Tip of the Week: Keep Spine Straight in Half Tortoise Pose

 photo from Bikram Yoga Charleston

When it comes time to do Half Tortoise Pose (Ardha-Kurmasana) in the Bikram series, it's easy to feel like it's time to relax as you've finished the standing and floor series, and you can sense the end approaching. But it's important to remember that this posture is not like Child's Pose in other forms of yoga. Half Tortoise is an active pose. Getting into and out of this posture effectively and easily relies on solid core strength. A key to being able to be actively engage your core as opposed to using back strength, is to keep your spine straight.

Some Tips for Keeping Your Spine Straight:

• Chin away from the chest to keep your spine straight and long – focus on the floor in front of your mat as you come down. If you are in the front row, you should focus on yourself in the mirror as you come down.

• Resist the urge to draw your chin into your chest when you are performing the stretch. Try to keep your chin as away from your chest as possible while maintaining contact between the forehead and the yoga mat. 

• When coming out of Half Tortoise Pose, use your core muscles to lift your torso away from the floor while keeping your spine straight. 

• Keep your head and neck straight (as opposed to tucking your chin to your chest). If your head is down and the neck is rounded, the energy will be transferred to your back instead of your core. 

Tip of the Week: Yoga Mantras

We have heard over and over again that having a mantra can help you, making your performance stronger.  Oftentimes, positive affirmation allows us to do things we didn’t believe were possible.  Mantras can also help us do something as simple as clearing the mind. We as humans are great multi-taskers.  We are constantly thinking of multiple things at once: our job, how we don’t want to be at our job, what to make for dinner, worrying about a family member, etc, etc, etc.  You name it, at one time our brains could be juggling 10+ different topics!

If you have ever taken a yoga class, you have probably heard your instructor say in some shape or form, “Quiet your mind.”  “Let go of your thoughts and be present with your body.”  It seems like it would be so easy to clear your mind, but we fight it so much.  A good way to let go of your thoughts is to have a yoga mantra.
I would keep it short and simple.  A Mantra *Lisa Johnson recommended to me that I love to use is, “I am.”  I am, can mean so many things.

• I am present.
• I am love.
• I am grateful.
• I am happy.
• I am strong.
• I am a fighter.

By itself, it means whatever you are in the moment, helping you be strong and present in your practice!

Another great simple yoga mantra is to repeat the focus of each asana (posture) you are in.

For example:

• Half moon : “Push, Push, Push!”
• Awkward pose : “Spine Straight Spine Straight Spine Straight.
• Standing Bow : “Kick, Kick, Kick”

Whatever you feel you should focus on, say that word over and over throughout the posture.  You will be amazed at how quickly your postures improve and how clear your mind will be using a mantra!  It is when you clear your mind that the real yoga starts!

From masteringhealthandfitness.com. *Lisa Johnson has been a Bikram Yoga Instructor since Fall 2002.  She found Bikram yoga when her Chiropractor referred her to a class to help her recover from extreme whiplash caused from a car crash.  Lisa opened 2 yoga studios in Las Vegas and now spends most of her time teaching at Bikram Headquarters and serving as a judge for the National and International Bishnu Ghosh Yoga Championships.  “Lisa believes that helping others change their lives, and learning to create peace within, will create a domino effect so that ultimately through yoga we can attain world peace.”-Lisa Johnson Bio

Tip of the Week: Breathe Like the Tortoise to Double Your Life Span

In class the other night, our teacher Nella shared a story about being on vacation and seeing a tortoise. She was told that the tortoise only breathes 3 to 4 times per minute, and interestingly enough also happens to be one of the longest living animals on earth. She told us to imagine ourselves breathing like the tortoise, as slooowly as possible so we could have long healthy lives.


The following excerpt from The Mind Unleashed has some fascinating facts on breathing rates and life spans:

How Do You Breathe?
 
Much of the science of yoga was gained from watching nature and her creatures. Ancient saints and sages noticed that animals with low respiratory rates, like the tortoise, but also like the elephant, and the other animals listed in the chart below lived longer life spans with a controlled, long breath. You will also notice, though, that as the speed of respiration increases, the life span of the animal shortens.

Animal	Breathing rate,  breaths/min	Life span,  years
Giant Tortoise	4	150
Whale	6	111
Elephant	4-5 (lying down)	70
Horse	8-15	50
Chimpanzee	14	40
Monkeys	32	18-23
Dogs	20-30	10-20

Though there are animals on our planet that live even longer, like sponges and sea clams, that can live for more than 400 years, humans are often thought to be relegated to a lifespan of around 70 years – and that’s when all key indicators of life or life force are excellent.

