An Ancient Cure for Modern Life

An Ancient Cure for Modern Life

Everyday stress can lead to vata derangement, an excess of nervous energy. These Ayurvedic therapies can bring you back into balance.

By Alison Rose Levy

http://www.yogajournal.com/health/647

Like most Americans, I’m an expert at multi-tasking. I eat at my desk, wash dishes while on the phone, go through bills on the bus, and drive while talking on my cell phone. Based on his knowledge of the Eastern wisdom of Ayurveda, the internationally recognized Ayurvedic physician and author Robert Svoboda has another name for this rushed, fragmented way of functioning. He calls it “vata-deranged.” Modern life as we know it, with its excessive travel, late nights, and nonstop stimulation, often contributes to vata derangement, which can affect anyone. People like me the tall, slender, fast-talking ones are most at risk, however, because our native constitutions are vata dominant.

To comprehend vata derangement, we need to understand that vata is one of the three metabolic types, or doshas, described by the ancient health science of Ayurveda. Vata is the principle of movement, ruled by air and ether. The other two doshas are pitta, the principle of assimilation ruled by fire, and kapha, the stabilizing force, ruled by earth and air. Ayurvedic doctors say that we are each a unique combination of these three. For most of us, one type is predominant, another secondary. But whatever one’s native type, when a person goes out of balance, the vata principle destabilizes most easily, causing other kinds of health and emotional problems.

According to Ayurveda, this is the force that governs all movement in the body, including the in-and-out flow of the breath, the action of our limbs, the circulation of subtle energy in our organism, and the mind’s ceaseless flow of thoughts, words, and images. Unlike earthy kapha, solid and grounded and with a tendency to get stuck, or fiery pitta, sharp and focused and knowing just where it wants to go, vata, like the wind, wanders here and there, its direction ever-changing.

Performers like Michael Richards, who played Seinfeld’s Kramer, Lisa Kudrow acting ditzy and off-beat on Friends, and Woody Allen, with his anxious patter, have made us laugh at the off-centered, nervous spaciness typical of vata derangement. While these qualities may seem funny when we see them on film, it’s not fun to experience the jerky stops and starts of breath, thoughts, speech, nerves, and limbs that result from a vata imbalance. And the health consequences aren’t laughable either.

Vata’s Rise and Fall

The pressure and pace of modern life can tip anyone into vata imbalance. But even if you spent your life meditating in the woods, it’s not easily avoided. Ayurveda holds that sturdy kapha is dominant in childhood, ambitious pitta rules in the prime of life, and vata prevails in our senior years. Our senior years bring the vatic qualities of dryness, roughness, and irregularity, manifesting in such health complaints as arthritis, constipation, anxiety, insomnia, and stiffness.

Fortunately, we can look to ancient wisdom for answers: Ayurveda has evolved ways to remedy vata imbalance and its accompanying diseases, and throughout hundreds of years ancient Ayurvedic physicians and yogis devised many techniques to prolong life hoping to gain more time to attain self-realization.

Undoubtedly, the Westerner most knowledgeable about these Ayurvedic rejuvenate practices is Svoboda, who teaches at Albuquerque’s Ayurvedic Institute and is the author of Prakriti (Sadhana, 1999), an excellent introduction to Ayurveda. For the last 25 years, Svoboda has traveled to India to receive and learn traditional rejuvenative treatments and to study Indian culture, philosophy, and practices. Last year he offered a small group of students a weeklong immersion in the health model and way of life he practices. Along with Iyengar Yoga teacher Ellen Leary of New Hope, Pennsylvania, Svoboda designed a retreat reflecting the Indian world view that Ayurveda, hatha yoga, and other spiritual practices like meditation and chanting are aspects of an integrated system of healing and spiritual evolution. As I flew to the Caribbean Island of Tortola, I wondered if, even with these gifted guides, it would be possible to alleviate some of my stress-building vatic habits in one week.

The Beauty of Routine

Vatas tend to be erratic or as workshop participant Paul Busch, an Iyengar Yoga teacher from Minneapolis (and a vata), described himself, “addicted to variety.” While stalwart kaphas plod along, rising, eating, working, and sleeping punctually, vatas zigzag out of regularity, rising and going to bed at odd times, skipping meals, and not keeping to any regular pattern. Although this makes life interesting, it is also destabilizing. The cure: Establish a predictable routine.

