Wellness From Inside

Vous Vitamins Review and Giveaway

 

I have been taking these for a few months and I love them. Vous Vitmins are vitamins personalized for your specific needs. You go to their website and fill out a diagnostic survey and they send you the formulation that is right for you. For instance, if you are vegan with brittle nails, your Vous will have extra B vitamins and Biotin. 

On my first order, they sent me a few packs of situation supplements as well. One was for athletes  and recovery, one was for the immune system and one was for energy and they worked  great. These are for when you need a little extra boost.

I felt great taking these, however, I had to make sure it was not a placebo.  I went back to my regular whole food vitamin and immediately noticed a drop in my energy. I went back to the Vous and my energy went back up so now I am a die hard Vous girl.

I liked them so much that I asked if they could offer a discount to my blog fam.

Comment below AND like Vous Vitamins on Facebook, and I will randomly choose 5 people to receive free situational vitamins. In the comments, let me know if you are a regular vitamin user. You must be subscribed so that I have your e-mail. Giveaway ends Thursday December 18.

Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/vouspersonalizedvitamin

You guys get 20% off your full order with coupon code:wellness

 

 

 For more information on Vous: http://www.vousvitamin.com/vous1/

 

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Are Yoga Teachers Making Us Fragile?

Me in Baddha Konasana

This amazing article on Yin Yoga.com talks about how, in certain situations, stress is needed to strengthen even the most fragile bodies. While I love this article, what a lot of modern yogis fail to talk about is energetics. I understand that energies can't be measured and often go under the category of quakery and yogic delusions, however, the movement of stagnant energy has always been apart of yoga. The yogis understood the nadis or the energy channels of the body and how yoga poses effected them. Sometimes the body needs to be stressed to awaken energy in the body and to move out mental traumas that have gotten stored in the tissues and in the mind.

It is commonly accepted, even in the medical community, that people can feel pain long after a trauma has been physically healed.  Yoga can be used to get rid of mental samskaras, or ruts in our minds, that result in us being mentally and physically in pain long after the events in our lives have passed. To do that, a person needs to be uncomfortable. They need to come face to face with the uncomfortable sensations and the perceived limitation.

 

Do No Harm?

Every yoga teacher wants to do good for his or her students: like doctors we strive to "do no harm." But, unfortunately, harm sometimes occurs. Teachers are no different in their intentions than nurses and doctors, but the prescriptions offered by teachers may be just as dangerous for the student as a well-intentioned prescription issued by a physician. Iatrogenics is not mistakes by a doctor, it applies to situations where a doctor followed all the right protocols and procedures, the right medicine was issued, the patient took it in the right doses and times, but the patient died because of all these "right" processes, not in spite of these instructions. 

This can and does happen in a yoga class as well. The teacher may follow all the instructions she learned in her teacher training course, she may have followed the latest discussions about whether to bend the knees or not while in a forward bend, whether to stress the spine or not if the student has osteoporosis, to find the right alignment for the neck in headstand, and the student may follow the instructions perfectly, and still an injury may result, not in spite of the right instructions being given and followed, but because they were given and followed. 

Let's examine just one illustrative example: a student comes to a yoga class for the first time, approaches the teacher and explains that she has osteoporosis in her lumbar spine. The teacher, well-trained and knowledgeable about osteoporosis, acknowledges the students conditions and offers directions and alternatives for her: she prohibits the student from any flexion at all in the spine, restricts twisting to the upper back only and then, only mildly, and also limits the amount of extension in backbends. The teacher rightfully believes that the student is close to the point labeled (B) in figure 3, but she prescribes for her student stress levels only at point (A), which is none at all. The teacher helps the student to minimize all stress to the lower back and checks constantly on the student to make sure that she is comfortable in every pose. Props are the student's constant companions every time she comes to that class. 

What is comfortable makes us fragile![7] The noble intention to do no harm to the student by making her comfortable, by minimizing or eliminating stress to the damaged areas causes those areas to become more and more fragile. Her lumbar joints atrophy further because of the reluctance of the teacher (and thus the student) to place any stress there. The student's back becomes as fragile as a porcelain frog. The teacher's intentions are commendable: her teaching harmful. 

