Pro Bodybuilders eat about one gram (sometimes even 1.5 grams) of protein per pound of body weight or per pound of non-fat tissue. I'm sure you've seen that the recommended dail
When I first started practicing yoga at home way, way back in the previous century, I really was just practicing poses. That is, I didn’t think about doing sequences; I was just focused on improving my ability at doing certain poses, like Handstand, Headstand, and Upward Bow pose. So I tended to do the same poses every day—the ones I was working on—gradually adding in some warm up and cool down poses as my sequence seemed organically to grow in length. It wasn’t until I started working with Rodney Yee and really started learning about sequencing that I started doing different types of practices on different days so I could cycle through the main categories of poses: backbends, forward bends, twists, inversions, etc. So I understand the how natural it is to think that doing the same practice every day would be the easiest way to have a home practice. And certainly getting started with the habit of practicing —no matter what you’re practicing—is a wonderful idea.
But I’m here today to tell you that in the long run doing the same sequence every day is not the best idea. Here’s why:
Doing the same poses in the same order every single day means you run the risk of repetitive stress injuries. That’s not yoga’s fault; it’s just the nature of the human body. Any joint is vulnerable if you over use it. For example, doing too many standing forward bends can cause back strain, just as too much gardening can.
You’ll be missing out on yoga’s other benefits. It’s like eating the same thing every day—even if its healthy food you’ll still be missing out on some of your important nutrients. For example, if the only sequence you do is an active one, you’ll be missing out on the many benefits provided by restorative or quieting sequencing. Or, if the only balance pose you do throughout the week is Tree pose, you’ll miss out on challenging your balance in other important ways.
Mixing it up keeps you from getting into a rut, which can lead to getting bored with your practice. Moving out of your comfort zone in your practice is the best way to keep your mind stimulated (good for brain health!), and to learn something about your habits and thought patterns while you’re at it.
So if you’re not already doing varying your home practice, now is a good time to start mixing it up! If you’re stuck for ideas, you can find lots of new sequences on our blog (search under “Featured Sequence”), as well as in various yoga books and yoga videos. And if you want to change up some of your current sequences, see Stuck in Rut for some simple ways to do this.
It is easy for us all to go to a class and be lead through a wonderful, balanced practice, but it’s quite a challenge for most people to come up with a similar practice on their own. However, one of the important advantages of practicing at home is being able to customize your practice for your particular needs and desires on a given day. But if designing a yoga practice from scratch is too overwhelming to consider, a good way first step is to tinker a bit with a practice that you found on our blog, elsewhere online, or in a book. It’s simpler than you might imagine!
In this post we’ll make some basic recommendations for how you can customize any practice to make it:
More gentle
More vigorous
Shorter or longer
Adapted to your particular limitations
Making a Practice More Gentle
You can make any practice more gentle by:
For dynamic poses, do fewer repetitions, for example, do 3 rounds of dynamic Warrior 2 instead of 6.
For static poses, use shorter holds, for example, hold Warrior 3 pose for 3 instead of 6.
For restorative poses, extend your time in the poses.
Leave out the most vigorous pose or poses from the sequence, either just skipping them or replacing them with gentle or restorative poses.
Between active poses, rest in Savanana or another resting pose.
Making a Practice More Vigorous
You can take any practice, other than a restorative practices and make it more vigorous in the following simple ways:
For dynamic poses, add more repetitions, for example, do 10 rounds of dynamic Warrior 2 instead of 6.
For static poses, extend your holds, for example, hold Warrior 3 pose for 10 or 12 breaths instead of 6. And instead of doing poses only once, you can repeat them a second of third time.
Repeat a series of static pose an extra time.
Add in any poses you feel are more vigorous for you, placing them after the warm-up poses and before the cooling down poses.
Making a Practice Shorter or Longer
We all feel the time crunch now and then, and, conversely, sometimes find that we have extra time on a given day. You can easily adjust the length of your practice depending on how much time you have to devote to it on any given day.
To shorten a practice:
For dynamic poses, do fewer repetitions.
For static poses, use shorter holds.
Eliminate any poses from the sequence that are less appealing today. Just be sure to keep in at least some of the initial warm-up poses and at least one cool-down pose.
To lengthen a practice:
Lengthen your time in some of the poses, either increasing repetitions of dynamic poses or extending your holds in static or restorative poses.
Repeat your favorite pose or poses a few times.
Add in more poses of the same type. For example, in a backbend sequence, add in more backbends, or in a strength building sequence, add in more strength building poses.
Add in a short meditation or breath practice that is not in the sequence.
Rest in Savanana or another resting pose between poses.
Take an extra long time in Savasana.
Adapting a Practice to Your Limitations
Injury. You can still practice with an injury by adapting the individual poses to your limitations. For example, with shoulder injury, you can keep your arms down at your sides in many standing poses or practice the wall version of Downward-Facing Dog pose instead of the full version. For those poses you cannot adapt, you can simply skip them, for example, skip Plank pose with a shoulder injury. When you’re in the acute and recovery phrases of an injury, floor sequences and chair variations are good substitutions.
