Regaining Balance and So Much More: Interview with Anita Berlanga

by Nina

Anita's 2016 New Bed

Back in 2013, I decided to follow up on this comment that Anita Berlanga left on my post Regaining Stability for Free.

"Omgosh. I ....this took my breath away. This is exactly what happened to me! I was this vibrant, moving being....then a stupid, nasty fall (via a piece of gravel on the sidewalk) ended all that. And my subsequent life mirrors your friend's. Thank you SO much for giving us hope!"

I reached out to Anita because I wanted to see if there was something we could do to help! You can see her original story in our post Starting to Move Again. After some behind the scenes emailing with Anita, and then some consulting with Shari and Baxter, we came up with some yoga recommendations for Anita, which you can read about in our post  Starting to Move Again, Part 2, along  with some early progress reports about how she was doing now that she started to practice yoga for regaining stability. Now that a couple of years have passed—and I heard that Anita was feeling like her life had been transformed by yoga—so I decided to check in with her again and let her tell you her story in her own words.  

Nina: Tell us a bit about yourself and what things were like for you before you slipped and fell. 

Anita: I was The Strider. I would walk for MILES with a confident, strong stride. So strong, so confident, I could run up 3 flights of stairs without a break. I was relatively flexible—and pretty much fearless. Though a bad motorcycle crash had done a job on my knees I was still flexible enough to walk for miles and lift things and just, in general, feel strong and confident. In my young adulthood I would walk from work (downtown Chicago) to my Lincoln Park apartment, a distance of about 10 miles. I miss walking in the City. But I still managed to get in a 2-4 miles walk here in the sticks. Every day.  

Nina: What happened when you fell, and how did you feel afterward? 

Anita: Well, it wasn't one fall. It was two. The first one was an absurd face-plant on the sidewalk when I, striding (in GYMSHOES! for the love of Pete!), twisted my ankle on a piece of gravel. Went down like a sack of potatoes. Blew out my hip and my knee (oh, that knee-scrape burned like fire!). I think I would've managed that a lot better than I did, except that about 2 days later I split open my Achilles tendon (a vicious storm door that always had it in for me—just biding its time...evil door). Alas, that gash was on the OTHER foot. So you can imagine—I was then pretty much incapacitated, since I needed shoes with backs and, omg, do you know how much it hurts to have the seam of a shoe hit a gash on your Achilles tendon? OMG. 

By the time that healed I was very stiff—and I'd gotten used to a very sedentary life. Walking was more of a shuffle and walking 2 blocks felt like a mile. But little by little I started walking again. Alas, the first fall was in October. The really awful fall...that happened in January. We'd had some freezing rain—typical Midwest winter. Our driveway is slightly sloped and faces north so it continued to build up. I was walking to my car and did an alley oop that tore up my shoulder and hip. The fact that I am terrified of falling on the ice made this really bad. Then I found out a client fell in her driveway the day before—she died. Any tiny bit of confidence I had regarding walking on ice evaporated. At that point I was pretty much housebound.  

Nina: Why did you decide that yoga might be a good way for you to regain confidence?  

Anita: One of those weird Six Degrees things. I'd first started yoga in undergraduate school but left it there. I was always relatively limber and cardio exercise kept that going. And in the Midwest yoga wasn't as huge as it was on the West Coast so I never picked it up again. 

When I moved down here to Hooterville my nerves were completely shot—I hated this place and mostly just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep until I was dead. A friend gave me a Rodney Yee DVD and after a whole lot of procrastination I decided to check it out. It was the AM/PM DVD and once I slowed the exercises down a bit (boy, he is FAST with the poses) I found myself really enjoying it. Then…I dunno...I think it was Facebook. Nina is Facebook friend and the algorithms must've put her posts on my feed...all of a sudden Yoga for Healthy Aging started showing up on my page. I sort of glanced at them but didn't really take it very seriously—until one day I realized not only was I not getting 'better,' I was rapidly becoming unable to do much more than walk through the house and sit at the computer. I gained 30 lbs. My spine felt compressed all the time. Omg. That was terrifying! So I started reading the blog posts and then I contacted you, Nina.

