health

by Ram Fern by Melina Meza In the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali we are introduced to the eight rungs/limbs/steps of yoga whose practice helps us to develop attention as a tool to discriminate between ignorance and awareness and between truth and illusion, which is the means for liberation or enlightenment. Pratyahara is rung five of the eight rungs. Verse 2.54 in the Yoga Sutras describes Pratyahara as: sva vishaya asamprayoge chittasya svarupe anukarah iva indriyanam pratyaharah When the mental organs of senses and actions (indriyas) cease to be engaged with the corresponding objects in their mental realm, and assimilate or turn back into the mind-field from which they arose, this is called pratyahara. �trans. by Swami Jnaneshvara .? Check any commentary or text on this topic and the term �pratyahara� would be defined as �withdrawal of senses.� However, the concept of withdrawal of senses may be difficult to comprehend for I have witnessed a few teachers in some of the yoga teacher�s...

by Baxter Transportation by Melina Meza A while back I shared with you a study done that looked at �transfer� ability as a predictor of longevity (see From Independence to True Longevity ). Today while reading �Putting Prevention into Practice,� AAFP Journal, Dec. 15th, 2012, Vol.86, #12, one of my medical journals, I came across a brief article on preventing falls in community-dwelling older adults. �Community-dwelling� means living at home, not in a care facility. As I read some of the recommendations from the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), I came across a test I had not previously heard of: the timed Get-Up-and-Go test. According to the  USPSTF, this is a way to assess the risk of falling by testing the ability of a person to "get up out of an armchair, walk 3m (10 feet), turn, walk back, and sit down again." It seems the average healthy adult older than 60 years can do this in an average of 10 seconds or less. As I think about in connection to the four skills...

by Nina Fence by Melina Meza On October 3, 2013, I wrote a post about the phrase � Yoga is my health insurance ,� which concerned me because of what I believe the phrase implies. At the time, I did not realize  that there actually is a business by that name. If you check my original post, you will see that I never mentioned any such business (or owner of said business) and that I was writing strictly about what I spoke of as the �concept� of yoga as �health insurance.� Unfortunately, I was a bit sloppy in illustrating my post. I included the �Yoga Is My Health Insurance� graphic that I�d seen on Facebook without checking where that graphic came from. Later on, I learned that this graphic belonged to the business by that name, and that my post had caused some confusion. As it was never my intention to write about the business by that name, I decided to take some action. The first thing I did was to update the original post (see here ) by removing the graphic and changing the languag...

Q: Once a substitute yoga instructor stated that she didn't do anything every day, and that yoga can be bad for backs. Could you clarify why this opinion might be so? I love doing yoga, and would really like to know what's going on here. A: Yoga isn�t "bad for backs" but not all yoga asanas are appropriate for �bad backs.� As an example, let us look at a very common group of yoga poses, forward bends, which can be thought of as both �good� and �bad� for someone with a back injury. Forward bends can be bad in the sense that if too much force is generated by trying to come into the position at the vulnerable area in the back, this will most likely cause more pain and injury. Not bending from the hips to come forward but using the arms as a lever force to pull into a position is unsafe. However, learning to move from the hip joints and keeping the spine in its neutral curves is a very different way to practice forward bends. This is safe because soft tissue restrictions ...

by Nina New Bay Bridge by Melina Meza As you can probably tell from my post yesterday on non-holding , I'm in a philosophical mood. To be honest, as much as I value the physical benefits I get from my asana practice, I think I value even more the benefits I've gained from studying yoga philosophy. This is why when Baxter and I describe what I might call the pillars of yoga for healthy aging, we always include "cultivating equanimity" along with strength, flexibility, balance, agility, and stress management. And as I was looking for something to write about this morning, I found a quote from B.K.S. Iyengar that perfectly summed up my reason for holding yoga philosophy in such high esteem: Yoga recognizes that the way our bodies and minds work has changed very little over the millennia. The way we function inside our skin is not susceptible to differ either in time or from place to place. In the functioning of our minds, in our way of relating to each other, there are i...

by Nina "Holding on to one's thoughts is also a form of possessiveness�." �BKS Iyengar Untitled Drawing by Milton Zolotow, one of hundreds Ram's recent post on aparigraha (non-hoarding) left a strong impression on me. In it, he mentioned several meanings for aparigraha , including "non-possessiveness, non-holding, non-indulgence, non-acquistiveness." Recently I've been thinking a lot about the "non-holding" aspect of aparigraha . Non-holding has been on my mind because I've started to feel weighed down with possessions. That's partly because in the last few years, both my parents and Brad's parents died, and we ended up with a lot of their stuff. Some of the things were useful, like the beautiful dining room table we inherited from my parents. We are using that table now and gave our old table to our daughter who started her own household, so a kind of balance has been established. A lot of the other stuff isn't at all "us...

by Baxter Looking Up in Jersey City by Brad Gibson I recently heard from an old friend who lives up near Glacier National Park (must be quiet up there, what with the park closed�come on Mr. Boehner!). She was wondering what to do about recurring vertigo and yoga. And she is certainly not alone! I know so many people with vertigo, or dizziness, and once it kicks in, doing yoga can be a challenge.  Because there are many possible causes of �vertigo� or �dizziness,� I�m going to write today about one of the most common causes, known as benign (paroxysmal) positional vertigo. It�s benign because usually there is not a life-threatening underlying cause for this kind of dizziness. The exception is if the dizziness is causing someone to fall, which we have discussed (especially in relationship to osteoporosis) in other posts. It�s paroxysmal because it comes on suddenly. It is positional in that the mild to intense spells of dizziness seem to be triggered by body or head position or movem...