Poets and sages knew better. For example, in a sloka (verse) from the Bhagavad Gita we learn:
“When, like the tortoise which withdraws its limbs on all sides, he (a sage) withdraws his senses from the sense-objects, then his wisdom becomes steady” (Chapter 2-58)

Additionally, here is a couplet from Tirukkural: “If a man learns to control his five senses in one birth as the tortoise, that power will stand by him in his seven future births.”  (Kural 126)

 

Part of this ‘control of the senses’ refers to the control of the breath. Though there are many practices in yoga – from meditation to yogic postures or asana, which can help to keep the body well and vital for many years, perhaps non among the yogic practices is as important for the extension of life as learning to control the life force through pranayama.

Pranayama Defined

Pranayama is a Sanskrit word that means literally life force, or an unseen energy, which runs like currents through the body ‘prana,’ and ‘ayama’ which means control, or extension of the life force. Just having an increased life force, without knowing how to control it, is rather useless, according to yogic wisdom.

It can take an entire lifetime to master all the breathing techniques or ‘control of life-force techniques’ offered through yogic science, from Samavrtti, Ujjayi, Kumbhaka, Anuloma Viloma, Kapalabhati, and Sithali, and more, but alternate nostril breathing, or Nadi Shodhana also called Anuloma Viloma, has been scientifically proven to increase life span.

Here’s why:

When the respiratory rate decreases the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood throughout the body. Our nervous system then calms down and takes a much-needed break, also. You can think of it like the conservation of energy in physics, or putting fewer miles on your car so it will last longer.

A Danish study, for example, published in Heart, suggests that a higher resting heart rate is an independent predictor of mortality — even in healthy people that are in great physical condition.

Danish researchers gave physical exams to 5,249 healthy middle-aged and elderly men beginning in 1971. In 1985 and 1986, they tracked survivors, of whom there were 3,354. Of these, 2,798 had sufficient data on heart rate and oxygen consumption for the analysis. Researchers followed them through 2011.

After controlling for physical fitness and many other health and behavioral factors, they found that the higher the resting heart rate, the greater the risk for death.

The numbers were quite telling:
Men with a resting heart rate of 50 beats per minute or less compared to those with 71 to 80 beats per minute has a 51 percent greater risk of mortality. At over 90 beats per minute the risk tripled.

The lead author and researcher at Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, Dr. Magnus Thorsten Jensen explains:
“If you have two healthy people, exactly the same in physical fitness, age, blood pressure and so on, the person with the highest resting heart rate is more likely to have a shorter life span.”

That’s where pranayama comes in, and specifically alternate nostril breathing. Not only does this breathing practice “increase cardiac autonomous modulation” (a long-winded way of saying, help out the heart and sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems) but it also lowers the resting heart rate. It gives profound rest to the entire physical and energetic system, while also invigorating it.

Tip of the Week: Are You Practicing Self-Judgment or Self-Compassion?

Oftentimes we can be so patient and loving with others, but can have a harder time giving ourselves the same respect. As we begin to incorporate self-compassion into our yoga practice, we start to incorporate it into our daily life. At its most practical level yoga is a process of becoming more aware of who we are. Yoga techniques facilitate balance and health, and unfold our dormant potential. Yoga allows us to be more aware of ourselves and feel connected.  As such, yoga is a process of self-discovery, and when we approach this process with self-compassion we are more likely to love the person we discover.

Self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Kristin Neff, PhD has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main components – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. 

• Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.
• Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience.
• Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one's negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them.

The following article by Jamie Greenwood from tinybuddha.com answers the question "What are you practicing?" in a humorous and enlightening way. 

What Are You Practicing—Self-Judgment or Self-Compassion?

By Jamie Greenwood

 

“You are what you practice most.” ~Richard Carlson

“What are you practicing?” she asked in a gentle, lilting voice.
The entire class was in triangle pose, and at that moment I was comparing my triangle to the young woman’s right next to mine, scolding myself for wobbling out of the pose and simultaneously harassing myself for not being “further along” in my career. (Because if you’re going to hate on yourself, my motto is GO BIG.)

“Are you practicing judgment or comparison?” she tenderly probed.
“WTF!” I thought. “Does this woman have a direct line to my brain?”

“Are you practicing worry or blame?” she continued. “Perhaps you’re practicing patience and love. Notice what you’re practicing and know that you become what you practice. What you practice is what you live.”

DAMN IT! I was three days into a five-day yoga retreat and I was far from blissed out. In fact, I had deftly managed to tie myself into a knot of comparison, self-doubt, judgment, confusion, shame, and embarrassment.

