Iyengar-Style Sequencing, Part 1

Flowers in Summer by Michele McCartney-Filgate

by Nina

Before I start delving into some of the more subtle aspects of how to sequence yoga poses in the Iyengar tradition, I thought it would be useful to give you an overview of how to sequence the basic categories of poses. Typically most Iyengar sequences are based on the following template:

1. Starting Poses
2. Standing Poses
3. Headstand
4. Backbends
5. Neutral Pose
6. Twists
7. Shoulderstand (and Plow)
8. Forward Bends
9. Restorative Pose
10. Relaxation Pose

Obviously if you were going to do all those kinds of poses within a single practice, your practice would end up rather long! To create a shorter practice, you simply eliminate certain categories of poses from the list while keeping the remaining ones in the same order as they are on the list. The following examples show typical formats for Backbend, Twist, Forward Bend, and Standing Pose practices.

Backbend Practice 
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Backbends
4.    Neutral Pose
5.    Relaxation Pose

Twist Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Twists
4.    Relaxation Pose

Forward Bend Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Forward Bends
4.    Relaxation Pose

Standing Pose Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Standing Poses
3.    Shoulderstand (or another inversion)
4.    Relaxation Pose

Although our classes typically include standing poses, they are by no means required. You could, for example, use the inverted poses to prepare yourself for forward bends as in the following sequence.

Forward Bend Practice with Inversions
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Headstand
3.    Shoulderstand
4.    Forward Bends
5.    Relaxation Pose

Or, you could design a seated practice with twists and forward bends.

Seated Practice
1.    Starting Poses
2.    Twists
3.    Forward Bends
4.    Restorative Pose
5.    Relaxation Pose

The Starting Poses and Standing Poses you select for your sequence typically relate to the focus of the practice. For example, if you are focusing on forward bends, you might do leg stretches as your starting pose and the standing poses with straight legs to prepare your hamstrings for the forward bends. For backbends, you would do shoulder openers, lunges, passive backbends and/or standing poses with backbend elements (such as Warrior 1). For twists you might select poses that lengthen your side body (Half Dog pose), that move the spine in all directions (various standing poses), and that incorporate twisting elements (such as Revolved Triangle).

I’ll do a separate post on how (and why) to choose warm-up poses in the near future. But, in general, sequencing is art rather than a science, so start out by practicing some of that “post asana assessment” that Baxter recommended in yesterday's post (and probably some pre-asana assessment while you are at it). You'll soon start to learn which sequences of poses suit your particular body and which do not, and which warm-up poses help you do your subsequent poses with more ease and comfort.

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Post Asana Assessment

by Baxter

One of the most essential skills for yoga asana practitioners to develop is something I like to call “post asana assessment.” And although I wish it were a skill that beginners came downloaded with, my personal experience and what I have observed with my students over the years has shown me that it is a skill you only learn with encouragement and practice. So what, you may be asking, is this PAA? Quite simply, it is the deliberate pause in your asana practice directly after completing a particular pose, the purpose of which is to assess the effects, positive, negative or neutral, of your practice. This may seem pretty straight forward, yet unless post asana assessment is actively encouraged, it is often overlooked or simply not considered as part of practice. 

Especially for the new student or even the student whose asana practice is of the faster flow variety, the time and space for such reflection is often not given in formal classes. And when newbies take their practice home for the first time, there is the tendency of the mind to be overwhelmed with planning ahead for what the next pose should be that the actual experience of the present moment is not fully appreciated. It is often the case that the mind is trying to recall a few ways of working in the pose heard via their memory of their last class experience, while simultaneously planning for what is coming next!  So the chance to learn more deeply what the effect of the asana has been is lost.

Rock and Reflection by Joan Webster

Today, while reading through one of the many training texts I have collected over the years, I came across one by Esther Myers, a long time student of Vanda Scaravelli.  (If you don’t know about Vanda, I would encourage you to read up on her fascinating story.) As I was already ruminating about post asana assessment as I read through the text, one comment by Esther caught my eye, as she talked about the role of breath in yoga:

“Breathing is essential to your Yoga practice.  The focus of attention on the breath brings you to a state of quiet attention which is the essence of Yoga.”

This is so simply and beautifully stated. One way to enter into this process of post asana assessment is to initially notice the effect of the pose you have just completed on your breath: calming, speeding up, agitating, slowing down, etc. From there, consider resulting physical sensations in the most objective terms possible, such as, where do I feel sensation now, is there a sense of effort still lingering, am I experiencing fatigue or weakness, vitality or aliveness? And what is the effect on my mood or emotions? 

What might initially seem cumbersome and challenging to do after your poses can become quite efficient and fruitful with practice. It can literally guide and help you create wonderful practices that are in alignment with any intention you may have set for your practice on a given day. The feedback may send you in new and unimagined directions as you notice an openness, strength or vulnerability that could easily be missed if you were to work in a more automatic way.

If it seems to daunting to do after each pose of a practice, consider spacing out your post asana assessments after every few poses until it becomes easier to integrate the assessments into your existing practice style. I feel this skill advances you from the beginner to intermediate level of awareness that leads to a rewarding, relevant and safe practice over time. 

For more by Esther, see The Ground, The Breath, and the Spine by Esther Myers, Lynn Wylie.

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Shari Ser Joins Yoga for Healthy Aging

We're pleased to announce that Shari Ser, a physical therapist and Iyengar-style yoga teacher, has joined the staff here at Yoga for Healthy Aging. She'll be posting regularly, and will be available to answer questions on a weekly basis. To begin, we've asked her to tell us all a little about her background in physical therapy and yoga. —Nina

Before I trained to be a physical therapist, I had a degree from SUNY Buffalo in Women's Studies/Labor History/American Studies—really useful, no? But it was circa 1978, and I was very involved in the food coop scene, eating healthy, growing your own food, collective households, communes—the personal was the political. I traveled for two years in Asia and ended up in London at a whole foods bakery. So it was either go into nutritional sciences and get married in England for citizenship or come back to the US and go to Physical Therapy school. I was always interested in taking care of your body, women’s health and alternatives, and thought PT would be a venue where I could be covert. Ironically, how wrong I was, because at the time PT's were some of the most conservative individuals I ever met. PT school was grueling and there are no words to describe how hard it was, but maybe that is where the yoga came in because it was a place I could be and not be judged and just explore with my teacher the boundaries of my physical body.

