What kind of Yoga is right for me?

I have been teaching Yoga for a couple of years now, and one of the things I frequently say is that there are almost as many styles of Yoga as there are Yoga teachers. Every once in a while, I hear a story about a person who "tried Yoga once, but hated it."

I will share my first time Yoga story with you...Once upon a time, back in the sunny 1990s, I was at a Blockbuster Video store, and in the used/for sale section, I found a Yoga VHS tape. It was Raquel Welch. I was in college, and I ended up adoring that video. I took it back to school. Raquel took me through a challenging practice. I went from never having heard of a single Yoga pose to eventually feeling confident in poses like shoulder stand and hand-to-big-toe. I LOVED it, and I LOVED Yoga!

Being a poor college student, I had neither the money nor the time to go take real yoga classes. Once I graduated, I lived in a small rural town that didn't have anything like a Yoga studio, and this was back in the mid-1990s, when such entities were still limited to the big cities. So I kept using my Raquel Welch VHS and added a few others to my collection.

Eventually, my local gym offered a special one-time only Yoga workshop. I was so excited! I loved Yoga! I arrived and found a packed class, and I was enthusiastic, because this might mean we had enough interest to sustain regular Yoga classes. We began with a warmup that seemed very familiar, but after about 30 minutes, the instructor informed us that we would be doing lots of partner work.

In all my VHS work, I had never been asked to work with a partner. And although I attended this gym regularly, I did not know anyone else in the class. Everybody else seemed to have buddies, and people partnered up right away. I felt like the last kid picked for a class in gym, standing by myself, and I tried to imagine leaning back-to-back with a total stranger, or holding hands and stretching into a straddle. It was just not my bag.

Faced with the likely option of having to work directly with the instructor, since partners were scarce, I picked up my mat and shoes and slithered silently toward the door. The instructor could have just let it go, but she did not. In a loud voice, which I perceived as sarcastic, she announced, "Well, thanks for joining us!"

I still remember her name was Deb. I never took another one of her classes. She is not the only instructor I remember for the wrong reasons. But I do often think of her, and I think, what if that had been my very first introduction to Yoga? What if, little old shy me, had wondered in off the street and thought that that's all that yoga was?

So I try to remember to tell people, especially newbies, "If you don't like my class, don't say you don't like Yoga. Try another class. Try at least 10 classes with 10 different people in different places. Try short and long, hot an cold, Vinyasa and Yin, and then you can say you don't like it, but give it a fair shot first."

So, to address the title of my post, what kind of Yoga is right for me? The reason I chose to write this is that I often run into new Yogis whose doctors have told them they ought to be doing Yoga. And I am so thankful that physicians are spreading the word! But if you have a bad back and are just recovering from an injury, you probably do not need to be doing the super-Intense Vinyasa flow class.

Steps to determining the right class for you:

1. Call the studio ahead of time. If you plan to go to an actual yoga studio, the person answering the phones should be able to gather enough information from you to direct you to the right class. If you are going to a gym, you may need to dig a little deeper. 
2. If you are just starting out, look for a "gentle" or "hatha" yoga. This is one place where you don't want to let your pride get on the way. You can get plenty of workout and stretch in a  gentle class, and it can really help you learn proper form and breathing before you move into a faster-paced class.
3. If you like to move a lot, try Vinyasa. If you think Yoga moves too slow, look for a Vinyasa or Power yoga.
4. If you just want the stretch and nothing else, look for a Yin Yoga class. Yin is totally focused on long, slow holds, is great for stress management, and excellent for athletes who push themselves several days of the week and just need a break every once in a while. 
5. Hot or cold? Heated yoga is the hot trend, and lots of people love it. If you go, just be sure to drink plenty of water starting several hours before the class (as in, if it's a morning class, hydrate well the night before and allow yourself time to drink a big glass of water at a leisurely pace before class). Sip, don't chug, during the class, and re-hydrate well after the end. Be sure to bring a nice, clean change of clothes for after. I literally look like I jumped in a pool after a hot yoga class, and don't really want to put my sweaty body back in my car.
6. If you are new, and your gym or studio offers a Beginner class, or even a Chair class, try it out when you get a chance. Your ego may want you to push hard all the time, but it can be a great learning experience to start at the beginning and take things slow. I taught Chair yoga for a year or so, and I was always able to vary it to the level of the class, hopefully your instructor will, too.
7. Lastly, if your doctor recommended that you take Yoga, make sure your instructor knows that at the beginning of the class. Tell the instructor what special issues you have. If you have a lot of concerns, you can always ask about one-on-one Yoga training so that you can get a whole workout plan tailored 100% to your personal needs.

