Autoimmune Disease: How To Stop Your Body From Attacking Itself

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Yoga and Stress - Maximizing Benefits

In my last blog post we talked about the “form” and the “essence” of yoga. This week I’ll share with you some key tips for easily tapping in to the essence of the practice. Following these tips will help you maximize the benefits and effectively use yoga as a tool for managing stress.

1. TIME AND PLACE – To get the most from my yoga practice I do it in the same place and at roughly the same time every morning. I make sure there is plenty of time available by getting up early enough to complete my hour long ritual each before anything else happens in my day. It does not have to be an hour. That’s just my preference. As little as 15 minutes can work as long as it happens daily and is a focused time.

2. WARM UP – I don’t start right away with trying to get deeply into the essence. Instead I spend a few minutes with vigorous movement and breath. You can just jump around if you want, or shake your body, do random movements or whatever just plain feels good to wake up your body and your breath. There is a section in “Turn Stress Into Bliss” that describes a warm up routine that I like to use.

3. BREATHING – Once you begin your yoga practice pay as much attention to your breath as you do to your body. Long, slow, deep, inhalations followed by relaxed full exhalations that are coordinated with you body movements work best.

4. PLAY THE EDGE – Remove all force, strain, and trying from your practice. Instead come gently to your edge in each posture using your breath to help you slowly get there. Some years ago I wrote an article on Playing The Edge that was published in Yoga Journal. If you are a yoga teacher and would like to copy it for your students, email me. It may help them add another dimension to their approach to yoga. I like to think of my yoga practice as “effortless effort”.

5. FOCUS AWARENESS – Once you arrive at your edge, practice being present physically and emotionally to whatever you might be experiencing right NOW.

6. ACCEPT – Whatever you notice, accept it. This is what is happening now and all that needs to happen.

7. CHOOSE - Decide in the moment how to be present to what is happening. You might feel an urge to move into a harder edge. Do you really want to do this? Choose. Practice making different choices and see what happens as a result.

8. PAUSE AND REFLECT – After each posture and again at the end of your practice take a few moments to reflect on your experience and what you noticed. In Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy one key element of the process is what we call Integration. It’s one of the key features of the practice that help make it such an effective modality.

All of the above tips are described in detail in Turn Stress into Bliss. Another good way for new yoga students to learn how to work with yoga this way is to find a yoga teacher or yoga therapist who can teach and guide them with a private session.

If you find this blog post helpful, please email it to your friends, students, or colleagues by clicking on the little mail envelope below. Also if you have any comments or questions please use the comment link below. I love to hear from my readers.

Yoga and Stress

Just about everyone knows and believes that if you want to reduce stress you should take up yoga, right? Is yoga the new panacea? Will it really make a big difference? And what kind of yoga? And what about the millions of us who just don’t see ourselves on a yoga mat – ever! Are our concepts of yoga misguided or do we really not fit the mold?

There is no question that regular yoga practice will make a difference to one’s life and it really doesn’t matter what kind of yoga is practiced. For the majority this will usually be a physical approach to yoga and the benefits will in turn be primarily physical. They include better respiration, enhanced circulation, greater flexibility, and an overall feeling of physical well being. All of this will contribute to reducing stress. However, when the rubber hits the road in day to day life in areas where stress is likely to be triggered – at the office or at home – it just might not be enough to make much difference. Yes, you read that right! All the effort of getting to that yoga class and practicing diligently just might not prevent you from that angry outburst, that frustrated look, or that deep feeling of despair and helplessness.

Why not?

Well, for one thing you may not have paid sufficient attention to aspects of yoga that will make a difference. Let me tell a story about a yoga colleague I’ll call Vince although that was not his real name.