I started practicing yoga in 1980. I was involved with San Francisco Zen Center at the time and someone suggested I check out this class nearby led by Roger Cole. I did and just continued practicing. I liked it and it made me feel good but it wasn't like “love at first sight.” Roger eventually moved on but he directed me to Judith Lasater's class at the Iyengar institute and she became my main teacher after that. At that point I was in Physical Therapy school at University of California, San Francisco, and it was nice to be studying with a teacher who “spoke my language.”

Through the Forest by Michele McCartney-Filgate

I studied with Judith from 1980-1987 till we moved to the East Bay. I was on bed rest for my first pregnancy on IV tocolytics from week #24-36 and Judith would visit periodically. She gave me Geeta Iyengar’s woman's yoga book (Yoga: A Gem for Women). During that time of bed rest, I would do yoga in my mind and had a whole bed routine that I did on my side—out of bed only to pee. Talk about weakness when you are finally allowed up! I had four days of late pregnancy till I gave birth to my daughter but wasn’t allowed to go back to yoga till I wasn't bleeding. That took another six weeks. Judith was very solicitous and kind to me in class when I came back. Then ego took over and I had to progress to her more advanced 3-5 class, and I just had to be able to do handstand!

So then I was in the level 3-5 class and met Donna Farhi. I was also informally taking some of the advanced studies' classes at the Iyengar Institute. We moved and then I found Donald Moyer through Judith. I assisted Donna and Roger at a class they taught at the Institute with my infant daughter in tow (when she began to crawl it wasn't a possibility any more). I also took a body work training that Donna co-taught. Why did I stick with yoga? It just became my time where I could leave my responsibilities of being a mom and working, and have my own time. Going to class was the only thing I did for myself at that time because trying to find time to practice was almost impossible (working full time with an infant).

One pregnancy down, a move to the East Bay and my realization that unless I committed to yoga more formally no one would “take me seriously,” so I enrolled in the Berkeley Yoga Room's Advanced Studies Program. I didn't quite know how to bridge physical therapy with yoga, though at the time I was working in outpatient orthopedics and was doing a lot of back care rehabilitation and taking a lot of continuing education classes for different manual therapy skills. Yoga was something I did in another life. After another pregnancy and another bed rest, I finished the program in 1999. I began teaching at the Berkeley Yoga Room soon after that.

I continued to work in outpatient orthopedics but yoga was creeping into my clinical practice. I changed into home health to allow me the flexibility of raising two children and working. I slowly began to add “more yoga” into the guise of therapeutic exercise. You have to be careful with some people in how you talk to them because not everyone is open to things they don’t understand. I still don't call what I do yoga in the home care setting—it is still “therapeutic exercise” or “Home Exercise Program”—but there is more attention to breathing, awareness and responsibility in health choices.

What I have learned from being a physical therapist is not from my education per se but learning to listen to my patients as they share their lives with me. In home health I am a guest in their homes and I have to learn to be respectful. My agenda and their agendas may not be the same. I currently have a 94-year old retired astronomy professor who sustained a fall in his home and broke his arm and foot. When I first met him he was very persnickety and didn’t want to do anything I said until I changed the wording and it was “what would you like to do today?” or “would it be alright with you if we did....” Once he was given permission to say no and he knew I would respect it, he began to trust me and work with me to regain his mobility and to work with his fear of falling again. That to me is the most valuable lesson I learned is to respect the word “no.”

I suppose that is where I am now. I think that bad things do happen to people who do all the right things; people die too early when they aren't ready, and it still hurts. What I try to do now is give people tools that they can use or not, but allowing them the information by which to make their choices. I do a lot of education about health and how one is part of the team, and a lot of encouragement for people to learn how to talk to their physicians. As to aging: what can I say? It is happening to all of us and I am just like the next person who doesn’t like the limitations that my body is starting to exhibit. I continue to push the envelop so to speak, but am mindful of injury more now than when I was younger, partly because it takes so much longer to heal as we age and prevention is the best path. It isn’t easy to acknowledge one’s limitations but maybe that is the new definition of aging. —Shari

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Workshops of Interest: Yoga for the Larger Woman

Recently Baxter wrote about his experience teaching larger women at the The Yoga Project in Portland, Oregon (see "Larger Women and Yoga: Getting Creative"). Women in the Bay Area now have the opportunity to take a similar workshop at Namaste in Rockridge, Oakland. These days the media is full of stories how excessive weight can be a contributing factor in all sorts of health concerns from diabetes to heart problems to cancer risks. This afternoon session, which was designed specifically for The Yoga Project’s “Larger Woman” Program, will look at how yoga can help us achieve and sustain a healthier and fuller life. Appropriate for yogis of all levels.

Here are the details:

YOGA FOR YOUR HEALTH
YOGA FOR THE LARGER WOMAN
with Dr. Baxter Bell

Satuday, March 3, 2012
1-4 pm
Namaste Rockridge

Cost: $60

You can register on the Namaste web site here.

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Friday Q&A: Rotator Cuff Pain

Q: I've been trying unsuccessfully to resolve a very long term (perhaps a year) of rotator cuff pain. I've modified my yoga practice, but it still hurts. I've tried acupuncture and massage. Neither worked. I'm doing PT, and I think it's addressing the underlying muscular problem but I want to keep my whole body moving and stretching.

A: Thanks for writing in about your journey toward healing!  If you have not do so, I’d definitely get the shoulder looked at, and consider requesting an MRI to more clearly identify what is really going on in the joint. Having said that, I would also encourage you to seek the assistance of a local yoga teacher with lots of experience working with shoulder issues. In addition, you may have to consider a longer term modification of how you approach your yoga. You can certainly continue to practice many yoga asana to keep other parts of the body strong and flexible, but use your arms in a more neutral way. This might mean not doing certain poses, such as Downward-Facing Dog, if they continue to cause pain and provoke inflammation of your injured area.

You can also look at several articles in Yoga Journal online, particularly ones written by Julie Gudmestad, Roger Cole and Judith Lasater on the topic. Judith also has an interesting section in her book Yoga Body, a yoga anatomy text, on the “Gleno-humeral Rhythm,” which could prove helpful in deepening your understanding of normal movement patterns in the shoulder. And several years back, Loren Fishman, MD, did a small study on rotator cuff tears and modified Headstand, and found some very encouraging results. I am not suggesting you start doing Headstand today, but would recommend you review the study, which you can find in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, and then discuss with your teacher if this approach is good for you. For now, all the best on your healing journey!

—Baxter

A: I urge you to continue with physical therapy but ask that the physical therapist look at you in a more holistic way, for example, considering how you use your neck in poses that may be problematic and whether you hold your breath either in the anticipation of pain or when in pain. I also suggest that less is definitely better, such as going into problem poses half way and only staying in a pose if it can be done without pain. To practice asana in the midst of pain is not asana. Trying to understand the root of the pain is often the hardest because it may be coming because you are trying to protect another body part from pain (like the low back area). Finally taking a break from active asana and maybe doing more restorative poses with breathing might help progress the healing.

