Stand Up Right

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

From the Mountain, Connect With Someone

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For Monday’s Yoga for Posture I wrote about Mountain Pose. When I was working through the step by step, how to do the posture, guide I got to thinking back over how I came to love this posture.

You know I do a lot of Bikram Yoga. Unfortunately, Bikram Yoga makes assumptions about the practitioner’s anatomy that flat out don’t hold for me. The end result of this is that I can’t do several of the postures without modification, and I can’t do 2 of them at all.

One of the postures I cannot do is hands to feet pose. I won’t bore you with the details, suffice it so say that if I do hands to feet pose I will blow out my lumbar discs, while destroying my hip joints. Since I don’t want to do that, instead of hands to feet, I do 30 seconds of mountain pose instead.

With one modification, I close my eyes.

Those two, 30 second periods of time give me a chance to

  • align my spine,
  • feel my breath
  • feel my heartbeat
  • feel my balance
  • tune into every muscle, bone and joint in my body and see what’s going on
  • practice perfect posture

It’s an amazing experience. I recommend it.

Bait and Switch

And here is the turn. I said I do a lot of Bikram Yoga. The truth is, I used to do a lot of Bikram Yoga, right up until some idiot in Wuhan saw a bat and instead of thinking, “Oh, that’s kind of weird, gross and creepy” he thought…”MMM, yummy!” Now I don’t do Bikram Yoga at all.

On the bright side, my studio has finally re-opened. On the not as bright side, it’s summer, and I’m on my annual summer yoga hiatus. On the really not as bright side, the studio is struggling. Hopefully sanity will prevail and when the kids go back to school after Labour Day, our halfwit powers that be will further reduce the stupidity, and enough normality will return that yoga studios and gyms will be able to survive.

I read the most distressing thing a few minutes ago. According to the CDC, about ¼ of Americans (25.5%), aged 18 to 24, have seriously considered suicide in the last 30 days.

Okay, folks, this is really fucking bad. That particular age range is the final years of growing up, and these stupid fucking lockdowns have a generation on the cusp of adulthood seriously considering checking out.

What in the hell are we doing?

Suicides, drug overdoses, depression, anxiety, anger, domestic violence, child abuse, all skyrocketing as we protect kids and young adults from a virus that doesn’t harm them.

This is supposed to be Wellness Thursday. Which it was going to be as I riffed on using Mountain Pose for posture correction and meditation as a leap into living well.

But I read about that CDC study and I can’t. I have three young children, and I’m doing everything in my power to help shepherd them through other people’s stupidity. Other kids simply aren’t so lucky. Other men also aren’t so lucky, as I have been, with my industry being deemed critical. I’m good, when so many aren’t.

So, no happy stories today. No cheesy pop culture references. No admonition to get out there and exercise. Instead, a request.

Connect. Reach out to someone. Show someone you give a shit. Maybe they’re doing fine, cruising through the bat flu lockdowns with no problems.

Then again, maybe not. And maybe you touch the life of someone who really needs it.

Does Yoga Help Your Back Pain

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Yoga and Back Pain

Since I seem to be getting back to my roots a little more lately;

Let’s keep it up, shall we?

Today the folks over at Back Intelligence posted “Is Yoga Good for Back Pain?” and proved just how very smart they are. How did they do that? By agreeing with me, of course.

Somewhere along the way I spilled a pixel or two answering their question with the exact same answer:

Q:           Is yoga good for back pain?

A:            That depends.

Yes, yes, yes, I know, a bit non-committal on both our parts., but being non-committal doesn’t really matter though, because it’s true. Yoga can be awesome for both

  • fixing your back pain, or
  • causing your back pain

Which answer you get depends on a large number of factors.

  • What is the cause of your back pain?
  • What kind of yoga are you doing?
  • How good/knowledgeable/experienced is your teacher?
  • What is your body structure?
  • What is your fitness level?
  • What is your core strength?
  • And many more.

To illustrate these points I will tell you the tale of two yogas; Bikram Yoga and Pranalife Yoga. The difference between them is the difference between a franchise burger, and a gourmet burger.

A franchise burger:

  • Is made according to a standard set out by the corporate leadership
  • Is made to be the same no matter which franchise you buy it in
  • Does not need any particular knowledge of cooking principles, only the ability to follow a script

A gourmet burger:

  • Is made according to the desires of the cook
  • Is tailored to the tastes of both the cook and the consumer
  • Requires an understanding of cooking principles, especially as applied to burgers.

