Featured Sequence: Low Back Care

by Baxter

Several weeks ago, I introduced some thoughts on low back pain and yoga (see here). As I mentioned, the majority of episodes of lower back pain are related to short-term issues of muscle strain or spasm, or other soft tissue and joint situations that usually resolve in six weeks or so. However, it is possible that a regular yoga practice or a special sequence directed at the lower back area can speed up that process and get you back on track a bit sooner. I have frequently observed that for students who come to class for the first time, acute low back strain often requires only a few sessions in my Back Care Yoga class before the student is well enough to return to or advance to a regular yoga class. In this setting, the variety of poses that may be helpful is a bit larger than with more serious lower back injuries or conditions. For example, you can be a bit more comfortable with some twisting and forward bending poses, which often have to be modified in the other situation.

This week I would like to give you a very brief sequence of poses to consider when addressing low back pain. (The poses in the sequence are all poses that we have already featured individually on the blog.) My intention is to add to this basic sequence over time. However, I have found that it is better to start with shorter practices and advance things as you are ready. Some of the poses in this sequence can be done dynamically, with you moving in and out of the pose with your breath, while others are done more statically, with you holding the pose for 30-60 seconds in most cases.

1. Reclined Hip Stretch Sequence (Dynamic). See here for a complete description of pose. 

2. Reclined Leg Stretch Sequence (Static). See here for a complete description of the pose.

3. Hunting Dog Pose (Static). See here for a complete description of the pose.

4. Half Dog at the Wall (Static). See here for a complete description of the pose.

5. Locust pose (Dynamic). See here for a complete description of the pose.

6. Knee to Chest pose (Dynamic). See here for a complete description of the pose.

7. Corpse Pose (Savasana) with Blanket Roll Behind your Knees (Static).

Notice how you feel after the practice and how you feel the next day. We’ll eventually add more poses to our back care routine, but these are a good start for you.

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Not All Yoga Poses Are Created Equal

by Nina

If you haven’t read it already, you might want to check out the article “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” in the Sunday New York Times Magazine (see here). So were Baxter and I—we’ve both read it—shocked and surprised to read that yoga can cause serious injuries? Well, not exactly. As teachers and long-time practitioners, we’ve both seen our share of injuries and had them ourselves, too. And for some time, I’ve been talking about wanting to write an article or post called “Not All Yoga Poses Are Created Equal” that would differentiate between relatively safe poses that can be done frequently by most people and other poses that should probably be done less often due to their tendency to provoke injury. (Think about it: you’re probably not going to hurt yourself doing Savasana unless you’re practicing near a bookshelf during an earthquake or something, however, poses that combine external rotation of the leg with a forward bend, such as One-Legged Seated Forward Bend aka Janu Sirsasana and maybe even Triangle and Extended Side Angle poses, if done too frequently really do have the potential to cause some pretty yucky injuries).

Forward bend with external rotation of bent leg

To be honest, there are a couple of myths in the yoga world that are currently in the process of being exposed. The first is that the poses have evolved over thousands of years and are therefore “perfect.” In fact, if you read books like Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton or The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace by N.E. Sjoman, you’ll learn that most of the poses we do in modern-day classes were developed during the early twentieth century. Of course the modern yogis who developed the poses (including Krishnamacharya and B.K.S. Iyengar) were geniuses, but they were also, like us, only human.

The second myth is that if you do a pose “properly” with the “correct alignment” it is always perfectly safe. And, conversely, that if you injure yourself, you must be doing something “wrong.” As you can see in the NY Times article, scientific research is backing up what many of us have already understood intuitively: that while there while there are certain robust individuals who seem to be able to do extreme forms of yoga without serious problems, that’s not really possible for the rest of us. For example, the Ashtanga Primary series is notoriously hard on the knee joints and Sun Salutations that include Chaturganga Dandasana (Pushup pose) are equally hard on vulnerable shoulder joints.

But does all that mean we should stop doing yoga?