Risks & Rewards

William Broad's articles and book, The Science of Yoga, caused controversy and debate in the yoga community when he listed many of the ways, through anecdotes, that yoga was causing harm to students. He was accused of shoddy reporting, selective sampling, and sensationalism. His stated aim was to make students aware of the "risks and rewards" of yoga.[8] Broad was warning about the dangers of going too far, of employing too much stress, of going beyond point (B) of figure 3, and of iatrogenics - the harm caused by yoga even when it was properly taught. Again, this was not to imply that all yoga is harmful: it isn't - yoga can be lifesaving and is very healthy and healing for most people, but not for everyone all the time. A reaction set in when the book was released which saw many yoga teachers go to the other extreme: if too much stress or challenge was bad, then it is better to have none at all. They went to point (A) on our curve. Dogmatic assertions switched from "always do this pose this way," to "never do that pose that way." But dogma is still dogma: Paul Grilley is fond of saying, "Never is never correct and always is always wrong."[9] As doctors have long known, we cannot have one prescription that will work for every patient. That is an important understanding, but it is one that is very hard to put into practice. 

There are yoga teachers who insist that students must never do Pigeon Pose, or Headstand, or --- pick an asana. There are teachers who claim that every time any student does a forward fold, whether standing or sitting, their knees mustbe bent. There are teachers, who, following their training, or their own experience, or even guided by valid logic, insist that students must always or never do such-and-such. Unfortunately, the reality is - by trying to do no harm, we may be preventing our students from getting the stress that they need to be healthy: we are making them fragile. Certainly, there are some students who really should not be stressing the challenged area. The problem is - how to know which student is which? Like the doctors who don't know in advance which patient will be cured by chemotherapy and which patient will be killed by it, yoga teachers can't know in advance what really is going to be best for our students.[10] 

It may seem quite counterintuitive to suggest that someone who has a fragile or damaged spine should deliberately stress it. The obvious course of action is to give it rest, but this debate has run its course in terms of women's recovery after childbirth. At the turn of the 20th century the prevailing wisdom prescribed lots of bed rest to allow the new mother to recover her strength. In time it was realized that this was the worst thing to do for most mothers: they needed to become mobile as soon as possible. Indeed, a study published in Lancet suggests that bed rest is never a good idea for any conditions.[11] By subjecting ourselves to small amounts of stress, we become antifragile. Figure 4 shows this graphically: if we extend Nassim Taleb's logic to people who are injured, we find that they still need some stress or they will risk becoming more and more fragile. 

To read the full article, click this link

Healthy Relationship with Pain

 

Picture by Tom Lann

Sutra 2:1
Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice.

 

Sutra 2:8
Aversion is that which follows identification with painful experiences.

Sutra 2:16
Pain that has not yet come is avoidable.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

The Yoga Sutras states that a yogi should not fear pain but they should try and avoid it. By doing everything with awarness and prescense, we avoid pain but still live life.

Why should we not be afraid of pain? Because the act of living comes with many risks. When you love someone, you risk their rejection. Should you not love? When you speak your truth, you risk others misunderstanding you. Should you not speak your truth? When you practice yoga, there is the risk of injury. Should you not practice yoga?

Photo by Brooklyn Morgan

 

To live fully, we have to embrace the risks of pain without fear, but try to avoid it as much as reasonably possible.  So when we love, we have to be unattached to the outcome and love for the sake of love. When we speak our truth, we have to do so fearlessly for the sake of truth alone. When we practice yoga, we do so with supreme awareness knowing that pain is possible but not letting it stop our practice. In the big picture of our lives, the benefits of all these actions outweigh the risks.

Everything has risks so you want to build a life with risks worth taking.

Healthy Ways To Approach Pain

Form relationships with like minded people-become very picky about who you let into your life.

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them"- Maya Angelou

Don't make your judgements based on past experiences with other people, but based on what this person is currently showing you. When they show you who they are, and it is not something you want in your life, limit your involvement immediately.

Build the life you want right now- the decisions you make today are your foundation for tomorrow. Make decisions that result in the life you want.

Don't Let Fear be your guide-fear of pain is often irrational. One way to see rather you are afraid or just avoiding is to use these questions from spiritual teacher Byron Katie, 

 Is it true? 

 Can you absolutely know that it's true? 

 How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? 

 Who would you be without the thought?

 thework.com

An example of this would be the thought, "chatarunga pose is bad for me".

Is it true? Yes, I hurt myself doing chatarunga

Photo by Sunset Girl

 

Can you absolutely know this is true? No, I may have been doing it wrong or to many of them. It is possible that my awareness was off that day. Maybe I don't know how to approach it for my body.