Nina: What kind of yoga did you practice? 

Anita: The three sequences you and Baxter told me practice (see Low Back Care Practice, Mini Restorative Practice, and Gentle All-Around Practice). Seriously. I am not a devotee. I just do the poses that work best for my issues and I do the relaxation poses so I don't explode. And that's pretty much it. It feels so good, though, I probably should work more diligently at it. I still do the PM yoga poses because it helps me to sleep. I'm in menopause and own a small business that is my sole income—that combination is lethal for a good night's sleep. Yoga relaxation poses really do help. You know my saying: Sleep is the New Sex. A good night's sleep is priceless!  

Nina: A few years later, how are you feeling about your body, your balance, and your life? 

Anita: OMG. SO much better. Continuing weight loss and regaining flexibility and balance. Who would've thought balance was so important—but...yep! To regain it Nina started me out by making me walk barefoot. I was SO resistant (I'm just not a barefoot kinda gal, having stepped on glass, 2 bees and a scorpion—really—and living with giant dogs has made me very leery) But here's the thing: walking barefoot—even just in the house—really does help my balance. 

My sacrum is a bit wonky and I have some pinched nerves that numb out my toes (omg I sound like a wreck!). Walking barefoot allows me to stretch my toes out in ways that shoes simply don't allow. And with that I can feel how my feet relate to the rest of my body, if that makes any sense? I still get a little unbalanced because I am frequently unfocused but when that happens I take my shoes off, stand there for a few minutes, regroup. When that doesn't do the trick I lie down and do Legs Against the Wall, which ALWAYS does the trick. Good thing I usually work from home. 

Oh, I forgot to talk about Reclined Leg Stretch when I talked about my sacrum. That pose is THE BEST for wonky hips. My sacrum gets cocked out of place and RLS helps put it back. After I do the RLS—I do the one where you gently pull the knee over—that really opens up the hips.

Nina: Anything else you’d like to tell our readers?

Anita: Too much to say here. I would just say: Do not be afraid to ask for help. Thought I was at the end of my healthy life, with a rigid body and a terrified mind. Reaching out to you and YFHA was a lifesaver. I have so much more body confidence and...well, I don't fear the onset of advancing age any more. Or at least not as much. 

Nina: Thanks so much, Anita, for taking the time to share your story with us! 

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The Importance of Preventing Falls

by Baxter

The Acrobat by Marc Chagall

As I have shared with you in the past in my post News on Balance, Falling, and Yoga, preventing falls as we age by working on maintaining strength, flexibility, agility and balance is one of the ways—if not the primary way—we can maintain our independence as we get older. My thoughts about this were recently reinforced even more strongly when I dove into a new book one of my students gave to me the other day, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, MD.

This book may be familiar to many of you, as it is a New York Times best seller, and is sweeping the country with its urgent look at how poorly our society and health care system deals with the realities of aging, and what we may be able to do to turn things around. Although I have not finished the book yet, it seems destined to be on the “must read” list for those who have embraced Yoga for Healthy Aging as part of their strategy for aging well. 

Anyway, as part of his investigations, Dr. Gawande spent some time following a geriatrician colleague around on his patient visits, and was surprised at how important this doctor felt about always checking the health status of his older adult patients’ feet. That’s right, their feet. Even if a 85-year old woman in his office was mentally sharp, generally strong in appearance, and doing well living on her own, as part of the check-up exam, the doctor always insisted on looking at both feet very closely. This intrigued Dr. Gawande, and so he asked why. “You must always check the feet” was the reply, because, as it turns out, this enables the doctor to tell a lot about the person’s overall functional ability. Often times, when a patient is asked to remove shoes and socks, it becomes immediately obvious that patient cannot do this easily on their own. And once the shoes and socks are off, the state of the nails (trimmed or untrimmed) can clue the doctor into the person’s ability to bend down or lift the leg up to care appropriately for their feet. And the presence of cracks in the skin or fungal infections can also let the doctor know about immune status and self-care abilities. OK, so check the feet, but what is the big deal? Well, keeping the feet healthy is one of several factors that can prevent falls and fractures in older adults. And preventing fractures and falls is the main way to keep older adults independent and living on their own, and not being relegated to a nursing home facility!

