Eating Healthy For Vegetarians

The vegetarian way of eating can be a very healthy style of eating. The rules still apply with healthy eating, although you should add variety, balance, and moderation.

A vegetarian is someone who avoids all types of meat, whether it be hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, or even fish. Vegetarians are also sometimes classified by the type of food they are or aren't willing to eat.  For example, Lacto-ovo vegetarians will avoid animal flesh yet they will eat eggs and most dairy products.  A Vegan on the other hand, will avoid all food that has any trace of animal origin.

Because they don't eat meet, vegetarians will often wonder how they'll get enough protein.  Although you may not realize it, the average American actually consumes more protein than he actually needs.  For the lacto-ovo vegetarian, dairy products are an excellent source of protein. Vegans on the other hand, get their protein from nuts, seeds, and soy products.

Along the lines of beans, there are several to choose from, including green or red lentils, peanuts, split peas, pinto, soy, kidney, and many more.  Some of them you are already familiar, such as kidney beans in
chili, refried beans in Mexican dishes, red beans and rice, and pinto beans.  Although some beans taste good as they are, others are available with different flavors to help enhance their taste.  Nuts are hihg in protein, although they deliver a lot more fat than beans, which means you should enjoy them in moderation.  By having one cup of cooked beans, you'll get the same amount of protein as eating two ounces of meat!

The nutrients of concern for vegans, who avoid all types of animal food, are vitamin B12, calcium, and vitamin D. In the average North American diet, the primary source for B12 is animals.  To have an adequate intake of B12, vegans should reguarly consume vitamin B12 supplements or foods, which contain vitamin B12, such as soy products or milk. 

For calcium, vegans can rely on orange juice or soy milk, as they are fortified with calcium.  Beans and leafy green vegetables will also contain some calcium as well.

Although all types of vegetarians rely on simple food groups, controlling your vitamins and calcium intake is something you should always do.  This is very important for eating healthy, as well as staying healthy.  If you control what you eat, you'll have many years of healthy eating ahead of you.

Featured Pose: Warrior 3 (Wall Version)

by Baxter and Nina

Warrior 3 is the third pose in our upper body strengthening series because this pose provides unique upper body strengthening with little or no weight bearing on your hands. Before providing instructions on how to do the full pose (coming soon), which can be quite challenging, we’re providing an alternative using the wall that is accessible to almost everyone.

Warrior 3 is unique in that in this pose you keep your torso, arms, and one leg parallel with the floor. In this position, gravity challenges you to keep yourself upright instead of folding over your front leg. All the musculature on the back of your body has to work actively to keep you in this position, including your hamstrings and buttocks along with all the spinal muscles up to the base of your neck. You are also building strength the arm muscles required to keep your arms overhead (the position known as flexion), including trapezius, anterior and posterior deltoid, serratus anterior.

To enhance the strength building aspect of the pose when you are using your hands on the wall, use the lightest touch possible on the wall so your arms still have to work to hold themselves up. Touching the wall with just your fingertips is the most effective, but you can still gain strength building with your palms lightly on the wall if you prefer full contact with the wall for support, balance, or even just a sense of security.

Instructions: Start by facing a wall, standing about one foot away. Place your hands on the wall shoulder-distance apart, either with palms or your fingertips on the wall. Depending on your hamstring and hip flexibility, your hands should be somewhere between shoulder height and elbow height. Next, bend your knees and push your hips back away from the wall, and, keeping your buttocks over your heels, slowly walk back until your arms and torso form one long line approximately parallel to the floor.

You are now in Half Downward-Facing Dog pose (see Featured Pose: Half Dog Pose at the Wall for photos and detailed instructions of moving into this pose). From here, push your fingertips or palms firmly into the wall as you press your sitting bones away from the wall. Then shift your left foot to the right, at the mid point between your feet, while allowing your hips to shift a little to the left so you are balancing on the left foot. Then swing your right leg up and back, in line with your arms and torso.

Be careful to avoid letting your chest sink toward the floor, because hanging from your shoulder joints puts a lot of strain on them. Instead of feeling a stretch in the shoulders, you want a feeling of even strength around your shoulder joints. So think about lifting your chest up into your shoulder blades, as opposed to dropping your chest down toward the floor and aim for a feeling of completely parallel line (if you are flexible) or an even slope (if your hamstrings are tight).

One you’re in the pose, try lightening the press of your hands on the wall so you can feel the work of your back body’s musculature keeping you in position. With your raised foot slightly pointed, lengthen through your hell away from the wall. Start by staying in the pose for six breaths or so and gradually over time work your way up to 1.5 to 2 minutes.

To come out of the pose, release your right leg down to the floor, bend your knees, and walk in toward the wall. Repeat on left other side.

