Distinctly non-funereal flowers in the bold colors Ann loved

My sister Ann passed away on Good Friday. Her memorial service was a week ago today.

I wanted to give you that news and thank you for all of the support you’ve given me, both in comments and in emails. It truly helps, in the misery of loss, to feel the presence of sympathetic people who wish you well.

I am doing fine, as these things go. I’m back to teaching this week, and back to taking classes.

But I’m not ready to write again, at least not regularly. For the next three months at least, I’m taking it easy and thinking things over.

For a while now I’ve been wanting to reorganize this website, to make the more than 160 posts more organized and accessible. So I’m going to work on that. From now on, I’ll be showing up on Facebook, just to keep in touch.

I also want to think about what Ann meant to me, and how I want to honor her memory.

My big sister had her own nursery rhyme:
“Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn – all except for little Ann, who’s hidden under the frying pan.”

I was so envious, and yet I never thought to find out who made it up.

When she was five, she went out with Dad and his buddy Jack Sheen and came home with a chocolate rabbit as big as herself.

When she was eight, she broke into the nearby children’s polio hospital to sit in the painted wooden teacups – by far the most appealing toys in the neighborhood – and was immediately evicted by the horrified staff, despite the sheets she and her friend Olive brought with them as they scaled the chain-link fence, hoping to pass themselves off as little patients.

I used to stare at those teacups too. But when I see a chain-link fence, I think that I’m not meant to be on the other side.

When Ann saw chain-link, she climbed. At least in the beginning. Then something happened, sometime in her forties. She seemed to give up on the possibility of happiness. In one of those odd twists of fate, Alzheimer’s softened her and made her more easy-going and affectionate.

I have written jokingly that yoga wrecked my life.

In truth, yoga keeps me from falling into the family default of helplessness and despair. It’s a vantage point, born, I believe, from fear, fear that life isn’t good, and that if we recognize our good fortune and claim happiness, it will be taken away from us.

Yes, people get old and sick and die. Yes, evidence quickly massing around me says that my body is aging, and yes, someday, I’m going to die. I still think it’s possible to be happy most of the time.

For the past month I’ve been reading and delighting in the poetry of Kay Ryan.

This one, called Age, is one I’m memorizing, hoping to “kinden” as I go:

AGE

As some people age
they kinden.
The apertures
of their eyes widen.
I do not think they weaken;
I think something weak strengthens
until they are more and more it,
like letting in heaven.
But other people are
mussels or clams, frightened.
Steam or knife blades mean open.
They hear heaven, they think boiled or broken.

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This is a picture of my sister, Ann, holding me.
She’s eight years old; I’m three months old.

We had been living in that half-built house for at least three months because this picture was taken in June, and they brought me home from the hospital in March.

Isn’t she beautiful? And doesn’t she have the most amazingly strong and capable looking hands for a child her age?

Ann is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and is now in the last stages of the disease. Sometime in the next few weeks or the next few months, she will die. So I find myself back in the land of childhood lately, trying to know my sister as best I can before she finally slips away.

I’m still practicing and teaching, living the truth of Guruji’s words, that yoga helps us cure what can be cured and endure what must be endured. It’s not all sad, and I work to be as happy as I can be under the circumstances.

But I can’t find it in my heart to write about practice, or more precisely, to write for publication, even to you, my yoga-blog friends.

When that changes, I’ll be back. In the meantime, I wish you a sustaining practice.

The post Remembering when appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

Sometimes the only transportation available to you is a leap of faith.
––Margaret Shepherd

JoAnn came to her private yoga class last week with a copy of “Father William,” Lewis Carroll’s poem in which an obnoxious young man attempts to guide his father in age-appropriate behavior.

“Do you know it?” she asked.

Do I know it? My mother loved it, and often quoted the first lines. I’ve used it on this blog. I don’t need to see it to start reciting:

“You are old father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white.
“And yet you consistently stand on your head,
“Do you think at your age that is right?”

JoAnn is 69. She wants to be to be able to say: “I learned headstand when I was 70.”
Her questions: Did I think at her age that is right? And would I help?

