Yoga For Back Pain

One of the biggest complaints I hear from my clients is that they have back pain. It is a major reason many people turn to yoga. Back pain can have any number of causes-weak muscles, tight muscles, an alignment problem, an injury. Often tightness or weakness in the neck or legs will manifest as pain in the lower back. The following videos were designed to address some of the more common causes of back pain. If your back pain is due to a new or old injury, DO NOT DO THIS SEQUENCE. The sequence is designed for the otherwise healthy person who feels moderate pain in the lower back. I take you through some basic core strengtheners, then finish with hip stretches ands twists. The idea is to bring the spine into alignment and keep it healthy and flexible. As always, because of time constraints I hold some of the poses for a very brief period, so if you'd like to hold the poses for longer please feel free to do so. If you have any questions about the poses or sequence, leave a comment here and I will try to address it.

Vinyasa Flow

Welcome back! Apologies for the long delay between posts. Apologies also for the quality of the embedded video.

Today I wanted to give a brief intro to vinyasa, or flow yoga. In a typical vinyasa class, hatha yoga poses are linked together with a set series of poses. This is usually plank-chaturanga dandasana (four-limbed staff pose)-upward facing dog-downward facing dog. The whole sequence is often verbally abbreviated "chaturanga." Chaturanga, however, is an advanced pose that requires a good deal of upper-body strength. If you wish to incorporate vinyasa flow into your practice but don't have the arm strength required to perform chaturanga, I have included two alternative vinyasa sequences that can be done in place of chaturanga in any vinyasa class. One uses cobra pose, which is the perfect pose to strengthen the muscles of the upper back and arms to build up to chaturanga. The next variation uses knees-chest-chin pose, or ashtanga namaskara. My form is not perfect in the video, so please check out about.com's excellent description of the pose here.

Vinyasa flow is based on the Sun Salutation. If you have a home practice and want to make it more physically challenging, I recommend adding some Sun Salutations. Begin with a warmup on the floor, move on to some variations of the Sun Salutation, then perform your other poses. Once you are comfortable with the Sun Salutations you can add more vinyasa to your practice. I like to use the sequences in the video to connect between standing poses (and to flow into poses like pigeon.), usually holding a pose for 6-10 breaths, then spending 1/2 to 1 breath on each pose in the flow sequence. Enjoy the video, and stay tuned for more updates and yoga insights.