Cautions: This pose requires a lot of back strength, so if you have lower back issues, you may need to modify the pose by placing your hands higher on the wall or by keeping your lifted leg slightly bent. If you have a hamstring strain, if you feel any strain in the standing leg, bend it slightly so you don’t aggravate your injury.

Osteoporosis, Balance and Yoga

by Brad

A couple weeks ago, I attended a very interesting seminar on “Bone Marrow Adiposity:  An Age-Associated Phenotype; What's between bone and fat?  New insights into age-related osteoporosis” by Dr. Clifford Rosen, MD.  Dr. Rosen is the Director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough.  His talk was fairly technical and had to do with the regulation of fat in bone and how it increases slowly with age, as well as being affected by other environmental and genetic factors. His data showed that as fat accumulates in bone with age, it appeared to be related to a decrease in bone density, and therefore could be a driver of osteoporosis in both men and woman. He also stated that the clinical manifestation of osteoporosis is bone breakage, and therefore as your bone density decreases, it is the fall and inevitable bone fracture that typically turns people into patients. Avoiding a fall in the first place is possibly the best and for some the only way to avoid the adverse effects of this age-related decline in bone density.

After his seminar, I had a chance to talk with him after his research and asked him whether yoga might help by decreasing the risk of falling. He immediately said yes, and added that the yoga and tai chi were the two things that he knew that had been shown to have the greatest benefits in reducing this falling and bone fractures (see, for example, the Mayo Clinic web site's Exercising with osteoporosis: Stay active the safe way by choosing the right form of exercise and the New York Times article Ancient Moves for Orthopedic Problems). He implied that this was primarily through an increase in balance as opposed to strength. Indeed, while there is plenty of evidence that strength training is important, an increase in balance and flexibility can make all the difference between a stumble or misstep and a full-fledged fall.

As I sit on my flight to Seattle, I am reminded of how much variation exists in flexibility and balance among adults. Squeezing out of an aisle seat to make your way to the restroom or retrieving a suitcase from the overhead bin can easily become an awkward and precarious—and at times dangerous—act. And it is often not the oldest passengers, but the middle-aged and muscle-bound adults who induce serious cringing from neighboring passengers. Imagine how much more agile they would be if they all practiced yoga!

And for those of us who already do yoga, this is yet another compelling argument that working on balance is critical as we age. So if you haven't done so already, check out Shari's post last week about how to create a yoga practice to improve your balance (see Planning a Practice for Improving Balance).

Planning a Practice for Improving Balance

by Shari

We've had a question about how to practice when you want to work on balance. We're going to take our time addressing this issue because there are several factors involved in balance. When you plan a daily balance practice, it is important to include all six basic balance components:

1.  Strength: Strengthening your legs is critical. Leg muscles that need to be strong for good balance include the quadriceps, hamstrings, adductors, gluteal, and ankle muscles. (Please see Baxter’s recent posts on feet and ankles). In addition, the back muscles specifically the back extensors, are also important.
2. Proprioception: The ability to sense where we are in space is critical for balance. Practicing with an emphasis on proprioception can help maintain or even increase this ability.
3. Central Nervous System Reactivity: The ability to coordinate movements of your eyes is essential to seeing objects in your environment clearly while you are in motion, and other central nervous system reactions help you maintain balance.
4. Postural Control: Standing well is the critical component for maintaining balance.
5. Gait: Varying how fast and slow you walk, as well as the sizes and directions of step, can help you stay more nimble and avoid falling.
6. Vestibular System: The vestibular system is the sensory system that contributes to movement and sense of balance. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes the labyrinth of the inner ear in most mammals, situated in the vestibulum in the inner ear.

You can target your specific “challenge” areas by varying how you incorporate these components in your practice.

Strength

We need dynamic as well as static strength to prevent falling. Simple ways to strengthen your legs can be standing up and down from a standard height chair without using your arms to assist you. How slowly or quickly you do this can add to the variability for the muscles. Holding the position at various points in going down and coming up is also good. Working until your legs feel fatigue is the key to strengthening these muscles. But please remember these types of quadriceps exercises load the knees significantly and they could potentially aggravate an arthritic knee. So be careful.

Another way to build leg strength is a stair-stepping routine of stepping up and down one step with one leg and then changing and doing it on the other leg. You can also side step up and down with one leg as well as back stepping up and down with one leg. Try not to use the handrails unless you absolutely need to. Varying the speed of the step is good, too.