Vince began practicing yoga in his twenties and loved it. He worked hard at his asana practice and very soon became one of the most adept students in his class. Vince was also very short tempered and impatient but was seen as someone who was strong, and was always able to push through and make things happen. Nobody would ever describe Vince as a happy person. He had a stern look on his face and if you looked closely enough you could sense a person in emotional pain. Success was important to Vince. All of these attitudes came to the yoga mat with him. He gave himself two weeks to get his forehead to his toes in the sitting forward bend and got there with days to spare by pushing his body through the pain and practicing the posture for hours each day. He became a yoga teacher, and because of his incredible physical flexibility and prowess as a yogi in the physical arena, was featured in a prominent yoga magazine.

I met him on the conference circuit and over several years got to know him just a little. Interestingly, he had attracted a following of students who were in many ways just like him – driven to succeed and focused on attaining perfection with the physical form of yoga. Ten years after meeting Vince his conversation had not changed. He was still frustrated with many aspects of his life, still striving for perfection in all things, and still criticizing his students for not working hard enough.

To me there are two very important aspects to the practice of yoga – the “form” and the “essence”. Vince focused on the form almost exclusively and as a result missed most of the benefits that the essence of yoga might have brought to his life. Now I’m not saying that form is not important. It is! We do need to know how to work with our bodies as we practice yoga. But form is really only a tool, not an end in itself. As well as good form we also need to learn how to engage the practice of yoga in ways that take us to deeper levels of awareness at emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. If we are obsessed with the form of the practice, this is unlikely to happen.

So how do we do that? Check back here in a few days for the next blog post and I’ll share some tips with you. And the good news is that if you don’t get hung up on the form that yoga should take, you, or practically anyone you know, can engage the practice and use it as an effective stress management tool. You don’t need a body like Vince’s!

Teenage Stress

A recent UCLA study reports that stress experienced in the teen years can have a negative affect on physical health in later years – particularly in relation to cardio-vascular disease. I guess this finding is not so alarming on the surface. What is concerning though is the significant increase in stress being experienced by a large percentage of teens in recent years.

As a father of five over a thirty year span of my life I have seen the changes first hand. The life of an average seventeen year old today can be very different than it was for someone that age in 1985. It seems today there is more pressure to perform in many areas of life and not just academically. Social networks fueled by instant messaging and cell phones have expanded to the point that thirty percent of some teens waking hours is spent in cyber conversation. Throw in on top of this the usual homework concerns, getting along with parents, dealing with first love, dressing to be cool, a changing body and other issues and it's not surprising that many teens succumb to "over the top" stress. No longer does the home provide a safe haven and a respite from the outside stressors that many teens are facing. With this happening it's easy as a parent to just give up and muddle through as best we can. At the same time, and ever the optimist, I'm always on the lookout for ways to make it easier for my kids. As much as possible I prioritize creating or providing experiences for them that will help them better deal with all they might be facing. Some work and some don't.

I was in Colorado last weekend to visit my 17 year old who is taking part in what is called The Rocky Mountain Semester at the High Mountain Institute. I sat in his English class listening to him and his peers read poems they had written about their experience so far. Already they have been on two expeditions - one to the Canyons of Utah and one in the high mountains of Colorado in the middle of winter. On the winter expedition they were out for nine days, sleeping in snow caves and quigloos they had shoveled out of the snow pack, carrying their food and shelter on sleds and using skins and telemark skis to climb and descend peaks up to 14,000 feet in elevation. They wrote about this different experience of life and how serene and fulfilled they felt both during and after. The hardships endured in just getting warm and going to the bathroom in the snow at fifteen below, didn't seem to bother them that much and were rarely highlighted. Instead, many of the poems gave voice to a camaraderie not ever before experienced and a connection to others that gave them a sense of wellbeing and support. They talked about learning how to take care of themselves and each other and be present to whatever they faced. The poems were eloquent and deep and clearly not influenced by anything other than the spirit of the poet. For two months they have been without a cell phone, and have very limited (and slow) internet access. On their main campus they sleep in a small cabin with nine others and wake several times a night to fuel the wood stove that heats it. I couldn't help but notice how alive and happy they all appeared. I have never seen my son so full of life and so comfortable with his surroundings, friends, schoolwork, and the leadership skills he's developing. There was no overwhelming stress here.

