May the Prana Be With You! Energy and Yoga

by Baxter

During an evening meal recently, an acquaintance of mine asked me what I thought about the word “energy” as it used today in this country when discussing practices such as yoga and martial arts. I should mention that this new friend is a medical anthropologist and a long time martial arts expert and teacher, and had a few ideas of her own. After we spoke about western and eastern concepts of energy, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had not addressed this idea to any great extent in these blog posts. So, with that in mind, I’d like to begin a conversation about energy as it pertains to the practice of yoga.

For anyone who has been in yoga classes for a while, you will be familiar with a term from Sanskrit that is sometimes translated as “energy,” but really has both a broader and more specific meaning in the original language.  Prana, the term referring to energy (not the yoga clothing line!), is conceived of as being of two types. The first is a substance called prana that pervades the entire known universe of material objects and is contained in such things as our atmospheric air and in the food we eat, so that it could be considered in part as nutrients for living beings. According to Georg Feuerstein, prana “signifies the universal life force, which is a vibrant psychophysical energy similar to the pneuma of the ancient Greeks.” In addition, there is an individual prana, which exists solely within you, that is the animating force of your life. We are born with a certain portion of pranic energy that we slowly use to fuel our life’s activities, and a partly renewable portion of prana that we can derive from food and air. This later source is not able to sustain us, however, if our original store of prana eventually runs out, which it does for all of us eventually.

Prana in the body is also said to move around. It does so via channels or small inner highways, said to number around 72,000 according to some sources, that are known as nadis. Out of the 72K, only three of them get spoken about much: the central channel that runs within or in front of the spine from the pelvic floor to the crown of the head, known as the sushumna nadi, and the right and left nadis known as ida and pingula, that start at the nostrils and end at the pelvic floor at the base of the sushumna nadi. I’ll tell you more on the sushumna nadi another time.

Exploring the Arctic by Michele Macartney-Filgate

In addition to these three large channels and all the myriad smaller ones, the prana is said to move around the body via a series of forces called “winds” or vayu, that assist in moving prana up towards the chest and head via the prana vayu, down toward the pelvic floor via the apana vayu, out to the extremities via the vyana vayu, around the digestive center via the samana vayu, and finally around the throat area via the uddana vayu.

According to the texts on Hatha Yoga from the Twelfth century and forward, the yoga practice itself is designed to have several effects on prana. By correct practice, which is quite detailed and contains enough material to fill up many blog posts, one can conserve one’s individual quantity of prana so as to achieve your goals in yoga or in everyday life. Through visualizations, yoga postures and pranayama breath techniques to name a few, you can also encourage the usual movements of the winds of the body or you can reverse them. For example, apana vayu is associated with all bodily functions where things need to move down and out of the body, such as for urination. Obviously, we want that to happen at certain times of the day in order for our physical body to empty waste and remain healthy, so apana vayu needs to move in its usual fashion. The yogis also suggest changing the normal movement of apana vayu at times, sending it upwards, as a way of holding onto more of your total energy. They figured if you could live longer and remain relatively free of illness, you would have more time to achieve the highest goals of yoga, such as another future topic, samadhi.  

If we try to find a modern interpretation of prana, we might think it has something to do with blood in the circulatory system or nerve conduction in the nervous system, and it is conceivable that it has just such correlates, although not exactly described in the same way as our modern physiology is described. In my personal yoga practice, I find that working with the concept of prana is yet another way for me to bring more concentration and focus on the tasks at hand, be they yoga poses, breathing techniques or even a more mindful way of standing in line at the bank. I’ll leave the idea of prana here for now, but I am certain this essential concept in yoga philosophy and alternative yoga anatomy will pop again before to long. Until then, may the force be with you!

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Protecting Your Wrists in Downward-Facing Dog

by Nina

There seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for my recent post on upper body strength (see Building Upper Body Strength the Easy Way), so I thought I would begin expanding on some of the poses and suggestions I made in that overview. Because so many people have concerns about their wrists in this pose, today I'm going to recommend some variations on Downward-Facing Dog that allow you to reduce or eliminate pressure on your wrists.

To lessen the pressure on your wrists, you can use various props to reduce the angle at which your wrists are bent (the more deeply your wrists are bent, the more pressure there is on your wrists). Depending on which props you have available and what feels best to you, you have three possibilities:

Slant board: Set up your slant board at the top of your mat so the higher side is closest to you. If your hands tend to slip on the slant board, you can wrap the front portion of your mat on top of it. Now, starting in a kneeling position, place your hands on the slant board so the palms of your hands are fully supported and your hands angle down the slant board. Then, come into Cat pose. From there move into Downward-Facing Dog pose and assess how the pressure feels on your wrists. If there is pain or discomfort, try another modification or use one of the options where your forearms are on the floor (below).

