Facing life with back pain?

Have tried all the remedies, only to have your back pain return?

Don't worry, you are not alone and anyway, worrying will just make it worse: truth is, you may be lost in the Back Pain Triangle.

Over 80% of adults suffer from back pain at some stage. Almost 90% will suffer from recurring bouts of back pain. Eventually these same people will have their older years in chronic back pain misery.

It sounds frightening but rest assured: your back pain is easily solved, with the Back Support Pyramid.

It is not a product, a system or package. The Back Support Pyramid is a three-sided understanding of how back pain arises, from three separate areas, and then interweaving the solutions for all three.

Ready to hear all three sides of the Back Support Pyramid?

SIDE 1: Structural Support for Your Back

The structural causes of back pain are tight muscles, weak muscles and joint imbalance. If you correct these, you correct structural causes of back pain.

Alas, cures are not structural alone. Your back pain will most likely come back (!)  if you don't also solve the other two sides of this three-sided Back Support equation.

By the way - recent research has shown that the trauma caused by lifting an object, or doing a normal daily activity (the most common excuse for back pain), is not sufficient to create back pain.

This means the physical trauma that you thought caused your back pain ... didn't! It came from a buildup of tension, from physical causes and from the other two sides to the back pain triangle.

SIDE 2: Look To Your Health

Your general health affects your back. If you are tired, have bowel complaints (minor or major), hormonal imbalances, immune problems or are just generally not 100% healthy, back pain is more likely.

How does that work?

If you suffer from constipation, diarrhea, gas and wind, bloating, there is extra pressure on your lower back. This can set your lower back in a state of tension where when you lift, when you walk, even when you sit - so your back does not have the strength to support you. Then, seemingly suddenly, you pull your back after lifting an object you have lifted a hundred times before.

If you are tired, your muscles tire. That means emotional exhaustion as well as the tiredness of physical illness. Notice how when you have a flu/cold your muscles feel sore also. My lower back is excruciating when I have a fever.

Take care of your general health and your back will benefit.

SIDE 3: How are you Feeling Inside?

Your emotional health, not just the extremes of depression or anxiety, affect your back.

If you are stressed, anxious, worried or generally not at ease, then muscles tighten. The saying that "stress rides between your shoulders" is very accurate. Stress also takes up residence in your back.

When your mind is overactive, when you are not coping too well, muscles in your upper back tighten. Notice if someone squeezes your shoulders after a busy day, they can feel like rocks.

Notice also how good a long, hard hug feels. This emotional support can allow you to let go of those rocks in your back and melt.

Stress affects your muscles, and sometimes it is in deadly combination with one of the other areas affecting your back. If you are hunched over a desk, working on a project with a crushing deadline (notice the word deadline...it doesn't even sound good), you get a double whammy of stress and structural damage to your back. And you might even be more susceptible to that stomach flu going around the office.

So to remove back pain once and for all, you need to address the physical, general and emotional causes to your back pain.

One answer? You guessed it: yoga.

In many hot yoga poses, we tell you to "pull your shoulders down from your ears," or to lift from your breastbone and tip your elbows into imaginary back pocket. In savasana, we encourage you to melt into the floor, to allow the floor to rise up to meet your body, to let go of your tension and your worries if only for these short minutes in the yoga room. We give you permission to take a pose lying down, to imagine yourself in the pose as you breathe deeply - this is just as beneficial as doing the pose!

These are all wonderful practices for of letting go the tension that is causing your back to seize up.

And when you finally get up after final Savasana, the relaxation pose, take these lessons out of the yoga room and back into your life: your back can support you in the ways it was meant, to carry you through a pain-free life of living your full potential for health and happiness.

Coming home to Hot Yoga

I left home 22 days ago and I found myself home, here in Florence and Rome.

As for my old home in New Jersey –  I am home now but I am not going back. I am facing forward.

I am tossing out old maps that got me nowhere fast. ‘So what are you doing how? What are your kids doing now?  Why isn’t your son going to college? How is your job?  How is your money? Have you checked on it lately?' These swirling questions spiraled me into dead ends.