How do you react when you believe that thought? I get afraid of chatarunga. I stop practicing it.

Who would you be without that thought? I would practice chatarunga 

In this situation, the questioning reveled that the avoidance of chatarunga is based on ego, fear and past experiences. This is not healthy.

If pain arrives, see it as a teacher-what can you learn from this situation? The pain can either destroy you or make your stronger. The choice is yours.

 

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Is An Empty Stomach Essential To Your Yoga Practice?

The most common rule for yoga is that you should wait at least 3 hours after eating to practice. But why?

Most people keep it light so that they can move and twist without feeling sick. However, Sadhguru, of Isha yoga,feels that it goes deeper then this. In a recent article, he stated, 

 

You should not only be on an empty stomach – your bowels should be empty too. If you do Hata Yoga, you must ensure to leave at least 10 or better 12 hours between your last meal and your practice. That way, you give enough time for digestion so that when you get up in the morning, the body will naturally purge. If you eat late at night and get up early, the digestion will not be complete.

In traditional Indian medicine, whether it is Ayurveda or Siddha, whatever health problem you have, first they will purge your colon. If you want to be healthy, it is essential that your colon is clean. The colon cannot be clean for people who eat certain types of foods, and who have the habit of eating in between too much. Especially dairy products andnon-vegetarian food remain in the colon for long periods of time.

Anything that is not an actual part of your body should be out if you want to move your energies upward. Yogic practices are not exercises – they are methods to restructure your system. In a way, you are trying to recreate yourself by remolding your system the way you want it to be. For this to be done, there should be nothing but your body. The only thing that is okay to have is water.

The source of creation, the intelligence which functions within you, treats anything else as an external substance, which will not participate in your asana.

Practicing yoga means beginning a partnership with the Creator. You cannot do it all yourself, but you can create the necessary atmosphere for the Creator to do the job. You want that which is the source of creation to become your willing partner. The first time you were made, it was not your choice – it was your parents and forefathers who decided how your body should be shaped, and how it should function. It happened from genetic memory. This is why in this culture, we refer to enlightened ones as dwijas or twice-born. Once born out of your mother’s womb – the way you were born was not your choice. But now you are reinventing and recreating yourself, step-by-step, the way you want yourself to be.

If that is to heady for you, here are some other reasons for practicing on an empty stomach.

Lightness

When your body feels lighter, it is easier to move 

Picture Taken By Wanda Koch. Me working on Tic Tocs with Briohny Symth

Improved access to your core

When your stomach feels full, it is harder to feel the connection to the core 

Arm balances and floating becomes easier

Because you have excess to the core

Twists and forward folds deepen

When your stomach is full, it is hard to twist and fold

Hot yoga becomes easier

The act of digestion and the feeling of fullness in your stomach can make you feel nauseous 

Bandhas become more accessiable

If your belly is distended or your colon impacted, it can be harder to access the energy of uddiyana bandha and mula bandha

Pranayama and breathing becomes easier

Some pranayama techniques require the use of bandhas and constricting the belly. When the stomach is empty, these become assessable.

Your practice is safer

In order to  keep everything in alignment, bandhas and tension in the muscles are needed in yoga poses. It becomes harder to access the needed muscles when the belly is full which makes the practice more dangerous.

Distraction

If your belly is full, it can distract you from your practice.

Energy

 A full belly makes you feel sluggish and sleepy.

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Are You Really Going To Eat That?

Whenever I bring cashew cheese for a snack(ground up cashews with seasonings. NO cheese involved), 3 things happen:

Curiosity

People Eat it

Judgement

Let's talk about the judgement. It happens so often that me and Elizabeth at the front desk actually joke about. At a glance, it looks like nacho cheese sauce. Obviously, this brings things up for people. I get stares, eyebrow and lip raises, nervous laughs and comments.

It just seems appalling that a yoga teacher would eat a jar of cheese. When I explain what it is, you can hear the relief in their voices. Cashews is acceptable. A jar of nacho cheese is not.

It is a reminder to me of expectations set on yoga teachers.  We are supposed to be cute and fit and examples of health and happiness. I don't get upset. I am kind of flattered that people care enough to have expectations of me. 

Even if it was a jar of cheese, i would eat it anyway. I am human and my students need to know that. They need to know that at the end of the day, their yoga journey is their own.