Blocks: Set up two same-size blocks on the medium height so their long sides are parallel to the side edges of your mat and their narrow sides line up with your shoulders. Now, starting in a kneeling position, place your hands on the blocks so your fingers spill over the front and sides of the block and your wrist is at much less than a 90-degree angle. Then, come into Cat pose. From there, move into Downward-Facing Dog pose and assess how the pressure feels on your wrists. If there is pain or discomfort, try another modification or use one of the options where your forearms are on the floor (below).

Chair: Place the chair with its back against a wall and its seat facing you. Standing on front of the chair seat, come into a forward bend and place your hands on the side edges of the chair seat, so your arms turn out slightly and you can hold onto the chair seat without bending your wrists. From there, walk your feet back into Downward-Facing Dog pose and assess how the pressure feels on your wrists. If there is pain or discomfort, try another modification or use one of the options where your forearms are on the floor (below).

To prevent pressure on your wrists entirely, you can do Downward-Facing Dog with your forearms on the floor (sometimes called Dolphin pose).

Dophin Pose Version 1: In the first version of this modification, you keep your forearms parallel to each other and shoulder-width apart. Starting in Child’s pose, place your forearms on the floor so your elbows are shoulder-width apart, your forearms parallel to each other, and your index fingers are parallel to the sides of the mat. If you wish, to keep your hands in line, you can use a block between your hands with the bottom corners in the web between your thumbs and index fingers. From there, keeping your head in line with your upper arms, lift your hips into Downward-Facing Dog position. This will be a more intense stretch on your shoulders but should remove all pressure from your wrists.

Dolphin Pose Version 2: In the second version of this modification, you place your hands and forearms in a headstand position, with your hands clasped while your elbows are shoulder-width apart. This hand position is less intense on your shoulders, but may have an effect on your wrists because you are putting weight on the sides of your wrist. So check it out and see how it feels! Starting in Child’s pose, place your forearms on the floor so your elbows are shoulder-width apart and clasp your hands completely, though not tightly,  together. From there, keeping your head in line with your upper arms, lift your hips into Downward-Facing Dog position. As always, assess how the pressure feels on your wrists. If there is pain or discomfort, go back to version 1.

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Friday Q&A: Flat Feet

Q: I have a question about flat feet and Morton's toe. I'm a 57 YO man who walks a lot and I have both. I always have difficulty balancing on one foot—tree, eagle pose, etc., and have recently had a bout with Plantar Fasciitis showing up in my left heel. No fun. I was at a yoga class yesterday and some poses felt good, others hurt. When I left the class, I literally limped home and iced it for 1/2 hr. then heat, then rest. I had acupuncture at Quan Yin this morning for it and bought new, sturdy shoes and heel pads. It feels a little better today. Can you suggest any asana or other treatment I can do at home that may help speed the healing process and prevent future trouble? Any suggestions for flat feet in general?

A: Wow, this is a great question! It is actually a triple whammy: flat feet, Morton’s neuroma and plantar fascitis! With that in mind, I suggest we address each condition individually over the next three Fridays, to get a better understanding of each condition.

So let’s start with the most common of the three, flat feet. Technically known as pes planus, flat feet are extremely common. In fact, we all start out with flat feet as infants, due to the fact that our muscles and tendons that create the arches in the feet (which number three, by the way) are not fully formed, and because we have a pretty good fat pad in the feet then that contributes to the relative flatness of the feet.

As we grow and walk and run, the muscles develop, the tendons tighten a bit and our arches begin to appear around age three or so. The most obvious of the three arches is the one that runs along the inner edge of the feet from heel to ball of the big toe, which is called the inner or medial arch.  When this arch is not present, the inner edge of the foot rests on the floor with the rest of the sole of the foot. Again, this is a fairly common occurrence in many adults, and unless you experience pain, either in the foot, ankle or knee, it is not really anything that needs direct intervention to change.

So why does having a collapsed inner arch cause ankle and knee pain? Well, if the inner arch is collapsed, it can force your ankles to turn inward, which throws off the alignment of your legs and can influence the knees just above.

What causes flat feet? Probably the most common is that the arches don’t develop in childhood. Other causes include injury or simple wear and tear stresses as we age (there it is again, age!). Risk factors for developing flat feet as an adult include obesity, injury, other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and, yikes, aging! An interesting distinction is made between flexible and rigid flat feet. Someone with flexible flat feet who stands on the balls of their feet, with heels lifted, will have an arch appear. Someone with rigid flat feet will not. The later case is often associated with pain and greater dysfunction, and may need the help of a foot doctor to address their symptoms. 

