"Transferring" and Yoga: Wisdom from Jane Fonda

by Baxter

Nina recently shared with me some fascinating information about Jane Fonda, who has lived many lives, from actor to fitness guru to political activist, just to name a few.  Fonda reportedly used to practice a more strenuous yoga two hours a day. “But” she says now, “those days are long gone. It got to be too hard.” All of that hard work has paid off even as Fonda approaches her golden years, though. She puts it this way:

“Every single time I go to get out of a car now, I say ‘Thank you, Lord, I have strong quads. Because if I didn’t have strong quads, I couldn’t be independent. You have to keep your back and legs strong so you can remain free and independent.”

Truer words could not be spoken! In my years as a Family MD, I cared for a lot of seniors, seeing them in my office if they were still living independently, or making trips to the nursing home if they needed special care. And one of the key skills that often allowed my aging patients to remain at home, which is were they all preferred to be, was the ability to “transfer” independently. By this I mean that they could go, typically, from a sitting or reclining position, such as their bed, to a standing position without any assistance. And they had to be able to do the reverse, that is, safely transfer from standing to sitting. Obviously, if they could do this from the floor to standing or vice versa, they would be way ahead of most of their peers! I have a 75-year-old student who does just that each week in class with me.

I found this expended definition of “transfer” at the medical web site medicine.jrank.org:

“"Transferring" is the term used for moving from one condition to another, such as out of a bathtub, chair, or car, or getting into bed. The ability to transfer depends on many factors, including strength, balance, vision, and flexibility.”

Because of the physical benefits of a regular yoga practice, specifically maintaining flexibility, promoting muscular strength, improving balance and keeping the body agile, students who maintain a regular yoga practice are likely to remain independent much longer than their age-matched community, all other factors being equal. And even if they don’t have a vigorous practice like Jane did in her younger years, even a moderate or gentle yoga practice is likely to have the same four categorical benefits listed above.

Many of the standing poses would be likely to help with such daily activities such as getting in and out of the car.  Any standing pose that requires the knees to bend and straighten, such as entering, holding and exiting from Warrior 1 or 2, is simulating the action the knees, legs and hips perform for our car example (see Warrior 1 and Warrior 2 Mini Vinyasas). Even better would be Fierce pose (Utkatasana), also called Chair pose!, especially if you added in a twist. One of the more challenging transfers for older people is using the toilet in a standard bathroom. It is usually lower than a typical chair, and so presents more potential challenge for most. Yet, if you continue to practice in an intelligent, age-adjusted yoga class, such situations may be non-issues for the aging yoga practitioner.

In classes designed for seniors with no previous yoga experience, it is quite common to utilize chairs to modify many yoga poses. So, just by virtue of getting in and out the chair in class a few times in class, with mindfulness and attention to detail, the student is again performing a similar movement to other important daily activities. The stress-reducing practices of yoga, as well as the mental sharpening skills of dharana, or concentration practice, are also likely to improve our chances of remaining independent well into our later years. So, let’s follow Jane’s example and keep our body and mind strong and agile via a regular yoga practice, so that we won’t even need an extra thought as we push away from the dinner table, stand and move onto the next activity of our full and satisfying day! 

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Practicing Yoga Mindfully

by Nina

Raindrops and Reflections by Nina Zolotow

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 is 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 to 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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).

Anyone who has additional suggestions, please chime in!

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Friday Q&A: Sacroiliac (SI) Joint Injuries

Q: I have been having problems with low back pain caused by my sacroiliac joint (SI joint) going out of alignment. It seems like something I'm doing in my yoga practice is making it worse. I’m looking for both techniques to snap the sacrum and pelvis back into place and alignment, and advice on how to prevent this from happening. I would appreciate any help with this. I want to keep practicing!

A: I asked Baxter to answer this question because he’s the back care expert (and MD), but since I’ve had this problem myself, I know a little something about it. And maybe even have slightly different advice than Baxter. So Baxter asked me to preface his answer with my own.

