Five-Minute Yoga

The Five-Minute Yoga Challenge started as a response to two of Gretchen Rubin’s Rules for Adulthood: “What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE,” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.” That, in a nutshell, is the philosophy of My Five Minute Yoga Practice. After all, no matter how busy you might be, there are five minutes somewhere in your day that you can devote to doing just one pose or preparation. The rules: it doesn’t matter if you don’t make all seven days. Three and above is a definite win, five and above is a triumph. Of course, if you have time, you can practice other poses. But if five minutes a day is all you have, choose a Five-Minute Yoga Challenge that works for you, do it, and see what happens.

Any solid door that opens away from you can turn into a yoga wall.

There’s a lot to be said for hanging out. In fact, adding a few minutes of hanging to your daily yoga routine is one of the quickest ways to loosen tight shoulders and create lasting length through your side body.

When you hang, you can spend time in a slow, meditative stretch that’s made much more effective by adding your body weight as traction.

So this week’s Five-Minute Yoga Challenge is to find a suitable door, knot a yoga strap, and find your inner monkey.

What makes a suitable door?

First and most important, it has to open away from you.  Solid wood or steel is best. Avoid glass doors and bi-folds, for obvious reasons.

Make a loop in your strap, then tie a knot in the loop.
Put the knot on the far side of the door, the loop on the side nearest you.
Close the door and pull the strap until the knot is firm against the back of the door. (You might want to dust the top of the door first, to keep your strap clean.)

Think "ski pole" when you bring your hand into the strap.

Stand about a foot away from the door. Now slip one hand into the loop as though you were taking hold of a ski pole. Turn your feet sideways to the door, so the arm connected to the strap is now on the side away from the door.

Start with a small loop, perhaps a foot (30 cm) of strap. The longer the loop, the deeper your knees will bend.

Once you get the hang of it, it's relaxing.

Slowly begin to stretch into your side body. Bend your knees a little at a time. Feel your way in, gradually taking more of your body weight into the strap. Experiment with engaging the muscles in your arm.

Turn to look up under your arm. Feel the stretch moving all the way down the side of your body to your hip. Imagine your arm becoming as long and supple as a gibbon’s. Play. For inspiration, you might like to listen to this territorial call of a female Silvery Gibbon.

If you can’t locate your inner monkey (or lesser ape) and feel puzzled and uncomfortable instead of long and liberated, try changing sides.
For most of us, one side understands immediately, while the other side is mystified. Once you’ve experienced the side that “gets” it, you’ll be able to recreate that feeling on the other side.
Hang for several long deep breaths on each side.

Benefits: Hang from a strap and you’ll create a longer, more open side body, especially through your ribcage, armpits and shoulders. Ease and spaciousness in your ribcage will energize you and help you breathe more easily.

Sequence: Hang around whenever you want to. It’s an excellent way to recharge your energy and clear your mind when you’ve been sitting at a desk. Use traction towards the beginning of a longer practice and enjoy the length of your side body in the poses that follow.

Ouch: Ease in slowly and gently if you have stiff shoulders. Keep the loop short if you have knee problems that make squatting uncomfortable for you. If you feel a pinch in your lower back, drop your buttock bones toward the floor.

Unruffled clarity: a still summer night on Rosen Lake

I certainly hope so, since genetics suggest that I’m going to be staring dementia straight in the eye. Except, of course, it doesn’t stare back. Instead it frets, repeatedly asking, “what day is it?” “what time is it?” and “where are we?”

One place we are is at the beginning of what is expected to be a steep climb in diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

At the moment, one out of every eight people 65 and older has dementia. By 85, the number is one in two. And as a society, we’re getting older.

Look for advice on Alzheimer’s prevention and you’ll find a fairly consistent message. There are no guarantees, but based on studies done so far you can substantially decrease your risk  if you:

• get plenty of exercise,

• eat a healthy diet

• refrain from smoking and excessive alcohol consumption

• avoid high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and stress,

• and stay mentally and socially engaged.

Is there anything on that list that doesn’t happen automatically with a strong yoga practice?

People who practice asana seriously do more than the 30 minutes five times a week prescribed as an exercise program.  Vigorous work in the poses not only raises your heart rate, it’s weight bearing – for a yogi, the body provides its own gym.

Prolonged yoga practice seems to lead us to a healthy diet and an abstemious lifestyle whether we want it or not. No rule says you have to stop drinking, smoking and eating red meat in order to practice yoga, but somehow the longer you practice, the less interesting they become.

