My Meditation Project

by Nina

The Promise by Rene Magritte

My confession: I am really bad at meditating. And by that I don’t mean my mind wanders a lot when I’m meditating (which I do not consider being bad at meditating). I mean that I just can’t seem to maintain a regular meditation practice. I’ve tried countless times. I’ve made a vow, started practicing short sessions every day, and then petered out. 

Of course, I’ve wondered why this is. It was actually really easy for me to start regular asana practice at home. And once I get going, it is often hard to stop. Practicing for two hours when I have the luxury of the free time is really easy for me. So, the problem is not related to being uncomfortable spending time alone or anything like that. I’m guessing that the problem is that while practicing asanas makes me feel good immediately as well as after the fact, practicing meditation does not. I find it boring and aggravating during the session, and after the session I so far have not noticed any increases in equanimity or peacefulness.

Yet I still feel like this is something very worth pursuing. Did you read Ram’s post Brain Waves and Yoga this week? I found it utterly fascinating and revelatory. I originally trained to be a yoga teacher so I could help people practice yoga for emotional well-being. And when I started this blog, I had a lot of information on that topic I wanted to share. But while I had some information about why yoga helped people with stress, depression, anxiety, fear, grief, etc., for example, how about how yoga triggered the relaxation response, there were still some mysteries about how an asana session could make you feel less depressed. Then in Ram’s post, I saw this:

"Depressed, introvert people have more alpha brainwaves in the left temporal lobe, while chirpy, gregarious people have more alpha waves in the right side. Thus, yoga-associated increase of alpha brainwave in the right temporal lobe provides a natural setting to counteract stress and depression. (See Effects of yoga on brain waves and structural activation: A review.)"

Wow, it was actually mind-blowing to read that yoga changed your brain waves and that this helped counteract depression along with stress! I checked the abstract for the study, which said:

"It was concluded that breathing, meditation, and posture-based yoga increased overall brain wave activity. Increases in gray matter along with increases in amygdala and frontal cortex activation were evident after a yoga intervention. Yoga practice may be an effective adjunctive treatment for a clinical and healthy aging population."

Two points stand out. First, they studied a combination of breathing meditation, and asana, not just asana. And second they also proposed this practice for "healthy aging," which is probably due to the increases in "gray matter along with increases in amygdala and frontal cortex activation."

So many benefits! And I’d really like to dig into it that all more the future. But for now, let's look at Ram's conclusion:

“Thus, a combination of breathing practices, meditation, and asanas is sufficient to shift the brainwave pattern to a physical and mental state involving reduction in stress, anxiety, mood disturbances, and depression and improvements in mood, focus, alertness, and an over-all sense of well-being.”

Again, we're looking at a combination of practices, not just asana. So, I’d really like to add a regular meditation practice to my life to see what it does for me. Who knows what my asana practice will become as I age? And I expect to face many life challenges in the future. Meditation is something that would always be available to me, no matter what. 

What I have decided to do this time is something different. I’m going to start my practice in the new year in a public fashion by posting a meditation diary once a week. I’m hoping that making a public commitment will help me stay on track for a good while, and maybe even help other people who want to do the same. My meditation diary will be on a different blog (not here), and I will announce its location this coming Monday, so stay tuned for that. If you want to join me in starting a practice, you can comment on my diary posts with your own weekly report. This will be a kind of virtual support group! And, of course, if anyone just wants to chime in with advice, encouragement, or support of any kind, that would also be very welcome.

What do you think? Does anyone out there want to join me?


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Re: Your Request that I Stop Writing About Sexual Abuse

by Nina

Meditation, 1936 by Rene Magritte

I received the following comment on my post from yesterday Speaking Truth to Power About Sexual Abuse that concerned me:

"Please, can you stay away from this deluge of articles related to sex and sexual abuse. It has nothing to do with healthy aging. Westerners are fascinated by sex and sexual culture and YFHA is proving this true with so many articles devoted to this topic. A drum requires to be played on both sides, Same is true with all these stories. For every Guru that could not control their sensual impulses, there is a student that encouraged and advanced such behavior from the guru. Let the likes of Rain not act as puritans."

