Gabrielle (The Hot Yoga Doctor)

Hello Sofia

I am here! Finally.

There is SO much in your entries that it’s a challenge to find THE right place to start. So I will just approach things in an order that I hope makes sense for you.

Something you mentioned seems to be an important thing to broach and that is your confession that you do push yourself too much. You practise A LOT of Bikram yoga. You do love it. It makes part of you feel good but the physical side is not working as well as it should.

My guess is too that you may be going beyond where you should be while you are IN the poses. This can be a problem in Bikram and hot yoga because people feel the difficulties in the pose, they feel spent, as if it’s just too much. Then they come out and have that micro-break between the poses or the sets or the sides and that small amount of rejuvenation time makes them feel happy enough to start again with renewed vigour.

The other problem is that MANY Bikram and hot yoga teachers have been known to tell their students that the ‘yoga fixes everything’ and to ‘just keep doing the yoga’ and to ‘push through the pain’. Is any of this your experience?

You say you have had a pretty sedentary life and so I wondered if there are some missing parts in your ‘fitness equation’. I say this because you are addicted to the yoga but maybe there are things you are asking of your body that would be more possible with somebody who has had more exercise experience. Could be wrong but maybe there are some other things you can do to get your body ready for the job. I will recommend another video and a blog post soon! Hold on… :cheese:

You mention your back is super stiff and your joints weak and your muscles needing work to support your knees for example.

Add into the equation the great possibility that you need help with specific poses and we have an interesting situation.

I can’t tell you all the things that need fixing in this message because I will need to be guided by you. There are clues in this thread. So let’s start with those:

You have seen the video, Great Posture From The Ground Up. I think that over the next few days see each of the other 3 videos as they will help you with essential practice considerations such as core strength, breathing, body posture and using your arms effectively, and keeping optimum shoulder position. Your body is connected so what you do to one part WILL affect the others.

Some specific technique/pose questions to answer please:
>> Are you still feeling swelling on locking your knees?
>> You mention hips and lower back hurt in Hands To Feet pose. How are your hands and fingers positioned? Are your elbows in behind your legs or more out to the side? Shoulders feeling tight or away from ears? Are your legs straight or bent?
>> What part of fixed firm are you in because you say your left shoulder hurts. I am not sure what to picture here. Can you tell me exactly how you are sitting or lying, where your feet/legs/knees are and bottom?
>> Have you tried holding your leg in fixed firm BEHIND the knee instead of on top? That can be the temporary fix that will help you open up the hip, release the lower back etc.

The fact that you say taking a break makes it worse makes me concerned that you are exacerbating some issues with less than optimal technique. A rest should be great for healing the body. So stick with me here in this very important phase of diagnosis!

I would also like you to take a look at this blog post called Opening Up Your Hamstrings in Hot Yoga as it could help you understand a very important mechanism that gets used many times in hot yoga. If you aren’t doing this correctly your knees, hips, hamstrings and lower back are likely to be in for some collateral damage. So read this and start applying it. I can help you work out where!

And
>> Have you ever been to a physical therapist (physiotherapist) for specific exercises to strengthen knees and legs? For a general look over to see how you ‘operate’ your body?

That’s PLENTY for you to get back to me on.

See you soon

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello again Linda

If you can’t stand up straight, bend that elbow (of the arm holding your foot), or surrender your leg to gravity, and the myriad other things described then your pose is simply not working for you. Doing “Collapsed Tree” won’t actually fix it. Your other work will in other parts of the class and with your post-class work. So keep that up. Take your towel and by all means, give me some progress reports. Pigeon and towels! Sounds like an odd combination. Ha 😉

Well, I have great news and bad news for you. Great news, I can EASILY give you the answer to fixed firm. Bad news? It requires a prop. Don’t ask this time just do it, ok?

Firstly you must not go back until you have an even seat with hips on the ground. You will either need to place some padding under your ankles or under your bottom depending on where the pressure is. Methinks bottom is the place… let me know.