Illness. When you are ill or recovering from an illness, focus on gentle, restorative practices until you recover. When you’re ready for a gentle practice, use our recommendations above to make your first active practice days easier.
Disability. If you’re working with a longer-term disability, adapt your practice as we described for an injury. Because you'll be practicing this way for a long period of time, it may also be worth getting special guidance from a skilled teacher for creative ways you can adapt various poses to your condition.
Have fun practicing! And don't be afraid to get creative.
I don’t know about you, but Ram’s post The Dangers of Being Sedentary scared me a bit. Findings from a recent study showed that individuals who sat for more than 11 hours daily were 40 percent more likely to die within the next three years than those who sat for four hours or less daily—even when people’s physical activity at other times of the day was accounted for. Studies have also indicated that sitting daily for less than 3 hours and watching TV for less than 2 hours extends life expectancy by an estimated 1 to 2 years. Studies reported in the prestigious journals Lancet and the British Medical Journal suggest that a sedentary lifestyle is the cause of one in 10 deaths worldwide. It’s now known that Americans are working less (26 minutes a day less compared to Y2007) and idling off more. Adults in the U.S. spend an average of 55 percent of their day engaged in some kind of sedentary behavior (see Sedentary behaviour and life expectancy in the USA: a cause-deleted life table analysis). In his post, Ram identified two obstacles that cause us to be sedentary: styana (inefficiency, idleness, procrastination, dullness) and alasya (laziness, sloth). The problem is, how do we overcome these obstacles? I mean, we all basically know that sitting around all day isn’t a good thing, but after hours of doing it—so many of us sit at desks all day or have long commutes—inertia tends to set in. And this can create a lot of resistance to the idea of getting up to practice yoga, even if you know it will be good for you and that you’ll feel better afterward. You think: Oh, I just don’t feel like it today—maybe tomorrow. "Old man, stiff man, weak man, sick man, they can all take practice but only a lazy man can't take practice." — Sri K. Pattabhi Jois I know this because even after years of practicing yoga at home on my own, I sometimes notice that tendency in myself. I do have some tricks up my sleeve, however. And I thought today would be a good day to share them, so you’d have some new ideas for fighting both styana and alysya. My first trick is a mental one: I tell myself that I don’t need to do a full practice, that I can just do one single pose, you know, like Downward-Facing Dog. But I might want to warm up a bit before that one, so, let’s see, maybe a Half Downward-Facing Dog at the wall followed by a full Downward-Facing Dog on my mat. And guess what, by that time, my energy starts flowing and my momentum starts to build, and I end up doing a full-length practice.
My second trick is to pick a pose to start that will energize me, even just a bit. I know that moving with your breath is a good way to fire up your energy. So standing in Mountain pose and raising arms overhead on the inhalation and down by your sides on the exhalation is a good way to energize yourself, maybe even shake off a feeling of depression, and that can lead to some other vinyasas or who knows where. But if you don’t feel like standing up—yeah, I know, sometimes you just don’t—you can get on your hands and knees and do the Cat-Cow pose, inhaling as you come into the Cow position (the sway back position) and exhaling as you come into the Cat pose (the arching position). That leads very nicely into Downward-Facing Dog pose, and then maybe Standing Forward Bend, by which time you might feel ready to stand up on your mat! My third trick is that when I’m feeling particularly tired or lazy, I tell myself that I can start lying down. Ah, yes, lying down sounds real good.
Often I start with Reclined Leg Stretch and other reclined hip openers, and even just moving my legs around gets me in the mood for a Downward-Facing Dog pose (and helps make that pose easier), which in turn leads....
Another way to energize yourself is to open your chest, and that’s also a good way to counteract all the forward bending you’ve been doing by sitting down for hours. Good news is this is also something you can do lying down. Try a passive backbend over a blanket roll or a bolster for three or more minutes (see Featured Pose: Supported Backbend). Then roll over and see what you might feel like doing next. Lately I’ve been starting by doing a reclined shoulder opener that my teacher often has us do in the middle of class: lying on your back, with a strap just above your elbows, bring your arms up and overhead (if they don’t reach the floor, try holding a block between your hands). Three minutes of that, and if I’m not ready for Downward-Facing Dog pose, I might procrastinate a bit with some reclined hip stretches. It’s all good. And if this strategy doesn’t work? What if you only end up doing just the one or two poses? Well, that’s much better than nothing. It might even start a new habit that will allow you to gradually grow into a longer practice over time—my own home practice started with me practicing just a few poses. And, besides, you can always try again in a couple of hours.... Of course, what I’ve mentioned here are just a few of many possibilities. Readers, how do you shake off your lethargy and start moving? I’d love to hear your recommendations. Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect
I’ve designed this quieting sequence—which can be helpful if you are suffering from stress or anxiety, or just need to chill—to prepare you to practice supported seated forward bends. If done with the right amount of support, seated forward bends can be very quieting poses. However, unless you are naturally very flexible in your hamstrings (the backs of your thighs) and your back muscles, you do need to experiment a bit with different types of propping to find the type of support that will allow the poses feel nurturing and calming rather than uncomfortable and aggravating.
