Years ago I decided after a year or so of yoga practice that I wanted to try doing a headstand. I pulled a pillow into a corner and walked my bottom above my head until I could lift my feet then fell over into the wall. I couldn’t balance and it felt very awkward on my neck. I ceased, deciding I’d try again later.
Months down the road I tried again and something had shifted. I seemed to be able to hold the pose briefly and began working on my balance, then my alignment through my arms and shoulders. The pillow slowly was pulled away from the wall and when I felt more comfortable with my balance the real fun began.
Headstand is like a wake up. As the king of inverstions is allows blood to pool in your head and turns your world upside down. Your heart has to work to push blood up to your feet and when you flip right side up, that’s reversed. Blood flow helps cellular repair and cleansing in your body.
This promotion of vascularity in the head and neck helps keep the thyroid and parathyroid in high functioning order. The hormones released regulate many functions in the body and the increased health of these glands is what makes the long term benefits of inversions, particularly headstand and shoulderstand so profound.
In yoga classes I regularly remind the students to breathe. I can never remind them enough and yoga is just exercise without the focus on respiration. The breathing will expand your body, open your tissues and allow more space for your self to reside in physical form.
In this video we talk more about the muscles of respiration and particularly what happens in inversions. Being upside down means that your breath changes in some key ways that you can take advantage of to strengthen breathing for when you’re right side up. Typically the breath is 50% inhale and 50% exhale. Use ujjayi to slow the breath down and enjoy the nuances and feeling of air going in and out of your body. Trace the breath from the nose to the lungs and back out again. Get lost in the breath. This feels good.
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In 1999 I took my first steps to becoming a bodyworker. A car accident left me with a bad whiplash and subsequent body issues that loomed like a gnawing gremlin for years. After announcing to a new client that I was mostly pain free after my ordeal she asked how long I was in pain. I announced, “ten years or so.” Her jaw grew slack at the announcement I’d dealt with pain for ten years but I kept working with a smile.
Pain, once it’s gone is forgotten. Much like a mother giving birth there is a memory but women do not stop having babies due to it. It becomes something you remember but no longer holds your emotions or life, it’s been processed. Recognizing where I’ve come from it’s been an extremely long journey. Just let it be known that I was miserable, depressed and couldn’t get help through the standard channels.
I’d always been somewhat against the grain but my injuries made me quit, drop out and move on. Receiving no help I had two options. I could become a junkie and medicate the pain away or I could get better. I chose the latter.
I’m still working on my pain but it’s marginal compared to where I started from. I was recently working on downward facing dog pose and using a small block to open my cervical spine. No one has taught me this but I’d seen a photo of BKS Iyengar doing it and as soon as I tried I had the usual response I have to his yoga, “that crazy old man knows! Wow, I can’t believe it’s that simple.” As I open up this portion of my spine realize that now this has been closed for 13 years. A 13 year old wound is being healed, something no bodyworker, no one but myself has been able to access. I grow in my admiration for Iyengar with every yoga practice. He’s considered a master for a reason.
Watching this video I continue to be in awe. The physical limitations we have are encultured and not encoded by genetics. Is it nature or nurture? At issue is we’re not really sure where the edge is when it comes to nature. Nurture in turn has hardly been explored, let’s continue working another hundred years until strong AI and the nanobots take hold but for now, there is yoga.
I continue to be amazed at what can be tapped into. I feel good. I’m energetic. A client asked me recently if I ever take a day off. I honored the mirror placed before me and have no desire to burn out but explained that my yoga practice has helped me have a level of health that allows me to keep going. I nap like a cat and sleep is my superpower my wife jokes. When you work for yourself, love what you do, run your own business and are trying to heal not just yourself but those around you, what else can you do but work ceaselessly?
Freedom, true freedom can only be known when it is experienced. Our path is using our body to release physical restrictions, remove pain, maintain health and feel spacious, open yet grounded. Once you’ve channeled your focus, tamed your mind, slowed your breath and begin mastering your body, you’ve only just begun. Freedom of movement, lack of pain and health of the human form is enough of a start.
