Working with pain: a natural part of the healing process

Physical pain is an inevitable part of life. As my husband likes to say, "Pain lets you know you're still alive." More than that, pain lets you know how you've been living. You can have pain from both overuse and under-use of your body. Either way, pain is usually a good indicator that something is amiss in your body.

Yoga students often ask me what they should do when the feel pain during a particular pose and what it means. There's a variety of answers to this question. The main thing is to determine whether the pain is just discomfort or potentially damaging to the body.

Usually, discomfort comes in the form of strain or an achy feeling in the muscles that are being stretched or strengthened in a pose. This kind of pain is normal and signals that you are at the "edge" of the pose. Translation: you shouldn't push any farther in the pose because you are hitting your body's boundary.

Sharp pain, shooting pain or the feeling that something is about to tear is damaging pain. If you feel this kind of pain you should stop right away and come out of the pose. It could mean that you are misaligned or you aren't ready for the pose. Often a simple adjustment or modification is needed to make the pose safe and accessible for you.

But what if you are dealing with an injury as often is the case with many yoga students? Unfortunately, there's no rule of thumb for healing. Everyone heals at their own pace and depending on the type of injury and some injuries can become chronic. Joints and bones take longer than soft tissue because of the lack of blood flow to these areas.

In most cases, when an injury first happens it's best to rest it for a few days at least and then see how it feels. Depending on the severity, a little bit of rest might be all that's needed. However, there will come a time when you will want (and need) to gradually easy back into activity again. You will need to regain your range of motion and strength in your injured body part, all of which yoga offers which makes it a good starting point.

Pain will be a part of the healing process. Learning to work with it is essential. The fear of pain is often what holds us back. Just as in a healthy yoga practice you will experience discomfort and have to decide if it's time to keep going or stop, you will face the same decision with an injured yoga practice. The sooner you make peace with pain and accept it, the easier it will be to decide if your pain is helping you heal or hurting you more.

This isn't license to ignore pain and do it anyway. That's even more counterproductive as leaving an injury alone too long. Getting better involves a healthy balance between pain tolerance and pain avoidance.

As I write this, I'm recovering from a bout of bursitis in my knee from running. I've rested and done yoga poses to help strengthen my knee for almost three weeks now. It seems to be working but today it was time to run again, albeit slowly and not as far. Yes, it hurt some, but it was manageable. I could walk without limping afterward which is a good sign that I didn't overdo it. I knew that to run without pain was expecting too much as was expecting to run my usually speed and distance. This was probably the hardest part of starting again.

And so it goes with yoga. There will come a time to push a bit more to help the recover process along but don't expect it to be pretty. Your downward dog might not look like it did pre-injury. It most likely won't feel that way either. The point is to try and see how it goes. Give yourself permission to stop if you need to and go slowly. Lose those expectations and just see where you're at. Then you can decide to go for more or if it's still too early and you need to modify or need more rest.

But try...

New York City Yoga

A week ago, I had my first taste of yoga in New York City. Not that we don't have some wonderful yoga studios here on the west coast, especially in the Seattle area, but New York is after all New York. They have just about everything there including what I imagine will be a hot new trend: anti-gravity yoga.

Move over Hot Yoga, you are about to be displaced by yoga practiced three feet off the floor in what are known as "hammocks." Hammocks are actually large pieces of soft but sturdy fabric that are suspended from the ceiling. They are wide enough to lay completely flat in Savasana, but compact enough to allow students to hang upside down in cobbler's pose.

While the poses aren't much more physically challenging than in a normal yoga class, they are more mentally challenging. Anti-gravity yoga is an excellent way to confront any fears of being trapped or heights. At the end of the class I commented to the instructor that it was definitely an exercise in trusting yourself. She agreed and said, "It's not that you can't physically do the poses, it's that you have to get past any mental blocks toward them."

In case your wondering, no, I don't plan on introducing anti-gravity yoga in my studio anytime soon. It would cost too much to reinforce the ceiling and yoga practiced on the floor has enough challenges to last a lifetime.

Besides anti-gravity yoga, I had an opportunity to take a traditional Iyengar class at the Iyengar Institute of New York. It had been a long time since I had attended such a class just as a student and not as a teacher at a training. While the instructor was great and very knowledgeable, I walked out of class feeling a bit disillusioned. Was that it? Just structure and correct positioning?