So now to translate this to yoga poses: think Warrior 2, Warrior 1, Extended Side Angle pose (Parvakonasana) and Powerful pose (Utkatasana). Move into and out of these poses first as a flow, pivoting your feet to keep changing directions. Then move into and out of these poses more quickly. Having a friend call out the poses so you can’t anticipate them can be fun—putting together your own sequence to delight your practice buddies! Then working to hold the poses with a timer to build strength. Start with a doable time, for example, ten seconds, and then increase it slowly. Thirty seconds is actually an eternity to hold a pose that is difficult for you. Varying how low you go into a pose is also valuable. Stepping into poses but not taking the actual pose also will challenge your reactions especially if someone else is also calling it out to you.

For back strength (this also includes gluteal muscles), try Locust pose (Salabasana) with arms and legs, as well as an all-fours position with opposite arm and leg lefts (Baxter calls this Hunting Dog pose—see Hunting Dog Pose for complete information on how to do this pose).

For ankles, try lunges with an emphasis on the back foot, toe rises and rocks with no hands (with both legs or one at a time). 
 
Proprioception

Closing your eyes while you practice can help with proprioception. For example, do toe rises and heel rocks but now close your eyes.

You can also work on an unstable surface, such as a foam mat (thick), an inflated air bed, your own bed or a couch (be creative and safe when choosing the unstable surface). Try standing in Tadasana (Mountain pose) with your feet hips-width apart and then with feet together on an unstable surface (first with your eyes open and then closed). After Tadasana, try heel-toe rocks on your unstable surface, first with your eyes open and then closed if possible. If you feel really adventuresome, try some standing poses on this surface, such as Warrior 2, Triangle pose, and Downward-Facing Dog or Hunting Dog pose as shown above. If this is doable, try closing your eyes and doing these poses on an unstable surface. Please make sure that you don’t fall off of whatever you are on because that would really be counterproductive.
 
Central Nervous System

Now let’s add the central nervous system challenge. Standing on an unstable surface, use your eyes to track a moving object. If you are doing this with a friend, he or she can hold a bright object in their hands while you use your eyes to follow their movement in front of you. Do not move your head or body, just use your eyes to track the object’s movement.

Now you can do a dynamic resistive exercise together. Stand facing each other palm to palm with your hands at shoulder height. One person is the leader and the other is the follower. The leader slowly starts to push into the follower’s hands and the follower matches their push into them with an equal push toward them. The leader keeps slowly increasing the force and the follower continues to match it. Then, without warning, the leader with quickly releases the force and move away from the follower. The follower is trying not to fall when the force has been removed. The leader is close enough to steady the follower so they don’t really fall. Change roles and repeat.

Another partner idea is to stand front to front again, but this time one person is holding a light object just out of their partner’s reach. The reacher is trying to lean to grab the object but the partner continues to slowly move the object just out of reach. The reacher cannot move his or her feet but can shift weight or turn without moving his or her feet. High reaching as well as below waist level reaching is good. There will be a point of reach when the reacher will lose his or her balance—that is the whole idea and the person holding the object should be able to assist their partner so no actual fall occurs. Change roles and repeat.

Postural Control

When working on postural control the key is to learn axial (skeletal) elongation as well as peripheral (arm and leg) elongation. The practice of Tadasana (Mountain pose) is difficult because of its simplicity. But learning your own postural habits is something that does affect balance and the ability to right yourself when a fall occurs.

You can address this component with a friend. Get a stick, such as a dowel, that is approximately six feet long and have your friend stand in Tadasana. Place the stick along his or her back body and see how many points of contact there are. Does the back of the head touch the stick? The upper back? The lower back? The buttocks? Do the backs of the knees touch the stick? Then look in an anatomy book to see what ideal posture is. Once you understand what your own issues are, then if you work with a yoga teacher, he or she can help you start to work on those areas that may need some attention.

Another component to address is the ability to safely lift an object off of the floor without falling forward onto your face when doing so. You can try this first with a friend and a light object like a newspaper. Each of you can do the task, which may be easier for some to do than others. Talk with each other to see if you can identify what makes it easy for some of you and more challenging for the others. With this information then you can decide if your personal issues are strength deficits, mobility or flexibility challenges, or other balance issues.

Now back to yoga poses that combine strength proprioception, and posture. Think Tree pose (Vrksasana), Mountain pose (Tadasana), Half Moon pose (Ardha Chandrasana), and Powerful pose (Utkatasana) with eyes open and closed, and with a stable and unstable surface. I am also particularly fond of the all-fours routine (Hunting Dog pose) on an unstable surface with eyes open and closed. Really you could pick one standing pose a week and work it through these variables of changing the surface you practice on, and whether you have your eyes open or closed. Moving into and out of the posture slowly or with variability in the degree of depth of the posture. The choices are endless actually.
 
Gait and Vestibular System

Try varying the speed of your walking—very fast or slow, big steps or small steps, quick changes in directions. You can also try stepping over items and around items, with quick changes again in direction after stepping over objects. Vary the objects you step over; some can be high and some can be low. You could do this with a group of friend, and have one person calling out what to do and the others following the directions. You could add music (like musical chairs) but when the music stops a pose might be called out for you to do.

