Learn More About Your Shoulders

In my last blog I talked about my dilemma and my decision of no longer doing chaturangas, a yoga pose which starts out with the yogi in a high plank and coming down so that you are just hovering above the ground, in my yoga practice.   It is a pose that, when done incorrectly, can cause a number of shoulder pain and discomfort.  I was intrigued by what might be causing me my shoulder pain and what I can do about it without having to seek out medical attention since it has not been causing me any type of grave discomfort.  It has made me take a look at my shoulder further in depth.  It is quite funny, really, that even though I claim myself to be a "yoga geek" I never really spent time looking into my own shoulder musculature to see what was going on.  I just kept saying that, "there is something in there that doesn't feel right."  Talking to some of my other yoga cohorts, one suggested that maybe my pec minor and teres minor muscles may be to blame.  Spending some time in both of those areas have been really transformational for me and have given me a clearer picture of what muscles are truly working when  I move my arm one way or another or when hey just plain hurt.  I think it first helps to have a clear idea of what muscles are part of the the shoulder and how they work.

The rotator cuff muscles consist of the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, subscapularis and the teres minor.  Those muscles are used to help move and stabilize the shoulder joint.  They also help to adjust the position of the humeral head (a bone of the upper arm) and the scapula or shoulder blade during shoulder and arm movement.   As you can see above, there are tendons and ligaments, which are not shown, that also support the structure of the shoulder and it tends to be at those sites where injury occurs.  The pain can either be acute or chronic depending on how the muscles have been injured whether due to a fall or just from repeated use of the arm or even old age.

Pain and spasms can occur that can limit the range of motion of the shoulder,  the muscles may no longer make smooth movements in the shoulder as it is being moved.  This means that you can no longer raise your arm overhead or when you move your arm, you hear some pops or cracks or it just feels gravely.  It may even be the case that there is fluid that has accumulated due to inflammation of the joint capsule.  Arthritis or a build up of calcium deposits may also be the culprit for limited range of motion.

Above is a picture of a rotator cuff tear in the supraspinatus muscles.  Most rotator tear cuffs occur in the supraspinatus and usually affect the tendon and not so much the belly of the muscle. Depending on the severity of the tear, you may have the option of taking care of it through some simple exercises.  It is important to keep in mind that most rotator cuff tears happen due to degeneration of the joint over time and not so much from sports injuries.

Thankfully, I don't not believe that I am suffering from a tendon tear but mostly a strain just from overuse  and tightness of some of my rotator cuff muscles.   Looking at these pictures may seem confusing to have the understanding you need to know what muscles in your shoulder are affected, but spending some time feeling around for each of those muscles will bring you some greater awareness.  What works for me is using my Yoga Tune Up® Massage Therapy Balls and palpating them.  You can use tennis balls at home if you don't have a YTU ball or even a racquet ball will do.  Placing the ball while lying in the ground or up against a wall in some of those shoulder joints may feel uncomfortable at first, but can provide a huge amount of relief if those areas are feeling stiff.  If there is inflammation, then the thing to do is rest the shoulder and ice it.  When you feel that the inflammation has gone down, then it is important to move it again.  When the shoulder is immobilized for a long period of time, then scar tissue and adhesion can build up and make the situation worse, movement is key here.

No More Chaturanagas...At Least for Now

I am such a jet-setter...so, this past weekend I was in Los Angeles studying with my teachers' (Jill Miller) teacher, Glenn Black.  I went to a three day training with a pretty sad right shoulder to begin with and with every intention that I was not going do anything that would just aggravate it even more.  I was doing fine the day before I left, keeping it immobilized, but I think that I may have aggravated it even more by having to hoist my luggage into the overhead bin on my flight :(  I would say that during the three days I was there, a lot of attention was spent on the shoulders, lower back and hips, there was no set agenda, which was nice.  I won't go into all the details, but we worked on movements that were both dynamic and ballistic that allowed for full range of movement through the shoulder joint.  We did this as well as various other movements for the shoulders and by the end of the third day I came away with this new revelation.  I am not sure why I had never thought of it before but I guess it just dawned on me right there and then.  I swore that I would give up doing chaturanga dandasana.  No, not quite the same as having to give up chocolate, this was not a pose that I necessarily craved, but it just felt wrong for me to continue to beat myself up.  So, I vowed to no longer do this pose until I can make sure that I am doing it right.  I also felt an obligation to my students.  How could I put them through a somewhat advanced pose without ensuring that they were getting all of the necessary corrections on alignment?  I also didn't want to be wincing in pain in front of my class while doing it.