The first evening of the retreat, Svoboda explained that they had carefully structured our schedule and practices to emphasize rejuvenation, particularly for balancing vata. Since dry, rough, airy, fast-moving, and irregular are the core qualities of vata, the Ayurvedic approach is to prescribe treatments, activities, and foods that provide the opposite qualities: oiliness, grounding, slowness, heaviness, consistency, and flow. Svoboda and Leary asked that we adhere to their schedule, even if it meant steering clear of the sun-drenched beach below. Instead of going after “fun,” we tasted a different kind of enjoyment: a restful night’s sleep.

This was the beginning of our routine: Every night we went to bed early, and every day began at 6 a.m. We entered the day gently with an optional morning meditation, followed by an hour long class in pranayama at 6:30 a.m. This is very important for vata, whose flow can become disturbed by transitions, particularly abrupt ones, like dashing straight from the dream state to the computer upon arising.

“Vata is discontinuous, so if there’s a transfer of energy and direction, like at a juncture or at any transition, that’s where vata becomes agitated,” Svoboda said. No chance of that here. Unlike other classes I’d attended, where even beginners launched into advanced pranayama techniques like alternate nostril or bellows breathing, Leary, who recently returned from a month at the Iyengar Institute in Pune, India, led us in a simple, restorative pranayama practice.

We used props in Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclining Bound Angle Pose), to ensure our bodies were in correct alignment and our diaphragms gently lifted. We supported our legs with homemade sandbags and a belt, allowing the groin area to deeply relax. Leary gently guided us in sensing the inner thoracic area, and after a time, without any forcing, we slowly lengthened and deepened our breath.

Expanding and steadying the breath helps pacify vata because it counters the constrained and shallow breathing and attendant anxiety that result from vata’s fast pace. Leary instructed us to allow this expansion to happen without forcing it, encouraging us to take a step back from the vatic and Western tendency to overdo it.

“Breath is essential to rejuvenation,” Svoboda explained later, when we gathered on the stone front porch for one of his three daily talks. The term prana, he told us, denotes consciousness and life force. Because prana is carried on the breath, increasing our breath capacity brings in more life force to nourish the physical tissues of the body. “As the organism becomes more confident there is ample prana, it relaxes,” explained Svoboda. While regulating the breath is necessary for vatas, inducing a calm state is healing to everyone’s cells, bodies, emotions, and thoughts.

But everything in its own time. Lest we fuel our spiritual evolution with ambition, Svoboda reminded us that we won’t get there any quicker by pressing the pedal to the floor. Even when it comes to spirituality, each of the doshas has its own way of overdoing or underdoing it. Kaphas are most likely to be kicking back and smelling the flowers, finding no motivation to practice at all. Pittas may be driven to become spiritual overachievers, losing contact with compassion as they pile up attainments.

Vatas overdo because they are mentally stimulated by so many options but without doing one thing consistently. This tendency carries over into other life activities. “My eyes are bigger than my stomach,” commented Busch. “My mind wants a smorgasbord, staying up late, watching stimulating films, or engaging in late night conversations, while my body would prefer to get some rest. And like all vatas, I overrule my body.”

Underdoing It

The retreat schedule, routine yet relaxing, defeated all vatic temptations to overdo. There’s no point in overdoing a practice like pranayama, Svoboda told us, because we can’t take in more prana unless we have room for it. In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else. Wherever there are blockages, the flow throughout our system is obstructed, causing vata disorders. The practices we learned opened the space for that flow. To open the mind, there was meditation. To expel toxins encumbering our digestive tract, there were Ayurvedic herbs and diet. To release structural and muscular blockages impeding our movement, there was hatha yoga.

After our daily pranayama, we performed Suryanamaskar (Sun Salutation) to the rising sun on a deck overlooking the ocean. With their addiction to variety, vatas find it boring to do asanas slowly and repetitively. Of course, more than anyone else, they need to take the time to allow themselves to become steady in each pose. “As a vata I love constant change, and it’s the worst thing for me,” noted Busch. Suryanamaskar is beneficial for vatas, who tend to have stiff joints, because the asanas move all the limbs and lubricate the joints. Suryanamaskar also regulates the flow of energy through the nadis, channels of subtle energy that run through our organism, like acupuncture meridians.

