I’m postponing my previously scheduled pranayama post to bring you this: Yoga Mob Celebrates Summer Solstice in Times Square. What an amazing crowd! Here’s another longer story about the event.
(Photo by sjunat55, courtesy of CNN iReport.)
yama/niyama redux / I-should-be-better syndrome June 20, 2011
I’ve been thinking a lot about the yamas and niyamas lately. Remember those? My first big assignment as part of my yoga teacher training was to read and think about the yamas, a set of five practices of self-restraint, and the niyamas, a set of five observances. After spending March and April reflecting on these things, I thought they’d be pretty ingrained in me. I was hoping I’d naturally remind myself to practice them throughout the day, and that I’d start to see my thought patterns changing.
Well, as you all know, I’ve done a lot of stuff during the past month or so, but consciously practicing the yamas and niyamas has not exactly been up there on the list. I think I still work on ahimsa pretty consciously (and I figure, if I’m only doing one of them, that’s the right one), but paying attention to and trying to improve my thoughts and my behavior is important for every single day, not just days when I’m supposed to be studying it. This is kind of the yogic equivalent of the ten commandments here. Don’t harm others, be truthful and generous, be moderate and balanced; be pure and simple, content, and disciplined; study hard and well, practice devotion. Be mindful. If I’m not paying attention, how can I say I’m being mindful?
Thinking back, I can say that even without being fully cognizant of the yamas and niyamas, I think I did a pretty good job of following them. I think I’ve been better about practicing non-violence in my words and in my thoughts. I’ve had the opportunity to be generous with my time and my support, and I think I’ve done a good job of that. I’ve studied hard and worked hard in my yoga practice. I’ve been very accepting and content with where I am in my life right now (although admittedly my life is pretty spectacular at present).
My husband F, with his usual impeccable sense of timing, sent me this great link the other day: Six Ways to Deal With I-Should-Be-Better Syndrome. This fits right in with thinking about the yamas and niyamas.
I’ve actually posted about my own experiences with I-Should-Be-Better Syndrome before, and I already try to do many of the things Amy Johnson recommends in her blog post: striving to be honest and truthful (practicing satya) and breathing (which, I’ve learned this month, is something we could all benefit from being more aware of). I also like her awareness that this is a universal issue – in Buddhism and in yoga, you work to feel compassion for everybody, every living creature, even that nasty parking attendant, even yourself, and if we understand that everyone is striving to be better, that it’s not just us, then that helps us to love everybody a little bit more, including ourselves.
I like Johnson’s practical, no-nonsense approach to this very emotional and personal issue. It’s hard to admit that you think you should be better, because really, you don’t want anyone to notice that you’re not already super-great. We feel shame when we get into I-Should-Be-Better mode, and it’s natural to try to hide shame. But being honest with yourself about these feelings is the first step to moving past them and feeling more content, more satisfied, and more peaceful, and that’s what the yamas and niyamas are all about.
Hangover Sequence May 27, 2011
In honor of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, I present you with a sequence of yoga poses designed to help with hangovers! (Or, if you prefer, to help with headache pain and remove toxins from the body.)
- begin in child’s pose (briefly! and don’t just stay there!)
- rabbit pose to start the warm-up
- come up to all fours for some cat/dog tilt (also called cat/cow)
- thread-the-needle side stretches
- step forward and up to standing (yes, really, it will do you good)
- 2 rounds of half sun salutes
- 2 classic sun salutations (nice and slow now!)
- standing sequence: warrior 1, warrior 2, radiant warrior, triangle pose, revolved triangle
- standing sequence, other side
- tree pose for balance
- come to the floor for cobbler pose and paschimottanasana
- marichyasana and janu sirsasana with a twist (these seated twists will wring the toxins out of your internal organs)
- if time allows, take another seated twist (for example, adding a twist to a simple cross-legged pose)
- inversion: legs-up-the-wall (no need to get complicated here, your head’s throbbing enough already)
- sivasana (and maybe a nap)
I hope this sequence helps you have a terrific weekend! I’ll be trying it out on at least a few friends, so I’ll let you know how it goes!
If you’d like to read more about how yoga can help a hangover and learn why I chose these particular poses for this sequence, check out this article in the New York Times and this post at Elysium Yoga.
Yoga and Wrist Health May 11, 2011
Here’s a link to an interesting little article about yoga and wrist health: Floating, Flying and Balancing: A Guide To Yoga Wrist Care and Proper Alignment.
Since I’ve experienced wrist pain associated with yoga poses in the past, I find it interesting to check out what different people have to say about this. For my wrists, I bought a wrist brace from Walgreens – just your basic carpal tunnel style brace, but it kept my wrist immobilized and allowed it to rest, and after a few days, it felt much better. I also found generic wrist supports (again, from Walgreens) to be useful when experiencing mild discomfort. I now have two of the generic wrist supports and a wrist brace for each hand (the braces are hand-specific, while the supports can be wrapped on either hand). I don’t usually have problems now but at least I have something to fall back on if pain flares up.
Waiting for pain to happen isn’t the best idea, either, though – we should try to prevent the pain from occurring. The article above gives some good tips for keeping wrists healthy. I’ve thought about getting these wrist-assured gloves that are supposed to be very helpful for poses that put strain on the wrist. One of F’s yoga classmates has a wedge that she puts under her hands in downward dog and other wrist-intensive poses. The wedge looks to be more cost-effective than the gloves, but the gloves might be a little more versatile. So far, though, I’m glad I haven’t needed either of them.
Have you ever experienced wrist pain, either in a single pose or in a chronic way? How did you treat it?