For such a short comment, it brought up so many issues. So rather than responding in the comment section, I thought I’d respond today in a second post. I will go through the comment point by point. 

1. It has nothing to do with healthy aging.

I do not agree. First, people who are sexually abused suffer from many physical and mental health problems as a result, so it harms their health. And the stress alone created by these experiences can cause serious health problems (see About Stress: Acute vs. Chronic). Second, an abusive yoga teacher will poison the experience of practicing yoga for those he has abused as well as for those who merely witness it or hear about it. This can end up robbing yoga practitioners of their practice and commitment to yoga. Karen Rain, for example, was never able to practice yoga again after her traumatic experiences. So, the abusive teacher is essentially depriving these students of being able to even have a yoga for healthy aging practice. Finally, to practice yoga for healthy aging in a productive way (after all, equanimity is an essential part of yoga for healthy aging), students need good teachers who provide them with safe spaces within which to practice.

2. Westerners are fascinated by sex and sexual culture and YFHA is proving this true with so many articles devoted to this topic.

As far as I know, there is no country on this earth, whether east or west, north or south, where rape and sexual abuse are considered normal and acceptable behavior. In fact, these acts are considered “crimes,” not “sex.” And although in the West we have ramped up our public discussion about these problems recently, partly as a result of the #MeToo movement, these issues are also being discussed worldwide. This can only be a good thing because ignoring the issue—as it has been in the past—has not proved to be a solution to this worldwide problem.

3. A drum requires to be played on both sides, Same is true with all these stories. For every Guru that could not control their sensual impulses, there is a student that encouraged and advanced such behavior from the guru.

As a yogi, a “guru” should be able to control his sensual impulses. This is done through practicing one of the yamas, brahmacharya, which is chastity or sexual restraint. As a teacher, the yoga teacher has a higher duty—regardless of temptations and/or the possible desires of his students—to insure a safe environment for his/her students. 

Of course, it is essential that yoga teachers—as well as all of us—to refrain from acting on "sensual impulses" with those who haven't explicitly consented. This is criminal behavior. 

4. Let the likes of Rain not act as puritans. 

Being against the molestation of yoga students by their teacher is not being anti-sex. Sexual acts of any kind when there is no consent are assault and are, in many cases, crimes. Please see Yoga and #MeToo: Toward A Culture With Zero Tolerance For Sexual Assault for more information.

5. Please, can you stay away from this deluge of articles related to sex and sexual abuse.

In my opinion, we are just in the beginning phases of an important conversation we need to have within the yoga community. If we are come up with real-world solutions to these problems, we need to hear both from women and men on this topic. And that includes right here on this blog.

P.S. Gratitude to my husband, Brad, who helped me with this post.


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For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Speaking Truth to Power About Sexual Abuse

by Nina

The Wisdom and Truth by Pierre-Paul Prod'hon

Have you heard about the recent very long podcast that J. Brown did with Karen Rain? Karen is one of the women that Pattahbi Jois sexually abused and I wrote about her in my post #MeToo and Yoga. Well, I actually listened to the whole thing! Because it is so long, I will summarize some of the points that stood out to me. But here it is in case you want to listen to it: 

Now here are what I found to be the highlights of the discussion:

1. Rain said forthrightly that Jois was not a great yogi. In addition to sexually abusing as many as 1,000 women, he lied, cheated, and stole money. He was immoral and didn’t teach or practice the yamas. I think that's such an important point.
2. Rain said that the problems with sexual abuse are partly due to the current culture in the yoga world, which is paternalistic. In a paternalistic yoga culture, the teacher always knows what is best for you and the students will often ignore their own intuition and simply follow the teacher’s instructions. What is needed is a consent culture, in which the student knows what is best for themselves. Carey Sims expressed this very well in his post The Importance of Inquiry and Agency in the Asana Practice. 
3. After years of being silent and feeling like Jois robbed her of what was meaningful to her, Rain said she is feeling energized and hopeful because she is now speaking truth to power. I found this empowering and inspiring, and I hope many other people, of all genders, will, too. 
4. The podcast ended with a second discussion, which was requested by Rain and moderated by her, rather than him. After having listened to the other discussions J. Brown had on his podcast with other Ashtanga yoga teachers, Rain felt that he had been sexist in his approaches to the teachers, lobbing softballs to the men or letting them get away with non-responses while being much more forceful and aggressive with the women. And the accusations that about Jois that Anneke Lucas made during the discussion with her were downplayed by Brown. 

Finally, are you wondering, why is Nina writing about Patthabi Jois and sexual abuse again? In the podcast, Rain mentioned the problem of how sexual abuse accusations briefly get a lot of attention and then fade away, so that future students aren’t even aware of problems that were once reported about teachers. I've seen this play out in the SF Bay Area with Manouso Manos. In the 1991, the San Jose Mercury actually did an expose of him and his habit of molesting women in his classes during the 80s (see Betrayal of Trust”: 1991 Mercury News Investigation of Sexual Assault Allegations Against Manouso Manos). According to this article, B.K.S. Iyengar “asked the community to forgive Manos.” And it said that in October 1990, the S.F. institute’s board of directors voted to reinstate him.

Once Manos was reinstated, the story kind of faded away and women who were unfamiliar with the old accusations, like Ann West, who in 2013 was groped by Manos in a class, felt safe to study with him. 

(By the way, one of the teachers who resigned from the SF Iyengar Institute faculty after that vote was my future main teacher, Donald Moyer. Donald later told us this entire story about Iyengar and Manouso during my teacher training.) 

After hearing Karen Rain talk briefly about this problem, I wrote down on a piece of paper “We have to keep this topic alive.” So, in that spirit, I’m going to share a list of teachers who have been accused of sexual abuse some of whom there are stories about that are fading away: A List of Yoga Scandals Involving Gurus, Teachers, Students, Sex and Other Inappropriate Behaviour.

Do I know for sure that all the accusations in this list are true? No, I do not. However, while it is never the fault of a “victim” if they have been sexually abused—so I don’t want to imply that I blame anyone for studying with the wrong teacher—if you want to intentionally avoid predators or being part of a lineage that still venerates a predator, there are steps you can take. Vet your teachers in advance. Do some research. Ask teachers that you do respect for their honest assessments. Ask other students who have studied with the teacher in very frank terms. And if you do take a class and get any kind of icky feelings, no matter what kind of reputation that teacher might have, follow your intuition and leave! 

The goal of yoga is Kaivalya, independency and not wrong devotion. —R. Sriram 

Here are some other posts I’ve written on sexual abuse in the yoga world. 

In my post Yoga Teachers Who Abuse Their Students I discussed the benefits of finally talking about these issues in the yoga community, both for the healing of individuals who experienced abuse and for making changes in institutions and communities to prevent future abuse. 

In #MeToo with Names I discuss the KQED article about SF Bay Area teachers who are mentioned by name, Manouso Manos, Zubin Shroff, and Allan Nett. 

In Yoga Nidra, Satyananda Saraswati, and Sexual Abuse I discuss the credible evidence that Satyananda as well as several of his disciples were involved in sexually abusing students and even children at the Bihar School of Yoga Ashram.

In Abuse of Power in the Yoga World I discuss the accusations against Kasthub Desikachar, and quote R. Sriram’s advice about the role of the teacher and the student and his recommendations about yoga the Viniyoga community should deal with Kasthub.


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For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Four Ways to Survive the Holidays (Rerun)

by Nina

Hegel's Holiday by Rene Magritte*

We’re quickly moving into the full-blown, end of the year holiday season that is Thanksgiving followed by Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa and topped off by New Year’s Eve. For many of us, this time of year is very challenging. We have too much to do. We’re traveling through snow and rain to get some place and then a few days after that slogging home again. And when we’re together for days at a time with family members, old behavior patterns and conflicts can raise their ugly heads. Or maybe we can’t be with family—or don’t have one—so the whole season looks nothing like at all like a Hollywood movie. And yet there are always those expectations for having a “wonderful” time. So it’s no wonder this time of year many of us experience disappointment and sadness, not to mention stress and anxiety.

But this year we have our whole yoga toolbox at our fingertips, so I’m sure we can all do a better job of surviving these challenges with a measure of equanimity and grace.

After some thought, I’ve decided to suggest a two-part strategy. The first is to use the wisdom of yoga to change your attitude toward the holidays. It seems that in great part it is our plans going awry or hopes being crushed that cause so much emotional difficulty during this time. By changing your attitude, you can do your best not to get stressed out in the first place. Then because, well, some amount of stress is inevitable—even when we trying our best not to let things get to us, we tend to crack once in a while—you can use your favorite yoga stress reduction techniques to calm yourself  down and quiet your mind.

YOGA TIPS FOR SURVIVING THE HOLIDAYS

 1. Consider your attachment to your plans and hopes for the holidays.

The Yoga Sutras tells us in sutra 3.3 that attachment to pleasure and aversion to pain are two of the “afflictions” that cause human suffering.

And it seems to me that one of the pleasures we become attached to is our fantasies about how our lives will turn out (see Attachment (Raga) to Our Ideas About Ourselves). So start by recognizing your attachment to your plans and hopes for the holiday season. And admit to yourself that your attachment to those plans IS an affliction. (As I wrote in Attachment (Raga) to Our Ideas About Ourselves, I sometimes think we cling to our attachments in a form of magical thinking, because we feel as if holding on to our plans and hopes will make some kind of magic that will allow us to obtain what we desire.) Then see if you can work your way to letting go of some of those attachments. 

And maybe the discomfort we feel while traveling and while witnessing—or even participating in—family conflicts is pain to which we feel aversion. Can you try to shift your thinking a bit about whether the suffering these situations causes you is inevitable? 

As the Bhagavad Gita says, “When a man has mastered himself, he is perfectly at ease in cold, in heat, in pleasure or pain, in honor or disgrace.” And speaking of family members, the Gita says this, too:

He looks impartially on all:
those who love him or hate him,
his kinsmen, his enemies, his friends

the good, and also the wicked.

2. Go ahead with your plans, but do your work with “detachment” or “skill in actions,” as the Gita recommends. 

The wise man lets go of all

results, whether good or bad,

and is focused on the action alone.

Yoga is skill in actions.

So take your trip, help with all that cooking, give your gifts, spend time with your family members, and open your home to others, all without worrying about success or failure. This is the combination of active engagement and acceptance that we’ve been writing about since the early days of the blog (see What We Need to Practice and Acceptance, Active Engagement, and the Bhagavad Gita), which is the way to achieve equanimity in your everyday life. And equanimity is definitely something we can all use a bit more during the holidays.

3. Practice yoga for stress management to quiet your nervous system and your mind.

Reducing your stress levels will support your ability to put the wisdom of yoga in to practice. After all, yoga’s relaxing practices, including meditation and pranayama, were developed specifically to help quiet the mind so a yogic approach toward life would be possible. See The Relaxation Response and Yoga. For those who are pressed for time, here are a few suggestions: 

• Mini Restorative Practice (see Featured Sequence: Mini Restorative Practice)
• One or more Supported Inverted Poses (see All About Supported Inverted Poses)
• Meditation session (see Starting a Meditation Practice)
• Body Scan or Yoga Nidra (see Audio Tracks for guided versions by Baxter)
• Breath Practices that calm you (see Friday Q&A: Breath Practices for Anxiety)

4. Let contentment lead to joy.  

Both Ram and I have written about cultivating santosha as an important part of yoga practice (see Santosha: Happiness and Longevity and Yoga and the Pursuit of Happiness). Santosha means "contentment" and TKV Desikachar defines contentment as "the ability to be comfortable with what we have and what we do not have."

To help you cultivate contentment, the Yoga Sutras recommends meditation, pranayama (breath practices) and detachment. And then there’s this:

1.33 Through cultivation of friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference to pleasure and pain, virtue and vice respectively, the consciousness becomes favorably disposed, serene and benevolent.

Well, that certainly seems like a good approach for the holiday season. So I wish you joy—no matter what your plans are this year.


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For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Friendly Reminder: We All Age, Too

by Nina

“Just as this is not the best of all possible worlds, your body is not the best of all possible bodies. But it’s the only one you’ll ever have, and it’s worth enjoying, nurturing, and protecting. “ —Daniel E. Lieberman from The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease 

You know how we have to be reminded—even through it is obvious—that we’re all going to die? 

Well, I think it’s also worth reminding everyone that if we make it to adulthood, we’re all going to age. No matter what race you are, you will age. No matter whether you are thin or have a larger body, you will age. No matter what your sexual orientation or gender identity is, you will age. No matter whether you are fully able-bodied or have a disability of some kind, you will age. No matter whether you are basically in good health or have a chronic disease, you will age. Whatever kind of body you have, right here and right now, that body will age. 

So that’s why practicing yoga for healthy aging is essential self-care for everyone. Most of us, no matter what kind of body we start with, can work on strength, flexibility, balance, agility, and cardiovascular health for whatever body parts we have that can move, even in a limited fashion. For example, here is a video from the Accessible Yoga YouTube channel of a chair sequence for improving balance: 

And all of us who have an active brain can work on stress management, brain health, and equanimity. 

For example, suppose you have a serious chronic illness, as my friend Liz does (see The Biochemical Basis for a Gratitude Practice). She practices yoga and meditation for her peace of mind, which improves the quality of her life. But she also “nurtures” and “protects” her body by using the asana practice, as well as walking, for its physical benefits to help maintain the body she has. I’m always inspired to see how well she cares for herself! 

I thought about this after reading Jivana’s post Yoga and Human Rights, when he quoted Audre Lorde:

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” 

From my point of view "caring" for yourself includes nurturing your body—the only one you'll ever have—as well as your soul.


Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.


For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Achieving a Flow State with an Asana Practice

by Nina

The Willows on the River by Claude Monet

In yesterday’s post The Benefits of Distraction: Tetris vs. Yoga, I wrote that yoga was a better alternative than Tetris (and other similar forms of distraction) for getting into a flow state to help with anxiety, worry, and other negative emotions. But how exactly do you use yoga for this purpose? With meditation and pranayama, obviously you just practice as you normally would. But how would you achieve this state with your asana practice? Can you just do any asana practice at all? Or, are there some basic requirements that you will need to meet?

Yeah, I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that you can’t just quickly run through a random set of poses while watching TV. But the basic requirements—as I figure it—are not too demanding:

1. Practice at the right level of challenge for you.

2. Practice mindfully, with a mental focus.

Let’s take a closer look at both of these requirements.

Practicing at the Right Level for You

There needs to be some level of challenge in your practice if you want to achieve flow. Ram put it this way:

“When one is engaged in an activity where the challenge matches the individual’s skill, that is, when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenging task.”

So, while there is a time and place for doing restorative yoga or just enjoying your favorite basic poses, a super comfy, easy practice won’t engage your mind completely. (The only caveat to this being that if you did those practices with your mind well focused on your breath, that would might also work. But, remember, the goal here is "distraction" and "flow" not just physical relaxation.)

