VeRTiGo

[desena]

i have been teaching yin yoga for 6 months now and ive never had any problems until the other day when i did your spine series for the first time (i think its a fantastic series but after hearing this ladies problems i noticed there is rather a lot of blood to the head in this series) anyway two days after the class she calls me up and says she was feeling dizzy towards the end of the set. she had to leave straight away at the end of the class because she was going to be sick, which she was. she said she has had vertigo all week and that she has had to have the week offf work. oh dear i thought! now, she is keen to carry on but i have advised her not to come next week until i gather more information for her. im not sure she should carry on in class.......i wouldnt want to be the cause of some life debilitating illness. please do you have any advise or experience with vertigo? is there yoga that would be ok for her...but not necessarily in the group class? do you think it may have been snail that is the worst for it? or the dangling? it would be hard to keep her in the class and just keep her in caterpillar the whole time if none of the others suit her!

this lady is 58 but she has been enjoying it so much it really is a shame.
summary of symptoms: dizzy, room spinning, nausea & vommiting, couldnt work etc

any advise would be highly appreciated
thanks

[Bernie]

Hi Desena ...

Thanks for posting the question here: it is an interesting and potentially scary situation. Firstly, we should remember something that Paul Grilley often says, "not every pose is right for every body". Even though 99.99% of your students will never have any problem with Dangling pose or Snail pose, there are always some people who will have a problem. Every pose is bad for some body. It sounds like you have a student for whom even a mild inversion may not be good for her.

You and I are not doctors: we need to be careful what we recommend to a student in this situation. But definitely I would ask her to go see her doctor or health care professional. The fact that the symptoms lasted quite long after the class could be because of a more serious underlying problem. Vertigo has many causes: it could be an inner ear infection, which may clear up all on its own in a week or so (in which case these poses will be fine for her), or there could be some congenital problem with her inner ears that won't get better and these poses will always be bad for her. Or it may have nothing at all to do with her inner ears: she may be suffering hypotension, hypoglycemia, diabetes, ... there are so many reasons why vertigo can arise: it is one of the hardest problem to figure out for doctors. So, again, I would really suggest she get it checked out.

When she is with her doctor she can ask what he/she thinks about her doing this style of yoga. Inversions may be contra-indicated leaving her no choice but to do Caterpiller (or Butterfly or Dragonfly) when others are inverted.

As to which pose may have been worse for her: both Snail and Dangling are inversions as you know. An inversion is any time your head is below your heart. Classically, we always warn folks with highblood pressure (hypertension), glaucoma, detached retinas, ear or eye infections to avoid these. People prone to vertigo due to inner ear problems could be added to the list. However, I think the Snail would create more pressure in the head than Dangling would. In either case, for her ... until she has seen her doctor, I would not allow her to do either pose.

She can still get some nice stretches for the spine without those two poses: stick to Caterpillar, Dragonfly, Half butterfly, etc.

Does this help? Do let us know how it goes.
cheers
Bernie