Guided Relaxation (Shavasana)

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This is a long time coming. I’ve had students asking me for a recording of my guided shavasana for at least a decade. For those of you who’ve been asking for it, I hope it was worth the wait.

For those of you who are non-yogi’s, this recording is basically a guided relaxation. Before starting the audio, lie in an appropriate position. If you’re not sure which position to lie in, I can recommend Psoas Release on a Bolster. You can watch a video demonstration of this posture here.

As this is my first try on recording a guided relaxation, I am aware that there is plenty of room for improvement. I welcome your feedback!

Namaste’

STRENGTH TRAIN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM – Health and the Autonomic N.S.

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Your autonomic nervous system is composed of two parts – the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.  The sympathetic is the body’s accelerator or stimulator, increasing muscle contraction, heart rate and blood flow.  The parasympathetic is the resting aspect of this system and promotes muscular relaxation, slowing of the heart rate and relaxation of blood vessel walls.

When the autonomic nervous system is in “good shape” it transitions easily between these component systems and their functions  at the appropriate times. This ability to transition from the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic N.S. and the “rest & digest” response of the parasympathetic is akin to a dimmer on a light switch that increases and intensifies the light when more light is needed to see and concentrate and then dials down the light, perhaps later that evening, for a romantic, candle light dinner.  Thus a well functioning autonomic N.S. gives us the ability to react quickly and forcefully to a dangerous situation at one moment, then relax and rest, maybe even take a quick nap and wake up refreshed a while later.

This aspect of our nervous system is called “autonomic” because its functions can operate without our having to think about them.  At the same time,  the autonomic  N.S. allows for a certain degree of conscious control. A great example of this is the role of the autonomic N.S. in respiration. We typically breathe without thinking about it,(thankfully) but we do have the ability to speed up or slow down our breathing at will and ideally with relative speed and ease. So despite the fact that many of our autonomic functions can occur unconsciously, we do have the ability to affect these functions consciously and therefore we can practice or “train” this part of our nervous system to perform its functions better.

A strong autonomic nervous system intelligently uses aspects of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic and is able to switch gears when needed without taxing the body.  We can consciously train our nervous system to seamlessly make this shift between stimulation and relaxation, and this will help keep our cardiovascular system strong and supple and facilitate muscle recovery. Thus “training” our autonomic N.S. not only improves the health of our nervous system but also the health of our muscles and cardiovascular system.

Most modern humans spend significant time  in situations and engaged in activities that stimulate the sympathetic nervous system to a mild degree.  This constant low-grade stimulation can become a habit, leading to missed cues that our body is neither resting nor fully engaged.  It’s as though we forget our light switch has a dimmer and leave the light on at the same brightness constantly, no matter the time of day or need for more or less light.

This “sympathetic overdrive” is also like a car running at idle, occasionally revving  the engine but never actually driving anywhere and never completely shutting off.  This can happen to all of us occasionally, and its not a big problem until it begins to manifest consistently when it will weaken our nervous system and its ability to shift from the sympathetic N.S. to the parasympathetic and it’s important functions.

Some signs of sympathetic overdrive include:

  • Digestive problems
  • Sleep problems
  • fatigue, exhaustion
  • shallow breathing
  • moodiness, anger, upset easily
  • high muscle tension
  • muscle pain
  • frequent colds or easily getting sick
  • metabolic disorders
  • high blood pressure
  • blood vessel problems

To train your nervous system to be adaptable and functioning optimally, here are some key steps:

1) Breathe diaphragmatically all the time

Diaphragmatic breathing is the easiest way to turn on the parasympathetic response. When you breathe well, your shoulders relax, your whole abdominal wall gently expands 360 degrees and there is a slight pause between the inhale and exhale.

Signs of breathing dysfunction include:

  • Spending your day sitting with a rounded back
  • Lifting your chest or shoulders up while inhaling
  • A chronically stiff and tight upper back
  • Breathing in and out of your mouth
  • Yawning or sighing frequently
  • A resting respiration rate higher than 12 breathes a minute

Your diaphragm is one of your largest back muscles.  In order to draw air into the deepest part of the lungs, it has to contract during inhalation. This contraction is a downward movement and in order for it to move down, the abdominal wall has to expand.  This is virtually impossible to do if you are slouching.  Conversely, correcting a slouch with a military style posture of arching the back and pulling the shoulder blades together will also restrict the movement of the diaphragm and interfere with breathing.

See our earlier blog post on diaphragmatic breathing for more on this subject.

2) Learn to relax the body

Our muscles are designed to do two things very well- contract and relax. Consciously relaxing our muscles helps them to contract more easily.  A muscle that forgets to relax is more prone to strain, pain and adds to overall discomfort in the body. Training your muscles to relax is just as important as doing your daily workout at the gym.

Some techniques that help include:

  • massage
  • yoga
  • tai chi / chi gung
  • biofeedback
  • meditation
  • warm baths.

Try giving yourself permission to relax and rest in small chunks throughout the day. Also, check out this video showing a great way of relaxing the psoas muscle. It will help you remember how to let go of tension in the body and the nervous system.

3) Learn to relax the mind

The workings of the mind distract us from being in our body and hence being able to perceive the habits that contribute to sympathetic over-stimulation. Habits like holding our breath, tensing parts of our bodies, straining our eyes and getting frustrated with little things often manifest as result of tension in the mind. Taking a few minutes every day to let the mind relax is renewing and refreshing to the body.