And to prevent diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure? Don’t smoke, don’t drink to excess, eat well and exercise.

Yoga practice relieves stress, and chronic stress can quadruple your risk of dementia.

In this case the effect is easy to measure and well documented: an hour of yoga significantly lowers blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol. That’s important because excessive cortisol wreaks havoc in the brain, hampering nerve cell growth and accelerating cognitive decline.

Commit yourself to yoga and you’ll have plenty of mental stimulation. Soon you’ll be learning the Sanksrit names of poses – a new language. There are sequences to remember, like dance steps, only slower, new poses to learn, new neural pathways to construct, new places to bring intelligence into your body.

Social contact? If you come to a registered class once a week you will gradually build a yoga community. How large or small you’d like it to be is your choice.

Is it just me or should we be looking at ways to integrate yoga more deeply into our preventative health planning?

In the meantime, I’m looking under “Brain” and “Loss of Memory” in the Curative Asanas for Various Diseases section in Light on Yoga. What’s recommended? Headstands and shoulder stands and their variations, forward bends, backbends, alternate nostril breathing, and in the “Brain” section, Ganda Bherundasana.

It’s back. B.K.S. Iyengar is 91, and still writing books. Perhaps we should look up the Ross Sisters and see how they’re doing.

B.K.S. Iyengar performing the final stage of Ganda Bherandasana

Using a chair helps you find a straight spine in your twist.

When something feels as good as a deep twist, how is it we  forget to do it when we need it most?

We sit at desks, shoulders tense and upper backs gripping, then get up and walk away, carrying our tension with us, when we could, with a few minutes of twisting, leave them behind with all those unanswered emails.

This week’s Five-Minute Yoga Challenge is to work at least one refreshing, back-freeing twist into your day.

How do you twist well? Two things:

• The longer your spine, the deeper your twist. Find length before you twist, keep it as you twist and maintain it as you come out of the twist.

• Don’t let your head go first. It will want to, but restrain it. Instead, keep your chin lined up with the centre of your chest until your last few breaths in the pose.

Now, sit at the edge of a chair, with your left side close to the chair back. Check that your feet are parallel and your knees are directly above your ankles.

Tall?  You may have to sit on blocks to achieve this alignment. If you’re short, you may need to put a block under your feet.
If you have a yoga brick handy, put it between your knees and squeeze it, or use a thick paperback. You can also just imagine a block there – if  it’s working, you’ll feel a pressure at the inner knees that transfers up your inner thighs and firms your core.
Now make space in your spine. Lengthen the back of your waist toward your buttocks. As you press your sitting bones down into the chair, bring your  body to an upright position,  with the crown of your head directly over your spinal column.
Exhale and release your shoulder blades down your back. Lift the crown of your head toward the ceiling.
Lift the sides of your navel as you inhale. Exhale and bring your navel toward your spine.
Turn to your left and bring your hands to the back of the chair.
Rotate your rib cage.

Check that your shoulders have not tensed. Move the bottom of your left shoulder blade toward your spine. Move your right shoulder blade away from your spine.

When you have rotated as far as you think you can, turn your head toward your the right, and lengthen your left collarbone toward your left shoulder. Turn a little more,  then let your head turn again to look over your left shoulder.
Repeat on the right side. Then do each side once more. The second twist will be even deeper and more delicious than the first.

Benefits: Seated twists ease tight backs and tone, massage and rejuvenate the abdominal organs. Do a seated twist in a chair, and you’ll have more freedom of movement and twist more deeply than when you sit on the floor.

Sequence: This Bharadvajasana variation is a great pose to do any time of the day, especially if you’re stuck at a desk.
In a longer practice, use this variation as the first in a series of seated twists, so your body feels a sensation of freedom in twisting first and has a correct sensation to work towards.

Ouch: If you feel squeezed and breathless at the end of your twist, you’ve gone too far. This gentle twist is safe for almost everyone. If you feel pain in the pose, consult your teacher.

Sanskrit corner: Say:(bah-ROD-va-JAHS-anna). Bharadhvaja was one of seven legendary sages who are credited with writing the Vedas, the oldest portions of the holy books of Hinduism.

Alison Grant-Watts drew this when she was three and we used to do yoga together. Now she has her own blog.

I first saw someone do full arm balance in a vacant lot in East Vancouver in 1962 when I was earning a Girl Guide badge that required me to build a fire and boil water in a billycan to make tea.