The following statistics from Being Mortal help frame the issue of the importance of preventing falls:

“Each year 350,000 Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, 40% end up in nursing homes, and 20% are never able to walk again. The primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. Elderly people without these risk factors have a 12% chance of falling in one year. Those with all 3 risk factors have an almost 100% chance.” (Emphasis is mine.) 

Here at YFHA, we have discussed how regular yoga practice may indeed improve or help maintain balance over time (see Aging and Balance). We’ve also discussed the problem of sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, and yoga’s role in helping to maintain and improve muscle strength (see Yoga for Strength: An Overview). Finally, we’ve discussed yoga’s role as part of a holistic treatment plan for a variety of chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis, all of which are typically addressed by modern medicine with medications. A regular yoga practice that helps to keep the blood pressure down, for example, could conceivably lead to the elimination of a medication or two, thus addressing one of the big three risk factors for falling. And it is worth noting, again, that having osteoporosis is not one of these main risk factors for falling, however important modern medicine places on the treatment of osteoporosis with medications. 

Armed with this new information, I hope we will all be more motivated to continue to use our yoga practices to bring these big three risk factors as low as possible and keep the falls at bay! I feel, too, that working to keep our feet vibrant and healthy has the potential to contribute to decreasing the chances of falling (see Want to Improve Your Balance? Take Off Your Shoes and Your Feet on My Mind).

Gawande said the following about the geriatrician whose work he was observing:

“The job of any doctor, Blandau told me later, is to support quality of life, by which he meant two things: as much freedom from the ravages of disease as possible and the retention of enough function for active engagement in the world.”

Gosh, I love that statement! And I believe that the “job of the doctor” can also become the job of each one of us, acting as our own advocates for healthy aging. 

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News on Balance, Falling, and Yoga

by Baxter

In preparation for my Yoga U Online webinar Yoga for Core Integrity and Balance that started last Tuesday and finishes this Thursday, December 18, 2014, I was reading two papers that shed some interesting light on why we should to be concerned about balance and how to improve it. The first was a 2008 study Shifting the focus in fracture prevention from osteoporosis to falls that appeared in the British Medical Journal, and the second was a 2008 paper Integrated Balance Training by the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). Since balance is one of our four essential skills of Yoga for Healthy Aging, I was excited to read about these takes on how to best improve balance. And as I was hiking around New Zealand last week and doing some yoga outdoors, some of these ideas started to make more sense to me.

Before I get to some of the unique recommendations for balance training from the NASM article, I want to share some other fascinating assertions the first group of researchers bring up for why balance training is so important as we age. The authors of the study on falling note this blockbuster fact:

“Numerous studies show that among older people falling, not osteoporosis, is the strongest risk factor for fracture.”

They also make a very interesting and important point:

“When a person falls, the type and severity of the fall (including fall height, energy, and direction) largely determine whether a fracture occurs.”

They point out that statistically a person whose dexascan numbers are higher by 1 Standard Deviation increases the chance of a fracture by about two times normal, whereas:

“By contrast, a sideways fall increases the risk of hip fracture three to five times, and when such a fall causes an impact to the greater trochanter of the proximal femur, hip fracture risk is raised about 30 times. These fall induced fracture risks are “strong” associations—comparable to those between smoking and lung cancer.”

To summarize what this study concluded:

• Falling, not osteoporosis, is the strongest single risk factor for fractures in elderly people
• Bone mineral density is a poor predictor of an individual’s fracture risk
• Drug treatment is expensive and will not prevent most fractures in elderly people
• Randomized controlled trials show that falls in older people can be reduced by up to 50% with balance training

Finally, they recommend that the medical community—and family doctors in particular—should shift the focus in fracture prevention by systematically assessing risk of falling and providing appropriate interventions to reduce the risk of falling. For those of us who practice or teach yoga, we can take this as encouragement to be mindful of our relative balance abilities as we practice yoga and look for ways to use our asana practice to maintain and improve our balance.