My favorite way to do this is to sit or lie down in a quiet area, scan through my body to note areas of tension, visualize the tension melting with the image of sunlight and then letting my mind be free. Letting the mind be free is as simple as giving permission for your thoughts be free of any particular focus.

4) Exercise on a regular basis with a large variety of challenges.

Your exercise should be varied and daily.  Each day should include walking, weight resistance, stretches and movements that challenge your balance and your movement skills.  The more muscles you use, the more blood flow you will have and this increased blood flow will feed nerves and removes waste products from all of your tissues. Stimulating the nerves meanwhile builds their resilience and adaptability.

*Personal Alignment Training is ideal for training the nervous system along with muscles, bones, joints and the C.V. system!

5) Get deep rest

How many times have you felt ready for bed at 8pm but for various reasons, ignore the signals?

Try this experiment once a week:

Forgo TV after dinner and read something relaxing, like a good book (not the news). Dim the lights in your home after the sun sets. Adjust the light so its just bright enough to read. Put away your phone and computer- you can check them in the in the morning. Notice when your body starts to send the signals it is ready for bed (not the mind!).

Place no significance on the time…

Just go to bed…

…and notice how much more rested you feel the next day!

If you have ever been camping you are likely familiar with this type of letting go.

6) Spend time in nature

Being outdoors is very soothing to the nervous system.  Exposure to the natural colors of blue and green have been shown to calm to our sensory nerves.

Try getting outdoors more on your lunch break.

Or instead of going to the gym, do a hike instead.  Exercising outdoors will engage the nervous system differently than an indoor workout with all of its distractions.

7) Be mindful of the quantity of stimulants you are consuming

Caffeine causes your blood vessels to restrict which can result in more muscular tension. Coffee and tea are delicious and enjoyable but consuming more than 1-2 cups a day or having caffeine after lunch can interfere with your body’s ability to relax and get a good night’s sleep. For anyone struggling with sleep issues, I recommend slowly reducing your intake to 1 cup a day and perhaps switching to tea most days as it contains less caffeine and delivers it more gradually.

A well functioning autonomic N.S. is essential to our long term health and quality of life. These “training” tips will help you build a stronger, more resilient nervous system that will serve you now and for years to come!

Adaptation and the Psoas

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When we’re faced with pain it’s easy to wonder, “why did this happen to me?” Seeking a cause for pain can be helpful, but only if we’re willing to consider the possibility that the pain is the result of how we’ve been using our body, or in many cases, not using it.

Human beings as a species have been successful on this planet largely due to our uncanny ability to adapt to our environment. Our bodies are extremely well adapted to the hunter gatherer lifestyle of our distant ancestors, for example, and like these ancestors we thrive on a wide variety of foods and the great number of human movements once required to collect them.

The breakneck pace of technology, however, has placed great demands on our ability to adapt to changes in diet and lifestyle. With very high calorie foods so easy to come by with so little physical effort, even relatively young people must all guard against diseases unheard of in the few hunter gatherer populations still remaining on this planet.

Perhaps the solution is getting more exercise, but this is highly debatable. The true purpose of exercise is to provide a substitute for the movement we’re not doing and the calories we’re not using in our increasingly technologically driven and sedentary modern lifestyle, but most of what we do for exercise these days reinforces the very lifestyle habits we’re already spending most of our days doing. Is sitting on a bike pedaling for an hour better than siting still in a chair? Maybe a bit, but it’s still sitting and can still contribute to many of the same health consequences.

In her 2015 book Don’t Just Sit There, Katy Bowman speaks to this issue when she says “the sitting itself isn’t really the problem, it is the repetitive use of a single position than makes us literally become ill in a litany of ways.” She goes on to give several examples including that “muscles will adapt to repetitive positioning by changing their cellular makeup, which in turn leads to less joint range of motion.”

I find myself telling my clients and students constantly that muscles adapt to the position we put our bones in. For instance If I stand with my hip joints forward of my knees and ankles, my hamstrings and calve muscles will shorten, limiting my ability to bend forward from my hips and placing greater demands on muscles and joints in my lower back.

These “adaptive” changes manifest to a certain extent over a period of time, but in some cases this type of adaptation can be very quick, even instantaneous. In the hips forward misalignment described above, the affects on muscle length and range of motion can actually happen rather quickly. Standing with the hips pushed forward turns off the muscles in the posterior hip and lower back. This doesn’t take any time at all, it simply happens as a result of doing it.

This turning off of the hip muscles is also a kind of adaptation and I actually consider this good news for us modern humans. It demonstrates that our bodies have the ability to make some changes rather quickly and that these changes can just as easily be good for our health and function as bad.

My favorite example of soliciting a positive change in the body that can have huge benefits to our health and function is what happens in the Psoas Release. I use this posture as much as any I teach my students and clients because I’ve seen how effective it can be in retuning the psoas muscles to a more functional length. This is important as psoas that are too short have a huge impact on our health and function in a variety of ways.

The psoas muscles are rather large muscles that attaches to the inner, upper femur at one end and to a number of locations along the lumbar spine at the other. The psoas run through the pelvis but do not attach directly to it. The psoas do however have a big impact on the alignment of the pelvis as well as the alignment of the lumbar spine. One impact they can have on the pelvis is the very misalignment pattern described above – causing the hips (and the pelvis along with them) to sit forward of the knees and ankles and therefore shortened psoas can directly contribute to limited hip strength and limited hip range of motion.

