health

After the Fire by Brad Gibson As Shari and I were discussing our series on menopause and perimenopause, Shari had the idea of contacting her former teacher, well-known yoga writer Judith Lasater, to see if she had some advice for us. To our delight, Judith agreed to do a brief interview with us for the blog. After some back and forth, we decided to ask her a single question. We love her answer, and hope that you will find it inspiring. �Nina and Shari Question : You've been practicing yoga since you were a young woman. As you went through peri-menopause and menopause, how did you change your personal practice to address your symptoms and adapt to your changing body? Judith : When I began my yoga practice in 1970, I had the idea that I would pretty much be following the same practice routine forever that I had established from the beginning. Nothing has been further from the truth. At the beginning I adapted my life to fit my practice. I started going to bed earlier so that I could...

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 Shari Shari's Go-To Pose I feel a little foolish presenting this topic because until quite recently I didn�t associate my various injuries or aches and pains as part of menopause. I didn�t really connect the dots; I just figured that I must be doing something wrong to cause myself injury. This has really come home to roost with my current knee injury that could be something I might have to address with surgical intervention! And my conversations with Nina about menopause prompted me to take a closer look at this problem that isn�t just my own personal issue. It turns out there is actually a term for this experience: arthralgia. A diagnoses of arthralgia is given when the joints become swollen, stiff or painful during menopause. Joint pain associated with menopause is also referred to as �menopause arthritis.� It can affect hips, knees, back and extremities (how about the whole body?).  In the journal "Semin Arthritis Rheum 2009," the researchers state that genetic alte...

by Nina Tough Weed by Melina Meza My sister in law, who never suffered much from headaches before, found that menopause brought on debilitating migraines. Other women find that normal, tension headaches become more frequent with hormonal fluctuations. In fact, although the most common complaint women in the US have during perimenopause and menopause is hot flashes, in Japan (where hot flashes are less common) women complain much more frequently about headaches. Baxter and I have already written on the blog about migraines and other headaches, both on how to prevent them (see Preventing Migraines and Other Headaches, Part 1 and Part 2 ) and how to practice when you have one (see Yoga and Migraine Headaches ). Unfortunately we don't know of any special techniques for treating hormonally triggered headaches (in the book The Woman's Book of Yoga and Health , in the chapter on menopause, Patricia Walden simply recommends her standard headache practices for headaches experienced dur...

by Nina Rose Light by Melina Meza When I was going through perimenopause, the worst symptom I had was fatigue attacks. Although fatigue or exhaustion is a classic symptom of perimenopause, I'm pretty sure I made up the term "fatigue attack" because I needed a special term for how it felt to me. I'm a pretty energetic person who gets a lot of things done in a given day, and my yoga practice during that time was quite athletic. But during that period, once in a while, I'd suddenly feel so drained of all energy that all I wanted to do was collapse into a puddle on the floor. There was something essentially different about these hormonally based episodes of fatigue than normal tiredness, and I remembered that same feeling of utter exhaustion from my pregnancies (although those were combined with nausea). So I knew it wasn't something I could fight with energizing poses, such as backbends or sun salutations. Fortunately, I got some guidance from two different senio...