Many of us are already walking around with some type of shoulder dysfunction.  It may not be very noticeable now, but it is similar to what happens when you have back pain and you do something as simple as bend down to pick something up, and then feel the shooting pain.  I feel that this is similar to the shoulder as well as what happened to me.  My almost ten years of practicing yoga and at least six years of doing Ashtanga Vinyasa, I was always doing chaturanga dandasana, it was part of the vinyasa flow and primary series that I practiced.  For those unfamiliar with what I am talking about, below is a picture:

As you can see in the picture, there is a lot of weight being loaded in the front of the body.  The shoulders are and lower back are lifted and the elbows are pointing straight back and hugging in close to the body. When I started out doing Ashtanga, I was going into chaturanga from uttanasana or forward bend and jumping into the position as you see above.  If you could imagine, I was literally putting a ton of weight onto my unsupported and unaligned shoulders and I was doing this over and over and over again.  I never noticed any pain in the beginning and I was in my 20s during this time, so I felt great after every practice.  Then last year during an AcroYoga class, I was working on an inversion with my partner where I was the flyer and she had to have her knee somewhere along my right shoulder and something got knocked around in there or maybe the pain sensors just awakened and since then, I have been having a dull aching pain in my shoulder.  I don't blame it on AcroYoga and I also don't partially blame it on Ashtanga, but mostly to my habit of hunching my shoulders.  I still have to remind myself several times during the day to drop my shoulders.  My upper trapezius muscles are also rock hard from all of the tension that I carry as well as from hunching my shoulders forward.  So, with overly contracted muscles and incorrect alignment of my joints for who knows how long, I added insult to injury due to my yoga practice and not receiving correct alignment on my shoulders.  I am currently at a state where I need to be delicate with my shoulder as I am almost in fear that I will tear something in there.

I have two pretty good ideas of which muscles are affected and have been spending some time recently to massage and do some self myofascial release in those areas.  My next step is to work on strengthening the muscles around that area.  I even noticed this morning as I was reaching for a cup in the cupboard how I had to readjust my arm and shoulder to do the task of reaching, I am using other muscles to compensate for the ones that are too weak to do the job and therefore putting me in this current state.

So, because of this I will no longer do chaturangas, at least for now, until my shoulder is fully healed and can be assured that when I do them again, I am in correct alignment and out of pain.  Lastly, the other awakening that I had was that I need to do more self care.  My shoulder has been asking for some attention for some time now, about a year and a half and I didn't really listen and assumed it would just go away.  But, if I had started doing some type of self care for my shoulder, I would probably not be writing about this right now.  It gave me the great idea to offer a class or workshop starting n the new year about self care for the body.  Most of us rely on a yoga class or our massage therapists, bodyworker, etc. to relieve us from the pain that we endure.  How about putting some of that power as well as knowledge into your own hands?  Think about it, how often do you touch yourself?  I don't mean it in that way, but in a loving and healing way, a way that can help release tension and pain.  It can be something that you can do every day, whenever and wherever you want without having to pay a dime.  Be on the look out for that in 2011!

The Time and Place for Overindulging

So, last weekend I was in Chicago for a wedding. I was only there for a total of three days and I was so surprised at just how much I ate and drank. If you have ever been to a wedding, it is definitely a time and place for overindulgence. There is the rehearsal dinner, breakfasts, lunches or dinners with friends and relatives, then the reception afterwards. It is a time for celebration and joy and one of the ways that we truly invoke that is through food and drink. It was my second day in Chicago and during the reception, which was being held at an Italian restaurant, they served traditional Italian food with at least a 6-8 course meal. There was even certain points during the dinner, that we had to tell the waiter before he even put the food down that we did not want it. Now who would turn down free food? Someone who has clearly overindulged :)

It truly brought up the question for me about overindulgence and do we really know when to say enough is enough. Looking up this word, overindulgence, it is defined as excessive indulgence . The word satiety comes up for me as well when I think of excessive indulgence which means to satisfy fully. When we are fully satisfied with a meal, then there is very little chance that we would want to overindulge. But there may have been times when you are in a party mood, such as at a wedding or if you go to a really great restaurant and may feel overwhelmed by the food that you continue to indulge beyond the point of satiety.

