We know all of you know about the Unity Woods experience: highly trained teachers, spacious studios and classes that suit your individual abilities. But lots of other people don’t know there’s a difference between what we do and gym yoga. Help us get the word out by voting and by forwarding voting links to your friends and fellow students. Voting continues now through March 1.

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The front page of the Jan. 31 Metro section of The Washington Post carried a story titled “Reaching in a new direction.” The subtitle: “Some area women stressed by demanding jobs aim to build careers as yoga instructors.”

The article recounted the rapid growth of yoga across the country and especially in the Washington area where estimates are “that the number of yoga professionals has grown by more than 200 percent here in the past five years.” It went on to describe how several of the women interviewed decided to become yoga teachers and what their training was like.

Most of you have heard me grumble about 200 hour yoga teacher training that may or may not be thorough and competent, so I’m not going there this time. I do want to share a chuckle regarding the idea that teaching yoga is an escape from stress. One of the things I tell prospective trainees and employees at Unity Woods is that yoga does indeed help you deal with stress, but it doesn’t make it disappear. Running a center is a more than full time job with all the demands any business encounters. We’re not just sitting here om-ing the day away.

And there is a lot more to being to being a teacher (if you want to be at least competent, let alone good) than walking in and telling folks to stretch their arms and stretch their legs. Hours of practice, ongoing study (workshops, reading), networking, interacting with students outside class by email and in person, record keeping, bookkeeping, and just plain business stuff.

No doubt the environment is a lot more supportive than most corporate environments, and the people you meet and work with are generally sweeter (although now that students are regarding themselves as customers [and the customer is always right] rather than students, that’s changing), but unless you’re just doing an occasional class in your living room, you’re going to have a lot of the same stresses everyone else has.

I think a lot more substantial reason for wanting to be a yoga teacher than looking for a cushier job is that you love your practice, it has changed your life for the better, and you want to share this revelation with the world.

The New York Times illustrated its article on yoga injuries with these clowning poses

This post is by John Schumacher, founder and director of Unity Woods Yoga Center.

Well, the recent New York Times article, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body”, has certainly created quite a stir. My inbox had over forty emails on the subject and I understand the Times had over 700 responses within the first week. (Use the link above to connect to the article in case you haven’t seen it so you know what all the hoo-ha and this comment are about.)

First, I think we should remind ourselves that the Times is in the business of selling newspapers. Since there are an estimated 20 million yoga practitioners in this country alone, what better way to grab a lot of attention than to tell those millions of people that what they are doing could very well seriously injure or even kill them. And why not splatter some pictures of clowns in funny positions around the page just to be sure to catch their eye.

Second, let’s keep in mind that the author of the article, William J. Broad, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer for the New York Times, has a new book out. I bet he’s interested in selling copies, too. (I think it worth noting that the book itself has the much less sensational title The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards.)

Mr. Broad extensively quotes Glenn Black, a yoga teacher, who Mr. Broad says, “has come to believe that ‘the vast majority of people’ should give up yoga altogether.” Why we should put a lot of store in Mr. Black’s opinion, aside from the fact that he has been teaching yoga for nearly forty years (as have I and more than a few others), is not clear, other than that he holds controversial views sure to get everybody all fired up. Furthermore, Mr. Black has recently undergone surgery to have his spine fused and screws inserted into his lumbar. He attributes the need for this to his practicing extreme backbends and twists for those forty years. I have to say that listening to Mr. Black’s opinions on the dangers of asana practice strikes me as being akin to receiving advice on the advisability of riding motorcycles from Evel Knievel.

Not only that, several responses to the article cite factual errors regarding the anatomical and physiological statements Mr. Broad makes. I include a link to some of those responses for folks interested in delving into these more technical aspects raised in the article.