How To Make the Infamous Cashew Cheese

Ingredients:

8 ounces raw cashews

1/4 cup of roasted red peppers

3 dashes of onion powder

pinch of salt

3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

1/2 cup of water

Dash of tamari or soy sauce

Instructions

Cover cashews in water and soak for 4 to 24 hours

Throw everything in a blender and process until smooth

Dip some tortilla chips in it and you are in heaven

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Simply Fresh North Carolina: Organic Veggies Delivered To Your Door

I used to have organic veggies delivered to my home but my money started getting short and I had to cancel it.  Things are on the up and up so I decided to start it up again. I like veggie delivery services because:

• encourages me to eat more veggies
• inspires me to be creative by creating dishes and finding recipes
• the veggies are all organic, local and in season which is better for the environment, local farmers and me

This time I chose, Simply Fresh NC because I liked their prices and the fact that I had a choice in how much I got. I chose the small box which is pictured above. They dropped it off on Monday in a nice insulated box. So far I have made home fries, roasted veggies,grilled mexican corn with vean mayo and chili powder,and  a huge salad.

The verdict is still out on rather I love it or not. I did have a few peices of produce that were questionable, however, I understand that this is real food and sometimes it is not perfect. 

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Demystifying Hip Openers and Tight Hips Pt 2

Here is the second part of that amazing article on hip opening written by Jennifer Rawlings for Yoga Dork Blog

 

Welcome to Part 2 of my hip-opening article! In Part 1 we looked at how classifying a small, specific group of yoga poses as “hip-openers” overlooks the anatomical fact that nearly all yoga poses are hip-openers, and if we treated them that way, our practice could offer us so much more. We’ll now turn our biomechanical eye to how you can shift your alignment to truly open your hips in your practice!

How to Open Your Hips (Really)

Let’s take pigeon pose. Single-leg pigeon pose is what most yogis picture when it comes to hip-opening (although we now know that there are a multitude of other poses which open the hips as well). This is a tricky pose because it requires a range of motion in the front hip that most people don’t actually have. In order to move into the shape, we often unknowingly destabilize other joints (especially the front knee), which is just a lame situation that no one wants. In order to effectively open our hip in this pose, without putting other body parts at risk, most of us will have to prop our front thigh up very high – but few people actually do this.

I think I’ll elaborate on this whole topic in a separate blog post, but for now, I’ll just offer that full lying face-down single-leg pigeon pose isn’t a great hip opener for most chair-sitting bodies (and it wasn’t a great hip-opener for me when this photo was taken awhile back – heh heh.) For truly effective and non-joint-damaging hip-opening I’d recommend other stretches instead, like the awesome reclined pigeon pose (pictures below).

Reclined pigeon stretches a few muscles in the back of the hip, but let’s focus on just one of its main target muscles to keep things simple: the infamously tight piriformis.

As I wrote about in my hamstring stretching post (with cool rubber band photos to illustrate ), in order to stretch a muscle, the distance between the muscle’s attachment points must increase. Most people simply don’t understand how to truly move a muscle’s attachment points away from each other (I didn’t fully comprehend this myself until I studied with my biomechanics teacher, guys!) and they, therefore, end up completely bypassing their intended stretch, stretching inappropriate tissue instead.

The pear-shaped piriformis attaches from the front of your sacrum, which is part of your pelvis, to a prominence on the femur called the greater trochanter. In order for this muscle to stretch, the pelvis and femur must move away from each other, which means that your pelvis must be un-tucked. If your pelvis stays tucked when you’re stretching your piriformis, your pelvis and femur have moved as a unit as opposed to moving away from each other, which means that a stretch didn’t happen in the place you thought it did. I’m not exaggerating when I say that 99% of the yogis I see stretch their piriformis this way, which means they’re not stretching their hip at all. (Sad face!)

Here’s a quick review of a tucked vs. un-tucked pelvis. In the un-tucked photo, note the presence of the natural inward curve of the lumbar spine/low back.

The below photo demonstrates the way most yogis do reclined pigeon. Knowing what we know about how to spot an un-tucked vs. tucked pelvis, can you see that in this pose, the pelvis is tucked, and instead of the natural inward curve of the lumbar spine, you see a lumbar spine that is rounded outward? There is no piriformis stretch happening in this pose at all because this muscle’s attachment points are not moving away from each other. Instead, the whole pelvis is tipped backward, resulting in an unintended stretch to the low back and a piriformis that unhappily kept its same old short length.

