Did you know that your body responds to stress involuntarily by tensing your muscles? Over time tightness builds up, restricts your movement, and causes you not to feel free in your body. Holding on to that stress around for a while starts to wear on your nervous system. It’a a heavy load for your body-mind to carry around. It affects your breathing pattern, your mind’s ability to focus, and your ability to sleep soundly. All these things inhibit your health and well-being. The good news is that you can teach your body to unwelcome stress from sticking. Welcome to my four part series, “Break Up With Stress.” Each week I will share techniques you can use to discard stress and improve your health and well-being. This newsletter series leads up to my annual Summer Solstice workshop, Dynamic Rejuvenation. Join me for a practice of active restorative poses on […]
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Manage Your Stress
The word on the street is that yoga can help to reduce stress in your life. But stress is a complex topic, and there are a lot of different kinds of yoga out there. So you may wonder, how does it all work? Stress is caused by the release of a hormone in your body called cortisol. When life circumstances become difficult to manage, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) kicks in and releases cortisol to heighten your awareness, pump blood to your limbs, and focus your brain to get the task done. Later your parasympathetic nervous system (PSN) is supposed to help you recover by bringing you back to a state a relaxation. If you spend a lot of time in a state of stress, it is common for the PNS not switch on, and when you don’t fully recover stress is compounded. To find the most effective tool to manage stress and triumph in […]
Continue ReadingFour Keys to Well-Being
In teaching yoga my goal is to help you to to be your best self. That means educating you about your body, helping you to listen more deeply, and empowering you to make choices for your body and your life that are healing and promote well-being. This is achieved through some basic physical things that all my classes, workshops, and other programming are planned around. Here are four things that I have come to believe are the most important to your health and what I hope you gain from your regular yoga practice: 1. Better, more effective breathing. Breath is life. Many of us live with dis-functional breathing patterns because of tight muscles, poor posture, and stress. Releasing the muscles of respiration and creating better breathing habits are crucial to the body’s overall health. 2. The ability to shift from states of stress to states of relaxation. There is no doubt that life is busy. But how effective […]
Continue ReadingYoga, Stress, and the Vagus Nerve
I have a confession to make. When I hear science confirming what yogis have known for a long time, or at least what I know to be true from my experience, I get really happy inside! Fortunately, this happens a lot these days since much more research is being done about the benefits of yoga. And that science shows that yoga practice works in ways other kinds of exercise does not. Things we do in every yoga class such as asana, pranayama, and chanting soothe and tone an important nerve in the body called the Vagus Nerve. Scientists are beginning to understand this fascinating cranial nerve which travels throughout the body and responsible for the relaxation response. When you are in constant stress your sympathetic nervous system never has a chance to switch off. This creates low vagal tone and brings depletion to your body making it feel like life is more difficult to manage. But healthy vagal […]
Continue ReadingYoga Is “Sensational”
I have been using the word “sensational” in class a lot lately. Not in the traditional meaning of “very good or great” – well that is partly true. When I say “sensational” I mean “lots of sensation” which IS actually great. Even when you perceive the sensation as uncomfortable. Let me explain. The body can have sensory motor amnesia. That means that some muscles forget how to work. This often results in using another muscle too much or inefficiently. In many cases this bio-mechanic disfunction is the cause of chronic pain. Pain is actually a great tool. Its purpose is to help you and let you know that something is not right. As a yoga practitioner it’s helpful to learn to discern injurious pain, which your don’t want, from the beneficial pain of strengthening, stretching, or waking something up from this amnesia. I dislike the word “pain” for that beneficial sensation you get from your yoga practice. So now you can call the intensity from an exercise or posture “sensational!” Truth be told, there is […]
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