Yoga News: Yoga Teacher Agents, Yoga Fights Heart Disease April 7, 2011
Here’s an interesting yoga-related article from the NYT: An Agent Pursues a Cut of the Yoga Boom
I know the NYT has been problematic for some people lately, so here’s a brief summary: This woman started a business as an agent for yoga teachers, the same way that movie stars, athletes, and rock stars have agents. Last year her agency arranged more than 100 gigs (for example, speaking engagements, modeling shoots, or workshops), and it already has that many on the books for the first quarter of this year, so it looks like the business is taking off. She currently handles bookings and “strategy” (not sure what that means) for 45 high-profile yoga teachers, including Leslie Kaminoff, whose yoga anatomy book I’ll be reading later this year.
On one hand, I could see this being a useful service, freeing up valuable time for the big name yoga teachers to just go teach yoga and not worry about the administrative stuff of handling the events (and, as Kaminoff pointed out in the article, not knowing how much to charge). On the other hand, do we really want yoga to be a “rock star” type profession? Do we want to feed into that culture? Do we even want “big name” yoga teachers? (I personally have never met or studied with any of the “big names”, although after a year of reading Yoga Journal magazine religiously I can now at least recognize most of the names.) I always wonder how much value these people can really deliver at the workshops and events they do.
In other news, yoga is good for your heart! I actually found this article through my job. A new study has shown that when patients suffering from atrial fibrillation (a chronic heart condition) participated in a supervised yoga program, their arrhythmia improved and they also experienced fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression. Yoga made them both healthier and happier! Obviously *we* all know the health benefits that come with yoga, but it’s nice to see that serious medical studies are being done to prove it statistically!
Yoga and injuries April 6, 2011
Some folks have sent me interesting yoga links lately, so I thought I’d share. Today we’ll talk about injuries!
Bend, don’t break: How to stay injury-free in yoga: This article looks like it was originally published a year ago, but it’s still interesting. I like the idea of differentiating between “impact injuries” (those that happen quickly and dramatically) and “cumulative injuries” (the ones that happen gradually over time). I’ve had some of both, and there are two that I’m currently struggling with.
- My latest “impact injury” happened during a yoga class back in December, the day before New Year’s Eve. I liked the teacher who usually taught the class, but that day there was a sub I’d never met before. He had us do “fire hydrant pose”, where you’re on all fours and, yes, lift a leg out to the side. I’d never encountered this pose before and was having a little trouble getting the hang of it, and the teacher adjusted my right leg, pulling it up and into the pose and then holding it there. My right hip hasn’t been the same since. I had a lot of pain and soreness and lack of flexibility in the hip in the weeks right after the injury, and even today, going into triangle pose on my right side makes me gasp. At this point, stretching the hip feels like a good thing, so I keep doing it, and hopefully it’ll continue to improve, but it’s still troublesome for me.
- I did something to my neck that seems part impact injury and part cumulative. When I write in a journal, I like to lie on the bed on my right side, ideally with a pillow under my right arm, and write with my left hand. On my honeymoon last fall, I was journaling a lot to capture all the special moments of the trip, and this positioning seems to have put a strain on the left side of my neck – maybe I was tensing my neck or something? Then we also had wimpy pillows at the jungle lodge where we were staying, and I slept on it funny, which made the injury worse. There were times during the trip when I couldn’t turn my head to the left at all; since then, the pain’s come and gone, but a sudden motion (like having to look quickly over my left shoulder to change lanes on the highway) can still be problematic. I’ve been trying all kinds of things to solve the problem: one pillow, two pillows, starting with two pillows and getting rid of one midway through the night (it was great fun the time I flung a pillow and knocked over my water glass), plus any variety of yoga stretches. What’s helped the most are a series of neck warm-ups I learned in African dance class, so I like to do those as part of my daily yoga practice. The dance class ran for the month of February, and by the time it ended, I had almost eliminated the neck pain. Now, though, I’m doing much of my practice at the studio, so I haven’t been doing the exercises every day. I need to get back to this.
Of course, I’ve also had problems with my wrists and knees. I would guess that anybody seriously pursuing yoga (or working all day in an office, or both) has also had some sort of problem in these areas. My wrists were bad enough at one point that I went to the doctor, who didn’t have much to say other than to keep wearing the wrist brace I got at Walgreens. It’s just a generic carpal tunnel brace, but it did help. I now have one for each wrist that I keep around just in case, plus a pair of more flexible wrist supports that I’ll use from time to time. Now that I’m stepping up my practice with teacher training, I’ve been considering getting these wrist support gloves, but they’re a little pricey and I haven’t experienced any actual pain from my new yoga schedule. I know, that’s a cop-out answer, if I’ve had pain before I should be trying to prevent pain in the future. But I haven’t been practicing a lot of wrist-intensive poses lately, either (handstand or handstand prep, crow, wheel: the sorts of poses where a high percentage of your body weight is resting on your hands). If I start practicing these sorts of poses more often, then I will look into getting the gloves, but for now I think I’m okay. I do wish that, in the Swenson article linked above, they’d given more detail on how to avoid and/or deal with wrist injuries.
I had some worries about my left knee recently too, but mostly that was in the winter: when I wasn’t walking or running or dancing. Once my dance class started up in February, and then it got warm enough for me to go jogging occasionally, it started feeling better, and I haven’t had any pain now for quite a while. This seems to me to agree with the article, that some cross-training can be good for strengthening the muscles around problematic joints. (I’ve also had issues in the past with twisting this knee, so I’ve been careful of that lately and I think that helps too.)
What yoga injuries have you experienced, and what insights can you share into resolving them?
(And keep the links coming when you see ’em!)
Rox Does Yoga 