Stand Up Right

Overcoming back pain. Regaining mobility. Learning to stand up right.

Yoga for Posture – 3 – Dead Bug

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In my ongoing attempt to increase the specific posture, pain and mobility content around these parts, here is the third in an ongoing series on yoga for posture.

I’ve covered basic training for your back muscles (primarily the erectors) and your glutes. Let’s move on to the core.

First, why should you be concerned about core strength? What does it have to do with back pain and posture? Well, pretty much everything.

Your spine is a stacked column of alternating tubes and sponge mats. Imagine, if you will, a column of alternating golf balls and toilet paper tubes. How does such a thing stay erect? Some force must be applied to it.

Well, the source of force keeping your spine erect is the muscles of the spine and the core. If you’re training your spinal muscles to keep it upright, and your glutes to keep the base level, what about your core; the muscles of your abdomen and lower back? Your core is going to provide the stability to keep the whole thing steady.

So how do we do it? Begin with dead bug. What I’m about to write here is a little more Pilates, and a little less yoga, but what the heck, if it works, it works. And believe you me, dead bug as a basic core exercise WORKS.

So, dead bug:

Lie on your back, relax and find the natural curve of your spine. Your hips, mid spine, shoulders and head should be resting on the floor. Your neck should not touch the floor, nor should your lumbar curve. To check on your lumbar curve, slide your hands under your low back. You might not be able to slide them in far enough to touch your fingertips together, but they should go at least part way. Now:

  • Brace your core, tightening the muscles of your abdomen, lower abdomen and low back.
  • Raise your legs, knees bent, until your thighs are vertical.
  • Hold your shins parallel to the floor.
  • Lay your arms at your sides, palms down.
  • Hold for five to ten seconds.

That’s it, basic dead bug. Want to add a challenge, add toe taps. Without relaxing your core, or moving your lumbar spine:

  • Keep your knees bent 90° and your toes pointed.
  • Without moving your left leg and keeping your right leg bent 90°
    • Tap your right big toe to the floor.
  • Return your right leg to vertical knee bent 90°.
  • Repeat, tapping the left toes.

Do a set of 5 taps for each leg, alternating left and right. Repeat for 3 to 5 sets total. The key to this exercise is to maintain the natural spine curve through the leg motions. Do not press your low back to the floor, do not press your neck to the floor. You are training your core and your spine to engage and do work while holding a natural spine curve, in other words, the spine curve for proper posture.

Find basic dead bug with toe taps a little easy? Want to up the challenge? We can do that, next time.

Ditch the Gym, You Don’t Need it…Mostly

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Wait, wut?

Andrew, you’ve spent the last month exhorting the world to live a healthy lifestyle; clean up the diet, lose weight, lose the stress, get better sleep, and on, and on, and on, and to do so through exercise. Get inspired, make a plan, make a schedule, and just show up.

Yes, indeed I have. But I never told you to go to the gym. Okay, that’s a lie, I’ve totally told you to go to the gym. What I’m saying today is, you don’t have to.

Somewhere along the way I told y’alls that when I don’t know what to write, one of my go-to sites for inspiration is livestrong.com. Well, this morning I sat down to the keyboard and…nothing. So I checked my email, and there I found a link to “10 Reasons to Ditch the Gym for At-Home Workouts.”

It tells you that you can still get the benefits of a tough workout, without the usual gym hassles, no;

  • Waiting for equipment
  • Accidently getting your picture taken
  • “Is anyone looking at me?”
  • Time and scheduling hassles
  • Germy, sweaty, unclean public equipment
  • Fees…$$$

So, get the benefits but save the costs and hassles of a gym membership. And, honestly, I can’t really disagree with the major points raised in the article.

But, and you knew there was a “but” coming.

But it all depends on showing up. I have a buddy who lives out in farm country. The only way he could make use of a gym membership is between the end of work and going home, because after getting home the trip back into town for exercise just isn’t going to happen. Fortunately, he is highly self-motivated. He bought an exercise bike and every day after work he heads down to the bike, turns on YouTube, and puts in his time. He shows up.

