Friday Q&A: Can Yoga Really Help Me?

Fallen Tree by Brad GibsonQ: I have been getting the emails for some time and find them very interesting but have a question that has been nagging me for some time. I have been practicing yoga for years and have been teaching yoga for 10 years. I am now 63 and in the last 3 yrs despite my daily practice and veggie diet feel that my body has been deteriorating, i.e., increased aches and pains, worse in the morning, increased loss in vitality and recurring...

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Featured Pose: Upward Bound Hands (Urdva Baddha Hastanana)

Upward Bound Hands poseby Baxter and NinaThis simple pose allows you to stretch and strengthen your shoulders, arms, hands and wrists, providing the perfect antidote to working with your arms down by your sides all day. Raising your arms overhead with bound hands reverses the effect of gravity on your arms and reestablishes the full range of motion of your collar blades and shoulder blades. This pose releases muscular tension in your shoulders and...

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Meditation and Brain Strength

by NinaTide Between Rocks by Brad GibsonRecently I read an article on Science Daily called “Evidence Builds That Meditation Strengthens the Brain.” Naturally I was hoping that Brad would comment on the article (see here) and the original research (see here). But until then—oh, I live in hope!—I thought I’d share the links with you and let you know some of my own thoughts about it.According to the article on Science Daily, Eileen Luders, an assistant...

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What to Expect from Your Yoga Practice

by BaxterSeveral times a year, a particular query is posed to me by one of my students and it goes something like this: I have been practicing yoga for many years, advancing in my ability to do intermediate and sometimes advanced poses. I have been very healthy up to this point. I thought that if I did this and ate a healthy diet that I would stay healthy into my older years. Yet I just found out I have X, and I am confused and somewhat disappointed....

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In Praise of Chair Yoga

by NinaRecently we’ve been featuring some yoga poses you can do while seated on a chair, such as a chair twist, backbend and forward bend. We’ve been offering up these poses as “office” or “travel” yoga, for those times when you don’t have the space or option of practicing on the floor. But it’s also true there are many people out there who cannot practice yoga standing up. They may have a chronic disease, such as Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis,...

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Friday Q&A: Hip Pain and Skiing

Q: I commented a while back on being old and having bad hips, but that was just basically a whine about pain. Now I actually have a real question. Last week I went downhill skiing in two feet of thick powder snow (very hard skiing). At the end of the day my hips felt great. Thighs and calves were pretty sore, but hips felt better than they had for ages. I think that this was the result of exercising each side equally—it was the only way to get through the powder without falling. How can I make sure in yoga practice that I am actually exercising...

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Featured Sequence: Mini Office Yoga Practice

by NinaRecently on Thursdays we've been featuring our essential office yoga poses and today is the day when we get to put them together into a sequence! This mini sequence is very well rounded, and even follows the format of traditional Iyengar sequence: a warm-up pose (Half Dog Pose) followed by "standing poses," a backbend, a twist, and a forward bend. As always, when you are practicing a sequence, feel free to skip any poses that don't work for...

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Aging: Terms and Theories

by NinaI’m old enough that I’ve started to focus on doing some of the things I’ve always wanted to do but never got around to. Some are big (writing a novel!) and some are rather trivial. One of the more trivial things that I somehow never got around to was listening to my husband and fellow blogger, Professor Brad Gibson, give a talk. He’s kind of infamous for talking really fast, jumping around the room a lot, and packing his talks with lots of...

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First Day of Spring: More Thoughts on Warming Up

by BaxterHappy First Day of Spring! As usual, Nina did a bang up job yesterday of getting into the topic of warm-ups for your daily home practice, mostly from an Iyengar perspective. I wanted to add in that, as may have been obvious from Nina’s post, you start by thinking about where you want to head in your practice on any given day. I think of this as an opportunity to pick what I and others call a “goal” or “crown” pose or poses that I would like...

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Iyengar-Style Sequencing, Part 2: Warming Up

by NinaAs I mentioned in my post "Iyengar-Style Sequencing, Part 1", Iyengar-style sequences typically begin with starting or warm-up poses. Today I’m going to write a little about how to choose the appropriate warm-up poses for a particular sequence. One useful way to choose your warm-up poses is to think anatomically about the main poses in your sequence. Don't let that term "anatomically" scare you, please! Just picture the shape of the pose,...

