Report Card: March 16-17, 2009 & Wishes for Yoga for Seniors

I still have not resumed formal yoga classes with my teacher. Instead I have been doing self yoga just to keep my muscles exercised.

Yesterday, I went beyond my normal 2-3 lap warmup walk on the treadmill and went for 1.6kms of brisk walking in preparation for this Saturday’s Walk a Green Mile Walkathon with Ipanema. That took me all of 25 minutes. And my stamina was still up afterwards. That’s a good sign!

I went through a 1.5 hour yoga routine — slowly, at my own pace, breathing slowly, trying to get the asana right. This is the part I enjoy. I have all the time to get into the pose without having to follow the teacher’s count. This way, I can take it slow and easy but still reap the benefits of holding the pose and sweating it out.

A difficulty I noted at certain points of my practice was a pain I had on the inner right thigh running from the crotch area to the knee. I felt that pain doing Trikonasana (Triangle) and the Wide-Angle Forward Bend so I ended up modifying my poses and easing up whenever I felt the pain. It seems like my muscles here have become inflexible once more so it will take patience to work out the kinks once again and bring flexibility back.

This week, I plan to resume formal yoga classes. Maybe that will help me get back into shape faster.

On another bright note, I had the chance to talk about my yoga experience with friends who are in the prime of life. One of them is into Taebo, a regimen she took up after retiring from work. But she confessed that it did not seem enough as she felt not all her muscles were being exercised. I showed her some easy yoga asanas she could do and she seemed really interested in taking up yoga.

This brings me though to a thought because I believe that those starting yoga at her age should not be placed in classes with students half their age. They should be in gentle yoga classes — those cut out for senior citizens or maybe for those 50 and above who are just testing the waters of yoga. And the program has to be tailored to certain concerns at that age — how to combat the onset of osteoporosis, achieving balance to avoid falls, building mass and reducing fat, and gland disorders, among others. And the poses must all be modified and easy, at least until they can become comfortable moving to the next level.

But most yoga classes being offered are too intensive for their age category!

I hope I can find a studio that is willing to take up a program for this category of students in the future. Yoga benefits people of ALL ages and the ones who really need it most are those who have led stressful, unhealthy, inflexible lives and are just realizing it at this point in their senior lives and wish to reverse at least part of the consequences.

Namaste.

Tonight’s Yoga: Arm & Core Strengtheners, Partner Yoga Backbends

Here’s a run-up of some stuff we did in yoga class today:

ARM STRENGTHENERS

Pio told us today that the difference between men and women is this. Men have upper arm strength; women are more flexible. This is why I guess men go for the pumping iron kind of workouts while women gravitate towards pilates and yoga.

But Pio also said something tonight. What we often do not want to do as an exercise or pose is oftentimes what we need. So while men like to do weights and upper torso pumping machines, what they actually need is to do exercises for flexibility. Conversely, women like us who are naturally flexible should work on strengthening our upper arms in order to do more advanced yoga asanas.

This mini-lecture on arm strengthening then led to us doing the Side Plank Yoga Pose (Vasisthasana in Sanskrit).

Side Plank Pose-basic (Vasisthasana)

This pose looks easy but wait till you do it. There are 2 things to note when trying this asana:

1. For beginners, its best to start with one knee on the floor, the other leg straight behind you. Then you go into the Triangle pose with one hand on the floor, the other above it in T-form.

2. Next, once you are grounded, straighten the bent knee and cross that leg over the straight one or, like the picture above, both feet are stacked one on top of the other.

In doing this pose, you need to watch the following:

1. See the supporting arm? It is in a direct L-angle with the hand which is palm flat on the floor with fingers spread apart. The L-shape allows part of the body weight to shift and be firmly supported by that angle.

2. The length of the leg nearest the floor should not collapse downward. Rather one should push it upward to shift some body weight and redistribute it all over the body so that the supporting arm does not catch it all.

The first time you try this, you may notice your supporting arm wobbling. It means the arm has not yet built enough strength to carry your body weight. In time, you will find yourself getting steadier and steadier in this pose.