I began to ask myself a question. How could I create at home, an environment that produced a similar feel? And then I realized I was discrediting my son, his colleagues, and the faculty by even asking the question. Why? Because each one of them had pro-actively created what they were experiencing. It didn't just happen by chance and it was not my job to try to create it for anyone other than myself somewhere else. In my conversation with my son before I left this became more apparent as he told me how he had changed. He was learning how to create his world the way he wanted it regardless of where in the wider world he might find himself. He was being given the tools to help him do it, but no one was doing it for him. At present he was fortunate to be in the company of others doing it too but knowing that he will be ready to go solo when the time comes.

I left feeling like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders and that my son was becoming equipped to handle whatever stress or problems might come his way in life. This felt so much more powerful to me than my trying to shelter him from these things. As a fellow parent, you might want to ask what experiences you might be able to offer to your teen - ones that can empower them to deal with the stress and the complexities of life that are bound to come their way.

As well as great programs like the one at High Mountain Institute, there are many other resources available. Check out listings for summer camps that offer a leadership component. Look for nature and wilderness experiences that use the backdrop of nature as a tool for empowerment. At a more basic level, many yoga or martial arts programs for teens offer components that support them in developing the strengths to handle adversity.

Here are two additional links

Appalachian Mountain Club Teen Wilderness Adventures

Northwaters Wilderness Program

 

 

Work Stress

Stress in the workplace is common for many of us these days. As organizations strive to adapt to a changing economy, the level of work stress increases. Is job stress something we just have to live with now? Or is it something we can control? Isn't there an ideal job with no stress at all?

Yesterday at my local airport I had the privilege of meeting face to face a woman by the name of Carol Pilon. Carol is no ordinary person. Her profession is wing walking! Yep, that's right! She walks on the wings of an airplane in flight and actually stays there standing on the wing and doing tricks while the pilot pushes the airplane through an aerobatic routine including loops and inversions. This is no ordinary job and I would imagine it's the kind of job that would push job stress beyond any known limits for most of us. But not for Carol. Of course there is some stress involved. Yesterday she was training a new pilot for some upcoming airshows. Everything has to work just right for her routine to work and to ensure a safe completion so efforts have to be made to get it right. That goes with just about every human endeavor. So why am I telling you about Carol?

Well, if Carol can do the job she does and not experience the kind of job stress that pushes her personal stress level over the top, then why can't we? If the worst we have to deal with is some ornery co-worker, then what's the problem? At least our life is not on the line! I guess what I'm saying is this. It's often not the job that causes the job stress but how we relate to the job that causes the stress. If you watched Carol prepare for an airshow you would probably say there is a good level of stress there in the workplace. But it is stress that people like Carol can handle and even thrive upon. So what's the secret?

First and foremost, Carol loves what she does. If you are in a job that you hate, the chances are you will experience work stress. And I can just hear some of my readers saying right now "Well that's OK to say but what can I do about it? I can't just quit this job because I hate it. In these tough times, I might not find another!" And I totally understand. But if that is the case you still have choice. You do have the choice to explore other options and you also have the choice to adapt and find ways to make your job less stressful and more fun. If you choose the latter option, here are some tips that might help. And even if you love your job, these tips will work for you too… even for someone like Carol.

Tips on How to Manage Stress in the Workplace

1. Prepare for your day. Spend at least 10 minutes each morning for you to stretch, breathe, meditate, walk, sing, play, or whatever it is that you can find that shifts your energy and your mind from a "Damn! Another day!" to "OK day… here I am! Open and ready!"
   
2. Don't take it personally! When stuff comes up on the job and you find criticism and nasty comments floating around as often happens with workplace stress, just let it roll off. You can even visualize the yucky stuff that comes your way just washing right off your body as soon as it arrives.
   
3. Smile a lot! Find a good reason at least every half hour to show the happy face. It's hard to smile and feel stressed at the same time so for at least a few seconds here and there you will be stress free if you can do this one.
   