Again, the only way to open up and fix that leg (wherever it’s tight/healing) is to be able to surrender to gravity with the towel to help you do that. Sit with what I think will be your bottom on the (folded or rolled) towel with sufficient padding for you to feel symmetry in your hips. When you can do that, you’ll be running back here and saying that you can finally feel something happening that is good rather than risky. Move your knees apart if you feel strain there. OR if you’re a long way away from both hips on the ground in symmetry you may find that knees hips and feet together in a regular kneel position will do the same trick.

I can’t wait to hear how you go.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Linda

Here’s the thing! I think it’s my bad because I wish I had been clearer. I don’t believe you should have asked if you could use a towel. It is your right to use one especially if it is to allow you to make the pose work for you. You didn’t ask to do a totally different pose. You actually were saying “I want to do the pose like everyone else, to feel what everyone else is feeling but it’s impossible because my body is crumpled over”.

The answer is very consistent with the culture of teaching Bikram yoga and that is, if the teacher doesn’t know the answer, then they say either “no, do it the way I tell you” or “just keep doing the yoga and the yoga will fix it” or they say “just breathe and work through it”. None of those responses are yoga. You can tell I feel very strongly about this! :cheese: Where was the curiosity when you asked that question? Did they take a towel and experiment to see if it would actually work? Did they ask to see you try? My guess: No!

The only way you can make headway with this pose is to follow those directions and have your body upright or NOT do it at all. But then you risk not being able to make progress at all. It is honestly bad advice to tell you to go into Toe Stand when you cannot even do Tree Pose. It would be risky to do so. Really if you think about it, doing Toe Stand as suggested is really stroking the ego. You’d be doing it for the wrong reasons – physiologically, you’re not ready for it – yet. 😉

The idea is to listen to your body and be sensitive to its evolving flexibility, strength, agility and opening. Equally to be aware of limitations, body collapse and struggle in breath or movement. That’s why you came here because you are aware of all that. So I hope you take the tools and use them to continue to be aware!

Take a towel into class and at the very least, after class, stand up and try Tree Pose as I have suggested. Of course do the same thing at home too every day (the difference is that your body won’t be as warm as it would be after some hot yoga). You may find that if it is working for you that you stand in the back corner of the room to do your pose during class with the prop. Standing out of the way would be in keeping with the studio’s opinion that you would be ‘distracting’ people (which actually does not happen!).

What you will notice with using the towel is that you will progress quickly and before you know it you won’t be needing it any more. The job is done and your body will be more open for all the poses, not just tree and toe. The strict ‘better-do-as-the-dialog-says-and-you-can’t-use-a-towel-because-bikram-doesn’t-tell-you-to-in-the-script’ approach is not informed by physiological principles and is shortsighted. It means that students either have an impasse in their practice or they hurt themselves – or both.

You do pigeon after class, so do Tree with a towel after class too! Let me know how you go.

Oh, just going back and reading your initial post I am just checking that you feel a soft tissue limitation and it’s not a bony tissue impingement.

Lastly, can you please tell me what you mean by “my fixed firm is halfway there”

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Carla

I will be able to get to this over the next 4-6 days. I will give you pages to look at in your book. (Thank you so much by the way. Very much appreciated. 😉 )

If you like, I would suggest to read Technique and Mistakes sections on the following poses. Don’t overwhelm yourself by reading them all at one time unless you feel ok to do so. The main idea is to read and experiment and to notice the overlapping techniques so that your approach will evolve to a much safer way than the dialog classes can afford you. It’s the ambiguity of the script and some issues with instruction that have created the issue for you.

OK, so take a look at:
>>> Pada Hastasana (Hands to Feet) AND Standing Sep Leg Intense Stretch. Notice the BIG similarities.
>>> Sit-Up so that you can learn ways to safely get up off the floor and if you can do a sit-up then a way to make sure you are not compromising what appears to be a weaker than ideal core.
>>> Paschimottananasa (Intense Stretch at the end) See how this relates to the technique and mistakes that occur with the Sit-Up.