My answer? Of course – on both counts!

This is the kind of challenge I adore. The goal is exciting. The timeline is as long as it takes, but as soon as possible. And the protagonist is a steady student, good humored and hardworking, with none of the contraindications for headstand (high blood pressure, neck pain, glaucoma or other eye problems).

Lewis Carroll’s verse ends:

“In my youth,” the father replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain.
“But now I am perfectly sure I have none,
“So I do it again, and again.”

But I think it’s precisely because we have brains that headstand grows in importance as we age.
After all, who couldn’t use a little more energy, concentration and mental clarity?
And there’s an excellent precedent. B.K.S. Iyengar taught headstand to the Elisabeth, Queen of Belgium, when she was 80, although, in his telling, she commanded him to do it.

To begin, we focused on three basic elements for getting into a good headstand: strong, active legs with flexible hamstrings, strong abdominals, and strong, open shoulders.

Supta Padangusthasana 1: with the correct leg actions, it will connect and strengthen your core as it lengthens your hamstrings.

•Downward dog will help with all three.

• The first variation of lying down big toe pose (Supta Padangusthasana) will loosen hamstrings and increase core strength and awareness. This one shows a strap at the groin, but you’ll get the idea, and the actions.

• Prasarita Padottanasana, the wide-legged standing forward bend, gets us used to having the head down and sets up the essential action of headstand through the shoulders: they lift away from the ears.

We also looked at the classic headstand preparation with the hands clasped, elbows in line, head on the floor and pelvis lifted, feet walking in.

But that preparation is harder to hold than the full pose – which is why most yoga students, myself included, are tempted to sail past it as quickly as we can.

If this is your main preparation for headstand, you’re likely to feel that the pose itself is beyond your reach. As useful as it may be for increasing strength, it doesn’t provide something equally important – a firm platform for a leap of faith.

Given the basic uncertainty of life, I’m sure as I can be that JoAnn will one day place her knuckles at a wall and kick up into a headstand with lifted shoulders, a long lower back and active legs, and then take her heels away from the wall and balance.

To do that will require a leap of faith.

No one ever kicked up into headstand for the first time, even with a wall behind them, without having to jump past the primal fear of falling over backwards.

The blocks at the wall support your shoulders and help you lift your pelvis.

What we need is a preparation that allows us to experience how headstand, or at least a pose very much like it, could be easy, and could make us feel powerful.
The best one I know is this headstand preparation with support for the back. (Click on the link for the full instructions.)
I learned it in a long-ago workshop with Aadil Palkhivala. As he pointed out at the time, it gives the same head-clearing sensation as a full headstand.

It also allows us to see how pressing down into the forearms lifts the upper arms and shoulders away from the floor.

It gives us the sensation of walking in to kick up without the heaviness of the unsupported preparation.

In that lightness, we can learn to press the upper front thighs back and lift the pelvis even more.

Yes, when it’s time to kick away from the floor for the first time, we all need to take a leap of faith to get where we want to go.

But with this work set in body and mind, we’ll have built ourselves a great place to push off from.

Photo courtesy Diego Hurtado, via Flickr

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The post Headstand at 70? Why not? appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

Don't tell me they're always this energetic.

Perhaps, in your 90s, or possibly your 60s, you will no longer feel that vigorous rounds of sun salutations are right for you.

But really, when will you not be able to lie down on the floor, given the appropriate propping behind your back?

And might you not, over time, deepen your understanding enough to be, as Iyengar says, “in the pose, beyond the pose”?

Reclining hero rests the mind and the belly, opens the chest, brings blood pressure to normal, stretches the front thighs and rests the legs.

You can do it right after a large meal. It relieves cramps, both menstrual and gastric.

In Geeta Iyengar’s Yoga: a Gem for Women, therapeutic uses include “acidity, rheumatism, stomach-ache, pain in the back, asthma, ulcers, heartburn, disorder of the ovaries and inflammation of the nerves.” In pregnancy, Geeta writes, Supta Virasana “relieves one from morning sickness, constipation, and flatulence.”