And then there is what I call the “Queen Elizabeth walk” Walk at a stately pace while waving with alternating hands and turning your head to look at your adoring subject. The idea here is to make your practice fun!

Balance and Safety

by Shari

A lot of my students tell me that they have balance issues and want to improve their balance with yoga practice. There is no unifying factor on why these students have balance issues. Some are due to injuries with surgical repairs (ankle fractures or other bone fractures, joint replacements of the hips or knees, spinal surgeries). Some are due to soft tissue injuries of muscle, tendons or ligaments. Some are due to brain injuries, such as strokes, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinsons Disease. Some are due to coordination issues, visual issues, inner ear issues. Some are part of medication side effects. I think you are getting the picture. So how does the yoga student and teacher address their own or their student’s balance issues?

I don’t specifically ask people if they have balance issues but instead I observe how they are in class. Then I am very free with using the wall as my favorite prop! I LOVE THE WALL! I can face it with the front of my body, I can have it behind me or I can be perpendicular to it. It depends on what I am working on at that particular time and the needs of my students. If there is a “yoga horse” in the place that you practice then it can be an even better love affair! I use the wall to allow me not to be afraid. Fear of falling can occur in all ages of students. Falling when you are younger is a lot less injurious than when you are in your 50’s and 60’s. Young bones “bounce” but older bones shatter. There are many reasons for this but the simplest can be attributed to osteoporosis and how we fall. Certain body parts are more prone to breaking than others and the surfaces that we fall on also contribute to fracture risks.

Bones of the Right Leg

The other unfortunate thing is that as we age we are less efficient in making new bone through the “remodeling process.” Bone is living tissue and it is constantly being formed and remodeled throughout our lifetime but like all parts of aging things get less efficient and slower (sigh). So falling in yoga class or during practice is not good for anyone’s health or confidence. For standing poses for some students, I may use a combination  of the wall and a chair, having them use both to assist in their balance as they are learning poses and then later on for them to increase their endurance when holding a pose. I think of blocks more as making poses accessible but not as a tool to safeguard from falling because they are too small and unstable themselves. If I have someone in class who is very unsteady I might place them in a corner so they have three points of stability (feet, side and then with a chair).

You may remember from a previous post Nina and I did way back when she interviewed me on balance (see Aging and Balance), we talked about balance receptors being found in hands and feet in large number. Being barefoot in class is really an important component of balance, and whenever possible I encourage my students to be barefoot if possible. Sometimes usage of a sticky mat isn’t as optimal as not using one (it may be easier to balance directly on the floor), so you have to decide what works best for you. Learning how to feel the intrinsic muscles in your feet (which Baxter has been so eloquent on in his recent posts on feet) and hands WILL affect balance in standing poses and some inversions.

Also, remembering to use your eyes in yoga class is also going to affect your balance (again see Aging and Balance about vestibular reflexes). Focusing on a fixed object as you move into and out of one-legged poses helps with stability. Keeping your head in neutral and not compressing your upper cervical spine into hyperextension (thrusting your chin forward) will also improve your balance (there are balance receptors at the base of your skull).

Other factors that affects our balance and safety are our individual levels of flexibility, strength and endurance. Being able to access a pose requires a certain degree of flexibility as well as alignment. When we try to do poses we aren’t ready for, we almost certainly will fall (think Headstand, arm balances, and Shoulderstands). These are truly advanced poses and take years to safely prepare to do them. Fatigue and endurance are factors in balance because we are unable to access the required muscular strength to perform an asana when we fatigue.

Lastly anticipation is also a factor in how balanced you are. The mental mindset “I always fall in Ardha Chandrasana when I do it on my left” pre-programs those pesky neural circuits into anticipating that you are going to fall so they aren’t going to be able to prevent it. Now I am not saying to disregard past experience or history it just that always doing the pose so that you fall isn’t a way to learn how NOT to fall in it. Learning to sense your balance changes within a safe context is extremely important as we try to improve our balance.

Balance like strength and flexibility is not static but improves with practice and time. I have a current student with me who began yoga because his wife told him to. He is a retired physician and told me when he started that he had cerebellar problems and couldn’t balance. Well he was correct the first year. He is now going on his second year with me and is now starting to do Ardha Chandrasana with just one foot at the wall. He can also now balance on each foot when he does tree pose (not very long but the time isn’t the issue but that he is starting to be able to do it). When I recently mentioned to him that his balance is improving he agreed and said, “I didn’t think it ever would and I am as surprised as you by it.”

I am truly humbled by the body’s ability to transform. That's one of the things that gets me onto my mat daily!