While pittas and kaphas do well with more strenuous exercise, repetitive, flowing movement balances vata, so it is best for vatas to do Suryanamaskar slowly. These poses can align vatas mentally and spiritually, Svoboda pointed out, if they face the sun, real or imagined, while doing them. Focusing gathers vata’s scattered energies, Svoboda said, and directs them toward “the sun, the source of light and consciousness in the world.”

 Practice Is Perfection

Following a well-earned breakfast, we next performed abhyanga. This is an Ayurvedic oil massage and a classic prescription for healing vata that brings vata’s dry, rough, and irregular tendencies into balance with the oil’s smoothness and heaviness. Ayurvedic clinics in Kerala, India, are renowned for treatments like pizhichil, in which as many as four people simultaneously oil massage a single client, or shirodhara, in which oil is slowly poured onto the top of the head. When oil is absorbed through the skin, it dislodges toxins, explained Svoboda, which otherwise impede the flow in our system, block the movement of prana, and aggravate vata.

Ayurvedic physicians also use food as medicine, considering the effect of every food and spice on each dosha. Cream of wheat, for example, while grounding for vatas, is too heavy for already grounded kaphas, who tend toward weight gain; on the other hand, a vata should probably pass on the chili because beans cause gas. Although people associate Ayurvedic cuisine with Indian food, the two are not synonymous. A diet balancing to one’s dosha can consist entirely of Western or international dishes. The retreat offered gourmet spa cuisine, delicious and balancing to all three doshas.

Ayurveda views the digestive process as a metaphor for all we take in. Many people eat whatever is available, watch whatever is on the tube, and believe the common consensus on many subjects. But Ayurveda asks us to consider what we can handle, as vata’s delicate nerves and digestion are easily overwhelmed by a bad meal or a bad movie, for that matter. Svoboda and Leary urged us to use the retreat practices to refine our inner awareness, so we could begin to discern the effects of the foods, images, and ideas we take in. This is helpful for all doshas, but particularly for curious and experimental vatas, who want to try everything even though their powers of assimilation aren’t always up to it.

Anything taken in but not processed remains in our organism and becomes a toxin, Svoboda told us. That’s why it’s important to recognize what is beneficial and decline what isn’t, rather than leave the gate open to any and all forms of input. Vatas are great communicators and love chatter. But as much as they love it, it is jarring to their nerves. The solution? To practice limiting input and output.

All chatter ceased on the day dedicated to silence, a traditional form of spiritual austerity practiced in India. Silence is believed to have a purifying effect on the sense of hearing and on the mind itself. In silence I noticed how much breath and energy I habitually waste on words. At meals I never missed the conversation, which I now realize was often used to stave off fears or feelings of emptiness. In silence these feelings were given room to come into the light of awareness, where they could dissolve. Our silent afternoon asana class brought the entire group into a state of inner and outer focus, as we followed Leary in a strong series of standing poses, the ocean breezes and our own breath the only sounds we heard. Silence, I discovered, is a restorative posture as powerful as any physical one.

The retreat showed me what Savasana (Corpse Pose), the most basic restorative pose, was all about. With my busy work schedule, I frequently omitted this asana from my practice at home, dashing from other asanas directly to the phone or computer keyboard. The flip side of this kind of vatic overdoing is an energy crash, from which a judicious rest can protect you.

“Savasana brings you as close as possible to perfect physical alignment because it is easier to do correctly than any other pose. Being still while in alignment allows all levels of your being to move into alignment,” explained Svoboda. This is why Savasana feels so restful, physically, mentally, and spiritually. With enough rest and alignment, even restless vatic energy can stabilize.

At first, with its new terminology, Ayurveda can seem exotic, even to someone like me who has traveled to India and studied hatha yoga and meditation for 14 years. But in truth, resting deeply, eating healthful foods, following a regular schedule, moving at a gentle pace, stretching all my limbs, taking deep breaths, and limiting stimulation are all the basics of good health. There’s nothing exotic about these practices.