But for those who love the pose, and I count myself among them, the sensation is its own reward. In reclining hero, your arms, legs and side body feel like the banks of a river. Between them runs a current of energy, which becomes stronger and richer as you hold the pose. You rest and recharge.

If a solar panel had feelings, then I imagine that’s how it would feel on a sunny day – especially here in the cloudy West Coast rainforest.

Why isn’t this excellent pose more widely practiced and taught?
Simple: it’s hard to find a starting point, and without a safe place to work, you could hurt your knees, and your lower back. (Check the Yoga Journal’s online guide. Supta Virasana is the only pose description I’ve seen that starts with the word “Caution” – yes, in bold.)

The most common suggestion is to start with a bolster lengthwise behind your back. But many students, especially cyclists and runners, need much more than the standard props when they first try the pose.

Put the same number of blocks on the stool as you plan to sit on.

Happily, this version, which my teacher Louie Ettling showed in a class last fall, is much more accessible.
As a bonus, it stars one of my favorite yoga props, a little plastic stool you can find in a hardware store for less than $10. (Buy two. You’ll be glad you did.)

If you’re ready to start recharging your inner hero, here’s how:

For your first attempt, place the number of chip foam blocks you would sit on in hero pose in front of the stool.

Sit in hero pose.

Place the same number of chip foams on the stool.
(If you don’t have chip foams, you can, of course, use blankets or wood bricks. Chip foams are easier to wrangle.)

Take a brief trial run to see if the stool is placed close enough to support your shoulders when you lean back. There’s no set distance. It will vary with the number of blocks you’re using.

Sit in hero pose.

Curl your buttocks strongly toward the back of your knees and lift your chest.

Catch the bottom edge of your shoulder blades on the bottom edge of the block.

Depending on your proportions and the number of blocks you’re sitting on, you may need an extra block or a folded blanket under your head in order to feel comfortable in the pose.

When everything is stable, clasp your elbows. Pull your upper arms into your shoulder sockets. Keeping your shoulder blades moving away from your ears, stretch your forearms overhead.
From the top of your outer arms, press in toward your ears. From the top of your outer thighs, press in toward the centre.
Keep your shoulder blades moving down as you lengthen your side ribcage.

Then relax your work in the pose to about half, still keeping the actions, but less intensely.

Support your head with your clasped hands, and lengthen the back of your neck.

Stay for as long as you want, but only if you are pain free. If it’s hard work to keep the actions, then try 30 seconds, and repeat the pose several times.

When you can easily hold the pose for two minutes, try removing one chip foam from under your buttocks and one from the stool.

Lead with your chest, not your head as you sit up.

Sanskrit Corner:
Supta Virasana (say SOOP-ta veer-AH-sanna) means reclining hero. Supta comes from the same root as the English word “supine,” meaning lying on your back. “Vir” the root of Virasana, means manly, or its closest English equivalent, virile.

I generally prefer Sanskrit names for poses. They’re international, in the way Latin used to be. I like the way they sound, and they often have meanings that shed light on the poses. But in this case, I’m considering the merits of “reclining hero.”

In the reconstructed language that linguists call PIE – Proto-Indio-European. “Hero” has roots that reach back 3,500 years to a word that meant “to watch over, to protect”

That’s the kind of hero that we’re all called on to be, all our lives.
We watch over and protect our children, our pets, and in time our parents, our siblings, our friends and our mate.
You don’t have to be manly for that, although it can help. Having a way to rest and recharge can help even more.

If this was your kind of post, you might also like:
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The post Supta Virasana: sometimes even super heroes need to lie down appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

As experienced dieters know, your true weight is taken first thing in the morning, naked.

Our weight loss discussion didn’t make it into the article, and I was happy about that, because I didn’t think it was a good answer.

I’ve struggled to give a better one, and the best way I can is through my own experience.
I started to practice yoga at 39. Ten years later, still practicing, I gained 28 pounds during menopause and a year of commuting from Vancouver to Seattle every week while eating chocolate bars to stay awake on the drive.

Then the commute ended, and the hormones settled down. Over the next three years, I lost that weight, five pounds at a time.