Basically there are two different ways to support yourself in a forward bend. The first way—which Baxter mentioned in his post Male Body Image and Yoga as a revelation to him—is to use a bolster or rolled blanket under your straight leg or legs. For example, here is Baxter in Seated Forward Bend (Paschimottanasana):
See Getting Comfortable in Forward Bends for information about this type of support forward bends. In this version, you do round your back a bit. If rounding your back isn’t a good idea for you (due to back problems) or just doesn’t feel good to you, you can try supporting your hands and head on a chair the way I’m doing in this photo (a version that works really well for me):
See Soothing Yourself with Supported Forward Bends for information about this type of supported forward bends. In this version, you keep your spine straight, so you need to be sure the chair seat is high enough to support your head without rounding your spine (it might be necessary to put some folded blankets on top of the chair seat).
This sequence begins with leg stretches to open your hips and lengthen your hamstrings (the backs of your thighs). The Half Dog pose and Standing Forward bend also stretch your legs while at the same time lengthening your spine and opening your shoulders. The standing poses also open your hips, lengthen your hamstrings, lengthen your spine, and open your shoulders. But because these are more active, demanding poses, they can help you release physical stress from your body to prepare you for sitting quietly.
The Cobbler’s pose (Baddha Konasana) is a seated pose that will transition you from the active poses to quieter ones, while at the same time preparing your hips for the first seated forward bend.
After the two seated forward bends, practicing Child’s pose, either with or without support, will continue to quiet you, while at the same time releasing your lower back. If this pose doesn’t work for you, you can skip it.
Ending with Legs Up the Wall or Easy Inverted pose continues to quiet your nervous system while resting your lower back.
Quieting Sequence
1. Standing Leg Stretches (Padangusthasana), 30 seconds to 1.5 minutes per side. Follow the instructions here.
2. Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana) with Chair, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Follow the instructions here.
3. Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) with Chair, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Depending on the length of your torso, you’ll need to stand some distance away from the front of your chair seat. As you come into the pose, focus on bending from your hip joints, not rounding your back. Keeping your back straight (step back if necessary), rest your head on your folded arms, tugging your forehead skin gently toward your nose. If the chair seat is not high enough for you, place folded blankets on the seat to raise it.
4. Warrior 2 pose (Virbradrasana), 30 seconds to 1 minute per side. Follow the instructions here. For this practice, focus on moving slowly in and out of the pose to maintain quietness.
5. Triangle Pose (Trikonasana), 30 seconds to 1 minute per side. As you come into the pose, focus on lifting up and over your hip joint as you keep lengthening your spine. Move slowly in and out of the pose to maintain quietness. Use enough support for your bottom hand to keep the pose comfortable.
6. Extended Side Angle Pose (Parsvakonasana), 30 seconds to 1 minute per side. After you bend your front knee, focus on lifting up and over your hip joint as you keep lengthening your spine to come into the pose. Move slowly in and out of the pose to maintain quietness. Use enough support for your bottom hand to keep the pose comfortable.
7. Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana), 30 seconds to 1 minute.
8. Cobbler’s Pose (Baddha Konasana), 1.5 minutes. Sit on a support that is high enough so your knees are at the same level with or below your hips (version 1 or 2 in this video). Focus on lengthening your spine up as your relax your hip joints.
9. One-Legged Forward Bend (Janu Sirsasana) with Bolster or Chair, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Start by sitting on a support with two straight legs, then bend your right knee and let your right leg drop out to the side in a half Cobbler's pose. Place your bolster under your left leg or, if you're using the chair, have your left leg under the chair seat. Then, to come into the forward bend, focus on bending from your hip joints, not rounding your back. If you are doing the version with a support under your straight leg, you can allow you back to gently round once you are in the pose. If you are doing the version with a chair, keep your back straight. Rest your head on your folded arms, tugging your forehead skin gently toward your nose. If you are using the chair seat and it is not high enough for you, place folded blankets on the seat to raise it. We don't have photos of this pose, but picture the next pose with one bent leg and one straight leg.
10. Seated Forward Bend (Paschimottanasana) with Bolster or Chair, 3 minutes if possible. Start by sitting on a support. Then, place a bolster or rolled blankets under both legs or, if you are using th chair, lengthen both legs under the chair seat. As you come into the pose, focus on bending from your hip joints, not rounding your back. If you are doing the version with a support under your straight leg, you can allow you back to gently round once you are in the pose. If you are doing the version with a chair, keep your back straight. Rest your head on your folded arms, tugging your forehead skin gently toward your nose. If you are using the chair seat and it is not high enough for you, place folded blankets on the seat to raise it.
