Category: Articles

A Pose Series Proven to Increase Bone Density

Feeling great is reason enough to do yoga, but happily this activity also comes with myriad health benefits.¹ One of these is bone health. How does yoga strengthen your bones? Yoga poses strengthen muscles. This puts stress on bones which stimulates extra calcium deposits, and enhances the action of bone-forming cells. The result is stronger denser bones.

Maintaining bone health is important for every stage of life, however the older you are the more important it is to take part in activities that keep bones strong. Both men and women experience lower bone density as they age. After 50, over 55% of people have low bone density.² Women have the added impact of lowering estrogen levels which impact on bone density.

Standing yoga poses like Warrior One and Two strengthen the legs and hips. Upper body weight bearing poses like Downward Dog and others impact on the muscles and bones of the wrists, arms and shoulders. Back bends like Cobra and Locust pose are accessible to most and impact on the bones of the spine. An additional benefit of yoga is the balance and co-ordination that it develops. This helps prevent falls that may be the cause of fractures, especially in older adults.

Ideally we do yoga to prevent bone loss but what if you have already experienced bone density loss? Can yoga help you regain it? Yes! Studies indicate that a daily yoga practice can help regain lost bone density. One such study found that 12 minutes of yoga daily can reverse bone loss, specifically in the spine and femurs.³ Another study demonstrated that yoga can effectively build bone mineral density after menopause.⁴ These benefits did not require rigorous training. Both studies had participants hold ten to twelve common yoga poses for about 30 seconds each daily. This means that you can maintain or improve the health of your bones with less than 15 minutes of yoga daily.

I have personally had students with bone loss connect with me after visiting their doctors and learning their bone density had increased after starting our yoga sessions. Here is one such letter I received from a student in my mixed level hatha yoga class.

Hi Bobby, My tests have shown that my bone density has increased at an amazing rate since I started yoga. I don’t know if it is coincidence as there are other factors to consider but my results have moved from osteopenia to normal in my hip, and from osteoporosis to ‎osteopenic in my spine. I have had 4 bone density scans in my life and this recent improvement was considered drastic!  My doctor described my results as stark improvement! – Carol T, St. John’s Yoga Practitioner

Follow the pose order of the images in this post if you would like to try the poses from the case study above. Simply hold each pose for 30 seconds as you continue to take deep breaths. Pause for a few seconds after each pose before moving on to the next pose. Use blocks if needed to ensure poses are comfortable as you hold. This is a great start for a home practice. If you would like to be sure you are aligning correctly in the poses, or would enjoy the support of a yoga community, join me in one my upcoming beginner or mixed level hatha yoga classes on Monday or Tuesday evenings. Class info at www.ShaktiYoga.ca or contact me at Bobby@ShaktiYoga.ca.

Sources:

1. www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/9-benefits-of-yoga

2. Osteoporosis: epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment. South Med J. 2000;93(1):2–18.

3.Twelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss, Yi-Hsueh Lu, PhD, Bernard Rosner, PhD, Gregory Chang, MD, PhD, and Loren M. Fishman, MD, B Phil (oxon.)

4. Fishman, Loren M. MD, BPhil(Oxon) Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation: July 2009 – Volume 25 – Issue 3 – p 244-250 doi: 10.1097/TGR.0b013e3181b02dd6

Love Yourself Happy!

Loving Kindness Meditation is an absolute must-have addition to all the Valentines Day chatter about cards, chocolate and candle light dinners. As yogis, this meditation practice is the essence of what we strive to achieve in our practice whether we are sweating through postures or sitting in contemplation. We learn to forgive, be kind, and compassionate toward ourselves. From this place of self-love, we are then able to extend this practice beyond our sphere of existence into the rest of the world.

Many studies have been done on meditation, and while all types of meditation are now known to have numerous types of positive impacts on your physical and psychological well-being, only one kind of meditation has been shown to increase the level of happiness in your life; Loving Kindness Meditation.

The Dalai Lama has written much on this topic. He admits that this is not completely a selfless practice, because we reap benefits of our own as we learn to love the world around us. He states beautifully however that if we are to be selfish then then we should be wisely selfish, practicing a philosophy of life that makes the world a better place as we make our own lives happier and more satisfying.