With my inner critic having hijacked my brain I was a total wreck, and caught myself, more than once, crying through one of the two yoga classes I took each day.
I should also mention I was pissed to be spending days of supposed relaxation and inner communion bumping up against every old demon that laid buried within me. Not a productive use of time, and if there’s anything I hate, it’s feeling unproductive.

I had gone on the yoga retreat (my first ever, and a huge indulgence according to my inner critic) for a good dose of soul care. I was craving reconnection badly and knew an idyllic yoga retreat in the Berkshire mountains was just what I needed to come back to myself. Little did I expect that to get to that reconnection, I first had to wade through a number of stinky layers of self-perpetuated crap.

And so there I was, wobbling in and out of triangle pose, in full blown comparison mode and hating on myself for not having written a book yet, for not being on SuperSoul Sunday, and for most certainly not being Zen during a yoga class.

And then her soft words plucked me out of my maelstrom of negativity.
“What are you practicing?”
I took a breath.
And then another, letting the fresh oxygen pulse through me.
I took another, solidified my stance, stretched more deeply into the pose, and faced all I was practicing.
I let the comparison and self-doubt wash over me. Let the judgment and shame flow. Let the embarrassment of this entire emotional debacle be there without feeling bad for feeling any of it.
In the breath I found that I wasn’t practicing the negative feelings and old stories. I was experiencing them. What I was practicing in feeling them (without kicking myself for experiencing them) was compassion.
I let the compassion grow, filling every edge of my body, and watched it morph. First into curiosity for my feelings, then acknowledgement for my pained state, and then into deep love for myself for finding kindness where there had originally only been gripped anger and a cold heart.
What I found in the instructor’s question was this: I can experience any number of painful thoughts and feelings, and in approaching them with compassion, it’s compassion I’m practicing, not negativity.

I wish I could tell you with that realization my struggle ended, my demons were forever released, and I quickly became the blissed out, wise yogini I had wanted to be at the start of my retreat.
Not so much.
It took another few days (and will probably take the rest of my life) to continually soften, to come back to the breath, and to remember to practice compassion. 
But what her question did do was loosen the knot.
It created space to find compassion where there had originally been none. It sparked the sloughing off of old layers, the questioning of painful stories, and the unfurling of my most sacred knowing to allow me to reconnect with myself.

“What are you practicing” is a brave question, as it often brings us face to face with the uncomfortable emotional space we’re in. And yet, it’s in letting ourselves ask the question and getting curious about it that a crack is made for compassion to squeeze through.

The next time you catch yourself in a maelstrom of comparison, anger, self-doubt, worry, or judgment, take a breath and ask, “What am I practicing?” Be gentle with what comes up (no judging yourself for being judgmental) and notice if in embracing your experience with tenderness, compassion has a chance to blossom.

Know this: It’s impossible to practice love and patience all the time. That kind of every-second-of-every-day bliss was not built into us humans. We suffer, and that’s okay.
And when we can be compassionate with ourselves when we’re practicing things other than love, our heart softens, our grip loosens, and suddenly we have a greater access to the love we were seeking all along.




Woman with heart hands image via Shutterstock

Tip of the Week: Arms in Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee

The above illustration from We Are Yoga demonstrates so nicely the Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee Pose.

*Notice how her arms aren't next to her ears, but actually stretching behind her ears. Once the hands touch the ground, the arms aren't relaxed but strong, engaged and straight as they are pulled forward away from the body. Energetically pull your arms back behind your ears as much as possible. Doing so will help to tone your arms, gain more flexibility in your shoulders, and help to lengthen your spine.

If you need to separate your hands for support on the ground, make sure you're up on your fingertips and not your palms. This will give you more length to be able to really round your spine, bringing your forehead closer to your knee.

You don't want a flat back; round your spine as much as possible like an angry Halloween cat.

For more tips on Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee Pose "click here".

Tip of the Week: Glute Anatomy to Improve Your Practice

Of course we all want that great looking "yoga butt", but strengthening your glutes by flexing and squeezing them during yoga can have more of an impact on your body than just appearances. Many of the postures in the Bikram Yoga series put emphasis on stretching the glutes and the surrounding muscles, or involve some form of glute activation to hold the pose. Tightening your glutes during the Standing Series helps you to keep your balance, and helps you to go deeper into a back bend. Focusing on your glutes especially during Half Moon with Hands to Feet, Standing Bow Pulling, Triangle, Locust, Bow Pose, and Tree Pose will really help to build up that nice round behind.

The following article by Kate Siber for Yoga Journal "Glute Anatomy to Improve Your Yoga Practice" lends some insight into the anatomy of our glutes.