11. Child’s Pose (Balasana), with or without support, 1 to 3 minutes. For instructions on the supported version, see here. If you are doing the supported version, make sure to turn your head to the second side halfway through the pose. And if you have trouble deeply flexing your knees or flexing your ankles and feet, as an alternative to regular Childs pose, try flipping onto your back and hugging your legs gently to your chest.
12. Legs Up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani) or Easy Inverted Pose, 5 to 15 minutes. For instructions Legs Up the Wall Pose and Easy Inverted Pose. If it is comfortable for you, support yourself on the bolster or blankets so that your lower back is curved again (letting your tailbone tip down off the support).
Last week when I wrote about mortician Caitlin Doughty Welcome to Your Mortality, I mentioned that I’d heard her say in her Fresh Air interview that she “took care” of herself by “doing yoga.” When I heard her say that, I laughed to myself because that very same subject—using yoga to take care of yourself—was on my mind as something I wanted to write about because it was what I had been doing myself the last few weeks (see Friday Q&A: Practicing to Manage Stress). Of course, the statement “I do yoga” was a rather vague, and it made me want to ask her, “What exactly do you do?” But the vagueness also made me think.
Because there are really two different levels to taking care of yourself by doing yoga. The first level, which is enough to satisfy many people, is just to take yoga classes on a regular basis. It seems that the combination of exercise and time spent focusing on mindful movement, with some relaxing practices added into the mix, can help many people deal with difficulty and stress in their lives.
But to take it to the next level, you need to start practicing yoga at home! When you practice at home, you can customize your practice not only for your particular body but also to help you deal with whatever is currently going on in your life and/or with your body. Recently, I’ve been using my home practice to gradually recover from a particularly stressful period. For a time, I focused exclusively on practicing quieting poses and practices, and avoided stimulating poses, such as active backbends and more challenging poses. Now that I’m feeling better, I’m gradually becoming more and more active in my practice, and returning to an asana practice that is more typical for me, including standing poses, backbends, and Sun Salutations. Soon I’ll be adding in some of my challenge poses. And because I have arthritis in my right hip, I’ve continued to incorporate hip stretches into all my practices to maintain my range of motion and nourish my hip joint.
To encourage you to take your yoga practice to the next level, here are six basic ways you can customize your practice to take better care of yourself:
1. Manage Your Stress. When you are going through a stressful period, focus your practice on reducing your stress levels. You have a lot of choices for relaxing poses and practices that you can include in your sequences (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga) or just practice on their own. For some people, including active poses to release physical stress is helpful, but when you’re stressed out, it’s always a good idea to follow up your active poses with a nice, long relaxing pose or practice. If you’re having trouble sleeping, consider practicing yoga for better sleep (see Five Tips for Better Sleep).
2. Balance Your Emotions. If you’re feeling off-balance emotionally—whether that means feeling depressed or anxious or angry—you can include poses in your practice that help improve your emotional state and avoid those that seem to aggravate it. Although the way poses, breath practices, and meditation affects your emotional body can vary from person to person, we do have some general guidelines that may help you design your practice (see Yoga and Your Emotions and How Your Breath Affects Your Nervous System).
3. Balance Your Body. Depending on your particular body and the activities you already do in your daily life, you can focus your practice on improving your strength, flexibility, balance, and/or agility as needed. You should also consider the activities you already do—and what you love to do—and design a practice to support your ability to continue to do them. For example, I love to walk and garden, so after a weekend spent doing those activities, I’ll focus my Monday practice on balancing my body from all that hiking around and forward bending. See Continuing to Do What You Love for information.
4. Practice for Physical Conditions. If you have a physical problem or illness, you can often target your asana practice to help improve it. These include common physical pains, such as low back pain or mild arthritis, and some more serious conditions, such as heart disease, osteoporosis, or Parkinson's Disease. In the past three years, we written about a great many medical conditions, so if you’ve got a medical problem, try looking it up on the blog using the Search functions—see How to Search). For chronic pain, see Yoga and Pain Management. If there is a condition we haven’t addressed yet that you want to learn about, drop us a line (see Contact Us).
5. Practice with an Injury or Disability. Often people assume that if they have a physical injury, such as carpal tunnel syndrome or a sprained ankle, or permanent disability that prevents them from doing the full range of poses, they have to stop practicing yoga entirely. But there is almost always something you can do, and you can often come up with a nice sequence that doesn’t involve the injured or disabled part of your body (see Doing Yoga Without). And, of course, you can always practice meditation, breath work, and supported restorative poses.
6. Read Yoga Books. While some yoga teachers discuss yoga philosophy and history during class, many simply lead an asana class. So if you haven’t read any yoga philosophy, you may find it to be a revelation (see Why You Should Study Yoga Philosophy). And finding just a single gem of wisdom to guide you in your daily life can make a huge difference. Reading yoga practice books can give you new ideas for poses and practices to try at home. And reading yoga history books can give you a deeper understanding of how the yoga practice evolved and what are some of the myths about yoga that really need debunking. Because one of the niyamas is self study (see The Power of Self Study (Svadyaya), Part 1 and Part 2), this is definitely practicing yoga!
