Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Overview

by Nina

Both Baxter and I have already written a number of posts exploring the topic of Yoga for Healthy Eating. But seeing that it’s the beginning of a new year—when people often make resolutions regarding their health—I thought now would be a good time to provide an overview of the topic. Basically, between the two of us, we’ve come up with a four-pronged approach to support healthy eating:

• Understand your digestive system

• Practice stress management
• Cultivate mindfulness
• Strengthen Will Power

1. Understanding Your Digestive System

Baxter has recorded a short audio tour of the digestive system (see Audio Tracks) that you can use to learn about how your digestive system works and what happens to your food as and after you eat it. It’s especially helpful for you to learn about how your digestive system interacts with your Autonomic Nervous System and higher brain function. When you’re in a state of stress (see Stress, Your Health and Yoga), your nervous system diverts your body’s resources away from your digestive system (you don’t need to be eating or digesting your food when you’re running away from that tiger or that car that looks like it’s not going to be stopping before the crosswalk!). So chronic stress can cause digestive problems. In addition, even thinking about stressful situation can have a potential negative impact on digestion!

2. Practicing Stress Management

Chronic stress may not only cause digestive problems as I mentioned above, but the cortisol that is released can cause weight gain by stimulating your appetite (Yoga, Stress and Weight Management). So one of the most important things you can do to improve digestion and move toward healthy eating is to use your yoga practice to reduce your stress levels. See The Relaxation Response and Yoga for basic information on using yoga to switch your nervous system from the Fight or Flight response (stress mode) to the Rest and Digest response (relaxation mode). It’s not called the Rest and Digest mode for nothing!

3. Cultivating Mindfulness

Many poor eating habits are just that—habits! Practicing yoga asana with mindfulness and meditating will help you tune into your body, and not to ignore it. And as you tune into your body, you may learn about foods you are currently eating that are compromising your health (see Got Mindfulness?) or notice poor eating habits, such as eating beyond satiety (see Meditation and Healthy Eating). Cultivating mindfulness can teach you to recognize:

• which foods are good for you and which are not (not just junk food, but maybe food intolerances or allergies)
• when you are full and don’t need to eat more
• when you are thirsty instead of hungry
• when you are eating for stress, not for hunger

See Yoga for Healthy Eating for more information.

Mindfulness will also help you start to recognize habitual thoughts that are getting in the way of healthy eating. You can then work on changing your perspective (see Cultivating the Opposite).


4. Strengthening Will Power

Once you’ve identified your habits or have decide to eliminate or cut back certain foods, it takes will power to change! According the Dr. Kelly McGonigal, being in a state of stress can increase impulsive behavior and decrease will power. So practicing stress management as we describe above will help with your will power (see Healthy Eating, Stress and Self Control). However, you can also use a meditation practice to intentionally strengthen your will power.  Meditation teaches you to return to your object of meditation (your focus) and tune out distractions (temptations):

“Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness." —Dr. Kelly McGonigal

See Meditation and Healthy Eating for more information.

Tune in tomorrow to hear from Baxter on the same topic! He’ll discuss stress eating and recommend some specific yoga practices for you to support your goals for healthy eating.

Lowering Your Blood Pressure

by Nina

If you have high blood pressure—or even high blood pressure that is being controlled with medication as Timothy wrote yesterday—there are certain anti-stress poses that you should not be doing. Although inverted poses can lower blood pressure due to the interaction between your baroreceptors and your nervous system (see Why You Should Love Your Baroreceptors), going upside down initially raises your blood pressure before feedback from the baroreceptors to the nervous system causes the Relaxation Response to kick in. This initial rise in blood pressure is why the poses are considered dangerous for those whose blood pressure is already high (and perhaps for those whose blood pressure is being controlled with medication as Timothy wrote in Keeping Yoga Safe for People with High Blood Pressure), because there is concern it could cause a stroke.

Timothy didn’t list exactly which inverted poses besides Headstand that people with high or even controlled high blood should be avoiding, so I decided to talk with Baxter about the topic in order to list them out for you. The good news is that Baxter considers three of the most effective stress-reducing inversions to be generally safe. I’ve divided the inverted poses into same three groups I used in my post All About Supported Inversions. So here goes:

Full Inversions: Poses to Avoid

• Handstand (Adho Mukha Vrksasana)
• Forearm Balance (Pincha Mayurasana)
• Scorpion (Vrschikasana)
• Headstand (Sirsasana)
• Shoulderstand (Sarvagasana), including the chair version
• Plow (Halasana), including the chair/bench version

Because you are fully inverted in these poses, the blood quickly rushes toward your head, initially raising your blood pressure. In addition, most of these poses are stressful to perform, especially for beginners, and the stress itself can raise your blood pressure.

