YOGA BUTT

Apr. 11th, 2019 12:06 pm
liveonearth: (Default)
 A friend came to me recently complaining of yoga butt.  It isn't what you might think--unless you've had it.  Yoga butt is, in medical terms, a proximal hamstring tendinopathy.  For those who don't speak medicalese, that means that an injury where your leg muscles attach to your butt bones (ishial tuberosities) hasn't healed right and is hurting for too long.  Muscles attach to bones with tendons as the connector, and when a tendon gets torn off the bone or otherwise hurt, it can be very slow healing.  This is because tendons are kind of like plastic--they're tough and hard, and not as "alive" as other tissues.

I got my yoga butt from doing a cartwheel without warming up first.  It took me 20 years to heal it because it took me that long to get serious about it.  It was just a bothersome ache at my butt bone that was worse with sitting.  Lots of people get yoga butt from doing hamstring stretches (forward bends) without building strength or warming up first.  You'd think that the muscle would be more fragile than the tendon but there's a weak spot where the tendon attaches to the bone--this is usually where the injury is.  Once it get injured, people tend to keep re-injuring it.  Especially yogis who are ever so slightly prideful about their ability to bend. 

Tendons get strong from being tensioned, but you have to start gradually.  Work out your hamstrings to make your hamstring attachment tendons stronger.  This is part of the treatment for yoga butt.  The thing is yoga doesn't have a lot of poses that strengthen the hamstrings, but it does have a lot of poses that require you to be able to touch your toes, or fake it.  And faking it teaches you all kinds of bad habits that leave you imbalanced, strong in places and weak in others, and prone to injury.

Lots of thoughts about this but I must go.
liveonearth: (Default)
 Yoga has the potential to transform both our inner and outer selves in a way that would allow us to see past differences of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and any other artificial identities we create, to be able to recognize the presence of the divine in one another and all of existence.

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation


liveonearth: (Default)
"Upon suffering beyond suffering; the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become one circle again. In that day there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things, and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be as one."
--Crazy Horse
liveonearth: (Default)

Contemporary Western postural yoga projects an authenticity and unbroken ancient heritage onto the yogic tradition, while mourning the commodification, secularization and denuding of that tradition by the West. Such lamentation belies the fact that modern postural yoga is a creature of fabrication and reinvention.
--Farah Godrej


QotD: Act

Jan. 12th, 2018 11:34 am
liveonearth: (Default)
"Do not wait
for leaders;
do it alone, 
person to person."

--Mother Teresa
liveonearth: (Default)
 Your confusion is not pathology, it is path. It has something to show you that clarity could never reveal. The nature of chaos is wisdom, but you must provide a home for it to receive its mysteries.


Your feeling of disconnection is not neurotic, it is intelligent. It has something to show you that oneness could never reveal. If you will practice the yoga of non-abandonment and provide safe passage – it will disclose an unmet doorway.

Your loneliness, your shakiness, and your fear are not mistakes. They are not obstacles on your path. They *are* the path. The freedom you are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the unwanted, but only in the core of the love and information it carries.


There are surges of somatic activity that contain very important information for your journey. If you will offer safe passage for the unknown aliveness, you will meet the messengers of illumination. Nothing is missing, nothing is out of place, and nothing need be sent away.


Yes, you may burn until you are translucent, but it is by way of this burning that your wholeness will be revealed.


~ Matt Licata

liveonearth: (moon)
Becca Zacchari on Treatment Outcomes of Alternative Therapies
OHSU Psychiatry grand rounds 10.18.16
Her interest: Trauma and substance abuse
Conventional and alternative treatment is merging-->integrative health
My notes... )
liveonearth: (dancing calvin & Hobbes)

When Shiva the Great Yogin chooses
to become the Lord of the Dance, Nataraja,
the universe appears as Consciousness
in its most ecstatic forms:
as art and play, as knowledge and beauty,
as the very embodiment of awareness
in the form of the Self.