On the other hand, if your practice is too challenging (something we don’t recommend doing anyway) that will lead more to frustration than flow.

In fact, in the study A better distraction: Exploring the benefits of flow during uncertain waiting periods. discussed briefly yesterday, they tested the subjects with three different levels of Tetris: very easy, very challenging, and just challenging enough. 

So, we’re basically in Goldilocks territory, with you yourself needing to figure out what kind of practice is “just right” for you. And you might have to do some testing, as Goldilocks did. But, if you haven’t read our post How to Stay Safe While Practicing Yoga, you should check that out. Because you definitely want to follow those guidelines to help you know when you should back off on the challenging poses or practices.

Finding a Mental Focus

While there are many benefits you can get from practicing yoga poses with a wandering mind or one that is distracted by music, radio, or TV, to get into a flow state you need to do your poses mindfully, which requires both concentration and practicing without self judgment. There are many different ways to practice asanas mindfully, so, again, like Goldilocks, you may need to experiment to see what engages your mind the best. And, in fact, you may need to change up what you do, as doing it the same way will probably create a routine quality that begins to bore you a bit.

For general information on practicing yoga mindfully, see Practicing Yoga Mindfully. In this post, you can learn about how Jon Kabat-Zinn recommends practicing yoga poses mindfully.

For information on how to practice breath awareness, which is always a good way to have a mental focus in just about any pose, see A Balm for the Soul: Practicing Simple Breath Awareness. If you're stuck in a rut with the way you currently practice breath awareness or if doing so makes you anxious, check out this post for ideas of other ways to do it.

For information on various ways to use your seven senses as a point of focus, see Coming to Your Senses in Yoga Poses. If you haven't read this post, you may be surprised to learn how many senses we actually have and what a variety of ways there are to use them as we practice.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

The Benefits of Distraction: Tetris vs. Yoga

by Nina

These seem like particularly anxious times (I had trouble concentrating on my work yesterday, did you?). But even when they are not, there is always plenty to worry about. Fortunately, according to some scientists, playing Tetris can help. They proved this in a kind of silly sounding study A better distraction: Exploring the benefits of flow during uncertain waiting periods., published in the Journal “Emotion,” where they made people anxious by telling them they were going to be rated on their attractiveness and then had them play Tetris while they were waiting to be assessed, if indeed they were ever assessed because the playing Tetris part was the actual assessment. 

So why am I telling you about this? I don’t even like Tetris, myself, though I realize it has many fans. But what interested me about this story, which I heard on NPR, Can't Stop Worrying? Try Tetris To Ease Your Mind, was that the scientists picked Tetris because playing it at the right level puts you into a flow state, which Kate Sweeny, UCR researcher, defined as, “"The state of flow is one where you're completely absorbed or engaged in some kind of activity. You lose your self-awareness, and time is just flying by." And that’s what they were actually trying to study—whether being in a flow state would reduce anxiety. Their conclusion was that, yes, it does. 

“The Tetris study is key because it experimentally manipulates flow and shows effects of that manipulation, which provides convincing evidence that flow actually causes well-being during waiting periods, not that it just happens to coincide with well-being.” —Kate Sweeny

And I remembered from Ram's post Positive Psychology vs. Yoga Philosophy what a flow state is and how he concluded that yoga was the perfect way to get into that state: 

“The breath work, concentration, precise alignment, the controlling power of how hard you’re pushing yourself—all of this puts an individual in a flow state. It was as though Patanjali designed the entire yoga philosophy to provide a flow experience.” 

