nadine Fawell for another detailed, photo-illustrated sequence of therapeutic yoga stretches for low back pain.

And then, head on over to Nobel's ever-philosophical Ashtanga yoga blog, Yoga in the Dragon's Den, for a post on how I maintained a vinyasa practice with a wrist injury.

Enjoy, comment, share, and keep the yoga blogsphere buzzing!

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Last week, I posted a letter to Ashtanga about "seeing other yoga". I didn't really mean it to be a controversial post, but it did spark some discussion.  For some more good reading, Damn Good Yoga posted a perspective on her blog which also generated a lot of comments and discussion.

In any case, upon browsing the Ashtanga blogosphere, there seems to be a perception that people leave Ashtanga because it's too hard, or because they can't handle the discipline and commitment, or they are shying away from ego-destroying transformation. And maybe some people do - but I'm not really in a place to judge anyone else's reasons or motivations.

I find this interesting because for me, the decision to branch out from the Ashtanga path was a decision to leave my comfort zone, both physically and on more subtle levels. You see, as I mentioned in my letter, I was taught that Ashtanga was all the yoga I needed. That it was a complete system that would heal and balance my body and my mind, well, completely. So when I recently realised that this wasn't happening for my body, it made sense to me that I needed to modify my practice. It honestly wasn't a big drama for me - after all, my "loyalty" is to myself and my journey, not to one asana system or another. [Not to mention that as a teacher, I feel like I need to learn as many different approaches as possible, to be able to teach to as many different needs as possible!]

The realisation that Ashtanga wasn't working for me in a "complete" way came during my Level 2 yoga teacher training, and in particular I had 3 major "breakthroughs":

• I realised that my shoulders have become imbalanced - partly this is the way my body is put together, and partly it's postural and work-related (damn computers). Basically, the front of my shoulders are quite strong and the muscles on the backs of my shoulders are comparatively quite weak, and this was causing my shoulders to round forward and causing me a certain amount of back pain. When I say "realised", I mean the kind of realisation that is accompanied by immense physical and emotional release - not the kind of passing thought you can just ignore. Yogis will know the kind I mean. Unfortunately, Ashtanga with its emphasis on forward-and-down vinyasas had made that imbalance worse. According to my Yoga Therapy teacher, this is pretty common among Ashtangis - many of whom suffer from shoulder injuries or pain at the back of the shoulder because those muscles remain comparatively underdeveloped. The good news is, it's fairly easy to work on and with the help of some yoga therapy moves, in a few short months since my TT I have already made huge progress in that area.

• As I've already mentioned, I realised that my psoas and hip flexors were just not getting the love they needed. The psoas is of particular concern to me since it affects lower back pain and imbalance, which I already have my dose of thanks to my scoliosis. This became crystal clear to me when we were working on Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana / King Pigeon pose. I couldn't BELIEVE that after 3 years of Ashtanga I had made absolutely no progress with this pose. Wow. That just didn't seem right to me - but once my teacher observed where my limitations were in the pose - those pesky psoas and hip flexors among them - it made sense - and became clear that my Ashtanga practice was just not addressing those muscles in the way that my body needed.

• Finally, as I mentioned, I have scoliosis. Luckily for me, it's quite mild, but it is progressive - i.e. the muscular imbalance, unless counteracted, gets worse with age. When I first started Ashtanga, I accepted the idea that the primary series was "yoga therapy", and therefore, my practice would be enough to relieve my imbalance. And while it did make the weaker side of my back stronger, over time it also caused the QL muscle on the strong side of my back (that's the thick muscle that runs either side of your lower spine) to become a rock-hard, ropey knot, which is exactly the kind of imbalance I need to avoid if I want to manage my scoliosis as I get older. Cue more massive release, and the realisation of just how badly I NEEDED to do some kind of practice that would allow me to dig deeper and really work on that area.

Now, I honestly think it would have been easier to just stay in my comfort zone and keep practicing Ashtanga, maybe throwing in a quick yoga therapy sequence in the afternoons to work on some of those target areas. Easier to remain attached to progressing along the Ashtanga path, and keep working towards second series. Easier on my ego, because I wouldn't have to face Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana or go deep, deep into that damn psoas and feel like I'm losing my mind.  But that would not have been in line with Satya, truthfulness, Aparigraha, non-grasping, or Ahimsa, non-harming. And so I'm taking the other path, moving out of my comfort zone, and into practices that challenge the imbalances in my body - and take me to the edge both mentally and physically.

Is it easier? Heck no. Am I less committed to my yoga? If anything, I'm more comitted. Is my practice suddenly less disciplined, more comfortable, or less confrontational? Actually, the opposite!  Of course I do write this with the caveat that I've been practicing yoga (self-practice) for nearly 10 years, have worked on these issues with an experienced Yoga Therapist, and have 500 hours of formal yoga teacher training that have given me the skills, maturity, and self-knowledge to design asana sequences that both nourish and challenge my body, that are well-balanced but also target my imbalances. And when it feels right, I'll keep practicing Ashtanga, too.

Funny, so much fuss about which type of asana we are practicing, when really, it's only 1/8th of the practice! I have found that as time goes on, I become less and less attached to WHAT I am practicing and more focused on HOW. Which is what yoga is all about, I guess. :)

Readers, what have been your "yoga realisations" or your experience with attachment?v

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