Mrs. Jones, the troop leader, was there to witness the fire building and water boiling. Perhaps she was bored. At some point in the afternoon, she flung her hands down to the grass, kicked her heels up in the air, and stood triumphant in handstand.

It was enchanting, magical, miles removed from what guide leaders and mothers normally did, and equally far from anything I ever imagined doing myself.

The next time I saw the pose was 25 years later in Wende Davis’s advanced Iyengar yoga class. She stood with her back to the wall, and those of us who needed help put our hands between her feet, walked in, and kicked up. I acted in blind faith – Wende thinks I can do this, so I can – and landed lightly at the wall.

I felt a hit of fearless-and-free, a rush like nothing I’d ever felt before. By the time I came down, I was in love.

We all fall in love with particular poses, I suspect. There are, of course, the easy ones that feel good right away and seem to love us back. But I’ll bet I’m not the only one who saves the passion and obsession for my unrequited loves, the poses that are difficult, glamorous and elusive.

We make them into benchmarks: once I can hover effortlessly in Chatturanga Dandasana, or fold like a jack-knife into Upavistha Konasana, or yes, kick up confidently in arm balance, then I will finally be strong, or flexible, or fearless.

In classic girl-meets-pose terms, my love affair with arm balance went like this: girl sees pose from a distance, girls tries pose, falls in love with pose, gets pose, loses pose, then, in what seems like an endless series of temporary breakthroughs, gets it back and loses it again repeatedly for the next 21 years.

After my first brilliant moment, I tried arm balance in class a few more times, then brought it into my home practice, only to learn that I had invited my own black beast to live with me. Alone at the wall, faced with flinging myself backwards, I was gripped with fear, and could barely get one foot off the floor, much less two.

Months went by.

I set up a sequence:  a chest opening, front thigh stretch, Supta Virasana, dog pose and arm balance. Every time I practiced, I tried kicking up. Once, it worked flawlessly. Then it stopped working. I concentrated on half-arm balance, reasoning that if I built my strength with my feet on the wall, I would gain confidence for the full pose.

Years went by.

The diabolical rocking chair, still available, free to a good home.

As unrequited lovers will, I made up a story about why it wasn’t working, a comforting, but ultimately useless explanation which hinged on the diabolical rocking chair I had as a toddler. Any time you went fast, you were in danger of tipping over backwards and landing on your head, with the chair on top of you. I know it happened, because I remember being told that if I didn’t stop flipping over, the chair would be taken away from me. No wonder I clenched every time I tried kicking up.

Breakthroughs came and went.

I practiced kicking up every day and letting go of the results.

I strengthened my arms. I walked in closer.

I focused on bringing my pelvis toward the wall.

I learned to exhale as I stepped in and inhale as I kicked up.

I lifted my heart as I kicked up.

All of it worked for a while and then stopped working.

I’d be back where I started, kick-up leg touching the wall, second leg not quite there.

In the meantime, I learned how to stand on my head, be stable in standing poses, love shoulder stand, balance in elbow balance, push up in a full backbend, and yes, fold to the floor in wide-legged forward bend. (There’s still no effortless hovering in Chatturanga Dandasana.)

Now, after 21 years of off-again, on-again arm balance, I seem to have mastered kicking up. Most of the time. Even, sometimes, with the second leg.

The secret? I look up. Not at the mat, not at my thumbs, as I’ve often been told, but up, toward the wall.

With my head lifted, my shoulders press into my back ribs and my spine feels strong. If I drop my head, I lose my upper body connection.

So what can we make of this?

Why it was so hard for me doesn’t matter. We all have our difficult poses and our easy ones. As Claudia MacDonald, one of my mentor teachers says, “if it’s easy, it’s easy.”

Why it took so long doesn’t matter either.

Now that the quest is over, I’m left wondering why I put so much weight on it, felt so bad when it didn’t work out and so good when it did. Why all the drama? Why the story?

Am I fearless now? Not really. The biggest change is that I no longer  have to listen to the voice that hisses: “You coward, you still can’t do that pose.”

Still, there’s something gained.

I’m reminded of the value of just showing up and trying, no matter how long it takes.

And then there’s this: most of my contemporaries outside of yoga world can’t do arm balance. True, they might not see the point of doing it, but the fact remains, they couldn’t if they wanted to.

