Out at the Heel, Yoga Theraputics part 1

                Here is the first of the fruits of a marvelous class by Sianna Sherman, given the last week in February 2012 at Shine Yoga Studio, Cincinnati, Ohio.

                Starting from the ground up, let’s begin with a great way to get your feet in alignment.  In tadasana (i.e. standing, or more properly, mountain pose), we are taught to stand feet hip distance apart, second toe in line with the midline of the heel.  For many of us, it feels a bit pigeon-toed at first.  This is because the hip rotators, which help rotate the leg out (or externally) are so strong, they have taken over some of the role of the hip flexors (which lift the leg forward, as in walking).  You can discover if this is true for you by taking a little test.  Walk around a bit, and then come to standing.  Without moving your feet look down.  If one or the other (or both) of your feet are pointing out (even just a little bit), learning how to tame the hip rotators is the lesson for you.

                When instructed to come into tadasana, we are often told to look down at the feet to make sure they are parallel through the midline.  Should this not be the case, we are told to bring them into alignment.  Since my big fall on the ice 5 years ago, I have never once looked down to find this alignment though I have practiced hard to rediscover it.  This weekend I learned a good step to repatterning this area of the body.

                First, let’s experience the feelings of different kinds of motion. Starting from your standing position (tadasana), turn one foot out to the side.  Lift the toes and turn the foot into alignment with the other.  Which muscles move the foot when you move the toes?  For me, I notice most of the sensation in the quadriceps (front of the thigh).  Turn the same foot out to the side.   Now, lift the heel (rather than the toes) and move it outward to bring the foot into parallel.  As the heel moves out feel how the lower back opens, freeing the tailbone and decompressing the piriformis muscle.

                To expand on this idea, apply it to many other areas.  When stepping the feet wide for standing poses, always finish by widening from the heel. As you step forward to utanasana (standing forward bend) from lunge in your sun salutation, widen the heels slightly.  After this class, I noticed that my right leg turned out when operating the gas pedal in my car, so I have begun to periodically check and move the heel out when necessary.  Look when you wash dishes, brush your teeth, stand in church.  All times are fair game to teach your body divine alignment. 

Who Just Said “I Can’t?”- Wait, That Was Me

I love it when Sianna Sherman comes to town.  She is my favorite travelling yoga teacher.  I save up to take her classes and rearrange anything short of a wedding or a funeral to make sure I can attend.  You would think that the mental preparation would be as important as the physical, but somehow I was mentally unprepared for the classes I took during her February visit to Shine Yoga Studio in Hyde Park.

I show up to class, new mat in hand, ready to learn everything that she could teach so I could pass it on to my students.  The classes were so full there was only a few inches of floor between each mat in every direction.   There were two dedicated teachers just to help adjust the numerous students.  The first afternoon was devoted to therapeutics.   We worked with partners, each giving and receiving guidance and therapy.  I enjoyed working with my new friend, learning all kinds of different ways to help my students and clients release the tensions within the body.  Our teacher called it clearing, just like we talk about clearing blocks in Reiki.

                On the way home, I realized something embarrassing.  One of the teachers who was adjusting posture really got on my nerves.  I actually told her “I can’t” twice and I didn’t even realize it.  There is no “I can’t” in my vocabulary! Or maybe there is, but it’s not something I want in there.  I didn’t want to miss the next class, but the teacher would be there so I needed to figure something out to fix my issue.

                In any relationship there are two or more people.  Unfortunately the only one I can fix is me.  Wouldn’t it be great if everyone else would just accommodate me?  Not gonna happen.  As I started to ruminate on the problem, I just couldn’t get a handle on what was going on.  In a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized that I didn’t have to.

This is one of the true gifts of reiki.  There is no need to figure things out.  Just send reiki to “whatever is the cause of the behavior I don’t like (insert the name here).”  I spent some time Friday night, then Saturday on the ride back to the studio just sending reiki to whatever was blocking my reception of her gift of teaching.

The transformation was nothing short of miraculous.  What a great class, only due to the gift of reiki.  My body has had many falls and minor car accidents. This makes it hard to find the yoga motions within my own body, though I can see and find them in others as I teach.  Now I have a template within my body for the actions I create in others.  There was so much energy moving in my body, I’ve had a hard time speaking for several days after class.    My thanks to my guides and all the experiences that brought me here.

The Incredible Edible Egg

I am sitting here, eating breakfast with a smile that goes from my toes to out the top of my head!  My egg is delicious!  Last night I picked up eggs from a friend of mine who has a large family.  The children keep chickens that lay some very happy eggs.

                It was so great to pray over them.  As I blessed those who “…sowed, harvested, and prepared this food…”  I could see the faces of the kids as we talked last night.  What a gift I have been given.  I hope you all have as good a day as mine has begun.

Careful What You Ask For

For years I have been praying for, working towards and sending reiki energy to many goals- flourishing business, having good friends, helping my son with the Forensics team- all with only moderate success.  I wasn’t really floundering, but it seemed all of the energy was not hitting the target.  I began to feel like the plate spinner in the circus.  I’d get one aspect of my life really moving, like the plate balanced on the end of a stick, held up only as long as it keeps moving.  It seemed I could only do one plate at a time.