First of all, this is a common injury for dancers and yoga practitioners, though not for the general population. In general, forward bends and twists take the sacroiliac (SI) joints out of alignment. Janu Sirsasana seems particularly bad. Backbends can put the joints back into proper alignment. So for now, I'll just suggest that at the end of a practice that includes forward bends and twists (even standing versions of these) that you include some kind of supported backbend before Savasana. Stay in the pose for at least three minutes. You want to restore the curve in your lower back. For example, Bridge pose with a block under the sacrum or even Legs Up the Wall pose with a bolster, where your lower back is arched over the bolster, can help restore the curve. (I’m recommending supported backbends because active backbends—which Baxter recommends below—at the end of a forward bend practice reverse the quieting effect of the practice. This is not really an issue for twisting practices. Regardless, you might try both as everyone is different.)

I also recommend that you read articles on the topic by Roger Cole on the Yoga Journal web site (see Protect the Sacroiliac Joints and Practice Tips for the SI Joints). I’ve learned a lot from him over the years, and have taken his workshop on the SI joint.

Finally, as wonderful as yoga is, it isn't necessarily the answer to everything, so you may need to take time off from certain poses or your asana practice entirely to heal before resuming practice. I, myself, as well as other yoga friends, have had good results from going to a chiropractor who realigns the sacrum manually. My chiropractor is also a yoga teacher—that's the perfect combination if you can find one. 

Now for Baxter’s reply.

—Nina

A: It might be helpful to our readers to define what we mean by “sacroiliac dysfunction.” Typically, the joint between your sacrum bone and the two halves of the pelvic bones meet at the right and left side of the posterior pelvic area and form a fairly firm, barely moveable joint called the sacro-iliac joint, or SI joint for short. 

The only exception to the “barely moveable” concept is for women about to give birth. In order for the safe delivery of the baby’s head and body, the joints of the pelvis, including the pubic symphysis in front, have to be able to move. The pregnant woman’s body produces a hormone, relaxin, which allows the ligaments around the joints to loosen and permit more movement than normal. Once the baby is safely delivered and breast feeding is concluded, the production and release of relaxin slows and disappears and the SI joint regains its previous firmness.

As Nina pointed out, seems there are a few groups of folks more likely to loosen one side of the joint. These include gymnasts, dancers and yoga practitioners. And indeed forward folds combined with twists seem to be regular culprits. These poses create a torquing action through the pelvis that can overstretch the ligaments and result in more mobility on one side. It is unusual, in my experience, to have someone with both SI joints hypermobile, but I have seen it at least once before.

And indeed, Roger Cole has written some very good articles on this topic, and leads workshops on the topic around the country, which I have attended and can highly recommend. In addition, Judith Lasater has an article in the Yoga Journal archives on her bout with SI joint dysfunction, how yoga brought it on, and how yoga helped her heal it (see Out of Joint).  She also has some discussion in her book, “Yoga Body” on the particulars as well, if you want to dive a little deeper. After reviewing the chapter in her book on the pelvis, I found a 1991 review of all the research to that date on intra-pelvic joint movement, including SI joint movement.  It seems there is some evidence for minor but distinct amounts of normal healthy movement at the SI joints, but a decent amount of confusion still existed at the time of that study.

As for asana recommendations, I like active backbends, especially Locust, but doing a variation Roger Cole teaches where you have the legs parallel, you strap the ankles and push out against the strap as you lift the legs up. He also recommends doing some asymmetric propping with sandbags, but I have found the symmetric version effective for some students.  And I’d put a block between the knees for active bridge and also consider strapping the thighs without a block and push out against the strap as you go up. I believe the theory is that you are creating some lateral space so that the SI joint that is misaligned can pop/slide back into place. These are only two of a whole slew of pose variations that Roger shares in his workshops, so look for the chance to study with him down the road.