At the same studio where I took the anti-gravity class, (Om Factory) I also took a Vinyasana class and found it more to my liking. In fact, the instructor's method was more like mine. Her focus was not just on doing the poses correctly but on enjoying yoga.

This experience left me wondering if I could still call myself an Iyengar teacher? While I loved the style when I first started practicing, now I find it almost too ridged and devoid of joy. I've heard it said that the Iyengar style is much like tuning your instrument but never playing it. I'm beginning to believe it's true.

I'm thankful to the Iyengar style for teaching me the correct body alignment in the poses and the use of props to make the poses more accessible. If you are going to work with your body to change its shape and tone it's essential to do it correctly.

That said, alignment isn't everything. Putting it altogether and making not just a practice but an art is the true beauty of yoga. Yoga is about balance and harmony of the mind and body. To be so focused an alignment that everything else is pushed aside is to miss out on that beauty.

Conversely, to whip through the poses, quickly and haphazardly, is dangerous and can be stressful. Yoga wasn't meant to be a cardio-exercise. Run, walk, swim or ride a bike for aerobic exercise. Yoga should be done slower and more deliberately than what is necessary for a good cardio workout.

I suppose I should have seen my departure from Iygengar coming a while ago when I stared gravitating to Anusara and therapeutic yoga classes. Anusara was developed out of the Iyengar style but has more flow and heart to it. There's still precision in the poses and the use of props, but to me it feels like it all comes together better in Anusara.

So where does this leave me as an instructor? What style do I teach? I'm not sure I've decided that yet, but for now it's a blend of Iyengar, Anusara, therapeutic yoga, pilates and anything else I've picked up along the way. Almost ten years of teaching yoga has taught me that I don't have to dedicated to one particular style. Sometimes it's better to glean the best from all styles, embracing the philosophy of, "If it works, use it. If not, throw it out."

I guess I'm not as "Type A" as I used to be.

Drawing from the Science of Yoga

You may have heard by now of a book causing a stir in the yoga world called The Science of Yoga by William Broad. I thought it might be a good idea to give it read and decide for myself whether it had merit or not. Far from arousing my objections, the book actually made me feel justified in several of my practices as a yoga teacher. (See me patting myself on the back here.)

For instance, Broad writes about the hidden stroke danger of some poses, especially shoulderstand and headstand. While I admit I wasn't aware of this danger before, I had given up practicing shoulderstand a few years ago because it kept giving me headaches afterwords. Besides it creates extreme neck flexion and the backs of our necks are already overstretched from things like driving and computer work. It never seemed to me like a good idea to add to it through yoga.

I do believe, however, that shoulderstand does have many benefits for the body such as lowering blood pressure and heart rate. A few years ago I was shown a simple alternative that just about everybody can do safely. It involves placing a block up under the hips and then elevating the legs. It's much easier to get into and it comes with the added benefit of helping to balance the sacrum.

As for headstand, I still practice it because I enjoy it. But I don't hold it quiet as long as is usually recommended in Iyengar classes where 10 minutes is expected at the advanced levels. In fact, I'm a little worried about being able to keep up in some of the classes I wish to take at an Iyengar studio in New York during my trip there in May. I guess I'll have to practice what I preach and let go of expectations. (And maybe not mention that I'm a yoga teacher.)

The book also pointed out (to many people's dismay) that there's isn't much evidence that yoga is cardio-exercise. I've never thought that it should be. I think today we are too focused on multitasking and getting as much done in as little time as possible. We want to make something that is great for strengthening the body, especially the core, and for creating healthy flexibility, and make it into aerobic exercise so we can have a fitness trifecta. I think this is part of the reason fast paced styles of yoga have emerged promising it all.

For me, the faster the class moves the less relaxing it is. It's also challenging to make sure that you are properly aligned in the poses which can lead to injury. If I want cardio benefits I'll go run. I fell in love with yoga because it slowed me down and helped me learn to unwind.

Some may argue that Billows-breath and Shining Skull breath can create cardio benefits such as increase lung capacity.  It's possible but I find the dizziness and nervousness that accompany these rapid styles of breathing to do more harm than good. Broad sites a few cases of students who actually collapsed a lung as a result. He also mentions that instead of increasing your oxygen levels what you are actually doing is decreasing your carbon dioxide levels which can result in dizziness and even blackouts. The bottom line here is you are still going to need to do some form of aerobic exercise such as walking, swimming, cycling etc. in addition to yoga for complete physical fitness.