How do you listen to your body? How do you pay attention to your body's many signals that you have clearly had to much to eat or drink and that you should probably slow it down or just stop? How many of you out there actually listen? It took a lot for me, I would have to say, to realize that I couldn't eat any more and to truly slow down and listen to my body. Especially given that I was at a party and having a good time and enjoying the wonderful food. I would have preferred to miss out and feel fine later on that evening or the next day then stuff my face and feel like crap later on completely regretting eating just one more entree.

I will leave you with a quote by Marucs Fabius Quintillian,

"Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures."

So, I ask you, whether it be alcohol, food, sex or whatever is your true enticement, do you take the time to evaluate how you are feeling while in the moment of indulging? Do you know when to say enough is enough or do you harbor guilt instead? A question for you to ponder...

Change of Seasons for the Body: Autumn

In the Bay Area, it can be hard to determine what season we are currently in. This summer has seen some very cold nights as well as days and now as we begin to approach fall, it can seem confusing. What should we wear when we are expecting a cold or rainy day, but it is sunny and warm out, just like what you would expect on a summer day. Well, just as you might be getting some confusion on the weather end, the same may be true with regards to your body. It may be known by most people that as you begin to enter a new season, it is recommended to do a cleanse to start off the new season with a "clean slate". We are also approaching the Autumnal equinox this week which marks the beginning of fall, so with all of this coming upon on us, what can we do to get ourselves ready for fall and winter?

After the warmth of summer and the abundance of food, outdoor activities, sun and maybe even alcohol, our focus should begin to shift towards more warming foods with the oncoming cold and wet weather. Based on Ayurveda, fall is a time for qualities such as cool, light, dry and windy. It is beneficial for all types to seek out more warming foods and liquids and to find more balance in their life. This would include getting more sleep and relaxing when needed. What is surprising is that fall is a time of activity, even though some think of it as a time for us to slow down. During fall, we are gearing up for winter as well as the holidays. School starts, people are heading back to work, and then Halloween and Thanksgiving come upon us so quickly.

Some guidelines to keep in mind for fall are:

- bring more heavy and oily foods into your diet
- keep yourself warm and wear a hat to protect your head on windy days
- stay well hydrated
- give your self a warming massage in the morning after your shower
- avoid fasting

Now, if you must do a cleanse, now would be the perfect time. We still have an abundance of summer fruits and vegetables available and it is so much easier to do a cleanse with some fresh produce around. Personally, I find it very difficult to stick to a fasting diet, but I like the idea of fasting regularly instead of doing one long fasting session where it is much harder to stick to. Finding a day where you can do a 24 hour fast can be much more beneficial by giving your body a break from digesting food. Even better, if you know that you will be gorging on some heavy food or sweets and alcohol, be sure to set the next day or so as a day for you to fast. It can give the body a break from processing and digesting and give the body and especially the liver time to detox the body instead of allowing it is stay harbored inside the body.

By preparing the body for this change in season, it will make the transition to winter even smoother.

Journey to a Meal

So, it has been about a week now since I prepared, planned and executed my first dinner which took place last Friday. It was a great success and much help is owed to my friend Mary, whom I have been having great and interesting conversations about, you guessed it, food! What else would we talk about, yes we do talk about our significant others, but sometimes they are not as interesting :)

Anyways, if you have not looked already, the pictures are posted on my website, www.tiawellness.com. It was a great 5 course Mexican inspired feast which left people wanting more. So, never having cooked for that many people before was a big challenge for me, I think the most that I ever cooked for was my family and some friends, but that totaled at least 5 or 6 people. I never had to plan out the menu and purchase plates and glassware and such.