In another 20 years, I’ll be in my 80s. If I’m still kicking up into arm balance, I’ll be very pleased.

The Five-Minute Yoga Challenge started as a response to two of Gretchen Rubin’s Rules for Adulthood: “What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE,” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.” That, in a nutshell, is the philosophy of My Five Minute Yoga Practice. After all, no matter how busy you might be, there are five minutes somewhere in your day that you can devote to doing just one pose or preparation. The rules: it doesn’t matter if you don’t make all seven days. Three and above is a definite win, five and above is a triumph. Of course, if you have time, you can practice other poses. But if five minutes a day is all you have, choose a Five-Minute Yoga Challenge that works for you, do it, and see what happens.

The blocks at the wall support your shoulders in this headstand preparation

No pose energizes, focuses thought and breaks us out of dull, listless moods as effectively as Sirsasana (headstand).

But headstand isn’t a pose for beginners.

So this week’s five-minute yoga challenge is do do five minute’s in a headstand preparation every day.

If you’re an advanced practitioner, by all means work towards five minutes in the full pose. But know that the safest way to increase your time in headstand is to add no more than 30 seconds a week to your holding.

If you’re a long way from five minutes, try this preparation first, then do your full pose.

And remember that in Iyengar yoga, shoulderstand always follows headstand, either directly, or later in the practice.

Not ready for the full pose?

Here’s a safe, easy way to start working with it, without having to take your feet off the floor.  It’s accessible to anyone who has a good grasp of downward facing dog pose, and it can clear the mind and raise the spirits almost as effectively as headstand itself.

If you have a helper to place the blocks, it’s a piece of cake. But with a little bit of practice, you can do it easily on your own. Here’s how:

Place a yoga mat with the narrow end at the wall.
If you have a second mat, fold it so you have three layers of thickness below your head. If you don’t have a second mat, use a firm blanket or a folded bath towel under your forearms.

Kneel, and with your hands hold three chip-foam blocks against the wall.
Bring your elbows to the floor and press your shoulders into the blocks. Make sure that the bottom edge of the blocks rests against your shoulders, and that the bones of your neck are below the blocks.
Clasp your hands, with your elbows shoulder-width apart. Let your knuckles touch the wall.
Bring the crown of your head to the floor.

Tuck your toes under and push up as though you were going into dog pose.
Take your feet out wide, to the edges of the mat, and walk them in toward your head.
Press your forearms strongly into the floor, especially the centres of the forearms, and press your shoulders into the blocks.
If you push down hard enough, your head will  lift off the floor. Relax your neck and let the weight of your head stretch your spine.
Check that you are looking out evenly, neither down to the floor, nor up toward the ceiling.
When you’ve held for as long as you like – it’s a surprisingly restful position – bend your knees and come down.
You can hold the chip foam blocks as you come down, or just let them tumble harmlessly to the floor. Rest in child’s pose, with your head down, for four long breaths.

Benefits: Headstand is one of the most powerful poses in yoga, bringing mental clarity and health to those who practice it.
But for beginners, full headstand can be daunting, and without the strength to stay in alignment, harmful.
This preparation will give you an energy burst from being inverted, accompanied by some of the calm and focused mental clarity gained from headstand practice.

Sequence: You can do this preparation whenever you feel low-energy or befuddled, and have the wall, the props and the privacy. Start your five minutes with a minute in downward dog pose, which will help your body adjust to the inversion. Then take your blocks to the wall.

Because you will not be bringing your body weight into your head, you don’t need to follow this preparation with a shoulderstand – although there’s certainly no harm in doing so if you have the time.

Ouch: Do not do this pose if  you have high blood pressure that is not under control, or glaucoma, or a detached retina, or are menstruating. Tight hamstrings? Keep your sitting bones high, but generously bend your knees.

Sansrkit corner: Say sheer-SHAH-sanna. Sirsa means head. Asana means pose.

Even if you're not practicing on a meteorite, all cross-legged poses are asymmetrical

We are all out of balance to some degree.

Triangle pose to the right may be a luxurious journey over smoothly oiled joints and long muscles. Turn to the left, and it feels like there’s sand in your joints and your hamstrings have, inexplicably, snapped an inch shorter.

There’s the one wobbly standing leg in Warrior III, the uber-tight shoulder in Gomukhasana, the short hamstring on one side in Janu Sirsasana. They bump us up against our limitations in every two-sided pose.