Thanks so much for reading with me until the end. I teach Yoga several times a week in the Stafford and Fredericksburg, Virginia, area. If you are interested in joining me for group or private lessons, please reach out. I would love to work with you!

Namaste, friends!

Depression, weight loss, weight gain

I find it interesting and rather frustrating that when our little animal bodies go through times of stress, we release a hormone called cortisol, which (among many other things) makes us want to eat carbs[1]. Another thing cortisol does is increase our body’s tendency to store fat in our abdominal area. To put it in layman’s terms, when you get stressed out, you want to eat a whole bag of cookies and it all goes straight to your belly and/or thighs and butt. You probably already know that.

If we stay stressed for long enough without properly chilling out, cortisol has even worse effects on our systems. Eventually, chronic stress will take a negative toll on the digestive tract. Where once we craved the whole bag of cookies, eventually, it will become difficult to eat anything, and digestion and absorption become compromised. You probably already know this, too. At least once in your life, you may have sat down to dinner with a date who decided to start a fight as soon as the entrees arrived. The waiter sets the once-beautiful lobster/steak/pasta in front of you, now rendered totally inedible by argument. If not, consider yourself blessed. 

Once we reach this phase of stress, we may begin to drop some stress-related weight. I’ve been doing this for a few months now. My weight loss is still under 10 pounds, but I am a generally fit person not trying to lose a lot of weight, so it’s a little frustrating to me. Also annoying is the fact that cortisol doesn’t release its hold on abdominal fat just because it won’t let you eat. The net result is that I am dropping weight from around my already scrawny lower-legs and upper chest, while my belly and butt hold onto it tightly.

If I were to continually repeat this stress cycle over the course of my life, I imagine that I would eventually end up looking like a potato propped up on toothpicks. 

I searched the Internet for a plan to combat the potato-toothpick outcome, and I could find nothing specific. Most of the Internet’s advice was geared toward managing the symptoms of depression (see a professional therapist) and keeping down weight gain (get exercise). All good advice, but it didn’t really address the stress-related weight-loss issue. 

So as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor, I will offer my personal plan of attack to manage this moment that I’m going through, just in case it helps anyone else: 

·     Unwind at the gym. Make sure your exercise includes a mind-body/stress management element like Yoga or Tai-Chi. 

• ·     Focus on moderate-intensity exercise. High intensity exercise is fun, but it adds stress to the body, and releases more cortisol into the blood.
• ·     Take group classes. It’s good to be in a group with other people, especially when you are feeling down, and even when you don’t really feel like it.
• ·     Lift weights. Weight lifting will help build or maintain muscle mass to keep the body from cannibalizing its own muscle mass if you aren’t eating properly. In my personal anecdotal experience, moving weight is also an excellent appetite stimulant. Again, don’t go crazy. Focus on moderate weight and increase gently over time to avoid injury, and adding additional stress and cortisol.
• ·     Make your meals a sanctuary. Allow yourself a half-hour of quiet, stress free time for each meal. If that means you need to eat alone and lock yourself in a storage closet with a candle and Spotify’s Deep Sleep Playlist, do it. You deserve time to digest without conflict.
• ·     Plan easily digestible meals. I am a huge fan of smoothies, because I feel like the cold, semi-liquid ingredients can slide in between the most stressed-out intestines. However, commercially prepared ones can be loaded with sugars and low in nutritional quality. Half a banana, a milk of choice, and a scoop of protein powder tossed together with a few ice cubes in a blender will keep you moving for a few more hours. Add avocado for some healthy fats, greens if your tummy can tolerate them, maybe a beet if you are feeling wild and crazy. Following is a link to some clean-eating smoothie ideas. All very simple and low-sugar: https://www.fitnessmagazine.com/recipes/drink/smoothie/clean-eating-smoothie-recipes/
• ·     Plan easily made meals. If you are already dealing with depression and stress, you know you aren’t actually going to cook the five-course meal, no matter how great it looked on the Food Network. Keep the meal plans simple, and there’s a greater chance you’ll make the food. You can toss a family pack of chicken thighs in the slow cooker with salt and pepper on Sunday, and do absolutely nothing else to it for 5 hours, and you’ll have proteins for the week. Buy few types of vegetables (broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes) that you can microwave or roast to go along with it, and that’s dinner in a few minutes all week long. I pull a lot of meal plans from Eatingwell.com http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/21148/seasonal/spring/dinner/quick-easy/. I like how they organize them so that breakfast, lunch and dinner use many of the same ingredients, which is efficient and economical, and none of their meals take terribly long to make. 

