health

by Nina Ice Floes on Siene by Claude Monet When I was doing research for my post on menopause and headaches (see Yoga for Menopause: Headaches ), I was very surprised to learn that the most common complaint that Japanese women have during menopause is not headaches (which is what I previously thought) or hot flashes (the most common complaint in the US) but frozen shoulder. As many of you probably know by now, I experienced two bouts of frozen shoulder during perimenopause/menopause. Although I knew this co ndition was common among women my age, no one I consulted about the condition really tied it directly to menopause, although there was some speculation that it might be related to hormonal changes. That's because they all said  no one really understands what causes this temporary (though very painful) problem. So it was very interesting for me to learn that in Japan it is considered a problem related to menopause. And because we've been focusing recently on menopause and I...

by Nina Photo by Erin Collom Last week, my friend Erin Collom (thank you, Erin!), a Bay Area yoga teacher, took some photographs of me doing some of my favorite stress management and anti-anxiety poses. It was kind of nerve wracking for me because I�ve never been photographed doing yoga before (I�m typically somewhere behind the camera). But I decided we needed an older woman on the blog, and I was the handiest one around, so.... When I saw this photograph of me doing Downward-Facing Dog, I was actually quite pleased. My alignment looks pretty good! Even my shoulders look good, which I wasn�t expecting. A well-balanced Downward-Facing Dog takes flexibility in both the legs (the hamstrings especially) and the shoulders. Back in the day, before I hit menopause, I had a lot of flexibility in both areas (some of it was natural and some of it was earned through consistent practice of the asanas over a period of years). But the hormonal changes brought on by perimenopause and menopause trigg...