Over time, the goal is to be able to strengthen the arms enough in order to go into this more advanced pose:

Side Plank Pose (advanced)

* * * * *

CORE STRENGTHENERS

Mula Bandha (or the core) is very important. It is key to being able to do the headstands, arm balances and other poses that require core strength.

Tonight, Pio made us do the Boat Pose in different variations:

1. Balancing on one’s sitting bones with legs raised in V-shape while you hold your big toes.

2. Shifting from the V-pose to pulling both legs together. Legs are still straight out while you are balanced on your sitting bones.

3. While in position #2, pull both straight legs nearer to your forehead as in this pose:

….and thanks to the quick eye of my yogini friend Chona, she was able to capture my first attempt at this pose with her camera… (thanks, Chon!)

Frame-by-frame Dhanurasana attempt with Pio coaching me

* * * * *

PARTNER YOGA BACKBENDS

Difficulty with backbends including the Bow can best be practiced with a partner.

Bow Pose (Dhanurasana)

Pio was my partner for this. And thank goodness, because backbends are one of my difficult areas!

He made me do the Bow pose while he stood behind me with bent legs. I was made to hook my feet around the back of his knees as he held me around the shoulders. Then he slowly straightened his legs, making him pull my shoulders back to make my back curve even more so that the Bow pose looks more like a letter U.

Backbends run counter pose to what I do all day at the office — bend forward on my desk. So I am thankful Pio helped me with this pose tonight.

Ouch!!! I am now nursing sores in the lower back areas which had to be bent this way and that but I am hopeful that with constant practice and the aid of a partner, flexibility in doing backbends can still be achieved.

Sweet and Sweaty Yoga Class

It almost seemed like ages since I did yoga at my yoga center with my teacher, Pio Baquiran.

I had been caught up in so much work that did not allow me to leave the office in time to get to Ortigas. Many times, I ended up taking classes at Yoga Manila, which was not really a bad alternative as I could do either basic Ashtanga or Mysore. Yoga Manila was just behind my office building.

Last week, even this was not feasible due to my work load so I found myself doing self yoga at home. Today, I realized I was missing out on the energies of my yogini friends and tell the truth, I kind of missed my teacher’s instructions and adjustments.

So with time to spare today, I gave Chona a call and we agreed to meet up earlier, then do a 7pm class.

Tuesdays and Thursdays at Vinyasa Yoga Center are intermediate classes. People coming to this class should expect nothing less than a sweaty class filled with deepening poses.

Yes, true to its word, this was indeed a sweaty, deepening, gruelling class. But I was surprised that despite my long absence and not-so-tiring self yoga, I managed to pace myself in class today. Pio has already been introducing new and deeper poses. And tonight’s pace was FAST!

But what I liked about class today was the fact that he would come over to me frequently to adjust and deepen my asanas. Thank you, my dear teacher, for welcoming me back into the fold and assisting me with the poses which you still remember cause me great difficulty.

In our previous yoga event for bloggers, Francis told me in a video interview we did that he found the class sweet and sweaty. That is how I describe tonight’s class. SWEET and SWEATY!

Here are some pictures of the more difficult stuff we tried out today:

Salabhasana (Full Locust)

Matsyasana (Fish pose - deeper variation)

Parivritta Parsvakonasana (Revolved Side Angle)

Tittibhasana (Firefly, variation C)

Parivrtta Janu Sirsasana (Revolved Head-to-Knee)

Hanumanasana (Monkey Pose)

Urdvha Mukha Paschimottanasana (Upward Facing Seated Forward Bend)

Parivrtta Parsvakonasana (Revolved Lunge Twist)

Wii YOGA!!!

I was having lunch with Juned and Jayvee last week at La Maison in Greenbelt 5 when Jayvee, a super techie guy who blogs about anything techie (AND did the Crane Pose in his first yoga class ever!!!) mentioned to me that the Wii Fit, the newest techie “toy” in town, includes yoga.