My final piece of advice for managing depression and weight loss and gain? Don't feel like you have to keep it a big secret. You don't need to tell everyone all the details of what you are going through, but you can tell your friends that you are having a rough time, and let them know what you need. Like, "Hey, friends, I am really stressed out, and it would help me if you would come to yoga with me to give me some motivation to get there."

Meanwhile, if anyone would like to come to yoga with me, I teach like 5 times a week, so just ask, and I'll tell you where I am. And we can just breathe together.

Namaste, friends!

---

[1]Dina Aronson, MS, RD, Today’s Dietitian 
Vol. 11 No. 11 P. 38, Cortisol — Its Role in Stress, Inflammation, and Indications for Diet Therapy

http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/111609p38.shtml

Things to do when you’re feeling down

You have probably seen some sort of TV or cartoon depiction of a little angel sitting on a person’s shoulder, and a tiny devil with pitchfork on the opposite shoulder. They are both whispering advice as the person tries to make a decision. Usually it’s about whether to get the fries or a salad. I don’t think that angels and devils interact with us quite like that, but we all do have some internal conversations going on throughout the day. I have noticed in myself that sometimes the loudest and most insistent voice is absolutely the wrong one.

Bad ideas from the loud voice:

•     Take another shot of tequila!
•      Eat all the chocolate!
•      Ask him out for drinks!
•      Avoid people today!

Okay, there are times and places where all these things are fine, but in the particular situations I’m thinking of in my life, each of these loud-voice-influenced decisions began a series of unfortunate events.

Sometimes, when we’re feeling depressed, the absolutely last thing we want to do is crawl out of bed. If we make it to the bathroom, we think we’ve made some great progress. The idea of being around other people at times like that is nearly impossible to imagine. All we want to do is curl up in bed, maybe sit in the dark and ruminate about the unfortunate circumstance that is life. If there is chocolate (or whatever binge food you prefer) in the house, so much the better. The loud voice tells you to eat it. Eat it all. Stay in bed.  Drink the booze. Take the pills. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t call your friends.

Somewhere inside, there is a quiet voice telling us this course of action will only make things worse, but the idea of going outside and taking a walk or calling friends to come over is just too much. So I have put together a list of achievable goals for days when we’re feeling really down. If you can accomplish some of the things, you might be able to feel a little better tomorrow, instead of making the situation worse.

Things to Do:

•      Take a bath. Put your body in the tub. Run some hot water. Bath salts and bubble bath are awesome, but if you don’t have that, at least your body will be clean, and this is something relaxing and restorative to do for about 20 minutes.
•     Lay on the floor with your feet up on a wall for 5-10 minutes. This is very low effort. It’s more comfortable on a carpeted floor, but if you don’t have carpet, you can put a blanket under yourself.
•      Listen to some classical music. You’re probably online: you can go on YouTube and find whole channels of free music that will play for extended periods of time. You can look up “music for depression” or “uplifting music.” Try to avoid any music that makes you depressed or anxious.
•       Eat something that grew out of the earth. Whatever you like: banana, apple, nuts, oranges. These items take zero work to prepare, and will help your body repair itself. Find a simple thing in your kitchen. If you don’t have a fruit or a vegetable in the kitchen, this is a great time to call up a friend and say, “I am feeling down. Could you bring me a banana?” The banana will be nicer to you than the quart of ice cream.

o   On a side note, if you really don’t have any plant-based foods in your kitchen, the next time you feel well enough to get to the store, buy a stash of healthy things that last a while, like frozen fruits. You can make them into a smoothie or just take them out, let them thaw, and eat them.