While many of the postures in the Bikram Yoga series require you to flex and squeeze your butt muscles (this action often helps you keep your balance during the Standing Series and go deeper into a backward bend, for instance), there are certain poses that put special emphasis on your rear end: - See more at: http://www.bikramyogavancouver.com/yoga-poses/bikram-yoga-poses-yoga-for-a-better-butt/#sthash.qs5KVOUo.dpuf

Whether you call it a fanny, derriere, heinie, 
or caboose, chances are you’ve assessed the appearance of your posterior. But what most of us haven’t considered is just how useful those buns are. Together with smaller supporting muscles, the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus make 
it possible to rotate your thigh inward and outward, draw your leg back, and stabilize your femur in your hip socket. The condition of your glutes can have a big impact on your posture, as well as help to prevent or alleviate back, hip, and pelvic pain.
“The buttock muscles are critical in all vertebrates for simply staying alive,” says Loren Fishman, MD, medical director 
of Manhattan Physical Medicine in New York City, assistant clinical professor at Columbia University Medical Center, and author of five books on yoga. “They help you stand and walk, procreate (think about the forces at play), and, being some of the biggest muscles in the body, also help cushion us when we sit.”

Unfortunately, parts of our modern lifestyle can cause over- and under-
development in our glutes, as well as strength discrepancies between the left and right buttocks. The usual culprits are overexertion in activities like running, and sedentary jobs that lead to poor posture. Strength imbalances in our glutes can affect range of motion of our hips, sacrum—that bony plate at the base of the spine—and whether or not we experience instability and pain in forward bends and standing and balancing yoga poses.

For Leslie Howard, an Oakland-based therapeutic yoga teacher, a struggle with a painful hypertonic pelvic floor—a condition marked by extremely tight pelvic-floor muscles—led her to seek solutions through yoga. She discovered that she suffered from weak glutes on both sides, and that strengthening them and checking to make sure they activated during standing and balancing postures eased her symptoms, which included pain while sitting and during intercourse.

“As yogis, we’ve always been taught 
to tuck, tuck, tuck our pelvis for certain poses,” says Howard, referencing this common yoga-class instruction that leads many students to round their lower and upper backs and flatten their butts. “If you tuck too much, your gluteus muscles turn off.” Instead, you want to use these muscles as they were designed to be used—engaged, but not clenched, while standing and walking, or while practicing poses like Vrksasana (Tree Pose) or Virabhadrasana I, II, and III (Warrior Poses I, II, and III). When your glutes don’t fire in these situations, you are often relying on other supporting muscles, such as the hip flexors, psoas, and quadratus lumborum in the lower back, to stand, she explains. Because of the ripple effect misalignments have throughout the body, chronic tailbone tuckers often experience pain in the lower back near the sacroiliac joints, where the spine meets the pelvis.

Armed with this intel, Howard developed a workshop called Smart Ass, Dumb Ass that helps students reacquaint themselves with this often-overlooked part of the body—and not just in the mirror. A great place to start is simply standing in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), says Howard. If you normally tuck your tailbone and slouch, push your thighbones back and let the top rim of your buttocks release away from your lower back. “Don’t be afraid to push your fingers into the glutes to see if they’re firing,” says Howard. “There’s nothing better than direct experience.”

Before you practice, a quick anatomy lesson

 

On a basic level, a “smart” ass is one with 
toned, balanced glutes that can support good posture, Howard explains. It is defined, 
round, and lifted. A “dumb” ass is flat and 
folded under, disappearing into your legs. But 
of course it is more complicated than that.


The gluteus maximus is the largest of the three glute muscles. It attaches to the side of 
the sacrum and thighbone, or femur, and draws the femur into the hip socket. Glute max also works to kick your leg behind you and in external rotation, in addition to supporting upright, standing postures. If the gluteus maximus 
is weak, muscles along the lower spine, in addition to the hamstrings, will often overcompensate, potentially causing back tension and spinal misalignment. Plus, weak gluteus maximus muscles can mean a tight pelvic floor and tight groins. 

You may also notice you have a tight, gripped gluteus maximus. Don’t assume your buns of steel are good: A tight muscle is often 
a weak muscle that may not be able to fire for too long, explains Howard. “A healthy muscle can stretch, contract, and fully relax,” she says.

The gluteus medius muscle sits partway under the maximus muscle and connects the ilium, often referred to as the hipbone, to the top of the femur. The medius helps you to externally rotate your leg when it is extended behind you, and internally rotate your hip when your leg is flexed in front of you. Together, the medius and minimus move your leg out to the side (abduction). You can find gluteus minimus under the medius; it is the smallest of the three glute muscles and also helps with internal rotation.

Alright, lesson over. Back to the mat!