To help you put together your own sequences, we have a number of general posts on sequencing. See Iyengar-Style Sequencing, Part 1 to start. I hope this inspires you!
Although it’s a rather new concept, approaching yoga poses as a mindfulness practice is a very powerful tool for improving your physical and mental health. Whether you are trying to change your eating habits, reduce your stress, or heal from disease, learning to listen to your body is crucial. In his wonderful book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn points out what happens if we simply operate in automatic-pilot mode: "One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse or lose control of as a result of being the automatic-pilot mode is our own body. We may be barely in touch with our body, unaware of how it is feeling most of the time. As a consequence we can be insensitive to how our body is being affected by the environment, by our actions, and even by our own thoughts and emotions. If we are unaware of these connections, we might easily feel that our body is out of control and we will have no idea why." Kabat-Zinn goes on to say that physical symptoms are the messages your body is giving you that allow you to know how it is doing and what its needs are. "When we are more in touch with our body as a result of paying attention to it systematically, we will be far more attuned to what it is telling us and better equipped to respond appropriately. Learning to listen to your own body is vital to improving your health and the quality of your life." And one of the best ways to pay attention to your body systematically is to bring mindfulness into your asana practice. I, myself, have learned to recognize certain physical symptoms that tell me when I’m overstressed (for example, a burning feeling in my chest). When I experience those sensations, I know it’s time for me to scale back temporarily and practice the yoga poses that calm me down. In my interview with Elizabeth (see Meditation and Healthy Eating) about mindfulness and eating, she talked about learning, from both meditation and asana practice, to recognize when she was actually hungry versus thirsty or had low potassium and that has helped her lose and keep off 50 pounds. So how you make your asana practice a mindfulness practice? Kabat-Zinn writes: "We practice the yoga with the same attitude that we bring to sitting meditation or body scan. We do it without striving and without forcing. We practice accepting our body as we find it, in the present, from one moment to the next. While stretching or lifting or balancing, we learn to work at our limits, maintaining moment-to-moment awareness. We are patient with ourselves. As we carefully move up to our limits in a stretch, for instance, we practice breathing at that limit, dwelling in the creative space between not challenging the body at all and pushing it too far." If that’s not enough—or if you have fallen into a rut with your practice that’s putting you in automatic-pilot mode, I have some specific suggestions:
Practice yoga at home. Practicing on your own, without the distraction of the teacher telling you what to do you or other people in the room, forces you to pay more attention to your own experience of being in the poses.
Pick a single physical sensation to follow throughout your entire practice, whether it is the quality of your breath in every single pose, the even distribution of weight on your feet—the balls as well as the heels—in every pose, or even something more arcane.
Change your routine. If you do practice at home and are in stuck in rut, try doing something different. Practice on the left side first instead of the right. How does that feel? Or, do all your twisting poses, even all the standing the poses, without turning your head. Twist from your spine only and leave your head looking down at the floor. Notice how hard that is, and how different your neck feels.
Try using props if you never have. See what difference it makes. Or, if you use props regularly, try a different height (lower or higher) or try practicing without props for once and see what a difference that makes.
Try holding poses for longer periods of time than you usually do. Notice the resistance that comes up in your body (as well as your mind).
Q: Following the stressful weeks you have just been through, what kind of yoga practice are you craving and what will you include in your home practice to meet that desire?
A: After many, many years of practicing on my own, I do develop specific cravings for yoga poses, depending both on my emotional and physical state. In my case, stress affects me in a very distinctive way: I become hyper, a little manic, and I have a hard time sleeping. So what I really crave (and know from experience will work for me) during a stressful period is the calming superpowers of supported inverted poses (see All About Supported Inverted Poses and Why You Should Love Your Baroreceptors ). What I love about these poses is that they don’t take a lot of mental effort for me (I do breath practices as well but you have to focus on those). I just get myself into the poses, and the magic calming action just kicks in.
The two poses I crave the most are Legs Up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani) and Headstand (Sirsasana). Legs Up the Wall is a guaranteed stress buster for me, and sometimes if I don’t have time for a long practice, I’ll just do the pose on its own (see A Woman Did a Single Yoga Pose and What Happened Next Will Blow Your Mind). Headstand isn’t so much calming for me as grounding. Part of my stress response is to get very flighty and distracted (hahaha, my son recently observed that when I get hyper, I interrupt MYSELF while I’m talking). So if my practice is longer, I like to add Headstand to my sequence, along with its traditional counter-pose, Shoulderstand (Salamba Sarvangasana), and finish off with a long Legs Up the Wall pose.