The other 2 places to look at are 2 of my free resources:

This one is a blog post on Opening Up Your Hamstrings with Hot Yoga. it helps you understand the mechanisms I allude to in the above 4 poses.

The other is a free video that will help build core strength, safely and easily. It’s amazing and will help stretch and strengthen the right muscles in a risk-free way.

That really is enough to go on. I only read your post very briefly. Since you’re ready to go back, it’s time to knowledge up on the best way to approach your practice. I will look for other clues in your post early next week.

This gave you a lot to do. So come back and let me know how you’re going or if you need any clarification. Any thoughts you have, any wins or if you think of anything else to fill in the details

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Barb

I am glad you responded so quickly.

I would love for you to go and see my video (free) Great Posture From The Ground Up. It may help with some balance issues and postural alignment in and outside of the yoga room and give you a couple of little exercises.

Thanks for responding about the type of instruction. Now that I know that, would you go through those questions one by one and respond? Just copy and paste them all in and respond next to each one in turn, please.

Once I know more I can respond with more focus.

As for the advice of the studio. DON’T DO THAT. “Keep coming and work through it” is wrong. Your body is saying “OUCH, something is not right”. Would you keep walking on a broken leg? Hmmm. “Take it easy” is not instruction. I am very wary of such advice. In my experience the people who don’t know the answer will say “just work through it” and / or “take it easy”. Those who do will either have something specific for you to do or will say that they don’t know and they will think about it.

The idea that you should listen to yoga instruction that tells you to “Listen to your body” and then the same person tells you to ignore that voice and just work through pain makes absolutely no sense.

So Barb, I know answering the questions could take a little longer than you might like but it will definitely help YOU.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Barb

An interesting dilemma. When you ask me about the balance on standing I am actually wondering a few things about other poses:

>> Is this a symmetrical issue happening to both legs?
>> There are other poses where technique could help open up what COULD be a tightness in this area. The tightness could be because of technique or a physiological one.
>> Do you do the standard Bikram yoga hot yoga poses or a different set of poses?
>> Is the instruction standard script?
>> How flexible are you on a scale of 1-10? In Standing Sep Leg Intense Stretch, are your legs straight and locked out? And if they are, is your back straight or rounded?

That’s enough for now so we can move together in the right direction

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Wow Ian. That heat is very high. 118 degrees plus high humidity would actually make for potentially dangerous outcomes for many. No wonder you would at times feel depleted.

When I was at certification I needed iced water. Now I couldn’t do that. I actually prefer my ambient water. Have also been known to drink warm to very warm herbal tea.

Whatever works, eh?

Thanks for coming back to list all of that.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Liesl and Azita

A little look around the pregnancy posts and you will find that I practised right up until the end of pregnancy and had a wonderful experience with the yoga and my baby.

I can only tell you that you need to do what you want to do. A few times when I practised I felt a little uneasy because it was my first pregnancy and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. If my girl was not moving inside I would imagine stuff (as one does) wondering why no movement during class. She was just resting and was active at times when I was NOT doing yoga.

Liesl, if you have had a practice before and you are familiar with your poses then go ahead and do it if you want to. You will, if you haven’t already, rebuild your body’s physiological acclimatization to the heat.

As for practising in the 1st trimester: Many people do because they don’t know they are pregnant. So if you feel good about it, then continue. Generally speaking more people feel nauseous during the first 3 months so if you get through that then doing the other 2 trimesters should in theory be more easy. That of course says nothing about changes in the body making certain functions like breathing and digestion a little less easy and the modifications one has to make to poses to accommodate the growing life inside.

Practising made breathing a breeze for me and I am positive that it made a huge difference to the birthing process.

Taking a break from practice – if it’s a long break – can be challenging to get back to because the ability of breathing and your ability to do your asanas is usually lagging way behind what your body remembers what it could do. The trick is really to be humble enough to keep up with the physiological challenges without imposing the mental expectations of performance.