I'm writing all this not to show what a great yoga teacher I am and how my teaching aligns with science, rather the importance of following your instincts and listening to your body. The way that I practice and teach, the things I do or avoid, are mostly because they either benefited or bothered me in some way.

I couldn't have told you until I read the book that strokes were associated with shoulderstand, or that rapid breathing depletes your carbon dioxide levels. All I knew was they didn't feel good to me and so I stopped practicing them.

No matter how many benefits are associated with a particular exercise, even yoga, it's a mute point if your body objects. Chances are there's a good reason something doesn't feel good. Don't ignore that.

What's with all the women doing yoga?

I've always found being female challenging and sometimes unappealing. I think there's something inherently wrong with our culture's view of women.

No I'm not using my yoga blog for some sort of political, feminist rant about how women are oppressed and blah blah. If you'll bear with me while I go off topic for a moment, I'll get back to yoga in a bit. (OK, deep breath, and relax. It's not what you think.)

International Women's Day (today, March 8), recent political events and a book I'm reading called "Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldridge have my mind churning about the meaning of femininity and how it seems that society's understanding of it is limited to put it lightly. In fact, my understanding of it has been all wrong since I was a little girl.

At an early age I rejected dresses, dolls and pink in favor of sandboxes, tree-forts and anything blue. I can't say that I truly understood the dynamics of gender then, but to me it seemed girls got the short end of the stick. Saddle me with the responsibility of a child/doll at age four, pretend clean the house and wear clothes that restrict certain kinds of movement? I don't think so! Let me outside, NOW!

Yet as I grew older the idea of the power woman who ran corporations and ate men for lunch didn't seem right either. This "us versus them" mentality among some women was also off-putting to me. Some of my best friends growing up were guys and I never felt uncomfortable in the company of men or oppressed by them.

I don't think either of these two views is accurate, in fact they are extreme. As a women I don't want to be relegated to the kitchen and motherhood, nor do I want to claw my way up a corporate ladder just to prove that I can. I think like most women I looking for a more balanced, harmonious approach to being a woman in this world.

Enter yoga.

Many articles have been written about the popularity of yoga among women. Women seem to flock to yoga despite that it was originally created by men for men. Why is that?

Yoga's ability to create balance between strength and flexibility and it's centering qualities seem made for women living in a society of imbalances. There's an innate harmony between power and surrender in yoga, effort and ease, activity and rest. These are qualities specific to women as well. We can be strong and beautiful, warriors and princesses. It's when we choose one side over the other that we end up out of whack and frustrated.

Physically, yoga helps create long, lean muscles, not bulky ones, but muscles still the same. These are the kind favored among women. We don't really want to look like He-man but we do want to have muscles, noticeable ones. Yet we don't want to sacrifice flexibility for them. We want to be strong but graceful.

We also want an exercise method that let's us honor and accept our bodies. Too much of what women are  told about their bodies is that they are somehow inadequate and need to be fixed. Yoga says, "You're OK just as you are." Yoga works for the body type you have rather than suggesting that your body type needs to change.

Mentally, yoga helps slow the worried, hurried female mind. Unfortunately, we women tend to be worriers and we tend to be overburden with all of life's demands. We tend also to have stress from both work and home to contend with. An hour's break filled with relaxation is heavenly for the women trying to straddle both aspects of her nature.

All this is not to say that men don't value the same things or can't benefit from yoga in the same way. More and more men are realizing that yoga isn't just for chicks. In that way yoga creates harmony not just in ourselves but among each other. Men and women can practice together and share interesting insights into each others worlds. We realize that the genders are both different and the same in many ways and that's OK. 

And since yoga fosters a non-competitive atmosphere, us verse them attitudes are more easily dropped. We don't have to feel threatened by each other as men and women. Nor do women have feel threatened by each either. We see that we all have struggles and challenges no matter our gender, size or shape.

The art of listening to your body

Anyone who has been to one of my classes lately has probably seen the bandages on my feet and heard the tale of woe... blisters. It's getting to the point where it's almost embarrassing to talk about now as I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about it. For weeks I've suffered from these annoying things and it's all because I committed myself to training for a half marathon in April.