The flipside of that is the people who get inspired to lose weight and get in shape. They buy the gym equipment of their preference in the Boxing Day sales, set it up, use it a once or twice and then it sits in the corner collecting dust. Having the space and having the equipment is great and all, but it’s a waste of money and space if you don’t show up.

Beyond that, the Livestrong article makes mention of streaming workout services and fitness apps. Which are also great, if you have the self-discipline to hold to your schedule and show up.

There is one thing in the article with which I do disagree, vehemently. In mentioning fitness apps the author specifically mentions yoga, Pilates, strength training and boxing. It is here that I part company with her.

If you are disciplined enough to show up, and already have the base knowledge to lift, box, do Pilates or yoga, then great. But if you’re new, and looking to learn any of these, I would strongly council against doing so in the absence of an actual teacher or trainer.

Any exercise program has risks and pitfalls that you only learn through time and experience. Some, such as both Pilates and Bikram Yoga (and I speak from painful personal experience here), if done exactly as taught, can actually harm you. My hip and lumbar structure make certain “required” Pilates and Bikram moves harmful to my lumbar spine.

I was doing them exactly as prescribed, and my back problems were getting worse. It was only through learning from a spinal mechanics researcher, and a yoga teacher who works with him, that I learned what the problem was, and how to correct it.

You need an instructor/coach/trainer who not only knows the program and what it can and cannot do for you, but also knows the potential risks, and how to adapt the program to you specifically, to ensure maximum benefit and minimal risk.

As to learning boxing from an app? I taught Karate for 10 years. I will say just this, if you’re learning a fighting system from an app, please make sure you’re only doing so for exercise.

In short home workouts are great. They do have all the benefits described at Livestrong and, as it happens, my wife and I both supplement our yoga memberships with yoga at home. But if you either

  • have motivation or discipline issues
  • or are looking to learn something brand new

Please, please, please make sure that you spend time with a seasoned instructor. Working out is amazing, wonderful, transformative, but working out the wrong way will harm you, potentially long term or even permanent harm.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water, or Change is Hard

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“You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.”

Continuing to pound on the themes of showing up, relaxing, letting go, and just letting it come, let’s think about someone. Who? Someone you know who needs…something. What do they need? I don’t know, this is your someone, not mine.

You know what they need. To quit smoking. To lose weight. To get in shape. You know why they need it. You know exactly how they can get it. You give advice, encouragement, provide evidence, argue, cajole reason and…nothing. They don’t do anything. Why?

Because they don’t have the motivation.

Wait, wut?

Andrew, you’ve been jabbering on, and on, and on about how motivation won’t get it done. That goals are for suckers, you need a system, and you need to show up. I stand by that. But before you can create a system, create a schedule and show up, you have to have motivation. My wife has a friend who:

  • Needs to exercise
  • Needs to lose weight
  • Needs to destress her life
  • Has expressed an interest in yoga

Cool, great, no problem. It’s entirely possible I’ve written about yoga as a solution to all three of those things. So my wife, who does even more yoga than I, is a member of a club that would make a perfect fit for her friend, and which offers “bring a friend for free” classes. All her friend has to do is show up. No money, no risk, no commitment, so they make a girls night yoga date.

And as the class draws near (name redacted) begins to make excuses. And more excuses. And more excuses. And finally bails.

My wife countered the excuses, each and every one, but it didn’t matter, her friend wasn’t ready. She lacked the critical mass of motivation to get started. And that, dear friends, is the utility of the goal, of motivation, of inspiration; it gets you started. Let me bold that:

Motivation is what gets you started.

But that’s it. That’s all it can do, get you started. After that, routine must take over, because motivation drains away.

We’ve all gone through it. We started out inspired to do something, to learn something, to make a change, but change is hard. And as we lost inspiration, as we ran out of motivation, we quit. We failed.

How many smokers do you know who have quit 10 times?

How many times have you failed to lose 10 lbs?

How many gym memberships have seen:

  • Weeks one and two, 3 workouts
  • Week two, two workouts
  • Week three, one workout
  • Week four, no workout
  • Week five, hey, I paid for this, two workouts, followed by, damn, I’m sore
  • Week six…nothing?

