Gabrielle (The Hot Yoga Doctor)

Hello kinks

For me I find the most stable way to find my balance is to direct the weight through the center of the foot. The geometry of this pose will mean that your weight will not fall into the heel. If anything it will favor the ball of the foot – thanks to the position of the body and the forward arm. It is best to move the weight away from the toes and ground yourself more.

And having said that when you are very deep into the pose (that is with a very high kicking leg) you can try bringing the weight into the toes for a moment then settle back again at the same time as opening up the space between the 2 knees – you can feel a lovely lengthening. It is subtle but those who are ready for it can try it and will know what I mean.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi everyone :cheese:

Just FYI here is another thread you may want to look at regarding mat cleaning: Cleaning your mat.

In a nutshell, we use several drops each of tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil added to water in a spray bottle. After each class we spray, leave for a few moments, wipe it down. These oils are both natural disinfectants. Then, when we can we lay them out flat outside for several hours and use the power of the sun to clean them as well.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Andrew

My thoughts: you are doing a wonderful thing. You can’t immobilize ribs because you have to continue breathing. :cheese:

So what you are doing now is limiting your practice sufficiently to stop it hurting too much. I don’t think you can avoid discomfort in healing your ribs. After all, it is very likely that coughing or sneezing or wearing a seat belt or any number of things that are a normal part of your life are now causing twinges or even sharp pain. The mere act of breathing will help your recovery, the expansion and contraction of your chest will mean that any chance of scar tissue forming around the injury is minimized.

A classic opinion of treatment can be: “if it hurts, don’t move it”. This is definitely not true in all cases. Consider backache. So many different presentations of back pain, so many different treatments. Sometimes THE treatment is to do backbends. But many people would give a blanket opinion that you should rest and not do anything.

Of course you have to monitor your particular situation and be vigilant for any worsening of your pain/discomfort. Your doctor may have (albeit begrudgingly) allowed you to go to yoga because of the physical considerations of trying to minimize your discomfort – and even perhaps because you have indicated that it has not been confirmed whether it is a bruise or a fracture. I am guessing that if Doc thought it was really bad you would have had x rays and you would know if there was a risk of damaging tissues around the fracture by doing your yoga or other movements. What a non-hot-yoga-practicing-doctor might not be taking into account is the ability for your body to heal itself greatly aided by attending class… I won’t go into all the benefits here but I think we are singing from the same hymn book

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Kelly

Some wonderful suggestions from artwednesday and LoveTheHeat.

I agree. I am sure it helps to realize that you are probably thinking too much about your own practice. Making observations is perfectly fine and is what you are supposed to do. It is lifting yourself from the temptation of commenting on or judging what you observe that is the hard part. In effect, your observations have to be dispassionate.

I totally agree that you ought to find a new focus for your class to give your conscious mind something to do that is geared toward a goal. It is the same kind of principle as setting your intention (which is often mentioned in class). Something unique to a class is a good start. Or a couple of things. One suggestion is to have a general technique that will enhance your experience. It may sound simple but focusing your entire class on the breath is quite the opposite. A fun thing is to really listen to what the instructor is asking you to do. Because while you know what you are supposed to do, you may find that the words used are not the ones that actually tell you what to do or how to do it. You can therefore bring your own intelligence to class in the form of an observer. And then you can examine how that effects your practice.

You may just find that your enjoyment returns and you learn how to make better distinctions in your poses.

A final thing you may like to look at in each pose is how well you are actually carrying out the command. For example choose one command to do something and then really check into see if you are actually doing it to the best of your ability. Take for example Standing Bow. When you are told to kick see if you can REALLY feel your upper leg’s quadriceps muscles warming with the effort.

Boredom is a state of mind where you are lacking curiosity. Your disinterest could be caused by anticipating what is coming next. In allowing the state of boredom to overcome you, you are robbing yourself of learning and of moving forward in your practice and even in your life. You have allowed yourself to make judgments from a disassociated state.

What will be useful is to distill for yourself why you are actually doing the yoga. Maybe (and this could be confronting to some readers) you could take a couple of weeks off and after your forced break, return to your practice and see what you missed by experiencing it with new eyes and new intention.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Well then my dear you are pretty darn observant! :cheese: Keep it up and enjoy the journey of noticing what your body and mind have to serve up for you from moment to moment!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello zanjabil

Welcome to the forum!

The first issue with your foot collapsing is simply a function of strength. Keep persisting. One day you will have the strength to support your body over your foot. Other poses will strengthen your ankles (Awkward for example). So take that focus into different poses.

The pinkie toe thing: 😆 that has happened to me from time to time. I have tried to bring it back in and sometimes that works but really it is your body making an attempt to balance itself. BTW when that has happened, the more I have tried to fix it the harder it has become! Just notice it and move on. It is not incorrect to have your toes in that way, so my suggestion is to simply observe how your balance dynamics change the way your body looks and feels over time.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Lulu

I am concerned that you are feeling that what you are doing is causing injury. It does mean there are some techniques that you are employing/learning which are simply not right. Luckily there are changes that you can make.

It is not entirely clear which poses you are indicating in the post. But the first one must be Standing Head to Knee. Yes you are correct. Lock the standing leg and do not proceed past the first part of this pose until you have the ability to completely lock that standing locked knee for the ENTIRE 60 seconds.

The mere act of fully engaging your quadriceps muscles when you lock the knee has the effect of relaxing the opposing muscle – the hamstrings.

BUT

Do NOT generalize this out to every pose. Because there are particular poses where a bent leg will give you much more stretch. Sounds odd I know but please go and take a look at the blog post about Opening Up Your Hamstrings With Hot Yoga. This technique will apply to Hands to Feet as well. Plus take a look at the posts on Floor Head to Knee and Intense Stretch for other tips to help your hamstrings.

