I risk displeasing people, but I must say this . . . . .

There are often many questions about Yin Yoga and specific spinal conditions. Feel free to ask your question here, or check out other posts or contribute input from your own experience.
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birdyroger
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2018 7:12 am
Location: Colorado Springs

I risk displeasing people, but I must say this . . . . .

Post by birdyroger »

8 months ago I started eating a carnivorous diet after being ketogenic for about a year; this saved me from a lot of inflammation and pain and pretty much reversed in some sense my diabetes2. (My success with this means that I won't be responding to anyone who tells me that I should be vegan or omnivorous, nor will I appreciate such foolish pontificating, given my success.)

About two months ago, I ate a high carb meal. The pain and inflammation came back with a severe vengeance and basically and truly made me a cripple. I had to use a scooter to shop and for weeks I walked around the house in a downward dog pose. My only relief was climbing stairs which made the required non-painful position of the downward dog much easier.

So I started doing yin yoga. This got me to a really good place. I could walk normally and even shop normally. But still I could notice a negative impact from eating carbs. Stumbling happens to imperfect people when there is temptation around.

So I took the principles of yin yoga (stretching and focusing on the inward feelings; long poses; and complete relaxation with no fidgeting; rather than being form oriented like yang yoga.). [If I missed a principle, please remind me.] I used these principles to construct poses that I thought would correct what I thought were deficiencies in the back bend poses that I knew and had been doing. Basically whatever stretch and strain I felt with a forward pose, I would do the opposite with a backward stretch using lots of pillows. If my hips were stretched or painful from say a butterfly or a butterfly variation, then I would pile my many pillows up so as to get my hips to stretch as far as possible backward without injuring myself. I have become more and more proficient at this. My BIG COUNTER (what I call it) is a correction for my 4 butterfly variations that last a total of 20 minutes. The BIG COUNTER lasts for a total of 10 minutes, and it is on top of a really big hill of pillows. I even stretch out my arms over my head to maximize my stretch. And deep breaths also give a really wonderful stretch. All of these stretches are so challenging that I have to do a child's pose for perhaps 40 seconds the other way to counter the counters. If I did the child's pose counter any longer, I'd have to do another back bend to counter the counter to the counters, and so forth. :lol:

The bottom line? Thanksgiving happened yesterday, and I am NOT having a black Friday. I am having a JOYFUL Friday knowing that this strategy worked. Even though I had far more Costco pecan pie than any health minded person should eat, I was not able to discern ANY negative consequences of my eating several helpings of that pecan pie. I slept my usual 8 hours, something that never happened after one of my usual stumbles before these DIY back bends. It fact, it took me days for my sleep to recover from a carb stumble before my DIY back bends. My BMs are 'B's and 'A's whereas before I would count myself lucky to be able to give myself a 'C'. (Acupressure didn't hurt with the sleep and the BMs.) There was no inflammation and no edema.

My DIY yin yoga back bends are inherently inversions, so that might have something to do with my success.
Yin Yoga fanatic
Bernie
Posts: 1293
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:25 am
Location: Vancouver

Post by Bernie »

Your journey is very inspiring! I hope you are sharing it beyond just this Forum...(which admittedly has limited followership these days due to the rise of Facebook and other social medial outlets.) Thanks for sharing!
birdyroger
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2018 7:12 am
Location: Colorado Springs

Post by birdyroger »

I shared it twice on Reddit and twice on Facebook. Reddit seems to be for immature people and Facebook is much better, although the functionality of Facebook leaves a lot to be desired.

Unfortunately hardly anyone had anything worthwhile to say on any of those four postings.

By the way, my son of 19 tells me that he is very familiar with the butterfly and he does it quite often. He is involved with tricking (not a form of con-artistry, but a sort of gymnastics that evolved from tai quan do from Korea). Tricking has a lot of sideways flips and stuff like that. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how he know about the butterfly pose. He even showed me, and he looked really good doing it. Apparently the Internet is putting holes in our echo chambers. The butterfly pose is a popular exercise among trickers.
Yin Yoga fanatic
sookieku
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:11 am
Location: Maui, Hawaii

Post by sookieku »

Hello Yin Fanatic, I want to thank you for sharing your experience with Yin Yoga postures, especially as a compliment to your carnivorous / keto diet. I, too, have been eating a ketogentic diet for over three years now, mainly to avoid creeping into the Type-2 Diabetes Hemoglobin A1-C range. I had been a vegetarian for decades, then a pescetarian as I became more athletic in my early 50's. I realize this is not a forum for diet but in reference to my yoga practice and management of energy overall, I wish to comment.

I empathize with your instinct to be cautious about your way of eating as potentially offensive to others on this (or other yoga forums). I was surprised at one teacher training with a very well known and famous yoga teacher who said, "God cannot visit you when there is a morgue in your stomach". Though he was addressing a large group, I took it as a direct reference to the fish that I was digesting at the time.

Regarding energy, I have found the keto diet to be Yin energy inducing. There is simply less hunger and therefore, less anxiety, and the ups and downs of sugar spikes. One of the most difficult things for me was to give up high glycemic fruits which are abundant here in Hawaii all year round. I have noticed that I can add on more Yang practices with this steady even-keel energy, and therefore, I've been able to revitalize my Ashtanga Yoga practice as a compliment to my regular Yin Yoga practice. I have also found I am able to maintain a more regular seated meditation practice. In summary, what I am finding is that food and yoga both affect our energy, it is highly personal, and a constantly moving target.

Best of luck to you on your journey.
Aloha, Sookie
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