This is where the second paper by the NASM comes in. It was specifically looking at providing a better understanding of the complexities of what goes into having good balance as well as how to train individuals to improve balance. There were two intriguing ideas presented that I want to share with you today.

The first has to do with a special approach to balance. According to the authors of this paper, “the main goal of balance training is to continually increase your client’s awareness of his or her balance threshold or limits of stability by creating controlled instability.” To give you a better idea of what they mean, they go on to define “balance threshold” as follows:

“Integrated (balance) training should constantly stress an individual’s limits of stability (balance threshold). An individual’s limits of stability are the distance outside of his or her base of support he or she can go without losing control of the center of gravity.”

This idea can apply to static poses as well as dynamic movements in your yoga practice. For yoga practitioners, this means that instead of merely doing our regular routine balance poses and dynamic sequences each day or week, we should consider challenging ourselves or our students by adding in “controlled instability.” Of course, you could try practicing your balance poses outside on uneven ground, as I did in New Zealand. That definitely adds some controlled instability!

But even in the yoga room, you can use your creativity to add some instability into your practice. An example of this might be to move from doing Tree pose (Vrksasana) on the floor to trying it while standing on a wooden block on the lowest height, gradually working towards a longer hold of the pose there. So, the first time I try it, I might shoot for 30 seconds on each side. Once that seems stable and easy, perhaps after several days or a week of practice, I’d advance to 60 seconds. Once I’ve mastered that variable, I might then try the same thing on a slightly softer foam block. From there, I might add in the challenge of holding an additional block between my hands and dynamically moving it not just up and overhead as is sometimes more traditionally done, but taking over to the right side (not side bending, just angling the arms up and to the right), then the left side, then down and to the right and down and to the left while maintaining balance in Tree. As this example demonstrates, a certain amount of creativity will be involved in providing yourself with more challenges over time. Keep in mind that even small changes in the way you do your “normal” poses can add this element of “controlled instability” into your practice.

As for dynamic sequencing, you might change up a Sun Salutation by adding in a pose you don’t normally do while flowing in and out of the usual sequence, such as, from transition from Lunge pose into Standing Splits (Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana) for a breath or two before stepping back to Lunge and onto Downward Dog and all the rest. When that new sequence gets easy to do in the flow, add in another pose that challenges your balance a bit more, and so on and so forth. Again, be creative and systematic in how you do this and have some fun with it!

Improving balance not only can reduce your chances of falling and therefore reduces your chance of a fractured bone, but it has also been shown to reduce the chances of other sorts of injuries as well, such as anterior cruciate ligament tears in the knees and ankle sprains. So start playing around with these ideas in your home practice or for the teachers out there, let these ideas add some more variety and creativity to your sequencing of classes. And as always, we love to hear what you discover along the way! Happy, balanced trails!

And for those want more details on these ideas, check out my Yoga U Online webinar. Part 2 is live this Thursday, December 18th, at 5:30PST, 8:30EST.  Even if you missed Part 1 last week, it is now archived and if you sign up for the program (see yogauonline.com), you can listen and watch either one anytime you want. The package also includes a one-hour practice video on Core Integrity and Balance. The perfect holiday gift for yourself!

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Want to Improve Your Balance? Take Off Your Shoes!

by Nina

Eagle Pose Outside by Melina Meza

“Balance is a complicated equation involving vision, muscle strength, proprioception (the body’s ability to know where it is in space), and attention. As people age, those elements deteriorate.”

Well, if the New York Times can write about falling twice in one week (see A Tiny Stumble, a Life Upended), then so can I! Because after reading part 2 of their series on falling, I have a lot more to say. The main article detailed what can happen after an older person falls, saying, “life is upended in an instant — a sudden loss of independence, an awkward reliance on family and friends, and a new level of fear for those who fall, and their contemporaries.” So, there I was, getting all depressed again. But at least the article end with a quote that confirmed what I wrote on Monday (see Morning Wakeup Call: Preventing Falls with Yoga) about the downward spiral that happens after people fall and become fearful of falling again.

