Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of October 2014

Several important updates.

Mint, one of our pregnant alpacas, had a false pregnancy.   Although she gained weight and had all the features of a pregnant camelid, she is no longer pregnant.   However, she is 30 pounds overweight and we’ll now have to restrict her access to grain.  Time for the alpaca stairmaster.

Mulan, our Harlequin duck with aspiration pneumonia is improving after 10 days on tetracycline.  She’s regaining her quack (for almost 2 weeks she’s been voiceless) and is now running with the other ducks.   She’s still a bit fatigued, but is on the mend.

It’s apple picking time.    My daughter and I picked six varieties of cider apples and organized an apple tasting at the farm to inform our cider making activities.

We decided that Empire was our favorite eating apple, followed by Rome Beaty and Macoun.    Our heirloom cider apples - Ben Davis, Northern Spy, and Roxbury Russet were good but had a very firm consistency with a bittersharp taste.    Our plan for the upcoming weekend is to crush cider using 1 bushel of Macoun (aromatic), 3 bushels of Baldwin (sweet), 1 bushel of McIntosh (tart), and 1 bushel of crab apples (astringent).   Although our apple harvest this year is in the hundreds of pounds, we’ll hopefully have thousands of pounds when the trees mature in 5 years.

Our existing cider fermentation is going well and we have developed a standard process - crush, ferment for 2 weeks, rack, add malolactic fermentation cultures, age for 4 months, bottle, age for 2 months, drink!

As winter approaches, all the creatures of the forest are storing up reserves for winter.   The squirrels are storing the acorns that are falling at a fast clip.    The bees are stockpiling nectar and pollen.    Even the preying mantis (find it in the picture below) are eating their fill.

 Leaves are falling, birds are migrating, and mushrooms are popping everywhere.  

This weekend (Columbus Day) is all about manure management - moving 10000 pounds of “llama beans” into windrows, a new squash planting area, and our garlic beds.   During all that hauling I’ll also move one of our wood chip piles into a new mushroom area using a new technique to first grow Agaricus spawn on cardboard then inoculating chips.   I’m hoping for a great spring crop as we expand the number of mushroom species on the farm.   Japanese Nameko and Shimeji are my next experiments.

Getting Up into Upward-Facing Bow Pose (Urdva Dhanurasana), Part 2

by Baxter

B.K.S. Iyengar in Urdva Dhanurasana

Last week in my pose Friday Q&A: Arm Strength and Urdva Dhanurasana, I described the movements of the upper body in the challenging yoga asana Urdhva Dhanurasana, known in English as Upward-Facing Bow pose or Wheel pose. Because our reader was asking us about upper body issues he had as they related to Upward-Facing Bow, my answer about how to get up into the pose really only dealt with a part of the story—maybe not even half the story.

In reality, there are two other huge factors in increasing your chances of having success in this pose: 1) utilizing your much stronger lower body to help you up, and 2) adequately preparing parts of your body that need to stretch and open to achieve this unusual, deep backbend shape.

Warming Up for Upward-Facing Bow Pose

I’ll describe the stretchy, opening stuff you need to look at first, as this is usually what I spend most of my practice doing to prepare for the goal pose of Upward-Facing Bow pose, if I have it in my sequence on a given day. Typically tight places that have to be lengthened in preparation for Upward-Facing Bow pose include:

• the muscles at the front of your upper legs and anterior hip joints
• the front line of your torso and belly
• the action known as flexion of your shoulder joints, where your arms come up along side your head

For the hips and front thigh area, I use a variety of Dropped-Knee Lunges (see Featured Pose: Lunge Pose). One of my favorites involves having the sole of your front leg foot on the lowest height of block, the back knee on a blanket, and your hands on an extra block or two on their highest height. If you want to get some of the lengthening of the abdominal muscles and front chest (which also begins to take the upper back into more extension or backbend), you can bring your hands to your front knee and actively lift up into a gentle backbend shape, or if your balance is good, take your arms into Warrior 1 position. Now you have all the areas that need opening involved.

For the front body, I like to do dynamic and static versions of Bridge pose, testing my limits of lift. This also addresses your legs, but often will give me feedback of stretch happening in the abdominals as well. If you can work you way up to the highest height of the block in Supported Bridge pose, you can more passively allow the front body and thighs to open. Take one or both legs straight out from the block with your heels on the floor, and your legs are getting even closer to Upward-Facing Bow pose openness! 

For the openness in your shoulder joints and upper back, practicing supine passive backbends over a blanket roll or bolster while reaching your arms overhead in the direction your head is pointing addresses both of these areas in a more passive way (that does mean you won’t feel the stretch, however!). Downward-Facing Dog pose and the version where you have your forearms on the floor (see Downward-Facing Dog Variations) are also great ways to work on the shoulder opening required for Upward-Facing Bow pose. 

See also Standing Shoulder Openers and Opening Tight Shoulders for more ideas for warming up your shoulders.

Using Your Legs in Upward-Facing Bow Pose

Now, the power of the legs in getting us into the full Wheel! Nina was quick to point this out to me last week when we were looking at the pose for our blog post. She wrote me: 

“One of the reasons people have so much trouble getting up in this pose is because they think it is all about the arms when it is not. If you focus on getting into the pose using your LEGS rather than your arms (although the arms certainly come into play) and lifting your pelvis up first using your legs (which are stronger than your arms), you can lift yourself up in a circular motion which is way less effortful than just by trying to push yourself up with your arms. That’s the way I learned it a long time ago, and have taught it to other people as well, who find it a little revelation.” 

The way I think about the “circular action” Nina refers to here is that as you press your feet into the floor to initiate the lift of the your, you let your knees move over in the direction of the toes a bit, and, as your hips begin to lift and shift, your arms can more easily press into floor and begin to lift the chest up, too. Seen from the side, it would look like you are circling your body out over the toes before lifting up to the full Wheel. Another suggestion that Nina mentioned and that I utilize as well is using a lift under the pelvis but NOT the rest of the torso to help you start with this action of lifting the pelvis before the shoulders. By using a lift, either a block or bolster, you are just making the amount of lift for your legs and arms a bit less high—every little bit helps.

This circular action works well if you are going straight up into the pose from Constructive Rest pose, as some teachers teach it, or if you are going up in two-phases, first by moving from Constructive Rest into a form of Bridge pose (with the crown of your head on the floor) and then moving from Bridge pose into full Upward-Facing Bow pose. (If you have any neck issues and are not already doing the two-phase movement—or even if you are—please discuss the two-phase technique with your teacher.)

Phase 1

Phase 2

Poses that have the same leg actions as Upward-Facing Bow pose can help strengthen your leg muscles for the entry into the pose. Try moving dynamically in and out of Bridge pose (Setubanda Sarvagasana). You can also practice moving dynamically from Mountain Pose into deeper versions of Utkatasana (Powerful pose) and then back to Mountain—it is the second half of this dynamic sequence that simulates the leg action required to get up into Upward-Facing Bow pose. 

There are certainly many more ways you could both open and strengthen your body for Upward-Facing Bow pose, but the suggestions here will get you started. And there are also a lot of modified ways of doing the full pose. But for simplicity’s sake, we have kept it pretty straightforward for you today! Remember that this is a challenging pose for many, many yoga practitioners. Approach it respectfully, listen to your body, and don’t rush to perfect it too quickly.

The View from Underneath the Bus

EHR causes Ebola!  EHRs hold data hostage in stovepiped legacy systems!  There is no interoperability in America!

How many headlines have you seen over the past month that are either completely false or a vast oversimplification of complex issues.

As I tell my staff, there is no problem that cannot be morphed into an IT shortcoming.

There a point at which CIOs, EHR vendors, and those working on policy feel like each day is spent being thrown under a bus.

The journey of the last decade has been the continuous progression of technology, policy, and cultural change that has moved us from 10% adoption of EHRs to over 70%.

In Massachusetts, millions of transactions are exchanged for care coordination, population health and quality measurement every month.

Web-based, mobile friendly, cloud hosted products are either live or soon to be live from all the leading EHR vendors.

Am I satisfied with our position?  No.   We still have work to do.

Am I satisfied with our trajectory?  Absolutely.    There is a pace of cultural readiness that cannot be accelerated if adoption is our measure of success.   Alignment of economic incentives, public education, and the evolution of technology are necessary pre-requisites for change.

When I was growing up in Southern California, I remember dropping envelopes into the Diebold "after hours" bank repository.   Then one day, a machine became available that automated transactions with that one branch of that one bank.

A few years later, those machines worked with all branches of that one bank.

A few years later, those machines worked across different banks in California.

A few years later, those machines worked across the country.

A few years later, those machines worked across the globe in multiple currencies.

Automated Teller Machines evolved over time to address growing demands once workflow redesign, changes in consumer expectation, and worldwide network enablers were in place.

EHRs are in the biplane era and we’ve not yet invented jet engines, but we’re working on them.

We cannot go directly from horse drawn carriages to the Dreamliner.

I’m optimistic.

At the October 15, 2014 joint meeting of the Standards and Policy committees we’ll review the JASON report which will emphasize the need for open EHR Application Program Interfaces (APIs) without impediments (such as high fees) to data exchange.

HL7 is likely to have the necessary Draft Standards for Trial Use (second version of FHIR) by mid 2015.

Meaningful Use Stage 3 is likely to focus on interoperability.

So instead of a view from under the bus, it’s time for everyone to recognize the progress we’ve made, acknowledge the hard work ahead, and agree that there are unemotional next steps to address specific needs in specific timeframes.

I’ll do my best to educate all those stakeholders and journalists who focus on the absence of flying cars instead of the fact that horses have already turned into Teslas.

Attached to My Face

by Jill Satterfield

Even with over 20 years of meditation practice, I recently re-discovered just how attached I am to my face. Yes, the pun is that we are all attached to our faces—they are part of our heads. However, what the pun insinuates but doesn't explore is just how emotionally attached I am to my face. Some recent surgery showed me the hidden extent of it.

As I attempt to faithfully see everything as practice, being self reflective, looking over and over at my mind and its habits, I kind of got around seeing this particular fondness for my face as an attachment. I see an aging face for sure—which requires some getting used to—but it has been a surprise to discover what I thought was a simple, unassuming, and perfectly normal preference was underneath a definite attachment in disguise. 

This most recent crack in my human veneer came in the form of more surgery (I’ve lived through at least 21 so far), this time in my mouth, which left me at least (hopefully) temporarily, looking like someone else. When a friend suggested it was worse looking to me than anyone else, I laughed (carefully covering my mouth). When someone suggested no one would notice or care, I couldn't help but say that I didn't think they might not feel that way if it were their face! 

Almost everyone has a body part or physical area of their body that they like the best—hair, hands, legs—and mine was always my smile. I have one of those big, wide, bright smiles. The unsettling part of liking my teeth and smile is that I’ve long had a fear of falling and breaking my teeth. When I was young, a friend of mine fell while ice-skating and her tooth went through her lip and broke. The thought of that turned my stomach. When I learned to ski I was petrified of falling down the slope at high velocity and landing on my face breaking my teeth. So while I skied a little, I didn’t pursue it with any vigor.

About 10 years ago I had a root canal—this was after having only had a single cavity my whole life. A few weeks before I felt anything erupting, I had a prophetic dream  that my tooth was a green mushy aloe plant, which after the pain of the infection, made perfect sense as an image. It was shocking to have work done in my mouth, but at least my smile didn’t suffer. 

Fast-forward 12 years. I was in France when the root of the tooth on which I had the root canal snapped. I had taken a bite of celery and pop. A dentist pulled the tooth and put it temporarily back in with a short pin. I could barely breathe thinking it would come out. And, of course it did, after I moved to Paris. And, of course it had to be the one dinner and day of being a tourist with a friend visiting from New York.

I located a dentist who spoke decent English, and had a replacement tooth made. Suffice it to say that it was not comfortable or aesthetically pleasing, but, I rationalized, I was in Paris, didn’t know more than two or three people, so who would care? You know the reputation of the French and their teeth, and I was there to have the experience, and to write, so most of my time was spent writing alone, with a few hours each day going to museums or wandering solitarily around the city.

Even though no one else cared for a moment about my appearance, I continued to examine my feelings about it—what I was willing to expose, what I wanted to be private and secret—and I got to seeing just how attached I was/am to my face. I was living the example of avidya (delusion), thinking I was my face. I was a prime example of raga, having attachment to my looks, and also dvesa, having an aversion to how I looked. I was the walking textbook for what some of the Yoga Sutras cautioned against!

A couple of months later, I moved to London. There I found a cosmetic dentist who had the nicest office I had ever seen, with beautiful young women in white serving tea off of Haviland porcelain teacups with silver spoons on the side. He put an implant in my mouth and I was ecstatic when, after the swelling went down I looked like myself again, finally! I enjoyed London tremendously, especially feeling myself again and being able to speak the language. When it was time to go home, I returned to New York with renewed vigor and the excitement of being back.

Not more than a month later, the implant became infected and had to be extracted. I was devastated. I worked at being with what was—which was anger, sadness, and blame. Although I knew I had a choice as to how I was feeling, I was caught in a tangle and really having difficulty letting go. In Buddhism this is called upadana, which means clinging. I was indeed clinging to how I used to look.

With old age and sickness close on my coat tails, I realized that I had better relax about this a little. I knew that if I didn’t, I would be suffering non-stop from here on out. I really don't want to suffer any more than is absolutely necessary! There's what's called optional suffering in Buddhism, and I saw how I was adding to that pile.

I had a temporary tooth made; it not only looked temporary, but it sang of “being made.” I tried to hide it, and my smile got smaller. Even though I still used my smile, I rarely let the extent of my entire mouth widen in public, and only to a select few friends would I smiled normally, or only when it was dark. 

I continued to travel and to teach about awareness, about suffering, about meeting what is, and I honestly kept living my messages to the best I was able. I knew in my heart that with time, I would accept what was going on physically more and more, and I did. Slowly.

I moved to California and began to settle in. I was ready to address the possible recovery of my smile with yet another dental surgeon. I developed faith in her, and the time had come to try again, repair the damage, and move on.

The surgery was five hours instead of the planned two, and afterward, I was ill, weakened, swollen, in pain. I hid in my home and read novels, many of them. I took pain meds, slept and barely ate, and didn’t leave my house. This went on for a month. The healing was so slow that my mouth wasn’t ready to accept a (new) temporary tooth—the proteins put into my jaw to re-build bone and the re-arranging of gum left my mouth and face incredibly swollen and painful. Now though, it was show time: I was to go on a retreat and I still had no (front) tooth. I weighed it out, I didn’t want to let anyone I didn’t know see the gap in my mouth, but I also didn’t want to miss the precious opportunity to be on silent retreat, which had always renewed me and has been a refuge.

I went to the retreat. I rarely opened my mouth. There were a couple of times we were asked to speak, and I either didn’t or put my hand over my mouth. During the meditation periods especially, I walked directly into my prideful fire. I was roasting in it; it was burning me and I only had tears to quench the heat. I faced my face and my pride over and over and over again. Sometimes with sorrow, other times with self -pity, and occasionally with anger. But I knew enough about practice to keep doing it no matter what. I didn’t run from my internal pain, even though I metaphorically ran from looking at anyone else to avoid being looked back at. I wanted to disappear physically, but to appear mentally and emotionally.

We all have our little pockets of shadow. Most everyone has a bit of something that hasn't been aired out, and spiritual practice is about finding those crevasses and filling them up with the light of awareness—no matter how slowly, or when, in your lifetime. Working with what is means just that, and life certainly does pitch some fastballs. Not all catches are graceful, but practice shows us that we have a choice about how we feel about things, and that we can pick up and try again.

I don't wish these kinds of lessons on anyone, but for me there have been gems in each one of these small traumas, and at this point I know no matter how difficult something might be, or how much I initially think I can't take it, I do and can, and will. The Yoga Sutras says:

“ II.33 Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts.” —translated by Edwin Bryant

(See Cultivating the Opposite for info on pratipaksha bhavanam or cultivating counteracting thoughts.)

And so I re-focus and re-adjust. I'm about to go out now, face forward, smiling inwardly. I've decided that although I still very much care about how I look, it won't prevent me from doing what I want and what is important. This has been about my face, but it is really about what has surfaced in front of my face and facing many unpleasant things. And I've been shown that there is a life that I still want to live in front of me. Optional suffering excluded.

Jill Satterfield is the founder of Vajra Yoga + Meditation, a synthesis of yoga and Buddhism that combines meditation, yoga and contemplative practices. Named “one of the 4 leading yoga and Buddhist teachers in the country” by Shambhala Sun Magazine, Jill has instigated mindful and creative educational programs for over 28 years.

She is also the founder and Director of the School for Compassionate Action: Meditation, Yoga and Educational Support for Communities in Need, a not-for-profit that trains teachers, psychologists and health care providers to integrate mind and body practices into their professions. SCA also provides classes to people in chronic pain, with illness, those suffering from PTSD, and at-risk youth. Jill teaches workshops internationally, is a faculty member of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Mindfulness for Yoga Training and the Somatic Training in Marin, California, and is a guest teacher for many other training programs. To find out more about Jill, visit her website vajrayoga.com.

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Practicing Yoga Mindfully (Rerun)

by Nina

Raindrops and Reflections by Nina Zolotow

Although it’s a rather new concept, approaching yoga poses as a mindfulness practice is a very powerful tool for improving your physical and mental health. Whether you are trying to change your eating habits, reduce your stress, or heal from disease, learning to listen to your body is crucial. In his wonderful book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn points out what happens if we simply operate in automatic-pilot mode:

"One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse or lose control of as a result of being the automatic-pilot mode is our own body. We may be barely in touch with our body, unaware of how it is feeling most of the time. As a consequence we can be insensitive to how our body is being affected by the environment, by our actions, and even by our own thoughts and emotions. If we are unaware of these connections, we might easily feel that our body is out of control and we will have no idea why."

Kabat-Zinn goes on to say that physical symptoms are the messages your body is giving you that allow you to know how it is doing and what its needs are.

"When we are more in touch with our body as a result of paying attention to it systematically, we will be far more attuned to what it is telling us and better equipped to respond appropriately. Learning to listen to your own body is vital is improving your health and the quality of your life."

And one of the best ways to pay attention to your body systematically is to bring mindfulness into your asana practice. I, myself, have learned to recognize certain physical symptoms that tell me when I’m overstressed (for example, a burning feeling in my chest). When I experience those sensations, I know it’s time for me to scale back temporarily and practice the yoga poses that calm me down. In my interview with Elizabeth (see Meditation and Healthy Eating) about mindfulness and eating, she talked about learning, from both meditation and asana practice, to recognize when she was actually hungry versus thirsty or had low potassium and that has helped her lose and keep off 50 pounds.

So how you make your asana practice a mindfulness practice? Kabat-Zinn writes:

"We practice the yoga with the same attitude that we bring to sitting meditation or body scan. We do it without striving and without forcing. We practice accepting our body as we find it, in the present, from one moment to the next. While stretching or lifting or balancing, we learn to work at our limits, maintaining moment-to-moment awareness. We are patient with ourselves. As we carefully move up to our limits in a stretch, for instance, we practice breathing at that limit, dwelling in the creative space between not challenging the body at all and pushing it to far."

If that’s not enough—or if you have fallen into a rut with your practice that’s putting you in automatic-pilot mode, I have some specific suggestions:

1. Practice yoga at home. Practicing on your own, without the distraction of the teacher telling you what to do you or other people in the room, forces you to pay more attention to your own experience of being in the poses.
2. Pick a single physical sensation to follow throughout your entire practice, whether it is the quality of your breath in every single pose, the even distribution of weight on your feet—the balls as well as the heels—in every pose, or even something more arcane.
3. Change your routine. If you do practice at home and are in stuck in rut, try doing something different. Practice on the left side first instead of the right. How does that feel? Or, do all your twisting poses, even all the standing the poses, without turning your head. Twist from your spine only and leave your head looking down at the floor. Notice how hard that is, and how different your neck feels.
4. Try using props if you never have. See what difference it makes. Or, if you use props regularly, try a different height (lower or higher) or try practicing without props for once and see what a difference that makes.
5. Try holding poses for longer periods of time than you usually do. Notice the resistance that comes up in your body (as well as your mind).

Anyone who has additional suggestions, please chime in!

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Friday Q&A: Arm Strength and Upward-Facing Bow Pose

B.K.S. Iyengar in Upward-Facing Bow

Q: I have a shoulder impingement with a possible tear in the supraspinatus muscle. I also have arthritis in the AC joint. I tried chair version of Urdhva Dhanurasana Sunday but I could not raise myself up. Question: Which muscles of the shoulder and back are used to raise up the torso and straighten the arms in Urdhva Dhanurasana? Is there a way to strengthen those muscles with resistance training?

A: First, I’d like to say there is a common misconception that getting into Upward-Facing Bow pose (Urdva Dhanurasana) is all about using the strength of your arms. In fact, your legs—which are stronger than your arms—play a crucial role in helping you move into the pose, and you should actually initiate your movement into the pose from your feet rather than your hands. I’ll be describing the action of your legs and feet in this pose in a future post, but until then because our reader asked specifically about the role of the arms in Urdva Dhanurasana, I’m going address just the movement of the upper body in this pose.

Next, I'd like to caution our reader that the combination of a possible supraspinatus tear and shoulder impingement (I am assuming on one side only), along with arthritis in the acromio-clavicular joint (between the acromion process—part of the shoulder blade—and the lateral end of the collar bone (again, I am assuming on the same side as the other issues), makes for one potentially limited shoulder and arm! If he has not had an MRI yet, this would help our reader clarify the question regarding a torn supraspinatus.

But let me break each aspect of these shoulder difficulties down:

Shoulder Impingement. Most of the time, the thing getting impinged or pinched beneath the AC joint (the one in our reader’s shoulder that also has arthritis in it) is the tendon of the supraspinatus muscle. This muscle is one of the four rotator cuff muscles. It starts off in the valley-like trough at the top part of the back of the shoulder blade, and the tendon travels laterally toward the upper arm bone, goes through a tunnel created by the AC joint, and attaches to the upper outer humerus bone. The primary job of supraspinatus is to help the ligaments of the shoulder area in keeping the humerus bone close to the part of the shoulder blade that makes up the shoulder joint (technically called the gleno-humeral joint). It turns out the ligaments don’t do a great job with this on their own, so the four rotator cuff muscles assist. The supraspinatus muscle also helps to swing the arm bone out the side and overhead with a group of other muscles, including the lateral part of the deltoid muscle, parts of the pectoralis major muscle, and the upper and lower parts of the trapezius muscle. The tearing of this muscle and the pinching often go hand-in-hand. (I discussed rotator cuff injuries briefly discussed in a past blog post Friday Q&A: Rotator Cuff Pain.)

Shoulder Arthritis. I wrote about shoulder arthritis way back in 2012 (for a quick review, see Arthritis of the Shoulder and Yoga). An important thing to remember about arthritic joints: if they are inflamed and painful already, doing weight-bearing poses can make them angrier—can you say Upward-Facing Bow? So non-weight-bearing range of motion exercises might precede the recommendations later in this post. 

With all of that in mind, let’s tackle the first of the two questions our reader is curious about: Which muscles of the shoulders and back are used to raise up the torso and straighten the arms in Urdhva Dhanurasana?

To set up for this pose, a practitioner usually starts in Constructive Rest pose, with arms flexed at the elbow and palms on the floor just above the shoulders with the fingers pointing towards the shoulders. 

To get from this position into full Upward-Facing Bow pose, three big actions of the arms and upper body are required: extension of your elbow joints, flexion of your upper arm bones at the shoulder joints, and upper back extension (back bending).

There are lots of muscles involved but of few of the most important ones are as follows:

Triceps. For straightening your elbows, the main muscle you need to use is your triceps, which starts at your shoulder blades and upper arm bones and travels down to attach on the back of the ulna bones just below your elbows. You can strengthen this muscle by moving repeatedly from full Push-Up pose (Chaturanga) back up into high Plank pose or from low Cobra pose (Bhujangasa) up to High Plank pose. You can also target this muscle group nicely with weight machines and free weight exercises.

Other arm muscles. To get an idea of the muscles in your upper arms needed to get into the pose, stand in the middle of the room with your arms overhead, with elbows bent and palms facing the celing at the same level as your head. Now imagine balancing a tray on your hands and the top of your head, and then press press the imaginary tray straight up to the sky To make this action happen, all the muscles that upwardly rotate your shoulder blades, especially the upper and lower trapezius, along with anterior deltoid and parts of the pectoralis major need to contract strongly. This is the same movement you need to make to move from Constructive Rest position to Upward-Facing Bow pose.

You could strengthen both your triceps and all the other muscles just mentioned by moving from Anna Forrest’s variation of Downward-Facing Dog pose, known as Turbo Dog, where your elbows are bent toward the floor about 30 degree, to full Downward-Facing Dog pose. Seated bench presses at the gym also target these muscles, but you need to keep your elbows and arms parallel through the movement (no elbows out to the sides!). 

Spinal muscles. To backbend the arch of your spine, you need to contract all of the muscles that line both sides of your spine on your back body. The largest muscle group needed for this action the erector spinae, which run from the base of your skull all the way down to the back of your pelvis. When you contract these multiple layers on both sides of your spine at the same time, you can achieve an even arch of your spine. A great way to use work these muscles is to lie on your belly with your arms stretched out in front of you on the floor. Inhale up into a Locust pose (Salabasana) variation, sometimes called Superman pose, and exhale down to the starting position. You can repeat this several times. With this movement, you are not only working the erector spinae, but you are also getting benefit for the arms as well.

In answer to the question “Is there a way to strengthen those muscles with resistance training?” my suggestions above to strengthen the groups of muscles in question with yoga use the resistance of your own body weight in the poses. Of course, you can also employ resistance by using free weights or weight machines at your local gym. As long as these isolated strengthening exercises don’t aggravate our reader’s shoulder issues, he may find them helpful in achieving his asana goal. Keep in mind that in addition to strengthening the muscles that create the actions described above, successful completion of Upward-Facing Bow pose also requires stretching the muscles on your front of the body adequately. But that is a story for another post! 

Finally, I’d like to suggest you ask your yoga teacher to show you a different variation of Upward-Facing Bow pose. Instead of working with a chair (I’m assuming your feet are on the chair seat), try working with your hands on two slanted blocks that are against the wall. This variation can be helpful for people who are tight in the shoulder area, as requires less opening in the shoulders than the full pose while still allowing them to use the power of their legs to move into the pose.

—Baxter

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Practicing Yoga for Your Health

by Nina

Hygeia, Goddess of Health by Peter Paul Rubens

One of the reasons, I wrote about body image yesterday in The Body You Want—besides the fact that I was feeling a bit rant-y, I guess—is that I knew I was going to write today’s post about practicing yoga for health benefits. And I wanted to have a way to clearly distinguish between practicing yoga asanas for health benefits and practicing yoga to “get the body you want.” This topic was on my mind because we received the following question from one of our readers:

"I’m a well aged yoga practitioner in my 70’s. One of the most incongruent aspects of yoga, especially in the western world, seems to come about from the tendency of practitioners to ‘use’ yoga for achieving something physical … more flexibility, greater range of motion and on and on. In a different way, as Ram so kindly reminds us, yoga offers the means to grow spiritually. To me these two aspects of yoga … achieving a desirable state of physical being through asana and cultivating spiritual growth through meditation, mindfulness and intentional study of yoga tradition appear to be at odds with each other.

"Question: Does the tendency to ‘use’ yoga (physically) actually impede our ability to comprehend the less tangible, more subtle and deeper spiritual aspects of yoga?"

To this reader, the use of yoga to achieve something “physical” seems incongruent with cultivating spiritual growth, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In fact, hatha yoga—the type of yoga we are all practicing when we do asanas—was originally developed as a way of fortifying the body for meditation. Hatha yogis believed that an unhealthy body or one that was in constant pain would impede the ability of the practitioner to sit for long periods of time, so various physical practices, including asana, pranayama, and cleansing practices, were introduced to support the good health of the practitioner. Here’s a quote from the Hatha Yoga Pradipka that describes the purpose of the asanas:

“The Âsanas are a means of gaining steadiness of position and help to gain success in contemplation, without any distraction of the mind. If the position be not comfortable, the slightest inconvenience will draw the mind away from the lakśya (aim), and so no peace of mind will be possible till the posture has ceased to cause pain by regular exercise.”

This why doing asana to support your health is not actually incongruent with the original aim of yoga. (But this is also why, as I said yesterday, doing asanas to improve your looks or to “get the body you want” is at odds with the true aim of yoga.)

However, the intention you bring to the your practice is essential for keeping your physical practice “yogic.” If you become obsessed with achieving good health (something you might not be able to achieve, anyway) or with any of the outward attributes that you associate with health (such as strength, flexibility, balance, and so on), then these obsessions may take over. At this point, if your practice is focused solely on the achievement of physical goals as an end in themselves, then you’ve lost your way. And surely an obsession with achieving perfect health is no way to find peace of mind, because, of course, you will ultimately fail.

So how can you practice for health without getting sidetracked by focusing on physical achievements? For me, the answer is in a text that is much older than the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Bhagavad Gita. The important message of the Gita, which Krishna explains several different ways to Arjuna, is that achieve equanimity you must surrender the fruits of your actions:

"Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.

Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work.

Do thy work in the peace of Yoga and, free from selfish desires, be not moved in success or failure.

Yoga is evenness of mind—a peace that is ever the same."

In fact, in the very early days of the blog, we wrote some posts What We Need to Practice and Acceptance, Active Engagement, and the Bhagavad Gita that espoused this very philosophy as a way to achieve peace of mind as you practiced yoga for healthy aging. I wrote back then that daily yoga practice is no quick fix, and results are never guaranteed, because this is real life, people. So for your peace of mind, at the same time that you work toward staying healthy, you should try to let go of all thoughts of success or failure and simply focus on your practice. Then no matter what happens, you’ll be prepared to handle it. And this combination active engagement and acceptance is the yogic approach to practicing asana for your health.

Additionally, when you perform your asanas with this intention, what you do in the yoga room becomes “practice” for your life outside the yoga room. For this same yogic approach outside the yoga room allows you to cultivate equanimity in your daily life. No matter what work we have to do, whether it is raising children, going to a 9 to 5 job, being politically active, or helping a dying family member, practicing acceptance along with active engagement allows us to do what we need to do and be at peace with the results.

“In this wisdom, a man goes beyond what is well done and what is not well done.

Go thou therefore to wisdom:

Yoga is wisdom in work.” —Bhagavad Gita, trans. Juan Mascaro

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