In addition to increasing happiness, studies also show that the positive impact of loving kindness meditation persists in the long term.(Michael A. Cohn, University of California San Francisco & Barbara L. Fredrickson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008). In this study, 15 months after participation in a loving-kindness meditation study, those who continued their meditation practice were found to continue to feel very positive emotions in their daily lives. Even those who had stopped meditating felt more positive than a control group that had never begun the meditation practice. What is especially significant about this is that feelings of happiness from events such as getting a great job or buying a new car dissipate rather quickly while feelings of happiness from loving kindness meditation endure.

Loving Kindness Meditation: How to do it

1. Sit. To begin meditating on loving-kindness, first prepare yourself to sit in a comfortable position. Choose a place where you will not be interrupted, and allow yourself to settle into a natural breath rhythm for a few minutes.
2. Love Yourself. Do a body awareness sweep. Smile at your feet and send love to them. Move up your body repeating this process until you have spent some time on each part of your body. Continue to do this until you feel full of this emotion, flowing completely into love, loving yourself unconditionally.  Initially there can be resistance to sending love to oneself. If you experience this, you may need to spend some time identifying and releasing feelings of unworthiness, replacing them with loving acceptance. Giving the practice some time to blossom in your heart will eventually allow you to overcome any feelings of self-doubt or negativity. This may not happen immediately, but with practice, you will remove this initial hurdle and be ready to systematically develop loving-kindness towards others. This is a key part of the process. When we feel genuine love and acceptance for ourselves we open the door to an unlimited source of love and kindness that can then be effortlessly shared with the world.
3. Focus on someone you already love. Now cultivate the emotion of love by focusing on something, or someone, that evokes a powerful uncomplicated love response. Allow this emotion to penetrate your full experience and then slowly transition from the object or person that helped you connect with this emotion to sitting with the emotion itself in its purest form. Repeat silently “May they be healthy, live happily, and may they love others and themselves.”
4. Love your family and friends. The next step is to allow this love to expand to include everyone in your close circle of family and friends, one at a time, or as a group. You can mentally repeat, “May they be healthy, live happily, and may they love one another and themselves.”
5. Love everyone. Now expand your loving circle to include, acquaintances, strangers (This would include neutral people, the person who serves your coffee or unknown faces in far away locations, for example), again repeating, “May they be healthy, live happily, and may they love one another and themselves.”
6. Love the difficult to love. Next, move on to include those who have hurt you in the past, those for whom you find it difficult to feel compassion in daily life, and again repeat the loving phrase written above. This step helps us better understand why Buddha described love as being the best armor. When we love those who are unkind to us, we remove the damaging impact that their behavior has on our lives and well-being. We cannot control how other people act. We cannot always understand what motivates them to do what they do, but we can control how we respond. If we feel loving-kindness towards those who do not treat us well, we remove their power to injure us and we stop the perpetuation of this behavior and energy.
7. Enjoy the results. Allow yourself to sit immersed in loving-kindness for a period of time, visualize this feeling being released from your heart center to fill your whole body. Simply be with this love, sit with this love and breathe with this love.

Repeating this practice even for just a few minutes daily will allow you to cultivate these emotions more easily and in a shorter period of time.

Happy Heart Opening Yogis!

Is the Western perception of yoga a barrier for some?

The picture to the right is my beautiful mom, Marilyn, whom I called from Tokyo 20 years ago, and asked to meet me in six months at a yoga ashram that was a half-day train ride outside Mumbai. Oh….and to sign up for a yoga class in the meantime so that she would know what yoga was before enrolling in a yoga teacher training course. If you know my mom it might not surprise you that she signed up for an introduction to yoga class at the local YMCA, and was waiting for me at the airport in New Delhi that fall wearing flip flops, and carrying the tiniest backpack you have ever seen.

In her late 50’s, with an average body size and sky-high blood pressure, my mother sweated her way through 40 degree days to complete her first 200 hour Yoga Teacher training. This included a full month of 5:00 am meditation wake up calls, followed by a 2 hour asana class (physical practice), 4 hours of lecture, a second 2 hour PM asana class, and evening mantra study.  While she was one of only a few “older” students, the teachers came in many ages, shapes and sizes. Many were seniors. Despite a lifetime of practicing asana they were all much more interested in talking to you about meditation and lifestyle. This ashram also ran yoga therapy clinics throughout that area and their students ranged from healthy young people to adults of every age, many with a variety of physical conditions. You could sense this in how they taught. The most beginner and the advanced student were all totally at home in the same asana class.