“Dr. Tinetti warned that excessive tentativeness can actually increase the risk of falling. “People who are more cautious cut down on their activity,” she said, “which makes their balance worse, their strength worse, and reflexes that prevent falls worse.”

But it’s the supplementary article on Steps to Avoid an Accident  that really got me upset. (Yes, I feel a rant coming on.) Here is what they recommended:

“Regular exercise classes can help, especially those that include balance drills, such as standing on one foot, or working with Bosu balls, the squishy hemispheres seen at gyms.

"The regular practice of tai chi has also been found to help. Tai chi involves very slow, purposeful movements in coordination with breathing and muscle activity, which in turn affects respiration, balance, and gait.

"Integrating balance and strength work into daily life — standing on one foot while brushing your teeth, for instance, or simply putting one foot in front of the other — can help as well.”

Uh, yes, although they came up with the brilliant idea of brushing your teeth while standing on one foot, they did completely forget to mention yoga. Yoga is particularly beneficial for balance not just because it includes so many balance poses but also because it cultivates muscle strength, proprioception (the body’s ability to know where it is in space), and attention, which the NY Times mention as being needed for good balance. When we work in our all our poses—whether or not they are balancing poses—with careful attention to our alignment, we are developing our proprioception and our attention. (My teacher, Donald Moyer, who always has us work with subtle alignment cues in our poses, has observed how his long-time students have developed very refined proprioception over the years.)

But in the end, there was something else the article didn’t even mention that made me feel rant-y: our feet! I’m a firm believer that exercising with bare feet is the best way to keep your feet healthy, strong, supple and agile, which in turn will improve your ability to balance. Imagine if you wore thick mittens all the time. Wouldn’t it be hard to use your hands effectively? Now think about your poor feet being trapped in their shoes all your waking hours. No wonder so many older people become less agile. I once watched a woman who had been born with no arms eat an ice cream cone and take care of her baby just with her bare feet; they’re capable of so much if we just let them out of their little prisons. That was a lesson to me about the power of our feet that I will never forget.

Of course we do yoga with bare feet. And moving into and out of a variety of yoga standing poses in bare feet definitely helps keep our feet more agile. As a matter of fact, in an early post of ours Friday Q&A: Feet and Comments, we addressed a question from someone who had trouble balancing in Tree pose and who also wore orthotics. Shari actually recommended that the reader spend at least some of her time practicing with bare feet to help her with her balance:

“If you wear orthotics in my mind it might be good to explore in yoga wearing them in some type of non-skid sock so your toes can still feel the floor when you are practicing your balancing poses. It sounds like you have very high arches so to contact the floor without your orthotics will be difficult. I might suggest that you explore doing the balancing poses (such as Tree pose) with your orthotics and non-skid socks, then take them off and try in your bare feet directly afterwards. Sometimes this can work to build muscle memory to teach your feet what to do. I wouldn’t push your feet to hurt your knees though. Be patient and kind to yourself when you try this.”

The NY Times article didn’t even mention how important it is to walk on uneven surfaces! If you’re always walking on a flat surface—especially wearing shoes—your feet and the rest of your body are going to be, well, just plain inexperienced and unprepared to handle any sudden unevenness, like a crack in the sidewalk. Of course, hiking on a dirt trail is effective for training your body to handle uneven surface. But it strikes me now that all those people taking photos of themselves doing yoga out in nature are doing something really good for their feet—and their balance—even if they are torturing us with their selfies. So maybe we should all start experimenting a bit with doing yoga outside.

But if you're not ready for that, in the same post in which Shari stressed the importance of balancing in bare feet, Baxter recommended a very simple yoga vinyasa, Tadasana (Mountain pose) to Urdva Hastasana (Upward Arms pose), to help keep your feet healthy and improve your balance. He said that this exercise can strengthen the foot muscles that are associated with a healthy arch. 