Half Inversions: Poses to Evaluate

• Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana)
• Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana), with or without support
• Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottanasana)

Poses where your head and torso are inverted but your legs not, such as Standing Forward Bend, are probably safe. But Baxter recommends that you ask your teacher to look at you while you are doing the poses. The same questions about how you look in the pose that Timothy listed yesterday would be helpful for assessing the suitability of these poses for you or, if you’re a teacher, for your student.

“Does the student appear to have the strength and flexibility to do the pose safely? How is their breathing in the pose? Do they look uncomfortable? Are they able to maintain a healthy curve in the neck? Are their neck veins bulging? How do they say they feel in the pose? It is even possible, if you've got a blood pressure device, to measure the pressure to make sure it isn't spiking in the pose or poses you're concerned about.”

If the pose is difficult or stressful for you, you may want to exclude it from your practice. If you decide to exclude these poses, you can practice Half Downward-Facing Dog pose at the Wall instead.

Gentle Inversions: Poses that are Generally Safe

• Legs Up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani)
• Easy Inverted pose (Viparita Karani with bent legs)
• Supported Straight Leg Bridge pose (Setubanda Sarvangasana)

According to Baxter, gentle inversions where your heart is only slightly higher than your head and your body slopes gradually down, such as Legs Up the Wall pose, do not seem to cause an initial rise in blood pressure (he has done some informal testing). Therefore, he feels comfortable in saying they are generally safe. One caveat might be that if your blood pressure is wildly out of control, it might make sense for you to do a different type of practice for stress reduction (see below).

Safe Ways to Lower Blood Pressure

Remember, there is no need for you to do any inverted poses! If you are at all concerned about going upside down, you can choose from several other very effective and safe techniques for lowering your blood pressure. Any yoga or meditation technique that triggers the Relaxation Response (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga) will lower your blood pressure (this was proven in the 70s by Dr. Herbert Bensen and described in his book The Relaxation Response, which I highly recommend). Probably the easiest thing to do is just to sit quietly and observe your breath or recite a mantra. But you can practice any form of mediation, practice Yoga Nidra, any guided Savasana, or any form of Relaxation pose (Savasana) with a mental focus. You could also practice your favorite restorative poses (see Mini Restorative Practice, also with a mental focus. Just be sure to take a non-judgmental attitude toward your practice, give yourself at least 10 to 20 minutes of practice, as it takes a while for the Relaxation Response to kick in, and don’t fall asleep (sleeping is different than conscious relaxation).

All of these options are wonderful for anyone who experiences “situational” high blood pressure (when getting stressed out or angry causes... well, you know!) And practicing conscious relaxation on a regular basis will also enhance your health in the short term (bolstering your immune system) and the long term (helping to prevent heart disease, strokes, and other diseases of aging).

Starting to Move Again

by Nina

Recently Shari and I wrote a post recommending a sequence to someone who had lost confidence in her body after a fall (see Regaining Stability—for Free!) Another reader left a comment on that post that made me realize what an important topic this was:

Omgosh. I ....this took my breath away. This is exactly what happened to me! I was this vibrant, moving being....then a stupid, nasty fall (via a piece of gravel on the sidewalk) ended all that. And my subsequent life mirrors your friend's. Thank you SO much for giving us hope!

It seems that after experiencing a fall, many middle-aged and older people may become fearful, which can lead to inactivity. That inactivity in turn leads to stiffness, weakness, loss of balance and/or loss of agility. So I decided to learn a bit more about the woman who left this comment, and to see if there was something we could do to help her regain her confidence and start to move again. Everyone has different issues, so before making recommendations, I asked her to fill me in on any physical problems she had. Here’s a condensed version of her reply:

My sacrum got cocked (like it often does) and that triggered a bout of sciatica - the two sent me to the ER. The cocked sacrum was the result of some incorrectly done crunches plus my bete-noire, a fibroid that spans the entire back of my uterine wall.

I've had two motorcycle accidents (about 20 yrs apart) and now just have that North Dallas Forty thing going  (the opening scene, with Nick Nolte in the bathtub - painful).  Also, I have had shoulder surgery (torn rotor cuff with a bone spur sticking through it)— that one is healed.