Of course, I have been saying for ever so long that yoga can help with negative emotions, including stress, anxiety, depression, sadness, etc., partly because the mindful way you practice provides a break or distraction from the difficult emotions you are experiencing in your everyday life. And distraction is exactly how the scientists identified the benefits of playing Tetris. Here’s a quote from the abstract of the study itself: 

“A worrisome period of uncertainty frequently precedes important life events, and many of the coping strategies people employ during such waiting periods are ineffective. Distraction can be efficacious, but individuals awaiting uncertain news often fail to lose themselves in a sufficiently diverting activity. Across three studies—two observational and one experimental—we test whether flow-inducing activities provide a better distraction and improve the waiting experience.” 

The thing is yoga offers so much more than just distraction, including improving physical skills (strength, flexibility, balance, and agility), stress management, brain health, cardiovascular and heart health, and pain management and other medical benefits, not to mention increased equanimity and contentment. So, yoga seems like a much more effective choice when you need distraction from anxiety and worry, especially because of its long-term benefits. However I do admit that getting into a flow state with Tetris is a bit more portable than yoga because while you can practice everywhere and anywhere, it’s not always possible to get into a flow state while you are, for example waiting in line to vote or at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or even on a plane while you are crammed in between two strangers. In those cases, Tetris might be a good option, so if you love Tetris, go for it! 

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

All About Inverted Yoga Poses

by Nina

Although you might think of an “inverted” yoga pose as one where you are completely upside down, such as Handstand, Headstand, and Shoulderstand, any yoga pose where your heart is higher than your head is considered an inverted pose. That means there are three basic types of inversions:

1. Full inversions, where your whole body is completely inverted, as in Headstand.
2. Partial inversions, where your heart is directly above your head (or almost) but only part of your body is inverted, as in Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana), Wide-Legged Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottanasana), and Plow pose.
3. Gentle inversions, where your heart is only slightly above your head, as in Bridge pose, Downward-Facing Dog pose, and Legs Up the Wall pose.

The reason we group all these poses together is that any pose where your heart is higher than your head has a special quieting effect on your nervous system, which makes the poses especially calming (assuming you are comfortable in the pose, of course). You can find out why this happens in my post Why You Should Love Your Baroreceptors They are also good for heart health and circulation as gravity helps return venous fluids back to your heart (see Appreciating Your Entire Cardiovascular System).

Personally, I love all these poses and have found practicing them very beneficial for times when I’m feeling stressed. And because these poses are also beneficial for circulation, especially when your legs are inverted, I’ve been practicing them regularly for my varicose veins. 

However, some of the full inverted poses, such as Headstand and Shoulderstand, can pose risks for certain people. And not everyone should be practicing poses that affect their blood pressure (which inversions do). Don’t panic, however, as you’ll find that most people can safely do the gentle inversions, no matter what. Fortunately, we have a lot of information on our blog on the benefits of these poses, how to practice them, and safety issues related to them.

First, I’ll start with background information about the poses themselves. Maybe this will help you discover some new ways to reduce your stress! Then I’ll provide links to the articles on inverted poses and sequences that utilize them. Finally, I’ll conclude with posts about cautions and safety issues for practicing them. 

About Inverted Poses

In Just in Time for the Holidays I discuss the value of practicing inverted poses and why I’m such a fan of them.

In Why You Should Love Your Baroreceptors I provide the anatomical/medical background that explains exactly why inverted poses can be so calming for your nervous system.

In Techniques for Improving Cardiovascular and Heart Health Baxter and I provide tips for using inverted poses for heart and cardiovascular health.

In All About Supported Inversions I discuss the value of practicing the supported versions of all the inverted poses and provide photos and descriptions of all of them.

In Low Pressure Tactics Victor describes how he practiced inverted poses, among other things, to help lower his blood pressure.

Practicing Inverted Poses

Because we don’t want to instruct people via writing about how to practice full Headstand, Shoulderstand, and Plow pose, we don’t have information on how to practice those on our poses on our blog. For instructions, you should consult an experienced teacher who can teach you in person. However, we do have information on the supported versions of Shoulderstand and Plow. Here are the posts that describe how to do individual poses:

Featured Pose: Downward-Facing Dog Pose (For Downward-Facing Dog pose with head support, see Featured Sequence: Easy Supported Inverted Practice.)

