Gabrielle (The Hot Yoga Doctor)

Hello Denise

Thank you for all the details.

Simple stuff first: Yes, do take more electrolytes. Sea salt is far, far better than table salt. It has the sodium and the chloride ions but it has other things that will give to the body too. You can get rid of table salt and enjoy different sea salts that have different qualities and tastes.

I am not sure what you have to do to ensure that you are absorbing vitamins that would normally and largely be absorbed by the colon. Google will help and I will also investigate too when I have a mo. I would follow your intuition on this one where you say you think you are not getting enough of your vits and mins.

So now I would like you to consider this:

The body doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined stress; physical and emotional stress; work and yoga stress!

In other words, you experience stress in your life. You go to yoga and hope that you will reduce your stress. This of course can and does happen. However, I believe (and yes, I could be wrong) that there is something happening in your environment that makes your yoga more stressful than it should or could be.

It could be that your life stresses combined with the high temperatures in the room many times per week tip the balance for you. It is possible that the adrenal fatigue is a result of the life stresses that you have, including the physiological stresses of your inner body, combined with the heat load. The temperature could be 105 Fahrenheit and higher – Are you able to confirm if anybody can actually prove what temperature and humidity conditions are in the room AT ANY MOMENT? Don’t settle for “we heat it to 105”. It must be easy to show you.

In other words, your body is not distinguishing between good yoga stress and ‘bad’ life stresses.

All this anxiety could be reflected in your ability to breathe and the tensions you hold in your body. You are feeling panicked in Rabbit pose (for example). My guess is that here it is not just about breathing (but it could be). My guess is that you intuitively feel somehow unsafe in this pose and your body is reacting by tensing up. This is not a tense pose and I do believe we should look into this together (or if you happen to have my book, that will explain it with photos).

Many, many people become emotional after camel. The vulnerability that one feels in a back bend can be huge. There are ways to minimise the stresses you feel in such poses.

Are you able to indicate in any way how well you believe you breathe during class and in normal every day life.

What about your practice? You see, when someone asks me a question I cannot make the assumption that their practice is optimum. There could be basic principles that you may not have incorporated into your practice that could be the key to your path.

Let’s see how we go with this post (and my umpteen questions)

See you back here
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Zubin

We seem to be playing ‘forum tag’. I will be here when you find the time! Life is busy! I just need a few answers so that I am as clear as I can be to give you a targeted answer.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Andrea

Often the time of the day’s class can affect the ability to sleep. Some people become very tired after class. Others become wired. Those who become more restless or active often need to switch their classes to the morning. Others who become tired need to practise in the evening – in effect tiring themselves out so they can fall into bed (or indeed not operate at zombie level during an otherwise active day!).

I am wondering if you can perhaps try to do all your classes at the same time each day to see if the regular time might be better for your body. So for example you could choose all 9:30 sessions one week. All 3:30 sessions the next to see. Do let me know if this is possible. Failing that, you might like to do the 3 similarly timed sessions this week, and the other 3 next week.

Another thing that could be affecting your wellbeing is your ability to breathe. Sometimes in times of stress in class, while we are focusing on the poses themselves, the breath gets held. I don’t think your issue is entirely in the breath but I just suggest that some attention on creating smooth, fluid, pose-appropriate-depth breath. What I mean by pose-appropriate depth is that breath intake changes depending on the body’s position. For example, a breath in a backbend can be very shallow compared with those you take in that 2 minute savasana. And those backbends are the most likely time when the breath is held. Maybe you’ll have something to report about your breath.

Finally, just to confirm, although I am pretty sure I know the answer 😉 that until your new yoga habit, you had no sleep issues at all.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Kelly

Check out what ‘hot hatha’ means and if it is Bikram yoga. The advantage of that style would be that the poses are very static and are often helpful in building knee stability. There are few poses that could be risky for your knee and I can definitely get quite intricate in my recommendations. If it is another style of yoga, that’s also fine. It would just take a little longer if you don’t know names of poses. We would have to rely on a lot more circumstantial evidence! :cheese:

Let me know

Any instruction from your doctor about knee twisting elements? Or was it just lunging? You see, I imagine that the movement of the lower leg with respect to the upper leg in certain versions of pigeon would be an issue and the angle which is formed and other pose details aside from the lunge could be an issue.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Denise

One possibility to consider: Just because the place is heated the way it always has been doesn’t mean we can assume that the heat is not too high.

What this means is that you (and maybe others, and without more information I would not be able to ascertain that) may indeed have issues of heat exhaustion. Up until now going with intervening days means that your mild heat exhaustion has had just enough time to bring you to a point where you can cope. Now that you’re going every day your body is not coping.

How long have you had signs of adrenal exhaustion? Ahh, I see in your answer. You’ve been practising just over a year and you were diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion last year.