Other possible effects of short psoas muscles are numerous. Here are a few more:

  • Compression of the lumbar discs
  • Excessive load on the sacroilliac joints
  • Increased risk of sciatica
  • Restriction of the diaphragm and disruption of healthy respiratory function
  • Inhibition of the pelvic floor tone
  • Increased risk of high blood pressure
  • Decreased circulation through the abdominal aorta
  • Impairment of the digestive system
  • Impairment of the urinary system
  • Impairment of the reproductive system
  • Ongoing activation of the sympathetic nervous system

Clearly there are a number of compelling reasons for have a longer, more functional psoas. So let’s look at the Psoas Release and learn a rather simple, gentle and effective way of bringing the psoas back to a more functional length. And did I mention that this pose can be very relaxing?

Thoughts on Communication and the Breath

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In an earlier post I offered some thoughts on communication, specifically communication between ourselves and our bodies. That post emphasized how our muscles respond differently depending on what we’re telling them, and it highlighted the fact that we can solicit the response we want, muscularly, when we’re clear about our intentions and effective in communicating our message.

Now this topic is coming up again and I find myself talking about it frequently with my students. The difference is that I’m talking more about the ways our bodies seek to communicate with us, how we sometimes fail to listen and how this typically leads to a smaller, more manageable problem becoming a bigger one.

Yoga teachers will often speak of listening to our bodies for guidance. This is in part because a failure to listen to what our bodies are telling us inevitably leads to injury. I have asked my students to pay attention to what their bodies are trying to communicate. I have also mistakenly assumed that a student who is clearly not paying attention to their body’s message, or mine as the inststructor, is doing so intentionally.

I have made this extremely unfortuate and damaging mistake more than once and I aspire to never do it again. It’s the rare occasion when a student deliberately ignores their body’s message. The fact is, listening to our bodies for guidance is very difficult and actually following that guidance, should we hear it, even tougher. Therefore we need to be generous with ourselves as we practice and as teachers we need to be generous with our students and assume they are doing their best, even when they appear not to be listening.

We also need to remain vigilant when it comes to fostering this type of communication. In his final book, Light On Life, B.K.S. says:

“Overstretching occurs when one loses contact with one’s center, with the divine core. Instead, the ego wants simply to stretch further, to reach the floor, regardless of its ability, rather that extending gradually from the center. Each movement must be an art. It is an art in which the Self is the only specatator. Keep your attention internal, not external, not worrying about what others see but what the Self sees.”

Iyengar’s statement reveals how the highest aspiration in yoga, to know the Self, is undermined by our most pedestrian of limitations, the ego. The ego,which we all have and must have to be well functioning human beings, runs interference between ourselves and the messages our body conveys. Iyenger illustrates here why the ego must be addressed if we’re to succeed in yoga.

I believe that most of my students aspire more to use yoga and/or movement to keep themselves out of pain and to function better and managing the ego may not be primary among their ambitions. My view is that these aspirations are not at odds with self knowledge but, on the contrary, are a necessary part of it. To resolve pain and improve movement we must be able to pay attention and hear the messages our body and mind are communicating to our intelligence, and this is also an essential skill for Self knowledge.

When two people are trying to communicate and they are having difficulty, often a moderator of some kind is helpful. Married couples might use a marriage counselor, for example, whose job it is to hear what a person is trying to say and then to convey that message to his or her spouse in a way that he/she will hear it. When we’re having difficulty communicating a message to our body, or hearing the message that our body is sending back, a moderator of a different sort can also be useful. The best moderator I’ve found in this instance is the breath.

When I use the word “breath” in teaching, as in the cue “use your breath,” I basically mean the mechanism by which the act of breathing relates to the body structurally and pschologically. When we inhale, for example, our diaphragm moves downward and increases pressure in the abdominal and pelvic cavities. This intra-abdominal pressure or IAP, as its known, is a powerul stablizing force that can be used to maintain functional alignment both in static postures and during motion. The IAP keeps our abdominal muscles and the pelvic floor working the right amount and at the appropriate times. The resulting trunk and pelvic stabilization facilitates greater mobility in our hips and shoulders and allows for freer movement.

These physical affects of IAP are also extremely reinforcing psychologically. When my IAP is working well, or said a different way, when my breath is working well, I feel stronger, more relaxed, more free in my movement and overall more at ease. In other words, when my breath is better I just plain feel better. Conversely, if my breath is not working well I don’t feel as good and it is likely an indication that my alignment is also not good.

This illustrates how my breath acts as a moderator to help me hear the messages my body sends and how it provides a powerful mechanism for responding to these messages when necessary. Even if I’m not quite sure what the source of my misalignment is, I can still make a correction by observing how the change affects my breath. And perhaps more importantly, even if I can’t improve my breath at that moment, at least I can use it to recognize that I need to come out of the posture or suspend my movement so that I don’t risk injury.

In Iyengar’s words, the breath can serve as “one’s center,” one’s “divine core,” and when he describes “extending gradually from the center” as opposed to an ego driven “overstretching” he alludes to how the breath can serve as the foundation for our postures and our momement. For this to happen we must recognize the difference between what “the ego wants” and what our body is telling us, and this requires that we “keep (y)our attention internal.” It requires that we remain in constant communication with the body and are not drawn away from its message by ego driven thoughts.