And don’t discount the benefit of working with a good physical therapist, as I have had students who were taught some effective simple adjustments they could do to get the SI back in good alignment. And as Nina has mentioned, I have had some students work with chiropractors and osteopathic physicians who got adjustments that resulted in SI re-alignment.  Ideally, you would not need to do this very frequently.

This is certainly a hot topic, so keep your eyes and ears open for new developments on the issue of SI joint dysfunction.  Thanks for your question!

—Baxter

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Featured Sequence: Travel Mini Sequence

by Nina

My chiropractor, Dr. Claire-Marie Holman, in Berkeley, California is also a yoga teacher. (I get adjustments for my scoliosis—for some conditions, yoga can only do so much.) As part of my self-care, Dr. Holman discusses my home practice with me, recommending certain poses for their therapeutic benefits. When I recently went in for a treatment, I was in between trips. So I asked Dr. Holman to recommend just a few poses for me to do while I was in the road, when I have less time to practice than I do when I’m home. She came up with a three-pose mini practice for me. I liked it so much that asked her if I could share it with my readers on this blog. She generously agreed.

So without further ado, here is Dr. Claire-Marie Holman’s travel mini sequence. The poses (and the thinking behind them) are the three she suggested for me. The order of the poses seemed obvious to me so I just went with my gut on that. And the timings are my suggestions.

1. Cat-Cow pose for six rounds.

This pose is an excellent warm-up for the second pose in the series, Downward-Facing Dog pose, and helps restore a back that might be sore from sleeping on strange beds (or different beds every night). So far, we’ve only featured the chair version of this pose (see Seated Cat-Cow Pose) on this blog. But, if you can, try the full version, with your hands and knees on the floor, and a blanket under your knees.

Start with your spine in a neutral position. Then, as in the chair version, on your inhalation, start moving from your pelvis, tipping your hips downward toward the floor. As you continue to inhale, gently lift your spine and lengthen into a gentle backbend. Lift your breastbone forward and up and allow your head and neck to lengthen out and back, coming into the Cow backbend.

As you exhale, start moving from your pelvis, releasing your pelvis in the opposite direction, moving the back of your waist upward toward the ceiling. As you continue to exhale, allow your middle back to move back as well and drop your chin toward your chest, coming into the Cat forward bend. Repeat for six rounds, moving with your breath.

2. Downward-Facing Dog pose for 30 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes.

This pose is one of best all-over stretches for shoulders, legs, and hips, which all get tight from the hours of sitting still required by traveling. As a bonus, you strengthen your shoulders, arms, and upper body while you’re at it. So far, we haven’t featured the full version of this pose, but John Schumacher has a good video of this on youtube.

If full Downward-Facing Dog pose is too challenging for you, try Half Downward-Facing Dog pose at the wall (see Half Dog Pose at the Wall) or the version with your hands on a chair seat (see Downward-Facing Dog (Chair Version).

3. Legs Up the Wall pose for 5 to 15 minutes. Come out if your legs fall asleep.

In addition to being a great anti-stress pose (who doesn’t get stressed out while traveling), this pose also stretches your hamstrings with gravity. And if you use a bolster or folded blankets or bathroom towels under your sacrum, with your tailbone off the support, this pose restores the curve to your lower back, providing an antidote to hours of seated positions. I can’t believe we haven’t featured this one yet, but we will soon, I promise.

We’re showing two versions of the pose today, one with just a folded blanket and the other using a bolster with a folded blanket underneath it and a second folded blanket under the spine. Try both versions to see which one is more comfortable for you. If they are equally comfortable, try the higher version, as this may enhance your relaxation. If this pose is uncomfortable for you, try Easy Inverted Pose (see Easy Inverted Pose).

Thanks so much, Claire-Marie! Readers, if you try this sequence, let me know what you think.