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Workshops of Interest: Therapeutic Yoga Seminars

Our own Shari Ser and her co-teacher, Bonnie Maeda, RN, are teaching a series of therapeutic yoga seminars this spring at the Berkeley Yoga Room.Yoga for Neurological Disorders on March 24, 2012Yoga for Heart Conditions on April 28, 2012Yoga for Breathing Disorders on May 19, 2012Yoga for Sleep Disorders on June 16, 2012These seminars are intended primarily for training teachers in the therapeutic uses of yoga, but all interested students are welcome to attend if space permits. For further information, see the Berkeley Yoga Room web si...

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Friday Q&A: Practice for All Seasons

Q: Practice and the seasons: Does your practice change with the seasons and if so how?A: Where I live, there are seasons (though some people might argue differently), but rarely extremes of weather. But one summer day that was actually hot, I went to my regular Friday morning yoga class, expecting backbends because my teacher always teaches backbends the second class of the month. Our studio, though in a beautiful old building, had no insulation...

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Featured Pose: Standing Leg Stretches

by Baxter and NinaThe Standing Leg Stretch series, one of our five essential office yoga poses, provide the same hip opening and leg stretching benefits that you receive from many of the standing poses, while allowing you to keep a neutral spine. Even though you tend to feel all the stretch in the top leg, you get some benefits for the standing leg at the same time. So these poses are good antidotes for hip and leg tightness due to sitting, walking,...

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Yoga for Abdominal Strength

Seated Twist: Strengthening the Oblique Musclesby Shari and NinaWe had a request from one of our readers for a post about yoga poses for abdominal strength, so I decided to ask Shari Ser, Yoga for Healthy Aging's physical therapist/yoga teacher for her thoughts on the subject. Nina: Why is it important to include abdominal strengthening poses in your practice?Shari: The abdominal area is such an important area of stability! The area carries a lot...

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Restricting the Whirls of Consciousness, Part 2

by BaxterUpside Down by Nina ZolotowNina did such a nice job on yesterday's post "Yoga Sutra 1.2: Restricting the Whirls of Consciousness" that I felt compelled to jump in and add my two cents. The tendency Nina identified for the mind to brood about the past or fret about the future is only of several dyads or other causes of our mental whirling, according to yoga's perspective. In fact, there are five main causes of affliction or klesahs that...

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Yoga Sutra 1.2: Restricting the Whirls of Consciousness

by NinaSpring Blossoms, Clouds by Nina ZolotowMy young cousin asked me last night about the history of the form of yoga that she’s been practicing lately. I told her that it was a very recent form of hatha yoga, but added that all the hatha yoga we’ve been doing in the United States was developed in the 20th century. We then talked about the part of yoga that was, indeed, very ancient, and I tossed out some of the definitions of yoga from the classic...

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Friday Q&A: Shaky Legs

Red Bud Tree in Transition by Nina ZolotowQ: Shaky legs towards mid to end of practice (standing poses and prone, like locust with lifted legs), what makes this happen? (I'm guessing they are tired.) And how to address this? Is it just a matter of strengthening?A: Dear Shaky Legs, Let me begin by saying that you are not alone with this phenomenon. In fact, for the first year or so of my asana practice, I'd experience the same thing, especially in...

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Featured Pose: Chair Forward Bend

by Baxter and NinaThe simple Chair Forward Bend, one of our five essential office yoga poses, is a safe forward bend for almost everyone. Because you’re bending your legs at the knees, you’re reducing the tension on your hamstrings and therefore allowing your pelvis to have more flexibility at your hip joints. In addition, because you’re resting your arms and head on a chair or desk and you’re not hanging in space, your lower back muscles can release...

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Deciding What to Practice

by NinaFor Me, By Me by Nina ZolotowAfter falling off the wagon, I did indeed pick myself up, dust myself, and start all over again (I even did some airplane yoga, including twists and shoulder stretches in my seat, standing twists and a wall hang using the wall in that tiny corner near the bathroom, a standing backbend in the aisle, and a long session of breath awareness back in my seat again). But then my first day home I had to decide what my...

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