If my hunch is correct you may have chronic heat exhaustion. While going 2-3 times a week was fine because you had days to recover in between your classes, going every day is physiologically too much. Add to that your heightened mental stress (to existing physical stress) and you have what has become an untenable situation.

I could ask you about other students in your class: Eg, are you the only one having difficulty getting through an entire class? Do others have to stop frequently in class? There could be a few students here and there dotted around the studio who take rests or a number taking breaks to drink rather than a quiet, focused, distraction free class. The other thing that is very common is having a room where the studio says it is heated to 105 degrees but there is no evidence that that is the temperature. Describe perhaps what you know of the heating system.

Do you avoid salt in your food? I know you put electrolytes in your water. Is that the water you drink during yoga? When else do you take electrolytes?

That’s enough to continue with! 😉

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Denise

I was away a couple of days. May I ask you about your previous practice first? When you went 3 times per week did you ever feel the same way you do right now? How frequent was the practice? Was it ever 2 days or 3 days in a row? Or did you happen to always have at least a day off between classes?

With your bowel resection, are you aware of any added hydration issues you might have been made aware of because of removing such a large section of your intestines?

Are you continuing to practise at the same studio? Have there been any changes to the heating system or the way they heat the studio?

When you practised 3 times per week did you feel calm and relatively stress-free? In other words: Before the new extremely stressful conditions please confirm if you felt fine and were practising 3 times per week. Please confirm if now you were stressed the moment you started to practise daily. So did you start to feel fragile and overwhelmed by the heat on the very first class? Or did you feel this way on the second class?

I hope you can sort these answers through because it is important to work out what variables are causing you to feel this way. I want to help you unravel this.

As Allison suggests it could have something to do with breathing, your stress and tiredness. If that’s the case, it will be easy to fix. We can help you put your attention where it counts (if you need any tips of course! 😉 ). It may be a more physiological issue to do with your body’s ability to process heat and stress (thank you for the electrolyte info).

I shall look out for your response

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Ami

How are you feeling now? It’s been almost 2 weeks since you posted so I thought I would chime in.

Can you please tell me how you worked around your sore right foot when it was healing? How did you avoid pain in that foot?

My guess is that a couple of things have contributed to your tendinits: 1>> your very active lifestyle coupled with 2>> your need to avoid putting weight on your healing right foot (causing an overuse or over-burdening of your left).

VERY often an injury will cause a problem on the other side of the body (or elsewhere remote from the initial injury) because of asymmetrical function or movement that is creating imbalance in the body.

Does any of that resonate for you?

Before I give you some ideas for your practice it would be good to know if you think there is something to work on in my initial response. I can rethink it if needed!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Vijay

It seems nobody has answered your questions in the longest time! So I shall chime in now.

Would you please let me know if there have been any changes to your condition and pain experience? If you’ve managed to improve matters I would love to know what you did.

In cases such as yours I have found that an outstretched arm with palm forward and energized hand (elbow point back), shoulder down and pressing the hand against an architrave (door jamb) can help. You put pressure against the jamb (or even a wall corner) and turn your body away from your arm for about 20 seconds at a time. Take a rest and do it again.

Have you tried such an exercise? It’s surprisingly effective.

I think restarting your Bikram practice is actually a good idea. What you must, must be careful of are your shoulders. Keep them down and back especially when your arms are up over your head. And especially when you are trying to straighten your arms. If your shoulders rise up AT ALL, be aware of it, drop them back down again and the try extending the arms again. If your arms have to be slightly bent in order to keep the shoulders down, so be it. Straightening them against lifted shoulders will cause problems.

You need to lengthen the arms in as much as you are able to keep the shoulders, head and neck muscles relaxed and working appropriately. You may find that because your arms may be hurting (elbows) that you could compensate for that, by trying to avoid pain and engaging shoulders without need (and with detrimental effect).

When your arms are underneath you for Locust Pose, they will likely hurt. Instead of trying to get “your pinky fingers to touch”, don’t be concerned about that command. It does not apply to all people. If your elbows are hurting too much then move your arms out symmetrically to a point where they can lengthen underneath you. It could be next to your hips, under your hips, or closer to the midline. It doesn’t matter.

If you think about it, the Locust Pose is similar in its action to the door/wall exercise described above. The one against the door is easier to do for longer and you can do it anywhere and anytime. 😉

I would love to know how you go and what works and what doesn’t so we can move forward!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Kathleen

Have things improved? I think you were just caught in a downward spiral that day unable to emerge by letting all those things go. Kinda like those times where one has a song in their head that just won’t go away.

You asked if others had similar experiences. I believe that at some stage anyone who has had a class where they couldn’t focus, fell over, fell out of poses continually, couldn’t manage to breathe properly or umpteen other reasons could tell a similar story! So actually, it’s pretty normal. And it’s particularly normal after one has returned from a break of any period.