Nevertheless, some of the issues the article raises do warrant further examination and discussion: For whom is yoga appropriate? Just what IS yoga? What role does the current approach to training teachers play in the possibility of injuries occurring? (A topic with which readers of this website and our newsletter are very familiar.) What is dangerous and what isn’t? I plan to address some of these in more depth than is possible here in the upcoming spring newsletter as well as responding to the specifics of the article point by point.

But one thing I do want to say is that, OF COURSE, you can hurt yourself doing yoga. You can injure yourself tying your shoes, for God’s sake. If you’re in a body (and all but a few of us are), then ANYTHING you do – or don’t do, for that matter – can have insidious effects. Which strikes me as a good reason for current and prospective yoga students to think seriously about where and from whom you are receiving your yoga instruction.

Oh, and by the way– B.K.S. Iyengar (who is referred to repeatedly in the article) is thriving at age 93, still standing on his head for up to half an hour at a crack, and a bunch of us fogies who have been practicing yoga for forty years or more are doing quite alright, thank you.

This post is by Unity Woods teacher Carol Cavanaugh, who teaches a weekly “Yoga & Meditation” class at  Unity Woods’ Bethesda studio. On February 4, Carol will also lead a special workshop on Yoga and Meditation. See the Workshop Listing for details.

The Yoga Sutras (the classical text on yoga philosophy, passed down from thousands of years ago) say about the practice of asana “Posture should be steady and comfortable” (Sthira sukham asanam). In fact, that’s just about the only guideline which the Yoga Sutras offer for the physical practice of yoga poses. Now, you may have noticed that your own poses often feel anything but steady (if you’re doing a difficult balancing pose) or comfortable (if you don’t quite have the strength to hold the pose that extra minute.) How can you find steadiness and comfort even in the midst of struggle?

To talk about this question, I’m going to refer to the recent book Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom. Authors Rick Hanson, Ph.D. and Richard Mendius, MD say here that “Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones”. This is because our mammalian ancestors who kept a sharp eye out for danger were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Today, brain research tells us that we’re more likely to pay attention to negative stimuli, store negative memories longer, and track our environment regularly for the possibility of danger.

Even in yoga poses, we might be more likely to pay attention to areas of physical distress, and to negative emotions like fear, than to allow a sense of ease. Iyengar Yoga helps us to spread our attention more evenly by inviting us, for example, to pay attention to grounding all corners of our feet, as we simultaneously twist our arms uncomfortably into Namaste behind the back. To develop the ability to find ease in the midst of discomfort, I have also found it helpful to teach some Yoga and Meditation classes in which I ask students to do difficult actions, while specifically inviting them to find aspects of the pose which are pleasurable or comfortable.

TO PRACTICE THIS IDEA AT HOME: Of course you will exercise good judgment. Yoga brings up many types of discomfort, and I am not asking you to distract yourself from the kind of pain which indicates an injury is happening (like pain in the lower back or inner knee joint.) With that said, choose several poses which would normally bring up challenge or resistance. If you practice at a basic level, perhaps you’ll hold standing poses for a full minute or longer. In Virabhadrasana II, lower that front thigh down till it’s parallel to the ground…then hold it there. Your mind will be drawn to that front thigh which is working, but where else can you bring your attention? Can you feel the tingling of your fingers, the touch of breath in chest or belly, the movement of air currents around your body, or other sensations? Notice that if you allow those perceptions as well, you may be able to hold the pose longer and more calmly. If you are a Level 2 student, maybe you’ll try this experiment in Supta Virasana for 5 minutes or so. For more senior students, inquire what actually brings you out of headstand. Is it lack of strength to keep your shoulders lifted (if so, come on down) or is it a vague sense of antsiness or boredom? If so, stay in the pose. Try absorbing your mind with neutral to positive internal sensations.

I’ll close with some notes I took at a retreat with meditation teacher Jack Kornfield. I’ve found these comments useful in practicing both yoga and meditation.

“ Pleasure uplifts the heart, in the moment before we grasp at it and try to hold on to it. Grasping is a reaching out, being pulled off one’s center. Pleasure is a state of receiving, of going into one’s center.” Without grasping for pleasant experience, try allowing for ease even in the midst of challenge as you do your yoga practice this week.