                Starting about two weeks ago, more plates began to spin at once.  The products I believe in began to sell.  I was invited to give a presentation.  I started receiving more emails.  Part of the Forensics team began to practice at my house.  My son wrote a good speech about something he really cares about.  Yeah! Aack!  I was overwhelmed!

                All of the details that come with success, better accounting, returning emails promptly, crafting talks targeted to your audience, and helping with speech revisions began dancing in my dreams.  I kept trying to keep all of the plates spinning at once.

Last Sunday morning, the day after my talk, I woke up in a sorry state, feeling just miserable.  I pulled off my Pendant of Eternal Light necklace and it looked like I felt.  The pendant is a coiled piece of metal with 3 crystal balls and a piece of lodestone inside.  If you are not careful, the chain gets caught up in the coil and it ties itself up in knots.  It had never gotten this bad before, maybe I should just cut it free.  That felt a little extreme so I went downstairs, made a cup of coffee, blessed it and began to unravel my pendant.  First pulling on one piece of chain, then on another.

 As I worked and massaged it back to freedom, I began to see the parallels with my life.  Each knot needed to be addressed as an individual, without worrying about all of the others.  Each bit unwound made me feel more hopeful.  Being present, in the present moment, with the present task made all of the difference.  Now I just need to remember it and enjoy the plates as I keep them spinning.

Be Yourself

“…every flower created by Him is beautiful, …the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy.  I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enameled with lovely hues.”

Story of a Soul, St Terese of Lisieux

Pain Free!

                There are days where I think “How did I ever end up here?”  When I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1988, not in my wildest dreams did I ever see myself as a wife, mother or even wilder- a reiki master. I was an officer and an engineer.  I love real, tangible things, yet here I am spending all of my time with the reality of the unseen.

                To help one of my most recent clients, I really had to dig through the dusty archives of my memory (and the even dustier basement) to unearth what I was looking for.  What I found was Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain by Peter Egoscue. As I reread the book it was such a great trip down memory lane.  This was the beginning of my explorations into alternative medicine.

                On Martin Luther King Day in 1989, my husband and I had a head on collision with a bus that left both of us with long term aches and pains.  I had found temporary relief from many sources, but by 2001 I was spending as much time as possible on the couch.  There was nothing more to be done short of surgery.  I knew that this was note for me, but where was I to go.

                As always, my first stop was the library. I read through the pain management, anatomy, yoga moving on to psychology (just in case it was all in my head).  In this search I found Pain Free.  The idea that all I had to do to relieve the pain was 30 minutes of exercises per day was unbelievable.  I spent the summer on the deck (listening to a Harry Potter novel) putting my hips back in alignment.

                I am a big fan of western medicine for acute injuries, but before you have the hip replaced, the bones shaved or the next shot into the nerve, check out this book and try the exercises for a few weeks.  All it cost me was a bit of time, but it gave me my life back.

Put The Oxygen Mask on Yourself First

One of my favorite television shows for years was What Not To Wear.  Each week, Stacey and Clinton would take a woman who had forgotten how to take care of herself and remind her (through a shopping spree, hair cut and new makeup) how beautiful she truly is.  In my practice I use reiki, BioGenesis tools and Hanna Kroeger techniques to help people deal with all types of things that get in the way of them being the most beautiful expression of themselves.  Somehow I forgot to help myself.

                We see it all the time in people in the caring professions; nurses, teachers, mothers and others.  So much energy is externally focused that they forget to take care of themselves.  Thirteen years ago both of my children spent time in the hospital, so I lived there as well.  What struck me was how unhealthy all of the staff was.  No one was on the stairs but me.  They worked such long hours and ate such poor food.  The good news is that has changed a lot.  This year a family member had a horrific car wreck so I spent a lot of time in the hospital again.  The stairs were downright crowded (at times I longed for the “good old days”).

                Two days ago, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized that I had to put the oxygen mask on myself before I could be of use to others.  As I alluded to in a previous post, I have put on a few pounds recently.  None of my dress clothes fit. Ick.  All this while eating my fruits and vegetables and healthy lean proteins.  How annoying.  Something had to change, but it couldn’t be my diet because that hadn’t changed from 8 pounds ago.

                What had changed was my business.  All of the sudden opportunities I have been working towards for years are presenting themselves.  I felt like I was rushing all of the time to catch up to my present rather than surfing the wave of life.  So I sat down with my BioGenesis Manual, first flipping through with irritation then settling down to business.  Using my pendulum I went through the wheels and other tools.  The interesting thing was that what came up over and over was the same wheel.  The Clear Regeneration Wheel for greater physical energy, digestion, and weight (when one eats too much because his/her body needs the energy).

                The result, in the last three days I have lost 2 pounds without changing anything.   I am also more attentive to my mood.  When I feel stressed and overwhelmed, I slow down, take a few long exhales and grab the BioGenesis wand to calm stress and anxiety.  It feels so good to surf the wave .