Now my weight is mostly stable. It generally rises a few pounds over Christmas and slides back down without too much effort beyond eating less sugar, which, by January feels like a blessing.

That’s not much of a weight-loss testimonial.

But the interior reality is a different story.

Like most North American women, I was dieting by my late teens, always starting a new year by resolving to lose 10 pounds.
I ate what I thought would make me thin. I swam, and jogged, to help me lose weight. I spent hours looking up calorie counts, devising diets, calculating how many calories I’d burned in the day, and what I could afford to eat. My self-esteem fluctuated with the numbers on the scale.

At my most obsessed, I ran nine miles and swam five every week, and did juice fasts on the weekends.

I was indeed thin. I was also lonely, isolated, mourning my father’s sudden death, and just about to start a cycle in which I gained my ten pounds back again, and added another ten – a classic yo-yo.

My weight dropped during six month’s travel in Southeast Asia – the week in Burma was especially conducive to weight loss – and gradually rose again when I came home and settled into my habitual patterns.

But the year I came back from travelling is also the year I started yoga, and the year that everything about losing weight began to change.

I would never claim that the change was instantaneous. It was, and continues to be, more like unpacking an infinite set of nested boxes. I’d stumble on a truth about my way of being in my body, think I’d understood it all, and a few months later unpack another box.

Most of what I learned was in the direction of friendliness and humility.

Western culture teaches us that we are two selves, a mind and a body. The mind is supposed to be in control. The body is the animal self, naturally ruled by the mind.

In truth, we’re a body-mind.

Our genes set our metabolism and predispose us to one body shape or another. And our body chemistry, as we’re now learning, dictates our moods and the way we see the world.

A mind that imagines itself to be “in control” of a body is delusional.
If you doubt this, think back to puberty.

In Wende’s yoga classes, I learned to turn inward and become intimate with my body. I learned where my bones and organs were, how to spread the skin on the soles of my feet, how to lift my inner ankles as my heels move down, how to press my forearms down into the floor to hold me up in elbow balance.

I started to feel powerful in my body, proud of its strength and its ability to take on the shapes of the poses.

Now I want to learn how to soften my groins, how to work my arms, how to even out the stronger, tighter right shoulder and the weaker, looser left shoulder.

I no longer resolve to lose weight. I don’t count calories, I don’t put any food into a forbidden category. I do try to eat more vegetables and drink more water.

My yoga practice changed the context.

When it comes to my body, I have other things to think about than numbers on a scale, and somehow, the numbers pretty much take care of themselves. I am not thin, but I am fit, and at a healthy weight.

Can yoga help you lose weight? Did it help me lose weight?

In fact, I lost the heaviest weight of all – the compulsion to diet.

Photo courtesy of the Italian voicevia Flickr.

If you liked this post, please share. If you’d like to read more, check out:

Can Yoga Prevent Dementia?

How does the impossible become possible?

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The post Can Yoga Help You Lose Weight? appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

A heap of jewel-bright Iyengar bracelets.

It was cookie night last night, by which I know that it’s officially Christmas time, and year’s end.

We made Cappuccino Shortbreads, Peppermint Patties, Gingerbreads, Clove Snaps (a clove-and-citrus take on Ginger Snaps), Lemon-Lime Butter Wafers, Kris Kringle chocolate cookies that you roll in either cocoa or icing sugar before baking, and, in a climax of chocolate adulation, Jackson Pollock inspired chocolate lace with orange-flavored sugar.

So I woke up this morning with the feeling that before I stop teaching, and blogging, until the New Year, I ought to look at what’s happened in my yoga year.

The truth is that deep in the quiet of my own practice, I’ve experienced a sea change.

Ever since my first class I’ve been told, over and over again, that my back rounds.
My mother and my sister both developed Dowager’s humps, so part of it at least was either genetic or such early postural programming that I might as well have inherited it.

Class after class, teacher after teacher gave me a gentle or not so gentle poke, sometimes in my mid-thoracic, sometimes higher.

It was so regular a correction that I came to expect that any forward bend, any seated meditation posture, and when Gabriella Giubilaro was teaching, any headstand, would come with a guaranteed poke in the back.