—Shari

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Featured Pose: Simple Chair Twist

by Baxter and Nina

The Simple Chair Twist is one of our five essential office yoga poses. It releases back muscles that are stiff or sore from sitting at a desk or from traveling, or from everyday activities that stress the back, such as gardening and painting, and increases the rotational mobility in your spine. Twisting also helps nourish the spine—movement of the spine helps maintain the health of the discs—and also strengthens the bones themselves as your back muscles pull on the bony insertions of the spine. And it also strengthens the oblique muscles of your core (and we could all use a little of that).

Traditional yoga teachers recommend twists for the health of your internal organs, improving circulation to and function of the abdominal organs, although no studies have been conducted to confirm this. And finally, for many of us, twists can release physical and emotional tension, providing relief from stress.

The Simple Chair Twist has the additional bonus of being accessible to almost everyone in any location, whether office chair, airplane seat, or even a car seat (except, as Baxter noted while sitting in Nina’s backyard, a 50s style butterfly chair).

Baxter prescribes Simple Chair Twist for:

• general back tension
• stiffness
• people with balance issues (or who are unable to stand)
• certain low back conditions
• digestive difficulties (constipation or sluggishness)
• strengthening the oblique muscles
• arthritis of the spine
• people who engage in sports or other activities that involve rotation (all you golfers can restore symmetry to your body by twisting on both sides instead of one)

Instructions: Side sideways on the chair, with your feet resting comfortably on the floor (if your chair has arms or is attached to another chair, see below for an alternative). Your thighs should be parallel to the floor, so if you’re tall you may need to sit on top of something and if you’re short you may need to place something, like a book, under your feet.

Keeping your thighs parallel to each other, lift your spine and turn toward the back of the chair, placing your hands on either side of the chair’s back. Inhale and create an inner lift from your sitting bones through the crown of your head. Then exhale and encourage the twist from your upper belly (above the navel) and chest. Continue lifting on your inhalation and twisting slightly deeper on the exhalation for about 1 minute. Then change sides and twist in the opposite direction. When you’ve finished the pose, pause for a moment to assess how the pose affected your body.

If you can’t sit on the side of your chair, you can sit facing forward as shown below.

As you twist to the right, place your right hand on the chair’s back and your bring your left hand across your right leg. To twist on the other side, simply switch your arm positions.

Cautions: With certain low back conditions (such as severe arthritis, bulging disc, spinal stenosis or sciatica) you should approach twisting cautiously and skip it entirely if it aggravates your symptoms. If you have osteoporosis, twist gently and don’t move through your full range of motion (stay within 50 to 70 percent). If you feel pain, please stop and when you get a chance, as your yoga teacher for help.

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Healing from an Injury

by Baxter

It seems that no matter where we develop an injury, it has a profound effect on the way our entire body functions in everyday life. I myself injured my left rotator cuff many years ago while participating regularly in rock climbing. And although I gradually recovered most of my function in that arm, after giving up climbing and taking up yoga, it is still stiff every time I do my first Down Dog!

And just this past weekend, after doing some home improvement projects which had me doing movement patterns that where not routine for me, I woke up Monday morning with right should pain when taking my arm forward and up or out to the side and up.  I immediately modified my usual yoga practice and limited those particular movements, while essentially working around the painful movements in order to allow what ever is aggravated to quiet down. My underlying assumption is that I have strained my right deltoid muscle, the lateral band of fibers. However, if the pain and limitation persists, I will consider a thorough evaluation by an orthopedist.

For any of you who have a yoga injury, I’d recommend following the same advice I gave myself. If you have not already done so, I recommend having your injury looked at by a physician or other qualified health care provider to more clearly identify what is really going on in the muscle or joint.

I would also encourage you to seek the assistance of a local yoga teacher with lots of experience working with your particular issues. In addition, you may have to consider a longer-term modification of how you approach your yoga. You can certainly continue to practice many yoga asana to keep other parts of the body strong and flexible, while using the injured part of in a more neutral way. But this might mean not doing certain poses at all, if they continue to cause pain and provoke inflammation of your injured area. I know that this can be very challenging for many of us, but you may not heal without such a modified approach and a re-framing of your goals with your yoga practice. I have given up running, soccer, and climbing due to the negative effects these sports were having on my body and my desire to avoid uncertain surgeries. At first, I was disappointed and a bit saddened at the prospect of not doing these things that I had previously enjoyed. However, I came to find equal satisfaction with the new activities I explored, including biking, hiking and yoga. And boy, is my shoulder happy about my decisions!

Lonely Rock by Brad Gibson

Finally, I feel compelled to remind our readers that our yoga practice is not static, nor is it designed to keep us in the exact state of physical condition we had at age 25 as we age. It can help us age gracefully, maintaining some strength, balance and openness on the physical plane. But the yoga practice has at its core this paradox of acceptance and change. When I was training in India, they used to chuckle at our American obsession with youth. There, the individual’s yoga practice would gradually change over time, becoming less about physical asana practice and more about breath and meditation, not because you cannot do physical poses, but because you are more capable of diving into the subtle practices as you mature and age, which are felt to be much richer and rewarding than mere asana. I am sure we will discuss this particular aspect of yoga again in the future. For now, all the best on your healing journeys!

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Honoring the Process

by Sandy Blaine

After the Rain by Joan Webster

Typically physical exercise is a goal-oriented pursuit; whether the goal is to beat your opponent at tennis, better your time in running, or improve your heart health and increase your muscular strength, you are after results. With yoga, the process, rather than the results, is the point. You will likely improve your strength and flexibility and might even achieve advanced postures along the way, but it is the quality of the experience, and not the outcome, that makes it a yoga practice.

In fact, according to Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford professor and leading stress physiologist, stress reduction activities such as exercise and meditation only work if you enjoy them. So there is little point in forcing yourself through something you don’t enjoy just because it’s good for you; that actually causes more stress and defeats the purpose.

When James Fixx, author of The Complete Book of Running and a leading proponent of the fitness craze in the 1970s died suddenly of a heart attack at age 52, there were a lot of dark jokes, and a lot of second guessing went on. But I wonder, would he really have preferred to have spent his life sitting in a Barcalounger eating chips had he known his fate?