What is unusual is that we live in a society where we have to make an extra effort to practice them and resist the pressures that lead us to neglect self-care. Following the Ayurvedic and yogic techniques seemed unfamiliar at first, but when I practiced them, my body (or was it perhaps some subtler aspect of myself?) recognized them. As modern Americans, we may have forgotten how to care for the human being, but Ayurveda remembers and can remind us of what we once knew.

Alison Rose Levy is a New York based writer on yoga, health, and psychology. She is currently training to teach Anusara Yoga while at work on her first book.

Better Posture 101

Your mom was right: You’ll look better and feel great if you stop slouching and stand up straight. Yoga can help you do just that—in a way that honors your spine’s natural curves. Here’s a guide to assessing and improving your posture.

By Julie Gudmestad

Are you a slumper? A swayer? Chances are you’re one or the other to some degree—despite Mom’s best efforts all those years ago to get you to sit up straight and stop slouching. She probably told you that you’d look and feel better if you worked on your posture, and she was absolutely right. But if you’re like most people, you rolled your eyes and ignored her, or straightened up until she wasn’t looking. And you probably didn’t give posture much more thought at all until you walked into your first yoga class and tried to stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose).

When you’re a beginner, it’s surprisingly complicated to master the art of rooting down through the feet while lengthening up through the spine, keeping your chest open without jutting your lower ribs out, and keeping the legs muscles strong and lifted without tensing the belly or jaw. But ultimately, Tadasana demands just one simple thing: that you stand in a way that supports the natural curves of a healthy spine. So why is it so difficult? And why do we work so hard to master good posture in yoga—leaving class feeling taller and healthier—only to slump down in the car seat on the way home or revert to a swayback when we heft our overstuffed yoga bags onto our backs?

In short, modern life conspires against good posture. We spend our days sitting at desks, staring at computer screens. When we travel, we do it in cars or—worse—airplanes. We lounge around in overstuffed chairs designed more for looks than for lumbar support. And we pay people to mow our lawns, tend our gardens, and remove our trash so we can spend more time working or driving or sitting. Nonsedentary cultures—with a few exceptions—don’t have the same epidemic of back and neck problems that we do. Picture a woman gracefully balancing a large basket of food on her head. To carry such a heavy weight, she must have a perfectly aligned spine and strong posture-support muscles. You don’t get that kind of alignment and strength from sitting around and watching the tube. You can, however, get it from a regular yoga practice.

POSTURE PRINCIPLES

To create great alignment for your body, I recommend a three-part strategy. First, build awareness by assessing your posture and your lifestyle. Next, create a yoga prescription for your specific postural problem by incorporating a few simple poses into your regular practice. Finally, take your newly developed awareness of your alignment issues and apply it throughout your daily life.

Before tackling the how-tos, however, it’s important to understand the anatomy of proper posture. Whether you’re sitting or standing, your spine has natural curves that should be maintained. They are a mild forward curve (like a gentle backbend) in the neck and lower back, and a mild backward curve in the upper back and midback. As you practice yoga, you learn to maintain these optimal curves in many standing poses, in most sitting poses, and in inversions like Sirsasana (Headstand) and Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand).

If any of these curves are habitually flattened or overly curved, abnormal posture can get locked into the body. A wide variety of abnormal curves can occur, including a flat neck and a flat lower back, but we’ll focus on the two most common problems: a hunched upper back (known as excessive kyphosis), which is usually linked with a jutting forward of the head (known as forward head) and, at the other end of the spectrum, an extreme sway in the lower back (known as excessive lordosis). These extreme curves contribute to many of the painful problems—muscle strain, joint pain, and disk problems, to name a few—that physical therapists and other health care practitioners treat every day.

Maintaining just the right curves is only part of the equation, however; to function efficiently, your skeletal structure also needs to be aligned vertically. That means when you’re standing, your ears should be over your shoulders, your shoulders over your hips, and your hips over your knees and ankles. When any body part falls out of that vertical line, the adjacent support muscles will feel the strain. For example, years of having a forward head will cause the muscles of the upper back and neck to become tired and achy from holding up the weight of the head against the pull of gravity.