No matter how well I thought I was working my shoulders, no matter how straight my back felt, there was always something visible to correct.

If there’s a defining feature of Iyengar yoga, it might be the demand for constant inquiry. We are always asked to go deeper, to observe ourselves, to observe the actions in the poses.

In June I took the basic Iyengar question – “what happens if I do this? – to the Bandha Yoga website’s suggestion for activating serratus anterior. When I do the correct sequence of actions – upper arms back, down, and deeper into the shoulder sockets, hands pressing apart against resistance – the last little bit of my upper spine straightens.

Since then I’ve explored that action in just about every pose that puts weight on my arms, and many that don’t. Again and again it works to give my ribcage a close to magical lift and opening.

I’m Quasimodo no more.

We’ll see if that holds next March, when Gabriella looks at my headstand, but so far it’s been months since a teacher has prodded my upper back in a forward bend.

In fact, every pose is changing, perhaps most remarkably, pushing up from the floor into Chaturanga Dandasana, the yoga pushup. With a straight spine, my shoulders stay back and my abdominals engage in a different way.

I can tell that my version of the pose is correct, which means that if I just keep working at it, eventually I won’t need the mechanical advantage from the two wood bricks I’m using right now.

A work of art in chocolate – and it tastes as good as it looks.

That so much has happened since June is breathtaking.

For now, I’m happy just to spend a few weeks absorbing it, and busying myself with baking and shopping and holidaymaking. (I hope to share some recipes from cookie night, at Ant and Anise soon. I’ll post to Facebook when I do.)

In the meantime, I wish you happy holidays, joy in your practice, and constant inquiry in the year ahead.

The bracelets in that lovely heap of color above come from Kelly Murphy’s Bend Over Backwards studio in Nanaimo, B.C. They’re a fundraiser for The Candles, a group of HIV-orphaned children in Uganda. You can buy the bracelets on the website, or email Kelly at kemurphy@shaw.ca.

The post Looking back on a year of yoga appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

Looks innocent, doesn't it? Fold it in four, leave it lying around, and you'll see the damage it can do.

Someone had left a folded yoga mat in the middle of the room. My little toe got caught in the fold. There was a flash of pain, and then I just kept walking.

My inner Spartan boy – the one who hid a wild fox he had stolen under his clothes and suffered the consequence – kicked in immediately.

I had one more class to teach, and I couldn’t see sending the students home, or teaching from a chair in the middle of the room. So I made it a game to see if could get through the 90 minutes without letting on I was I injured.

Knowing what I know now, I’d have sent out for ice, and taught large portions of the class on my back, with my legs up the wall.

I learned that it’s important to keep props out of the circulation space.

I don’t blame anyone for the sticky mat incident, or if I do, it’s me, for not paying attention. But the truth is, I walk around the studio looking at the students, not the floor, so I need all the help I can get to stay safe.

For years I’ve seen the scattering of props around the room as a happy sign of yogis at work. I thought that teachers who insisted on keeping the room clear were a bit on the military side.

Not any more. Just call me Captain.

I learned what a sprain is.

By definition, a sprain is an injury at a joint, usually the knee, ankle or shoulder, but little toes count too.

In a sprain, we tear the ligaments that tie the bones together. Ligaments, from a Latin word meaning to tie or to bind, and by association, a bandage, connect and stabilize one bone to another. They look a bit like bandages, white, stringy, fibrous and tough.

They can be stretched to increase range of motion. If they are over-stretched they can’t regain their former shape, and the result is a loose and weakened joint.
Hence the alarm about “hanging in your joints” when you do yoga poses.

When you wrench ligaments, by say, getting your little toe stuck in a yoga mat, they take a long time to heal. In fact, a sprain can take longer to mend than a broken bone.

Ligaments don’t get much blood supply, so they are naturally slow to heal. And they are always subject to new strains, just in the normal course of doing their jobs.

Think of it: the work of the ligaments is to halt the movement of the bones when they go too far away from each other. You don’t have to be playing sports to make a ligament stretch. All of us place our weight unevenly and stumble from time to time.

