Starting to Move Again, Part 2 (A Progress Report)

by Nina

Daffodil by Melina Meza

As some of you may remember, during this last winter, Baxter and I became concerned about people we were hearing about who were afraid of leaving the house because they were worried about falling on the winter ice. Even worse, we heard about a couple of people who had fallen and who had then lost all their confidence in their physical abilities. The real problem here is that loss of confidence can lead to inactivity, and that inactivity in turn leads to stiffness, weakness, loss of balance and/or loss of agility. But we knew that yoga could help these people so we got started blogging!



First, Baxter wrote a general post about how you can use yoga to cultivate balance specifically for dealing with icy conditions (see Winter Ice, Fear of Falling and Yoga).



But I decided that I wanted to help a specific individual, a women who had left a comment on my post Regaining Stability for Free. Here is the original comment:



“Omgosh. I ....this took my breath away. This is exactly what happened to me! I was this vibrant, moving being....then a stupid, nasty fall (via a piece of gravel on the sidewalk) ended all that. And my subsequent life mirrors your friend's. Thank you SO much for giving us hope!”



So I followed up with this reader to find out more about her particular issues, and with Baxter’s help I came up with three short yoga sequences for her to practice as a way to regain both her physical abilities and her confidence (see Starting to Move Again ). The three sequences were:



1. Baxter’s classic Low Back Care Practice. Because our reader was having back problems in addition to fear of falling, I hoped this sequence would help relieve back pain and restore a feeling of physical wellbeing.



2. Baxter’s classic Mini Restorative Practice . Because our reader was feeling anxious, I hoped this sequence would help relieve stress. And because she was stiff from lack of exercise, this sequence would allow her to gently and passively regain flexibility.



3. My Gentle All-Around Practice. Because the standing poses in this sequence build strength in the lower body and improve balance and stability, I felt this sequence would be helpful for our reader as well as for anyone who is afraid of falling.



My hope was that practicing these sequences on a regular basis would, over time, restore our reader’s flexibility, balance, and feelings of self confidence, and allow her to be a “vibrant, moving being” once again.



Now that it’s spring, I decided to check back in with her to see how the program had worked for her. The news was so good, I decided I had to share it with you. Here’s what she said:



“The moment I started practicing, I knew that I had the tools to positively effect a change, and that translated, almost immediately, into regaining my confidence. And once I got my flexibility back, it was as if there was a mind-body reconnection as well. Although I sometimes backslide, when I do attend to the poses and sync my mind with my body, I feel pretty much invincible!”



I’m partly sharing this with you simply because it makes me so happy! But there is also an important takeaway: having a home practice, however basic, is empowering.



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Cultivating Agility with Yoga

by Baxter and Nina

Nina's Great Aunt Isa, who danced with Nijinsky

Once when Nina was flying across the country and she was sitting in the middle seat, she reached that point when she really, really needed to go the restroom. The problem was, she was flying with her yoga teacher, and he was sitting in the aisle seat, deep in meditation. So rather than disturbing her teacher by asking him to stand up, she just quietly stepped over him using the two armrests. Later on, she told her teacher how two of the flight attendants had stopped her to talk to her about how she had climbed over a meditating yoga teacher. She said, “They seemed more fascinated by the fact that I climbed over you than by the fact that you were meditating.” He just nodded sagely and said, “Duh!” She thought for a moment and said, “Oh, you mean, they’re not used to seeing a woman my age being so agile.”



Agility means having the coordination and reflexes to respond quickly and nimbly to physical challenges in the real world. Whether this translates into being able to navigate through a crowd, dance the salsa with a partner, or dribble a soccer ball down a field, being agile allows you to move through all the activities of your life with grace and ease (not to mention preventing injuries).



Learning a wide range of yoga poses helps you maintain and even increase agility because the subtle movements you make as you do them wake up the nerve endings in your joints and muscles (your proprioceptors) that send signals to your brain to let you know where you are in space, which direction you are heading and how fast you are going. This increased body awareness will aid you not only in mastering your yoga poses but also in every other physical activity you engage in.



And by learning new sequences of yoga postures—especially dynamic sequences, when you change poses after just few breaths—your co-ordination and response time is challenged and improved. Even making small changes in your flow sequences, such as Sun Salutations, will encourage you to stay attentive and nimble.



While you might not be climbing over meditating yoga teachers any time soon, there is a good chance you’ll want to get in and out of a kayak without tipping it over, walk down a steep, rocky path, or squeeze yourself and your suitcase into a crowded train. A regular yoga practice will keep you prepared for that—and more.



