Strength and Flexibility
Men often come to the studio owning strength and needing flexibility. Women usually arrive lissome and bendy, with nary a muscle bulging on arm or thigh. Yoga is a chance to get balanced. You leverage strength to get flexible, and use your flexibility to build muscle.
Sometimes the instructions cue the benefit. This is the case in standing hands to feet pose. The teachers explain that pulling hard with your hands, with as much force as you can muster, will stretch the back. Likewise in floor bow, kicking backward forcefully opens the shoulders, the teachers explain, adding range of motion.
It’s less obvious how flexibility can build strength. But it does. The more deeply you flex sideways in half-moon pose, the more muscle you build in the abs holding your curve. The more tightly you wrap your legs in eagle, the more you can bend your knee, strengthening the weight-bearing thigh.
The practice is full of opposites that benefit each other. It’s part of the magic. How pushing yourself to the limit relaxes you. How getting sweaty cleanses you. And the practice balances you in other ways. People who are too thin gain muscle mass. Those with excess fat get streamlined. Those with insomnia eventually sleep through the night, and sluggards wake earlier, with more energy.
Bikram is known for saying, “Don’t let anyone steal your peace.” Which is to say, keep your balance. The jerk who angers you, the injustice that saddens you, even the material prize that elates you—to succumb to these feelings is to be off-balance. Balance is to see the idiocy, see the unfairness, see the victory, pause, note, reflect, maybe act—but stay on your own path, true to your own self, with a calm mind. Stay balanced.
All the balancing poses in the series? That’s to learn what balance feels like, to assert your strength against gravity, to preserve peace in the strangest circumstances. Controlling the body to maintain balance is the first step to doing the same with the mind.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
Attitude of Gratitude
Yoga teachers often tout practicing gratitude along with our triangles. One will start class saying how lucky we are to be able to practice— so we must cherish the money, time, health, nearby studio, and values that bring us to our mats. Another teacher is fond of saying during savasana, “If you are feeling anything other than gratitude right now, stop it.”
They’re on to something. A recent article in The New York Times summarized modern research on appreciation:“Cultivating an ‘attitude of gratitude’ has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked….”
I practice gratitude every morning and evening. It keeps the blues away. Gratitude quashes “I want a guy, I want wealth, I want . . . .” Whine, whine. Gratitude boots the depressed “I lack” out the door. And really, pining is boring, and silly. Who cares about the counterfactual anyway?
I’m not picky or creative about picking blessings. Some days, I go profound, like concentrating on my healthy children, not being a women in Iraq, or having eyes. My two feet are a great treasure—I thank fate for them when walking the dog, especially when I have Riverside Park all to myself in the evening. Strangers constantly tell me how lucky I am to have such a wonderful dog. I’m grateful, guys. Let it be known. Sometimes I cherish the coffee in my freezer, and savor my morning café au lait. Sometimes I appreciate my electric toothbrush, and I brush harder along my gums.
I have a new reason these days: I just spent a month whipping like a ping-pong ball between mind-numbing pain and mind-numbing painkillers. Now, free of that and strong enough for class, I appreciate being pain-free. I am absurdly happy arriving at the studio. I go all out in class.
I’ve got my feet and my body. I’m grateful. I’m happy. Try it.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
Pain, Pain, Go Away
Bikram says we must welcome any suffering during practice, as it eases the suffering we face in life, which may seem like peanuts both in comparison and because we’ve practiced endurance.
This is true.
I have been bemoaning my lack of a yoga mind for many a blog now, but after two recent brushes with pain, I’m elated to report I’ve got the grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it part down pat. Get down on your knees and say halleluyah!
The first incident was my first tattoo. (Go ahead, wonder what I had inscribed. I ain’t telling, but hint, hint: What would a yoga geek choose?) The tattoo artist promised me 15 minutes if I held still. As he began, I clutched my daughter’s arm, hellbent on staying frozen stiff.
What went through my mind? “It’s just fifteen minutes. You can do anything for fifteen minutes.” Now if you’ve hung out in the Bikram studio long enough, you know this echoes the instructions for balancing stick: “It’s just ten seconds. You can do anything for ten seconds.” I held so still so well, my inkster asked, “Didn’t you tell me this was your first tat?”
If you choose to do something unpleasant, it’s automatically less unpleasant simply because you chose it–psychology 101. So I did not leap to any self-congratulatory pride in a strong yoga mind, as I had chosen that pain.
A few months later pain forced itself on me. I fell into the clutches of an evil medical condition so painful the doctor prescribed heaping quantities of oxycontin every six hours. Waking up in the mornings, the six hours long over, the pain was excruciating.
I stayed calm and did not cry. I swallowed pills and awaited relief, which took 15 minutes on an empty stomach. You can do anything for fifteen minutes, I would say, brush your teeth. Twelve minutes, take the dog out. Five minutes, make the coffee, feed the cat. The pain strangled me throb by throb, but breath by breath, I knew, my cells knew, that each throb was one more done and past, one less to endure.
So add to the list of reasons to welcome suffering as a gift: It’s a chance to practice strength.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
Abs
Teachers constantly say “suck in the stomach”. I have constantly neglected to. Until recently. Most of my blubber is on my abdomen so I am trying to trim it by plying the muscles in the area– the core, what Pilates calls “the box”.
Almost every posture offers work for the abdominal muscles. In the first breathing exercise, the abdominals have a chance to grip the spine and act as strong as a pillar. In half moon, the challenge is to hew to the straightness and length while curving. The curve is an enormous burn. The abs must open sideways like a Slinky going downstairs. This move gives a streamlined line to the abs.
In the first awkward chair, the abs serve as a pedestal bearing the weight of the back arching backwards. In the second and third awkward chair, gripping the stomach in and the back straight shifts the load-bearing work from the legs to the abs.
The two most intense ab exercises in the series are the sit-up and tortoise. The torso, head, and arms are raised 180 degrees by the sit up, which we do, I think, 12 times per class. I begin situps by hauling all my ab muscles in to my spine, then pressing the heels to the floor with all the force of the legs. Though we are supposed to do the sit-ups fast, I prolong it to work the muscles more.
Tortoise can allow you to deploy the abs to descend and rise slowly. You keep the back flat, suck in the abs and use them to lower and lift yourself on, like a freight elevator.
I do not know if working harder in an area reduces fat there—though it must build muscles—but trying harder requires more calories so it is a win-win situation.
By far, the two most interesting ways to use the abs are in triangle and the final spinal twist. In triangle, if you pull in the entire abdominal wall, it takes weight off your legs, while making your torso work much harder. It also give the triangle a much straighter hypotenuese. And in the twist, pulling in the abs helps keep the spine straight and allows you to raise the back hand to the thigh, which makes the pose a strength exercise rather than just a stretch.
At this point, I have removed some blubber. Sometimes a snaky line emerges of the outer rim of the six pack. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I love the liquid way my hips move these days.
Namaste,
Yoga Lily
© 2012 Postcards From The Heat. Powered by Wordpress.