•       Call a nice friend. You don’t have to tell them you’re feeling down. Just tell them you called to check on them and ask them how their day is going. Maybe their talk will distract you for a while. At times like this, be sure to think about who you are calling—someone who is interested in your well-being and who doesn’t make you feel worse. You might want to call your ex or that frenemy who always puts you down—instead, call someone kind and upbeat who generally makes you feel better.

The goal here is to avoid making things worse by drinking, overeating, or talking to people who affect you negatively. As you start to feel a little more together, maybe in a day or two, take stronger actions, like taking a walk outside. Go in person to a restorative/gentle yoga class. Take any exercise class, or go to a gym with people in it. By moving, we get ourselves out of our heads and into our bodies. If we can find a place with people, it also helps alleviate that sense of isolation that compounds depression.

Once you’re really feeling energetic, plan out a week’s worth of healthy meals and go shopping.

Find a group or organization that needs your help, like a homeless shelter or animal shelter. Volunteer your time to take some of your focus away from your internal dialogue.

When you’re feeling good, try spending a few minutes a day in meditation. I didn’t recommend this at the beginning because, at least in my own head, my meditation gets very melancholy when I’m feeling down, so that’s not really the place I want to start. But when you are feeling well, you can try setting aside a few minutes of quiet time a day to take a mental inventory of your life. Focus, one-by-one, on things for which you are thankful. Mentally reach out to people you care about, sending positive thoughts their way for a moment or two. Try to cultivate a sense of gratitude. If you start the practice when you are feeling well, it can become a healthy and grounding practice even when you’re feeling down. The next time you feel depressed, you might even be able to think of a few things you are grateful for. Some days, that list might be very short. For example, “I am thankful I am not on fire.” However short the list, it is a place to start.

Remember, no matter how bad you feel, tomorrow is another day.

DanceFXBG and LindyintheBurg: Updates and Changes

Lots of things have changed in our dance world over the past few months.

First off, we are now the proud parents of a bouncing baby dance studio! We have signed the lease on 1145 Jefferson Davis Hwy, the spot that used to be DanceTrance, and where we have had our dances and lessons for most of 2016. Our new business name is DanceFXBG.

We are using a spot that was once a DanceTrance studio, and their old sign is still there. But our new DanceFXBG sign was just approved by the city, so it will be installed soon. In the meantime, if you are trying to find us, that's where we'll be. Right across from the Hyatt hotel in Eagle Village, conveniently located walking distance from the University of Mary Washington and Blackstone Coffee.

Our class offerings are in the process of a major overhaul. You can check the calendar on DanceFXBG.com to see what we have in October, but we are looking to expand the course offerings in November and in the new year, bringing lots of fun dance styles and dance-related fitness classes to the studio. Right now, in addition to our swing dance classes and Saturday dance parties, I teach BarreBody (a fusion of Ballet, Yoga and Pilates) and Yoga a few times a week.

We have subcontractors using the space who teach square dance, line dancing and hip-hop. On Wednesday nights, we have a ballroom dance instructor doing drop-in lessons. Later in October, we will start offering belly dance. In November, jazz fusion for kids.

We are actively seeking new dance forms and instructors for the studio, so if you have any ideas or know of a group that needs a place to dance in Fredericksburg, please send them our way!

In the coming weeks, our social media and messaging will be changing over to DanceFXBG, but it's still the same super-fun, family-oriented, socially engaging thing it's always been.

Thanks for all your awesome support over the years, and I hope to see you at a dance or class some time soon!

Be Good, Do Good

I have been prepping for my YogaFit Level 4 training by doing the required reading ahead of time. In the course of the reading, I have come across many concepts that make me stop and think. And I am working the thoughts out in this blog.