I taught karate for 10 years. I could not even guess how many students signed up for a year, and didn’t make it through the first month. I’ve been going to the same yoga club for 11 years. Same thing, I could not begin to guess the number of new students I’ve seen drift by over the years. Something motivated them to sign up for class one. Something stopped them from sticking it out long enough to make the desired change.

All of the arguing, cajoling, begging, pleading and convincing in the world will not provide enough to make a change. Motivation alone will not provide enough to make a change.

In karate we were told, “In order to make change, you must first be ashamed” and I’m absolutely convinced that it is true. I wrote yesterday of the changes I had to make to become the daddy that my kids deserve. I was motivated to make that change because I was ashamed of myself.

But although you must first be ashamed, it’s not enough. People have a great capacity to settle for “just good enough,” rather than going for “getting the best.” When this willingness to settle runs into something hard a conflict ensues, a battle between what we want, and what we’ll accept.

This is the heart of the problem. Our shame, our desire for change, brings us to the water. But we take a sip and find the water cold and dirty and gross and, “Yech, I’m not drinking that” and our capacity to settle takes over. “You know, I don’t really need (desire), I’m okay without it.”

Are you? Are you really okay without it? Then what sparked your desire for the change in the first place?

If you truly desire change, you must commit. You can’t allow yourself to think,

  • I’ll work on it when I have time
  • I’ll do it when I feel good
  • I’ll go when it’s convenient

You have the shame, you have the desire for change. Make a plan. Make a schedule. Arrange your life to accommodate the schedule. Commit. And show up. And keep showing up until you manifest the change you desire. Your life will be better for it, and you will be better for it.

Mad Dad, Glad Dad

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Richard Kiyasaki wrote about two dads in Rich Dad, Poor Dad and how the lessons learned from them shaped his life. Today I write about an angry father, and a happy father and the ongoing lessons I’m learning from them.

It was the fall of 2012, and hockey was starting again. I dragged my equipment down to the arena for Sunday shinny and the inevitable razzing. You see, we had just had kid three the week before, and I knew I was going to catch (cheerful) holy hell from the guys.

“Another kid, are you nuts?”

“What were you thinking?”

“You’re out of your mind, I could never have a kid at our age, I wouldn’t have the patience.”

It’s that last one that got me thinking. You see, while Al couldn’t imagine having kids after 40, I couldn’t imagine having them younger. I remember my 25 year old self, and I would never have had the patience to have kids in my 20s. I barely had the patience at 40, and the mistakes I made would have been 10 times worse.

What changed?

Sure there was the inevitable slowing down. Get enough years behind you and you find you’re not in as big a rush to get to the next big thing. Your career is more developed, you have more money, and you’re not pounding the extra time to get that new job, next promotion, whatever.

But that’s really not the big thing.

I began a serious practice of yoga, and by that I mean three to four times per week, when my second boy was about a year old. At that time I was neither a happy man, nor a particularly good father or husband. In fact, my wife and I were pretty much on the fast track to divorce.

What changed? Short answer, I did.

Instead of running for exercise, I began going to Bikram Yoga classes three or four times a week. Bikram Yoga is pretty much self-torture. I mean, nobody makes you go. The teachers tell you, if it gets to be too much, take a knee, or lie down. Everything you’re doing, you are doing. So, you spend 90 minutes exercising hard, in 110° heat, and 80% humidity. In the beginning, you can’t concentrate on anything more than making it through the next posture.

You’re not thinking about your workday, the week ahead, your plans for the weekend. You’re not worried about tomorrow’s hockey game, or kid one’s allergy appointment, or kid two’s pediatrician appointment, or yesterday’s fight with your wife. Your entire existence is the heat, the humidity, the stress, the strain, the pain, the pounding heart, the heaving breath. The universe is a 6’ by 3’ slip-n-slide you created with your own sweat, and all you want is to get through the next 30 seconds.

Remember when I wrote about getting rid of stress? Exercise and meditation.

Remember when I wrote about sleep deprivation? Stress reduction/cortisol busting.