4. Breathe! Yes, the old faithful. A deep slow and full inhale followed by big exhale will work wonders to shift how you respond to what's going on around you. Every time you feel the tension building, take a breath break.
   
5. Keep open to the possibility of a major change. Other jobs are out there. Keep your eyes and ears open and don't stop dreaming about the job you really want and the one you would love. Hey… what about wing walking?

Oh... click here for a pic of Carol doing her thing.

STRESS and FEAR

Fear of something, no matter what it is, can be a source of stress. And it's often very different for each of us. For a teenage girl I worked with this week, it was fear of flying. For my wife, it's fear of supermarkets. How do we deal with these so called "little fears"?

It's been said that we shouldn't sweat the petty stuff, but that's easier said than done. There are various approaches ranging from "embracing the beast" to "turning and running".

This week I had the pleasure of leading an Introduction to Aviation Week for ten students from a nearby private high school. Flying is one of my passions and so it was a great chance for me to give back something I've gained from my 20 or so years of flying airplanes. On the first day I asked them why they had chosen this particular option as part of their Pro Vita (for life) program. The responses were varied and many talked about the adventure and excitement that went with taking to the air. For Victoria though it was very different. She said she was afraid of flying. Terrified, in fact. She talked about the physical reactions in her body every time she set foot on a plane to go anywhere. She had decided that by learning more about airplanes and even getting to fly one, could be one way she would overcome it.

On the first day we went flying. The weather was not the best and it was pretty bumpy aloft. Victoria let out a scream or two as the airplane bounced around. I began to wonder if this "self therapy" she had prescribed for herself might not work out. By the third day she was much more relaxed and was beginning to enjoy the experience. By the last day of the program she was ecstatic as she took the controls and actually flew the airplane herself. In her evaluation she wrote: "Taking this course has taught me not to be afraid anymore. Because I faced my fear and allowed myself to embrace the rawest form of flying I will probably experience, I am no longer worried!" Victoria had truly "embraced the beast and tamed it".

Lori really hates supermarkets and when in one for any length of time beyond a few minutes, she experiences stress related symptoms. She feels nauseous, light headed, and unstable on her legs. If she pushes through these symptoms, she then gets a headache and by the time she gets to the checkout she's often feeling like throwing up. For many years she's tried to overcome it by "just doing it anyway". As a small child from a large family, she went several times a week to the several different supermarkets with her mother for prolonged shopping experiences armed with coupons and lists. She hated it. She felt very small inside the big store and the array of stuff on the shelves was overwhelming. The fear of not getting the best bargain was ever present and the high powered fluorescent lights tended to make her feel sick in the stomach. Every time she left a store, she inwardly wished it might be the last time she'd ever have to go into one. On the other hand, I love supermarkets. I read labels and spend additional time seeking out new products to try. I enjoy looking for the bargains, chat with the guy at the seafood counter, talk to people I meet, and generally come away feeling pleased with the experience. So in our family it's a no-brainer. I do most of the grocery shopping each week and have done for years. One of the most loving things I can do for my wife is to reassure her that she doesn't have to step foot in a supermarket again if she doesn't want to. This "stay away from the damned tiger at all costs" strategy works just fine for her.

This weekend we changed the clocks forward one hour for the return to daylight saving time. I couldn't help but notice how I chose to "hug the tiger" on Saturday night. Before going to bed I made sure all the clocks were changed, remembering how in years past when waiting until the next day to change some of the clocks and forgetting to change others, I had managed to create some panic next day around us knowing what time it really was. For me, I find that when I notice the urge to procrastinate and then consciously choose not to, it makes for a less stressful time ahead.

In these examples I have outlined above there are three common elements. They are: Awareness, Choice, and Action. If you want to know more about these in more detail there is a chapter on each in my book Turn Stress Into Bliss. To shortcut though, you can ask yourself these questions: "What are the little fears (tigers) in my life?" "What are my choices with each?" "What action do I want to take?"

So what DO you do with your "tigers" in life? What works and what doesn't?

Please pass this blog on to others if you feel it might serve them. Cheers for now.