I came to Italy with a vague remembering of a young girl who felt at home with no plans, with a backpack, a bit of money, and a desire to see art, 30 years ago. I went searching through all the monuments and museums to find that person I l thought I had left behind; someone carefree and eager for life.

She was with me all along.

Being lost is exactly where I was supposed to be. It feels like home to have found my courage to be lost and found and lost again.

And to speak up.

The route is always clear: just walk where it feels good. I don't need a preplanned route. I am the map and the mapmaker.

Now I turning up the heat; I am asking myself to expand to fit the size of my dreams.

My touchstone has been yoga.  For me, Hot Yoga has always been bigger than my body and my poses; hot yoga symbolizes life in alignment, my ability to move gracefully not despite the heat, but because of it. Heat is risk; heat is expansion in progress; heat is necessary. You can stretch in the heat.

I have kept the heat too low in my life or too many years. How about you? Ready for some hot yoga expansion? Anyone up for a 30 Day Hot Yoga Challenge perhaps? Or to commit to hot yoga three times a week to create The Cumulative Effect? What fire is burning inside of you that hot yoga can help you spark into reality?

Halloween Candy Blues, Hot Yoga Style

Is hot yoga scary?  Not compared to The Sugar Monster.

Halloween is Monster time and I dont mean zombies and slashers; I mean SUGAR. Chocolate and Twinkies and Twix...oh crap.  

Because holiday diet sabotage starts with the call of the Candy Monster on October 31.

Then comes pre-Thanksgiving, when you've got a big plate of busy to deal with -  shopping, cooking, entertaining, visiting - and that's when the Monster eats you.

You're hungry; you need to eat SOMETHING RIGHT NOW. What's easier than a cookie...or 10?

And sure, you say those miniature Milky Way bars are for the trick-or-treaters....but then, why are you keeping them in the freezer?

There's nothing worse than suffering a sickening defeat at the claws of the Sugar Monster. But -

Defeat The Sugar Monster in 3 Easy Steps:

STEP 1. Start with a laugh and a song: this Candy Thriller Video  was written by a lifelong Weight Watche who has fought and lost and lived to fight again! Sing along til the sugar blues go away.

STEP 2.  Hot Yoga Burns Calories now

If you call victim to the Sugar Monster, help is just a hot yoga class away: just one hot yoga session burns more calories than any other activity. Check our Calorie Burner and see!

STEP 3. Join a Hot & Healthy Challenge

Defeat the Sluggish 10 Pound Holiday Weight Gain (ugly sister to The Sugar Monster) with hot yoga plus a personalized diet plan, in the company of friends.

Take the Hot & Healthy Challenge 2011, our magic combination of hot yoga AND healthy eating: hot yoga 3x a week, plus, personalized diet coaching and supportive handholding from  Jaime Cahalan, Riverflow Yoga Certified Nutrition Coach.

The *Hot & Healthy Holiday Challenge starts Dec 3, 2011 through January 2, 2012.

Relax...it's going to be a hot New Year!

*Special pricing for our Annual Hot Yoga Pass holders, and discounts if you join with a friend!

Chris Christie Does Hot Yoga?

Hot yoga can inspire people of all weight sizes. 

Case in point: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

To bring home the issue, I invited NJ Governor Chris Christie to hot yoga class at Riverflow Yoga.

I got the idea early in October, after Governor Christie declined the 2012 GOP candidacy and the fat jokes got thick.  Comedian  David Letterman said Christie couldn't run for President because, "there isn’t a Quizznos within five miles of the White House."

Michael Kinsley of Bloomberg View took serious issue with Christie's weight: "Since the president inevitably sets an example, and obesity is a national epidemic, a skinny person should run the country.” Fox News’ Neil Cavuto called it  "racism"— with a scale.

Governor Christie was unfazed; I got hot and bothered.

I invited the Governor to hot yoga because Christie could be the ideal candidate to end weight prejudice in America.

Hot yoga is not for the lighthearted. Over 1000 people of all shapes and sizes practice hot yoga at Riverflow in Lambertville.

Weight has nothing to do with commitment, can-do attitude, and ability to inspire others.