So, while you needn’t nag yourself about slouching, you may discover that the simple act of straightening up can change your life. If you train your body to maintain the normal spinal curves and keep your posture vertical and spacious when you’re standing or sitting upright, you’re likely to feel better all over. And that’s something to write home about.

SLUMP OR SWAY? THE ASSESSMENT

The first step toward changing a bad habit is to recognize that you have a problem, right? So, let’s start your posture-improvement program by building awareness of your postural pitfalls. You can assess your spinal curves by standing against a doorjamb. When you stand with your heels very near the jamb, you should have contact at your sacrum (the upside-down triangular-shape bone a few inches above your tailbone), the middle and upper back (thoracic spine), and the back of your head. With normal spinal curves, your lower back (lumbar spine) and neck (cervical spine) won’t touch—there should be about an inch of space between the doorjamb and the vertebrae of your lower back. But if you can slide your whole hand into the space, you have a swayback, or excessive lordosis.

Standing at the doorjamb also provides valuable feedback about kyphosis and forward head. If you notice that your chin lifts up when you place the back of your head against the jamb, you probably have excessive kyphosis in your thoracic spine. The combination of excessive kyphosis and forward head is common, and it puts significant strain on your neck muscles and intervertebral disks.

It’s also worth noting that you could have a combination of postural problems, such as an increased kyphosis with an excessive lordosis. In that case, it’s usually best to focus on creating proper alignment in the pelvis and lower back first, and then work your way up the spine.

After your assessment, take a close look at the furniture you use every day at work, home, school—anyplace you spend a significant amount of time. Supportive beds and chairs and a carefully set-up desk and computer workstation will facilitate good alignment. On the other hand, a saggy bed, poorly designed chair, and keyboard at the wrong height will set the stage for degenerating posture. Make the best furniture choices you can to support your journey to better spinal health. (See “Furniture Dos and Don’ts,” for more furniture tips.)

CREATE YOUR YOGA Rx

While sitting is not the root of all evil, it does contribute to both kyphosis and lordosis. Most people unwittingly tip their head forward and down while working—to see the papers on their desk or read what’s on their computer screen. Often the arms also pull forward to reach the keyboard. It’s easy to see how this contributes to a sagging, droopy posture.

When you hunch forward at your desk, the chest collapses and compresses the heart, lungs, and diaphragm. Hunching also strains the back muscles, causing them to overstretch and become weak. If you’re collapsed in a kyphosis, the key to breaking the habit is to stretch the muscles of the chest, increase the flexibility of the thoracic spine and ribs, and strengthen and shorten the muscles of the back. Supported backbends stretch the pectoralis major, so they’re an excellent way to open the chest. They also increase the mobility in the stiffest part of the spine—the thoracic.

To strengthen and shorten the muscles that support the midback, practice Salabhasana (Locust Pose) and Bhujangasana Cobra Pose). Both are effective strengtheners for the long muscles that run parallel to the spine along with the muscles that help support and position the shoulder blades (the trapezius and rhomboids in particular). In a slumped posture, the shoulder blades usually fall forward toward the chest and hunch up toward the ears. Both Bhujangasana and Salabhasana train the midback to hold the shoulder blades in their normal position, which is down away from the ears and flat against the back ribs.

Sitting all day can also contribute to serious misalignments in the lower back and pelvis. Prolonged sitting shortens the hip flexors—the muscles (including the iliopsoas, rectus femoris, and tensor fascia lata, to name just a few) that cross the front of the hip. If you sit for many hours every day without stretching your hip flexors regularly, they will gradually lose their normal length, causing the pelvis to tilt forward (known as an anterior tilt of the pelvis) when you’re standing. A strong anterior tilt usually causes an excessive lordosis or swayback, which contributes to chronic tightness and pain in the lower back muscles. It can also cause lower back pain by compressing the facet joints, the small joints along each side of the spine where the vertebrae overlap one another. The facet joints weren’t designed to bear much weight, and compression can wear away the cartilage lining the joints, causing arthritis. Unfortunately, you may not know that your cartilage is wearing away until, after many years of sitting, standing, and walking with excessive lordosis, you find yourself living with a chronically painful arthritic lower back.