Remember when I wrote about moodiness? Stress reduction and proper sleep.

Remember when I wrote about learning to let it all go. To allow the process to unfold, and let the future take care of itself? Oh, wait, that’s what I’m writing about now.

Yoga teachers will tell you that yoga is transformative, that you will create a new you. Just yesterday I quoted Bikram Choudry:

You’re never too old, never too bad, never too late and never too sick to start from scratch once again.

I never believed it. I’m not one for the mystical mumbo jumbo you get in yoga. I believe in physics, chemistry, biology. Funny thing is, it doesn’t matter if you believe the mystical stuff. It doesn’t matter if you just come for the exercise. Why? Because it’s true. It transforms you physically, and it transforms you mentally. Whether you believe it’s because of physics, chemistry and biology, or the universe whispering in your ear doesn’t matter. Yoga transforms you.

Yes, I gained several pounds of lean muscle. Yes, I dropped an inch off my waste. Yes, I got stronger and more flexible, and stopped pulling muscles. But although that stuff is great, and it’s what brought me to yoga, it’s not what has kept me there. You see, while I was transforming my body, I was also transforming my mind, my whole self.

When I began this practice, I was impatient, demanding, snappish and short. With toddlers. I love my boys with all my heart, but I just didn’t know how to be a good daddy to them. I couldn’t ask my wife for help, because we couldn’t talk to each other without fighting. Like I said, fast track to divorce.

But a funny thing happened. The summer rolled by (this all started in May), and my wife, who had started a regular practice a month before me, and I could talk. And when one of the boys did some little boy thing, I saw no malice, no intent to bug daddy, I saw…a wonderful little boy exploring life.

The change wasn’t instant, and the change wasn’t easy. But by going into the yoga room I learned to let go.

  • Let go of what is out there, you don’t need it in here.
  • Let go of expectations, you are today what you are today.
  • Let go of anticipation, what will come will come.
  • Let go of yesterday, it’s gone and you can’t undo the past.
  • Let go of the wrongs done to you, carrying them saps your energy, does you no good and has no effect on those who harmed you.
  • Let go of the wrongs you did, carrying them saps your energy, does you no good and has no effect on those you harmed. All you can do is ask forgiveness from a true place of contrition, and try to make good.

Most of all, in learning to let go, I learned to forgive. Yes, I learned to let go the wrongs and forgive others. It would be a huge part of what saved our marriage, but forgiving others wasn’t the hard part. I learned to forgive me. When I was short with the boys, I hated myself. I beat myself up. But all self loathing and self flagellation do is add to the pile of stress and unhappiness. They give you a greater burden to carry, and don’t do any good for those you wronged. Before I could get good with my boys, before I could get good with my wife, I had to get good with me.

I had to let myself be human, to make mistakes, to fail, to learn, and to try again. And guess what, the Bikram sweat box is a great place to do that.

The yoga room is a great leveler. There’s no competition, you’re not trying to be better than the person beside you. You’re just trying to be the best you can. Hell, you might just be trying to survive the next 10 seconds. If you’re busy beating yourself up for skipping this posture, or for not getting that posture perfect, or for not doing the form as well as that guy beside you, if you’re busy beating yourself up for what you are not, you’re missing out on what you can be.

I was missing out on the magic of my little boys’ childhoods, and I was missing out on being a daddy to them. Through hard work and sweat, I learned to let go of the past, of what might be, and learned to love what is. And along the way, in learning how to be the daddy that three amazing little boys deserve, I am learning how to be deserving of the three little boys I have.

Sometime last year, when I was mucking about with our youngest, my wife looked at me and said, “You know, (kid three) is getting the best of you.” She didn’t mean it in the sense that he was pulling a fast one, but that he was getting the best Daddy. Yoga transformed me from Mad Dad to Glad Dad, and every day I try to apply the lessons learned to all of my boys, so that they all get the best me.

Pain Sucks

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I shamelessly stole the idea for this headline from the guys at uprighthealth. The full line is “Pain Sucks. Life Shouldn’t.” It’s an awesome line guys, thanks. Anyway they’ve got a great site, and I love their newsletter. You should check one out, and sign up for the other. You decide which.