1. Start in Mountain pose.
2. Inhale and lift your heels off the floor as you swing your arms up into Upward Arms pose. Focus on keeping the balls of your feet even on the floor as your rise up.
3. Exhale as your lower your heels down to the floor and release your arms by your sides. Focus on keeping the balls of your feet even on the floor as your lower down.
4. Repeat for at six rounds or more.

Baxter also recommended that practitioners with flat feet should practice their standing poses keeping the balls of their feet grounded as they lifting their toes off the ground. This will encourage strengthening of the medial and lateral arches of their feet.

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Morning Wakeup Call: Preventing Falls with Yoga

by Nina

Baxter Balancing by Melina Meza

“As the population ages and people live longer in bad shape, the number of older Americans who fall and suffer serious, even fatal, injuries is soaring. So the retirement communities, assisted living facilities and nursing homes where millions of Americans live are trying to balance safety and their residents’ desire to live as they choose.” —NY Times

When I sat down for breakfast with Brad this morning, he told me about an article in the New York Times Bracing for the Falls of an Aging Nation that he had just finished reading, saying, “You should write about this today.” So as I started to drink my morning tea, I read through the fairly long article, and the more I read, the more depressed I got. Because after presenting all the terrible statistics about the numbers of people over 65 who have died after falling (nearly 24,000 in 2012, the most recent year for which fatality numbers are available — almost double the number 10 years earlier), the article described all the measures that retirement communities are taking to keep their residents safe. But the problem that I saw right away was that many of the safety restrictions for residents, such as keeping floor surfaces completely even and requiring walkers, would cause the residents to become even less mobile and less able to balance, in a downward spiral of inactivity in the name of safety. And the really sad thing for me was that even though these facilities offer optional exercise classes—even classes specifically focused on improving balance—people were not going to them. As the article said:

“But many residents do not, or refuse to, recognize their own gradual deterioration, leaving them vulnerable despite efforts to protect them. Institutions offer sessions on avoiding falls and Improving balance and fitness. But some residents will not go near them – until after they have fallen.”

At one point in the middle of the article, I said to Brad in despair, “I can’t write about this—it seems totally depressing.” It was only when I reached the end of the article that I saw a glimmer of hope:

“Though the risk of a fall increases significantly once people reach their 80s, researchers have found that people 85 and older in excellent health have no greater risk than someone 20 years younger.”

Yes! That’s what I like to hear. As we have written about in several posts (see Winter Ice, Fear of Falling, and Yoga), yoga is especially helpful for enabling you to maintain and/or improve your ability to balance. So if we’re all practicing yoga asana regularly—especially standing poses and balancing poses—we’re going to be much better off than the old folks in the article, who have become practically immobilized in attempt to keep them safe. Granted, it is sometimes difficult to motivate yourself to take preventative measures. As the article said regarding the older people’s lack of attendance in the optional exercise classes:

“It is not so much laziness that accounts for the limited attendance, but denial. A sluggish foot, eyesight that fails to catch a step down, slowed reflexes – these creep up slowly, often imperceptibly. This helps explain why people tend to pay scant attention to their risk for a fall until it happens.”

So that’s our wakeup call for the day! Let's all "brace" for future falls by practicing yoga instead of retreating into immobility. I don’t know about you, but I practice balance poses several times a week. If you’re not doing the same thing already, give Baxter’s Easy Balance Practice a try. And if this is too challenging for you—or you’re working with someone who is weak or shaky—take a look at Regaining Stability for Free and Starting to Move Again. Even just a few wide-legged standing poses, with your back to a wall if you’re feeling nervous about balance, can be a great start.