Basically at the moment, some of what you are doing even though you are doing it with the intention of helping your hamstrings heal, is actually having the opposite and unintended consequence of CAUSING more problems, making it worse. Yikes.

Please get back to us here with your response, your discoveries etc. I have a feeling there may be other particular poses that are causing you grief. If they are then check out the posts for those ones in particular and see if the answers are in there already. And also feel free to open a new thread to cover any unanswered questions! I will answer them in pose specific posts and link it back to this one for you! :cheese:

Finally as a beginner student, not surprisingly you want to pay attention and to respond to everything your teacher asks you to do. I would really request that you pay attention to your body’s voice because at the moment it is screaming out (sometimes in pain!). So something has got to change. Please don’t go beyond that point of discomfort – where you know you are doing good – into pain. And please don’t cross that pain threshold when and because your instructor tells you to do it (either wittingly or unwittingly). Remember they are teaching a whole class and unless they are also teaching every individual and saying stuff like “Lulu, do it this way because you have tight hamstrings” or “those of you with tight hamstrings do it this way” then learn what it is you should and should NOT be listening to.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Kristin

Abdomeno-diaphragmatic breathing is not the only way to breathe into your lungs and get great lung expansion and breath. You can still ‘suck in your stomach’ and focus on expanding the ribcage on the inhale and let the bottom ribs lengthen back down and relax on the exhale.

Many hot yogis think Abdo-diaphr breath is the only way to go. But think about it there are times when your abdomen is being stretched or held in, in poses where it is simply impossible to relax and let your belly ‘move outward’. The trick is to focus on moving the flow of breath out of the top of chest where it can cause sensations of panic, anxiety, being shallow and light, to expand the ribcage outward and right into the lowest ribs. The diaphragm will undoubtedly still be used but the mechanism is different.

It may take you some practice. But it is definitely worth it. Why use only such a small percentage of your lung capacity. Modify your breathing and energize your practice.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello my yogini friends

I would like to draw your attention to another thread on the forum that has a lot of information about heat, overheating, body thermoregulation, heat stroke and lots of other things!!! I hope you find it very useful.

Here is the thread:
Is the studio I go to over-heating the room. Within it you will find an article link which I will give you here Lesley Funk’s article on exercising in the heat.

Thanks Amy for pointing out that phrase that some lose sight of:

it should be a energizing calm and rewarding thing through out!!! IT”S YOGA! It should feel good and keep you loose and relaxed 😉

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Dawna

I am so happy that you provided such a great and measured response from personal experience. You clearly have a lot of knowledge of the process. It certainly gives the logical commonsense answer that I was wanting.

Thank you :cheese:

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Lannette

You definitely approach your practice intelligently. You are doing everything right methinks. 😉

There is one tweak to the thinking on locking the leg though. You simply CAN’T do it 100% of the time. Muscles fatigue, attention wanders, focus changes to other pose requirements etcetera. So you will find that you have to commit your muscles to lock the leg and then be aware of when they are not as tight and then simply recommit. Over time the length of time increases that you can hold the leg locked. But just as you say; there is a final little movement that definitively locks the leg and it is just beyond where many people actually take their locking to. Cycling between these states is fine. And so is being mindful of whatever your body and mind serve up for the day and modifying your practice to suit. Once ego is out of the equation you let the prevailing strengths and weaknesses determine some of the parameters. Limitations are obviously not just physical and our ability to go beyond is not just measured by how far we extend/lock/whatever. We all know that! Even the ability to lock your leg will change with your day to day practice.

Re Pranayama: I find it impossible to lock legs 100% of the time and unreasonable to expect this of my students. Each Pranayama set can last as long as 3 minutes. As in the manual I suggest using the inhale to stretch up and lengthen everything. You can engage your legs here but don’t need to lock them fully. This way on the exhale you can make a further concerted effort to tighten everything, including locking the legs really hard. I may cause a stir here, but really if you can lock them the whole time then go for it, but if you can’t, then have at least some kind of formula that works WITH the breathwork you are already doing.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Deb

It is more simple than that. Interlock the fingers around the knee, let gravity take your relaxed leg down, and lift your chest and let your arms straighten with the traction between knee and shoulders and THEN of course, focus on locking your leg! :cheese:

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Deb

Firstly I want to acknowledge your mammoth effort. 78 days in a 90 day challenge! That is fantastic.

It seems that you are on the right track with your thinking and your approach. Amy has given you some sound advice.

Stand and feel a solidness across the hips and pelvic girdle in your standing position, before you lift your leg. Always use more then just the joints to hold your body firmly in space: use your muscles and connective tissues too and your core will more positively support you. In this way you can maintain a locked out leg that is ALSO in good alignment. By this I mean that you avoid the sinking into the standing leg, and falling inward toward your arch.

On a practical in-studio level: watch your standing leg knee. It will help you in your steadfast commitment to lock and relock the knee (and when your muscles tire). You will see when your foot is fanning out to the side, when your arch collapses in (and causes a whole stack of alignment issues), when your knee or hips need adjusting.

Get back to us when you have tried the knee hold. It is rather more as if you are hanging your body from your knee. Let the full weight of your relaxed lifted leg straighten your arms.

Amy’s idea of lifting your leg as high as you can, which although in principle is a good idea it would introduce too many things for you to focus on and become competent at when you are already struggling with simply locking your leg. And it would actually be harder than supporting it with some kind of hand hold or grip. Amy’s idea is great to test how strong your body is (your hip flexors, lower back, quadriceps etc). Let’s leave that for a while! 😉

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