Yesterday I did my go-to stress reduction sequence, which is actually rather long (though very effective). I started with reclined leg stretches (see Featured Pose: Reclined Leg Stretch ) and hip openers, and then a long shoulder opener. These helped me prepare for the inverted poses, and also released held tension from my legs (I’ve been walking a lot). Then I did all the supported inverted poses, in the following order:
Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana) with head support
Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) with head support
Widespread Standing Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottanana) with head support
Headstand (Sirsana)
Shoulderstand (Salamba Sarvangasana) with a chair
Plow pose (Halasana) with a chair
Supported Bridge pose (Setubanda Sarvangasana) with straight legs
Legs Up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani)
You can see photos of all these poses in my post All About Supported Inverted Poses. I do understand that some of those poses are not accessible to our readers (though you can do just the ones that are, skipping over the ones that aren’t).
In the days to come, as I recover from a very stressful few weeks, I’m going to plan several sequences that prepare me for a nice, long Legs Up the Wall pose. For example, a series of straight leg standing poses (such as Triangle pose, Half Moon pose, and Pyramid pose) will prepare me for seated forward bends, and after a few seated forward bends, I’ll be all set for a nice Legs Up the Wall pose. (If I want to do Headstand again—actually I try to refrain from doing this every day to keep from overstressing my neck—I’ll put that and Shoulderstand before the seated forward bends). Or, I might do a few twisting standing poses (such as Revolved Triangle and Revolved Half Moon) and then some seated twists, ending with, yes, you guessed it, Legs Up the Wall pose. Headstand/Shoulderstand could come either before or after the seated twists. I will avoid active backbends for some time (I find these over-stimulating when I’m stressed), though I will do some passive backbends to keep my body balanced.
At night, before sleep, I will do a short session of breath practice, where I lengthen my exhalations (see Yoga You Can Do in Bed and Yoga for Better Sleep). The hope is that by practicing conscious relaxation immediately before sleep, I’ll sleep more soundly. I do the same practice if I wake in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.
I do know that other people might find restorative yoga helpful when they are feeling stressed out (see Restorative Yoga: An Introduction). This is especially true for people who find inverted poses challenging, but I suspect it also has to do with natural temperament, maybe even according to Ayurvedic types. So I just don’t feel like practicing restorative yoga poses, unless I’m exhausted.
Q: Now, I’m curious about you, dear readers. What are your go-to asanas when you’re going through a stressful period or your nervous system feels over-stimulated? And why do you think those poses work well for you? Please let me know either in the comments section of this post or on our Facebook page.
As some of you may remember, during this last winter, Baxter and I became concerned about people we were hearing about who were afraid of leaving the house because they were worried about falling on the winter ice. Even worse, we heard about a couple of people who had fallen and who had then lost all their confidence in their physical abilities. The real problem here is that loss of confidence can lead to inactivity, and that inactivity in turn leads to stiffness, weakness, loss of balance and/or loss of agility. But we knew that yoga could help these people so we got started blogging!
First, Baxter wrote a general post about how you can use yoga to cultivate balance specifically for dealing with icy conditions (see Winter Ice, Fear of Falling and Yoga).
But I decided that I wanted to help a specific individual, a women who had left a comment on my post Regaining Stability for Free. Here is the original comment: “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!”
So I followed up with this reader to find out more about her particular issues, and with Baxter’s help I came up with three short yoga sequences for her to practice as a way to regain both her physical abilities and her confidence (see Starting to Move Again ). The three sequences were:
1. Baxter’s classic Low Back Care Practice. Because our reader was having back problems in addition to fear of falling, I hoped this sequence would help relieve back pain and restore a feeling of physical wellbeing.
2. Baxter’s classic Mini Restorative Practice . Because our reader was feeling anxious, I hoped this sequence would help relieve stress. And because she was stiff from lack of exercise, this sequence would allow her to gently and passively regain flexibility.
3. My Gentle All-Around Practice. Because the standing poses in this sequence build strength in the lower body and improve balance and stability, I felt this sequence would be helpful for our reader as well as for anyone who is afraid of falling.
My hope was that practicing these sequences on a regular basis would, over time, restore our reader’s flexibility, balance, and feelings of self confidence, and allow her to be a “vibrant, moving being” once again.
Now that it’s spring, I decided to check back in with her to see how the program had worked for her. The news was so good, I decided I had to share it with you. Here’s what she said:
“The moment I started practicing, I knew that I had the tools to positively effect a change, and that translated, almost immediately, into regaining my confidence. And once I got my flexibility back, it was as if there was a mind-body reconnection as well. Although I sometimes backslide, when I do attend to the poses and sync my mind with my body, I feel pretty much invincible!”
I’m partly sharing this with you simply because it makes me so happy! But there is also an important takeaway: having a home practice, however basic, is empowering. Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook
by Nina So there I was at the airport, early as usual, and feeling rather restless. I hadn’t had a chance to do yoga that day or even take a walk, and I really wanted to do some kind of active yoga practice. The thing is, I really did not want to touch the carpet. It looked particularly filthy—probably because thousands of people walked on it with their dirty shoes every day, spilled their coffee drinks on it, rolled their strollers across it—you know. So I thought for a moment about what kind of practice I could do keeping my shoes on and using just my airport chair as a prop but that still involved a lot of movement. Fortunately, I usually wear pants with some give (either loose or stretchy) and always flat shoes. Here’s what I came up with:
Half Downward-Facing Dog with hands on the chair.