And enjoy your practice

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Rob

May I please ask you the motivation to stop taking salt? The reason I ask is this: There have been longstanding beliefs about salt and the effects on BP. Your body is a physiological battery that needs electrolytes. You sweat them out in hot yoga so you need to replenish them. I believe you could be putting you and your kidneys and your blood pressure in a worse position if you avoid salt especially sea salt with a good complement of minerals and electrolytes.

There has been a large amount of refuting of the propagated belief that salt is bad for the body. In fact there is a large turnaround.

There is a belief that the studies that found that salt is bad could have been examining the results of using electrolyte-poor table salt (only sodium and chloride and a touch of iodine).

I would be very concerned if a lot of hot yoga is being performed and hydration was up but electrolytes were down. That with all the fluid and electrolyte loss and you could be causing a BIGGER problem. Please take a look at what HYPONATREMIA causes (and its causes too through an online search).

Would you please tell me too why the specialist thinks that the heat could be damaging? I don’t know enough about polycystic kidneys. But what I do know is that most medicos will warn you against hot yoga UNLESS they practise it themselves. It can be a fear-through-ignorance standpoint, erring on ‘safety’ because they simply don’t know. That is not a criticism of them. It is just human nature (and possibly a medico-legal issue).

You LOVE your practice. And hot yoga (if you are well hydrated and have good electrolyte replenishment through sea salt or other supplements) is FANTASTIC for correcting blood pressure conditions.

So Rob, how does that all resonate with you?

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Linda

Thanks for your question!

At the moment you are not doing a pose at all (at least on that side). Nothing is happening if your body is collapsed, as you have already worked out. Worse you would be creating asymmetries in the body that could cause problems rather than fixing them.

So thankfully, the answer is quite simple. Whether or how you do this is going to depend on the type of studio you go to and the teachers/owner there and their attitude. If you go to a strict Bikram studio they may be likely to tell you to just keep doing what you’re doing and keep trying to grab your foot. They may even ‘forbid’ you to use the technique that I am suggesting below. Come back here if that’s an issue and we can discuss that too. But hopefully you will have a supportive studio!

Here’s what I recommend you do:

>> Use a small long thin towel
>> Slide your hand down your right leg to get a hold of it and then gently guide your foot upwards (then used your left hand when you can)
>> Lasso 😉 your foot along with ankle (not just the ankle as including foot and ankle will markedly help you open up the foot, ankle and leg overall in a better way)
>> MAKE SURE that you are able to stand straight, releasing enough of the towel to do so
>> AND EVEN more IMPORTANT is to make sure the left hand (holding the towel) has palm facing forward
>> Now ensure that you are able to bend your left elbow backward (close to the body). This seats the shoulder down and back.

Now you should feel a few things:

1) You will feel you are actually doing something useful. That the pose can actually make sense to your body, that you are able to open it up.
2) You are now able to surrender your leg to gravity and get rid of the stresses you have been feeling until now.
3) You can now more easily lock the standing leg, squeeze the bottom a little to push the hips slightly forward against which you feel the knee/leg moving back (as you lift the foot in the towel) to create the action that makes this pose work.

Over time (and a relatively short time at that) you will find that you are able to draw the foot up higher while still standing up. Which means, that one day you will not need the little towel at all.

The problem with the no-prop approach is that it presumes the pose is little more than about holding the foot. This is a complex whole body pose that has a LOT going on. Your way forward is to use the prop.

The reason why you don’t want to use a strap is that it will settle in at the ankle joint and you will not get the opening that you are after.

Hope that helps
Come back and tell me how you go

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Everyone

This thread is being dealt with via other channels at the moment. I will copy and paste our conversations (if Jwan gives permission) at a later date.

FYI: The story so far: Jwan needs to balance an enormous water intake with some electrolytes which are missing from the diet. Salt loss is particularly high in first weeks of practice.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