Author Carol Cavanaugh teaches a regular “Yoga and Meditation” class that seamlessly combines the two practices to enhance our capacity to appreciate life and weather its storms. Each class includes asana practice plus seated mindfulness meditation practice. For Level I/II and up. Classes meet Wednesdays at Bethesda.

Community classes are mixed level, one-hour asana classes taught by a rotating selection of Unity Woods teachers. They are offered every Friday of the session in Bethesda.

Time: 6:00-7:00pm
Cost: $5 cash-only drop-in

John adjusts a student using ropes

In October I was invited by Dr. Deborah Norris and the Mindfulness Center to give a speech at Suburban Hospital as part of the Mind-Body Week DC program. Since many of the events and programs revolved around the theme of healing and therapeutics, I decided to speak on “The Subjective Nature of Yoga Therapeutics”. This newsletter addresses some of the things I said in that speech.

As you all know, yoga has become immensely popular in recent years. This has happened for a number of reasons, one of which is recognition by the medical community of the powerful therapeutic properties of yoga. As a result, at Unity Woods we are seeing more and more students referred to yoga class and/or private yoga sessions by their physicians.

I think these referrals are coming to us in part because of Unity Woods’ reputation for having highly experienced teachers that teach yoga safely and effectively; in part because we teach Iyengar Yoga, which is known for precision, alignment, and being intentionally therapeutic; and in part because yoga is generally perceived inside and outside the medical community as an effective tool for helping folks with a vast range of symptoms and conditions.

I ‘m not sure, however, how, amongst physicians, this perception of yoga as a viable remedy has come about. Although anecdotally yoga has been known to help with back pain, insomnia, anxiety, and a host of other maladies, doctors are generally more swayed by clinical evidence than patients’ stories. That has resulted in a rush to do more clinical trials to determine yoga’s efficacy in dealing with everything from arthritis to obesity. Even so, there really aren’t all that many studies available yet.

Furthermore, the studies that have been done, at least the ones I’ve seen are, to my mind, of limited value. That’s because studies are by definition about quantifying, about measuring things, and when you get right down to it, there are some important things that make yoga therapeutic that really can’t be measured all that well. That is one of the reasons why I say that yoga therapy is subjective. Although in many ways it is a science – much about it CAN be predicted, repeated, and measured – yoga therapy is truly more an art.

B.K.S. Iyengar says, “Yoga is a science. It is acquired knowledge and it is objective.” And he also says, “Yoga is an art in all its aspects, from the most practical to the highest.” That is to say, it is subjective.

This, of course, can also be said of medicine. Richard Selzer’s beautiful book, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, provides keen insight into the inherently artistic nature of the practice of medicine. Indeed, anytime one person is working with another for the purpose of healing and care giving, artistry is involved. The therapeutic process is inherently subjective and intimate.

What makes yoga different from many other healing modalities, though, is that for it to be truly appropriate and effective, the “therapist” must first and foremost have experienced the art and science of yoga for herself. The surgeon doesn’t have to have undergone surgery to be a surgeon. Even the Rolfer doesn’t Rolf himself: he is Rolfed and practices Rolfing others, but that isn’t the same.

That doesn’t mean that if the yoga therapist hasn’t had MS, for instance, she can’t work with a student with MS. What it means is that in her practice, she learns the techniques, the effects, and the range of benefits yoga has to offer, and through that practice she will develop an awareness of what will be of benefit to a student with MS. The deeper and more intense the yogi’s practice, the more arrows she has in her quiver to take aim at whatever problem she encounters. It is her own internal experience from which she draws the skills to apply to the challenge facing her in the form of the suffering patient/client/student.

What that means is that people who don’t practice yoga have no business attempting to do yoga therapy. Upon what are they basing their therapeutic approach? Taking workshops?