In the wake of a series of recent articles talking about how the West is “ruining” yoga I thought of my mom and wondered whether she would have embraced this enormous challenge had her first yoga class been a vinyasa (flow) class taught by a young, lean teacher, surrounded by students in midriff baring yoga clothing. Don’t misunderstand this to mean that I think there is anything wrong with flow yoga, stylish yoga clothing, or young/ thin teachers. I enjoy and teach flow style classes (as well as other styles), own lululemon clothing, and believe an effective teacher can be of any age or body type, including young and thin. 

As a runner in my early 20’s I began studying hot yoga because it was the only thing that felt like a better work out than running. I spent many hours sweating in shorts and short tops and I would not have been interested in going to a gentle yoga class with an emphasis on breathing and meditation. I actually believe that the focus on asana (yoga poses) in the west may actually be necessary to introduce the practice to a society that has been taught to look outside oneself for answers, and values a state of being constantly busy. Indeed, I might not have become a yoga teacher/student writing a blog post on this topic if it were not for a style of yoga that many consider to be extreme. All of this stuff is good and we need to meet people wherever they are.

Possibly more important than the discussion of whether the teacher ought to be Western or Indian, or classes traditional or physical is: Are we reserving space in the yoga image that is projected in the west to include populations not represented by the “perfect” models in the often challenging poses shown in yoga magazines (which I buy, by the way). I am simply concerned that for every brave soul who has written me prefacing their inquiry about yoga classes with their age and weight, as if it might be a deal breaker, there are a dozen people who simply did not write at all because they felt they were too much, or not enough to do yoga. I am not sure the yoga image (or the practice itself) in the West is always welcoming and accessible to these people.

Those of us who are yoga teachers must look at how we promote our classes, design our websites, etc., and ask ourselves if we are being inclusive. And to go further than that, we should ask ourselves if we are offering any classes that are genuinely accessible to everyone (not that everything we teach has to be for beginners or chair yogis, of course). When someone tells me that they tried yoga and it was too hard for them I let them know that this is simply not true. They simply did not go to the right class for them. However I worry that they will never pull together the courage to try another class.

To those looking to begin a yoga class please know that yoga is for everyone.

It doesn’t matter how old you are. The type of poses, speed of practice, balance of breath work and meditation will change as you age to be what you need at that time in your life. The same pose is doing something completely different for every single person in any class.

It doesn’t matter what size or shape your body is. All poses can be done in some version by everyone.

It doesn’t matter how flexible you are. The right class for you will help you maintain the range of motion that you have, and possibly increase it if it is appropriate for you. In the end maybe your yoga class does not need to change your flexibility or body shape. Maybe where you are is good for you and your yoga class will help you feel great about that.

It doesn’t matter what religion or spirituality you practice (or don’t practice). Yoga will help you develop skills of introspection that will help you deepen your understanding of your own truth in whatever form it resonates within you.

It DOES matter that you find the right class for you.  The goal of yoga is to enhance your physical, mental and emotional well-being. That is achieved differently by every person, and it changes as we evolve.  If something is not working for you, don’t give up until you have tried at least 2 or 3 different teachers and/or classes. The class for you exists somewhere. Maybe you will even find it on a DVD and do it in your living room!

And, back to my mom. She returned home from her time in India and blew her doctor away with a perfect blood pressure report, despite the fact that she had not taken any of her medication in India (I am SO not recommending that anyone do yoga in lieu of medical treatment! My mother simply does what she wants and listens to no one, doctor or myself included. An occasional source of frustration for me and possibly the karmic return for my teenage years). She continues to practice yoga and teaches chair yoga. She has students are in their 80’s and 90’s! As we begin our journey into the new year I say to anyone thinking of starting a yoga practice that if my mom could do it so can you!

Happy New Year to all of you Yogis and Yogis-to-be.

A Yoga Pathway for Keeping it Real

When asked yesterday to write a post on yoga for self isolation I immediately began to compile a list of common yoga wellness techniques. I contemplated the use of breathing practices, asana, journaling, meditation, laughter, music, nature walks, and creative pursuits appropriate for this purpose. As I was organizing my thoughts and ranking activities by relevance, I realized that this was an impossible task. How could I possibly know what any one person in isolation needs right now? Of course, I could not. I remembered however that I do know someone who does know. So instead of creating a list of things to do (or not do) in isolation, I thought I would instead introduce you to the person with all the answers, and help you listen to them. Hint: It is you!