Tip of the Week: 90 Minutes of Moving Meditation

The following excerpt by thegoodbadpeople answers the question of "Does Bikram yoga incorporate any meditation?"
 

Bikram’s philosophy derives from the philosophy of traditional yoga he began learning at age 3, in Kolkata. His guru was Bishnu Ghosh, brother of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi, in which that guru lineage is further explained.

The core principles of the philosophy revolve around the observation that in order to sit very still and meditate quietly until achieving self-realisation, one must have a disciplined connection between the mind and the body. If not, it is simply far too painful to sit still for that long. Especially in lotus pose. Plus it is really, really, really distracting, due to the dramatic performances of the mind that monkeys around trying desperately to get your attention. Which it is super excellent at doing. And presumably self-realisation takes a pretty long time to achieve. If ever.

So the story goes that the practice of hatha yoga (the practice of postures, or if you prefer the Sanskrit, “asana,” which loosely translates to “posture holding stillness, breathing always normal”) developed to limber up the body and prepare the mind in preparation for meditation. In lotus. For a really, really, really long time. Maybe even forever.

Bikram yoga, like all posture yoga, is hatha yoga, which means the yoking of the body and the mind, creating what Bikram likes to call “a perfect marriage.”

When he tells the story of agreeing to his guru’s request that he bring traditional Indian yoga to the west, Bikram emphasizes the directive to not change it in order to make it more accessible to westerners (that is, easier with the help of blocks, straps, chanting, dim lights, music, pastel walls, sleeping, etc.). Instead, he was meant to give them the real deal: a physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually challenging practice that enables practitioners to strengthen the five aspects of mind: concentration, determination, self-control or willpower, faith, and patience, in that order. Improvement in one facilitates improvement in the next. Eventually. Or in the future.
 
Bishnu Ghosh was involved with yoga therapy as well, a therapy that functioned in accordance with Ayurveda to address health issues. In other words, a treatment involving the prescription of yoga postures, similar to physiotherapy or the like.

Bikram’s sequence of 26 postures (including two breathing exercises) was developed to address the common ailments and complaints of the western individual. The sequence works the whole body through compression and release to improve the blood and move it systematically through every part until every system is addressed. Bikram speaks of five main systems of the body: respiratory, circulatory, digestive, skeletal, and nervous. Together, they sustain the sixth and overarching system that governs homeostasis: the immune system. The Bikram series addresses each system, with some extra focus on backward bending, considered to be the healer of the spine. And of course the spine houses the central nervous system, which refers to the entirety of one’s physically mitigated material experience, and so! a happy spine means a happy life.

So, in Bikram yoga, you have one and a half hours in a hot and humid room that is brightly lit and lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. You are wearing not much, and neither is your neighbour. All are sweating. Maybe some crying. Maybe you. You are requested and repeatedly reminded to regard your own self in the mirror. For very very very very very many people, this is extremely hard to do. But everyone who keeps trying starts to get used to it. Maybe even–a little bit–they start to enjoy it. And everyone gets benefit: everyone together. Bikram says the darkest place is underneath the lamp, and the hot room offers the experience of stepping into that bright place so you can see what monsters lurk there, and eventually stop running away.

With practice, you begin to learn concentration, determination, self-control, faith, and eventually, if you’re very very, very very very very lucky, patience. You learn to try the right way, to try again and again, to try harder, and to not give up. And you have to remove yourself from your complaints that try to stop you from doing all of this: it’s too hot, it’s too hard, I can’t do it, I’m soooo bad, I’m toooooo sick, I’m toooooooooo special, nobody loves me. With practice, you learn a little objectivity that requires putting that stuff aside for the moment and just doing your yoga. So: your body improves, your mind improves, and you start to have a relationship with yourself that is founded on the moving meditation of your body, with your breath, according to your mind. Posture by posture, class by class, by trying the right way, trying harder, and trying again and again, you start to heal your relationship with yourself.

Tip of the Week: Sore Legs After Starting Yoga

Yoga poses can challenge your leg muscles. Photo Credit Thinkstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images

Starting a yoga practice can give you a discipline for increasing your flexibility, mindfulness, balance and endurance. It's natural to experience sore legs after yoga, particularly when you're learning new exercises. Yoga combines stretching and strength training; many yoga poses involve supporting your body weight with your legs. This aspect of yoga practice strengthens your leg muscles. Warming up, cooling down and caring for your sore muscles can reduce leg soreness.

Leg Muscle Workout

Increasing the workload on your leg muscles results in microscopic tears. The healing process, called muscle recovery, causes muscles to grow and become stronger. Muscles repair themselves between workouts. If you're new to yoga and performing exercises daily, you might need to rest for a day between yoga sessions to allow time for recovery. Stretching farther than your body is ready to stretch also causes soreness. Many yoga poses call for stretching the body in unaccustomed ways. Using your muscles differently and increasing your range of motion can put strain on ligaments and joints in addition to causing muscle soreness.