I’ve written a fair bit on the subject of pain. Head pain, back pain, neck pain, but I don’t think I ever talked about how debilitating it can be.

For many years, starting in University, I suffered increasing levels back and neck pain. My classmates used to laugh at me when, as I was taking notes, I’d sit bolt upright as a red hot stabbing pain shot through my back. I guess it looked funnier than it felt.

Later, my career included 10 years as a computer aided design consultant and trainer. So, instead of just hunching over a computer all day, I added travel. Along with lugging around a beast of a laptop, I got to enjoy airport lounges, airplane seats, hotel beds, jet lag and all the other stresses of being away from home.

Along the way I developed cluster headaches and migraines, which got so bad that during times of high stress the only way I could get through the week was heavy use of pain killers. Saturdays became head pain days, and I would spend hours in a quiet, darkened room, waiting for it to pass.

The muscles between my shoulder blades began to atrophy and die, leaving flat spots in my mid spine. The nerve endings in the skin of my back also died, leaving a permanent numb spot just below and inside my right shoulder blade. Some time after that I developed a lumbar problem which would occasionally go “click” and hoo boy, was that fun. The pain was so bad it made me nauseous, and put me on bed rest, pain killers and muscle relaxants for a week.

And in the spirit of “It’s darkest just before things get really black,” the back problems which had already begun to seriously degrade my quality of life took a turn for the worse. Up until this point, the worst effects applied primarily to me, but then…

When that lumbar nerve gets pinched, the most vigorous thing I can do is walk. Slowly. No games, sports, or roughhousing with the kids.

One day my oldest was feeling car sick so I pulled the car over to let him get some air. Then, while reaching in to help him out of his car seat, I almost fell on him. The pain of simply leaning over was unbearable. Like, literally unbearable. As in my knee joints gave out, I collapsed and had to catch myself on the roof of the car.

So, rather than me taking care of him, he took care of me. We had pulled over by a Pharmacy, and my sweet little boy took me by the hand and walked me across the street to buy muscle relaxants. We got home, and I was laid up for about five days. That’s five days of

  • Painkillers to get to work
  • Painkillers to get through work
  • No playing with the boys
  • No exercise
  • No fun

But, the lack of exercise or fun wasn’t the hard part. As I said above, previously my pain only really affected me, but no longer. Being unable to help your sick five year old is an awful feeling. Knowing that it’s your own fault for neglecting your health does NOT make you feel better.

I’ve jabbered on about how inspiration and motivation aren’t enough to make a change. Well, they are the spark that starts the fire.

No, not the fire, once started fire takes on a life of its own. They are the spark that starts the engine. An engine that you control, that you direct, that takes you to your destination.

At any rate, there was the spark, the inspiration, the motivation I needed to make myself better; my boys. It took research, time, patience and no small amount of sweat, but guess what? I made a plan, I showed up and let it come.

What came?

Over time, my back healed. I can do more in my 50s than I could in my 30s because I’m living without the fear of pain. Oh, I’m not pain free, I still get the occasional migraine, I still get headaches when the weather changes, I still get stiff and sore from shovelling the snow, or doing the gardening. But I don’t fear that by Friday, the stresses and strains of the week are going to put me in bed for Saturday.

Even my back, though much improved is still fussy. I can’t do pretty much anything which requires lumbar flexion, and I had that very lumbar “Click” just a couple of months ago (got pinned against the boards in hockey, and pooched my back twisting loose). But…a bit of heat, a bit of ice, a bit of Voltaren and a good night’s sleep later and I was good to go.

It’s amazing, wonderful, empowering, freeing to know that even as you get a little older you can correct much of the damage of a misspent youth. It was only after I went through this that I really began to understand:

You’re never too old, never too bad, never too late and never too sick to start from scratch once again.

Bikram Choudry

Going through the process, making the plan, showing up, relaxing and letting it come simply…worked. I’m healthier, happier, and doing more now than ever before. I’m living the best years of my life and could not agree more with the guys at upright health. Pain sucks. Life shouldn’t.

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