Several Sun Salutations with my hands on the chair (so that meant hands on the chair seat for Lunge, Plank, and Upward-Facing Dog)
All the standing poses I could think of that did not involve balance on one foot (I was pretty sure my shoes would throw off my balance). Warrior 2, Warrior 1, Triangle pose and Revolved Triangle, Extended Side Angle pose and Revolved Triangle—that sort of thing, ending with Pyramid pose.
Standing shoulder openers (see Standing Shoulder Stretches). At this point I was guarding the suitcases so my husband could take a little walk.
Oops! It’s time to board the plane
I have to say, I did feel a lot better after my practice. And if I’d had a bit more time, I would have done some finishing poses, like maybe some seated twists in the chair followed by a chair forward bend of some sort (see Mini Office Yoga Sequence). Sometimes these restrictions even make your travel yoga practice more fun as they force you to be creative. I hope this inspires you to try practicing yoga when you're stuck somewhere, even in less than ideal circumstances. And if you have your own story about doing creative yoga in a challenging situation, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section. Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook
Since we’re all “householders”— the term yogis use for people who live with their families and work during the day at jobs or in the home (as opposed to being monks or hermits)—we’re not doing yoga all day long. Most of our days are taken up with the activities that make up our real life, including both work and play. And many of these activities, whether they entail being sedentary or moving around a lot, can be hard on our bodies. But your yoga practice can help you balance your body from the physical stresses you experience, allowing you to keep up with the physical demands of your real life. Let’s start by talking about our jobs, which take up so much of our time each day. Having a desk job where you sit for eight hours or more a day can cause physical pain and injuries, including low back and neck problems as well as repetitive stress injuries, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Too much sitting is also associated with obesity, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and colorectal cancer, among other problems. However, a well-rounded, active yoga practice will counteract many of the problems caused by hours of being sedentary. A well-rounded yoga practice allows you to stretch tight muscles, strengthen weak muscles and improve your circulation for heart and joint health. You can also target your practice to balance your body from too much sitting by doing shoulder stretches, backbends, leg stretches, and hip openers to keep your back, hips and neck healthy. And upper body strengthening and stretching poses will help protect your hands, wrists, and arms. For people who work in a standing position, such as restaurant workers, store clerks, or factory workers, being on your feet all day brings its own special problems, including back problems, as well as hip, leg, knee and myriad of foot problems. By getting your body moving with an active asana practice, you’ll release held tension in your muscles and support good circulation. By practicing yoga back care and upper body strengthening poses, you can help keep your back strong and healthy. And by including poses where your legs are inverted, you can rest your feet and legs, and reduce swelling. More active work, such as construction work or gardening, provides beneficial daily exercise but can also lead to physical imbalances, with some muscles being overdeveloped and tight while others remain weak. A well-rounded yoga practice will help balance your body, stretching tighter muscles and strengthening weaker ones, and you can also target your practice to address specific physical problems you might be experiencing. For example, I spend a lot of time gardening, which involves bending down for hours at a time, which can lead to back strain, and reaching forward, which can lead to a tight neck and shoulders. To balance my body after an intensive gardening weekend, I’ll practice twists to release my back muscles and mild backbends to strengthen over-stretched back muscles, and I release my tight shoulders and neck with upper body stretches. And what about the fun stuff you do during your time off? Well, the sports and other activities that you do for exercise or pleasure, such as running, hiking, biking, and gardening though excellent forms of exercise can create imbalances in your body because you’re moving your body repeatedly through the same motions. For example, while biking, your legs are cycling over and over as your upper body is hunched over your handlebars. Other favorite forms of exercise, such as tennis or golf, are literally imbalanced, as you do all your hitting or swinging with one arm. But, as you may know, professional athletes from football teams such as the Seattle Seahawks (who won the 2014 Super Bowl, by the way) to Olympic figure skaters practice yoga to balance their muscular systems as well as to stay focused, and you can too. For example, if cycling is your favorite sport or mode of transportation, you can use your yoga practice to release your tight chest muscles and relieve back strain, and to stretch your tight outer hips and calves, as Bridget does (see Yoga and Cycling). See Continuing To Do What You Love for a little more info on this general topic. How about you? Do you use your yoga practice to balance your body for work or play? Tell us about it! Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get stuck in a rut with my yoga practice. I have a few different sequences that I’ve developed for myself, and I tend to fall back on them again and again. Then I start to get a little bored. So lately I’ve been making a conscious effort to change things up a bit. Of course it would be a lot of work to write a completely new sequence for myself every day. So instead I’ve been focusing on spicing up my typical sequences. It’s kind of like deciding to remodel a room in your house by making just a few changes, such as buying new curtains or throw pillows, rearranging the pictures, or even just by adding a vase of fresh flowers. Sometimes a small change can make everything else look different. Here are a few tips for “remodeling” your home practice: 1. Add a new pose to your sequence, one that you never practiced at home before or haven’t practiced in a long time. I’m pretty good about working my way through the various standing poses on a regular basis, but I always forget about Dancer’s pose for some reason. Welcome back, Dancer's pose! 2. Replace a stretch you typically do one way with another pose that stretches the same area. For example, to stretch the fronts of my thighs of my thighs the other day, I tried replacing my Reclined Hero Pose with Frog pose. I hadn’t done that in years! 