The Good News

Muscle soreness from starting yoga is generally a temporary and harmless condition. As long as you don't push yourself too hard or stretch beyond the point that's a slight challenge, you can continue to make progress. The soreness is a sign that you're becoming stronger and more flexible. People older than 40 who practiced yoga for more than five years had significantly lower blood pressure and resting heart rates compared to a sedentary control group, according to research published in 2003 in the "Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology." Sore legs at the start of a yoga practice is a small price to pay for significant long term health benefits.

Minimize Muscle Soreness

Sore leg muscles aren't a badge of honor so minimize the discomfort by smart practices. Warming up by walking or similar light cardiovascular exercise prepares your body for exercise. A warmup pumps blood to your muscles and increases your heart rate. Warming up before every yoga session can help reduce the risk of injury. Paying attention to your body as you practice yoga helps you keep from overstretching, or challenging your legs too much, too soon. Many classes and DVDs offer modified poses for beginners. A yoga teacher can recommend exercises to prepare you for any pose that's too advanced for you. Yoga improves your posture and alignment; as you continue your practice, you'll experience less soreness.

Soothing Soreness

Applying ice packs to your sore legs for the first two days helps to relieve the muscle soreness. After the first 48 hours, soaking in a warm bath with Epsom salts helps ease any remaining soreness. Applying arnica, a plant-based remedy for muscle soreness, can help, according to "Yoga Journal" magazine, which also suggests Tiger Balm, a traditional Chinese remedy in salve form. Tiger balm creates a strong, warm sensation and helps to relieve muscle pain. Talk to your doctor if there's acute or persistent pain — and get her approval before using any herbal remedy to self-treat any condition.

Article by livestrong.com

Tip of the Week: Bikram for Balancing Emotions

Yoga has the power to unlock, heal and balance your emotions. For those of you who have a regular practice, you can probably attest to lying down in Savasana at one point with tears streaming down your face or smiling so hard your face hurts. 

Though a sudden onset of emotions during a routine yoga session takes many practitioners by surprise, it’s really an important part of the discipline. That’s because there’s no differentiation between the mind, the body, and human emotions within yoga. They’re all connected, and, as such, they all affect each other. Yogis will tell you that when something weighs you down mentally, it'll likely weigh you down phyically, too. And that remains true whether you follow yoga’s tenets or not. For example, severe stress has a demonstrated effect on heart health, but within yoga specifically, certain body parts are believed to carry different types of emotions. As Sarah Powers wrote in the book Insight Yoga, “We may experience disappointment in a tight hip or fear as we settle into a long-held backbend. The longer we practice, the more we notice how varied our feelings are, how we can feel agitation one minute and elation the next, exuberance followed by despair.”

Poses that tap into tension in the hips, chest, and back seem to prompt emotional releases most often during yoga sessions. Frustration and anger could manifest in spinal tension, heartbreak and depression could linger in the chest, and emotional pain from the past could lie dormant in the hip flexors. These moves can help you confront such unresolved issues.

Bikram Yoga helps balance the emotions in several ways. Physiologically, regular practice harmonizes the nervous and endocrine systems, two systems which figure heavily in emotional well-being. In addition, practicing Bikram Yoga cultivates the mental faculties of faith, self-control, concentration, determination, and patience. As we become more aware of our inner life, we notice how events, interactions, and even the atmospheric pressure effect us. When we are aware, we can exercise choice in our response. This helps us balance our emotional life. 

Triangle Pose: The farther you extend your torso to the right and stretch your arms, the more you challenge your hips to let go of tension.

Camel Pose: Because you make your heart so open (and vulnerable) in this pose, it often leads to dramatic emotional displays, from giggling to sobbing.

Bridge Pose: This pose is a gentler way to release emotions, because you slowly ease your body into it. The chest opening isn’t quite as stark, but it still makes a difference.

Spine Twist: Twisting the spine in either direction awakens your organs and abdominal muscles as well.

Savasana: This is a completely neutral pose that allows for total relaxation of the mind and body. Resting poses don’t tax the body, but they do cause you to center your thoughts, which can be very emotionally taxing for some people.

Using poses like these to move past mental and emotional blocks is part of moving forward in your yoga practice. Breathing deeply and staying centered in the pose are a healthy way to release such tensions. But if it gets to be too much, you should come out of the pose and allow yourself to experience the emotions fully—otherwise, it’s simply another means of suppression. Be sure to talk to your studio instructor for more insight into the phenomenon. After all, exploring and finding the balance between mind, body, and emotion is likely why you came to yoga in the first place.