I’ve been thinking a lot about asymmetries lately, in part because the last two posts from the  superbly obsessive Yoga Spy have dealt with why we always roll out of Savasana on the right side, and how to address asymmetrical poses and asymmetrical bodies  in practice.

Yoga Spy even has a system for changing the  hand clasp in headstand based on odd and even days – on even days the left hand is on top, on odd days, the right.

It’s true that asana practice promotes symmetry, and that much of our work consists of bringing our bodies into balance. As the excellent website for the Iyengar Yoga Association of Greater New York has it:

People tend to stretch from their more flexible areas and rely on their better-developed muscles for strength, thus reinforcing postural habits. Iyengar Yoga encourages weak parts to strengthen and stiff areas to release, thus awakening and realigning the whole body. As the body moves into better alignment, less muscular work is required and relaxation increases naturally.

But I can think of five good reasons to cherish our unbalances, even as we yes, work to remove them.

1. Asymmetry wakes you up. Every time we take a two-sided pose, our hips, shoulders and hamstrings make sure that we have two different experiences. There’s more to notice, less of a tendency to fall into habit patterns and space out. On really dramatic differences – kicking up with the second leg in full arm balance, for instance – it’s less a different pose than a whole new, if somewhat unwelcome, continent to explore. Nonetheless, asymmetry keeps it new.

2. Asymmetries introduce you to your own body.

Yogis know which hip is stiff, which shoulder is tight, which hamstring resists in forward bends. Long before the stiff hip starts to wake us up in the middle of the night with a dull ache or a sharp pain, we’re at work on the solution.

As we resolve imbalances on one level, another level appears, a lot like peeling an onion.  Janu Sirsasana used to be hard on my left side, because the hamstrings were tighter. My left hamstrings are still tighter than the right, but now they have enough give for the pose. Now it’s the right side that’s more restricted, because my slight scoliosis, which I didn’t much notice before, takes me more easily to the left.

3. Asymmetries allow you insight into how your mind constructs categories. Do you label the sides as “easy” and “hard,” or  worse, “good” and “bad”? Is there a moral judgement implied on that problematic shoulder?

My own preference is for “sticky” and “smooth,” in part because there are times when “sticky” is good.

4. The smooth side teaches joy, but the sticky side teaches attention to detail. When you’re on the sticky side, you aren’t tempted to glide on through to your deepest place. That means you have time to stop and feel the effect of every action, and what you learn will stick with you – an example of good stickiness at work.

5. Finally, having a tighter or more difficult side provides boundless opportunity to practice friendliness and open-hearted curiosity towards ourselves. And since we always seem to find ourselves the most difficult people to be friendly to, all opportunities are welcome.

How do you feel about your imbalances? Are you just finding out what they are? Have you developed ways to work with them? Let me know.

Image: flickr creative commons, by  Sari Choche

Place a penny between your index and middle finger mounds

My friend Terri told me recently that she’d had a pain in her foot that was given temporary relief whenever she did downward facing dog pose.

So she found herself doing dog pose five or more  times a day – whenever the pain-relieving effect wore off.

“You know the interesting thing?” she said. “They started feeling different as the day went on. I started noticing things.”

Ah, dog pose.

It strengthens, it stretches, it wakes us up, it calms us down.

Here’s a slightly condensed version of the effects for Adho Mukha Svanasana as given in Light on Yoga:

When one is exhausted, a longer stay in this pose removes fatigue and brings back the lost energy. . . . The pose relieves pain and stiffness in the heels and helps to soften calcaneal spurs. It strengthens the ankles and makes the legs shapely.

The practice of this asana helps to eradicate stiffness in the region of the shoulder-blades and arthritis of the shoulder hjoints is relieved. The abdominal muscles are drawn towards the spine and strengthened. As the diaphragm is lifted to the chest cavity the rate of the heart beat is slowed down.

This is an exhilarating pose. . . . As the trunk is lowered in this asana it is fully stretched and healthy blood is brought to this region without any strain on the heart. It rejuvenates the brain cells and invigorates the brain by relieving fatigue.

With so many benefits, how could it possibly not have as many adjustments, and in Iyengar yoga, as many possible propping variations? And how could you not help noticing things as you practice it?

This week’s Five-Minute Yoga Challenge is to spend five minutes a day in Adho Mukha Svanasana, downward facing dog.

You might choose to put your heels on the wall and a wood brick under your head, and stay for five minutes. Or you might break it up into five one-minute holdings, or two holdings of a two-and-a-half minutes. You could try the same propping every time, or vary it.

