I submitted a proposal yesterday for a workshop at the 2013 International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) conference. As you would expect, I am hoping to provide an interactive workshop about yoga and pain. The title of the presentation is “How much pain is okay in Yoga?” In the proposal description I wrote something like this, “…pain, like love – another potentially troublesome human experience – is often misunderstood.”

I wrote this sentence for three reasons. The first two are that I want the conference to accept the proposal, and I want people to come to the presentation. The most recent IAYT conference had an excellent session on neuroplasticity and pain, so there could be a feeling that the topic has already been covered. Enticing people (more…)

Students in my therapeutic yoga classes often ‘disappear’ from the class for a while. Some move on to other classes, and some come back when they are ready. I don’t worry when a student hasn’t been to class, but rather hope that they have found a path and a consistent practice that are serving them well. Yet sometimes people are coming to me with significant physical and mental health issues. Occasionally, I find myself hoping ‘not for the worst’ when they do not attend.

Earlier last week, I heard that one of the students had been unable to attend the class because her cancer had returned/spread. In hopes of raising her spirit, we hand-delivered a card and bright flowers this weekend. (more…)

Salt Spring Island is beautiful in October. The trees are changing colour, the nights are cool and the days are warm. With such a beautiful venue as the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga – the sister centre to Mount Madonna in California – it’s no wonder the inaugural offering of Pain Care Yoga retreat is filling up fast.

Salt Spring Island is a small island east of Vancouver island in Canada. It is accessible by ferry from close to Victoria BC, or from just south of Vancouver, so people coming from afar typically fly into either of these airports. The trip is beautiful, with Orca pods often seen from the ferries. Once on the island, there are quaint villages, artisans, organics produce, and everything expected when surrounded by ocean. Cycling around the island is one of my favourite activities, especially early in the morning to catch the sunrise on pebbled beaches. (more…)

In my beginners classes I always tell my students to work with the chakras, to take a chakra test and find out which ones are in balance and which ones need work. It is a valuable tool in learning about yourself and finding out what makes you tick. I have also talked with them about the first chakra – the root chakra – and how it is so directly related to our relationships within our family. One of my favorite expressions with this particular chakra is to say to them, “If you really want to know yourself, trace your roots.”

Which is something I have been doing over the last few months. (more…)

I was presented with an important decision last weekend. The options were to withdraw from an activity in order to stay safe, or perform an activity that involved a certain amount of danger. Not only had I planned for and approached this activity with a sense of control and confidence, I had been preparing for it for a few months. In an instant, I questioned my capabilities, felt my body tense, my mind move towards panic, and decided that I would not let fear be the only deciding factor.

This scenario reminds me so much of ones faced by people in pain, every day. As much as we try to control our daily activities, and stay in our area of comfort and safety, along comes something or someone that shakes us up. As much as we pace ourselves, and make plans to progressively move forward, challenging our limitations a little at a time, life can throw us opportunities that require letting go of the plan and letting go of the pacing. (more…)

As someone who is always on the lookout for new students to walk into my studio, I am constantly talking to people about how much yoga can benefit their lives. I have talked to community groups, spoken to doctors at medical centers and am generally just trying to spread the word. But it seems that at least once every day I hear this statement “I can’t do yoga; my body doesn’t bend like that”! Now, I have to admit that before I started doing yoga I had the same idea about it, that you had to be super bendy and strong.

I had been misinformed about doing yoga; my only yoga experience had come from yoga magazines and books. I would see these people, beautiful people, doing these outrageous poses, and it scared me to try it. Fortunately I discovered a TV show called Yoga Zone on the health network and realized that I could do yoga, that anybody can do yoga. (more…)

Over the last few months, my life has taken an interesting turn, one that has been a roller coaster ride of emotions. I recently lost a good friend. Now, before you start thinking that this person died, I want to clarify that she didn’t. She just decided that she did not want to be my friend anymore. It hurt. In fact, it hurt terribly, I actually think that it hurt more than if she had died. At least if it were a death, it would not have been a choice she made, but a circumstance. What hurt me the most was that she “chose” not to be my friend anymore. Now, while many of our mutual friends felt it was a problem with her, others thought it was a problem with me. I am not sure how she felt but my thoughts are it was both of us.

The way the friendship ended, “JUST LIKE THAT”, (more…)

Tomorrow I head off to the Canadian Rockies to teach for three days, in Banff and then in the town of Golden. Similar to so many of my teaching trips, I am connecting with quite a diverse group of people. In Banff, I am speaking at the Natural Health Practitioners yearly conference. The first day, I present on the topic of pain science. My goal is to shift the manner in which practitioners view pain, chronic pain, and people in pain. I always enjoy morphing such presentations to the differing views of the health care practitioners. It is such a pleasure when people start to ‘get it’, though I find that most of the time we need education well beyond one day to change our beliefs. Outdated pain beliefs are firmly rooted in most of us. On the second full day of teaching at the conference, my role shifts to that of facilitator, providing the participants with experiences and practice in techniques with which to enhance their clinical work with people in pain.
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The past few weeks have been packed with traveling, teaching and advocacy. Although I work clinically up to two-and-a-half days each week with people in pain in Penticton, a big part of what I do includes travel. This can be tiring. Yet it provides me the opportunity to learn from so many people – yoga teachers, health professionals and people in pain. The teaching part isn’t tiring. That energizes me. It is the travelling itself, and the sleeping in strange beds/rooms, that leaves me fatigued. It can also leave me in pain, but we’ll leave that for another post.

On April 24th I travelled to Ottawa, Canada’s capital, for the first Canadian Pain Summit. Over 200 delegates from across Canada gathered to begin the process of creating a national pain strategy. Patient groups, government officials, health care researchers and educators, and others who understand the huge economic costs of pain, as well as the gaps in current pain care, were there. The attendees included the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, a fact for which I am proud. The one essential person who was not there was our federal Minister of Health. That was disappointing.
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This is the last event I attend at the Tadasana Festival in Santa Monica. It is called “Universal Kabbalah”, and was featured in the “Daily Love Lounge Speaker” Series. Madonna is supposedly an avid devotee of Kabbalah. Unfortunately I arrive late, so I miss the first ten minutes. (I was trying out a circular hanging bed, which was so inviting, that I kind of lost track of time. It was like lying on a suspended flying saucer). Two speakers are leading the entire room in a breathing exercise that is meant to relax and then invigorate you. Then they explain the concept of Kabbalah, but only scratch the surface. There is so much to learn. It is a religion and a belief system tied into how the number seven is connected to everything in the universe. There are seven days in the week, (more…)