Perhaps that’s the ultimate test: would you regret the time spent if it doesn’t get you the results you’re hoping for? It’s a package deal, the process and the results. That’s another aspect of the yoking together implied by the term yoga. Western culture tends to be highly goal oriented, and it can be hard to wrap our minds around the concept of process. Practicing yoga can yield wonderful rewards, but like everything in life, those rewards are transitory. As blissful as you might feel following your yoga session, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be around to enjoy it again tomorrow. Surrendering the fruits of your labors and being in the moment are tenets of yoga philosophy. And each Savasana is meant to provide a little preparation for ultimately giving up the body altogether.

We can’t know the answer for James Fixx, but when I ask myself that question, I know I wouldn’t regret a moment of my yoga practice. I might increase my ice cream intake if I was given a fatal diagnosis, but I’m positive I’d continue to practice. I might actually devote more time to my practice, in preparation for letting go of life. In the end, it’s not about achieving anything, not doing more advanced positions, nor accumulating more years. Ultimately I’ll die, and I know whenever that is, there will be plenty of feats in Light On Yoga, the bible of asanas, that I never came close to accomplishing. But when I’m practicing, I have moments of being completely present, and aware of being connected to something larger than myself. That’s how I want to live, for as long as I’m alive.

Sandy Blaine has been practicing yoga since 1986, and teaching since 1993. She has a joyful devotion to her daily yoga practice, and seeks to bring these qualities to her classes, which combine her experience and training in the Iyengar, Ashtanga Vinyasa, and Kripalu methods. Her writing has been published in “Yoga Journal,” “Yoga International” and “Ascent” magazines, and she is the author of two books: Yoga for Healthy Knees and Yoga for Computer Users. Sandy is the director of the Alameda Yoga Station and the longtime resident yoga instructor for Pixar Animation Studios, and as a wellness consultant, she has spoken at Kaiser and Google. Previously, she taught yoga at UC Berkeley for many years, and she is a faculty member of the Berkeley Yoga Room's Advanced Studies Program, from which she graduated in 1995. Find more information about Sandy’s work on her website www.sandyblaine.com. Sandy is at work on a new book about establishing a personal yoga practice, and she blogs about her own practice at www.theyogaguidetohappiness.com.

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Kalendar Aktiviti Bina Badan 2012

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Stressed Mind, Stressed Cells?

by Brad

Ferns by Joan Webster

Last Friday I attended a talk by Dr. Elissa Epel called “Telomeres, telomerase and mental states: Stressed mind, stressed cells?” According to the abstract Dr. Epel supplied in advance of her seminar:

"I will discuss our UCSF research on the telomere/telomerase maintenance system and relationships to stress and other psychological states and lifestyle factors. The length of our telomeres is a predictor of health status – early disease and mortality, and may serve as an index of biological aging. We now know from 8 years of research that shorter telomere length is related to states of suffering—anxiety, depression, trauma exposure, and chronic stress. Just how much can people stabilize their telomere length through interventions such as exercise and meditation? I will discuss initial findings, suggesting that this marker appears somewhat malleable."

Dr. Epel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF.  She is also a co-founder of Telome Health, Inc., a relatively new company located in the Bay Area to promote the use of telomere testing as a measure of biological age and overall health status. The basic idea that Dr. Epel was promoting is that chronic stress has a negative impact on telomere length, and that stress reduction through diet, exercise, and possibly other lifestyle changes can have preserve telomere length.

You may remember I posted a piece on this subject a couple months ago that discussed telomeres, yoga and aging ("Science, Aging and Yoga"). As a recap, telomeres are sequence of nucleotides or base pairs at the ends of your DNA that serve cap off and protect DNA integrity. One of the theories of aging asserts that decreased telomere length resulting from the failure of certain cell type in the body (immune cells, stem cells, etc.) to properly renew their telomere length after rounds of cell division via the action of telomerases (enzymes that add back lost telomere DNA) can lead to cellular senescence (a terminal, not dividing state) that could play a role in aging, acting as a sort of molecular clock. The question as to whether a reduction or low telomere length is responsible human aging or diseases is still hotly debate (see NY Times article here), despite many studies showing a correlation of shortened telomeres with cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and other chronic diseases of aging.

Personally, I found much of the data presented by Dr. Epel not especially convincing, as it was mostly correlative, and did not provide much if any mechanistic insight. However, I was intrigued by her attempt to link the physical and mental state of “stress” that we experience daily (you know, “I’m so stressed out”) to cellular stress and damage (alteration in the physiological state of cells or tissues that can lead to damage at the molecular and cellular level). Although we are all familiar with the former use of the term “stress,” this second usage of the term “stress” is quite different, and its effects can remain hidden until it manifests into a pathological or disease state.

It is well known that emotional stress can lead to an increase in cortisol and insulin levels, as well as increases in catecholamines and inflammatory cytokines. What is less clear is how these signals are integrated at the cellular and tissue level, especially under chronic stress, some of which are not at all obvious. Most studies measuring telomere length are on carried out on immune cells present in blood, as these cells are relatively easy to collect and originate from actively dividing cells. 

The notion that chronic stress could alter telomerase activity in these proliferating immune cell types, resulting in the shortening of the telomeres and causing these cells to lose their capacity to divide (“Immunosenescence”) is certainly an interesting hypothesis. Indeed, immunosenescence is increasingly being seen as a new target for drugs and/or biologics therapy by both pharmaceutical and biotech companies. According to data presented by Dr. Epel, one group of people that apparently has a statistically significant decrease in telomere length are long-term primary caregivers, a group that is regarded as suffering from chronic stress. People with long-term depression apparently also have a similar phenotype.

And as I have discussed in an earlier post, meditation and mindfulness practices have been proposed as ways to ward off the presumed negative effects of telomere shortening. (I say presumed, because it’s still not clear to what extent shortened telomeres are by definition a bad thing, or how much shortening of telomeres is required for any negative consequences.) The science on all this is still in the very early days. It may turn out that telomere length will be one more false lead in the ongoing search for biochemical measures of biological aging. And I would be extremely wary of any company advertising to measure your telomere length or that suggests that taking supplements to increase telomere length makes any sense at all. Unfortunately, there are a growing number of companies out there they do indeed make such claims. (To their credit, Telome Health appears to be considerably more circumspect in their claims and services than most.)

I suppose what interested me the most from Dr. Epel’s seminar is that it once again reminded me of the many avenues of medical research that are converging on the notion that chronic stress is a negative factor in human health and possibly a driver in premature or accelerated aging. While the details of how this actually happens is unclear, it is interesting to consider that one of the main, if not primary, benefits of practicing yoga might be to reduce stress.  Who knows, maybe it will turn out that yoga reduces stress at both the psychological and cellular level? Too early to tell, but stay tuned….