The thought of the day is the concept of "Be Good, Do Good," which is a very simple and basic guideline that is excellent advice for anyone's life. However, the real trick for us humans is understanding what is good. Sure, there are obvious answers. Like if we see a starving man on the street, it would be good to go buy him a sandwich. But what if that man isn't really starving? What if he's just really skinny and very tired, and is sitting on the curb waiting for a taxi, and then by giving him the sandwich, we've made him realize that he's looking like a beggar. He might feel really offended by our action and get depressed because we thought he was a starving man.

I think most of us would say that, in this case, we really are trying to do good, so the intention is there. You might think this would never happen, but I've run across a few similar instances. I once belonged to a group that took dinner to people who were sick or who had new babies. Most of the recipients were very appreciative, but I ran into two people who seemed almost annoyed that I had intruded on them. (This was all organized through a church, so they always knew we were coming, it's not like we just popped in with an armload of KFC).

I once showed up at the door of an older woman who had fallen and broken her foot, and had to have foot surgery, and was wearing a boot. When I arrived at her door, she opened it and led me back to the kitchen so I could put away the homemade soup and yes, home-baked bread that I had made for her. She did not seem in any way happy to receive me or the food, and on the walk down the hallway she said, "So, you like to cook. Is that your problem?"

At the end of this encounter, I really questioned whether I was doing good for this person by bringing her food. She didn't seem to want it at all. My presence seemed to be an intrusion. I actually cooled a little bit on the idea of the meal delivery program, and I think this was one of the last times I did it for that group. So how do we know when we're really doing good and being good?

There are much bigger issues in front of us than delivering soup to injured seniors. And our powerful brains are so clever at rationalizing whatever our physical bodies want to do. I have heard people make very well-structured arguments about why they are right in doing things that are obviously illegal, immoral or just plain mean. How do we know if we're really doing good, or if our clever brains are lying to us?

Well, I found something that made me think a little more about this today. What I found in the Yoga Sutras: "Blessed are the pure; they shall see God." And as Swami Satchidananda goes  on to explain,

That does not mean the impure cannot see God. If they work for it, they can, but their God will appear as a demon to them because of their impurity. Their vision is colored; they can't see God's our nature. They see God from the wrong angle...

But if you are really serious about this business and really want to go deep into meditation, take care to have a clean mind. Otherwise, you are not going to get it.

Which kind of put these things into perspective for me. To know if we're really doing good, and to know that our decisions are based on real right-and-wrong as opposed to our clever brains' ability to rationalize anything, we have to have a purified mind. How do we get that? Well, that's the whole struggle. I think that right there is the life journey. We work at it by spending time in meditation, by being unflinchingly honest with ourselves, by asking the opinion of people whose character we trust, and by critically examining ourselves. It isn't going to happen overnight. But we keep trying. We may keep seeing God from the wrong angle, but at least we are seeing him, and hopefully with time, he'll help guide us into a purer consciousness. But that can only come if we keep working at it.

 

My deep thought of the day, from the Yoga Sutras.

I am reading the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali for my Level 4 Yogafit training next week. I happened to buy the books for this training very early on, so I have had lots of time to read and digest, for once. And I am really glad. I feel like all the Level 4 books should be required for life. It would be a lot more useful than reading "The Last of the Mohicans" in high school.

It's a lot like reading the Bible in that pretty much every day, I see something that totally applies to my life and I have to stop and think about it for a while. For example, yesterday's sutra of note was, "By cultivating attitude of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness."

What this means, the swami explains, is that we should be friendly when we run into happy people (not jealous). We should be compassionate when we find unhappy people (not thinking they must deserve their suffering), we should admire virtuous people (not try to tear them down) and we should just ignore the wicked.

He goes on to tell a story about a bird who built a marvelous nest, with just his beak and feet. The bird is nice and dry and toasty during a pouring rain, and then he sees a monkey sitting in the tree, without any shelter. The bird tries to tell the monkey that he has great faculties and potential, a marvelous brain, strong muscles and able limbs--he ought to go build himself a shelter. The monkey is offended, thinking the bird is trying to tell him how to run his business, so he goes and destroys the birds nest in a fit of rage.