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Winter Ice, Fear of Falling and Yoga

by Baxter

Despite the fact that I have lived in California near the temperate ocean for the last 14 years, I still vividly remember the scary, slippery winter days when I lived in the Midwest in icy conditions. And I remember slipping and falling on more than one occasion. Perhaps because I was younger at the time, I avoided significant injury (except for that one ice-skating party my freshman year in college that started at midnight, when I fell while showing off and broke my arm—was there beer involved?). And as I’ve watch the national weather reports the last few weeks, I have seen icy conditions in the forecasts for a good part of the country. For many adults as they age, especially if they are not very physically active, icy conditions are enough to keep ‘em indoors for days on end, until the ice abates. Seems a shame! I wonder if there is any benefit yoga could provide to boost the confidence of those in such chilling circumstances?

As you probably have already guessed, yoga can definitely help on many levels. It can restore your confidence in your physical abilities, as you get regular with a practice geared toward the outdoor icy reality.  It can improve your strength if you have not been working your body out as of late, especially in the legs. Your standing balance can get better with targeted work in certain yoga poses. Yoga can improve your chances of getting up off the ground if you happen to go down, something we have written about in my post Transferring and Yoga Wisdom from Jane Fonda as “transfer” ability. And as many of my students have reported back after the fact, yoga can even can help you to “fall better.” Finally, if you are stressing out about falling on the ice before you even leave the house, some focused easy meditations can keep you mentally and physically relaxed as well as improving your concentration for when you step out the door and into that new, shifting reality of the winter wonderland (see Stress Eating and Healthy Eating Meditation Practice—you could use a different mantra, such as "healthy walking," for the second meditation).

Tell me more, you say! Let’s first talk about the strength, flexibility and agility that you need in icy situations. First off, you need strength and agility to feel your feet are under you and grounded to the earth, even if they might start to slip. And if you begin to slip, you’d like the strength, flexibility and agility to self-correct if possible. In modern yoga, practicing many of the basic standing poses, such as Warrior 1 and 2 (Virabradrasana 1 and 2), Triangle pose (Trikonasana), Extended Side Angle pose (Parsvakonasana), Standing Backbend, Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottanasana) to name a few, will allow you to start to address the strength and flexibility aspects beautifully.

Extended Side Angle Pose

Doing some simple Sun Salutations and Moon Salutations will crank up your agility skills by not only moving your body dynamically, but also making bending down to the ground and being on all fours familiar, should you still lose your balance on the ice. You could almost think of it as practice falling!

Poses with two bent knee poses, such as Powerful pose (Utkatasana) and Squat or Garland pose (Malasana), done both dynamically—in and out of it with the breath—and dropping as low as possible and holding the pose, are great poses to prepare you for a slip.  How so? Well, at the first feeling of a slip on ice, if you remember to bend your knees and not lock them, you can start to “sit down” toward the ground as opposed to tipping over like a falling tree. Sitting down is much less impactful (less injurious, perhaps) on the body than tipping over. And if you do find yourself sitting down from a slippery fall, you’ll have the strength, from having practiced these squatting shaped poses, to more quickly and successfully right yourself. In other words, you will be good at transferring down and up again. (See Featured Pose: Powerful Pose for detailed instructions on how to do the pose.)

Powerful Pose

And if you really want to advance things and improve your balance, you can start adding in one-legged yoga poses to the mix in case you slip and one foot happens to stay on the icy earth. Tree pose (Vrksasana), King Dancer (Natarajasana), Warrior 3 (Virabradrasana 3), Half Moon (Arda Chandrasana), and Standing Hand-to-Foot pose (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana) will take you in all different directions with your legs and your spine, so again, you may feel more familiar with suddenly being in those positions in slick conditions. (See Featured Pose: Warrior 3 for three different ways to practice Warrior 3.)

Warrior 3 Pose, Easy Version

I can also assure you that my students who have fallen and lived to tell the tale (with minimal injury) reported back that they have the definite impression that their regular home practice and class attendance contributed to their ability to “fall well.” They reported that their reaction time seemed faster and that they had the ability to choose how and where to fall. And often they began to fall and “caught themselves” before actually going all the way down—save!

Now, I can hear some of you saying that this is all fine and dandy, but what I am I to do today? It’s icy out there now and I have been sitting on my butt for years. Well, there is no time like now, especially if you are not going outside today anyway, to start your new yoga home practice today. And the way things are playing out this winter, there is likely to be more ice in the weeks and months to come, so your future pay-offs will be huge by practicing one icy day at a time, beginning now. Go!