My thought bubble: You must be kidding! How can you ever do yoga on a skateboard-sized mat?

Well, this is what I found out about this thingamajig:

- the Balance Board, as it is called, is actually more than just a scale. It can read your movements and bring this to life on the screen. Of course, as with the other exercises that go with the Wii Fit, it allows you to set your physical properties, training goals, and history of your activity results.

- an animated yogi (or yogini, if you choose) demonstrates the poses and you are supposed to follow along while listening to a voice-over of the trainer.

- Yellow circles set the boundaries for the center of gravity. As you do a pose, the Board detects where you are putting pressure and moves the ball accordingly. You need to try to keep that ball within the yellow circle.

- At the end of each pose, how you do on the left and right side is evaluated through a numerical rating (the closer the ratings to each other, the more balanced you are). An overall grade is also given so this seems pretty useful during yoga competitions among friends.

As a practicing yogini who is also a bit techie, this gadget holds some fascination. But would I go out tomorrow and buy it? No, I don’t think so.

This is a FUN thing to do among friends and may be the only hope to get couch potatoes out of the uhhhh…couch.

But if you are a serious yoga practitioner, this won’t give you the workout that you get from the real thing. Moving around, jumping and hopping like I do during my yoga practice can never be done on this teeny-weeny electronic board. I cannot even imagine how I would do the Shoulderstand or Headstand on this contraption.

I think I will wait this one out and see what happens. Maybe I will just go a-looking for a blogger friend who has one and do some tests on it (Jayvee, call me when you get one!).

But for those of you who are dying to get your hands on this thing and are wondering how yoga is done on the Wii Fit, watch this YouTube video:

Privates Do What Regulars Can’t

Chona called me a few weeks ago to ask if I would like to join them in a 5-some private class with Tesa of Pulse Yoga. She and Joy were the planners since they had already tried a week of unlimited classes there. Sure, I said. It would be interesting and most likely fun, since we were all yogamates at Vinyasa Yoga Center, to start with.

While Joy made the reservation at Pulse, Chona and I took turns confirming with Tesa, and we arranged for a session on power yoga.

Last Friday, 4 of us met up for class (Joy, Crissy, Lomen and I). Chona unfortunately went on an out-of-town working trip and had to cancel out.

We used a shala which was just small enough to accommodate 5 practitioners comfortably. Four black yoga mats were already laid out for us with rolled-up white towels beside each one. As was my usual routine, I had my own yoga mat with me. But I immediately noticed that the black mats were clean. No signs of anyone else before me having used them. Thought bubble: Thank goodness! Because if there were footprints-in-the sand marks on them I would have insisted on using Sandy!

I won’t go into the details of our class with Tesa. Every class is different, every instructor has his/her own style and sequence.

But this is one thing I can say. THERE ARE JUST SOME THINGS YOU GET OUT OF PRIVATE CLASSES THAT YOU MAY NOT GET IN A REGULAR CLASS.

What are some differences, you may ask?

1. If you have any special needs (injuries, health conditions, personal yoga development goals) doing privates may be your answer. – In a regular class, you most often need to follow the set sequence of the teacher. Unless you are the type of person who does prior research into the asanas which are good/bad for your condition, you may end up doing asanas which you shouldn’t, or worse, injuring yourself.

2. Privates work best with a maximum group of 5 people. In classes which have 10 or more students, the teacher cannot watch all of you all the time. Nor will there be time to adjust each and every one. Regular classes need some set pacing in order to get the routine done in an hour and a half. Privates have more flexibility in terms of start-stops.

3. Practitioners can ask questions. This is the beauty of privates. You are free to interrupt the teacher and ask specific questions about a pose or your condition. In a regular class, you would hesitate to do so as you could be disruptive of the flow of the class.

4. Adjustments of alignments will always have a personal touch – One advantage Tesa has is that she is TALL and has the STRENGTH. And for the 4 of us last Friday, it paid off that she was a WOMAN! After all, no male yogi teacher would EVER attempt to do what she did to moi below!