It is so important in yoga and movement that we don’t work at cross purposes. We need to keep asking ourselves the questions “why am I doing this” and “is this serving my primary interest.” If my answers are “to punish myself with exercise” and “yes but it’s not quite painful enough yet,” this is perfectly fine but then we need to recognize that my ego is the source of my motivation and not the needs of the body and mind I’m tasked with looking after. If we do recognize this and decide to move forward with the work anyway, at least we’re clear about why we’re doing it.

If on the other hand we see that the ego is driving the conversation then we have an opportunity to reevaluate our approach and seek other input. Our bodies are extremely good at giving feedback. Let’s strive to learn their language and hear their message.

 

 

 

 

 

Tips for Better Hydration this Fall

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As we approach the fall season, especially here in California, too much dryness is a concern. Dryness increases vata dosha and an excess of vata dosha can interfere with agni and impair our ability to digest, assimilate and form new healthy tissue. If vata dosha gets too aggravated it can start to weaken the body and make us more prone to illness.

Our agni or digestive fire is what enables us to break down and assimilate the things we take in. A well functioning agni is necessary for the nutrient elements in our food to reach and become part of our tissues (for more on agni and its role in digestion, see my recent article and allergies). Good agni is also needed for the liquids we drink to reach and infuse our tissues. Therefore we should consider the role of agni both in digestion and assimiation as well as in hydration.

When vata dosha is high, dryness itself makes it harder for us to absorb liquids. Imagine a patch of very dry soil that receives rain after a long absence. The soil is so dry and hard that the rain water won’t readily absorb into the soil and simply runs off, preventing the parched soil from absorbing the much needed liquidity. A parched body can behave in a similar way. Say we feel very dry and thirsty so we drink a big glass of cold water to quench our thirst, then short time we’re urinating most of the water out. The water has simply “run off” the digestive track without much of it actually being absorbed.

We can help facilitate absorption and hydration by changing the qualities of the water we drink. The easiest way to do this is to warm the water, making it more favorable to our agni and preventing astringency in the digestive track. Think of how your skin feels when you’re exposed to very cold water. The pores close to keep the heat in. The digestive track responds similarly to cold water, whereas warm water relaxes the tissue, helping with absorption.

Another way of changing the qualities of our water is by adding other substances to the water that stimulate the agni and signal the digestive system to assimilate the liquid. The simplest way of doing this is to add lemon or lime to our water. Adding citrus to water stimulates the agni and improves absorption. Adding a tiny pinch of salt further enhances this effect and is also good for reducing vata dosha.

For a superior hydrating drink, adding even more elements to the liquid, to the point of making it more like food, is the way to go. Studies have shown milk, for example, to be more hydrating than water. In Kenya, long distance runners are known to drink plenty of rooibos tea with milk after a long run for rehydration. I recommend making any type of herbal tea that you enjoy and adding a small amount of sweetener such as maple syrup or agave nectar. If milk will complement the tea, as in the case of rooibos tea, then a small amount of cow’s milk or even soy or almond milk will add sufficient sweetness and substance to the liquid for optimal hydration.

Caffinated drinks, while often just as hydrating as water in the short term, can aggravate vata dosha longer term if taken in excess and are therefore not ideal for hydrating. Alcoholic drinks dramtically increase heat in the body. So while a G&T can feel refreshing in the short term, it tends to dry us out later as the heat of the alcohol “steams” away the moisture in the body.

Finally, eating foods with a higher moisture content and reducing our intake of dry, very salty foods can be helpful. As we move further into the fall and the weather cools it makes sense to eat more soups and stews and fewer dry sautéed or roasted dishes. It’s also helpful to sip warm water or herbal tea with our meals, deliberately mixing the warm liquid with bites of food as we liquify the food in our mouths. In this way we can offset the effects of dryer foods and infuse more liquid into any meal and ultimately into our tissues.

 

Tissue Hydration and Movement – Keys to Keeping Your Body Young at Every Age

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I think we can all agree that staying hydrated is a good thing and becoming dehydrated is not. To hydrate our body we tend to think first of drinking more water, and while drinking enough water is obviously necessary and important for our health, keeping all of our tissues well hydrated, particularly our connective tissue, benefits from a more nuanced approach.

To understand tissue hydration better it helps to understand a bit more about the tissue we’re hydrating. Connective tissue, which includes our ligaments, tendons and fascia, is a tissue framework that supports and connects, you could say holds together, other tissues in the body. Our connective tissue plays an extremely important role in human movement. When connective tissue is healthy and well hydrated, it allow our bodies to move in a wide variety of ways. Conversely, if our connective tissue is not well hydrated it tends to limit our mobility, adversely affecting the health many other tissues in the body.

Connective tissue is composed of cells, fibers and ground substance. Understanding ground substance, our connective tissue’s liquid component, is the key to understanding how to keep our connective tissue well hydrated .Ground substance is a clear, viscous fluid that is 70 percent water. It can vary in consistency from relatively thin and water like to thicker and more gel like. What gives ground substance this variability in consistency is the 30% non-water component, the glycoamindoglycans or GAG’s. GAGs act like a binding agent that draws water into the tissue and keeps it there. GAG’s therefore play an important role in keeping our connective tissue well hydrated.