It really has everything to do with letting go of expectations or performance. But what must also be done is paying close, close, close attention to the way things are being done: Pose technique, body alignment, breathing and so on!

Do let us know how you fared.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Well Zubin, I am up for the challenge!

It means though, that I need your cooperation. 😉 There may be times where I ask you to do something that goes against the strict Bikram teaching approach, where I will give you things to do that may not be following the script to the letter*. Stuff that could, for example go against the ‘don’t touch that towel’ approach that some teachers may have.

Thanks again for the details. I have a sense of what you’re doing and I know what you can do to start to open up your body.

PS I meant to post this the day you responded but I forgot to “submit post”. I am unable to give you all details today but suffice it to say that your poses should be opening up your body. If they are not then there are natural body reflexes that are not being activated and that means simply that there are pose techniques not being attended to. Step by step you WILL get there!

So monsieur, are you willing to do what it takes? :cheese:

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

*Those techniques I will give you respect your body and will make the poses better for you… You may even start to get (more?) compliments about your poses. Let’s see eh? 😉

Hi Kathleen, bunni and Kristin

There is a belief ‘out there’ that is this: In order to have a well disciplined studio one has to be rigid or militant or strict. The tone of those descriptions often tends to be synonymous with control and harshness.

I believe that you can have a friendly completely allowing studio where people are well disciplined, they don’t wipe sweat, they don’t leave the room (unless there’s an emergency) and they follow instructions, there’s no talking, but it’s neither oppressive nor dictatorial.

There are hints of this in some of the above descriptions.

I have always striven for the ideal situation in my studios and have sought it out in studios that I visit (and helped nurture that in my teacher trainings). It’s about setting a culture, a way of practising. It’s about teaching with the right amount of suggestion in the instruction. The recited script does not do this.

What you say and what you don’t say are both equally important and determines the tone and informs everyone’s outcomes. Done well it will have people easily, willingly and without a hint of coercion, doing EXACTLY what you would like them to do in order to lead them through their practices (before, during and after poses).

It is possible that a person who gets up to leave the room can be barked at, told to leave and not come back, screamed at, embarrassed or humiliated publicly or have the door locked on them. Hmmmm. Very friendly eh? By the way, these are all things that actually do happen. I find that very surprising. Some teachers have given other teachers the feedback: “you need to be more bitch”. No wonder students complain.

On the flipside: That same student can get up to leave and be assessed visually or by a quick question by an empathic or understanding teacher … The issue can be dealt with right there or when they get back. Or even during savasana. Maybe the ideas will be floated about the principles of distraction, heat, feeling nauseous, the ability to develop self-discipline, listening to the body, why one stays in the room unless it is absolutely essential that they leave. There are plenty of things that could be said based on the context of the occurrence.

But … and this is important … rather than being a dressing down, a humiliation, an embarrassment, or totally overstepping the lines of human interaction and being inappropriate, one has the choice to treat everyone with dignity (which does not mean being a pushover) and create something of value (by talking thoughtfully on points of life, philosophy and yoga practice) while CREATING a culture of self-discipline, calm, quiet and a focused beneficial yoga practice! All this without necessarily singling out the ‘culprit’.

It is in this way that as a good teacher you can teach excellent breathing skills, the beauty of being in unison, the gift of listening to one’s own body, the way things should be when faced with choices about wiping sweat, leaving the room, lying down in between poses, talking in class, where and how long to wait to leave the room after class, where and how long to wait before entering the studio close to the end of a preceding class and so on and so on…

Set the culture right, instruct intelligently and with the outcome of helping everyone rather than pushing a barrow and there is almost NO TIME EVER that you have to tell anybody off, be strict or militant or manage those annoying things that seem to happen in the descriptions of studios above.

Amazingly all this CAN be done without a dossier of rules for anyone to read!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Pat

Good news. If what you’re telling me is THE CLASSIC Bikram Yoga error, then you don’t have to give up your practice!

You can confirm for me please that what you normally do is go into Standing Separate Leg Intense Stretch pose with straight locked out legs. If that’s the case, then worry no longer. It should clear up quickly.

Please take a look at this blog post. It encapsulates the fix to THE most complained about problem in Bikram and hot yoga. This problem is due to teachers using a recited script without deviation and not having been instructed during their ‘training’ as to the way the body works in certain poses. Of course, it could be upsetting if you say this directly to your teachers so just follow the directions and see what difference it can make to you.

There are other poses to which you can apply this technique.

You will find much free information with technical instruction on this forum and of course I wrote a book with step by step photos too. Hunt around the forum first. Do let me know what other poses seem to set you off.

The problem with the heat can be that you may not feel the problem poses during class and feel pain afterward. But if you have a sense of the poses that are causing this for you, then do let me know.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