Today as I look outside at the pouring rain, I'm actually thankful for it. It's less tempting to run on feet that need healing time when the weather isn't gorgeous as it has been this past week. It can rain for the next two weeks for all I care, because that's about how long it's going to take to heal.


Yet there's a bigger lesson here I realize than just learning to back off of my running when my feet hurt. How often have I said in class "Listen to your body, honor its boundaries"? More importantly, what does it mean to listen to your body? What are body boundaries? These are the questions every yoga student has to answer at some point if they wish to have an effective practice.

The boundaries of your body aren't just the things you can and can't do. Too often students look at a pose and without even trying it say, "Oh, I don't think I'll ever be able to do that." The fact is we don't know what our boundaries are until we bump up against them. (The operative word here is bump, not slam through them.)

In my case, I didn't know that I would get severe blisters from running until I pushed my mileage past 10k. It doesn't mean that I plan to drop out of the race because of them. But it does mean that I need to take time to heal and then take more precautions in the future. 

In yoga practice, it often means using props to get into challenging poses and coming out of a pose when it hurts or your body begins to shake with fatigue. This is the art of listening to your body. It means paying attention, being present. You especially don't want to be thinking about your grocery list when you attempt something difficult. 

Boundaries aren't always permanent either. Little by little you can extend the boundaries of your body. If you can't touch your toes in a forward bend, use a strap to make up the distance instead struggling to reach. After some time and practice you'll notice that you are getting closer to reaching your toes. However, if you ignore those pain signals and try to compete with the person next you who can touch their toes, you are liable to tear a hamstring. 

It's been said that trauma is the disease of the inability to be present and that those suffering from traumatic events are often outside there bodies. They view their bodies as the enemy and so withdraw from them. Often they are so disconnected from their bodies that they aren't even fully aware when they are moving their bodies. Yoga helps create that awareness because it asks you to tune into your body specifically and feel the sensations of your body in the poses.

People suffering from anxiety also view their bodies as the enemy and tend to be hyper-vigilant toward any uncomfortable sensations. Yoga teaches us to endure things that are uncomfortable and gives us the ability to tell the difference between discomfort and the actual potential for injury. For instance, triangle pose might be uncomfortable for the hamstrings but with a block and some deep breathing it can be endured. Without the block and the breath it can be dangerous. This is how boundaries are honored.

Living in a body with boundaries, and we all have boundaries, is a dance of balance. It's pushing forward and pulling back, working and resting, engaging and releasing. Listening is asking if your body can do more but respecting a response of "no." Listen to your body as you would a friend and your body will become your friend. This is the body you've been given in this life so you might as well make the best of it and enjoy it while you have it.

"The Way" a new yoga class on Thursdays

 It's estimated that yoga is about 5,000 years old. Walking and running notwithstanding, that makes yoga one of the oldest if not the oldest form of exercise.

Certainly over those 5,000 years yoga's popularity has waxed and waned. Right now it's probably at one of it's all time highs.

What makes yoga so enduring, as opposed to say disco-aerobics, is it's adaptability. As David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper write in Overcoming Trauma through Yoga, "We can modify the yoga to suit our needs and still call it yoga because the practice has survived by being so expansive and adaptable. In fact, it could be argued that our emphasis on yoga as a practice of self-inquiry and self-care above all may actually be closer to the intentions of the first practitioners than are some other modern interpretations." 

In other words, yoga may have initially been developed as way to care for and help heal the body and the mind together, not as a religious practice as some contend. Though Buddhist and Hindus may claim yoga as part of their belief systems, yoga belongs to none. It's free to any and all that would make use of it's healing benefits.Yoga as a practice can be adapted to fit any belief system and does not necessarily promote one religion over another.

This is why as a follower of Jesus Christ I am introducing a Christ-centered yoga class on Thursday evenings at 6 pm here at the studio. It's open to anyone who would like to come explore Jesus' teachings together with yoga. The class is titled "The Way" in reference to the name that the first Christians called Christianity. As Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life."

My intent for this class is to focus on bringing the healing power of Jesus through yoga especially to those suffering from stress, trauma and anxiety. These are issues that I too have dealt with and would like to share some of the things I've learned and practiced as both a Christian and a yoga teacher.

I suppose the question that might naturally follow is whether that means all my classes will have a more spiritual slant. While I've never hidden my beliefs, I am sensitive to the fact that no one wants to be "evangelized" or preached at if they aren't open to it in the first place. Most of the time it does more harm than good. For that reason I've always maintained a secular approach to my classes and that's how they will stay. I want everyone of every background to feel comfortable in my classes not just those who agree with me.

