Yoga

Thank you for starting this thread and for the inspiring inputs from many. I have taken some classes over the years and had books, but have lapsed in the practice. The 28 day book sounds interesting and I look forward to putting it into practice. More flexibility would not hurt ;) also as a preventative measure.
 
Well I managed to hurt myself pretty good. Missed a couple nights work. So y'all be careful. Good news is it motivated me to seek out chiropractic care and I found a place that's very reasonable. Something I needed anyway. I plan to return to the yoga as soon as I feel it's safe to do so, and much more gently next time!
 
I just started my yoga practice 2 months ago, I go to a class 2 days a week and do some at home as well.
The 2nd week of my practice I took a very informative workshop on fascia that was given by a yoga instructor who is also a nurse practitioner.
It was so interesting to learn that our fascia starts to form even before our heart and every muscle fiber, tissue, and organ in our body is enveloped in it.
She likened it to the membrane in an orange that surrounds all the juicy bits and holds it together.
She explained how through the years when we are unaware of our fascia it gets tight and stiffens up through not stretching and injuries over the years. That is how many people get injuries when practicing yoga, trying to push too far too fast.
Fascia can become flexible again but it takes time and gentle attention to where we are tight.
She showed us how to modify our poses and push only to the limit where we can feel the stretch but back them up a bit from pain and listen to the body.
With practice I have become much more limber than I was when I started and when I listen to where my body tells me not to go too far I have experienced significant pain relief from some of my chronic pain issues. I have taken to saying in my mind "Hello Fascia, tell me where you want me to go" when I find the kinks and tight spots in my poses.
Last Thursday when we were in our shavasana I experienced, maybe for the first time in my adult life, complete relaxation and no pain anywhere in my body. It was amazing! It only lasted for about a minute, but, WOW.
I don't think I will ever give up my practice now that I have seen and felt that.

Namaste. :D
 
genero81 said:
Well I managed to hurt myself pretty good. Missed a couple nights work. So y'all be careful. Good news is it motivated me to seek out chiropractic care and I found a place that's very reasonable. Something I needed anyway. I plan to return to the yoga as soon as I feel it's safe to do so, and much more gently next time!

Sorry to hear this, I still have injury from practice of yoga 10 years ago. My left shoulder will always be reminder how is to easy to fall into trap when you push yourself beyond your limits.
 
Laurelayn said:
It was so interesting to learn that our fascia starts to form even before our heart and every muscle fiber, tissue, and organ in our body is enveloped in it.
She likened it to the membrane in an orange that surrounds all the juicy bits and holds it together.
She explained how through the years when we are unaware of our fascia it gets tight and stiffens up through not stretching and injuries over the years. That is how many people get injuries when practicing yoga, trying to push too far too fast.
Fascia can become flexible again but it takes time and gentle attention to where we are tight.
She showed us how to modify our poses and push only to the limit where we can feel the stretch but back them up a bit from pain and listen to the body.
With practice I have become much more limber than I was when I started and when I listen to where my body tells me not to go too far I have experienced significant pain relief from some of my chronic pain issues. I have taken to saying in my mind "Hello Fascia, tell me where you want me to go" when I find the kinks and tight spots in my poses.

Thanks for sharing Laurelayn, the information about fascia is really important, especially when it comes to yoga, stretching, resistance training etc. There are some great articles on Sott about it and it was covered in the Health and Wellness Show as well:

Connective tissue - why it matters
Fascia: Fascinating connective tissue
The Health & Wellness Show: Body Work: The Issues in Your Tissues

Keep practicing :wow:
 
What is important in Yoga is to learn to breath, and to learn about our bodies. To learn to be patient with our bodies, to listen to our bodies, be gentle. In fact, Yoga is a way of life. And it is beautiful.

Be gentle when you do your assanas, take your time. We are not in a competition, when doing Yoga. We are with ourself, our body that have pain here or there, our mind that is always thinking. Yoga is a stop. It is to be with you, in that present moment, moment after moment. Not more than that.

In Spain you have Ramiro Calle, a very good teacher of Yoga. He has many, many videos that are little classes of Yoga at Youtube. His books are good also. Because he is in love with Yoga he is a good teacher of Yoga, his passion. But he reminds us that we have to be careful, patient, slow...
 
loreta said:
What is important in Yoga is to learn to breath, and to learn about our bodies. To learn to be patient with our bodies, to listen to our bodies, be gentle. In fact, Yoga is a way of life. And it is beautiful.

Be gentle when you do your assanas, take your time. We are not in a competition, when doing Yoga. We are with ourself, our body that have pain here or there, our mind that is always thinking. Yoga is a stop. It is to be with you, in that present moment, moment after moment. Not more than that.

In Spain you have Ramiro Calle, a very good teacher of Yoga. He has many, many videos that are little classes of Yoga at Youtube. His books are good also. Because he is in love with Yoga he is a good teacher of Yoga, his passion. But he reminds us that we have to be careful, patient, slow...