To give a sneak peak on my journey to a meal, especially one as extensive as this, I guess it is best to start out with where I sourced most of the food. For me, this holds the most interest for me, most in particular as I am currently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. If you would like me to go into how I planned out the meal and decided how each dish would go together, you can let me know, but I don't want to bore you with those details.

My first stop, two days before the dinner, was to pick up some fresh and local produce that was grown and harvested at a local urban farm in Alameda, it actually was the place that I was employed at for two years. The Alameda Point Collaborative has the Growing Youth Project Farm which is situated on the old Navy base in Alameda Point. I was able to purchase some fresh heirloom tomatoes that I used for the Cod Roll and Tomatoes, Almonds and Cilantro dish. Peppers as well as potatoes, onions and carrots, beets, and cucumbers were in great abundance and were all used in the following dishes respectively: Roasted Pepper Quesadilla with Mexican Cheese, Amaranth-Potato Croquettes and lastly the Beet, Carrot, and Apple Salad. One day before the dinner, I made my way over to the Monterey Fish Market located up in North Berkeley. My reason for choosing this fish market was because I did some research and they are one of the very few fish markets that do not purchase or stock farmed fish and take a responsible stance with regards to sustainability of fish. Most of the fish is caught via hook and line versus trawling which actually does some vast harm to the ecosystem of the ocean floor. I liked their stance with regards to sustainability and the environment and i knew that I would also be getting good quality form them as well. My last stop was to Spun Sugar; I had passed by this place on my way to Three Stone Hearth on the days I was interning and finally had a chance to make my way in. I was overwhelmed with the various amounts of chocolate that they had, but being a retail store for cake and candy decorating, selling a lot of chocolate made sense. I really enjoy going to specialty stores, because I know that there is a lot more care as well as a lot more knowledge going on with their products. So, this last purchase was for the Chile Chocolate Pots de Creme, which was a rave hit with the guests at the dinner.

It was great to be able to tap into and access all of these various dinners and to use all of the things that they had to offer to out my menu together. I received overall very positive feedback, some constructive criticism, but which is good, because I know what I will need to work on for the next time. So, I am hoping that the next dinner will be taking place soon and I will be sure to have you follow me on that next journey!

Why the Rush?

I know you have had one of these days: you have been running around all day taking care of errands or sitting at your desk and you don't eat lunch. It is not that you forgot to eat lunch, you know you are hungry, but you just want to try to get some more work done before sitting down to eat. By the time you do eat, it has been at least anywhere from 2 to 3 hours from when you should have eaten and you practically wolf the food down without a thought about what you just ate, how good or bad it tastes or what is actually in your food. I know because this happened to me today. I knew that I would be running around most of the day today and needed to get certain things done before moving on to the next. I do take the time to stop by and grab a veggie burrito, but did not want to waste my time sitting down to eat, hoping I would be able to at the next place I was at. When I finally do take the time to eat, I am so hungry and still engrossed on a conversation with my friend, that my attention is more focused on the conversation rather than on the food I am eating. I am literally just stuffing the burrito down my throat without really getting a chance to enjoy it.

So, why the big rush?

I ask myself this question every time I catch myself, after the fact, of going through ingesting my food so fast that I could eat it in less than 10 minutes. I have fortunately begun to develop a practice of just closing my eyes and smelling the food or looking at the food and just observing its color or smell and giving a simple blessing or thanks for the food and I feel that my body is much more ready to accept it. To my disappointment, this did not happen this afternoon and I have to ask myself why? Was it because I did not want to break up the flow of the conversation, was I maybe embarrassed, or just not even conscious of what I was doing because the primal part of my brain was just saying over and over again, "FEED ME!".