During downward dogs, she stepped on my hands as she pushed my tailbone back, then from behind, held me around the thighs and pulled this way and that.

Three of us were doing down dogs a little differently, with our spines curved into a “U” so Tesa showed us how she wanted us to do it. As she said, it didn’t mean one way was right, the other wrong. That’s just how she taught down dogs. And you know what? Doing it HER way eased up somewhat on the wrist pressure and that was a relief since I had been having wrist pains for some time now (another blog post on that coming up).

5. Assistance with challenging asanas – As it was a power yoga class, many poses were more difficult than the usual. That night, Tesa made us do headstands WITHOUT THE WALL. I used to do this but always against the wall. I would kick up, rest my legs against the wall, then when I was confident of my balance, take both legs slowly off and balance unaided. Tesa said that method did not allow me to use my core. So we were to try it wall-less this time — no security!

I had to go down on my forearms, hands clasped, in V-formation. Then she made me walk my feet closer and closer to my hands until I was an inverted V. Then, using my core, she helped ease me up into the pose. As she was keeping me balanced, she kept reminding about using my core, not collapsing, finding that equilibrium. And at one point, she even lifted me completely off the ground! Gosh, what strength this lady has!!!

As I was unable to have my pic taken doing the headstand, Crissy has graciously agreed to be the model for what we did that night. Thanks, Crissy!!!

If you have never done privates before, consider it in between your regular practice but do them with a good teacher. You just may find out that your progress in your yoga practice accelerates with good techniques being pointed out. You can also unlearn bad alignment and correct them BEFORE they become more difficult to change.

Namaste.

Gearing Up for Reverse Namaste

If you are like me, Ms. Tight Shoulders, doing the reverse namaste pose in any asana (with full lotus or doing a standing forward bend as shown above) does not come easy. Office work and hours on the computer do take its toll on those shoulders.

So it was with some amazement that when I told my daughter C2 this, she said “Is it like this, Mama?” and immediately made the reverse namaste position with both hands way, way up her back. WHOA!!!

Now why can’t I do that????

Some sleuthing around the web got me some tips on how to do preliminary exercises to bring the body eventually to this pose:

1. Move arms up and down laterally (about 20 times)

2. Rotate arms at the shoulders, clockwise and counterclockwise about 20 times. First do one arm at a time, then both arms together.

As you continue the warm-up exercises above and as you try to do the Reverse Namaste position, you may start out with just the tips of your fingers touching your lower back.

From there you may find your flexibility increasing and slowly, the whole side of your hands can assume the reverse namaste position on the lower back.

With further flexibility, you can slowly inch those hands up your back until they are already past your mid-back.

Continue working on those tight shoulders. I know I will!

Namaste.

Sanskrit’s Link to Tagalog

This is a slightly off-topic post but I thought it was interesting to tackle the similarities that I see in the Sanskrit language to one of the major dialects in my country — Tagalog.

(May Śiva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods. ( by Kalidasa)

This curiosity was always there ever since we began hearing the different names of our asanas. When I first started yoga, Pio would call out the poses in English. He would say Lotus, Forward Bend, Downward Dog, Shoulderstand, etc. After a while though, he started calling them out in Sanskrit.

One day a FilAm yogini, Kristina, left a comment on this blog and told me she studies a lot of Sanskrit in New York. Now that sounded interesting for someone living all the way across the globe! So I began searching for common words I knew in Tagalog which take its roots from Sanskrit. After all, when I stayed in Indonesia for several months, I always delighted in little day-to-day discoveries of Filipino words which were the same as Bahasa: gunting (scissors), payong (umbrella), anak (child), halo (mix), lima (5), nasi (rice) and salamat (thanks).