I learned that it’s best to take sprains seriously.

One of the hidden but real dangers of yoga is that you generally feel so good that you come to think of yourself as invincible. I almost never get colds or flu. When there’s a bug around I might have a hot bath and then tuck up in bed with a cup of tea for the afternoon, but that’s about all that happens. (In fact, the illusion of invincibility is so strong that I’d completely forgotten The Sniffley Sadhana when I wrote this. And that was only six months ago.)

I expected the sprain to heal quickly, almost by itself. Everything else always does. Why not this?

I could have taken anti-inflammatories on a regular schedule, but I didn’t do that, nor did I lie down and put my feet up as much as possible.

I didn’t even Google “sprained little toe” until into the second week, so certain was I that all I could do about it was ice and wait. And since it was going to heal quickly without much help from me, I didn’t really bother too much with the icing.

A month later, my foot still hurts. Today, it’s swollen and it looks bruised again. I seem to be able to walk inside, barefoot or in sandals, without much trouble. Not so much outside, in shoes.

I used to take 40-minute walking breaks down to the library and back to clear my head when I’d been writing. I trotted up to the bank, bought most of my groceries on foot, took just about any chance to head out the door and see how the world smells, and how the air feels on my skin.

Now it makes a difference to me if I park in front of my destination, or a block away.

I’m getting an X-ray, to see if it’s just a strain (whew!) just a broken bone (whew! again) or a broken bone with a small chip of bone lodged in the joint (not so whew!).

And the last thing I learned?

I need a bike.

Photo courtesy of bradleypjohnson, via Flickr.

If this is your kind of post, you might also like:
Wrecked by yoga: a personal story
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••••••
VanCitybuzz just published my story on the joys of Iyengar yoga, titled Highlighting Iyengar Yoga. If you like it, please share.

The post Five things I learned after I sprained my little toe appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

From inside the foggy bubble it's hard to tell where you are.

If you are a fan of heavy-metal clothing brand Affliction – admittedly not really likely if you’ve found yourself on this page – then you might believe that affliction is “the passion that drives us to reach for greatness,” or something that “makes you build when others buy.”

Well no.

Since at least Roman times, an affliction has been understood as a cause of mental or bodily pain. It comes from the Latin afflictus, meaning distressed, or cast down.

In fact, the purpose of yoga practice is to reduce afflictions so that we can reach deep states of meditation that will lead to Samadhi, or integration.

Yoga philosophy counts five afflictions, or kleshas (say clay-sha) – ignorance, egoism, passion, hatred and the will to live, or clinging to life.

When Patanjali provides a list, the most important item comes first. There’s no saving the best for last.

That means the most important klesha of all is ignorance. In fact, the literal meaning of the next sutra is that ignorance is the field in which the other afflictions grow.

This makes sense because what’s meant by ignorance, literally “not seeing,” is a permanently operating fog machine that keeps us from perceiving reality.
And by definition, if you’re ignorant, you “can’t know,” as a little boy I met used to say in response to almost any question.

So if the kleshas rise from ignorance, and you can’t know your own ignorance, how can you possibly work with the kleshas?

In theory, you could always go to the bottom, and least important part of the list and try to work your way up. But fear of death, clinging to life, and the will to live, is, as Iyengar writes in Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, “the subtlest of all afflictions . . . . found even in wise men.”

I have a small suggestion.

It comes from my September commitment to 10 minutes of conscious breathing a day, first thing in the morning.

Lie down, prop your chest up, set a timer, and become passive in the presence of the breath. Most especially, allow a natural pause at the end of your exhalation, and let the inhalation breath come by itself.

You will be led, every morning, into a meditation on breathing.
First there are bare facts that you don’t own your breath, didn’t start it, and aren’t in control of when it stops – although it will, inevitably, stop.

Perhaps your breath will merge back into the universal breath bringing some part of your experience with it. Perhaps not. But it will definitely end. Breathing is both fragile and impermanent.

Happily, it’s also universal. Every in and out cycle connects you to the big breath of everything that lives, from whales to lichen. (It seems even bacteria breathe, or at least respire, although viruses don’t.)