In addition to its role in tissue hydration, ground substance also:

  • Serves as a source of nutrition for our tissue
  • Helps to disperse waste products from our tissue
  • Acts as a lubricant and spacer between collagen fibers
  • Is Thixotropic

In short, ground substance keeps our tissues fed, clean and lubricated while playing a key role in our movement. The ground substance can transform from gel to liquid, a quality called Thixotropy, and it’s this quality that explains in part why it is so important for human movement. Thixotropic fluids change when our environment and our movement changes, providing more support when we need it and less when we don’t.

This is something we can all feel. We recognize for example that our bodies feels stiffer when cold and looser when warm and that taking a hot bath or warming up the body with movement can help a stiff and sore back. But will drinking more water also help with a stiff and sore back? The answer is more complicated. Drinking more water can make more water available to our tissue, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into keeping our ground substance more fluid and our connective tissue better hydrated.

When addressing the health of our connective tissues it is important to understand that drinking more water only goes so far. We also need to move. Movement is essential for keeping our tissues mobile and hydrated, especially our connective tissue, and the fluidity of all of our tissue is compromised when we don’t move enough or with enough variety and frequency.

One reason movement is so important for tissue hydration is because it is needed to facilitate the feeding and cleansing functions of the ground substance, and this is especially important as we get older. As we age, the areas in our bodies where tissues become adhesive and stiff tend to increase. Past injuries, acute and chronic, along with the cumulative effect of poor and/or infrequent movement habits can lead to dried out tissue fibers. These fibers tend to stick to one another, causing the ground substance to decrease proportionally and the connective tissues to get less nutrition while allowing more waste products to accumulate.

This scenario can contribute to pain and tension patterns that limit our mobility further and before you know it, we feel old. Meanwhile, connective tissue that doesn’t move well limits the movement of the muscle tissue it supports. This makes it difficult to generate new muscle in these areas, contributing to a weakening body.

The good news is that this trend can be reversed! Movement always remains available to us, no matter our age. So it’s always a good idea to try to increase the quantity and quality and regularity of our movements.

Here are some suggestions that will, when done with regularity, promote hydration of all of the tissues, help maintain strength and promote good muscle tone and function:

Stretching:  When done with good alignment and stable joints, stretching can help to increase the normal gliding of the connective tissue, allowing for greater range of motion for our muscles. Muscles with more range make it easier to move our joints and help to keep fluid in the joint capsules, maintaining their suppleness.

*Research has shown that while stretching initially decreases the water content of the tissue, after 30 minutes of rest, the water content increases beyond the pre-stretch quantity and remains higher for up to 3 hours afterwards!

Natural Human Movement: This is movement that takes joints through a wide range of motions. Walking is a great example of a natural human movement that can take a wide variety of our joints through a wide range of motion. In fact, did you know that walking can mobilize more joints in your body than running?

*Moving your joints to maintain health need not be done with strenuous activities!

Orthopedic Massage:  Orthopedic massage was designed specifically to reintroduce motion into connective tissues to decrease pain. This technique involves sliding the fibers of connective tissue across each other to create friction that increases fluidity. This along with the gentle rocking motion of Orthopedic Massage and its passive joint mobilization help to increase fluid uptake in our tissues.

*Massage is a must if you are dealing with injuries that are keeping you from moving as freely as you could because of pain!

Personal Alignment Training and Re-education:  If our joints do not line up well we will have a greater tendency toward tissue tension, tightness, stiffness and weakness, and these issues can lead to chronic movement pattern disorders and decreased mobility.  Over time, decreased mobility can promote adhesions in the tissues fibers. Personal Alignment Training helps re-educate you on how to hold yourself in proper alignment, reducing pain due to poor movement habits and improving mobility. Ultimately this keeps your tissues better hydrated.

*Remember, adhesions are effectively dehydrated tissue. That is, tissue where the connective tissue fibers have dried out and become stuck to each other. 

Staying properly hydrated is important at any age, but becomes more important as we get older. Hydration is not simply a matter of drinking more water, but to be more proactive about tissue hydration. As we age we tend to move less and develop more movement habits that cause or maintain chronic pain and injures. This leads to more adhesions, causing more pain and discomfort and decreasing our mobility. This in turn can cause us to move even less.

Keeping our tissues young, supple and hydrated need not be strenuous, it simply requires more varied and biomechanically sound human movement. Movement is the key to staying youthful and well hydrated.

Understanding Allergies Better for More Relief

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As the weather heats up I find that myself and others are experiencing more difficulties with allergies. Symptoms of sinus irritation, itchy eyes, sneezing and congestion that were less a problem when the weather was cooler tend to increase as the temperature rises. It reminds me to do the things I know I need to do to keep a clear head.

Years ago, before I had much interest in alternative health or even health in general for that matter, I was at an event out in an open field east of Sacramento in the summer. I don’t remember why I was there, but I do remember very clearly that I was suffering. My eyes and nose were on fire and I could not stop sneezing. I was miserable.

A gentleman at the event saw the state I was in and told me a story. He said that there was a time when he would have been suffering the way I was, but that he saw an allergy doctor that helped him. This doctor tested him for sensitivities to a variety of substances ranging from environmental irritants to household chemicals to various foods. After the tests the doctor revealed to him those substances to which he was most sensitive and pointed out that one of these was tomatoes. The doctor told him that if he stopped eating tomatoes he would see a significant improvement in his symptoms. The man followed this adivce and his allergies cleared up.