Another interesting finding is that people with flat feet may have a very tight Achilles’ tendon, so specific stretches for the calf muscles can be potentially helpful: do I hear anyone out there thinking Warrior 1, back leg?

Many students have no symptoms associated with their flat feet. But others note some foot pain in the heel or arch area, difficulty standing on tiptoe or swelling along the inside of the ankle. Usually it is foot pain that will prompt a visit to your doctor, who will likely examine the foot, may order X-rays and could recommend meds for pain, and possiblly some sort of shoe insert. Rarely do you need to go further with treatment.

I know of at least one yoga student with flat feet who claimed that working with yoga poses in a particular way helped him reform his arches. I know this is just anecdotal evidence for the benefit of yoga, but it is still encouraging, as this student felt better after the change. How might you experiment with this? As already stated, you might work on releasing tension in the Achilles’ tendon, carefully, via standing poses like Warrior 1, Pyramid pose (Parsvottansana) and squatting yoga postures like Garland pose (Malasana). In addition, I find that keeping the ball of the foot on the floor while lifting all the toes up while doing standing poses seems to create an inner arch lift. It may be strengthening the muscles enough to provide the lift needed for an arch in that area of the foot.

Another way to work with the feet is in Reclined Leg Stretch pose (Supta Padangusthasana) with the strap positioned across the center of the sole of your foot, the location of the transverse arch of the foot. As you pull down on the strap, push your heel and the ball of your foot up toward the ceiling and spread your toes wide. This will simulate and possibly stimulate the medial and lateral arches of the feet to appear. Hold the action for a minute or so and repeat on the other foot. Those of you out there with Morton’s neuroma or heel spurs can give this a try and I’ll take up the neuroma next time!

For more information on feet, see Your Feet on My Mind and Friday Q&A: Feet.

—Baxter

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Featured Pose: Reverse Prayer Pose

by Baxter and Nina

This pose from our office yoga series moves your shoulders into a position that you don’t take very often in your everyday life. Although this movement is not commonly needed, it’s still an important one because for the long-term health of your shoulders, you need to move them through their full range of motion. Unlike Prayer pose (Namaste) in front of your chest, Reverse Prayer pose (Paschima Namaskarana) takes your upper arms into internal rotation, creating an excellent stretch for your forearms that’s helpful for your elbows, wrists, and hands.

Although the classic version of the pose is difficult, if not impossible, for some people, a second variation, where you hold your elbows or forearms, makes the pose accessible to almost everyone.


This is an excellent counter pose for any work that involves the use of your hands whether it is manual labor or office computer work. And, as with all our office yoga poses, you can do it almost anywhere, in any attire. The pose also releases tension from your shoulders and collarbone area (an area where most people don’t even realize they hold a lot of tightness), providing physical relief as well as relaxation.


Those of you who have shoulder or arm injuries (such as, tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome or rotator cuff injuries) should start by trying version 2. If you can do variation number comfortably, you can cautiously attempt version 1.


Baxter prescribes this pose for:

• stiff and tight shoulders
• tight forearms and elbows
• tight wrists and hands
• counter-pose for activities that require griping your hands
• stress relief of the shoulders and neck area (self massage!)

Instructions: For version 1, start by standing in Mountain pose, with your feet hips-distance apart. Bring your palms together into Prayer position (Namaste) in front of your chest, and press your palms together firmly. Take a moment to assess how flexible your wrists are in this position.

Now bring your arms behind your back, with your fingertips pointing toward the floor and elbows slightly bent. Then move your hands a few inches away from your lower back and spin your fingertips up toward the ceiling. Allow the pinky side of your hands to lightly touch your lower back. At this point your elbows are bent and your upper arm bones are turning in quite a bit. Carefully wiggle and wriggle your hands up along the line of your spine as high as you can comfortably go or until your palms come completely together. If your palms can come together, try to bring the thumb sides of your hands closer to each other (as they tend to get pulled apart).

Stay in the pose for approximately 30 seconds, working up to 2 minutes. To come out of the pose, carefully wiggle your hands down your back at least six inches or so before you release your hands down by your sides (this takes the tension out of your shoulders).


If you attempt version 1 and are unable to turn your fingertips up and keep them together, there may be too much tightness or tension anywhere from your shoulders to your wrists that prevents you from doing this safely. Choose version 2 instead.