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Friday Q&A: Hamstring Injuries

Q: I'd like to know how to manage a nagging pain at the hamstring insertion point. I bend my knees and never stretch to the point of discomfort, and yet it persists.

A: Hamstring insertion injuries are challenging to heal. They can take a long time—I'm talking 6-12 months—due in part to the fact that every time you stretch the hamstrings, even inadvertently, such as when bending down to tie your shoes, you tend to re-injure the area a little bit. This leads to chronic ongoing inflammation at the spot on the sitting bone where the muscles attach. And these attachments points often have poor blood supply, which also slows down healing.

So, in addition to bending your knees in standing forward bends, you need to modify, if not avoid, other forward bend for a while. How long? That depends on the person and the injury, but likely at least a few months. In addition, yoga teacher Roger Cole, PhD, recommends strengthening the hamstring muscles via back-bending poses like Bridge (Setu Banda) and Locust (Salabasana) as a first approach to healing.  Unfortunately, I don't know of any studies that have looked at this, but it is worth a try. You can read more about Roger's approach on Yoga Journal's web site in the archived articles section.

—Baxter

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Sequencing: An Essential Skill for Home Practice

by Baxter

Pathway at Dripping Springs by Brad Gibson

We recently received an inquiry about how to sequence a home practice. Although this is a large topic in many respects, it is an essential skill you can develop that will go a long way to make your home practice more enjoyable and rewarding. 

Sequencing refers to the way you construct or put a practice together. In some ways, it is like a mini journey we take each time we come to our mats to practice yoga asana. Like any journey, you want to consider where you are heading on that given day, what you’d like to accomplish and how much time you have to devote to the practice. Time of day can play into designing a sequence, as we tend to be a bit stiffer in the morning, requiring a bit more warm up if we want to do some more challenging poses in our practice; whereas a practice later in the day might be able to forgo too much warm up, as we tend to be more open from simply being up for many hours. 

I find it helpful to start by simply sitting for a few minutes. I get centered, become aware of how my body is feeling, how my mind and emotions are operating, how my breath is flowing. With that information, a plan for the day’s practice will often begin to emerge.
 On a very simplistic level, I usually design a practice to follow this plan: a period of warming up movements that may or may not be official yoga poses, often done reclining, sitting, or on hands and knees. Then I work my way toward standing poses, often with some vinyasa, such as a round or two of Sun or Moon Salutations. I will often have a goal pose or two that I have decided I would like to include in my practice, and I usually work on those poses at the midpoint or two thirds of the way through my session. Then, a period of cool down, perhaps with one or two restorative poses, follows. I will often do some breath work just before taking a rest in Savasana for at least 5, and hopefully 10 minutes. 

An additional factor to consider is adding counter-poses if you have a particular focus on a group of poses that are similar. For instance, this week I have been doing some backbends in my practice, so I have been adding some gentle forward bends, like Child’s pose, to counteract any untoward effects of the backbends.

Each style or system of yoga has general guidelines on how they view proper sequencing, so in a future post, if you all are interested, we can look at some of the systems and how they specifically approach this skill. Until then, give a try, be willing to experiment, and listen to how your body and mind feel at the end of your practice.

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Yama Drama: Considering the First Branch of Yoga

by Nina

A Hollow Trunk by Brad Gibson

In classical yoga (the yoga of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras), there are eight “branches” or “constituents” of yoga.

Moral injunctions (yama), fixed observances (niyama), posture (asana), regulation of breath (pranayama), internalization of the senses toward their source (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption of the consciousness in the self (samadhi) are the eight constituents of yoga.

The five moral injunctions that make up the first branch, yama, are rules regarding our conduct with the outside world.

Non-violence (ahmisa), truth (satya), abstention from stealing (asteya), chastity (brahmacarya), absence of greed for possessions (aparigrahah) are the five pillars of yama.

If you are someone who is pursuing yoga as a spiritual path, conducting your life according to the yamas is the necessary first step on your path to union with the divine. But what if you are just—as many of us are—using yoga for your health and peace of mind? Reading this quote from Georg Feuerstein helped me understand how the yamas apply to way I conduct my own life.

For as long as we pursue a lifestyle that falls short of these moral virtues, our energies are scattered and we continue to harvest the negative repercussions of our actions. —The Deeper Dimensions of Yoga

For a brief time after college, I was addicted to an afternoon soap opera (“The Young and the Restless” if you must know). Ultimately tiring of all-too-predictable drama, I had an epiphany: if everyone on that show just stopped lying to each other, not much would happen on a given day. Sure people would fall in and out of love, have children, suffer from illness, and lose loved ones, but the bulk of the drama, including the violence, was the result of secrets and the lies that everyone told to cover them up. Now I have met a few drama queens out there who seem to thrive on all that commotion, but for the rest of us a lot of drama is just plain stressful and disruptive.

And the rest of the yamas? You can probably figure it out. Nighttime television is filled with violence of every kind, and you can see over and over how one act of violence leads to another and then another (killing a second person to cover up the first murder usually turns out to be a rather poor strategy), quite the opposite of peace. When there is stealing, this, too, inevitably leads to harm of all kinds, including lies, violence, betrayal, and so on. Not very relaxing, that’s for sure.

Greed for possessions? Even if you don’t commit crimes to obtain the objects of your desire, the lust for material goods can cause you to overspend, even going into debt, which is not only stressful for you but can be ruinous for your family. Or maybe the desire for material possession simply means you work at a stressful, unsatisfying job or are continually dissatisfied with what you do have, both of which are impediments to peace of mind.

I saved chastity for last, because this is a complex one for our culture. To be honest, the original meaning in the Yoga Sutras certainly meant no sex at all for a yogi. But for us ordinary “householders, I like to think about brahmacarya as sexual responsibility. If you are reckless in your sexual conduct, well, we’re back to the soap opera territory: lies and violence, jealousy and pain. (I learned that lesson back in my college days, when I was under the illusion that there was such a thing as “free love.”)

I started this post a few weeks ago after I received a couple of requests for us to tackle the topic of yama, but it was very hard to write. And in the end, well, I chickened out. I mean, who am I to hold forth on topics of this nature? But some recent events (yama drama, you might say) gave me a little shove. I hope it at least gives you some food for thought.

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Featured Pose: Dynamic Arm Circles

by Baxter and Nina

In the coming weeks, we're going to be introducing a set of poses you can do outside the yoga room (such as at work or the airport) or from a chair (if standing is not possible, for whatever reason). We're starting off this new set of poses with dynamic arm circles.