I think I’ll stop the analogy there before it gets too strained. Anyway, the first bit describes Bikram Yoga and its teachers, where the second bit describes Asia Nelson and Pranalife Yoga.

When I began a regular Bikram practice 10 years ago I did what I always do with any new thing; I took it as a challenge and went at it hard. I received a ton of benefits (which I’ve written about at great length) but I also paid a price. A price I didn’t even know I was paying until I encountered Asia.

When I began working with Asia once or twice a week, I knew I had found something unique and special. Over the course of the next couple of years I learned more about the principles of yoga and healthy movement than I had in the entire rest of my life.

Along the way I learned that

  • “Out of the box” yoga postures are designed for a particular body, one which I do not have.
  • There are anatomical limitations on your body’s movement
  • These limitations can be genetic; your body simply may not be able to do them due to the way you were built at birth.
  • These limitations can be due to your life’s story; for example an injury may make a particular movement impossible.

Now, some time ago I wrote a series on modifying Bikram for people with flexion intolerant lower backs. The reason I did this is that Bikram yoga has a script. The teacher recites the script. You follow the script. If you don’t follow the script the teacher “corrects” you so that you’re following the script, even if following the script has the potential to cause you serious injury.

Unfortunately, there are a number of postures in the series that, done the Bikram way, will not only NOT help your back pain and posture (in spite of what the script says) they WILL MAKE IT WORSE. If I hadn’t trained with Asia, eventually doing Bikram by the script would have caused me serious injury.

Don’t believe me? In the last class before the China Flu shutdown the teacher (whose class I thoroughly enjoy, by the way) “corrected” an “error” I was making. I told him, briefly, why I was making a modification and he insisted (futilely, by the way) that I do it the Bikram way. If I did it the Bikram way, long term I would have blown out my lumbar discs.

Aside:

Insisting I do something because “that’s the way it is” in the script is a waste of your breath. I’m 52 years old, have done more years of Bikram yoga than my studio owner and I’m as stubborn as a mule. Seriously, I’ve got me a major case of highlander pigheadedness.

Anyway, over the course of those first two years with Asia we workshopped every single Bikram posture. We started from the posture’s purpose, then applied my physiological and movement limitations to it to come up with a spine healthy way for me to do the posture to reap the max benefits, for me.

The result?

I still get to do my regular Bikram practice (at least I could until some Chinese bat eater made that temporarily impossible), and I get to do it no only without causing harm to my back and posture, but actually helping same.

Let’s HIIT it Again, or, How I Fell Back in Love With Bikram

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So lately things have gotten a little too serious round these parts. It may have been with good reason, but there’s enough going on out there to harsh your mellow without me piling on, so let’s return to one of my favourite topics.

High Intensity Interval Training.

I began HIIT about two years ago. My yoga club introduced Inferno Hot Pilates as an alternative/complement to Bikram, starting with a 6 am class a couple times a week. For a while there it was a teacher, 5 or 6 other yoga/Inferno teachers, and one sweaty, wrinkly old bald guy. And being the maniac that I am, I didn’t just do the Inferno class, I did the Bikram class before it.

One morning the Inferno teacher ended class by telling us to remember there’s a Bikram class before, “…and you can always come early and do the double with Andrew.”

Silence…

Incredulous stares…

“You do both classes?”

“Yah.”

“Andrew, you cray.”

“Yah.”

Fast forward a month, maybe 6 weeks, and half the Inferno girls were also coming to the Bikram class. Who’s crazy now, eh?

Anyway, this all happened at a time when my yoga motivation had ebbed, and it was becoming a chore to go to class. Adding a new, equally challenging workout to my routines rejuvenated my interest in Bikram, allowing me to continue to reap the benefits of yoga, and add some new ones with the HIIT training.

No matter how much you enjoy something, it can get stale. This happened with my yoga practice; I was just going through the motions, basically maintaining what I had, but not experiencing new gains.

This happens for a variety of reasons, which I may get into another time, and one way to combat this phenomenon is to mix it up. It’s good for you physically, and it’s good for you mentally.

Misery Loves Company, So Be Miserable, Together

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Friend of the blog Aubin, who got me to thinking and writing about tea, had a great suggestion; write about diet, and exercise, and partners. Now, his suggestion was that I think about how we should get in shape before we get married, so we have the habits to stay fit and attractive for our spouses, and can even do it with them.

So that’s where I started. But then I got to thinking about the story of Mrs. Andrew and me.