For version 2, start by standing in Mountain pose, with your feet hips-distance apart. Take your arms out to your sides with your elbows bent to a 90-degree angle and your palms facing forward. Then spin your forearms forward and down (this is internal rotation) so your fingertips point down toward the floor. Bring your right forearm behind your back so the forearm rests on your lower back, then bring your left arm in as well, grabbing your left forearm or elbow with your right hand. Then spin your left hand around to grab your right forearm or elbow, as shown below.

Stay in the pose for 30 seconds, working up to 2 minutes. Then release your arms and repeat on the second side, bring your left arm behind your back first.

Cautions: If you have a history of shoulder joint dislocation, you should avoid the extreme internal rotation required by this pose. Or, if you want to try the pose, start with version 2. If you feel any dramatic movement in your upper arm bone, back off immediately. Likewise, if you have pain in your shoulder joint, elbow, or wrist. Those of you who have active rotator cuff injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome or tennis elbow should check with your teacher before practicing this pose.

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Building Upper Body Strength the Easy Way

by Nina

It’s only natural, I guess, that when you start blogging about yoga, your friends are going to ask for your advice, even when you’re on vacation. Luckily for me, I love helping my friends and truly enjoy giving them short private lessons, and seeing their eyes light up when they realize there are some easy yoga solutions to their problems in one of my ideas of FUN.

This time my friend Carol asked me about her right shoulder and wrist, the ones she over-uses when she spends so much time in front of the computer moving her mouse around. She was under the impression that to protect her shoulder and wrist she should not use them very much, even when she was doing yoga. To baby them, in other words. I assured her that, to the contrary, to protect her shoulder and wrist she should be both strengthening and stretching her shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands. Then I gave her a quick private lesson to show her some easy poses she could do on a regular basis.

For her wrists, I showed her the wrist flossing sequence (see Featured Sequence: Wrist Flossing) that is so helpful for preventing carpal tunnel syndrome and other wrists problems. For stretching her shoulders, I showed her a passive backbend over a blanket roll, with her arms overhead and straight, using a strap around her upper arms to make it easier to stay in the pose for around three minutes. I also taught her the doorknob version of Upward Plank pose (Purvottanasana) because she could easily do this in her work place and it’s a nice counter-pose to sitting hunched in front of a computer (see Upward Plank variations). Of course there are many other shoulder stretches, many of which we’ve been covering in our office yoga series (Arm Circles, Eagle pose Arms, Cow-Face pose Arms, etc.).

But what about building upper body strength? I assured her that, no, she didn’t have to do handstands or arm balances, and there were many easy yoga poses that help build upper body strength. Then I quickly ran through a lot of suggestions for her that I thought I share with you today. Hopefully, in the near future, we’ll be able to explore some of these poses in greater depth.

Any pose where you put weight on your arms builds upper body strength, including Cat pose, Downward-Facing Dog, Upward-Facing Dog, Plank pose, Sideways Plank pose (Vasithasana), Upward Plank pose (Purvottanasana), and so on. If you are worried about putting weight on your wrists, you can use a wedge to change the angle of your wrists, do some of the poses with your forearms on the floor instead of just your hands (for example Downward-Facing Dog with forearms on the floor). You can even do Sideways Plank pose standing a few feet away from the wall, with one hand on the wall, your outside leg in Tree pose, and your second out to the side or overhead (I swear, I will take a photo of this one of these days). One of my favorite upper body strengtheners, which I learned from yoga teacher Julie Gudmestad, is to move back and forth, several times, between Downward-Facing Dog and Plank pose.

Plank Pose

Also, any pose where you hold your arms up or out to the side builds upper body strength, including Warrior 1, 2, and 3, Tree pose, Triangle pose, Extended Side Angle pose, Half Moon pose, and so on. Do you doubt me? Try keeping your arms in position instead of releasing them as you change from the first side to the second side of Warrior 2 (or any other pose). I bet you’ll find it’s harder than you expected.

There are so many possibilities that I once taught an entire workshop on the subject. Here is the mini practice I sent those students home with:

1. Cat pose

2. Downward-Facing Dog pose

3. Standing Forward Bend

4. Two Sun Salutations with Plank instead of Chaturanga

5. Sideways Plank pose (Vashithasana)

6. Upward Plank pose (Purvottanasana)

7. Child's pose

I hope this inspires you to incorporate some upper body strengthening into your home practice!

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A Yoga Offer to Health Care Professionals

by Baxter

Before I can let you in on my offer to health care professionals, I need to give you a little background information on how the offer came to be. As many of you know, I spent the first part of my professional life as a family MD, working in a busy primary care office, dispensing prescriptions for all sorts of diseases and acute illnesses, and sending patients off to see the physical therapist or the MD specialists when the situation warranted it.  Nowhere in my training was there any mention of “alternative” or “complementary” therapies that I might offer to my patients. (That situation is slowly changing in this country, thank goodness!) 