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Knee Replacements and Yoga

by Shari

Nina asked me to add to Baxter’s previous post Arthritis of the Knee and Yoga about what the next step might be when your own self-care management techniques are not as effective and your quality of life is severely impacted. So I thought I would you give some background about the elective procedure total knee replacement and why you might elect to have it done. Professionally, I see a lot of total knee replacements in my work as a home health physical therapist, and I also have yoga students who come to my class either after the procedure or beforehand as they are preparing themselves for the surgery.

Although many people will never need surgery for arthritis of the knee, if you have severe joint damage, extreme pain that isn’t helped by other treatments, or very limited motion as a result of the condition, knee replacement surgery may be necessary. So if the arthritis pain in your knee worsens, and the exercise that once helped you feel better has become unbearable, your doctor may recommend a total knee replacement (TKR). Surgery for osteoarthritis can provide several benefits, including :

• improved movement
• pain relief
• improved joint alignment

When you research the procedure, you will discover there are gender-specific knees, which are knee replacement models designed for women, and dozens of other options, too, including different materials, sizes and models from a variety of manufacturers. How do you choose? Generally, you don’t. Surgeons typically determine which implant they’ll use when they are in the operating room and actually looking at the structure and size of your bones.

X-Rays of Knee Replacements (from Wikimedia)

Prior to surgery, however, you should have an informed conversation with the doctor about your options so you can ask good questions about why a particular model might be chosen, and determine if you’re comfortable with the doctor’s approach and experience or whether you’d like a second opinion.

When only a portion of your knee has severe arthritic wear and tear symptoms, as confirmed by diagnostic testing as well as subjective complaints, you may be recommended to undergo a “partial or unicompartmental knee replacement.” This may be recommended because it helps to straighten up the joint, which has changed its position as a result of osteoarthritis. Partial knee replacement can be more effective and durable if appropriate and are less invasive. Recovery time is less because there is less surgical trauma.When the entire knee joint is replaced that is called a total knee replacement, and the ends of the femur, top of the tibia and often the patella (knee cap) are fully replaced.

When you are ready to return to your yoga class, you should take time to talk with your teacher about your knee replacement. I will routinely ask these students a series of questions:

1.    How long ago was the surgery?
2.    Are you still in pain?
3.    Are you still in physical therapy?
4.    Do you have any hip or back pain (either before or after the knee replacement)?
5.    How much mobility do you currently have? Can you get up and down from the floor?
6.    Do you have arthritis in any other joints?

So be prepared to provide your teacher with this information. Knee range of motion will vary widely both in a recent post-operative knee as well as a knee replacement that is over one year old. A lot depends on how much motion you lost prior to the surgery and how hard you worked postoperatively. The answer to the question “Can you get up and down from the floor?” is important because it tells the teacher a lot about a student’s flexibility and strength. Knee flexion will vary considerably, but I have never seen a knee replacement with 155 degrees flexion nor have I ever seen someone able to do a deep squat. Whether this just happens to be my student demographic or not, I don’t know.

When resuming yoga practice, alignment is a big deal with knee replacements because post operatively you want to avoid torque forces through the joint because that affects cement in the joint. “Closed chain activities,” where your weight is shifted with your foot remaining on the floor,” where your foot is lifted off of the floor with subsequent weight bearing will affect the joint differently. For standing poses, I teach students with recent knee replacements to pick their feet up and then replace and position as opposed to pivoting to change directions. Down the road, you can introduce pivoting if it doesn’t cause pain or discomfort. Liberal usage of props; walls, chairs, blocks will assist the student in not over-doing too quickly.

Strengthening all of the muscles that cross the knee joint as well as secondary stabilizers is also important. This means front, back and side leg muscles. Attention to hip alignment and strength also translates to protection of the knee replacement. Kneeling is problematic but not necessarily injurious to the new knee. Finally, pay attention to the feet—where is the weight on the foot? A lot of individuals who suffer from arthritic hips and knees have feet that need some tender loving attention. Baxter in his prior posts talked about feet (see Your Feet on My Mind), and I agree that where the body meets the ground and how we stack up from there is crucial in protecting our joints for longevity, especially when we become bionic.