If you fall into the swayback category, focus on lengthening and stretching those tight hip flexors in your yoga practice. Add lunges and Virabhadrasana I (Warrior Pose I) to your daily practice or, at the very least, do them two or three times per week. You can, of course, include this stretching as part of Sun Salutation, but it’s optimal to hold the hip flexors in a stretched position for one to two minutes. Try adding a good long hip flexor stretch later in your practice, when the muscles are warm, and focus on breathing, relaxing, and lengthening the muscles that cross the front of the hip.

Also, practice a posterior tilt by lifting the front pelvis up off the front thigh and drawing your tailbone down toward the floor in lunges or Virabhadrasana I. This action will create space and release compression in the facet joints in your lower back.

In addition to practicing these actions, you can reduce the anterior tilt of the pelvis, support your internal organs, and help reduce the risk of lower back injuries by strengthening the abdominals. Exercises like curl-ups and crunches emphasize the upper abdominals. But if the upper abdominals become overly strong and tight, they can restrict breathing and actually pull down on the rib cage, contributing to an increased kyphosis and flattening the normal curve of the lower back. Instead, practice postures like Navasana (Boat Pose) and Urdhva Prasarita Padasana (Leg Lifts) to strengthen the lower abdominals, which are most important in supporting the lower back and pelvis.

SITTING AND STANDING PRACTICES

Whether your problem area is the upper back, lower back, or both, I recommend that you sit for a few minutes once or twice a day in Virasana (Hero Pose). It is a wonderful position to reinforce good posture habits, because it teaches proper alignment in all the spine’s curves. After a brief daily Virasana practice, you can more easily integrate your alignment awareness when you sit during the day. Just remember to apply the same cues you learn in Virasna when you sit on your couch or at your desk.

After you get settled in Virasana, place one hand on your lower back. Now tuck your tailbone under—you’ll actually be sitting on it. As you do this, feel how you slump over and your lumbar spine flattens. Now move in the opposite direction by rolling your pubic bone toward the floor. Your pelvis will tip forward and you’ll have excessive lumbar lordosis, which you can also feel with your hand. Now move back and forth between those two extremes until you find the point balanced in between, where you can sit directly on your sitting bones and feel a healthy alignment for your pelvis and lower back.

Next, bring your awareness to your upper back. To reduce kyphosis, imagine lifting your breastbone up away from your heart and lungs as you engage your back muscles to lengthen your spine upward. As you lift up, don’t increase the curve of the lower back or let your lower front ribs jut forward. Let the shoulder blades fall away from the ears, and spread your collarbones broadly without pinching the shoulder blades toward the back spine.

Moving farther up the spine, make sure you don’t have a forward head. I don’t recommend that people with a forward head put a finger on their chin and push their head back, because doing so can create an overly flattened, uncomfortable neck. Usually, just reducing the kyphosis will bring the head closer to its normal alignment, with the ears over the shoulders. You can also try putting the flat parts of your fingers across the back of your neck and dropping your chin. Feel how the curve of your neck flattens and the tissues become hard. If you lift your chin and look up at the ceiling, you’ll feel the back of your neck curving excessively and compressing. Now come back to the middle position, where your chin and gaze are level—you should feel a soft curve, slightly toward a backbend.

To reinforce good alignment while standing, come back to the doorjamb-assessment position. You can use this position several times a day—without putting on yoga clothes or getting out your mat—so you learn by feel how to stay vertical and maintain the normal curves while standing.

Lengthen your spine up the doorjamb by reaching the crown of the head toward the ceiling while your shoulders melt down away from your ears. If you tend to have excessive lordosis, you may find it’s much easier to reduce the lumbar curve by bending your knees. If that’s the case, your hip flexors are probably tight and your abdominal muscles are weak. To work on strengthening the abdominals, stand at the doorjamb, bend the knees slightly, and draw your tailbone toward the floor and your back waist toward the doorjamb.

Don’t contract the abdominals so hard that you collapse in the chest or can’t breathe—remember that the goal is to have a mild (not excessive or completely flat) curve in your lower back, combined with an open chest and a chin that’s level to the ground. (If your chin and gaze tend to go up when you take your head to the doorjamb, your kyphosis is probably still causing a forward head. It will take time to reduce the kyphosis; in the meantime, don’t force your head to the doorjamb. Keep working to lift your breastbone, without overarching your lower back, and stay in the position in which you can keep your chin and gaze level.) Finally, step away from the doorjamb, training your body to remember the feeling and your mind to remember the cues to good vertical posture. When this happens, you’ll be standing in Tadasana (Mountain Pose).

