Yoga starts the time you step out from the Studio, not the time you step in. Learn yoga in the Studio to practice outside, in the real world. Most of us, we know a lot of things but how about put it into practice?
The Vertigo attack on April 24th changes my life, entirely. I was not able to do a lot of things, which most of us take it for granted including myself. How true what people said – you’ll only appreciate when you’ve lost it.
I was not able to walk my normal pace, not to mention rock climbing.
I was not able to dash out from the bed every morning.
I was not able to bring Beanie for a walk.
I was not able to drive and ride.
I was not able to hear properly thus can’t play Er Hu.
I was not able to read for 20 mins continuously.
I was not able to practice most of the asanas.
I believe in nature’s cure and our brain is capable of adapting to problems involving senses. For example, blind person often find that their other senses, especially hearing, improve tremendously to make up for their eyesight.
In my case, my brain can adjust to the new situation and after a time, could be months or years before the Vertigo gradually disappears. For this to occur, however, my brain must be regularly exposed to the misleading messages from the inner ear. If this doesn’t happen, it cannot adapt and there will be no cure.
Because my Vertigo occurs only during certain movements, and because the symptoms are unpleasant, there was almost irresistible temptation to avoid those movements and so avoid the symptoms. But I knew by doing so, I miss the opportunity for a natural cure.
Since I refused medications, yoga-ing is the only way for me to get my life back. It wasn’t easy but not impossible. As I always said in the Studio, listen to the body and I am learning to listen all over again.
Showing posts with label Alternate Route. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alternate Route. Show all posts
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Tension = Backache
Why does tension attack the back? And why does tension take up ‘residence’ in the very specific place (between the shoulder blades up to the base of the neck)? After so many years of practising and teaching Yoga, what I can say that emotional, physical and postural tensions are the main culprits.
Tension can be emotional. Tension in the back is directly related to the state of MIND. Automatically, when we’re upset, we curl up. This posture takes a lot of effort, straining and fatiguing the muscles in your upper back and neck. The longer you despair, the more strained and tired those muscles get. And worse, the muscles in front of your chest will begin to shorten, pulling you even lover. It’s no accident of language that I refer to an unhappy person as being ‘down’.
I’m going to tell you something shocking – unhappy people are prone to injury and illness. Nearly 80% of all the physical problems I encounter are related, directly or indirectly, to tension and pressure. No matter what I do to unlock the body or show how successful I am in restoring function, sooner or later, she/he are going to come back unless she/he gets a handle on life. I’m not saying that getting happy will guarantee a lifetime of health and injury-free, but it helps. Big time.
Tension can be physical. The emotional aspect of carrying tension between the shoulder blades is not the only culprit. Fitness or lack thereof, plays an even bigger role.
When your back is pain, your abdominal muscles are the suspected cause. Weak abs cause the pelvis to be unstable, so the back (all the way from sacrum to the skull) has to compensate to keep our body balanced and erect in posture. But without the assistance of supporting abdominal muscles, your struggling back becomes very unstable.
While the problem originates at your pelvis, it qualifies as a full-blown disaster by the time it reaches your head. Weighing between 3.6 – 5.4kg, the head is pretty heavy! When the abdominal muscles are weak and the back is struggling to compensate, that heavy head pulls the spine forwards. Shoulder follow suits as the front of the shoulder foreshorten and collapse. This sag may be subtle at first, but it doesn’t take long for the upper back, designed to stabilize, to become fatigued from trying to support weight.
A strong, fit body ensures that all your muscles are doing their jobs and that they are sparing your back from having to compensate.
Tension can be postural. People can even make tension between shoulders worse by postural mistakes.
When you sleep on your side with a pillow that fails to support your head and neck, you collapse your lower shoulder, folding it towards your chest and straining the muscles in your back for hours.
When you work at your desk, you sit and pull all your action in front of you, so that you reach out and down towards the desk – and your upper back is stressed.
When you drive, you reach forwards and up to steer – and your upper back is stressed.
When you eat, your plate is on the table in front of you, so you reach down and towards it – and your upper back is stressed.
Add personal tension to biomechanical mistakes and long-term fatigue, and you have a knotted, cramped upper back.
When those muscles between the shoulder blades become fatigued, they begin to shut down in a process that is like strangulation; the area were deprived of oxygen, as blood flow is slowly squeezed off when tissue constrict. Fresh oxygenated blood not only carry oxygen to muscles but it also helps to carry away metabolic waste generated (like lactic acid) when muscles fire.
While many back problems originate in that upper back zone, they don’t necessarily stay there. Just when you thought you couldn’t be more locked up and incapacitated, this pain sneaks down to your lower back to hobble your step, creeps up your neck to inflict a world-class tension headache or radiates down your arms in an exhausting ache or shooting pain.
Back and shoulder problems aren’t always the result of a postural imbalance or an incorrect performed exercise; sometimes the root cause can be a lot deeper.
Tension can be emotional. Tension in the back is directly related to the state of MIND. Automatically, when we’re upset, we curl up. This posture takes a lot of effort, straining and fatiguing the muscles in your upper back and neck. The longer you despair, the more strained and tired those muscles get. And worse, the muscles in front of your chest will begin to shorten, pulling you even lover. It’s no accident of language that I refer to an unhappy person as being ‘down’.
I’m going to tell you something shocking – unhappy people are prone to injury and illness. Nearly 80% of all the physical problems I encounter are related, directly or indirectly, to tension and pressure. No matter what I do to unlock the body or show how successful I am in restoring function, sooner or later, she/he are going to come back unless she/he gets a handle on life. I’m not saying that getting happy will guarantee a lifetime of health and injury-free, but it helps. Big time.
Tension can be physical. The emotional aspect of carrying tension between the shoulder blades is not the only culprit. Fitness or lack thereof, plays an even bigger role.
When your back is pain, your abdominal muscles are the suspected cause. Weak abs cause the pelvis to be unstable, so the back (all the way from sacrum to the skull) has to compensate to keep our body balanced and erect in posture. But without the assistance of supporting abdominal muscles, your struggling back becomes very unstable.
While the problem originates at your pelvis, it qualifies as a full-blown disaster by the time it reaches your head. Weighing between 3.6 – 5.4kg, the head is pretty heavy! When the abdominal muscles are weak and the back is struggling to compensate, that heavy head pulls the spine forwards. Shoulder follow suits as the front of the shoulder foreshorten and collapse. This sag may be subtle at first, but it doesn’t take long for the upper back, designed to stabilize, to become fatigued from trying to support weight.
A strong, fit body ensures that all your muscles are doing their jobs and that they are sparing your back from having to compensate.
Tension can be postural. People can even make tension between shoulders worse by postural mistakes.
When you sleep on your side with a pillow that fails to support your head and neck, you collapse your lower shoulder, folding it towards your chest and straining the muscles in your back for hours.
When you work at your desk, you sit and pull all your action in front of you, so that you reach out and down towards the desk – and your upper back is stressed.
When you drive, you reach forwards and up to steer – and your upper back is stressed.
When you eat, your plate is on the table in front of you, so you reach down and towards it – and your upper back is stressed.
Add personal tension to biomechanical mistakes and long-term fatigue, and you have a knotted, cramped upper back.
When those muscles between the shoulder blades become fatigued, they begin to shut down in a process that is like strangulation; the area were deprived of oxygen, as blood flow is slowly squeezed off when tissue constrict. Fresh oxygenated blood not only carry oxygen to muscles but it also helps to carry away metabolic waste generated (like lactic acid) when muscles fire.
While many back problems originate in that upper back zone, they don’t necessarily stay there. Just when you thought you couldn’t be more locked up and incapacitated, this pain sneaks down to your lower back to hobble your step, creeps up your neck to inflict a world-class tension headache or radiates down your arms in an exhausting ache or shooting pain.
Back and shoulder problems aren’t always the result of a postural imbalance or an incorrect performed exercise; sometimes the root cause can be a lot deeper.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
How to EAT SMARTER
Well, Chinese New Year is around the corner and as we all aware, its eating time! Let's eat smarter this year, the year of an OX.For many people, learning to energy test the food changes their relationship to what they eat. Test to see if your body is going to like a particular food, not based on taste but either its increases or reduces your energy level.
Because preconceptions can affect an energy test, it is better not to try to guess what the results will be. Subtle energies are responsive to our thoughts, so clear the mind as as well as you can prior to conducting energy test. Drink water before the test as water conducts electricity, and dehydration inteferes with the flow of energy in your body.1. Both of you take a deep breath.
2. The person being tested place one hand straight down the side of the body with thumb touching the outer thigh, palm facing to the back and fingers pointing down and the other touching/holding the food that she/he planning to eat.
3. The tester slips her/his palm (facing out) between the body and the arm, just above the wrist.
4. The tester then asks the person being tested to hold her/his arm firm, elbow straight (I often use words such as 'don't let me pull your arm away from your body').
5. With the hand and with pressure from one to two seconds, the tester slowly pulls the arm away from the body.
With neither person straining, the arm will either pull away relatively easily or it will feel locked in place. Do not struggle as this is not a competion nor it is about muscle strength; it's about energy flow.
If the person being tested feels she/he is losing her/his strength upon touching the food, indicates that her/his body vibration is not in harmony with the food vibration. This may mean :
a. the food is never good for you;
b. the food is not good for you right now or
c. you have an allergy to the food.
Always remember, one person's vitamin is another's poison.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Arthritis – Alternate Route
I am not going to tell about new miracle cures or what arthritis is, but how to bring about pain relief without getting a prescription filled or making a trip to a doctor.Lose weight, gain relief. More stress and pressure are placed on the joints of an overweight person compared to a person with normal weight. This increases the stress on the cartilage, which interferes with the bone, thus increasing the incidence of inflammation, swelling and pain.
Stretch gently for strength and mobility. Incorrect moving harms but intelligent moving heals. Don’t baby your joints. Moving hurts but not moving destroys.
I keep that philosophy in mind when teaching yoga for my arthritic practitioners. Yoga teaches movements with proper joint alignment which helps bring deformed joints back to normal position as appropriate muscles are lengthened and strengthened.
Find relief through less stress. Childbirth is very painful but women learn how to deal with that pain by learning how to relax thru’ breathing. If you are hurting and you tense up, you hurt even more.
Use ice to prevent pain and use heat to reduce pain.
Copper bracelet. Studies showed that some people with arthritis seem to have difficulty metabolizing copper from the food they eat, leading to increased pain. The dissolved copper from a bracelet bypasses the oral route be entering the body through the skin (refer to ‘The Copper Bracelet and Arthritis’ by Dr Helmar Dollwet, Ph.D).
Fish for relief, not everyone but some.
Master massage. Work the muscles that are attached to the tendons leading to the painful joints, using a compression technique.
Boost Vitamin C intake. Studies have shown that people with rheumatoid arthritis are deficient in Vitamin C.
Practice food avoidance. In most cases, nightshade family (white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and all peppers, except black pepper) and milk products.
Cut back on vegetable oil. Known to contain high levels of Omega-6 fatty acids, which have shown to cause inflammation in those with rheumatoid arthritis. 2 oils are low in Omega-6 are canola oil (made from rapeseed) and olive oil.
Carry on with vegetable juice. Ahhhh…. My favourite.
Fish for relief, not everyone but some.
Master massage. Work the muscles that are attached to the tendons leading to the painful joints, using a compression technique.
Boost Vitamin C intake. Studies have shown that people with rheumatoid arthritis are deficient in Vitamin C.
Practice food avoidance. In most cases, nightshade family (white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and all peppers, except black pepper) and milk products.
Cut back on vegetable oil. Known to contain high levels of Omega-6 fatty acids, which have shown to cause inflammation in those with rheumatoid arthritis. 2 oils are low in Omega-6 are canola oil (made from rapeseed) and olive oil.
Carry on with vegetable juice. Ahhhh…. My favourite.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Energy Medicine and Me
I have been asked for years about the nature of energy medicine - what is energy medicine? What benefits doeas it offer a person that he or she cannot gain from conventional medicine?
Energy medicine is safe, natural and accessible. It is both contemporary and ancient. The term being used in many ways todays, ranging from the introduction of 'shamanic healing practices' in modern cultures to the use of power electromagnetic and imaging technologies in modern hospitals. It embraces lawful principles and mysteries; routine procedures and artistry; matter and spirit. Energy medicine is the best term I know for describing the growing number of approaches where an understadning of the body as a system of energies is being applied for promoting health, healing and happiness. The belief that repressing an illness through drugs is of use to the healing process will come to be seen as harmful rather as beneficial.
And when shall we expect such changes to occur? Dramatic shifts in medcine and healing are happening all around is now. Our society has shown respect for the holistic movement and energetic medicine by it growing interest in learning more about this field and choosing to engage in alternative healing methds for diseases.
18 years of yoga practice has help me to take my first small step into the energy medicine world and I enjoyed every moment of it. It’s a gift; every gift comes with a heavy responsibility.
Energy medicine is safe, natural and accessible. It is both contemporary and ancient. The term being used in many ways todays, ranging from the introduction of 'shamanic healing practices' in modern cultures to the use of power electromagnetic and imaging technologies in modern hospitals. It embraces lawful principles and mysteries; routine procedures and artistry; matter and spirit. Energy medicine is the best term I know for describing the growing number of approaches where an understadning of the body as a system of energies is being applied for promoting health, healing and happiness. The belief that repressing an illness through drugs is of use to the healing process will come to be seen as harmful rather as beneficial.
And when shall we expect such changes to occur? Dramatic shifts in medcine and healing are happening all around is now. Our society has shown respect for the holistic movement and energetic medicine by it growing interest in learning more about this field and choosing to engage in alternative healing methds for diseases.
18 years of yoga practice has help me to take my first small step into the energy medicine world and I enjoyed every moment of it. It’s a gift; every gift comes with a heavy responsibility.
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