This pose is great for preparing your shoulders for yoga practice, or for any task where you will be using your arms overhead (such as painting a house) or a sport that involves your arms, such as tennis. It’s also perfect for releasing tension after you’ve worked your arms or sat for hours at a desk or on a plane. And moving your arms within the complete range of motion is the best way to keep your shoulder joints healthy.

You can do arm circles standing in Mountain Pose (which is how we will show it) or sitting in a chair. Because you can do them without props and in your street clothes, it’s possible to do arm circles almost anywhere (especially if you don’t mind people giving you odd looks at the airport).

The pose has two variations: 1) front stroke: moving the arms forward, up over head, and back around to the front and 2) back stroke: moving your arms back, up over your head, and down toward the front.

Baxter prescribes arm circles for:

• Gaining flexibility in tight shoulders
• Regaining range of motion after an injury
• Arthritis, lupus, or other diseases that limit range of motion

Instructions. Start in Mountain pose, with your chest facing forward. Then make circles your arms using either in forward stroke or back stroke motions, moving with your breath (for example, moving forward and up on and inhalation, then back and down with an exhalation). Baxter generally recommends about six repetitions.

Don’t try to make perfect circles. If your shoulders are tight, you may have to allow your arms to go slightly out the side. Listen for pops, clicks and discomfort, and try to find a comfortable range of movement.

You can move both arms at the same time, alternate between right and left, or move one arm forward and up while the other is moving back and down, as if you were swimming. Relax and have fun!

Cautions. If this causes an acute or old injury to flare up, stop the movement. If you’ve dislocated your shoulder, proceed with caution, especially with the back-stroke version. If these movements cause pain, have your yoga teacher or a doctor take a look at your shoulders.

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Interview with Steve Cropley: Relief from Sciatic Pain

Baxter: When we spoke recently, you reminded me of an event that happened to you while attending a week-long retreat lead by JJ Gormley and me.  What was going on with your body that week?

Steve: I suffered low back problems from my high school years on. I routinely jumped off of gas tanker trucks onto concrete in leather-soled moccasins. Today they call that sort of thing “Parcorp”; in the 60s it was called “working for Dad.” My back problems got worse over the years. Years of downhill skiing, running, and working added to the problems. Chiropractors were my only saviors until sciatic pain.

In the spring of 2000, I developed sciatic pain. No relief from chiropractors, acupuncture, massage or physical therapy. I was suffering a pain that generally isn’t felt at its source. In my case, I did feel it from its source in the low back, through the hip and knee, through the ankle, top of my foot, toes and the sole of the foot. I couldn’t sit stand or lie down without constant shooting pains. Thinking that yoga might be part of the problem, I stopped my practice except for Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall or Waterfall pose). This pose was the one reliable way to fall asleep; I would plop down anywhere when I needed a break from the pain. I had months of agony before the pain began to recede. I returned to my yoga practice with the occasional recurrence of the sciatic pain, none as severe as the first. 

Baxter: You learned a valuable way of working with lower back pain from JJ that you now share with your students. Can you share it with us here?

Steve: It’s July 2004. I am in a weeklong yoga workshop at the Feathered Pipe Ranch with JJ Gormley and Baxter Bell. This particular afternoon, Baxter is teaching and JJ is assisting students. I can feel the tell tale bite of sciatic pain and I am moving in every direction, except the ones that Baxter is guiding us into, trying to find relief. JJ spots me and I tell her my sciatica was acting up. “Which side?” she asks. JJ shows me how to bring the hip points together with a yoga strap. JJ has me to do symmetrical poses. I did easy down dogs, cat backs, child poses and on my back, knees to chest and easy hip raises. Within a few minutes, the pain was gone. JJ answered the question on my face. “I figured this out on myself. “ She too had fought sciatic pain.

I am 60 now and in my life I have hurt all the major joints, broken fingers and toes, ribs, my jaw and my skull. On occasion, I wake up with low back pain. The difference today: I know that within a few minutes of rising, I will have figured out what it takes to make the pain disappear and get on with my day.

I have taught JJ’s belt trick to a lot of people in the last few years. Building extra press boxes at the 2006 Super Bowl, I found one of our electricians moaning and rolling around on the concrete. This guy had been self medicating, using alcohol to help him cope with his sciatic pain for years. Our 12-hour days and 7-day weeks were taking their toll on him. I taught him JJ’s belt trick, and some simple asana. Within a few minutes, he was able to find relief and go back to work.

This August a student came to class with sciatic bite, my term for that mild or beginning pinch that one gets as sciatica acts up. I taught her JJ’s belt method and she continued class pain free. As class continues, I forget about her earlier sciatic bite and guide her into a twist. She has an immediate reaction as her sciatic bite returns. We go back to JJ’s method, belt and symmetric poses. Pain stops. I haven’t seen this student since Thanksgiving, but I know she has JJ’s belt method in her toolbox, another tool to ease the body and calm the mind.

Here is JJ’s sciatic belt trick/method/remedy. Put the belt around the hips with the buckle on the hip point of the affected body side. Hold the buckle in place as you draw the belt tight. The action is to draw the hip points together.

Baxter, I don’t know why this works. Dr. Patty Tobi and I were talking about this yesterday. Does the pull of the strap or compression from the strap make others nerves fire and make the mind reset the brain’s reading of the enflamed nerves? Patty wonders if the strap puts pressure on a meridian.

Baxter: The belt trick is one I have used for stabilizing the pelvis and opening the sacroiliac joints so they can reset. Sacroiliac joint pain can cause sciatic-like pain patterns. It is hard to say what the belting is doing anatomically, but it very impressive in its effect on stopping back pain.

Steve Cropley is Head Custodian, Santosha Yoga, Sheridan WY, CYT 300 RYT 200. Steve read Light on Yoga in 1971 and determined he was already practicing yoga. He found a teacher and began formally studying yoga in the mid 90’s. Steve began studying with Baxter Bell in 2003, and Baxter introduced Steve to JJ Gormley. Steve graduated from JJ’s Special Ed Yoga program, which he practices to this day. Steve has led impromptu yoga classes in Beijing and Inchon Airport in Seoul. You can find Santosha Yoga at the Santosh Yoga web site.

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11th South East Asian Bodybuilding Championships–Yangon, Myanmar.

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New Tricks for Old Dogs: Working with Bunions

by Baxter

It was my first class with Donald Moyer in the new year, January having flown by and February upon us. I checked in with him before class began and mentioned an unusual aching in the lateral aspect of my left foot that I had been experiencing for about two months. It was not bad enough from preventing me from my normal activities, but I noticed it when turning my left foot out to 90 degrees for many of my standing poses. He gave me some pointers for the day’s practice, and then class began. 