Tip of the Week: Yoga is Perfect for Weight Loss

For many of us, the first step on the journey to weight loss is through the gym doors. The glistening and toned physiques at the weight rack, on the treadmills, and in spin class briefly inspire us that the best way to shed those stubborn pounds is to lift heavier, run faster, and push harder. But, if this is really the key to permanent weight loss, then why do so many walk away from the gym exhausted, frustrated, and defeated in their efforts?

The Yoga Difference: Mental Health Meets Physical Health

We often overlook that weight loss is just as much a mental and soulful experience as it is physical. Aligning your mind, body, and soul is the key to sustainable health, and it can often be found among the serene music and warming breaths of a yoga class. Yoga, unlike other exercises, gives you something uniquely special because helps heal your mind, body and soul. Yoga will support your weight loss transformation as you identify with what will ultimately bring you joy and happiness, and it will inspire you to "live with purpose", which will support your decisions to become as happy and healthy as possible.

In that spirit, and in the spirit of the new year, here are 9 ways yoga will support a new relationship with your body and help you lose weight.

1. Disconnect From Technology

 Instead of looking at other people and what they're doing to lose weight, yoga supports a quiet state of mind, so you can make decisions that are best for your body. You will be inspired, your energy and vibration will shift, and you will begin to feel gratitude for the smallest things without needing to compare yourself to others.

2. Work With Wonderful, Experienced Teachers 

Your friends and family can be great role models, but to transcend your circumstances, you often have to remove yourself from your current space of understanding. Being around inspirational teachers helps you build your own thoughts and beliefs inspired by their teachings. They will often become a mirror of your own weaknesses and insecurities and help you find a way past them. These teachers who have blazed the trail before you (many of whom have had their own weight loss journey) provide a powerful road map for your own growth.

3. Spend Time With An Incredible Community

 Having the ability to become part of an incredible community—people who are working towards similar goals right along with you—is incredibly powerful. Your fellow yogis will praise you when you do well, encourage you when you feel hopeless, and help point you in the right direction when you get off track. The power within you is always guiding you; sometimes you just need a bit of help (and positive friends) to harness it.

4. A Guaranteed Break 

Spend time meditating and allow yourself to stop over-thinking. In a world of constant information (especially about diets), this is often one of the most difficult things to do, yet it is one of the most important things to learn for your well-being. Turning off all the noise, including your own voice, judgments and outside perceptions, for just 45 minutes truly frees you. It allows you to open up to a sacred space of healing which welcomes happiness and empowers you to make improved decisions when it comes to your food and exercise.

5. Heal The Past

 Individuals often experience profound healing and new states of awareness during yoga. Being in an environment where you are not distracted by other things allows you to move closer to forgiveness—one of the most important components of permanent weight loss. We often hold weight because of guilt that we carry inside ourselves. Yoga offers a space of compassion and love that can help propel you forward.

6. Experience A Space Beyond Your Current Circumstance 

Money, time, work, and toxic relationships can drag you down and make you feel trapped in your current reality, causing binging and unhealthy eating behaviors. You have to live beyond what you have now and believe in what you can become. Yoga allows you to experience this unique space. As the Law of Attraction states, living within the mindset of the future version of you helps it actually come to you!

7. Embrace Fear 

Yoga is a safe space to embrace your fear, harness the energy behind that fear, and remove it from your life. We're often fearful of things we truly desire, so there is fear around losing weight. Who will we be when we don't have the weight as a protection against the world? Who will we be when we are healthy and filled with energy? Quieting the mind helps us to understand where the fear of losing weight comes from and offers the ability to move through it to create dramatic shifts in your life.

8. Bust Through Blockages 

Yoga testimonials often state that individuals were able to break through blockages and limiting beliefs. Most of us carry around childhood memories, past traumas, and pain, causing severe stress in our subconscious that manifests in negativity and fear. Yoga helps create a space where our conscious and subconscious thought patterns can unite to break through these feelings, shedding mental (and physical) weight.

9. Finally Make a Commitment To A Healthier Life 

After several yoga classes, your body will begin to cleanse, detoxify, and heal. As your body cleanses and detoxes, you actually retrain your brain from craving junk food to desiring more real, healthy food. Being in an environment that supports that energetic shift in your body will help you stay on track no matter where in the world you may be.

Without a doubt, yoga is one of the best things you can do to create dramatic shifts not only in your mind, but also in your body. Being in an environment where you can focus and make a commitment to your well-being alters your life forever. As you spend several days moving closer to a "new" way of being, you are actually announcing to the Universe that you are ready to permanently live this way.