Awhile back we received a flyer in the mail about a workshop titled “Therapeutic Yoga: Bridging Ancient Practices with Traditional Therapy Techniques”. It said it was: “An essential one-day seminar for PTs, OTs, and other health care professionals.” So one would presume that most of the participants were not full time yoga teachers or even necessarily yoga practitioners. Many probably knew relatively little about yoga; there certainly was no requirement of prior yoga knowledge. In the workshop, the participants were promised, they would learn how to:

• Perform basic yoga breathing, poses and sequences as well as deep relaxation
• Identify how to customize treatment plans to meet specific client needs and integrate yoga into therapeutic practice
• Use simple tools, equipment, props, and toys to enhance and modify yoga practices to all populations and abilities
• Determine how to use yoga therapeutically in various settings
• Discover how to use yoga to market yourself in new or non-traditional settings
• Identify how to document and bill properly when using therapeutic yoga
• Examine therapeutic variations for specific disorders, disease and disabilities

The therapeutic variations for specific disorders/diseases/disabilities listed in the Course Content are: autism/PDD, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Down’s syndrome, HIV/AIDS, cancer, post-op, and back injuries.

Also listed in the Course Content:

• Yoga for All Ages: infants, children, teens, adults, and seniors
• How to Use Yoga in Various Settings: acute care, outpatient, pediatrics, long-term care, home car, school-based/after school programs, adapted/regular physical education, athletics training, wellness populations, human services agencies, senior centers and aquatics.

The seminar began at 8:00am and concluded at 3:30pm with a one-hour break for lunch on your own.

So….the participants were going to learn all that in 61/2 hours!!!!!!!

My God! It’s mind-boggling, not to mention ludicrous, to think that someone would imagine that they could begin to present even one percent of this material in a day. You students of yoga have an idea of how much in the way of even yoga posture and breathing you can learn in 6 ½ hours, let alone all the rest of it. If you had cancer, would you want to receive yoga therapy from the person who has completed that workshop?

To give you some idea of what is required to be a serious practitioner of yoga therapy: For a certified Iyengar teacher to be sanctioned to practice therapeutic yoga, he must be a certified senior Iyengar Yoga teacher, which requires a minimum of ten years of study and arduous testing.

Suppose you’re not a regular yoga practitioner. Could you maybe learn yoga therapeutic techniques by reading yoga studies in professional journals?

I am a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. They publish the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, an excellent compilation of yoga clinical studies and trials as well as writings by leading yoga therapists from a variety of traditions.

For example, they recently published an abstract designed to examine whether Yoga classes can relieve arthritis symptoms in older adults. Yoga classes were offered once a week for six weeks to 23 older adults (mean age 71: 19 of the 23 were diagnosed with arthritis). The six classes were designed to stretch the participants’ bodies by mobilizing all the major joints in the body as well as the minor joints in hands and feet, to provide limited strengthening of arms and legs, and to offer an introduction to deep relaxation. Poses were selected from three different books.

The teacher, Elizabeth de G.R. Hansen, PhD stated that, “Although I had planned to offer uniform classes…there was too much variability among the students for a ‘template’ approach to be viable. Reality led me to focus on preserving the overall class structure….and then responding to the students in front of me. The lesson plans served as guides, but the actual selection and modifications of the poses depended on the students’ needs, challenges, and interest.”

In a discussion of the results, the author goes on to say, “Yet, while the results are positive, this study has several important limitations. First, the fact that there was variability in the poses offered to the students on a weekly basis…might appear to be a serious limitation regarding treatment fidelity from the perspective of Western experimental medicine. However, all yoga traditions that I am aware of meet practitioners where they find them. Pose modification to allow for variation in individual capacities is part of the tradition….Further, such flexibility in pose modification is essential to be able to teach seniors effectively and safely.”

What the author of this study said about the “variability among the students” and the need to modify the class depending “on the students’ needs, challenges, and interest” relates directly to what I said earlier about the limited value of trials and studies.