About half way through the class, while we were in Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana), Donald had us slip a strap between our big and second toes, and bring the loose end over the top of the big toe and down to the floor to the inside edge of the toe. He asked us to gently pull the strap to move the big toe medially, so that it lined up more evenly with the first metatarsal, the foot bone just before you get to the toe itself (the toe bones are called phalanges, and the big to has two, the other toes all have three).

In addition to re-aligning these two parts of the foot and toe, the bones of the toe rolled a bit medially on their axis. Donald made an offhand remark about this being beneficial for treating bunions (hallux valgus for you Latin lovers) and then we moved on. But treating bunions! Sweeter words were never spoken. I come from a family of bunion formers, my mom’s mother, my wonderful Grandma Lopresto, had an impressive one on each foot for as long as I could remember. Interestingly, I don’t remember her complaining about them much.

What, you may be asking yourself, is a bunion? Well, a bunion is a condition in which your big toe deviates toward your second toe instead of lining up with your first metatarsal. And although bunions have a genetic component and do tend to run in families, another huge factor is shoes that smash the toes together. While these shoes are often for fashion purposes only, I do teach to one group of students whose shoe wear is all about function and their passion for climbing. And while the shoes these folks wear help keep them on razor thin ledges, they do lots of harm to their impressionable toes and feet.

According to the PubMed Health website, bunions occur more commonly in women and people born with abnormal bones in their feet. Certain kinds of shoe wear, specifically narrow-toed, high-heeled shoes, may also lead to bunion formation. And although it can seem a bit unsightly, it is only when pain develops that most people seek help.

How can you tell if you are developing a bunion? You may begin to see a thickening or actual bump forming where the toe and foot meet on the inner edge of the foot. On the opposite side of the big toe, a red callous may form from the big toe and second toe rubbing on one another. Pain can occur in this joint, aggravated by certain shoes. 

What is the mainstream treatment for bunions? First off, they often tell you to wear different shoes, ones with a low heel and a wide area for the toes. That alone could do the trick. Sometimes special pads can be placed on the bunion or between the big and second toes, and wearing a toe spacer at night can start to influence the alignment of the toes. If that does not work, there are only a mere 100 different surgical approaches to treat bunions. One of my long time students has had both toes operated on, and says it made a huge difference for her, eliminating the pain. However, it has had an effect on her balance.

So, here was Donald offering up a really simple way to affect the toes! A few years back, my colleague and friend JJ Gormley shared her favorite method to get the big toe back on track, which you can do at your desk. With your feet parallel, place a can of your favorite organic goodies between your inner arches and put a veggie rubber band, one of those strong ones, around the big part of your big toes, so they deviate a bit towards the midline between your feet. You can do this for 10-15 minutes a few times a day, and watch for results.

Obviously, if either Donald or JJ’s techniques result in worsening symptoms, stop them right away! But if not, give it a go. And remember, since a lot of the problem stems from being in shoes, yoga itself can go a long way to help the problem, as you are barefoot and you are strengthening and stretching many of the muscles and other structures that can affect the big toes.
 
For more information on yoga and bunions, there is a good article by Doug Keller in Yoga + Living Magazine from 2008 that you can find online. I hope the photos of Donald and JJ’s bunion recommendations are helpful in your home practice.

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A Week of Yoga Practice

by Nina

Is anyone else a fan of the brilliant food writer M.F.K. Fisher? I not only love her beautiful writing, but also her ideas. When I first started reading her work, I remember being struck by a simple but profound of advice she had for eating well:

“Instead of combining a lot of dull and sometimes actively hostile foods into one routine meal after another, three times a day and every day, year after year, in the earnest hope that you are being a good provider, try this simple plan: Balance the day, not each meal in the day.”

(You can read her entire advice on this subject on the Less Is Enough blog.)

What Fisher meant was that you did not have to eat every single food group at every single meal (what we used to call a “square meal,” something American nutritionists used to insist on) but rather you could have grains for breakfast, a salad or soup for lunch, and meat or fish with vegetables for dinner. You'd still get all the nutrition you needed—just not all at once! Thirty years later, I still follow her advice.

I recommend applying the same advice to your home yoga practice. Rather than trying to make every single yoga practice like a balanced “meal” by including some of everything, you can focus each day on one or two of the major classes of poses. And by the end of the week, you’ll have done a very wide range of poses, balancing your body by moving all your joints within their range of motion and reducing problems associated with repetitive stress.

So what are the basic pose “food groups” you could think about trying to cover in a week? Leaving out a few poses that don't fit that well into general categories, they are:

• Standing poses
• Backbends
• Forward bends
• Twists
• Inverted Poses
• Restorative poses

Depending on how many days a week you want to practice (and how long you want your practice to be) you could focus on single class of poses each day, or you could combine two or more in a given day. If there’s something in particular you want to work on (such as balancing or abdominal strengthening), you could add that into your practice on a regular basis. Does this mean that even though your teacher always includes standing poses in every single class, you can skip them yourself at home? Yes. That's exactly what I mean.

A Pose You Can Skip from Yoga: The Poetry of the Body 

It does make sense to do a little balancing, however, by adding one or more counter poses to the end of your practice. After doing backbends, it’s helpful to do a twist, leg stretch or another back releasing pose. After doing forward bends or twists, I recommend doing a gentle back bend to restore the natural curve to your spine. And after standing poses, inverted poses or restorative poses can help calm you down and relax your muscles before Savasana.

I hope this helps you feel more comfortable about starting a home practice because the main thing is just to jump right in. I’ll do another post soon on how to plan a single practice, but in general there are no hard and fast rules, and there is no reason why your home practice has to look like a class.

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Interview with Baxter Bell by Life Style Maven

Today on the blog Life Style Maven there is an interview with Baxter Bell by Cailen Ascher, a yoga teacher, writer, and blogger. She asks Baxter the following questions:

• What does yoga mean to you?
• What style of yoga do you teach/practice? Why? 
• Do you have a favorite yoga sutra?
• What is your mission statement as a teacher? 
• What inspires you and your practice? 

So if you'd like to learn more about Baxter's teaching, check it out here!

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New Features

by Nina

I spent a little time this weekend changing the layout of the blog and adding a few new features. If you haven't already noticed, at the top of the blog you'll now see tabs that will take you to special pages on the blog.

The "Audio Tracks" tab takes you to the page where you can stream relaxation tracks (and other audio tracks as we add them) or get access to our Band Camp site to download tracks.