All that matters is that you do the pose, and pay attention to how it feels as you do it.

If it’s giving you wrist pain just to think about five minutes of downward dog in a day, here’s something to try.

You can, of course, put your hands on bricks at the wall, or do your dog pose with the support of a chair. But by learning where to place the weight in your hands while you’re in the pose, you can begin to come to a permanent solution for sore wrists.

With your right index finger, find the spot between your index and middle finger mounds. Now take a penny and press it into that space.

The proof of the penny: look for a nice clear imprint

Holding the penny in place, turn your palm down and position it for downward facing dog pose.
Place your second hand on the mat, and take the pose.

(if you have a yoga buddy nearby, you can do both hands at once. Position the pennies and get your helper to hold them in place as you flip your hands over.)

Press down into your finger mounds. Extend your fingers. Stretch your thumbs towards each other. Now press into the penny.
Of course, at the same time:  take your thighs, shins and ankles back. Lift your outer hips, and as you bring your heels toward the floor, lift your inner ankles.
After a minute or two, come down, turn your hand over, and look at the indentation. Ideally, you have a perfect circle.

If the line is heavier on the little finger side, you need to bring more weight to the thumb side of your hand.
Try it again, and see if you can even out the circle.

Benefits: Check an anatomy book and you’ll see that the radius, the thicker and heavier of the two forearm bones, connects to  the thumb side of your hand. When you bring your weight into the finger mounds toward the thumb side, you’re placing it on the side that’s designed to bear it. You’ll reduce strain in your wrists, gain more strength in the pose, and be better able to lengthen your inner arms and move your shoulder blades away from your ears.

Sequence: Try it once, and if your results aren’t stellar, repeat the penny test several practices in a row. Tune into the feeling of pushing evenly down on both sides of the penny, then duplicate that feeling in every downward facing dog that you do.

Ouch: If your shoulders are very tight, you may not be able to keep your arms straight with weight in your index finger mounds. Ask your teacher to show you a variation of downward dog that you can perform with straight arms – perhaps with your hands to a chair seat, or your fingers turned out to the side.

Sanskrit Corner: Say AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAH-sanna. Adho means downward. Mukha means face. Svanna means dog, and asana means pose.

Do you have shaggy dog tales? Discoveries in practice? Ways of relieving your wrists in downward dog? I’d love to hear about them.

My red hen, my favorite pen, and the side of my notebook

When I write these blog posts, most of the time I do it to the sound of a small red kitchen timer, shaped like a chicken.

Cranking the timer is a signal that the work is going to begin, and the ticking creates a reassuring sound barrier – it tells me that I can put everything else aside and just focus on what I’m doing.

I set the timer for 25 minutes, and when it rings, I get up and walk away from the desk for a five-minute break.

Sometimes I spend five minutes on the Sisyphean task of clearing the dining room table. Sometimes I  unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry.

On other breaks I might do a spinal stretch at the kitchen counter, or a sequence of child’s pose to downward dog to forward bend or any other five-minute yoga practice that feels right . Sometimes I lie on the floor and roll my upper back on tennis balls.

Then I’m back, time permitting, for my next 25 minutes with the chicken.

This is my modest practice of the Pomodoro Technique, invented by Francesco Cirillo, an Italian computer programmer.

Francesco Cirillo, inventor of the Pomodoro technique

When he was a student, in the late 1980s, Cirillo became overwhelmed by deadlines and looming exams. In a stroke of genius, he realized that his enemy was not time, but distraction. He decided to challenge himself by setting a timer and concentrating for just 10 minutes.

The timer at hand happened to be a kitchen timer in the shape of a red tomato, hence the Pomodoro Technique.

Over the next few years he refined and developed the technique, and wrote an instruction manual for it, which you can download for free from his website.

Ideally, Pomodoros are done in sets of four with a longer break, up to half an hour, when the fourth set is finished. And there’s a system for estimating and keeping track of how many Pomodoros your task will take.

Cirillo now has a company that teaches how to quickly create effective software, as well as an educational branch that focuses on teaching the Pomodoro Technique.

Although it comes out of a software background, I’d argue that there’s a lot for a curious yogi to learn from Cirillo’s technique. Here are four good places to start:

1. The Pomodoro Technique is good for your body. Any sedentary work needs to be regularly broken up with movement. When I’m focused on writing, I forget everything I know about good posture. The two most surprising things I notice when the chicken rings are first, how hard it is to get up and tear myself away, and second, how bad my posture becomes when I’m not paying attention to it. Taking a break after 25 minutes means my desk posture doesn’t have as much of a chance to settle in.