The problem with studies and clinical trials is that even if they become much more exacting in their attempt to control variables such as what style of yoga is being employed, what poses are used and how they are done, what sequence is followed, how long the poses are held, what breathing techniques are incorporated, and so on, it is still the essentially unquantifiable experience and skill of the teacher/therapist that is the crucial element in the therapeutic process.

Everybody would like all this be much more black and white, to be more objective. Our tendency as a culture is to want our healers to give us what amounts to a prescription to cure us of our ills. Students ask, “What poses do you recommend for back pain or for insomnia or for a pulled hamstring.” It simply doesn’t work that way.

If I have a hamstring pull, for instance, is it in my biceps femoris or semimembranosus that’s pulled? If it’s in my biceps femoris will external rotation poses such as Uttitha Trikonasana be appropriate or internal rotation poses such as Prasarita Padottanasana? Do I even know what poses incorporate external rotation or internal rotation? Do I know where to instigate external rotation of the leg for this condition? Would turning the upper thigh first be better, or would it be better to start from just above the knee, and if so from the inner or the outer knee?

And even after I decide how to approach the problem, I must be extremely sensitive with the person before me. Just as a millimeter one way or another can make all the difference between repair and catastrophe in the operating room, so subtle adjustments in applying yoga techniques can be the difference between alleviation and exacerbation of symptoms and dis-ease.

How does the yoga therapist learn these yoga skills? Not in a one day or one week or even one month workshop. And not by reading journals and studies, which are usually vague at best in describing the protocol being used.

The way the yoga therapist learns these subtle techniques is through intense, sustained, systematic practice. And that is, presumably, how the author of the study knew how to modify the arthritis program to suit the needs of the students she was working with.

Studies and journals and workshops are not useless. They can very valuable. I read articles and books and magazines and professional journals like the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. I both give and take workshops and classes on the therapeutic applications of yoga. I read up on physical conditions, pathologies, and various palliative and curative standards of care. But I do these to augment the foundation of knowledge and experience I’ve already gained from prolonged, intense, consistent daily practice. It is the sensitivity and knowledge acquired in that practice that guide me in teaching and in working therapeutically with students/ patients/clients.

I’ll give you an example. In this case, I’m the therapist and the patient. A couple of years ago, I began to show slightly elevated readings on blood pressure tests, around 140/90. My doctor recommended medication, but being committed to yoga I was determined to see if through my practice, I could lower my blood pressure. I have a number of books that contain sequences that are recommended for sufferers of high blood pressure. I worked with some of the sequences and variations for several months with no appreciable effect. So I decided to focus my personal practice primarily on exploring and working with what I felt was affecting my blood pressure. Physicians will tell you that you can’t feel blood pressure. I don’t think that’s so. I worked to develop sensitivity to learn to modify my practice based on what I was feeling. Without going into a lot of detail, I found that very minute changes to my pranayama/breathing practice were the most effective means for adjusting my high blood pressure. I practice pranayama for 45 minutes to an hour each morning. I also found that I could carry that awareness into the relatively less subtle asana or posture practice and modify them accordingly. On my last two trips to see my doctor, my blood pressure readings were 120/78 and 117/82.

Although the sequences in the books had been helpful for others, they weren’t useful for me. It was only through my own practice that I was able to come up with the approach that WAS appropriate for ME. And I developed my approach through trial and error. That is what is supposed to happen in a yoga practice. Sure you learn things from other sources, from books, CD’s, videos, and most importantly, teachers, but you have to throw all those ingredients into the cauldron of your practice. You try a pinch of this and smidgeon of that, and you find out what makes it sweet and what makes it sour. Given that trial and error are so important in the process of learning what works and what doesn’t, it seems to me best to try and err on yourself for awhile before you begin trying and erring on somebody else.

And that is one part of what I mean by the subjective nature of yoga therapeutics. The importance of the teacher’s own perception and sensitivity acquired through the rigors of his own practice is the single most important factor in yoga therapy.