The "About Us" tab takes you to the page where you can find biographical content and links for both the writers and photographers whose work you see on the blog.

The "Contact Us" tab provides easy access to email addresses you can use to contact the bloggers.

On the right-hand side of the blog, I've added a Search function that allows you to search the blog for particular posts by their content and I've also turned on the feature that displays an alphabetical index to the blog posts. Now that we've got a substantial backlog of posts, it seemed like it was time to make it easier for you to find old posts.

Looking Closely by Michele McCartney-Filgate

If there is anything else I can add to the blog to make it more usable, please let me know.

For you technically minded people out there: what I'd really love to do is to create two tabs at the top for searching, one to provide access to the search function and the other to provide access to the index list of labels. But I have not figured out how to get those blogger "gadgets" onto the body of separate pages (and off the home page). If anyone can help me with this, please let me know!

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Friday Q&A: Future Topics

by Nina

No reader questions came up this week on the blog, so today I'll ask you all a question.

Q: What topics would you like us to cover in the coming months? You can ask brief questions for the Q&A, suggest topics for longer pieces, or recommend experts to be interviewed or perhaps write posts as guest bloggers. You can leave your answers as comments on this post (or any other post), send email to me (click the Contact Us tab at the top of the page) or message me, Nina Zolotow, on Facebook (where I'm the only person with that name!).

Stalactites or Stalagmites? I Can Never Remember by Brad Gibson

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Airport Yoga: Baxter's Interview on Washington Post Blog

Baxter was interviewed yesterday by the Washington Post health blogger about the new San Francisco Airport Yoga Room and the benefits of doing yoga at the airport, and you can see the post here.

In his interview, Baxter admits that it is unlikely that anyone would stop at an airport yoga room after they arrive at their destination, however, during the time before you take off or when you layover in an airport between flights, practicing yoga can be beneficial.

"The general tenor of travel these days is so stressful, it’s almost designed to get the blood pressure up and stimulate the fight-or-flight response. Stretching [as in doing yoga] can switch from the sympathetic, fight-or-flight nervous system to the parasympathetic, or rest and digest, system. That could go a long way toward reducing stress."

He even suggests a few inverted poses that you might do in the yoga room. Of course only the San Francisco Airport has a yoga room, so what's the ordinary traveling yogi to do? Well, you know all those chairs you have to sit around on while waiting for your plane to board? You can use them as props for an "office" yoga practice (see "After the Retreat: Office Yoga" right here on our blog).

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"I think I have sciatica"

by Baxter

If I had a dime for every time I have heard this from friends, students and patients, I would be doing all right! Usually, any time someone gets a pain in the back that travels below the buttock, they believe they are suffering from sciatica. And some of them may be right, but others could have something else going on. So before we go any further, let’s step back and try to define what sciatica is, which is easier than that might seem, as it is really a symptom, not a medical condition or disease. What that means is that even if you do have sciatica, you are just at the beginning of a journey to find out the underlying cause of you symptom.

Sciatica gets its name because of the relationship to one of the body’s important nerves, the sciatic nerve, which is really made up of several nerve roots from the lower lumber and sacral region of the spine. These separate nerve roots emerge from the sides of the spine and join together to make a bigger nerve that travels down the back of the legs all the way to the feet. It has a couple of jobs: it supplies sensation to the muscles of the backs of the knees and lower legs, and it also provides sensation to the backs of the thighs, part of the lower legs, and the soles of the feet.

Let’s take a look at what the NIH, National Institutes of Health (see here) have to say about sciatica:

Sciatica refers to pain, weakness, numbness, or tingling in the leg. It is caused by injury to or pressure on the sciatic nerve. Sciatica is a symptom of another medical problem, not a medical condition on its own.

Sciatica usually affects people on just one side of the body. And it turns out that the "symptom" called sciatica is actually a constellation of other symptoms. Here’s what the NIH has to say about that and the pain associated with sciatica:

Sciatica pain can vary widely. It may feel like a mild tingling, dull ache, or a burning sensation. In some cases, the pain is severe enough to make a person unable to move. The pain most often occurs on one side. Some people have sharp pain in one part of the leg or hip and numbness in other parts. The pain or numbness may also be felt on the back of the calf or on the sole of the foot. The affected leg may feel weak. The pain often starts slowly. Sciatica pain may get worse:

• After standing or sitting
• At night
• When sneezing, coughing, or laughing
• When bending backwards or walking more than a few yards, especially if caused by spinal stenosis

Okay, so far so good.  But that, again, is a pretty broad set of symptoms that could account for this thing we are calling sciatica.  So, if we are going to put our finger on the underlying cause, what are the most common culprits?

A few of the more serious and common causes include a slipped disc in the lower lumbar area of the spine, Piriformis Syndrome (a condition associated with a deep muscle in the buttock area beneath the gluts that comes in contact with the sciatic nerve as it heads down the leg), pelvic injury and fracture (which could include sacroiliac dysfunction, a not uncommon problem for yoga students) and tumors.

Interestingly, a lot of cases of sciatica will resolve on their own without a lot of testing or heavy duty treatment. In the old days, they used to recommend bed rest for these kinds of symptoms, but we know now that it is prudent, after a brief period of rest, no more than a few days, that gradual return to everyday activities can be helpful, with gentle spinal movement and core strengthening very helpful for recovery. This is, of course, one way yoga can help. In fact, yoga is an excellent way to promote gentle spinal movements, safely strengthen the abdominal area and the lower back muscles, as well as stretch several muscle groups that are associated with general lower back pain that could include sciatica, such as the psoas and the piriformis muscles.

In addition to acute treatment with over the counter meds like ibuprofen and acetaminophen, as well as ice and heat, the NIH also makes the following recommendations for early treatment:

Bed rest is not recommended. Reduce your activity for the first couple of days. Then, slowly start your usual activities after that. Avoid heavy lifting or twisting of your back for the first 6 weeks after the pain begins. You should start exercising again after 2-3 weeks. This should include exercises to strengthen your abdomen and improve flexibility of your spine. (Go yoga!)

If your symptoms are not improving, you are having weakness in one leg, you noticing a foot is kind of drooping when you walk, or you have difficulty controlling your bowels or bladder, don’t put off a visit to your doc—schedule is as soon as you can. In these situations, you might need more evaluation, which might include X-rays, MRIs or local injections to help reduce swelling around your nerves if they are determined to be the culprits.

And if you are going to utilize yoga as a healing tool, look for the most qualified and experience teacher around to work with. Later this week I will share the experiences of a good friend and colleague of mine who had sciatica arise during a retreat a few years back and the almost miraculous technique he learned to eliminate this symptom.

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