Just yesterday a good friend of mine showed me her hand, which was still swollen and black and blue after a fall she took when she was walking her dog. And when I was in the software industry, a significant number of people I worked with seriously injured their wrists sitting at their desks, typing. My point is obvious; almost any physical activity you take up has the potential to cause injury. And we all need to continue being active. So for our practice of yoga, as in our other activities, it’s really of matter of combining knowledge with common sense. I’ve asked Baxter to work on a post where he specifically lists the poses that you should approach with caution, but in the meantime, here are some common sense guidelines:

• Don’t do a pose that hurts
• Don’t do the same poses or the same types of poses over and over (repetitive stress injuries are not limited to typists, cashiers, and factory workers)
• Come out of a pose early if you need to
• Use props as needed to help prevent overstretching or strain
• Find a yoga teacher who has had a long, thorough training and experience teaching people of your same age and condition
• Tell your teacher about any injuries you may have or any relevant health conditions

You may have noticed that for every pose we feature on our blog (and these are generally very safe and accessible poses), we provide a list of cautions. These are based our current best knowledge, but if you have any concerns of your own that we haven’t mentioned, follow your common sense and listen to your body.

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Friday Q&A: Yoga After Retina Repair

Q: I'm interested in discussion regarding yoga and retina issues.  Cautions and options for yoga after retina repair and doctor permission to return to class.

A: Thanks for your question regarding practicing safely with eye related concerns, specifically cautions and options for yoga after retina repair and doctor permission to return to class. This is not an uncommon concern among some of my students. In fact it came up again this past month, when a student had to undergo laser treatment to the retina for a partial tear to the back surface of the eye. His doc recommended avoiding inverting for a full two weeks. And I suspect given individual circumstances, you can expect even longer periods of rest from inverting before safely re-introducing poses like down dog to your practice. I suggested to my student that he could modify many of his poses and still practice safely at home and in class. For instance, I suggest half forward fold instead of full forward bend, half dog at the wall versus full down dog. It might also be good to avoid holding poses for a long time, as there could be a corresponding rise in blood pressure that could negatively influence the pressure in the eyes. A focus on restorative poses, calming pranayama (breath practices) and yoga nidra (guided relaxation) would likely support healing.

—Baxter

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When Less is More

by Nina

In Baxter’s post about meditation on Tuesday (see here), he recommended that students who want to start a meditation practice should start out small, with short sessions only a few times a week. This reminded me of a quote from The Wisdom of Yoga by Stephen Cope that not only made me laugh, but also made me really think about how to approach making changes in your life.

As Swami Kripalu often pointed out, Eight-Limbed Yoga begins not necessarily with the admonition to tell the truth, to be generous, chaste and so forth, but rather to be a little less greedy, a little less untruthful, a little less unchaste.

With regard to non-lying, Swami Kripalu said: “Our condition is such that we need not worry about practicing truth in speech, but merely need to delete a little untruth from the mass of untruth we usually speak. Therefore, to practice truth, we should decrease our practice of untruth.

Mushroom Closeup by Brad Gibson

Hey, is that a tiny blade of green grass in this photo?

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Featured Pose: Reclined Leg Stretch Sequence

by Baxter and Nina

The Reclined Leg Stretch sequence (Supta Padangusthasana) opens your hips and stretches the backs of your legs. It’s a perfect starting pose for just about any practice, as we usually like to start low (on the ground, that is!) and work up to standing poses. But it also works as a great standalone mini practice, providing relief for lower back pain or release of leg muscle tension due to sitting, traveling, or walking. And if you tend to store stress in your body, it’s also a great anti-stress pose after any stressful event or simply at the end of your work day.

The three variations of the pose take you first through forward folding at your hip joint, then, with your top leg out to the side, abduction of the femur, and finally, with your leg across the midline of your body, into a twist, adduction of the femur and rotation of the lower vertebrae of the spine, so you get overall opening of your hips and some twisting, too.

Baxter prescribes this pose for:

• any musculoskeletal conditions that result in tightness in the hamstrings, hips and lower back
• chronic back pain
• general knee conditioning
• stress relief

Instructions: Start by making a loop with the strap and have it ready off to your right side.

Now recline on your back, bend your right knee into your chest, place the loop over the arch of your right foot and straighten your leg toward the sky. Adjust the size of the loop so your arms can be comfortably straight. Press from both your hips to your heels. Stay in this version one for 14-16 breaths.