I totally agree with you loreta :) I've been doing yoga for a while now, and when I attended classes at the beginning I used to get really impatient, cause I was always used to very active exercises, but once you realize yoga is not an exercise per se, but it has lots of elements to it, things start getting better. Now I just do videos, from a YouTube channel called "Yoga with Adriene." She might be a bit "breathe love exhale love" sometimes.. :lol: but if you don't pay attention to that and just laugh, her general approach is, IMO, really good. She focuses a lot in the breathing and always remembers you how important is to breathe while doing the asanas. She's got lots of different videos and of different duration, videos from one hour to even 6 minutes. And also programs that last a month, and every day you work on different things, building up the practice little by little.

It has been very helpful for me, specially with the anxiety. I will get Hittleman's book and check it out :)

Thank you everyone for the information provided!
 
I recently came back to yoga, after a 10 year absence. I've been doing it now for a few months and although I am so less flexible than I used to be, it's a slow and steady thing for me now. Luckily I have found a good teacher locally, she is very supportive and helps to correct poses in class which I find useful. The youtube yoga vids are nice but there is something about doing yoga in a group for me. I still do my Qi Gong every morning too, which I also think helps.

A little while ago Nicklebleu gave me a link to some Yin yoga which is much slower and you hold the poses for much longer. Anyone who has back problems I would recommend checking this out :)


60 minutes Yin Yoga for the Spine

https://youtu.be/AMqMrDLBYro
 
987baz said:
I recently came back to yoga, after a 10 year absence. I've been doing it now for a few months and although I am so less flexible than I used to be, it's a slow and steady thing for me now. Luckily I have found a good teacher locally, she is very supportive and helps to correct poses in class which I find useful. The youtube yoga vids are nice but there is something about doing yoga in a group for me. I still do my Qi Gong every morning too, which I also think helps.

A little while ago Nicklebleu gave me a link to some Yin yoga which is much slower and you hold the poses for much longer. Anyone who has back problems I would recommend checking this out :)


60 minutes Yin Yoga for the Spine

https://youtu.be/AMqMrDLBYro
Thank you for sharing the idea of Yin yoga which I read more about on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_yoga where the "neutrality of this article is disputed" but it still gives an idea of the background. I don't think doing asanas slow is a super new invention. I recall once seeing two books by a yogateacher (teacher is "acharya") from Rishikesh in which he demonstrated many, many poses. Now, the criteria by which he judged if a student was ready for his school was that the person wishing to join could hold at least one pose for a minimum of 10 minutes. It may sound easy, but I am not sure it is if you have to hold a pose completely still. Imagine having to be completely still for 10 minutes in some of the balancing asanas.
 
loreta said:
What is important in Yoga is to learn to breath, and to learn about our bodies. To learn to be patient with our bodies, to listen to our bodies, be gentle. In fact, Yoga is a way of life. And it is beautiful.

Be gentle when you do your assanas, take your time. We are not in a competition, when doing Yoga. We are with ourself, our body that have pain here or there, our mind that is always thinking. Yoga is a stop. It is to be with you, in that present moment, moment after moment. Not more than that.

In Spain you have Ramiro Calle, a very good teacher of Yoga. He has many, many videos that are little classes of Yoga at Youtube. His books are good also. Because he is in love with Yoga he is a good teacher of Yoga, his passion. But he reminds us that we have to be careful, patient, slow...
I've got to day 7 but I'm having a day off today. I've really enjoyed growing into the practice and I see very small improvements and I think I'm becoming more in tune with my body. I must say I agree with you Loretta about the breath I find the complete breath difficult and I wanted to ask is it in through the nose then emptying the lungs through the mouth? When I try to do the complete breath standing and you raise on to the toes I find it nearly impossible to keep my balance. Breathing and balancing it could be a male trying to multi task, way to difficult :lol:

Joking aside when I've found things difficult I just give the exercise a little more time and I've found some of the sessions have taken up to an hour. Though it mentions in the book we're less supple early morning I've enjoyed gettin up early to start the day with yoga I feel It gives me an energy boost for the day.

Re: Yoga Genero81
« Reply #25 on: Yesterday at 04:36:09 PM »
Quote
Well I managed to hurt myself pretty good. Missed a couple nights work. So y'all be careful. Good news is it motivated me to seek out chiropractic care and I found a place that's very reasonable. Something I needed anyway. I plan to return to the yoga as soon as I feel it's safe to do so, and much more gently next time!
Sorry to hear you' ve hurt yourself what did you do? Chiropractic care was the start for me of healing my back pain and fingers crossed I haven't had any problems for a few year so good luck with getting it sorted out.

Thanks to all for your comments it's been very helpful.
 
France said:
Thanks to write that. I agree with your post.

I have been practicing movements that resemble yoga for several years in order to reduce the conscious or unconscious tensions that can accumulate in my body. Having had good results on different levels, I decided to go for a training in Holistic Gymnastic.

By mixing the conscious breathing and the mobility of the joints, this helps to free the postural compensations that often bring pain, thus it makes the body aligned and free in its gait. In addition to circulating these energies that were blocked in the muscles, tendons or joints, this work also makes it possible to make conscious the patterns that are retained in these postural compensations.

I have been teaching Holistic Gymnastics for 10 years to small groups because I like to give tools to people for a better autonomy in their daily life. They leave with small movements that helped them and they can do it again at home.