We inhale the knowledge of our interdependence and exhale a long, slow breath that clears away, at least temporarily, the small corner of ignorance where we forget our mortality and suppose that we are separate from all else that lives.

Doesn’t sitting meditation do the same thing?

For some people I’m sure it does.

For about 25 years of my life I either meditated in the morning, or beat myself up for not meditating in the morning. When I sat, I was quieter and happier. But I was capable of staying caught up in my thoughts the whole time, and rising as deeply mired in my ignorance as when I sat down. (I still sit, I just don’t make it my first thing in the morning practice.)

Breath observation is more physical – shockingly physical, in fact.

I’m beginning to understand that it’s as necessary as active work in asana for improving posture and creating a broad, upright and expanded upper body.

If you prop your chest up and breathe for 10 minutes every day, you’re setting your ribcage, without tension, in the shape that every yoga pose demands. Active work gives you the strength to hold the shape.

Long slow breath calms the nervous system. It releases deep levels of anxiety that we all have – at some level we are all concerned with survival, and the will to live.

In calmness we react less to desire and aversion, and cling less tightly to the ego’s idea of ourselves.
And in calmness, it’s possible we might someday find the off-switch for the fog machine.

Image courtesy of Mysserli, via Flickr.
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The post Every breath you take appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.

When you come back up, even a dark, gray day looks brighter.

Here on the wet West Coast, where winter closes in with endless clouds, rain, and steadily diminishing daylight, we take seasonal depression seriously.
I have a “happy light” glowing on my desk as I write this.
So there’s nothing I’d like to recommend more than doing a backbend over a chair, (more properly two-footed inverted staff pose in a chair), whenever the weather turns your mood sombre.

There are other poses that can help with depression, it’s true.
Vigorous standing poses and handstands can lift your mood, especially if dark winter days leave you feeling like staying in bed, with the covers pulled over your head.

Mind you, if that’s your kind of depression, standing poses and handstands are probably the last things you feel like doing. And if you’re not a strong practitioner, a few wobbly warrior poses or failed kick-ups into arm balance could leave you feeling worse than when you started.

It doesn’t take much energy to drape your upper back over the edge of a chair. And you don’t need to be strong, or even experienced. If you have an existing back or neck injury, you might need the help of a teacher, but fixes can be found.

And best of all, given the right support and a bit of practice, almost anyone can hold the pose for a long time – say three to 10 minutes – which is long enough for it to have a profound and lasting effect.

Need more convincing? Here’s an outline of the benefits from Lois Steinberg’s indispensable book, Geeta S. Iyengar’s Guide to a Woman’s Yoga Practice, Vol. 1: (link)

“While in this pose, tensions are completely rolled away by the lengthening and releasing that occurs. The abdominal and pelvic organs are decompressed, and toxins are expunged. The diaphragm releases its grip on the abdomen. The front body rests to the back body. The chest remains fully opened and benefits the heart, liver, stomach, spleen, gall bladder, and pancreas. Optimal breathing also occurs with the opening of the chest. Toxins expelled through the respiratory system are exchanged for fresh nutrition to the lungs. This pose is excellent for those suffering from depression, especially when the head is back.”

But here’s the issue: you can’t just go to a store and buy a yoga chair – a metal chair with the back cut out – although there are some solutions available.

And even if you could, metal chairs are, as we say, “one size fits some.” If you’re petite, you could probably do this pose in a chair with the back left in. If you’re large, you might not be able to do it with the back cut out.

Set up your two chairs seat-to-seat, with a sticky mat folded in four to cover the gap – and pad the chair

You can, of course, use just about any two matching chairs.
I think it’s worth buying a couple of metal chairs: they’re inexpensive; they have the hard surface you need; and the way they’re built makes them suitable props, even with the back left in, for most yoga poses, including, most importantly, chair shoulder stand.
Besides, they fold, so they don’t take up much space, and with the backs left in, they’re more comfortable when they’re pressed into service as extra chairs.

Start with your head in line with your spine, then, as you become comfortable, gradually reduce the height.