I would like to add that lot depends on your pre-surgical state of health. If you have been active up till the day of the surgery then your recovery time will take about three months till you feel like you have integrated the new knee into your body. This is a rough estimate, but it seems about right for a traditional total knee replacement. Minimally invasive and partial knee replacements have less trauma, so healing and function comes more quickly. For those individuals who have lost a lot of mobility and have developed severe range of motion loss and significant loss of muscle strength, the recovery time will be more arduous because of all the structural as well as cardiac changes.

Finally I want to emphasize this: talk to your surgeon before and after surgery to know what your particular limitations and precautions may be, and remember to share them with your yoga teacher. Remember this is an invasive surgical procedure and everyone heals in a different manner. Be kind to yourself and remember that with a lot of hard work you will regain function and improve the quality of your life. This the reason why you decided to undergo this surgical option in the first place.

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Arthritis of the Shoulder and Yoga

by Baxter

If you have been following our blog for any amount of time, you’ve become familiar with the wide variety of joints and areas of our boney spine that can be affected by osteoarthritis. From your hands to your toes, any movable joint is subject to this condition of wear and tear on the end surfaces of the bones and their slick, cushiony covering, the cartilage. The older we get, the more likely we are to develop osteoarthritis somewhere in our bodies, including the shoulder area. Seems the magic age is sometime after 50, but if you have sustained a traumatic injury to your shoulder or have the rarer form of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), you could develop the tell-tail symptoms of arthritis-pain, swelling and reduced movement at the shoulder.

I’ve worked with many students and patients over the years with arthritis, and I will mention that the shoulder area is less commonly affected than say the knees, hips or spine. But it does show up now and again. Turns out there are actually two joints in the lateral shoulder area that can develop arthritis.

The first one is where a finger-like projection of the shoulder blade or scapula meets the far end of your collarbone or clavicle at what is technically referred to as the acromioclavicular joint (the AC joint). You can actually feel to the top connection of this joint if you trace your collarbone from your breastbone toward your shoulder area. You’ll note a sudden drop off as you move laterally. That’s where the two bones meet. Arthritis in this joint usually refers pain to the front of the shoulder area.

Shoulder Joint

The second joint affected is where your arm bone, the humerus, meets the side of the scapula at something called the glenoid fossa (a shallow, cup-like area that is concave to fit the round end of the arm bone), forming the glenohumeral joint. Arthritis pain in this joint is usually referred to the back of the shoulder area. And like other forms of arthritis, a diagnosis is usually reached after a history and physical exam by your doc, possibly including X-rays to look for narrowing of the joint space or the development of bone spurs around the joint and, on rarer occasions, blood tests to rule out RA or drawing fluid from the joint to look for crystals or infection. Once diagnosed, usually with osteoarthritis, you’re likely to have rest, ice, anti-inflammatory meds and physical rherapy prescribed to help decrease swelling and pain, and increase your range of motion in the shoulder joints. On more rare occasions when these treatments are ineffective, injections or surgery may be recommended. Like the hip and knee joint, the surgeon may replace part of the joint with an artificial joint.

Humerous and Scapula

Where does yoga fit in? Well, since shoulder arthritis can result from chronic wear and tear action on the joints, it is possible that a yoga practice heavy on weight-bearing asana, such as Downward-Facing Dog pose, Push-Up pose, and arm balances, such as Crow or Heron, as well as vigorous repetitive practices that don’t vary much in their routine, could lead to this kind of shoulder problem. However, on average, yoga is more likely to be helpful as a tool for healing than the underlying cause of the problem. And if you suffer from shoulder arthritis, this is yet another setting in which working one-on-one with an experienced teacher could save you time in getting on the right course of practice to improving your symptoms.