In this photo, however, you can see that Anna has backed off the shape by not pulling her thigh in toward her chest, which has allowed her pelvis to remain un-tucked. Now all she needs to do is maintain the un-tuck and maybe move her pigeon leg knee away from her a bit to actually create a stretch in her hip.

Although the pose in this second photo might not look as “deep” as the first one, if you train your eyes to actually see what the bones are doing in a stretch, you should see that this arrangement is the only version in which the hip is actually stretching. (For the record, Anna is actually quite flexible, and she and a small percentage of flexi-types might be able to pull their thigh in a bit closer to their body and still keep an un-tucked pelvis, but no one should pull their thigh in as close as the first photo. To keep an aligned pelvis, your tailbone needs to stay firmly planted on the ground. Your thigh can pull in a bit as long as your tailbone keeps contact with the ground. Make sense?)

Other Poses

There are so many other poses which can open our hips, but to cover this topic in full is too big a job for this little old blog post. As I mentioned above, all hamstring stretches are hip-openers, and you can use the alignment tips I offer in my hamstring stretching post for all of your hamstring-openers (including parsvottanasana – pyramid pose, adho mukha svanasana – downward facing dog, and supta padangusthasana – reclined strap stretch). All seated yoga poses are also hip-openers, all backbends are hip openers, all standing poses are hip-openers – the list is practically endless! Your whole yoga practice can become a hip-opening practice if you can see these poses for what they’re actually offering to your body.

Biomechanics and anatomy offer a profound understanding of the body and what our yoga practice is offering to us. As a progressive yoga teacher, my hope is to bring the clarity of this biomechanical perspective to the way we practice yoga so that we can move toward living in our bodies in a truly mindful way. I invite you to forget about “hip-openers” and to start thinking about aligning your body with integrity so that you can turn your whole yoga practice into the hip-opening experience that it’s meant to be!

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Demystifying Hip Openers and Tight Hips

Demystifying Hip Openers and Tight Hips

I am really excited about this article on Yoga Dork by Jenni Rawlings. When I first started Yoga, I had a broad definition of hip opening but when I started teaching Vinyasa, if a student didn't see pigeon,double pigeon or frog, they didn't feel like we had did a hip opener. So to keep the peace, I usually throw one of these poses in.

My first serious yoga practice was Ashtanga in which none of these "hip openers" exist, yet, Ashtangis do full lotus and they put their legs behind their heads so hip opening definitely was happening. 

This article demystifies hip opening and I look forward to part two.

Let’s Forget About “Hip-Openers”

We talk a lot about “hip-openers” in yoga, but hip-opening is actually more complex than we often realize. Pigeon pose and its variations are usually considered the main group of poses which “open our hips”, but surprisingly, most people unknowingly practice these poses in a way which bypasses the actual hip-opening they offer. The truth is that nearly all yoga poses are hip-openers, but we haven’t learned to think about them this way, and we therefore don’t align our joints to find this hip-opening potential that our bodies so desperately need.

Instead of thinking about the small group of poses we usually classify as “hip openers”, we should broaden our focus and learn to open our hips throughout our entire yoga practice.

Anatomy Lesson

We can all point to the general area of our body we have in mind when we talk about our “hips”. To be specific, though, we can say that the actual hip joint is located where your femur (thighbone) meets your pelvis (hip bone). And for the anatomy geeks in the room, let’s be technical and define the hip joint as the place where the head of the femur (the ball-like prominence at the top end of the bone) articulates with the acetabulum, a concave hemispherical socket located on the side of the pelvis. (Fun fact: did you know that “acetabulum” means “little vinegar cup” in Latin? And are you a new fan of anatomy trivia now?)

The hip is a joint, which means that it’s a moveable part of your body.  Motion at the hip takes place when the femur and pelvis move in relation to each other.  There are lots of movements available at the hip joint, including hip extension (moving the thigh behind you, as in shalabhasana), hip flexion (think diving forward from tadasana to uttanasana), hip abduction (moving your thigh out to the side, like your back leg in warrior 2), hip adduction (moving the thigh toward your midline – think eagle pose), and internal and external rotation.  Ideally all of these motions would be fluid and easy for you all of the time, but all too often, our hip joint movement is restricted in one or more planes (or all of them), resulting in hips we experience as “tight”.