Featured Pose: Standing Forward Bend 

Featured Pose: Wide-Legged Forward Bend

Featured Pose: Chair Shoulderstand

Featured Pose: Half Plow Pose

Featured Pose: Bridge Pose 

Featured Pose: Legs Up the Wall Pose

Featured Pose: Easy Inverted Pose 

Here are two sequences that use inverted poses:

Featured Sequence: Easy Supported Inverted Practice

Featured Sequence: Inverted Heart Health Practice

See All About Supported Inversions for recommendations on how to sequence inverted poses.

Safety and Inverted Poses

In Friday Q&A: Caution for Inversions I provide information about who should not be practicing which inverted poses or who should approach them with caution.

In How to Stay Safe While Practicing Yoga I provide generally information about staying safe while practicing yoga, all of which applies to the inverted poses.

In the following posts, Baxter addresses safety issues related specifically to Headstand:

Friday Q&A: The Safety of Headstand (Sirsasana)

Friday Q&A: Ostepenia of the Spine and Headstand

Friday Q&A: Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICD) and Yoga

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

A Yoga Pose for My Dental Hygienist

by Nina

I’ve been seeing the same two dental hygienists, Deb and Gail, for 32 years now. So, when I visit every six months, they check in with me a bit about my life, especially about what my kids are doing these days (they used to treat my kids, too, when they lived at home). But the conversations are never long, and I never really said anything about what my work was or how I spent my days. Yesterday, that changed.

While Gail was working on me, a woman—I guess it was Deb—came up behind me and whispered, “Congratulations on the book!” I couldn’t reply because, well, you know, my mouth was full of stuff. But Gail said, “What book? Did you write a book?” Then she paused what she was doing so I could reply, “Yes. It’s called Yoga for Healthy Aging.”

She then resumed what she was doing and started telling me that she really should start doing yoga. She had already had a good experience with it. Until lately, even though being a dental hygienist is really hard on the body, she had been holding up really well. But some months ago she started having some pain in her hip. When it didn’t go away, she finally decided to look up hip stretches on the internet and she had found a yoga pose that really helped her, within the first few days, even. Now the pain was good.

But she went on to say (you know how those conversations go—for most of the time they are one sided) that she was concerned about keeping her body healthy as she aged, especially because of the position she worked in, where she was bending forward all the time in a very asymmetrical position. When she had me rinse, I replied that, yes, yoga could help with that. Then, as she resumed work on me, I decided to come up with just one pose she could do during the day at work that would be a counter pose to her working position and that would help restore the symmetry of her body. I toyed for a while with the idea of a Standing Cobra pose, with hands on the edge of a sink, which would be a backbend to balance her body from all the forward bend, I decided in the end that Half Downward-Facing Dog pose would be a better idea. It would get her arms overhead, open her chest, stretch the backs of her legs, and stretch her back muscles evenly and symmetrically. Then in the remaining time I thought about where in the office she could do the pose. There was no space in the room where she worked. And the door to the waiting room couldn’t be blocked because people might need to come in. But—wait!—in the vestibule between the waiting room and the room where she worked there was a counter with plenty of room in front of it. 

So, after she was done with her work and I was ready to go (no cavities!), she told me she was going to buy the book. I said, if I had known she wanted one, I would have brought one. But, I said, I was going to teach her one pose she could do during the day on her breaks that she might find helpful. I quickly demonstrated the pose for her and then had her do it herself. After she tried it, she looked very pleased and said she could feel what a good stretch it was! And I was happy to be able to give her this little gift after all the work she has done caring for me and my family over the years.

I mentioned that the pose was in the book using the wall like this:

But when there is no wall space available, you can do this pose with hands on countertop, table, or even the back of a chair. Have you ever tried it this way?

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.