So, besides providing a blessing and taking the time before eating to breath and smell and see my food, I also try, again, I say try, to avoid eating and reading or eating and sitting in front of my computer. Again, it is hugely distracting and takes away from the enjoyment and pleasure of eating. I am not one for following rules to the T all the time and look for ways that it can fit my lifestyle and find it hard for me to follow this one sometimes. You may have heard of chewing your food for a set amount of time. One of the reasons being that you don't fully assimilate all of the nutrients that are found in food. By not chewing and swallowing the food right away, you don't actually break it down with your saliva or teeth and it goes undigested out to your other side. So, in a way, the food is being eaten without not providing much benefits other than making you full if you happen to be this type of person. Although it is not something I do all of the time, really chewing my food, it is something I do think about. Lastly, if you finish your meal in less than 10 minutes, you should probably think about slowing down a bit more, unless it is a melting ice cream than you have free reign :)

I intend to address many of these issues and look at the rhythm of eating in our society and how we can improve it for the better through the community dinners that I will begin hosting this Friday. Even through eating, we can cultivate more awareness about ourselves and our habits. Be on the look out for more information and photos from my pilot dinner!

Is Chocolate a Guilty Pleasure?

What a whirlwind this summer has been, I have gone through some major changes and I am truly loving it :)

I want to talk about guilty pleasures but I first want to introduce a new service that I am offering, it is called Awaken the Senses. I provide community dinners that feature local, organic, sustainable and wholesome, nourishing foods. This may sound like something that you may have heard before like underground dinners or guerilla restaurants, but this is different where there will be more of a focus on the mindfulness aspect of eating. For me, this is a great way of incorporating the teachings of yoga around the way that we eat and the foods that we consume on a daily basis. I am hoping to also begin offering yoga classes and food or "yoga and a brunch", sounds very inviting, right? Take a rejuvenating yoga class and then enjoy a small meal. Not sure if it will be a workshop type format or a biweekly or monthly class. Any suggestions? I want to make eating food be a whole body experience and through yoga it can help to heighten our senses and prepare our bodies for the food that we will eat and bring even more thought and consciousness into our decisions. This will prove to be a very fun and educational journey :)

So back to the topic at hand, guilty pleasures. Now you may have one and you can insert what they may be for you...it can be chocolate, cheesecake, french fries; pretty much anything that you may find pleasurable but have guilt around eating that food and may even be considered bad for you. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and I made this comment about chocolate being a guilty pleasure and she stopped me mid sentence and stated why she didn't understand why it is that chocolate is assumed to be a guilty pleasure when it can actually be pretty good for you, of course all depending on what kind of chocolate you are eating. This idea of guilty pleasures is something that I want to explore even further.

Why does there have to be so much deprivation and denial and guilt around the food that we eat? Especially in today's society. For good reason, some may say that we, as a society, love to indulge ourselves, whether it be in food, sex, alcohol and we have a tendency to overdo it. In a culture of abundance and where things such as food are much more affordable than what they used to be back in our parents or even grandparents days, we have that luxury of being able to have as much as we want whenever we want. So coming back to guilt around the pleasures that we seek, I think that we don't know when to say when and to truly listen to our bodies about what it is that we need or want.

I used to be a self professed chocoholic. I could buy a bag of Snickers snack size candy bars and eat half the bag in just one sitting. I would have them in my freezer (I love to eat chocolate when it is cold!) and get up maybe 5 or 6 times within a day and grab a handful. I knew that what I was doing was not good for me and that I would later regret having eaten so much after suffering from a tummyache, but this was my guilty pleasure. You would definitely see me the next time I went shopping buying the same thing or some other kind of big bag of chocolate. I would put limits and restrictions on how much I should eat, but none of them ever stuck. It was only after switching to some good dark chocolate and also having that knowledge of what was actually in those candy bars that I no longer became a chocoholic. I listened to my body and knew what it needed if I was having a craving for chocolate.

Chocolate is definitely a good health food, but within its limits and all dependent on what kind it is. All other types of goodies that come to mind when you think of guilty pleasure may not necessarily be really bad for you, but I think when we overindulge in those pleasures, that is where the real harm is done.

This is a topic that I want to continue to explore and discover why we have so much guilt around the foods we eat or why it is that we deprive ourselves of food because of a diet we are on or maybe because we know that we will overdo it when we eat it. Food should be a pleasurable experience and one to be shared with community (family or general community), not one of denial, it takes the whole fun out of eating. I would love to hear your comments about this and maybe some ways that you have dealt with this issue.

P.S. Be on the lookout for more information about Awaken the Senses dinners and "yoga and a brunch" gatherings in the East Bay.