What Does It Mean to Have Tight Hips?

Even though we might casually talk about our joints as being “tight”, the truth is that your joint itself isn’t really the issue. It’s actually the muscles and fascia that cross your joint that restrict your movement. And how do these tissues become tight? As my biomechanics teacher Katy Bowman says, “your body adapts to what you do most frequently”. And the one body position that we as a culture tend to assume most frequently is sitting with our hips and knees flexed at 90 degrees. Even if you don’t think you sit a lot, or if you have a job which requires you to stand, you’re probably forgetting all the other time you do spend sitting because it’s so ingrained in your daily lifestyle that you almost don’t even realize it.

In a nutshell, our over-use of the sitting posture shortens the muscles that cross the front of our hips (hip flexors) and the muscles that line the back our thighs (hamstrings), as well as effectively “turns off” our otherwise powerful glutes, and basically just throws our whole hip package out of balance. The result is unhappy, tight hips which drive us into yoga classes in search of some much-needed opening.

Why is Having Tight Hips Uncool?

There are many reasons that our tight hips are uncool, and the general discomfort we experience from stiff, unyielding muscles is just the beginning. Most people don’t realize the incredibly huge role that our musculoskeletal system plays in our body’s overall health. But check this out: our blood vessels and lymphatic vessels are embedded inside our muscles. Blood carries the oxygen which feeds our cells, resulting in cellular regeneration, and lymph is our body’s waste-removal system. But blood and lymph can only flow through muscles which are at their optimal, supple length. A tight muscle will resist the circulation of these vital fluids – picture a fist gripping a hose and how that would effect the flow of water running through that hose. Put another way, tight muscles work against the flow of your cardiovascular system (blood) and your immune system (which your lymphatic system supports). The result is increased blood pressure, decreased metabolism, waste accumulation in your tissues, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. If optimal health in our body is important to us, bringing suppleness and circulation back to our tight muscles must be a priority. Had you ever thought about your muscles from this bigger-picture, whole body health perspective?

Another reason that tight hips are no bueno is that when we want to get something done that requires hip motion, like picking something up off the floor, or pressing up into urdhva dhanurasana (wheel pose) in yoga, we will move from somewhere else more than we should because we can’t move from our hips as much as we should. Unfortunately, the alternative body part that is all too often over-used when our hips are tight is our vulnerable spine. Hello, spinal joint degeneration, herniated discs, impinged nerves, and back pain in general!

Understanding a bit more about our anatomy reveals to us that tight hips are actually about much more than the inconvenience you might experience when you can’t get into lotus position in yoga class.

What Does “Opening the Hips” Mean?

For much of my yoga-practicing career, I was under the impression that if you wanted to open your hips, you basically just needed to do pigeon pose a lot, and that pretty much summed up all you need to know about hip opening. 

But hip-opening is about so much more than simply pigeon pose. There are a total of 22 muscles that cross the hip on all sides and at varying angles, including your hip flexors in the front, your hamstrings, glutes, and deep lateral rotators in the back, your inner thigh muscles (collectively called your “adductors”), and your outer thigh muscles (collectively called your “abductors”).

A “hip-opener” is technically any stretch that lengthens any of the 22 muscles that cross the hip. This means, for example, that all hamstring stretches are hip openers, all inner thigh stretches (think baddha konasana) are hip-openers, all standing poses (warriors, lunges, etc.) are hip-openers, many of yoga’s twists are hip-openers, and as counterintuitive as it may seem, all backbends are also hip-openers. (Crazy, huh?)

Can you see that once we have an anatomical definition for what hip-opening is, it’s difficult to name a yoga pose which is not a hip-opener? (Inversions aren’t really hip-openers, but I wish they were!  ) Our whole yoga practice is basically just one big hip-opening opportunity.

However, most yogis are very (very!) good at compromising the work we need to do in order to stretch our hips in our poses. This is because we simply don’t understand how to position our joints (a.k.a. alignment) in a way that actually stretches our hips, and we end up leaving our mat without much change in our tight hips at all.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, guys! Stay tuned for Part 2 for some great tips on refining your practice with hip-opening in mind!

 

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Tips For Your Pregnant Yoga Students or For Practicing While Pregnant

Yoga International released this awesome article written by Kathryn Heagberg. 