It’s fascinating to me that a relatively minor change in diet could have had such a huge impact on this man’s allergies. I come back to this story periodically and it reminds me that we all have things to which we’re sensitive and many of them, like environmental irritants or pollutants, we really can’t totally avoid. But despite the pervasiveness of many irritants in our environment, what we eat can still has a significant impact on allergies.

We had a rainy winter and plants are still vital and abundant and many of these plants produce pollens that can be irritating to our tissues and solicit reactions from those tissues in the form of allergy symptoms. Staying indoors when our allergy symptoms are at their worst is an option, but not a long term one and not one that avoids exposure altogether.

Most people I talk to who have seasonal allergies use over the counter medications to manage symptoms until these symptoms pass. Examples include steroidal nasal sprays such as Flonase that reduce irritation to the sinuses and anti-histamines such as Claritin and Allegra that prevent our bodies from producing more histamines, the chemicals our cells produce in response to a pathogen.

I am in no way against using these medicines to relieve symptoms and if I’m really suffering I have no problem getting out my stash of Flonase. But I also believe we shouldn’t limit ourselves to merely treating symptoms. It is within our power to limit our exposure to other irritants, such as those in our diet, and by doing so we can reduce our tendency to react to the irritants we can’t avoid.

Ayurveda has helped me see the tremendous value in understanding and addressing root causes of ill health and has exposed me to effective alternatives to symptom treatment. Ayurveda is a terrific source of “home remedies” or using common, easily available household items or methods to treat common ailments. I’ve found that trying out many of these remedies has given me a deeper understanding of how health problems manifest and made me more effective in making recommendations to clients.

Ayurveda views allergies as being a symptom of defective or deficient agni. The word “agni” means “fire,” and it refers to the digestive fire or the ability of a person or of a particular tissue in a person to break down and assimilate or neutralize a substance. If the agni is weak or not working right then a person or tissue will struggle with the metabolic process, resulting in the production of toxins rather than the production of more healthy tissue. If these toxins accumulate they further depress the agni which may eventually trigger an immune response in the form of an allergic reaction.

Thus an essential part of Ayurvedic treatment and prevention of allergies is to improve agni. Our main agni is our digestive agni and one way we can strengthen it is by avoiding foods that are heavy and/or difficult to digest. Foods high in refined sugar are the low hanging fruit for elimination as they greatly tax the agni and have been shown to dramatically depress our immune system. A 1973 study done at Loma Linda University showed that ingesting 100g of sugar, about the amount in 1 liter of soda, reduced the germ fighting capacity of white blood cells by 40%, and this effect lasted for up to 5 hours!

Another way we can strengthen agni is to use an appropriate herbal digestive. A simple one that will work for most people is a tea made from a decoction of cumin, coriander and fennel.

Boil 1 tsp each of cumin, coriander and fennel seeds (whole not powdered) in 3 cups of water down to 2 cups and sip this tea with meals.

“CCF Tea” will help to strengthen weak agni and regulate agni that is over active. Keeping our agni optimal helps us digest and assimilate our food better and prevents us from producing and accumulating the digestive related toxicity that can put a drag on our immune system and increase our allergy symptoms.

Besides taking the above steps to keep our agni strong and our digestion working well I also find neti- a nasal saline rinse – helpful for relieving allergy symptoms. Many people know about nasal saline rinsing as it’s often recommended by docotors for allergies and colds. In the case of allergies, rinsing the sinus passages with salt water helps clear irritants out of the sinus passages, thereby reducing our exposure to these irritants and our tendency to react to them. There are different ways to do a saline rinse, but my favorite and the one I recommend most is using a neti pot.

Depending on the size of the neti pot, dissolve 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of fine sea salt into boiled, body temperature water. Taste the water for saline content. It should have the salinity of your tears. Place the water into the pot and place the spout of the pot into your right nostril. Tilt the head down and to the left over the sink until the water flows into your right nostril and out of your left. Remember to breathe through your mouth.

For larger pots, use half of the water to pour from right to left and the other half to pour from left to right. For smaller pots use a full pot in each direction. When you’ve finished each side, gently blow the excess water out. Be careful not to blow so hard and to push the water deeper into your sinuses.

While Ayurveda recommends neti it goes a step further. This step, done after the rinse and when the saline solution has been gently blown out of the nose, is to apply sesame oil, coconut oil or a combination of the two to the inside of the nose.

Take a small amount of liquified coconut or sesame oil into your palm. Dip your small finger or a cue tip into the oil and apply it to your nostrils. Sniff a few times to pull the oil deeper into the nasal passages. If you have time, lie down for a few minutes with the head comfortably back to allow the oil to drain in more.

Oil will help to counter the dryness caused by weather and/or the effects of blowing the nose frequently. The oil also helps to strengthen the tissue of the nasal passages, making it more resilient and better able to deal with inevitable exposure to irritants. You may find that applying oil will solicit the impulse to blow your nose. Don’t worry if you must as it may require several oil applications to resolve this feeling and to gain relief from the sinus irritation.

Movement can also be extremely helpful in relieving allegy symptoms and clearing the sinus passages. Almost any intelligent movement will help, but a specific movement that seems to work well is to do a series of standing forward bends.