Yogi Tip #1: Tune In

What is needed to thrive in any situation varies from person to person (and moment to moment). Adding to this complexity is the fact that most of the time we don’t actually know what we need! The three-breath practice below is designed to help you find out.

First close your eyes, inhale a wave of breath, exhale and imagine that wave releasing your body and mind. And now begin.

Beath 1: Body Awareness Inhale and tune in to your body. Visualize your body filling with your breath and become aware of all the sensations in your body. This is a non-judgemental curious sweep. Exhale and imagine your body settling into ease.

Breath 2: Mind Awareness Inhale your breath into your mind. Imagine your brain filling with this breath. Exhale to release your brain into ease.

Breath 3: Heart Awareness Inhale to bring awareness to your heart center. Exhale to visualize this space relaxing and opening up. Ask yourself what you need right now? Maybe you want to pause and breath here for a while longer to wait for an answer or possibly you know immediately what you need. To move? To lie down? To breath fresh air? To connect with someone?

Social media is full of wrestling indignant opinions on whether we should be active or inactive right now. Don’t get caught up in the extremes. There is no right or wrong way to proceed. You are now, and will forever be, the only person who knows exactly what you need.

Yogi Tip #2: Give Permission

This tip is every bit as important as the first. Without it, your tune-in is not going to be of much use. There are a lot of different emotions being felt right now. Be kind to yourself. Does your tune-in inform you that you need to cry? Take a nap?  Move?  Do you need a break from your kids/partner? If so, feel it and do it (even if you just lock yourself in the bathroom to sit on your vanity counter for a few breaths). The most important thing to do when you learn exactly what you are feeling is to greet it with unconditional compassion, interest, and acceptance.

Jung wrote that the modern man lives in endless transgressions against his instincts. While we may resist certain feelings, the reality is that it is natural to feel angry, sad, lonely, happy, etc. It is also ok to notice it and to feel it. Before doing the three-breath tune-in above commit yourself to non-judgmental acceptance of whatever you discover. If you feel like napping for example, resist the urge to think, “but really I should go for a run”. In this unusual time when we are unable to welcome physical guests into our home I suggest we follow the sage words of Jellaludin Rumi, and instead practice welcoming all of our internal guests. I provide his beautiful poem, The Guest House, below to further inspire. Enjoy

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

 

The recent need to stay inside due to Covid-19 means that many yoga enthusiasts have had to move from studio to online classes.  While it is true that online classes are not the same as the in-studio experience, they do come with some special perks of their own. If you are wondering whether an online class may be right for you, read on for some of the unexpected joys that my students have shared with me since I transferred to a live streaming option.

1. PJs welcome! Tired from all day at work and wish you could change into your pajamas but it is yoga night? No problem. Yoga at home has no dress code. If you are working from home you may have been in them all day anyhow!
2. Relieve stress. Something we need to do more than ever right now. The onslaught of news coverage, and worries about loved ones mean that our usual anxiety load is higher than usual. Yoga breathing and meditation studies repeatedly show a powerful impact on the nervous system.
3. No sitter? Want to introduce yoga to a family member? Online yoga is your solution. Bringing yoga into your home provides a little window into what yoga is all about for hesitant partners or friends. Kids can be put to bed before class, or join in as you move through your practice.
4. Stay active at home. My students are telling me that even if they are doing the same job at home, they are not moving to and from work, up and down stairs, etc. This means they may be doing significantly less moving than before. The fitbit does not lie!
5. Savasana followed by proximity to your bed! For my students, this is the most commonly swooned about aspect of doing yoga at home. Especially in a Canadian Winter when going home after class frequently requires one to first scrape frozen rain or snow off the windshield.
6. Maintain your regular schedule. For some, this alone can ease the anxiety of a sudden upheaval like many of us are experiencing right now. Another perk is that it may help you remember what day of the week it is!
7. Missed a class? No Problem. Each studio or teacher will have their own policies on this. If you miss a class ask your teacher if there is a link available to a recording. You may be able to do it at a more convenient time for you.
8. Support a local studio or teacher. Small businesses are struggling right now. While some are fortunate to be able to work from home others are not. If you are in St. John’s and find yourself in a position to support a local business check out the  Guide to the Good website for an easy and efficient way to find local services via  this keyword searchable platform.

Enjoy!