For the next variation, keep your bottom leg engaged and take the loop into your right hand and extend your left arm out to the side. Now slowly take your right leg out to the right side of the room until your foot is about 12 inches off the floor. If this feels painful or like too much effort is required to hold your leg in position, place a block or folded blanket under your right thigh for support. Stay for 14-16 breaths and on a exhale return to your leg to vertical.

Finally, take the loop into your left hand and extend your right arm out to the side. Then take your right leg across the midline of your body and over to your left side about 6-12 inches, keeping your lower back and pelvis on the floor.

Stay for 14-16 breaths, then release out of the pose, returning to a symmetrical position, either with legs straight or both knees bent, feet resting on the floor. Take a few moments to feel your body, and then repeat the series on your left side.

Cautions: Don’t pull your top leg aggressively toward your chest (although you can encourage it in that direction) as this could result in a strain to the origin of your hamstrings at your sitting bone, as well as aggravating a lower back condition if your lower back ends up flattening too firmly into the floor.

If you have weak wrists and fingers, you may need to modify the strap by making a loop and hooking your fingers over the loop to hold onto the strap—this makes it much gentler and easier for fingers and wrists.

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Mr Gym 1 Malaysia 2011–Full Results

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How to Meditate

by Baxter

Dock at Hadley Cove by Brad Gibson

Happy 2012 to all of our readers out there! It has been an exciting first few months for Brad, Nina and me, giving birth to Yoga for Healthy Aging. And I’m so pleased to hear from you, our readers, with your questions and contributions to our discussions and topics. Thanks, and I look forward to your feedback this coming year.

My last post of 2011 (see here) dealt with understanding classical yoga’s recommendations regarding meditation. It can be helpful to get the context on where things come from, but it's even more powerful to have some practical guidelines to put meditation onto practice. I often hear from my students that doing asana is so much easier for them than sitting quietly and practicing some form of meditation. It seems “doing” is so much easier than the simple “being” of meditation. Yet, if you need any reasons for meditation, you might check out Pico Iyer’s article "The Joy of Quiet" from this weekend’s New York Times (see here). The sheer pace of modern life cries out for us to stop and find stillness from time to time. With the information we discussed last time, I’d like to shift to some practical ways to begin you home meditation practice. So here we go!

First, don’t get caught up in how long to do a practice. Keep it simple and doable, with just 5 or 10 minutes at first and for a while. Set a timer of some sort so you don’t have to have thoughts about worrying how long you’ve been meditating. Second, don’t get too hung up on how to sit to meditate. In fact, you can meditate in Savasana (Corpse pose), as long as you can remain gently awake. But if you do decide to sit, you can sit in any way that feels comfortable to you (read not necessarily Lotus!). Use a chair or any props to get as comfortable as you can.
 Third, pick a simple focus for your mind to fix its attention on. This can be as simple as your inhale and exhale. It could be an object that you look at or imagine in your mind. Or it could be a repeated word or phrase that has positive meaning for you, called a "mantra" in Sanskrit. Mantras I’ve explored during meditation include the word “Om,” the phrase “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna,” and my grandmother’s name, Genevieve. If you decide to focus on a mantra, try repeating it on the inhalation and the exhalation in your mind. Don’t be surprised if your mind manages to squeeze a few distracting thoughts in while you are focused on the mantra.

Speaking of thoughts… Fourth, you are not trying to stop thoughts from happening. This is a bit confusing, because if you’ve explored the Yoga Sutras, you know the famous statement about one of yoga’s goals:

1.2: Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodhah

The translation of this phrase is “Yoga is the quieting or cessation of the fluctuations of the heart/mind.” But despite this lofty and difficult goal, at the beginning, allow yourself the opportunity to simply become familiar with the behavior of your thoughts. Consider watching them like you might watch a three year old play at the park, and don’t be surprised if your mind and the three year old seem strikingly similar! And each time you get distracted or absorbed in the thoughts, notice this happening and gently guide yourself back to your chosen focus. 

The rewards of consistent meditation practice are varied, but can include a sense of inner peacefulness, even when life is very busy, improved mental focus and concentration, and improved memory, as well as others you will discover on your own. So get started this new year, using the above guidelines, and let us know how it goes for you!

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