However, for a long time I've wanted to share how I've integrated my faith into my own yoga practice to help me overcome the anxiety disorder I've suffered from. It's something God has placed on my heart and I feel he's asking me to do. I've also been asked by a counselor friend if I would teach such a class. She told me that there's a need for more Christ-centered yoga classes that specifically address anxiety and trauma.

While I taught a similar class several years ago at my church, teaching The Way feels like I'm stepping outside my comfort zone a bit. For one, when it comes to anxiety I've often felt like the blind leading the blind and that because I wasn't fully healed maybe I wasn't fully qualified to teach others how to manage anxiety.

 This past year though I finally received the miracle I'd been praying for. Essentially since I was a child I've battled the demons of anxiety in their various forms. While it wasn't exactly the healing that I wanted, the way I wanted, God was faithful and provided me with enough relief that I can run again.

Yes, the reason I didn't run for nine years was that I was phobic of the possibility of suddenly dropping dead while out on a jog. It sounds silly but the fear grew to the point that sometimes even hiking would set off my panic alarm. Now, I'm training for a half marathon in April. If that's not a miracle I don't know what is.

Another reason this class pushes the boundaries of my comfort zone is that religion and spirituality are sensitive topics that often draw strong opinions. As I mentioned, I taught a similar class at my church and it caused a stir. Some people unfortunately misinterpreted my intentions and thought I was trying to bring "new age" spiritualism into the church. In conversations with other Christians I often find myself feeling wary of mentioning that I'm a yoga teacher for fear that they might write me off as one of those "liberal Christians."

Yet part of my healing has come from learning who I am in God and to be myself. That means worrying less about what others think and more about what God thinks. I'm also learning that part of my faith is to honor my body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:12-17) This means caring for the body in a healthy which I believe yoga promotes. My yoga practice can then be an act of worship to God just as much as going to church or reading the Bible.

"For God has not give us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, love and of sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7

Yell and holler! My beef with Yelp.

As we all know the pen is mightier than the sword and freedom of speech is still a constitutional right at least for now. It's in that spirit that I'm picking of my pen, or in this case my keyboard, to defend small business owners who can't afford an ad with Yelp and end up paying the consequences. And also to defend the rights of those who write reviews on Yelp in support of such businesses.

Yelp has recently introduced a program on their site to "filter" out any seemingly phony business reviews. Apparently, some businesses have figured out how to beat the system by asking customers to write positive reviews on the site or by writing them themselves using a fictitious persona. In theory the filter is good because it allows new customers to see only honest reviews by real people. Kudos to Yelp for trying to keep the internet a honest place.

However, this same filtering system has removed all positive reviews from my listing, even though they were unsolicited nor written by me. I can only assume this was done because every couple of months a Yelp salesperson calls me asking me to purchase an ad with them. I've politely told them on numerous occasions that I'm not interested. I've tried to explain how small my business really is and that I keep my overhead low by not paying for advertising. After all, the best advertising is word of mouth.

After declining several times, I took note of the number from which the Yelp salespeople call me and started ignoring them when they call. Seriously, I just don't have time for a 20 minute phone call each time where I listen to the same information only to have to argue my way off the phone.

Then lo and behold, my reviews and ratings all disappeared. Even the one that had been up for over a year and a seemingly innocuous one that just said she was looking forward to checking out my studio and would report back.

I've heard from others that I'm not the only business that this is happened to. Is it possible that Yelp's review filtering system is just too sensitive or in error? Possibly. But I suspect that more is going on here than a glitch in the software. Especially, since they state specifically in their rational for filtering reviews that they aren't punishing the non-advertisers.

Yes, I know I can't prove it but it does seem a bit suspicious, doesn't it?

Yelp, if you are going to try and keep everyone honest and accountable for their reviews, how about starting with yourself? Just because I'm not giving you money doesn't entitle you to edit out my positive listings and ratings. Freedom of speech is a constitutional right that shouldn't be guaranteed with money. You are perpetuating the system of corporate greed and power where the small businesses get pushed out because they don't have the deep pockets to compete with the big-boys.

You might be able to edit my listing on your site but you can't touch my blog. Yogis know how and when to speak up.