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

Once you’ve done your physical assessment, looked at your furniture, and added poses to your arsenal, there’s just one very important thing left to do—practice, practice, practice. With frequent repetition, old habits and patterns can be replaced with new and healthy ways of moving, standing, and sitting. But it’s important to remember that change takes time. I tell my students and clients to expect to work for a year before new posture and movement habits become automatic. Muscles don’t lengthen or strengthen overnight. As you stretch out the tight areas and strengthen the weak ones, your body will gradually find its way to a more balanced alignment.

It’s also important to notice how you feel when your posture is good. Does your body feel at ease? How’s your mood? Your energy level? Likewise, notice how you feel when your posture is bad. Are you feeling down or rushed or tired? When do your bad habits creep up on you?

The goal here isn’t to achieve perfection; it’s simply to find the healthiest alignment—one that makes you feel simultaneously strong and at ease—given your body structure. This will take time, patience, and perseverance.

Take comfort in knowing that yoga trains your mind as well as your body. As you continue to devote yourself to your practice, you will become more present in your body and more aware of your alignment, and you will begin to naturally make choices that will improve your health and your quality of life. Over time, the combination of increased awareness and physical training will allow your improved alignment to spill out into other areas of your life. Before you know it, you’ll feel at ease as you practice good yoga alignment while you’re perched at your desk, standing at the copier, and sitting at dinner. You’ll be doing yoga during all of your waking hours. And who knows? You might just impress your mom!

FURNITURE DOS & DON’TS

With a critical eye, take a look at the furniture you use most often or might buy in the near future.

No matter how fashionable it is, don’t bring home a couch with a long seat, which will cause you to slump backward as you search for support. If you already have one, keep plenty of cushions on hand to fill in the space between the back of your hips and the back of the couch. That’s true for any type of seat; when the backs of your calves hit the front edge of the seat and there is a gap behind you, fill in the gap so your back is supported and upright.

If possible, try a kneeling chair, which comes closest to virasana off the floor. With a regular chair, if you’re short in stature, use a stool for your feet so they don’t dangle in midair and contribute to strain in the lower back. If you’re tall and your knees are higher than your hips when you put your feet on the floor, you could easily fall into a backward slump. Solve this problem by raising the chair seat—if it’s as high as it will go, sit on a cushion. In a pinch, you can sit toward the front edge of the seat and pull your feet back so the knees are lower than the hips. This shape is similar to that of Virasana.

When you work on the computer, make sure the screen is at a height at which you can look straight ahead or just slightly down at it. Learn to touch type so you don’t have to look down at the keyboard, and get a book holder or inclined desk to bring reading materials closer to eye level. Set up your keyboard—you might need a keyboard tray—so your forearms are parallel to the floor.

The best sleep positions for most people are on their back or side; sleeping on the stomach is the biggest no-no. (If you have excessive lordosis, sleeping on your stomach will exaggerate it, especially on a bed that’s too saggy or soft.) If you sleep on your back, don’t increase the forward head habit by piling pillows under your head. It’s better to use one down pillow, which conforms to the shape of your head and neck, or a foam pillow formed with neck support and an indentation for the back of your head. If you’re lying on your side, be careful not to pull your head forward.

—J.G.

Julie Gudmestad writes Yoga Journal’s Anatomy column.

Sukshma Yoga and Yoga Cleansing – YV08

YOGA VILLE 2008 Highlights: Shatkarmas and Sukshma Yoga

SHATKARMAS: yogic cleansing

Wrong diet and wrong living habits cause a build-up of toxins and impurities in the body tissues and block the body’s channels. The aim of many of Hatha Yoga techniques is to unblock the channels to revitalize and purify the body.  The yogi detoxifies the body, keep it clean, healthy and vibrant with energy by practicing the shatkarmas (the six cleansing techniques).