The second aspect of subjectivity in the application of yoga therapeutics is the individual nature of each patient/client/student. Of course, this is an inherent part of therapy in any modality. Each patient presents her condition in her own unique way and must be dealt with based on that unique presentation. On one level, the yoga therapist isn’t primarily a therapist at all. Rather she is a yoga teacher who must, as any good teacher does, take into account the characteristics, capabilities, and limitations of the student in front of her so as to be able to modify the teaching. All students present pathologies of different degrees so the teacher is, by the very nature of the process, always a therapist. Just as the doctor prescribes medicines or procedures or life style changes to direct the patient toward health and well-being, so does the yoga teacher/therapist practice and teach postures, breathing practices, life style changes, and meditations to integrate body, breath, heart, mind, and spirit in such a way as to bring well-being and freedom for himself and for those with whom he comes into contact.

With any therapeutic interaction it is the combination of the therapist’s knowledge of his tools and his ability to see and understand the person with whom he is interacting that will determine the outcome of the therapy.

So I say, let’s do all the studies we can and let’s be as objective, precise, thorough, and exacting as we can. And for those who wish to employ yoga for the purpose of remedying and healing, read the literature from as many viewpoints as possible. But please understand that if one intends to use yoga as a vehicle for therapy, only through her personal subjective practice and the knowledge and skill that comes from that practice can she be of real service to those who come to her for help.

From the Post article:

Unity Woods, started by well-regarded yogi John Schumacher, has locations in Bethesda, Woodley Park and Ballston. It offers free classes for first-timers. The Iyengar style specializes in longer-held poses and a serious, muscle-fatiguing workout.

See the Post’s full article here.

Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg tells a wonderful story about an experience she had while on retreat. She went in to meet with her meditation teacher, prepared to describe all the profound experiences she was having while sitting…only to be asked to recount every detail of how she put on her shoes that morning. So she paid attention to putting on her shoes… only to have him ask her in the next interview to describe every sensation she felt while brushing her teeth. At each interview the subject of inquiry changed. Never knowing what moment of her day she’d be required to describe next, she felt obliged to pay equal attention to every single moment of her day. In frustration and humor, she called that retreat “The Torment of Continuity”, but ended up finding on that retreat that “each moment became equally precious and important.”

I’ve used this story in my Yoga and Meditation class because I feel that it applies equally well to yoga practice. So, you can stand on your hands in the middle of the room and wrap one leg around your head – but are you conscious of how you are standing after you come down from the pose? I commonly find while teaching backbends that students create a lovely open chest while doing the pose … then walk over to get a prop for the next pose with shoulders slumping and eyes cast downward.

TO PRACTICE THIS IDEA AT HOME: While editing a film of Mr. Iyengar practicing standing poses, I found that the film looked the same while run forward or backward. In other words, he exited each pose as mindfully as he entered it. Yet commonly people injure themselves while coming out of poses – because they are tired and not paying attention. This week in your yoga practice, exit each pose by exactly reversing the order of actions you did to come into that pose. For example, did you lift your kneecaps before or after you turned your feet to the side? And how much of the sense of openness created by the pose can you keep in your body even after the pose itself has ended? Does it remain even a minute after you have left the pose?

BEGINNING TO MEDITATE: It is said that meditation can be done sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. Even if you don’t do seated meditation, can you walk with the mindfulness of Tadasana the next time you are doing some errand like shopping for groceries? Can you sit mindfully at your desk in the office, just as you might sit mindfully in Sukhasana at a yoga class? In this way, yoga becomes something you don’t take time out from your life to do. It becomes how you live your life.

“Yoga and Meditation” classes seamlessly combine two practices which enhance our capacity to appreciate life and weather its storms. Each class includes asana practice plus seated mindfulness meditation practice. For Level I/II and up. Classes meet Wednesdays at Bethesda and Thursdays at Woodley Park.

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