Iyengar knows what this is about, far more than I do. He’s devoted most of his life to the practice of yoga. May his light continue to shine and dispel the darkness.
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The most common breathing done in hatha yoga is called ujjayi. It’s said to build internal heat, cleanse the body and it aids in slowing down the heart rate. When people breathe this way there is a slight, small sounding rasp in the throat. It’s the sound of the ocean hitting the beach at low volume. If I have students exhale through their mouth and make a haaahahahahahahhhahahahah sound it’s the same muscular contraction taking place.
This is the epiglottis. This covers the trachea during eating so that food doesn’t go down into your lungs. This covering, if lightly contracted, closes the windpipe (trachea) slightly and makes for a smaller pipe to pull air down into the lungs. This has several functions. The sound occurs due to air rushing over the epiglottis much like the whistle that happens when you blow over a glass bottle.
The lungs are like balloons. There is one on either side of the heart. Those ballons are only so large and if you take a big in breath you can fill them in 3 seconds or so. By gently working with the contraction of the glottis you’re able to decrease the size of the pipe that air goes down. This allows someone to prolong the in breath or out breath substantially to say 12 seconds on the in breath and 12 on the out breath. Then comes the benefit of increasing the strength of the muscles of respiration.
The diaphragm and intercostal muscles that work to pull air in and push it out are strengthened through this kind of breathing because they’re working harder, pulling air through a smaller pipe. Long term this means that the muscles are stronger and your breathing improves and is more full even when you’re not in yoga class and not focusing on it. Better breathing, leads to better health.
So this slowed down, focused, oceanic breath allows you to get air, focus yourself internally and aids in the postures in yoga. It’s something people work on and gets easier with practice.
The easiest way to learn it is to breath through your mouth initially. As you exhale open your mouth and make a hhhhaaaahahahahaha sound. This isn’t with your vocal chords. You’re not singing or speaking you’re contracting the musculature of the epiglottis that allows you to close down the windpipe slightly. Once you’ve done this on the exhale try exhaling through the nose but hold that same throat contraction. With practice you should be able to make the hahahahahaahaha sound while breathing through your nose. Then the final step is to only breathe through the nose and make the sound on the inhale and exhale. This is ujjayi.
This breathing makes some difficult postures easier. I find my ujjayi kicks in even more when I find myself struggling in a pose and needing to settle in and focus. Over time the breath will slow your heart rate and calm you down while still providing ample oxygen to continue your practice.
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I remind my yoga students to breathe. I’m always working on alignment, working on furthering their stretch and focusing on certain muscles to grow stronger but I return again and again to the breath. In hatha yoga, it’s the foundation everything else is built on.
In any pose at any time you should be able to breathe as fully as the pose will allow. If the pose is compressing your ribs so can’t take a full 100% breath then you breathe as well as you can with the space you do have. Poise and grace in position is what we’re working towards. If you can breathe steadily and calmly through a full class you’re well on your way to being able to sit and meditate.
The breath has profound effects on mood and outlook. Its ability to change one’s state of mind is well known in yoga. Older texts on pranayama usually start with a warning, “Danger! The exercises in this book can lead to arrythmia, anxiety, depression and eventually death…” not exactly something you want to play around with. Certainly at its edges there can be danger but for most the beginning of working with breathing is safe. I’ve been teaching it to seniors at a nursing home for a year.
The full range of changes chemically and biologically escape me. Let’s know that breathing in helps you take in more oxygen and exhaling allows you to rid the body of carbon dioxide. If we strengthen the muscles that help you breathe, you do so more efficiently even when at rest. Same as your bicep and a curl. The stronger it is the more it allows you to lift something with less exertion.
Breathe! You’ll live longer and with sharper focus.
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People think you have to already be thin, young, healthy, flexible before you can do yoga. I’ve no idea why this is the case since one of the greatest modern teachers of yoga was so sick his own teacher gave up on him when he first started learning. BKS Iyengar developed props to help people get into poses gradually, to open their bodies but starting where they were, no matter their physical state at the time.
Let me point something out. This is me.