2. It promotes concentration, which is the sixth of the eight limbs of yoga. For almost all of us, almost all of the time, the biggest problem we face is keeping our minds engaged in the task at hand, whether it’s studying for an exam,  focusing on our alignment in triangle pose or watching our breath in sitting meditation.

Pomodoro means tomato in Italian

Dharana, or concentration, is the first of the three internal limbs, and like all the other limbs of yoga, it’s a practice. Whether  it’s focusing on an object in meditation, or focusing on a task as you complete a Pomodoro, the more you practice concentration, the better you get.

3. It gets you in the habit of shifting your mental state. A large part of integrating yoga into daily life is to understand the yogic view of reality and to continually make the distinction between pure awareness and the pressing, urgent issues that are tugging  at your pant legs.
Every 25 minutes, the timer tells you to come up for air and consciously change your mental state. That provides you with a call to consciousness as many times as there are Pomodoros in your day.

4. Two of the rules of the Pomodoro Technique are also among the most important unwritten rules of yoga practice:

• Results Are Achieved Pomodoro after Pomodoro, and

• The Next Pomodoro Will Go Better

Results are achieved practice after practice, and when you keep at it, day by day, the next practice will go better too.

Cover every part of your foot, from under the toes to the heels

Is there such a thing as yoga magic?

If you struggle with tight hamstrings, this Five-Minute Yoga Challenge might lead you to say yes.

The effects can be startling the first time you try it.

Continue to roll your feet daily for a week and some of that “shock of the new” will drop away.

You’ll be left with livelier and more relaxed feet, and a new benchmark in hamstring flexibility – still enough of a change to call magic, considering that it’s achieved with a tennis ball and five minutes a day.

Why does it work?

When you massage the soles of your feet, you loosen the starting point of a network of connective tissue that runs all the way up your back body to the crown of your head. So it stands to reason that massaging your feet can loosen your hamstrings.

Having a hard time imagining what that network of connective tissue would look like?

Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists has posted a fascinating video from a human dissection showing the entire Superficial Back Line of fascia, connecting from the feet to just above the eyebrows. You will never feel the same about the distance between your feet and your head again.

Before you try this for the first time, measure your hamstring flexibility:
Come into a standing forward bend with your feet hip distance apart. Press down into your feet, lift your front thighs and straighten your legs. Roll your front upper thighs in, and widen across your hamstrings.
Unless you can easily bring your palms to the floor with your legs straight, use yoga bricks (or books or a handy stair), to support your upper body.
Make a note of how much height you need to place your palms flat, then roll up from your forward bend.
Now, stand close to a wall on a yoga mat or carpet, with one hand on the wall for balance. Place a tennis ball under one foot and start to roll the sole of your foot over the tennis ball.
Experiment with the amount of weight you can put into the ball and still have an intense, yet pleasant sensation.
Drape your toes over the tennis ball and massage the backs of your toes. Then work your way down the sole of your foot, all the way back to your heel. Roll along the inner and outer arches.
Keep rolling for at least two minutes – it helps to set a timer or watch a clock – and then move to your other foot.
Once you’ve worked both feet, revisit your forward bend. You may be surprised to find that – abracadabra! – your hamstrings have lengthened by as much as an inch or two.

Benefits: Our feet become cramped and tense from wearing restrictive shoes and walking on hard surfaces. Regular ball rolling releases tension in the muscles and fascia. Since the fascial body is a web of connective tissue, a release in one part can trigger release in the entire web.

Sequence: Especially welcome after a long walk, this exercise can be done any time, and almost anywhere. If you are free to take your shoes off when you sit to work, you can even keep a tennis ball under your desk and do impromptu rolling sessions while sitting down. Do it at the beginning of a longer practice to bring extra awareness to all of your poses.

Ouch: If your feet are particularly sensitive, a tennis ball may initially feel too harsh. Find a softer, more forgiving ball, and work with it until your feet adapt. Then move on to a tennis ball.
Beware of excess enthusiasm. Stick with a moderate pressure and a modest amount of time – two to four minutes per foot if you’re standing, 10 if you’re sitting down. It’s possible to hurt the muscles in your feet by rolling too much and too fiercely.

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