Make whatever adjustments you need, then sit on the edge of the chair that’s closest to the wall.
Supporting yourself with your hands, take your buttocks over the edge of the chair on the wall side.
Lie back, then move toward your head until the bottom edges of your shoulder blades hook over the edge of the chair.

To come back up, wiggle your buttocks back toward the middle of the chairs, and hold onto the chair backs.

You won’t be able to reach under the chair to hold the legs as you might when you’re using just one chair.
Instead, experiment with holding your elbows, or holding the back of your head in your hands, as though you were doing headstand. Be sure to change the cross of your hands.
Then, as in the photo above, extend your arms long, either with or without support under the back of your head.

Sit up chest first, head back.

To come out, wiggle your buttocks back toward the middle of the chairs. Hold the back rungs of the chairs, and pull down as you swing out, leading with your chest.

Ouch:
If your lower back feels tight or pinched, come out and put more height under your feet.
If that doesn’t make the pinching go away, bend your knees and put your feet on the floor.
If you have tight shoulders, your arms might begin to tingle as you hold the pose. If this happens, clasp your hands and rest them on your belly.

Do you have a favorite yoga technique for weathering dark days? Do tell.

Photos by Mary Balomenos
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Yes, those triceps could be even more assimilated. Give me time.

The Borg is quite possibly the most thought-provoking alien species ever to populate science fiction.

“Born into a collective consciousness, they are collectively aware, but not aware of themselves as individuals,” as the article on the StarTrek.com database tells us.   They’re never alone, always in the company of thousands of voices; deep in a hive mind that encompasses the knowledge of every species they have assimilated in their search for technological perfection.

And their message, once heard, is indelible: “We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.”

Happily, yoga is not science fiction. In yoga, resistance is not only utile – if you’ll excuse the obsolete word for useful – it’s necessary.

Here’s a case in point.

One of the prevailing mysteries of Iyengar yoga, for me at least, is: “how do other people hold their arms up for so long?”

I’ve been led any number of times through a long preparation for, say triangle pose, legs turned and working, arms out to the side, chest lifted, waiting for the cue to hinge at the hip and take the pose – and waiting, and waiting.

I understand the use of a long preparatory holding. We’re learning to maintain the actions in a neutral position, so they’ll be set when we move into the full pose.

Sometimes of course, teachers just get caught up in talking through the pose, and forget that the students are holding it.

In either case, I’m the one discreetly bringing my arms down, relaxing my shoulders and bringing my arms back up again. 

It’s not so much that my arms get tired. I’d stick with that, as much as I could, knowing it was strengthening.

But the sensation in my upper back and neck doesn’t feel healthy. It’s not the slightly pleasant pain of working a little past your previous limit. It’s a contracting, buzzing, disconcerting grip at the base of my neck.

 Lately I’ve stumbled upon a partial answer: resistance.

 With my arms horizontal, I press my palms down into an imagined hard surface.

I use that resistance to help me lift my triceps. In Borgian terms, I assimilate my triceps into my upper arm bones.

Those two actions trigger a third: I exhale and lengthen down the sides of my neck, and out my shoulders and upper arms, while simultaneously releasing my shoulder blades.

The grip is gone, and my arms feel stronger.

It doesn’t last, of course. A few breaths later, the grip at the back of my neck sets in, and I have to do it all over again.

Still, it’s an improvement.

But if you’ve never felt resistance under your hands with your arms spread, how do you find an imaginary hard surface?
One option is to ask a willing helper to stand behind you, put their hands under yours, and resist when you press down.

An inanimate object will work too.

If you have a sofa of the right dimensions for your body, you can sit tall, spread your arms on the back of the sofa, press down and lift your triceps.

No right-sized sofa?

Try kneeling in thunderbolt pose between two chairs. Put a wood brick on each chair, turned to the side that will support your hands with your arms horizontal at shoulder height.

Once you have the memory of real resistance in your hands, you’ll be able to take that sensation into your standing poses.
Just remember: We are yogis. Our triceps will be assimilated. Resistance is utile.
 
Photo by Mary Balomenos

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The post Forget about the Borg: resistance is utile appeared first on Five-Minute Yoga.