Just as we discussed in arthritis of the hip, even with the abnormal changes to the joint that accompany arthritis, it is still essential to keep mobility in the affected joints. In the situation where symptoms are already present, you will want to proceed slowly and mindfully as you begin to experiment with yoga postures that are exclusively non-weight bearing (at least at first). Many of the standing poses, such as Triangle, Extended Side Angle (being cautious not to bear too much weight with the bottom arm for both of those), Warrior 1, 2 and 3 would all be reasonable choices.

Poses that involve more pressure around the shoulder joint, in which there are additional rotational forces, such as Prayer position behind the back, or Eagle arms, may not be appropriate, as they could more likely aggravate the joint than help it. However, working with a teacher, you may gradually be able to add in more complex arm movements if your symptoms stay quiet. Versions of poses you would be likely to encounter in class, such as the ubiquitous Downward-Facing Dog, may be added later if you are progressing, with wall versions, such as Half Downward-Facing Dog at the Wall (see here).  And since it is not unusual for the muscles around the affected joint to be atrophied from lack of use when the joint is initially inflamed, holding the arm positions, like Warrior 2 arms, for 30-60 seconds can add strengthening of the muscles to the goal of maintaining mobility in the joint.

In addition, the pain-diminishing effects of pranayama and meditation practices could be very helpful along with your physical poses, and could be substituted for asana during times when your shoulder symptoms flare up and resting your body makes more sense for a while.  And, as always, we welcome your comments and experiences with the topics we share with you. So if you have some yoga insights on arthritis of the shoulders, we are all ears (and shoulders, of course!).  

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Practice As Many As You Can: T. Krishnamacharya's Yoga

T. Krishnamachrya in a "New" Pose

by Nina

In my post last week Authentic Yoga, I mentioned that most of the yoga asana we do these days were invented in the early 20th century. In his book on the origins of modern posture practice Yoga Body, Mark Singleton focuses in particular on the innovations of T. Krishnamacharya, the teacher of three very influential 20th century yoga teachers who had a tremendous impact on yoga in the western word, Iyengar, Jois, and Desikachar. Krishnamacharya was clearly a genius, whose system, as Singleton puts it:

"can be fruitfully considered a synthetic revival of indigenous exercise (comprising yogasana alongside other types) within the context of Westernized curricular physical education in late colonial India."

Because so many people are reluctant to practice yoga at home due to concerns that they might not be doing it “right” or don’t have time to do what they would do in one of their full-length classes, it’s worth taking a little time to look at what Krishnamacharya (who was, for many of us, the original teacher of our teacher, or our teacher’s teacher) was doing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dear readers, he was making stuff up! For details you can see the wonderful book The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace by N.E. Sjoman. But for now let’s just look at this quote in Yoga Body from T.R.S. Sharma, one of a group of students at the yogasala in Mysyore, which confirms that Krishnamacharya’s teaching was intended to be, and in practice was, experimental:

"was innovating all the time in response to his students. He would make up variations of the postures when he saw that some of his students could do them easily. “Try this, putting this here, and here.” He was inventing and innovating. Krishnmachrya never emphasized a particular order of poses, there was nothing sacrosanct about observing order with him. He would tell me “practice as many as you can.”

The quote as whole really brings home the idea that, regardless of what we may have been told by certain teachers, the practice of yoga asana traditionally was not a rigid system that you have to follow or else it won’t be effective. And it seems to me, if you’ve been reluctant to practice at home due to time restrictions or concerns about doing something wrong, this quote contains a great motto for home practice in general:

Practice as many as you can.

Since it is December already and you may be thinking about New Year’s resolutions, “practice as many as you can” also seems like an excellent resolution for starting or deepening a home practice next year.

P.S. Hey, Krishnamacharya's alignment in Utthita Parsvokasana (Extended Side Angle pose) in the photo above doesn't look the same as what I've been taught is "correct," so that must mean....

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