Last thing that happened was about 18 mos. Ago—striding down the street, I twisted my ankle on a piece of gravel and went down like a sack of potatoes.  Banged up my left knee and hip (that poor hip gets so much grief), wrenched my back, and damaged the OTHER shoulder in the fall, which is why I have no flexibility or confidence whatsoever. So I can’t extend my right shoulder much. I also have two discs in my neck that are bone on bone, though I keep those pretty limber, most days.

So that's the litany of ick.  Other than that stupid fibroid and the post-injuries I’m actually pretty healthy and very strong (except for that shoulder – but I can still lift between 50-100lbs with my arms at my sides – just not extended).  Mostly I'm just stiff and achy and need to get back to moving around - your post on 'regaining stability' resonated so deeply, Nina.  

After learning about our reader’s situation, I decided to take her case to Baxter, who pointed out to me that certain physical problems, such as the fibroid and the new shoulder injury, needed to be addressed by a medical professional. He agreed that while our reader was seeking medical help, she would also benefit from a gentle yoga practice that allowed her to start moving again. A short, daily, gentle yoga practice would be helpful to her allover physical health and would allow her to start increasing her flexibility, as well as her confidence.

In her case, because she has a history of low back and other problems, he recommended that instead of having a single sequence, she should alternate between three different sequences. I was happy to find that two of the sequences were already on the blog! (So if you’re a new reader and want to start practicing some short sequences on your own, be sure to poke around through our archives to see the various sequences we’ve been posting.)

The three sequences are:

1. Baxter’s classic Low Back Care Practice (see Low Back Care Practice). Because hip openers are helpful for low back problems, this sequence includes stretches for leg and hip flexibility.

2. Baxter’s classic Mini Restorative Practice (see Mini Restorative Practice). A restorative practice will help reduce stress. Long-held passive poses also gently stretch your muscles.

3. Our new Gentle All-Around Practice (see Gentle All-Around Practice), which I'm just posting today. This practice includes shoulder stretches to increase upper body flexibility and standing poses to improve balance and stability.

My hope is that practicing these sequences on a regular basis will, over time, restore her flexibility, balance, and feelings of self confidence, and allow her to be a “vibrant, moving being” once again.

And although we came up with this set of sequences for a particular person, all of them would be suitable for just about anyone who is starting a home practice. And it just so happens we’re in the first week of the new year! So if any of you have made resolutions to start practicing yoga at home, give any or all of these sequences a try and let us know how it goes.

In Praise of Gomukhasana (Cow-Face Pose)

by Nina

Because this is turning out to be the almost all-Nina week (don’t worry, all the other regulars will be back soon), I thought today I’d just share with you some more of the beautiful artwork from the current exhibit Yoga: The Art of Transformation at the Smithsonian Museum.

As I was looking through the book, I noticed something surprising to me. While most of the yoga poses we currently do in our yoga classes and in our home practices were developed during the twentieth century (see Authentic Yoga), there are several poses—mostly seated poses—that are quite old. The artwork in this exhibit that portrays yogis in action allows us to see which ones they were. Of course, there are many examples of the classic seated position that we all picture from the past, Lotus pose (Padmasana. But I also noticed how many of these works of art portrayed yogis in a seated position similar to Cow-Face pose (Gomukhasana) legs.

It just happens that this is a pose I practice frequently myself (though not as a meditation pose) because I received advice that stretching my piriformis muscle would help me regain some mobility in my right hip, and Cow-Face pose is one of the best poses for stretching this muscle. And, as it turned out, practicing this pose on a regular basis did increase my hip mobility (see How to Stretch ).

Baxter finds this pose stretches the deep hip muscles in a different way than Sukasana (Seated Crossed Legs), Padmasana (Lotus pose), Baddhakonasana (Cobbler's pose) and Firelog pose, so it can be helpful for those with tight hips who want more mobility. And Shari recommends stretching your piriformis muscle to keep your sacrum happy and healthy. So it was quite amazing for me to see what a common seated poses this for ancient yoga practitioners. And as we haven’t yet taken photographs of one of us doing the pose, I’m so pleased to have some visual examples to show you.

While most of these paintings show the practitioner sitting on the heel of the bottom foot, many of us who aren’t used to this pose, may find this uncomfortable. In that case, sit with your hips on a prop (as in the video), such as a folded blanket, and your bottom foot alongside your hip.