When I first started doing yoga in 1994, it was a completely personal thing; it felt really good for my overworked body and my stressed-out mind. I felt more grounded, clear and rested after my practices and that was enough incentive for me to continue to practice. I finally decided my interest was growing beyond the personal and I wanted to learn more so I could teach yoga, too. One of the first workshops I offered was to the medical staff at the hospital my patients would go to if seriously ill. It had a staff over 200 admitting doctors. My theme was the health benefits of yoga, and my hope was to expose my colleagues to those benefits, who by and large had never done yoga and had a very confused idea of what it was. I recall that several of the family docs in my practice attended the evening session, along with several nurses and perhaps one or two other staff docs. It was by no means the turnout I had hoped for, but it was a start.

Clouds Reflected in Jade Green Lily Pond by Nina Zolotow

Since that time, I have been delighted to have several doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, physical therapists and other health care providers attend classes regularly. And they often express how beneficial the practice is for them, and simultaneously express their frustration with the demands of the works schedule that often makes it hard for them to attend as often as they would like.  Such is the reality of these hardworking people.

So, even though I have had some health care workers in class over the years, I have always had this underlying impression that the vast majority of docs and others in my community have never taken a class, let alone investigated the variety of styles of yoga that they or their patients might explore to assist in improving their health. This is despite decent articles in magazines like Yoga Journal and Yoga International that provide overviews of yoga styles and what a student can expect to encounter in regards to physical demands and such.  

This is why I was delighted to be invited to a yoga blogger’s Round Table on July 23, 2012, sponsored by the National Institute of Health’s NCCAM division, the Complementary and Alternative Medicine branch that sponsors studies on the potential benefits of practices like yoga, meditation and Tai Chi, to mention just a few. And for those unfamiliar with this part of our federal government, they have funded and completed perhaps a dozen studies in the past 12 years or so, looking at the benefit of yoga on a variety of conditions.

The purpose of the Round Table was to engage a group of bloggers who are writing about yoga and health in a dialogue about what they are doing there and to get any input from us out here in the real world.  Super exciting! Leading up the event, we were given access to view a new seventeen-minute video they are releasing tomorrow on some new studies on yoga and health, which also provides some guidelines on yoga’s benefits and situations where caution should be given to patients. I watched it immediately and was delighted in the balanced information they are providing, so do check it out this week when you get a chance (see http://nccam.nih.gov/video/yoga-trailer).  

Later that day, the webinar began with about seven bloggers from around the US online and on a conference call to hear more about what the NCCAM folks are up to and to get our feedback. At one point in the presentation they shared what they called “tips for consumers,” which were all pretty reasonable. As always, they suggested that you discuss your interest in starting yoga for your health with you health care provider. This seems often a kind of perfunctory recommendation that we hear a lot. But it brought up my ongoing concern that there is a disconnect between this recommendation and what your doc may actually know about yoga, so I raised my cyber-hand and suggested that patients might also want to ask their doctor or nurse practitioner what their personal experience has been with yoga before deciding if any advice given by the doc about yoga is sound advice.

I obviously see a gap that exists between what my fellow yoga professionals and I know about the benefits of yoga, and what the medical establishment knows about yoga. I often gripe about this, and nothing changes. As it turns out, a few days later I am away at a yoga festival, and doing a Zen Meditation workshop on the first day, and things get quiet inside (me, of course!). And as often happens a first step suggestion arises in the quiet: get more health care professionals to my yoga classes!  After a bit more reflection, I came up with a plan.  I will now do what I can to make this a reality in my classes with the following offer: for all you health care professionals out there, your first class with me is free. (See bellyoga.info for a schedule of my local classes and my workshops around the country.)

Now, I know that most of our readers are already doing yoga. But you all know health care workers who have never done yoga, could really use it, and would potentially share their new discovery of yoga with their patients.  So I am hoping you will spread the word, on Facebook, Twitter and any other means at your disposal to get the word out. And if you teach, consider making a similar offer to your communities and students as well. I’d love to see 2012 go down as the year that saw a huge exposure of yoga to the medical world in a more real and tangible way, and I am hoping you can help! I know it might be a small step, but sometimes a small step can get things moving in the right direction. And don’t forget to check out the NCCAM web site http://nccam.nih.gov/, as they have a lot of good info for the public regarding the research they have completed. I’ll let you know about two studies featured in their video in the next week or so.

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On Vacation

Hadley Cove by Brad Gibson

This is just to let you know that our Editor in Chef (that would be me, Nina) will be on vacation next week, so we won't be posting anything on our blog until August. See you then!

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