I sometimes think I’m fat. Let me say that again for those of you who’re questioning my sanity. I sometimes…think I’m fat. Body image is an odd beast and there are winter days where I’m sluggish and feel like poop warmed over. I go to a Bikram yoga class and feel youthful and vibrant. I feel like Titus Pullo.
When I took this photo after a Bikram class I felt alive and well, certainly not fat. Years from now I can look back and remember that I had visible abs. For guys that’s some sort of benchmark in western society. Don’t believe me? Find a copy of 300 and watch it. Abs are a big deal. Why? Do you needs visible abs to do yoga? Well you certainly do if you want to strut around and flirt with girls after class I suppose.
Image and yoga? What do they have to do with one another? Very little but American marketing demands that its needs be met. Yoga even the physical hatha yoga isn’t about the physical. The end goal has absolutely nothing to do with your physical body. In fact the practice is supposed to teach you, to have you experience the fact that you are not your body. It uses the physical as a doorway to the spirit. You may have to walk through it but I doubt anyone has ever reached saint status then thought, “man, I don’t have abs any more.” Crunches needed.
So what’s the focus on fat? I’ve no clue. I presume it’s just the groans of a dying society lost in a whirlpool. Our species for most of its existence had to struggle to get enough calories. Many on the planet still starve but those who have food, especially here in America have, dare I say, too much food. Food is everywhere and you can’t avoid it. People say sex sells but how often do you see pornography on a billboard? How often do you see naked breasts on the convenience store window? You do see ads for poptarts, corn dog rollers, double bacon patty melts and a whole host of foods not only poor in nutrition but loaded with calories. Hold up some kale and ask kids what it is? Brocolli? Swiss Chard? Now hold up a burger, do you see my point?
Part of the issue with yoga and those considered fat is that yoga, a timeless part of Indian spiritual tradition hit America. The land of botox, lapbands, fake boobs and pastreurized processed cheese food has now tried to merge with a spiritual tradition whose goal was samadhi. Lord, save me from your followers.
If you are ill or unhealthy then you’ll have problems reaching that goal. That is what the physical yoga is for. It’s designed to help make you strong, limber, focused with open hips that allow you to sit and meditate. Notice that I did not mention cute $100.00 yoga attire, mats, blocks, straps, water bottles, yearly memberships or your neighbors excess or lack of arm pit hair. Those trappings and material components have nothing to do with yoga. It’s not the point.
The point is you. It’s helping you wherever you are physically to train your mind and body to experience who you really are, underneath the abs or fat or both. So for the fat girls out there, yoga is designed for you. Much like life and relationships, yoga is what you make it.
I teach yoga in a nursing home once a week and have for the past year and a half. These people have taught me more about the practice of yoga than anyone. Know why? Because they couldn’t do anything that I thought of as yoga previously. They can’t get on a mat, they must sit in a chair. They’ve never done any traditional yoga pose other than mountain pose in a standing position.
If you come to my yoga class and can’t do something, we find something else for you to do. We improvise. If you’re in a yoga class and a teacher makes you feel bad or criticizes the fact that you can’t do a pose find another class and teacher. My goal as a guide is to help you explore you, wherever you are. Out of shape? So what. That means you’re a perfect student. The practice is designed to help you not convince you you’re not worth anything. If I as a yoga teacher cannot look at new students with different bodies as an opportunity to grow my own teaching practice then I have failed as a teacher. Each new student with different limitations is my chance to find out something new about what I’ve devoted my life to.
Start where you are. There is no other option.
Oh and by the way, remember when I said I feel fat? I’m 5’10” and weigh 174lbs. According to BMI I’m 1lb overweight. Medically I’m overweight. If I lose 1lb I’ll be considered okay. Get my point? That guy in the photo with the abs is considered medically overweight.
Each of the three words in the title elicit some response in the reader. I like all three. Fat whether it be from bacon or a good looking woman is usually pleasant to me. Girls are nice or at least hopefully are. Yoga is my preferred exercise and spiritual practice so combine all three and I’ve got a powerhouse of innuendo.