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Starting to Move Again

by Nina

Recently Shari and I wrote a post recommending a sequence to someone who had lost confidence in her body after a fall (see Regaining Stability—for Free!) Another reader left a comment on that post that made me realize what an important topic this was:

Omgosh. I ....this took my breath away. This is exactly what happened to me! I was this vibrant, moving being....then a stupid, nasty fall (via a piece of gravel on the sidewalk) ended all that. And my subsequent life mirrors your friend's. Thank you SO much for giving us hope!

It seems that after experiencing a fall, many middle-aged and older people may become fearful, which can lead to inactivity. That inactivity in turn leads to stiffness, weakness, loss of balance and/or loss of agility. So I decided to learn a bit more about the woman who left this comment, and to see if there was something we could do to help her regain her confidence and start to move again. Everyone has different issues, so before making recommendations, I asked her to fill me in on any physical problems she had. Here’s a condensed version of her reply:

My sacrum got cocked (like it often does) and that triggered a bout of sciatica - the two sent me to the ER. The cocked sacrum was the result of some incorrectly done crunches plus my bete-noire, a fibroid that spans the entire back of my uterine wall.

I've had two motorcycle accidents (about 20 yrs apart) and now just have that North Dallas Forty thing going  (the opening scene, with Nick Nolte in the bathtub - painful).  Also, I have had shoulder surgery (torn rotor cuff with a bone spur sticking through it)— that one is healed.

Last thing that happened was about 18 mos. Ago—striding down the street, I twisted my ankle on a piece of gravel and went down like a sack of potatoes.  Banged up my left knee and hip (that poor hip gets so much grief), wrenched my back, and damaged the OTHER shoulder in the fall, which is why I have no flexibility or confidence whatsoever. So I can’t extend my right shoulder much. I also have two discs in my neck that are bone on bone, though I keep those pretty limber, most days.

So that's the litany of ick.  Other than that stupid fibroid and the post-injuries I’m actually pretty healthy and very strong (except for that shoulder – but I can still lift between 50-100lbs with my arms at my sides – just not extended).  Mostly I'm just stiff and achy and need to get back to moving around - your post on 'regaining stability' resonated so deeply, Nina.  

After learning about our reader’s situation, I decided to take her case to Baxter, who pointed out to me that certain physical problems, such as the fibroid and the new shoulder injury, needed to be addressed by a medical professional. He agreed that while our reader was seeking medical help, she would also benefit from a gentle yoga practice that allowed her to start moving again. A short, daily, gentle yoga practice would be helpful to her allover physical health and would allow her to start increasing her flexibility, as well as her confidence.

In her case, because she has a history of low back and other problems, he recommended that instead of having a single sequence, she should alternate between three different sequences. I was happy to find that two of the sequences were already on the blog! (So if you’re a new reader and want to start practicing some short sequences on your own, be sure to poke around through our archives to see the various sequences we’ve been posting.)

The three sequences are:

1. Baxter’s classic Low Back Care Practice (see Low Back Care Practice). Because hip openers are helpful for low back problems, this sequence includes stretches for leg and hip flexibility.

2. Baxter’s classic Mini Restorative Practice (see Mini Restorative Practice). A restorative practice will help reduce stress. Long-held passive poses also gently stretch your muscles.

3. Our new Gentle All-Around Practice (see Gentle All-Around Practice), which I'm just posting today. This practice includes shoulder stretches to increase upper body flexibility and standing poses to improve balance and stability.

My hope is that practicing these sequences on a regular basis will, over time, restore her flexibility, balance, and feelings of self confidence, and allow her to be a “vibrant, moving being” once again.

And although we came up with this set of sequences for a particular person, all of them would be suitable for just about anyone who is starting a home practice. And it just so happens we’re in the first week of the new year! So if any of you have made resolutions to start practicing yoga at home, give any or all of these sequences a try and let us know how it goes.

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