Here was my appeal to Governor Christie:

"In September you came to Lambertville as we were on the brink of yet another flash flood.

I am now inviting you to shut down the jokes about your weight showing a "lack of self control" by inviting you to a hot yoga session at Riverflow Yoga in Lambertville.

Hot yoga is NOT just exercise; it’s an exercise in focus, awareness, and willingness to take on a challenge.

Our extremely tenuous economic and political climate calls for leaders who try different solutions and have the heart to do whatever it takes. I vote for you.

The last thing I said to Christie, I say to all of you:

"Do hot yoga for yourself, do it to answer all those who say you are defined by a number on a scale

... and do it for fun - you certainly deserve some."

Still awaiting a response from Governor Christie. We're keeping a spot warm for him at Riverflow Yoga.

Namaste, Dammit!

You're angry. You're depressed. You're overwhelmed. You're snarky.

What to do when you don't WANT to do hot yoga?

You know all the reasons you should do hot yoga...your bad back will straighten, your hurt knees will feel healed, your arthritis will ease, your rotten mood will soften...but right this minute, you don't FEEL like doing yoga, dammit. And class starts in 5 minutes.

You're not alone. A glut of hot yoga students show up 5 minutes before class begins - or 2 minutes after we lock the door to the yoga room - so we always know the days you had to drag yourself to hot yoga class.

We don't blame you; we welcome you. In fact, we have a lot of respect for you when you gag the Demon and show up anyway.

You've got your reasons...damn good ones. You're working overtime. You have a long commute right behind the old man who drives with his reading glasses. Your kids needed a ride to soccer practice and you thought today was Wednesday.

Hey, we've been there. We still are - yoga teachers are people, too.

So as a yogi and yoga teacher for the past 30-40 years, here's my advice on how to do yoga when you don't want to to yoga...and it's probably different than you would expect.

Option 1: Release the Small Self

Anytime you're about to grow, your ego says, "NO! I'm comfortable here!  Just let me sit in the dark a bit longer."

Hot yoga isn't comfortable in any way; the room is hot, your towel smells, the person next to you ate garlic for lunch (don't ask how I know that) and anyway you've got a million more urgent things to do.

What can you do? Ignore your snarly-voiced demon, put one foot in front of the other, head for the door, and take yourself to hot yoga class.

Want to go further? On the way to yoga, answer these three questions to shed some light on the Demon's face:

1. What is most holding me back? What thoughts do I have about myself right now that make me not want to go to yoga?

2. Do I have a rule that I have to be perfect before I'll show up?  If I end up next to that Gumby woman - will I just feel worse about myself?

3. What two action steps can I take right now? )If you're on your way to class, you're doing one of them). How about when I walk through the yoga room door - what one thing can I do to feel just a little bit better (greet the teacher; smile; compliment someone on something random; take the deepest breath I ever took) Choose one and do it.

Option 2: Give in and lie down

Didn't think I was going to say this, did you? Well, sometimes it's the best option.

Procrastination isn't always a flaw; sometimes, it's an inner knowing that this isn't your optimal timing.

How can you differentiate between procrastination and perfect action? Play the What Feels Better game. Close your eyes and say this to yourself:

"I'm not going to yoga." Before your mind kicks in, feeling what immediately comes up in your stomach: without defining or explaining or thinking, do you feel relief or clench?

Now try this one: "I am going to yoga class right now." Don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think just FEEL: relief or tightness?

Go with your gut feelings. And I do mean gut... because this is where your heart is.

Your gut doesn't lie: you get an immediate sense of relief of a sense of tightness. This is not your small self talking: this is your guidance system, right there in your stomach. That feeling is telling you what is best for you right now.

But how do I know for sure whether it's my Higher Self or my Snarly Demon talking?" You won't know it in your mind; you'll feel it in your gut. Relief or recoil; you can differentiate between these two easily. Instantly. That's the one.

It's not always best to force yourself to do what you don't want to do.  If you don't feel it in your gut, don't put it on your plate. Check in again tomorrow.

And hey, there's always a warm spot for you in our hot yoga room...come back and play another day.