Recently it came to light that Paula Deen is diabetic. I felt an odd sense of well, duh when I first saw the article and after criticising her brunch donut sandwich felt like this announcement was the point I’d been trying to make while discussing Deen with friends recently.
I don’t want anyone to have diabetes. My mother is diabetic. It’s not fun, doesn’t make life easier and with high healthcare costs do we want even higher rates of diabetes showing up? I don’t. It’s a huge mix of issues from nature to nurture but people get diabetes for a whole host of reasons due to genetic factors and lifestyle. Can Paula Deen do yoga? Sure, whether or not she’s male or female or has diabetes has nothing to do with the practice.
Yoga was not originally taught to women. It was a men’s club in India. Fat people were less common because you had to figure out how to get enough food to become fat. McDonald’s didn’t exist when the vedas were written. Yoga is now an American institution and with ample food we wind up with fat girls in yoga class.
I’ll never forget a young lady showing up to work with me on yoga privately. We discussed health, diet, exercise and yoga. If allowed I have very relaxed meetings and discussions. My client announced in no uncertain terms that she would not allow me to tell her she should lose weight. If I pressured her in any way she would resist and cease working with me. To this point I’d mentioned nothing like this at all and found myself perplexed. I just felt puzzled and said, “what does being overweight have to do with health?”
We didn’t wind up working together but in retrospect I think she’d had so many health care workers focus on her weight that she had an assumption that anyone who worked in health would make issue of it. You’re fat? Ok. I’m not sure what that has to do with your ability to do yoga, live a long life or be healthy. People come in all shapes and sizes and it’s my firm belief that yoga is for everyone, not just the limber and biological elite.
I never want anyone to think they couldn’t come to my yoga classes. General classes would be difficult to work out if you were in a wheelchair but that’s just due to shooting to the middle of ability in a class with 6 people. Fat people can do yoga just as well as thin ones. The question is what is yoga?
For most it’s just a physical exercise. To me it’s more than this. It’s not your ability to do a certain pose but your ability to harness and focus your attention while in the pose. The practice can be done by anyone and is supposed to bring health, wholeness and make people at ease. I’ve never heard any mention of fat getting in the way. Your body is where it is. Start where you are, grow your roots.
People who aren’t some societal vision of physical perfection can stand, can sit, lay down and therefore you can do hatha yoga. If you go to yoga classes where the teacher or students look at you oddly then ignore the students and find another teacher. It’s as simple as that. You are wherever you are. Size has nothing to do with yoga.
I posted this video on my business facebook page and had quite the response.
Some announced this was why they couldn’t do yoga. They were comparing themselves to the woman in the video and announcing they’d never be able to do those things. Others like myself were in awe of her muscular control and grace in the middle of difficult poses. I found it tremendously beautiful.
I was discouraged to find that I could not find the video I wanted of big sexy girls doing yoga. If you type big sexy girls yoga into youtube or google be preprared for near pornographic non-yogic focus to your video. Much hilarity ensued.
My friend was asking me why I don’t use my wife and students to shoot a video of big sexy girls doing yoga and my first comment was, “because it’ll turn into my own personal youtube video of sexual shame!” I like big girls. I like girls that are considered fat. Nothing gives me as much joy as coming home after a Bikram yoga class where I have sweated and worked out in a hot room to my lovely curvy wife relaxing on the couch. She asks how class was, I get her a slice of cheescake. It’s not everyone’s choice but fat girls do yourself a favor and hang out with men and yoga teachers who appreciate bigger women.
I’ll see you in yoga class. Just remember I’m married.
In a previous post we discussed the neti and how it creates a softness and texture to the breath through cleaning, hydrating and adding nuance to respiration. The nose is the preferred place to breath from, not the mouth. Mouth breathing stimulates the fight of flight response and most breathing in yoga is through the nose. “Mouth breather” is a derrogatory term for a reason, even if people don’t realize why, they sense it’s poor health function. If you can’t breathe through your nose, allergies come to mind, then breathe through your mouth. It’s not wrong, just not preferred. Always breathe.