 

1. Make Space for Baby 

As pregnancy progresses, many asanas (in their classical forms, anyway) can start to feel restrictive and uncomfortable. Solution? Think “make space for baby” when you offer pose variations and alternatives. Avoid or modify poses that compress the belly. This might mean that you offer a prop or two (like blocks under hands in a standing forward bend or lunge), present spinal extensions as forward-bend alternatives (such as dandasana, or staff pose, in place of a seated forward bend), or suggest a wider stance. 

 Avoid or modify poses that compress the belly.

 It also means that pregnant students should avoid lying on their bellies (especially after the first trimester). In place of belly backbends like bhujangasana (cobra) orshalabhasana (locust), offer similar-ish poses that can be done on all fours, like cow or opposite arm/leg extensions. 

Compressive “closed” twists—i.e., twisting toward the front leg side (in an asymmetrical standing twist like a lunge), or the bent leg side (in a seated twist likeardha matsyendrasana)—should be avoided for the same reason. Offer “open twists” to pregnant students instead. This basically means “twist in the direction opposite to that of everyone else.” Pregnant students should also focus on opening up through the chest as they twist, not twisting from the belly. 

2. Avoid Overstretching 

During pregnancy, the hormone relaxin increases flexibility (the name itself is a bit of a giveaway!) and helps to prepare the body for birth. Because this influx of relaxin causes the ligaments to become more lax, pregnant students should take extra care not to overstretch. This can lead to pelvic and joint instability and/or pulled ligaments (which take a really long time to heal). To avoid overstretching, students should focus on strength and stability more than flexibility during pregnancy. This is especially important to keep in mind when it comes to hands-on adjustments. As a general rule, avoid giving “deepening” assists to pregnant students (i.e., assists that help them to experience a deeper stretch in an asana), and offer stabilizing assists instead (such as rooting a student’s pelvis in tadasana,or stabilizing her back leg in side angle). 

 

To avoid overstretching, students should focus on strength and stability more than flexibility during pregnancy.

 

3. What’s the Deal with Inversions, Anyway?

In general, if inversions feel good, students can continue to practice them, but it is a good idea to avoid inverting near the end of the first and beginning of the second trimester (weeks 10-13), when the placenta is attaching to the uterine wall. Pregnant students should also avoid inverting for long periods of time (stick with 30 seconds or less). If you’re teaching long holds in inversions, a supported bridge pose (with a yoga block under the sacrum) with feet on the floor or legs in the air, is a great pregnancy-friendly alternative for most students.

4. Addressing the Lower Back: Tailbone Tucking Is Not a Cure-All 

During pregnancy, as one’s center of gravity shifts, lower back pain is a common complaint, and as teachers, we’re likely to notice extra-archy lower backs (excessive lumbar lordosis) in many of our pregnant students. Though it may seem like a quick tail tuck would be just the solution, more often than not, that instruction can be problematic, especially during pregnancy!

Until fairly recently, I regularly used tailbone-centric instructions when working with pregnant students, but would often become frustrated when I saw that even though my students were doing exactly what I’d asked them to, my verbal cues weren’t really having the desired effect—their pelvises would be really tucked under, yet they still appeared to be collapsing in their lower backs. 

 

Their pelvises would be really tucked under, yet they still appeared to be collapsing in their lower backs.

 

Eventually, I learned from my wonderful, wise teachers and mentors that excessive lordosis and an excessively tucked pelvis are not mutually exclusive (which explains why I would often see the two go hand in hand). Often the “extra-archiness” will be in the upper part of the lower back, and an action in the pelvis (like tucking) isn’t really going to make much difference. Combine this with the fact that chronic tail tucking can weaken the pelvic floor (not exactly something that we want during pregnancy, or at all really!)—and that was enough to convince me that there are much safer and more effective ways to help students find length and space in their lower backs.   

Personally, I’ve found that an instruction to “draw the sides of the waistline back,” or even placing a hand on the lower back and asking students to “breathe here,” can be useful ways to go about this. (“Draw your low ribs back” can be an okay instruction for non-pregnant students and those in their first trimester, but during the later parts of pregnancy the low ribs become less of an accessible reference point!)  

Admittedly, none of this is quite as “quick and easy” as “tuck your tail,” but ultimately, it’s more than worth it to take the time to teach good pelvic alignment to all students (pregnant or not), and to find alternatives to tail tucking (even if they take a little longer to explain at first). This doesn’t mean that tailbone-focused instructions are never useful or appropriate for pregnant students—just that they shouldn’t be our “go to” each time we notice a student overarching her lower back. 