Doing Yoga Without

by Nina

Yesterday I wrote Cheating at Yoga? about props and how we here at YFHA staff feel it is wise to use them to adapt poses to your body type and/or physical condition. But there are some physical conditions where a prop won’t help. In this case, you can simply modify your poses in certain ways to make them accessible to you.

I was thinking about this because recently a friend told me that she “can’t do yoga” anymore because shoulder injury (as yet undiagnosed). I assured her that she still could because there were a lot of poses that she would still be able to do. She then asked if there were some yoga videos for yoga without arms, and I said that I couldn’t think of any but that most practices (except Sun Salutation practices) could be modified by changing your arm positions or, in some cases, substituting one pose for another. I know all about this because I’ve had two frozen shoulders, which meant even moving my arm was very painful, and I continued to go to a public class and kept up my home practice throughout.

Because lifting caused her pain, I suggested that she avoid all poses where you bear weight on your arms. This would include Downward-Facing Dog, Sun Salutations, and some backbends, such as Upward Bow pose (Urdva Dhanurasana). A modified version of Downward-Facing Dog pose, Half Downward Dog at the Wall, could be substituted for the full pose. Inverted poses, such as Headstand and Shoulderstand, where you bear weight on your shoulders should probably also be avoided. For these, you can do partial inversions, such as Supported Standing Forward Bend and Supported Prasarita Padottanasana (see All About Supported Inversions), where your head rests on a block or other support.

Substitute for Downward-Facing Dog

Even after eliminating those poses, there are still so many other poses someone like her could do, including standing poses, seated twists, seated forward bends, and backbends, such as Locust, where your arms do not bear weight.

But what if even just raising your arms over your head or out to the side causes pain? In this case, in standing poses, you can modify your arm position to one that is more comfortable. For poses where both arms are overhead, such as Tree pose (Vrksasana), Warrior 1 (Virabhadrasana), and Powerful Pose (Utkatasana), bring your hands into Prayer position (Namaste) in front of your heart. You can even take this same arm position in poses such as Triangle pose (Trikonasana) and Extended Side Angle pose (Parsvakonasana), where your arms are out to the side. But you could also practice those poses with just the injured arm alongside your body or with a bent elbow and hand on your hip while your uninjured arm is in the standard position. In other words, just find a position that is comfortable for your injured arm. Feel free to experiment!

Surprisingly, seated forward bends, especially if you are flexible and normally hold onto your feet, can also hurt your shoulder. In this case, for the injured arm, reach it only as far as it can go and use a block underneath to support it. Binding in twists is also not recommended, as it is an intense stretch on the shoulder, but most of us know milder alternatives for the arms in twists.

It’s your practice people, so just make it work for you. Like I said yesterday about using props, this is not cheating! You’re still practicing and that’s all that counts.

Cheating at Yoga?

by Nina

As I wrote in my post Practicing With Pain, sometimes we get a question from a reader that leaves me feeling sad. This one, from a reader who was accused by a teacher of “cheating,” came in just recently:

Am I a cheater if I use Props?
Cheat/Cheater: (Oxford dictionary): deceive, fraud, deception, a person who behaves dishonestly, a liar



Dear esteemed Writers /Teachers of this blog, I have been practicing yoga for nearly 20 years and have completed 500 hrs of teachers training. I have studied with several master teachers including Judith Lasater, Kofi Busia, Tony Briggs, Tim Miller, David Swenson among others. These days owing to some back and knee issues I use props when required since I know what’s good for me and what can hurt me. Last month I was in a class that saw a new teacher who introduced herself as a teacher with several years of experience and having studied from several well known teachers in this country and in India as well. Despite her impressive background, what surprised me was that in several hip and knee poses when I used the prop or the back wall as a support (for some balancing sequences) she would come to me and say “You are cheating; don’t cheat”. To me the word cheat meant that I was engaging in fraudulent behavior. At the end of the class I confronted her and sought out an apology from her which she refused to do. I have stopped going to her classes. Now my question to you is: Why is anyone a cheater if he/she uses a prop? Do we have to wait for a teacher to tell us to use these supports? If I know my body well and feel the need for a prop, why am I a cheater? Is the use of a belt/block/wall for poses that we feel comfortable akin to engaging in deceit or a dishonest act?

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any period of time—or who even just looks at the photos—knows that we do not consider using props to be cheating. In fact, we consider using props as needed for your body type and physical condition to be a very wise way to practice yoga. So, no, dear reader, we do not agree with the statement that the “use of a belt/block/wall for poses that we feel comfortable akin to engaging in deceit or a dishonest act.” See Yoga Props: An Introduction for a general overview of some of the props we recommend incorporating as needed into your practice.