Inside the nose and sinus passages are structures called turbinates. These structures aid in the cleaning and hydrating of air before it enters the lungs. Using a neti facilitates this process and the turbinates structure is of importance. When you breathe in through the nose the air circulates or spirals due to the turbinates. That soft, moist mucus membrane then picks up any particulate matter like dust, mold or pollen before it enters the lungs. As the air spirals and flows against the mucus membrane the increased moist surface area allows that particulate to stick, it’s part of your bodies filtering mechanism. See why the neti is important? It cleans this off regularly so you can start anew.
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I was doing research the other night and realized BKS Iyengar’s birthday is today. I feel it appropriate to mention one of the teachers who’s most influenced my practice. If anyone lit up a sense of hope in me, hope of not only improving my health but of becoming a whole human being, Iyengar helped sparked my internal fire. Today he is 93 years old.
Soon after my first awakening to how great yoga was I went to the library in search of books. In and amongst the books was a copy of Light on Yoga, the book considered to be the bible of modern yoga. I was amazed at the photos as most are but what really blew my mind was the back of the book. If you have shoulder problems do these asanas, if you have digestive problems do these asanas…etc.
Could it be? Look at the photos! He’s got to know something about the body look at what he’s capable of. Ask your overweight doctor what shoulderstand does.
I knew I’d stumbled onto something huge. 8 years or so later, I’m still at it, breathing, stretching and working on my body one small piece at a time. As I reconnect and experience the great things a yoga practice brings I occasionally find a video like this series. I watched in awe last night, Iyengar makes me look like a novice.
This is part one of a series. If you have the time watch it all. It’s quite the demonstration.
So Iyengar is now 93 years old. The bushy eyebrowed lion of Pune has influenced most of the lineage of hatha yoga due to his intense focus on the alignment in poses. His alignment allows one to do yoga safely and over time deepen into the poses. Using props to help students open their bodies and aid in the process was one of his great influences on the practice as well.
Thank you so much Mr. Iyengar. May your life and teachings continue on. Thank you for providing a crack that lets all the light shine in.
Bikram yoga is one of my favorite discussions in the yoga community. Nothing else that I know of is quite as controversial and with as many varied opinions. Those in the yoga community tend to fall into camps. They prefer certain teachers, certain styles and although some are eclectic I find strong opinions in people that are nearly religious in their fervor. Bikram is separate, nearly reviled by those who do not practice it and loved and held in high estreem by those who do. It’s something akin to the disdain people have for the Grateful Dead and their music while Deadheads keep dancing merrily.
I took maybe 6 classes of Bikram before moving to Austin. I was excited upon moving here to live in a city that offered Bikram and signed up immediately and have not looked back. On average I’ve practiced once a week for 6 years. Yogagroove has supplied a steady supportive base for me to continue my practice over this time.
A few months into my jaunt I got together with college friends. All of their families are from India. As we ate curry, yoga came up. The modern situation one finds oneself in amazes me. Three Indian guys and one ScottsIrish from south Louisiana. I not only do yoga, I teach it. They’ve barely done more than a sun salutation.
Bikram came up as that was on my mind at the time. Immediately I was told that Bikram was horrible. The hot room was bad for you and what was worse, Bikram was selling the culture of India. I took all of this information in and respectfully as possible replied to certain concepts. It is true that Bikram’s business practices have received attention. Court battles have been fought and won and no one can teach Bikram yoga unless you train with Bikram. At its core Bikram isn’t selling yoga or Indian culture he’s marketing the sequence that he developed and now sells.
In the same way that a song is copyrighted, so is Bikram yoga, and it gives Bikram sole ownership. Many do not like this, they do feel he’s sold part of Indian culture. When I get these complaints much as I did that day with my friends, I ask them a question, “Have you ever done his yoga?” Usually the reply is what I heard that day, a confused look comes over their face and they say, “No.”
When you’ve practiced his yoga, done what he’s asking and looked at it the way I have you form different opinions. Having old injuries, inflammation and scar tissue the heat in a Bikram studio warms me and makes me pliable. It helps me open into those areas and flush blood to help heal old wounds. My body is stronger, leaner, more healthy and I can eat what I want. It’s not much of a sacrifice for 1.5 hours of my time once a week. It’s the only regular purposeful exercise I get. I’ve learned to hydrate well, drink little alcohol, eat lightly and prepare my body for the rigors of his practice. He in turn has helped me with my aches and makes my life more tolerable. I’m one of the healthiest people I know.
Bikram codified his sequence in the heated room for a particular reason, he’s working with Americans first and foremost. Americans are often overweight, lazy, work in air conditioned office like environments and are not yoga aficionados. Bikram’s yoga can take someone who is out of shape and wake them up. I’m not saying it is for everyone, if it doesn’t suit you go do something else. 105F isn’t for everyone but with patience and practice Bikram’s yoga can transform people, of that I’ve little doubt. I’ve done it for 6 years and I’m still finding new levels of health, alignment and openness. The practice gets less difficult but it’s never easy.
Bikram doesn’t have to tell his students to hydrate, they do so because they must to practice his yoga. Bikram does not have to tell his students to practice on a nearly empty stomach, they learn that they will have trouble practicing if they don’t. Bikram does not have to tell people to lay off of the alcohol, they will simply learn that they will be dehydrated if they do not. Bikram’s yoga can turn out of shape people into healthy liberated beings.
It’s not everything. It’s not all of yoga. It’s Bikram. I honor his work and teachings for the differences it’s made in my health and body as do I other teachers, particularly BKS Iyengar.
The heat helps someone who is tight begin to stretch. The heat means they will not be thinking about their grocery list during asana, they’ll be focusing on not passing out. The cardiovascular workout people receive in that light sauna environment gets their heart pumping. That blood circulating does what circulating blood does but add to it asana and its tourniquet effect and you have a way of cleaning out your body. That blood cut off then released flushes the organs, glands and helps heal injury.
Bikram developed his sequence after destroying his knee in a weight lifting accident to the point that doctors told him he would not walk again. Many I’ve spoken to in the Bikram community have overcome injuries due to his yoga. My clients are often overweight, they are lazy, they suffer from American average. If they have a remotely athletic bone in their body I tell them to do Bikram. The reason is that I know this yoga and what the clients will be doing. If I send them to just any studio what will the teacher be teaching? It will vary from teacher to teacher and class to class as does my teaching. This is one benefit to the practice as someone who would recommend yoga to clients.
I do not expect all to like Bikram or his yoga. I see results from my practice. If people practiced Bikram’s yoga they would not wander into my office with a list of medications for illnesses that only affect people in the 1st world. They would not complain about their upper back and neck because they work on a computer 40 hours a week and get no exercise while eating too much fast food.
It is not the only yoga I practice but I honor what he has done. If I ever meet him I’ll polish his Rolls Royce with my taut white keister.
Thank you mister Choudhury and thank you to my friends and teachers at Yogagroove.
I went to Yogagroove for Bikram yoga last night and had a good class. I felt fairly strong and limber throughout. In the last 6 years my body has opened more and due to the recent master cleanse there’s less to push against. Having lost body fat I feel stronger, having burned off anything that was bogging me down.
When I arrived home my wife teased me about waking before she does the following morning. It’s not uncommon for my sleep to be deep but I’ll wake early. This could be due to extra blood flow to my thyroid and parathyroid or just due to exertion in a hot sweaty room. It’s frequent enough for Andrea to notice whatever the cause.
Sure as rain I woke at 6am and could see Bikram Choudhury driving his Rolls Royce around Beverly Hills giggling at me. If you’ve never tried Bikram hydrate well and remember that the first obstacle is the heat. Yoga is a good practice and regular Thai massage adds to its effect.
If you’re in north Austin, I practice at Yogagroove.
More variations on downward facing dog pose using a wall. The change of gravity and position helps open the spine and allows one to build strength in the arms and hands while working on stretching through the upper spine and finally into the neck. Play with these they’re great fun.
I highly recommend these if you work in an office, have slouched upper back posture or upper back/neck pain. Do it several times a day for 5-10 minutes for a week. It’s one thing to read about the benefits of a pose. It’s another to have your body integrate the pose into your nervous system. Breathe.
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