 

The aim of the shatkarmas is to create harmony of pranic flows, thereby attaining physical and mental purification and balance.  The shatkarmas area also used to balance the three doshas or humours in the body: kapha – mucus, pitta – bile and vata – wind.   According to both ayurveda (the science of life and healing) and Hatha Yoga, an imbalance of the doshas will result in illness.  Everyday we clean ourselves by brushing teeth, washing the face, bathing the body, etc..  These are external karmas.  But internal cleansing to remove the toxins accumulated by wrong way of living is more important.  Hatha Yoga prescribes the following six methods to keep ourselves healthy:

 

Shatkarmas – Yoga cleansing techniques

1.           Neti – nasal cleansing

2.           Kunjal – digestive tract cleansing / Shankaprakshalana – intestinal wash

3.           Basti – colon cleansing

4.           Nauli – intestinal cleansing

5.           Trataka – cleansing for development of concentration power

6.           Kapalabhati – purification and vitalization of the frontal lobes of the brain

 

Beneits of Shatkarmas:

1.           Helps to develop immunity by eliminating the toxins;

2.           Stimulates the mind and aids in removing lethargy (tamas);

3.           Washes to colon, sinus tracts the stomach, etc;

4.           Provides a messaging effect to the area applied thereby stimulating the effective working of the organs.

5.           Stimulates vitality and helps in retardation of ageing;

6.           One’s capacity to think, digest, taste, feel express etc., increases and a greater awareness develops.

SUKSHMA VYAYAMAA: Subtle Yoga

Sukshma Vyayamaa is the only system of exercises in the world where each and every part of the body including each organ, each joint and each muscle is taken into consideration, and a particular exercise or set of excercises associated with a specific type of breathing in a specific type of position with a specific point of mental concentration is prescribed, literally “from top to toe” is the coverage of the entire sequence which is something very unique in the entire world, in the past, present and possibly the future too.

So the Sukshma Vyayamaa as is implied by the name, is meant for the subtle body or Sukshma Sarira.  As per the yogic philosophical tradition there are five bodies for every individual – the physical and the subtle: the annamaya sarira, pranamaya sareera, manomaya sareera, vigyanamaya sareera and anandamaya sareera.  So, Sukshma Vyayamaa deals with the second level, that is the subtle body or the pranamaya sareera.

The main features or components of Sukshma Vyayamaa are (1) breathing (2) concentration point (3) actual exercise.

The benefits once again are immense and are direct and immediate. Within a month of regular practice, it will lead to development of extraordinary levels of capabilities and faculties of various aspects of the personalities both mental and physical.

For those who have maladies and problems of different kind, Sukshma Vyayamaa alone is capable of curing and preventing, and increasing the strength and vigour of different organs and systems in the body.

祛風姿勢是一組練習，它從體內釋放出風和濁氣。 祛風姿勢系列非常簡單，然而，對調節在印度稱之為體液的痰（kaf）、風（vat）、酸或膽汁（pitta）最為有效。按照被稱為阿育吠陀（ayurveda）的古代醫學，這三種體液控制人體的一切功能，如果這些功能發生任何異常，人體的代謝就會出現負反應，疾病產生。風不僅指腸胃濁氣，而且包括人體每一關節處形成的風，因為由於人體內不正確的化學反應，發生了風濕病和強直。酸或膽汁既指消化必須的汁也指尿酸這類東西，必須有規律的把它排出。倘若人體的該系統內有過多的酸，某些器官就會發生功能不良。

     祛風姿勢練習將有助於把過多的風和酸從體內，尤其是從關節內排出。這些練習對恢復期病人、久病衰弱的病人和移動四肢和身體有困難的人都有用。長期臥床之後，可以用這些練習柔和的重新訓練肌肉。它們對緩解各種類型的肌肉毛病也有效。

     祛風姿勢系列的練習可分成兩個截然不同的組：抗風濕組和抗胃病組。

     抗風濕練習將有益地影響人體的不同關節和器官。雖然它們似乎十分簡單，但對練習者有微妙的作用。這組練習梵文稱之為sukshma vyayama，意思是微妙的練習。

     這組練習應該在每日瑜伽姿勢練習階段進行，以放鬆關節，使肌肉柔軟。目的是供初學者、病弱的人、心臟病人、高血壓病人和身體過於強直不能做其他姿勢的人。