Baxter protects his hamstrings from tearing by using a prop

I’d say that from our point of view, the only way to “cheat” at yoga is not to practice and then pretend you did. However, there are a lot of different styles of yoga out there, and not every tradition recommends the use of props. So it’s very possible that some of you, as our questioner experienced, may encounter a teacher who is unfamiliar with or does not believe in the use of props. That, of course, does not justify the rudeness of the teacher described above, and it seems wise to me that after such an unpleasant experience with this teacher, our reader decided not to return to class.

But I also think it is wise every time you take a class with a new teacher that you arrive a bit early, introduce yourself to the teacher, and briefly describe any physical problems you may have and let the teacher know you’ll be using props. I have mild arthritis in my right hip, so I always let the teacher know this and assure them, however, that I don’t need special attention as I know how to look after myself by using props and modifications. At that point, the teacher could make clear his or her particular philosophy regarding props, and it would be up to me—if props were discouraged or forbidden—to decide whether or not to take the class.

Taking Back the "Yoga Body"!

by Nina

Are you familiar with the term “yoga body?” What does it mean to you? Unfortunately, for many people, this term connotes a young, slender, super-bendy woman posing on the cover of a magazine along with promises that doing certain yoga poses will result in a “fierce and fabulous” body, worthy of a photo shoot. Recently, a book cover by yoga teacher Sadie Nardini seems to capitalize on this concept:

Here, a young, attractive and very slender woman, who is not even doing yoga on the cover (really, what is that silly position she’s in?), seems to be promising that in 21 days, you’ll have a body that looks like mine!

Of course, if you’re one of our regular readers, you will know that when we talk about the effects of yoga asana on your body, we’re referring to overall physical health, including strength, flexibility, balance, agility, and reduced stress levels, not the way you will look after practicing for 21 or more days or the advanced poses you’ll be able to show off. So in general we just tend to ignore mainstream media’s obsession with physical beauty and the resulting distortion of yoga practice. Recently, however, some discussions in the blogosphere as well as at my own dining room table made me realize it would be worthwhile to raise my concerns about this disturbing trend and to take back the term “yoga body.”

First of all, there has been the “scandal” over Lululemon’s founder and CEO Chip Wilson’s statements blaming women’s physical “flaws” for problems in the company’s yoga pants. Yes, people, in explaining why certain women found these expensive pants were pilling, Wilson said that “quite frankly some women’s bodies just actually don’t work for it,” and “It’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there over a period of time and how much they use it.” The take-away here was that if your thighs touch when you stand with your feet together, you don’t have the “yoga body” needed to wear certain “yoga pants.” Do I even have to explain how offensive—and completely antithetical to the real purpose of yoga—this is?

Then, I read some inspiring posts by yoga blogger, Roseanne Harvey, an average-sized yoga practitioner, who decided to test the program in Sadie Nardini’s book and document the results by photographing herself in before and after photos. She decided to do the program for two reasons. The first reason was to test the rather ridiculous time frame being promoted. I’ve already written about the issue of being realistic about the time period required for results (see Take Your Time). But it’s very compelling to see the dramatic before and after photos Roseanne took of herself after doing the program. Spoiler alert: she looks basically the same in both photos, possible even a little rounder in the after photo.

But more importantly, Roseanne wanted to take the opportunity to explore the concept of a “yoga body,” asking some of her favorite yoga writers to weigh in on the topic. And she concluded by saying:

“But I’m starting to feel that the “yoga body” is something that needs to be reclaimed (or possibly even claimed; was it ever ours to begin with?). It needs to be reclaimed from Google, reclaimed from marketers, reclaimed from a fragmented culture that has mixed messages and ideas about the human body.”

Yes, Roseanne! I agree wholeheartedly. So this is me joining your movement! And I’d like to add that while most of the discussion around the term “yoga body” focuses on body image and body weight—certainly vital issues in our culture—what about age? What about the gray hair, wrinkles and sagging flesh that come along with the natural aging of the body? My final inspiration for this writing post was seeing this recent photo of BKS Iyengar on the occasion of his 95th birthday.

How about this as the ultimate “yoga body?” Here is 95-year old man, complete with sagging flesh, white hair, and wrinkled skin, who is still in good physical and mental health, and who is completely comfortable in his skin. In this case, I really do think the picture itself says it all.