Here are some Tagalog words I found which are taken from the Sanskrit language:

asa (hope) – asha in Sanskrit

salita (speak) – cerita in Sanskrit

balita (news) – berita in Sanskrit

karma (karma)

mukha (face)

guro (teacher) – guru in Sanskrit

dalita (suffering) – dharta in Sanskrit

In the site Tagalog 101, this is what they say:

“Philologically, Tagalog belongs to the Malayan branch of the great Malayo-Polynesian linguistic family, which extends from Hawaii to Madagascar and from Formosa to Easter Island west of Chile, including New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa, as well as Borneo, Celebes, Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines from east to west, a distance of 180º, or half the circumference of the earth.

Tagalog, together with other civilized tongues of the Philippines, such as Visayan, Pampango, Ilocano and Bicol, has preserved the verbal system better than any other. The basis for the comparative study of the family must be taken from the Philippine tongues and not from the more cultivated Malay, Kawi, or modern Javanese, all three of which have been profoundly affected by Sanskrit and to a lesser degree Arabic, something as English has been affected by Latin and French elements. The number of roots or primitive-idea words in Tagalog seems to be about 17, 000 there being 16, 842 words in the Noceda and Sanlucar dictionary of 1832. Of these some 284 are derived from the Sanskrit, and are evidently borrowed through the Malay. Many of these are names for the things unknown to the primitive Malayan peoples, but others are abstracts and various words, some of which would seem to have supplanted a primitive Malayan word. Thus in may cases Americans and Tagalogs use words in their own languages which are from the same remote source in India, and coming around the earth east and west to meet again in the Philippines.”

Next time your teacher calls out asanas in Sanskrit and you feel all strange about it, just remember that we are historically linked to it.

Namasté (नमस्ते [nʌmʌsˈteː]

Mastering Jump-Throughs

In some of our classes lately, my teacher Pio Baquiran has been making us try jump-throughs as transition from downward dogs. What we do isn’t even the full jump-through where you swing both legs forward and through your arms from Downward Dog and land with both feet straight out in front of you in a seated position. What Pio makes us do is land with legs crossed. And even that is quite a challenge.

There are days when I get through, barely. On other days, I kind of land awkwardly with a thump, cross-legged. And there was a time when I almost toppled forward as one of my legs snagged against an arm.  I also get that tensed-up feeling whenever we are asked to do this — maybe because of an innate fear of falling again.

So once again, off to the internet I went trying to find out what suggestions were out there to make jump-throughs less “painful”.

Tim Miller, an Ashtanga student and a writer for Yoga Journal, makes this suggestion for those new to this transition:

To build a sense of confidence and competence, first try this maneuver with blocks under the hands. From Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog), exhale and bend the knees deeply so the ribs come back against the thighs, lift the heels and allow the hips to descend. Keep the hips as low as possible as you spring forward. Ideally, the body stays in a full forward bend even as it comes through the arms.

Remember to support the movement with your breath. Jumping through at the end of an exhalation, when you are completely empty of breath, is best because the exhalation also facilitates deeper movement into the forward bending position. You will also find strength and support by engaging the abdomen and pelvic floor in Uddiyana (Flying Up Lock) and Mula Bandha (Root Lock). So as you set yourself up to jump through, remember to exhale, keep the bandhas engaged, remain in forward flexion, and stay close to the ground.

However, he and David Swenson differ in some other ways. Tim suggests that since the legs are longer than the arms, they must be kept as parallel to the floor as possible during flight to successfully come through. He says that the mistake new students to this make is keeping their hips high so that the legs remain vertical.

In the Ashtanga Yoga Practice Manual, however, David Swenson’s original insights on the “physics of flight” suggest that we imagine ourselves like a ball being hurled across a room with a high ceiling. Unlike a low ceiling where you need to hurl the ball straight ahead and with great force, throwing a ball in a room with a high ceiling means less force and the ball actually makes a high, graceful arc which we want for our jump-throughs.

Just imagining the 2 suggestions, I would think David Swenson’s suggestion might work better for me. But I would imagine this requires practice, practice, practice before I can even make this transition gracefully and seamlessly.

Yoga instructor Jenny Sugar shows some preparatory transitions prior to the complete jump-through using yoga blocks.

And hopefully, some day, I can do a jump-through that looks like this: