Friday Q&A: Questions

Q: You have questions and answers on your blog almost every Friday. My question is about the questions: where do the questions that you answer on your blog come from?

A: The questions come from you, our readers! We answer questions that we receive in person, via email (you can find our email address by clicking on the Contact Us tab at the top of the page) or through comments left on individual blog posts (click on the How to Comment tab at the top of the page to learn how to leave comments). Some of our reader's questions get answered on a Friday Q&A post, but others trigger full-length posts on the particular topic.

Okay, fine, I admit it, not all the questions come from our readers. I made up the question for today because it's time for another round of questions and/or concerns, and I thought that some of our newer readers might not realize they can ask us any questions they like.

So speak up, everyone! Do you have any specific questions you'd like us to answer? Or, do you have any requests for general topics for us to address? We love hearing from you.

—Nina

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Mr Putrajaya 2012 series–Riano

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Mr Putrajaya 2012 series–Nish Sairul

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Yoga Journal Conference and a Giveaway!

Good news, everyone! Baxter’s going to be teaching at the San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference, January 17 - 21, 2013. We hope to see some of you there. For the first time, Baxter will be presenting an all-day workshop on Yoga for Healthy Aging. And he’ll also be teaching a two-hour class on Yoga for Arthritis. Obviously, he was inspired by his writing for this blog, and by the feedback he gets from you, our readers.

Speaking of which, he’s been asked to do one more class at the conference and hasn’t yet picked the topic. What would you like him to teach? Yes, we want to hear your ideas!

This could be yours....

To encourage you to make some good suggestions, we decided to hold our first-ever giveaway. The prize will be a yoga book by Nina and Rodney Yee, either Yoga: The Poetry of the Body or Moving Toward Balance, your choice.

To enter the contest, leave a comment on this post suggesting a topic for Baxter to teach at the conference and tell us which of the two books you’d like most to win. It’s okay to vote for topic that someone else has already suggested because multiple votes for the same idea will tell us which suggestion is the most popular. We’ll have two winners: the one with the idea we like the best, and a commenter selected at random.

You have a week to enter the contest, and we’ll announce the winners at the end of next week. Now go forth and get creative!

or maybe you want this!

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Ankle Sprains

by Baxter

Yesterday, I provided you with a basic overview of the anatomy of the ankle joint (see Getting to Know Your Ankles). Now let’s turn our attention to the most common injury to ankles, the ankle sprain. Suffering one sprain to an ankle, if mild, is usually no big deal. But many times, there will be several sprains over the course of time, often on the same ankle. This can lead to looser ligaments from repeated micro tears and stretching, resulting in overall less stability in the affected joint, and the tendency to have more twists down the road. Yikes! The vast majority of ankle sprains involve the action described about as “inversion” (which I defined yesterday), so are known as inversion sprains. Due to the foot rolling under and the ankle bowing outward in this case, the ligaments on the outer ankle and foot area are stretched and/or torn a bit, resulting in local swelling and pain in that area around the lateral malleolus. A small but important ligament in this area known as the anterior talofibular ligament is almost always the victim of the trauma. The case of the ankle rolling in is much rarer due to the longer fibula bone as the lateral malleolus tending to prevent that, so I won’t address this specific situation here.

On a practical level, when we suffer an acute ankle sprain, we get local swelling, tenderness over the area to touch and discomfort when we stand or walk, to varying degrees. The typical recommendations from your doc areto elevate your foot and leg above the level of your heart and to use ice can help to diminish the swelling associated with the trauma, so are a good idea to try. And since there are lots of yoga poses that are done lying on your back with the legs elevated, your asana practice could assist in the healing process.  In the acute phase of injury, poses such as Legs Up the Wall pose, Chair Shoulderstand, Easy Inverted pose, and similar poses may be all you want to try. All of these poses are also helpful if you suffer intermittent or chronic swelling of the feet and ankles, another common condition.

Legs Up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani)

Easy Inverted Pose

Once the acute phase symptoms have diminished, you can turn your attention to a more typical asana practice, as well as adding in last week’s seated ankle rolls and alphabet spelling exercises (see Ankle Circles).  At this point, you are ready to focus on the strengthening aspects of the poses for the ankle and foot area, so add special attention to activating as many of the muscles surrounding your ankles and feet as you do your standing poses. A modified Mountain pose Tadasana) sequence I learned at the Krishnamacharya Center in India years back also comes in handy for strengthening the ankles after injury. You begin in a good Mountain pose, and on an inhale, lift your heels up and balance evenly on the balls of your feet, taking your arms up and overhead. As you exhale, lower your arms and heels to the starting position. Do this slowly and mindfully six times. Don’t be surprised if you find that you roll in or out onto the ball of the foot, but work to even this out.

As always, cultivate patience with your body to gently guide it back to a healthier place and listen deeply to its requests to honor its limitations.

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Mr Putrajaya 2012 series–Asrul Rizal

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