—From
Clothed in Consciousness:
Nataraja in the Tantric Tradition

by Dr. Douglas Brooks

liveonearth: (moon)
When I have a morning at home alone I work on my lists and I fall into my practice more easily.  The sun is streaming in and I am doing triage on piles of "urgent" items which have become buried under a stream of distractions and amusements like my nonstop study of public health.  One observation this morning is that the strong balancing poses which I find so elusive when surrounded by empty air and other students are more accessible when I am alone in my office.  Here I can step into a warrior 3 knowing that the sunny windowsill is right there to hold me up, and yet confidently not needing it.  This strength and balance that I find in my own small office is something I would like to take with me into the world.
liveonearth: (arched back)
I've been trying to be polite. I am more dedicated to my own practice than to any teacher. I've studied under many teachers, and in many schools. Some new teachers were far better than some veterans. Every teacher teaches me something. Every school has taught me something.

Sometimes the thing I learn is a negative. Part of growing up and separating from your parents is deciding "I don't want to ever do that." What I have been learning recently is that many teachers are so busy teaching that they don't take the time to breathe. That is to say, the best teachers are the ones who are truly present with us in the practice, and not simply filling airspace with instructions.

My yoga practice involves tuning in to my own inner voice, and being present with my breath and body. This was a great learning for me, because I grew up very American, unaware of my body, or worse, in denial of it.

Exhale, inhale... )

QotD: Grace

Sep. 4th, 2014 09:40 pm
liveonearth: (moon)
Grace just comes: you don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it, and you can’t pay it back. It’s lila, the play that comes, as Krsna puts it in the Bhagavadgita, ‘by rare chance.’ You can say ‘thank you’ and you can offer your gifts. The best gift, of course, is yourself.
--Dr. Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy
(Here: http://rajanaka.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-black-swan.html)
liveonearth: (water_dropping)
Lately I've been doing a lot of weeding. I can recall a few yoga classes after which my hamstrings were longer than ever before. That was before my hamstrings knew about gardening.

Now they know. Daily, they get that if you can't bend over, or squat, it's a real problem.
liveonearth: (moon)
No time to work out, you say? Have to clear out the sink? OK then, try this. The asana for dishwashing is the Fierce pose, Utkatasana. Basically you put your feet hipwidth or narrower and parallel, and bend your legs like you were going to sit into a chair. But there is no chair. Keep your spine straight, not hunched, head up. Pull in your belly. Put your weight into your heels. Drop lower into your seat. Arms go straight overhead for the full expression of the asana, but you can wash a few dishes in between. This asana is warming, and if you persist for more than a minute or two your breathing and heart rate will increase, and your legs will begin to burn. You can hold it longer than you think you can. This asana is one of the best for back pain, both the kind that is between your shoulderblades, and the low back kind.
liveonearth: (urban sitter)
Downward facing dog aka Adho Mukha Svasana. Re-invigorates the person who has settled into a slouch. Enlivens the gaze. Practice for at least five minutes after 4 hours of sitting. Ok to play with it, go into Wild Thing or whatever variation makes you happy. Try getting around on all fours--feet and hands, no knees. The dog knows how. The heart is the center for this asana.

QotD: Yoga

Aug. 12th, 2013 04:32 pm
liveonearth: (stone face)
Yoga is an internal practice,
the rest is just a circus.
---Guruji
liveonearth: (OM metal)
In Sanscrit, from the Upanishad, this is the mantra:

Om Purnam-Adah Purnam-Idam Purnat-Purnam-Udacyate
Purnashya Purnam-Adaya Purnam-Eva-Avashisyate
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

And this is the meaning:
Om, that is Full, this also is Full, from Fullness comes that Fullness,
Taking Fullness from Fullness, Fullness Indeed Remains.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

Modified for readability from:
http://greenmesg.org/mantras_slokas/vedas-om_purnamadah_purnamidam.php
Discovered because of a beautiful recording by Shantala on the album The Love Window

ॐ ॐ ॐ ॐ ॐ ॐ ॐ ॐ ॐ
liveonearth: (peace sign)


This video is intended to inspire people to try yoga, but the music speaks even more loudly for peace. It's a reggae tune, I think by Trevor Hall. Pretty inspiring. =-]
lyrics to the song: Where's the Love )

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