You can see on my website the video: http://eveilholistique.wixsite.com/francelemire/gymnastique-holistique (the website is in french but the video at the bottom of the page is only visual - no word)

In the last 4 years, I have introduced Brain Gym in my classes. This helps to have a better balance, memory, coordination, emotional stability while decreasing stress to facilitate learning.

There are practitioners in Toulouse (Jackie Labadens) in Holistic Gymnastics or you can find other practionners through the website of http://gymnastiqueholistique.fr/ there are good teachers.

For Brain Gym you can visit http://www.braingym.org/ for more details. This is very complementary to Holistic Gymnastics but it does not focus on breathing and relaxation which for me is very important for body repair. By having both formations, I combine the essential of Brain Gym through my courses of Gymnastic Holistic.

I wanted to share my experience and some references in hoping that it can help some people.

Thank you for all these info!
France, do you know a book in french, a good one?
 
Dakota said:
genero81 said:
Well I managed to hurt myself pretty good. Missed a couple nights work. So y'all be careful. Good news is it motivated me to seek out chiropractic care and I found a place that's very reasonable. Something I needed anyway. I plan to return to the yoga as soon as I feel it's safe to do so, and much more gently next time!

Sorry to hear this, I still have injury from practice of yoga 10 years ago. My left shoulder will always be reminder how is to easy to fall into trap when you push yourself beyond your limits.
Feel free to share details about your injury if you like. Books on yoga may give some contraindications, but I have yet to see actual desciptions of mishaps or injuries. However, from those one can also learn.

If I have to begin talking about "being careful", I would say the force of habit can be a pain. I was in a habit of doing a set of exercises, but at one time I had some swelling in the legs, but still proceeded with the crossed legged postures. That was not condusive to healing, so I had to stop until the swelling had subsided. As the knee was a problem, I did a simple spinal twist (Meru Vakrasana) instead of a half spinal twist (Ardha Matsyendrasana).

Sometimes I overwork on a computer or doing physical work and end up with a weak wrist in the right arm. In such cases instead of a cobra pose (Bhujangasana) I can do the easier sphinx pose. Or if the back stretching pose (Paschimottanasana) is overdoing it, then the head to knee pose (Janu Sirshasana) might be a possibility.

One of the greatest dangers I have had while doing asanas, has not been the poses, but the objects around me, especially when doing exercises in unfamiliar and tight places. Sometimes I have thought "That was close".

Here are a few pages about what can go wrong while doing yoga and suggestions on how to prevent mishaps:
_http://www.yogapoint.com/mainstory/TopstoryContents/painandinjury.htm
_http://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-you/yoga/the-5-most-common-yoga-injuries-and-how-to-prevent-them/2/
_http://www.huffingtonpost.com/details/the-4-most-dangerous-yoga_b_8408476.html

The last link is not about physical injury, but mentions the possibility that some poses might trigger strong emotions in some people who have been exposed to traumatic events. The language of the article ends a bit new agey, but the idea and intention is alright.
_http://www.spiritvoyage.com/blog/index.php/dos-and-donts-of-teaching-yoga-to-trauma-survivors/
 
nature said:
Thank you for all these info!
France, do you know a book in french, a good one?

If you want a book about Gymnastique Holistique:
"La voie du corps" by Lise Sirois http://www.gymnastiqueholistique.com/boutique/livres/la-voie-du-corps/

If you want a book about Brain Gym :
Apprendre par le mouvement by Paul Dennison https://www.amazon.fr/Apprendre-par-mouvement-Paul-Dennison/dp/2354321295/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493687106&sr=8-1&keywords=Apprendre+par+le+mouvement

Happy reading. :read:
 
nature said:
Thank you, France! And about yoga, do you know a good one?
You mean in French? The book by Paramahans Swami Maheshvarananda that was linked to earlier by Dakoto [ https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,44080.msg713189.html#msg713189] is online in French: _http://www.yogaindailylife.org/system/fr/ as well as German, Hungarian, Hindi and Czech.

The book that was mentioned in the health and wellness show, as mentioned by Gaby in https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,44080.msg713121.html#msg713121
appears to be similar to "Bible du yoga" _https://www.amazon.fr/Bible-du-yoga-BKS-Iyengar/dp/2290017388/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494013424&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=iengar I know this book in English and it covers a lot of postures.

I found another book in French on Iyengar Yoga, but less extensive "Yoga Iyengar : Initiation aux 23 postures classiques": _https://www.amazon.fr/Yoga-Iyengar-Initiation-postures-classiques/product-reviews/2702911315/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1

While I am at it, I may as well add the link to Light on Yoga for Spanish speakers:
Iyengar book: _https://www.amazon.es/Luz-sobre-Yoga-Renombrado-Biblioteca/dp/8472455955/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1494016651&sr=8-3&keywords=Iyengar+yoga

For German speakers:
Iyengar book: _https://www.amazon.de/Licht-auf-Yoga-grundlegende-Hatha-Yoga/dp/3868201750/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1494016885&sr=8-2&keywords=iyengar+yoga
 
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