By Sarah Anne Stewart, Health Coach charlottesbook.com

Tip of the Week: Take the Balance Test!

It benefits your neuromuscular coordination – basically it helps improve the communication between your brain and muscles.

It helps with muscle isolation – during balance training you have to maintain stabilization and you are forced to engage an individual muscle predominantly so that you are not using other muscles to help you “cheat.”

During balance training your body has to work that much harder to stabilize – in turn this helps you to burn more calories.

It helps w hip stabilization – with single leg type balance exercises your glute medius is engaged and worked.  Therefore, this helps with hip stabilization. 

It helps with core stabilization – this in turn helps to improve your coordination, athletic skill, and posture.

- See more at: http://www.activecenterforhealthandwellness.com/blog/active-news/the-5-major-benefits-of-balance-training-do-not-neglect-it#sthash.YuKXXCWq.dpuf

Why are the balancing postures like Eagle Pose, Standing Head to Knee, Standing Bow Pulling, Tree Pose, and Balancing Stick so important in our practice? Working on your balance has many benefits!

1. It benefits your neuromuscular coordination - basically it helps improve the communication between your brain and muscles.

2. It helps with muscle isolation - during balance training you have to maintain stabilization and you are forced to engage an individual muscle predominantly so that you are not using other muscles to help you "cheat". 

3. During balance training your body has to work that much harder to stabilize - in turn this helps you to burn more calories.

4. It helps with hip stablization - with single leg type balance exercises your glute medius is engaged and worked. Therefore, this helps with hip stabilization.

5. It helps with core stabilization - this in turn helps to improve your coordination, athletic skill, and posture.   

It benefits your neuromuscular coordination – basically it helps improve the communication between your brain and muscles.

It helps with muscle isolation – during balance training you have to maintain stabilization and you are forced to engage an individual muscle predominantly so that you are not using other muscles to help you “cheat.”

During balance training your body has to work that much harder to stabilize – in turn this helps you to burn more calories.

It helps w hip stabilization – with single leg type balance exercises your glute medius is engaged and worked.  Therefore, this helps with hip stabilization. 

It helps with core stabilization – this in turn helps to improve your coordination, athletic skill, and posture.

- See more at: http://www.activecenterforhealthandwellness.com/blog/active-news/the-5-major-benefits-of-balance-training-do-not-neglect-it#sthash.YuKXXCWq.dpuf

Is your balance up to par?

Take the 30-Second Balance Test (from saveourbones.com)

First, you’ll need to find a partner to time you, because your eyes will be closed. It’s also important to have someone close by in case you fall. 

1. Stand barefoot on a hard floor. Now close your eyes.
2. Bend one knee and lift the foot – if you’re left-handed, stand on your left leg and lift the right foot; do the opposite if you’re right-handed. You don’t need to lift it high; even though your eyes are closed, you can probably estimate about 6 inches off the floor.
3. Ask the person with you to check his or her watch, and time how long you can hold that position without wobbling or opening your eyes.
4. Repeat the test 3 times, and then add up your total time and divide it by 3 to find your average balance base. (For example, if test 1 was 4 seconds, test 2 was 8 seconds, and test 3 was 6 seconds, you’d add up 4, 8, and 6 to get 18. Divide by 3, and your average balance time is 6 seconds.)

 

Not surprisingly, the chart shows that the number of seconds decreases with age. In the 25-30 year group, for example, the average eyes-closed balance time is 28 seconds. For 50-year-olds, it’s 9 seconds; 65-year-olds average 5 seconds, and 70-year-olds 4 seconds. That’s because…

Balance Tends To Decrease With Age

As we get older, our eyesight tends to diminish, throwing a wrench in the first step in good balance (vision). Muscles tend to shrink and your reaction time may be a bit slower. But there’s good news, because…

You Can Improve Your Balance Regardless Of Age

You don’t have to be resigned to poorer balance as you age. You can take action to improve and maintain it. 

A study published last year shows that there’s scientific validity to the "Flamingo trick" which involves standing on one leg while doing an every day chore.

Researchers conducted a trial to study the effectiveness of the “dynamic flamingo exercise” in preventing falls. They found that periodically standing on one leg does in fact improve balance, prevent falls, and even improve independent living.
 
In a meta-analysis review of 17 trials involving a total of 4305 participants aged 60 and older, researchers concluded that regularly engaging in balance exercises not only prevented falls, but actually prevented injury (including fractures) when falls did occur. Even in the case of severe falls, injuries were less common among those who exercised regularly.


We suggest you practice balancing Bikram postures for a few weeks, and then repeat the balance test!