3. Subtract a pose you always do just to see what happens. Do you always practice Downward-Facing Dog or Triangle pose? What would happen if you skipped them? Would your other poses feel different? 4. Start working on a pose you think you “can’t” do. For example, maybe you think you can’t do arm balances, but even taking the shape of a pose like Crow without lifting your feet off the ground is doing a form of the pose. Maybe you can even lift one foot off for a second or two. Keep it light and playful, and you might find this adds a new element of fun to your practice. 5. Face down a pose that you dislike. On a day when you feel up to it, try doing that pose that you really dislike (you know which one I mean) just briefly. Whew! Sometimes it can be exhilarating to take on something you’ve been avoiding (kind of like finally cleaning out your closet). Readers, do you have any other tips for spicing up a sequence? Let us know in the comment section! Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook
Yesterday morning, shortly after I awoke, I received a phone call from my son letting me know that my uncle had died. He was 86 and in poor health so the news wasn’t totally unexpected, yet because he wasn’t suffering from a terminal illness the way both my parents had—he died of a heart attack—it was a bit of a shock. So then there was that surreal feeling— you’re living in the same world, with the same furniture in your house and the same scenery out your window and the same list of errands you need to get done that you were leaving in just moments before, yet somehow everything has ineluctably changed. After making a couple of phone calls and talking with my aunt, my cousin and my son, Brad and I went out for one our usual Sunday walks. We talked about my uncle as we walked, reminiscing about quintessential stories of him (one of my special memories was of him, knowing how nervous I was before a certain public event I needed to participate in—a book party at Donna Karan’s New York store for the release of Yoga: The Poetry of the Body—carefully preparing for me a “magic” baked apple that he said would protect me from any unpleasantness I might encounter). On the way home from our walk, we even stopped at the plant nursery and bought fertilizer for our soon-to-bloom spring garden. But when we got home, we were both hit with sudden waves of fatigue. It was a reaction we both found surprising, and yet that was how we were both feeling. And this morning, I found myself, though wide awake, feeling even more exhausted. Then I remembered that fatigue, surprisingly, can be one of the symptoms of grief, so I went and reread an interview I’d done with Bonnie Maeda, a former hospice nurse who teaches yoga for moving through grief, and sure enough she said: “Also, there are some common physical manifestations of grief such as fatigue, a sense of heaviness, anxiety, and lack of motivation, which I believe the practice of yoga can support and even improve. I believe each of our emotions have an energy that presides in the body. Yoga, with its movement and focus on the mind -body connection, can support an individual's experience of their personal grief response.” My experience of grief after losing my parents was so different. In particular, with my mother’s death, I kept saying that I was surprised at how closely grief resembled stress. And because that was how I was feeling, the yoga practice that I turned to almost every day was a very long session of Legs Up the Wall pose, with a eye pillow over my eyes and a focus on my breath. Even though I sometimes cried while I was in the pose, I did feel like that yoga practice kept me grounded in a way that allowed me to do all the things I had to do (as most of you probably know, there is a ton of business to take care of when a member of your immediate family dies). But for this loss, as I prepare myself to travel to the East Coast to be with my family, I’ll be turning to different practices. As always, the yoga that’s helpful for you in a particular situation varies from person to person as much as the situations themselves. As Bonnie said: “My favorite poses vary depending on where the student is in their grieving process. This is not necessarily a chronological time. It is more how they are processing their emotions, and the physical manifestations at the time. But in general what I have found to be beneficial working with students are the poses that soothe the nervous system. Forward bends, such as Parsvottanasana to a chair or blocks, seated forward bends, and supported Shoulderstand. I also link two or three standing poses together in a flow-like sequence to create a rhythm for the body and the breath.” For me, finding the right practice for myself on a given day is kind of like imagining the right meal to cook. Just thinking about it, what sounds good? Today, the idea of moving with my breath sounds about right. My uncle didn’t practice yoga but I do feel the way that he lived the last part of his life was a great example of healthy aging. He loved New York City, where he lived his whole life, and as long as he was able, he walked briskly all over the city. And his passions for theater, the visual arts, politics, baseball, his writing projects (he published a memoir called In My Father’s Bakery), and baking his own bread, and the enduring love he had for his wife kept him fully engaged in the present. But it was a very small practice of his that I kept coming back to yesterday. Every day, no matter what his plans were for that day—even if he was going to be staying in—he would put on a freshly laundered dress shirt and tie (some of his ties were really beautiful—I especially loved the flowery ones from Liberty of London). Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook
