Restorative Yoga for Sports Fitness, Healing, Longevity, and Rejuvenation: A personal account, by St

About 9 years ago my postural problems had been increasing slowly. Computer project deadlines always seemed to happen faster than I expected. Managers in the software industry regularly underestimate the effort required. Why is that? An internal time clock malfunction? Not sure but I was caught up in it and with the impending separation from my girl friend things were deteriorating. I thought I had a decent solution to it all. I would simply increase my weekly running mileage from 20 to 25 miles, throw in a few hills, and it would be easy going. In the past a bit more exercise seemed to work well.

One night I ran halfway up majestic Mount Soledad in La Jolla, Ca, circled the top and started back down. It was always fun running down but that morning was a little different. The pending end of my relationship had been building stiffness into my hips, low back, and hamstrings and I had been busy. Too busy to slow down and stretch like I wanted to. On the way down I stepped off an ordinary curb in an ordinary way and planted my foot … Ouch! Now there were sharp pains shooting down my left leg. I stopped, evaluated my leg a little and thought, “Not a problem, I can stretch this out when I get home. I have felt this kind of thing pain before.”, so I walked a few blocks back home, stretched for half an hour and went to work which meant 6-8 hour in a chair. All day long I had a low level dull ache in my left hip. “Not too bad” I thought, “I’ll stretch more over the next few days and it will be fine.” But by the end of the week my hip muscles were still tight and there was some nerve pains that were distracting.

I decided to rest and really stretch. I knew all the muscles, the Piriformis, Gemelis, Gluteus Minimus, Hamstrings … they were all involved and I would just spend the extra time to stretch them just like the chiropractors had shown me. I would put the extra time into the stretching that I was not allowing because of my busy software schedule and everything would be fine right? Well, the next few years would be different. I would not exercise regularly and I would often struggle with low back pain during my long days of sitting in an office chair.

I was in my still fairly young and things were getting stiffer. For many years I had a minimalist stretching routine, a regular exercise schedule, and I was spending 8 hours a day in a chair. It did not seem like a “really” big deal; the big Ouch!, but that pain was sitting on top of a mountain of muscular tension that I was mostly unaware of. For years I was not doing any deep stretches. I was only doing quick stretches that I thought athletes should do. I did the stretches I liked before I would hurry off to work or to dinner or anywhere else. I did not do any long slow stretches. Just like most people who don’t stretch enough I had been slowly increasing the tightness in the legs, hips, and back and slowly decreasing my strength in the core abdominals muscles. I simply did not know about the micro spasms that occur for everyone in deep stabilizing muscles. I was getting tighter and tighter in certain muscles and weak and weaker in others which is a recipe for disaster.

For the year following the big “Ouch!” I stopped running, increased my tried and tested stretching routine, visited chiropractors, got MRI scans, got foot supporting orthotics for my shoes, adjusted my chair posture, tried some acupuncture, and took plenty of Ibuprofen. Things got better but were never right. I had a chronic postural issue.

Eventually I decided to try a yoga class that I had been to years before. Luckily for me it was a class taught by Rama Birch the founder of the Yoga Alliance. The Yoga Alliance creates the standards for certified yoga teachers nationwide. Rama is a very wise yoga teacher. Her conviction and experience were amazing to me. I told her about my dilemma and she said something like, “Well, I saw you moving across the room and your spine is all locked up. You need to release your tail bone. It’s going to take time.” I thought to myself, “geez, my spine is locked up, hmmm; I can touch my toes and even get my legs into a few pretzel poses.” I had even done extra stretching the month before class so how could I be that locked up?

I started taking classes and did the extra poses that Rama suggested. For a one hour a day for several months I did this: 1, the seated forward bend (head hanging between the knees), #2, the chair cross legged forward fold for both legs (in a chair, ankle on opposite knee and fold forward), 3, kneeling lunge for both legs (knee on the ground and opposite foot out in front and bring the front leg to vertical), #4, lying stomach twist both sides (lying on your side you look like your in a chair with you head looking the opposite way of your knees). I added a few more yoga postures and some core exercises given to me by a chiropractor that also helped relieve the small muscle spasms and tightness. Slowly over time my body changed. The pains started disappearing and a few months later there were significant changes that allowed me to jog a bit and go dancing. After awhile I was taking regular Vinyasa yoga classes at the gym I had joined. I was going to yoga every other day and feeling great. I was running 1 mile a day and cycling a lot.

I lived this way for a few years and I felt pretty good but was never really satisfied. I was more restricted than I wanted to be by my physical limitations. I wanted a regular aerobic exercise routine that was invigorating. I wanted to feel really healthy. Every time I tried to increase my running mileage the pains would come back and linger throughout my day. I tried to stretch good in the Vinyasa yoga classes and that helped but not enough.

Rama stopped teaching regularly and started working on the Yoga Alliance full time so I made it my goal to find another teacher. I wanted a teacher trained by Rama because I sensed that I needed to release the deeper muscles that Rama would talk about. I found Skyler Myers at yoganic studio and I started taking her bliss classes (restorative yoga). After several months my body started changing on a deeper level. I was slowly releasing more of the bound up tension from deep within my spine, tailbone, hips, hamstrings etc. With these classes I was doing a larger variety of yoga postures and I was discovering new poses that I needed to add to my regular routine. After a year of yoga with Skyler I started running a few miles at a time again without pain. I was gliding like an antelope as if I was still in my early 20s. Everything started getting easier. My stress level was dropping and the 2-3 colds I used to get per year were now either mild or not happening at all.

I was thrilled and one day I decided to share my joy of deeper yoga with the world. I borrowed a friend’s professional video camera and created a yoga DVD with a few friends. After struggling and learning a lot with that video I purchased a few more cameras and other equipment. Over the next couple of years we produced several yoga DVDs spending many hours waiting for nice sunsets and just the right tides (beauty was very important to us). I am especially fond of the Therapeutic and Restorative yoga DVDs because of my history and the dramatic changes that came from moving deeper into my body. The DVDs are for sale online at Amazon.com and at MyYogaVideo.com. Search for myyogavideo on Amazon.

Over the years I have tried many styles and teachers of yoga. My deeper healings came from really slowing down and paying close attention. I also needed to try different things, experiment with positions, and find out what it was like to deeply relax into a pose. Without a deeply relaxing style of I probably would never have discovered what my body needed. In other types of yoga classes there simply was not enough relaxation. My mind did not slow down enough and release the deeper muscles. There are so many muscles in the body and these muscles store tension in layers. Some muscles like those in and around the coccygeal nerve need to release before you can get a good release in the sciatic nerve area, the piriformis. And to do this you need to find out if they are tight. Right now can you feel whether the muscles in and around your tailbone are tight? Noticing your deep tensions takes time, patience, and the right poses with a possibility of deep relaxation.

The DVD projects were gathering steam and as they chugged along it became important to me to create DVDs that would help yogis move deeper into their practice. When I practiced yoga it was not always helpful to hear the instructor talking. I liked it when her instruction was directed at what she saw in me that helped me explore my body but often she was saying things that distracted me from noticing the deep subtle muscles and my breath. I needed to escape my own minds chatter and her chatter often just added to it. This type of mental chatter is almost always present on DVDs where the instructor is talking about alignment and it is there every time you play it. So in addition to restorative yoga DVDs we created a series of Vinyasa Yoga DVDs where you can choose how detailed the instruction is. You also choose the music you want, the music that helps you go beyond the mind, or choose no music or no detailed instruction. And we tried to make them beautiful to inspire you further.

The home website for the videos clips and DVDs is MyYogaVideo.com
I hope you enjoy them
Namaste,

Article Source: http://www.ezx-articles.com

Steve Bickel July 1 2008 MyYogaVideo.com

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