We didn’t start out exercising together. When we got married I was heavy into kung fu and travelled a lot for work. Most of my exercise was done anywhere from an hour’s drive to three hours air travel away. She, on the other hand, had a local gym and the apartment complex’s pool, so, we stayed in shape, but we weren’t doing it together.

Thing is, life moves along and things change. Around the time kid 2 was a year old we were in a very bad place; stressed out and fighting constantly. Then, somewhat short of divorce court, fate intervened. My lovely bride decided it was time to work off the baby weight, and dialed her yoga practice up to four times a week.

This happened right at the end of winter hockey, taking me from three games a week to one, right as our yoga studio had it’s annual spring sale. So I switched her membership over from the class card she was using up way too fast to a full membership, and bought another for me.

And then a miracle occurred.

Did you check the link? Seriously, do so, it’s one of my all time favourite comic strips. Anyway, here’s the more explicit step two.

Years earlier we were studying in Beijing, and the Beijing atmosphere is (to put it mildly) not conducive to running outside. We joined a yoga/Pilates club, began going 6 times a week, and experienced one of the best (to that point) periods of our marriage.

Well, as the instructions on the shampoo bottle say, lather, rinse, repeat.

We were in year nine of our marriage, and in pretty bad shape (relationship-wise), but we started going to yoga together at least two days a week. Over the course of that summer, as we sweated out the stress we found ourselves able to talk again, and began to repair the damage we had done.

Why do I say this was a miracle? Because we were pretty much at the point of no return. We literally could not talk to each other without it devolving into a fight, but there in the Bikram yoga torture chamber, fighting through the heat, and humidity, and stress, and strain, and exhaustion, we were together. And, more important, we were in it together.

I don’t know, I can never know, how much of the repairs to our marriage I can attribute to destressing and detoxifying through hard exercise, and how much I can attribute to doing it together, fighting a common fight, against a common enemy. Fortunately, I also don’t care.

In the end, I ended up falling in love all over again, with the woman who had already made two beautiful little boys for me, and who would go on to make a third. With the woman who puts up with my odd personality, strange sense of humour, occasionally irritating habits and obscure pop culture references.

So, let’s circle back to Aubin’s original idea; be fit, and when you’re married, you can diet and exercise together to help stay together.

I think there really is something to it. We don’t work out together much anymore, work and life and busy little boys don’t allow for it. But we do both work out still, and we both still try to stay fit and attractive for each other.

But.

But at the lowest point(s) in our marriage (twice) we went to the (hot) yoga studio together and learned to love each other again.

Yoga and Weight Loss

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My main areas of focus on this little blog are posture and living better through exercise. In doing so I spend most of my time plugging yoga and Pilates. Along the way I have loudly sung their praises:

– Stress Relief

– Better Sleep

– Improved diet

– Weight loss

– Strength and flexibility

– Improved testosterone

I do this mostly by telling the stories of my own experiences and how this benefit or that came to me (mostly by accident) through a regular practice of yoga.

Lately I’ve wandered off the basics a little as the fancy hits me (hey, it’s my blog and if you don’t make a request, I choose the topic), but today I want to circle back. This time to yoga and weight loss.

So I get a daily email from Mindbodygreen.com (a health and wellness site) and today the headline link in the email was “Can Yoga Promote Weight Loss?”

Now, I’ve addressed this a couple of times, in “Stop Eating Crap” and “Yoga, the Accidental Diet.” The first was my tale of, well, how I stopped craving and eating crap. The second referred back to an American Dietetic Association study that showed yogis tend to, well, crave and eat less crap.

The thing is, eating less crap may be helpful to weight loss, but it’s not the whole ball game, and the Mindbodygreen article skips over the diet part to talk about the exercise part. Short version you need to be in caloric deficit, which means using more calories than you take in. There are two ways to do this;

  1. Eat less (stopping eating crap helps here)
  2. Burn more (exercise)

The author then goes on to talk about various exercise programs to increase your calories burned. Among them she mentions, drum roll please…wait for it…here it comes…Bikram Yoga. You know, the one I practice most, and write about the most.

It’s not the only yoga style mentioned, nor is yoga only exercise mentioned for weight loss. Her main point is to eat less than you burn. And I think, somewhere along the way, I’ve said the same thing.

So now you don’t have to take old Andrew’s word for it. You can take Ray Bass’ and Jaime Schehr’s word for it; burn more than you consume. I don’t care if you do yoga or Pilates (I think you should) but I do care that you off the couch and move.

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