As a business owner, I have run into a few of these monkeys. The swami says to just ignore them. When you first run across them, if you have any inkling they are the kind of person who will bristle and tear down your nest any time you offer a bit of advice, just get away. Unfortunately, we don't always get away before the monkeys destroy our nests. I've had a few relationships of this sort, both personal and professional, where the monkey did his best to destroy my reputation or business because he felt slighted in some way. Once or twice, I have probably been someone else's monkey.

All you can do is move on. Practice indifference. Let the monkey have his fit. As a bird, you can fly anywhere. Having built a beautiful nest once, you always know that you have the capacity to build another just as wonderful. Only this time, you will know to keep away from the monkey.

How the University of Virginia helped make me a competent, if somewhat judgmental, human.

I graduated from the University of Virginia many years ago. I went on to get my Master's from George Mason. Because I have the contrast of the two schools, there are certain personality traits I identify as characteristic of UVA. As a disclaimer, I know lots of people who didn't go there who also have these traits, and a few who went there who don't, but for the most part, certain traits are sort of typically Hoo-vian.

For one, we have a strong trait of precision that tends to drive others crazy. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and "my way' is of course, the right way. This is a habit born of having to get your citations 100% correct, and also needing to have your facts straight, because professors would absolutely call you out for errors. But in post-educational life, it extends to various trivial facets of being. For example, there is a right way to put the plastic lid on a disposable coffee cup so the cup doesn't drip. And if the barista doesn't put it on that way, you have to fix it. (The drinking hole must be 180 degrees across from the cup seam, in case you wondered).

Words must be used correctly. Even if I intuitively know what a person is trying to say, I will challenge them if they use the wrong word. I recognize this is highly irritating when people are trying to talk about something like social media. Even though I know what people are trying to say, I can't stop myself from pressing them on which item they actually mean. I do recognize that is not a fantastic trait to have, but it stems from that love of precision.

People who thrived at UVA also had to have a strong respect for deadlines. Papers were due when they were due. The professors (back in the old days) would set a turn-in box outside their office doors. If the deadline was 5pm on Thursday the 5th, they would pick up that box at precisely 5. If you arrived at 5:05, the box was gone. Slipping it under the professor's door at that time with a very sad note about your sinus infection, your 105-degree fever, and explaining how your boyfriend broke up with you earlier in the week and left you crushed and destroyed would do nothing. Your paper was late. Maybe the professor had a policy in which they would take only 30% off your paper grade for lateness, or maybe they would refuse to accept it at all. We all knew that the professors would adhere to whatever policy they set out in their syllabi. No exceptions.

We were also rather competitive. To be accepted there, you had to excel among your high school classmates, so you sort of developed a taste for standing out academically. Then you got to UVA and everyone else was just like you: smart, precise, dedicated. So you had to work a whole lot harder to excel. And we liked that. We liked digging deep, finding more inside of us, working harder, and doing more than we thought we could.

Because I spent some critical formative years in this environment, I sometimes assume these qualities come standard with all humans, and I'm frankly pretty surprised when I run into people who don't have them. Because I value these traits, a lot of my friends also tend to be precise, dedicated, intense and focused. The very idea of not turning in your work (in real life, things like paying bills and showing up for work) surprise me.

So I'm always surprised when I encounter people of the opposite personality type. Don't get me wrong, there's a real place in the world for folks who are relaxed, happy-go-lucky and free form. I just don't understand them. How do you function when you enter into obligations you know you can't fulfill? How do you take on enterprises you'll never be able to manage, and then just shrug when it all falls apart around you, over and over again? 

I have no answers. But in my personal journey, I am really working on a couple of things. First off, understanding that I make mistakes myself, just different types. I need to do a better job of NOT expecting everyone to be intense and over-scheduled. I'd like to find a beauty in the laissez-faire attitude, but it is hard when those attitudes hurt people around them over and over again. I also need to get a better radar for detecting that devil-may-care personality type. It would probably be easier to get along with these folks if I could see them coming. So I might say, hey, that's a great person to go drinking with, but I don't really want to be their roommate or business partner. 

We all are who we are. We have our inborn natures. We can work toward personal growth or accept ourselves as we are. I am trying to grow, trying not to judge others so harshly, but also working on putting my trust in the right people and becoming better at understanding my fellow humans' strengths and weaknesses, whatever they may be.