With the feet paralell and about 1 foot apart, bend forward with the knees straight down to a height that does not require a lot of bend from your spine. Use a chair or a yoga block as a support to put your hands on, but avoid leaning into the hands and keep the weight of the body mostly in your heel bones. Hold the forward bend for 5-10 seconds, breathing through your nose as much as possible. Then come up, keeping the knees straight and the weight in the heels until you are fully upright. Stand upright for another 5-10 seconds and then repeat the forward bend. Continue to alternate between the forward bend and standing upright until you start of feel your sinuses clear or you reach your fatigue point, whichever comes first.

Finally, altering our breathing pattern can be very helpful in relieving allergy symptoms. This is especially the case for anyone who tends to breathe through their mouth or must do so because of sinus congestion. When we breathe through our mouth we over oxygenate our blood, throwing off the delicate balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide necessary to make oxygen available to our cells. When our cells don’t get the oxygen they need, even for a short time, they struggle to metabolize well and this makes it difficult for our cells and the tissues they make up to neutralize pathogens. The following breathing exercise can be quite effective.

Sit quietly for a minute or so and allow your breath to be normal and relaxed. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Start to take smaller, sip like inhalations, followed by normal exhalations (meaning don’t attempt to alter your exhalation). Continue this breathing pattern for as long as is reasonably comfortable. If you start to feel short of breath, take a few normal inhalations until your breath recovers, then begin taking smaller inhales again. Continue this process, staying as relaxed as possible for the full 5 minutes.

With many of the over the counter medications available for allergy relief being so effective it’s tempting to rely on these and forgo other solutions. Ayurvedic medicine provides some easy to do and helpful means of symptom relief, as well as a fairly straightforward view of what causes allergies and how to address this cause at its root. The suggestions I’ve given above are a boon to anyone suffering with seasonal allergies and who is interested in relief that goes beyond symptoms. These suggestions may also provide insights into how other aspects of our health may be contributing to our allergies.

 

 

The Best Breathing for Reducing Pain and Stress

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When working with our clients one of the first things we check is their breathing pattern. This is because the way a person breathes can have a big impact on their health, including the health and function of the musculo-skeletal system. Much of the impact of breathing on our health has to do with the role of our diaphragm.

The Diaphragm during Respiration

There are many ways to breathe but the most effective, efficient and relaxing way to breathe involves using our diaphragm. The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that spans the lower border of our rib cage. On inhalation, as the diaphragm contracts, it flattens and moves downward. This downward motion creates a vacum in the chest, helping to pull air into the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes it moves upward, back into its dome shape, and this upward motion helps us to exhale.

Intra-abdominal Pressure and the Stabilizing Role of the Diaphragm

The downward motion of the diaphragm also creates pressure in the abdomen. This pressure is called “intra-abdominal pressure” and is important for facilitating a stabilizing response in the muscles of our abdomen, low back and pelvis. This highlights the dual role of the diaphragm. Under optimal circumstances it acts as a facilitator of both respiration and muscle-skeletal stabilization.

Often people are taught diaphragmatic breathing by lying down and breathing into the belly, inflating it toward the ceiling. Although this may be a good way to get started, it is an approach which focuses only on the respiratory role of the diaphragm and fails to address its crucial role in stabilizing the trunk and pelvis.

Experiencing Diaphragmatic Breathing and Intra-abdominal Pressure

For the diaphragm to perform optimally in both of it’s roles it is essential that its downward motion be symetrical and that the pressure it creates in the abdomen be distributed evenly. To experience this even distribution of intra-abdominal pressure for yourself, place your hands around the abdomen just below the lower ribs, making contact with the front, sides and back of your body. Your diaphragm sits just above where your hands are touching. Now inhale and feel how the pressure created in your abdomen is pushing gently into your hands.

True diaphragmatic breathing creates intra-abdominal pressure that expands outward into the full circumference of the abdomen. When you breathe in with your hands wrapped around your abdomen, check and see if you feel the pressure moving in all directions. If you feel most or all of the pressure pushing into your belly, then on subsequent breaths try to gently, but consciously, redistribute the pressure into every place your hands are touching, especially into the sides of your waist and into the back.

Another technique for improving diaphragmatic breathing and intra-abdominal pressure involves tying a theraband or a stretchy cloth around your lower ribs and feeling your inhale touch the whole circumference of the lower ribcage.  Here you can feel the intercostal muscles between your ribs move. The intercostals assist the diaphragm in playing both its roles and are an important source of load and mobilization of the rib cage, helping to keep these bones healthy and mobile.

Intra-abdominal Pressure and the Pelvic Floor

As I mentioned earlier, when we are truly breathing diaphragmatically the downward motion of the diaphragm will be symetrical and create an even distribution of pressure in the abdominal cavity. But it doesn’t stop there! In fact one important benefit of diaphragmatic breathing is its affect on the pelvic floor. This is because true diaphragmatic breathing and optimal intra-abdominal pressure will move directly downward toward the pelvic floor, loading the pelvic floor muscles and soliciting a response from those muscles that maintains their strength and responsiveness.

To sense the intra-abdominal pressure in your pelvis,  place your hands on the front of your belly below your umbilicus (belly button) and above your pubic bone and take a breath. You should feel a gentle pressure increase here. You may also begin to sense a gentle pressure in the floor of your pelvis.