And with a good mix of held and dynamic yoga practices, you are cultivating better balance and reducing the chance of falls, which, as many of you may know, are a leading cause of morbidity (increased chance of disease) and mortality (death) in the elderly.



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The Dirty Carpet Story: Creative Travel Yoga

by Nina


So there I was at the airport, early as usual, and feeling rather restless. I hadn’t had a chance to do yoga that day or even take a walk, and I really wanted to do some kind of active yoga practice. The thing is, I really did not want to touch the carpet. It looked particularly filthy—probably because thousands of people walked on it with their dirty shoes every day, spilled their coffee drinks on it, rolled their strollers across it—you know. So I thought for a moment about what kind of practice I could do keeping my shoes on and using just my airport chair as a prop but that still involved a lot of movement. Fortunately, I usually wear pants with some give (either loose or stretchy) and always flat shoes. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Half Downward-Facing Dog with hands on the chair.
   
   
   
   


2. Several Sun Salutations with my hands on the chair (so that meant hands on the chair seat for Lunge, Plank, and Upward-Facing Dog)


3. All the standing poses I could think of that did not involve balance on one foot (I was pretty sure my shoes would throw off my balance). Warrior 2, Warrior 1, Triangle pose and Revolved Triangle, Extended Side Angle pose and Revolved Triangle—that sort of thing, ending with Pyramid pose.


4. Standing shoulder openers (see Standing Shoulder Stretches). At this point I was guarding the suitcases so my husband could take a little walk.
   
   
   
   


5. Oops! It’s time to board the plane

I have to say, I did feel a lot better after my practice. And if I’d had a bit more time, I would have done some finishing poses, like maybe some seated twists in the chair followed by a chair forward bend of some sort (see Mini Office Yoga Sequence). Sometimes these restrictions even make your travel yoga practice more fun as they force you to be creative.


I hope this inspires you to try practicing yoga when you're stuck somewhere, even in less than ideal circumstances. And if you have your own story about doing creative yoga in a challenging situation, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.



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Contentment and Yoga: An Overview

by Nina

Sandy Carmellini by Brad Gibson

One of our readers told us that she started taking yoga when she was 48 and recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She wrote, “My first tears shed during my first Savasana, six months after the storm. The asana forced me to accept the world as it is.”



Although a long health span is one of our main goals for healthy aging, we believe that cultivating contentment is also an essential part of aging healthfully. For what is life without some measure of happiness? A little peace of mind would be nice, too. Of course no one who lives in the real world can be happy all the time—it’s not even appropriate when something tragic like Hurricane Katrina happens. So when we’re talking about “contentment” what we mean is that you’re able to be comfortable with what you have and what you do not have. When you can face difficulty with equanimity and cultivate gratitude for what you have, true contentment naturally arises.



How does yoga help with that? Well, to start, your asana practice can help you stay grounded. In general, doing a well-rounded practice takes you out of your mind and into your body, giving you a break from obsessive cycles of worry about the future, or regrets about the past. You can also target your practice to help shift your mood. Calming and comforting poses can soothe anxiety (see Yoga Solutions for Anxiety and our other posts on anxiety). Uplifting backbends and moving with your breath can relieve depression (see Tamasic and Rajasic Depression and our other posts on depression). And your asana practice can even support you through the grieving process (see The Way Home: Yoga for Grief). It was actually my epiphany about how valuable yoga was for emotional wellbeing that led me to become a yoga teacher and ultimately a yoga blogger (see Yoga for Emotional Wellbeing: An Epiphany).



But being able to stay grounded emotionally is only the first step. Mindfulness practices, including both meditation and breath practices, can teach you about your mental habits. And when you start to notice your automatic behavior—whether that’s stressing over small things, eating unhealthy foods, losing your temper, or anything else destructive—there’s a chance to head it off before it starts. This helps you make positive changes in your life that can support your overall goals (see A Pathway in the Mind).



Finally, yoga philosophy provides wisdom that can change your entire perspective on life. The original aim of yoga was peace of mind, and the yoga scriptures were written to help us all realize that goal. In fact, the yoga scriptures are so full of profound observations about the nature of the mind and the causes of human suffering that you are sure to find something that speaks to you. Mohandas K. Gandhi said that the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita allowed him to maintain peace of mind as he fought for social justice. Ralph Waldo Emerson was inspired by early translations of yogic texts as he developed his philosophy of Transcendentalism. And Henry David Thoreau practiced meditation and pondered yogic concepts as he explored the nature of solitude during his time at Walden Pond. He even wrote:



“Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. … The yogi, absorbed in Contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating Original matter. … To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.”



Look up yoga philosophy in our index to find out more about the wisdom of yoga! (See How to Search for guidance on how to search.)



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