Plank/Chaturanga          

Encourage pregnant students to practice these poses with their knees on the floor, which will be more stable and supportive for their lower backs than practicing the poses in their traditional forms. (And it goes without saying that lowering all the way to the floor in chaturanga should be avoided! Stick with a few well-aligned “chaturanga push-ups” instead.)

5. Cut Out Kumbhaka 

Pranayama practices involving breath retention (kumbhaka) should be avoided during pregnancy (as should powerful practices like bhastrika and kapalabhati). Remind pregnant students to breathe smoothly, evenly, and continuously, and suggest nadi shodhanam (alternate nostril breathing) or bhramari (bumble bee breath)—which are both wonderful to practice all through pregnancy—as alternatives to pranayamas that are contraindicated.

6. Avoid Lying on the Back If It’s No Longer Comfortable (or If You’re Not Sure)

Look at any “one-size-fits-all” list of pregnancy modifications for yoga, and you’ll likely see “avoid lying flat on the back.” This can be perplexing for students if lying supine still feels quite lovely. 

Is it really dangerous for pregnant students to practice a traditional shavasana(corpse pose), or supine stretch?

The answer (of course!) is “it depends.” The reason why this caution is often given is that as baby continues to grow, lying flat on the back for an extended period of time can compress the inferior vena cava (an important vein which returns deoxygenated blood from the lower body back to the heart). When this happens, it tends to be pretty uncomfortable, and it’s not very likely that your student will want to remain on her back (which she shouldn’t).

Bottom line: Don’t insist that your pregnant students (especially those in the earlier stages of pregnancy) stay away from a traditional shavasana, but offer other relaxation options as well (see below for some ideas). And while there’s no need to make shavasasana “off limits,” remember that just because a student chooses a classical shavasana, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s comfortable for her. (After all, haven’t we all—at least once or twice—chosen a pose variation that was less than ideal just for the sake of doing what everyone else was doing?)  

Always mention shavasana alternatives when pregnant students are present, and encourage them to honor their bodies and to change positions if they start to feel nauseous, dizzy, or uncomfortable.

 Always mention shavasana alternatives when pregnant students are present, and encourage them to honor their bodies.

 

Tips for Modifying Shavasana

If a student is no longer comfortable lying flat on her back, she can practice a side-lying shavasana or a propped “incline” shavasana instead. For the side-lying variation, students should lie on their left sides (since the vena cava is on the right side of the body). A block, bolster, blanket, or pillow between the knees may help make this position more comfortable, and resting the head on a pillow or folded blanket, hugging a pillow bolster, or covering up with a blanket are other ways that you can make side-lying shavasana extra cozy and supportive. 

For the incline variation, elevate the far end of a bolster with a yoga block or two, so that when a student lies over the bolster (with her bottom on the floor and her back on the bolster) her head is above her heart). A second bolster or rolled blanket under the knees can feel especially nice here, and may help to relieve lower back discomfort.

 

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To lazy to take pics but my pose looks a lot like this. Lower then people say it should be and elbows and wrists not stacked. However, this chaturanga looks pretty good

The only time my shoulders get injured is when people try to "fix" my chaturanga. It is always the ones who feel that your arms should be at a 45 degree angle, elbows over wrist, shoulders come forward  and that you should only go down but so far.  This does not work for my body. It does for others. As an Ashtanga practitioner, I can do hundreds of chaturangas a week with no problem but the minute someone starts trying to fix my alignment(how far I lower and my elbow and shoulder placement), pain comes.

If you look at videos of yogis who can do amazing arm balances and float in and out of poses like leaves in the wind, many of them don't have the "perfect" chaturanga and to say that they are not strong would be to deny reality.

When I work with my students on chaturanga, I focus on what is going on with their core and their scapula. I look for stability when they lower. For most people,once they get strong in the core and the seratus is stable,  the shoulders and elbows  work themselves out.

It is important to remember that we don't do yoga for the sake of doing yoga. Meaning, unlike the olympics, someone is not judging our form and its perfection. Yoga is about making our everyday life better. If doing "perfect" alignment jacks up my shoulders, how is that making my life better? I have been practicing for about 11 or so years. I think that is long enough for me to know that what I am doing with my chaturanga is not causing me any harm. Here is a great video on it.

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