Other Benefits of Diaphragmatic Breathing

Another reason the direction our diaphragm moves is so important is that it helps pull air into the lowest lobes of your lungs. Since the lungs are narrow at the top and wider at the bottom, blood flow into the lower lobes is greater than into the upper lobes and therefore breathing diaphragmatically will allow for more oxygen transfer into the blood. With a big chest breath we are actually taking in less oxygen than if we simply take a small but healthy diaphragmatic breath!

Diaphragmatic breathing also has benefits to our nervous system. The para-sympathic nervous system (rest and digest) is activated by relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing while the sympathetic (fight or flight) is activated by chest breathing. Again, for healthy breathing that big chest breath is not always what we want. It is actually preparing our body to ramp up, promoting a stress response rather than alleviating it.

Diaphragmatic breathing can also help alleviate back pain and reduce back tension. When breathing diaphragmatically, the intra-abdominal pressure solicits a response in the abdominal and lower trunk muscles that gently unloads the spinal joints and strengthens the abodminal muscles. These muscles get a gentle massage and workout just by breathing correctly!

Breathing through Your Nose is Essential

Finally, to get the most out of diaphragmatic breathing it is essential to breathe in and out of your nose. Mouth breathing is shallow and will promote lifting the chest up in lieu of the diaphragm moving down. Since ALL of the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing hinge on the symetrical downward movement of the diaphragm and the even distribution of intra-abdominal pressure then breathing through the nose is key in reaping these benefits.

For guided instruction on the basics of diaphragmatic breathing, check out this video.

The Importance of Alignment

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I was first introduced to alignment in the context of yoga.  The Iyengar Yoga system in particular is often characterized as emphasizing “alignment” in postures.  It’s only recently, however, with the study of biomechanics, that I have begun to understand better what alignment really means and why it’s so important.

Katy Bowman, M.S., whose work I’ve been studying describes our alignment as being distinct from our posture.  She points out that posture is cultural while alignment is based on objectivity.  For example, some women I have talked to about posture and alignment have told me that their parents encouraged them not “to stick their butts out.”  This view of posture is purely subjective as it is based a particular point of view.  Alignment must be objective and must therefore be based solely on identifiable objective markers.

One such marker is the alignment of the hips relative to that of the knees and ankles.  When standing in a bio-mechanically functional alignment the hip joints must sit directly over the center of the knees and the center of the outer ankle bones.  Most of us tend to stand with the hips pushed forward of the knees and ankles.  This tends to rotate the pelvis back (posteriorly) such that the pelvis sits a little “tucked”.  To correct this misalignment we must back our hips up until our hip joints align over the outer ankle bones.  When the hips are backed up this way it not only brings the pelvis and hips into a more functional alignment with the legs, it also tends to correct the “tuck” of the pelvis and rotate the pelvis back to neutral.

Figure 2

Figure 2

When I ask students to back their hips up this way, they usually say they feel like they are “sticking their butt out,”  something some have been deliberately trying NOT to do!  This is partly because they’ve gotten so accustomed to having their hips forward and their pelvis tucked that this misaligned position feels normal and the new position feels “strange” or “wrong” relative to what they are used to.

This example is a strong argument for using objective markers when aligning our bodies.  We cannot rely on what “feels right” to us.  When it comes to our own bodies we are not all that objective.

Besides the fact that it just feels right to push the hips forward, there’s another reason we tend to stand with our hips pushed forward – it’s easier!  Standing with the hips forward is essentially us sitting loosely into the front of our hip joints.  We often do the same thing to one side, swaying the hip out to act as a fulcrum to support our weight.  This puts a great deal of stress on our hip joints and will eventually lead to pain.  It takes a lot less effort to stand this way because the bones are in a position that doesn’t require (or to some extent even allow) important stabilizing muscles in our hips to work.  When we back the hips up and align the hip joints with the outer ankles bones, it suddenly takes a lot more effort to stand!

This alignment of the hip joints helps a great deal in yoga with many of the standing postures.  In the posture “samasthithahi,” for instance, where I am standing with my feet “hips width” apart (as opposed to “tadasana” where the feet are kept together), judging the position of the hips relative to the knees and ankles can be done by using a belt with a buckle as a plum bob to tell if my hips are lined vertically up over the outer ankle bones (see the diagram above).   When I get the hips aligned I can feel that I’m anchored through the heels and the legs and hips are active and alive while I have a distinct sense of depth and space in the groin.  Re-establishing neutral pelvis also does wonders for the function of the pelvic floor and is an essential step in the practice of the mula bandha.

Most importantly, aligning the hips properly in a yoga posture brings life into the posture.  And this is not just true for samasthitahi but can be applied in many of the standing postures including trikonasana, parsvakonasana and ardhachandrasana to name just a few.  In fact, this bringing of life into the postures can be manifested in just about any yoga posture when I can establish a better anchored and neutral pelvis.

Bio-mechanically sound alignment in yoga postures not only makes them better postures, it also helps us avoid injury and derive more benefit from our postures. So it’s worth the time and energy in a yoga practice to improve our alignment.

But ultimately, it’s our day to day activities that have the biggest impact on our health and function.  Therefore alignment should not be limited to the domain of yoga but be a feature of how I stand, sit, walk and move throughout the day.  In fact, the better my alignment in these every day activities the better my yoga postures will also become.