Tag Archive for: yoga therapy

How my worst migraine day gave me confidence

This is one of the reasons I love yoga therapy and the holistic approach to health! Last week I went a bit overboard with my workout and because I thought I was a pro at this, I did something unhelpful and didn’t stretch. 30 min of cardio in 90degrees weather, with no stretch before or after! Please do not do this yourself, I learned the hard way.

The next day, I started getting sciatica pain – that’s when the glutes and the piriformis (your buttocks muscles) get tight and press on your sciatic nerve, sending pain down your legs, usually just one. But this time, it was both for me and so much pain that I felt my lower back really tight (it was hard to fold forward halfway), I felt the pressure in my middle back and the worst part is that a few hours later I started getting a migraine. I never get migraines! It literally stopped me in my tracks and I felt overwhelmed for a bit, because it was such an intense pain and so new for me. I was in bed for a whole day and had to cancel some of my commitments for the day, that’s how intense it was.

This is where yoga therapy comes in. With the helps of the medical information we studied as part of the yoga therapy training, I knew enough to understand the connection between my workout and the sciatica pain. But I could not figure out the migraine. I was suspecting a connection but didn’t know enough about it.

So, I started researching and what do you know. There’s a study from 2013, which shows the link between chronic migraines or chronic tension type headaches and low back pain! For those who like numbers, there’s another article, which looked at 14 studies and concluded that there is a positive correlation between the two.

The beauty of the work that I do and the fact that I also use Qigong is that it allowed me to have a pretty rounded look at this and understand the underlying cause. I could have taken pain medication, but that only addresses the symptoms and not the cause. And I wanted to understand the cause.

In Qigong, headaches are connected to the digestive system and stagnation in the stomach. Sciatica…you’re probably going to guess…is also connected to the gallbladder meridian. Well, a few weeks ago we all had a stomach bug, which wiped out all the goodies in my stomach. So you see how it is all related? In addition to my workout which caused tension, my digestive system was still weak and sensitive.

So what did I do? In yoga, we usually do a seated or reclined figure 4 to stretch the piriformis and glutes and release the pressure off the nerve. This time, I used a variation of that, which comes from Qigong, and more specifically from Lee Holden’s Tao Yin. I found it to be the most effective movement and it allows me to work with my breath, the meridians, and the muscles. To see the full video and a full library of free resources, sign up for my newsletter.

The next day, believe it or not, I was up and running! So I’ve learned the hard way and I am sharing it with you all, so you don’t have to! 🙂

/by

If you were thirsty now, would you wait several days to drink water?


Make Resourcing Yourself a Daily Priority.png

This has been coming up a lot recently in my sessions. Across the board, whether my clients are dealing with burnout, auto-immune issues, sleep disturbance, or anger, we are discovering together in our sessions that even though it is needed “now“, daily resourcing is rarely on people’s radar. 

Someone was recently grieving the loss of their dreams about renewed family connections so I asked:

Me: What would you need right now?

Client: Comfort and nurture.

Me: And what would bring that sense of comfort and nurture to you?

Client: Spending some time at the beach with my partner and kids.

Me: Can you do that?

Client: Yes, we talked about doing that next Friday.

Me: When do you need the comfort and sense of nurture?

Client: Today.

Me: So what is preventing you from going to the beach today?

Client: “…”

So now I am asking you. If you were thirsty now and I asked you to wait until next Friday to drink, you would think I am crazy, right? The difference is that we don’t think about resourcing as vital as food and water. The invitation is to reflect whether it is different though? 

If your answer is “no”, then think about little things that you can do each day to resource yourself. Something that brings you joy and takes 3-5 minutes. It can be longer if you have the time. There is a saying actually (and I am paraphrasing) about the need to be outside in nature for 30 min daily, unless you are too busy. In that case, you need 60 minutes! 🙂 When we don’t have time for something, what we are actually saying is that it is not a priority. So let’s make daily resourcing a priority!

/by

Our self-worth and the need for validation

I recently had a session with a strong woman whose soul had all the answers but still felt stuck. Maybe we can all relate to experiences like that, or one experience when we didn’t realize our self worth. Or if we did, we put it on the back burner because other needs were asking for our attention: validation, care, attention, love. And for that reason we kept going back to the person or the circumstances which hurt us. 

Self-worth is the secure grownup who says I love myself and I’m showing you my boundaries. If you want to come into my sphere, you need to respect me and my boundaries. That’s the space where we can care for each other, be true to ourselves, and share trust and affection. 

The need for validation, care, attention, love comes from the inner child whose needs were not met, who was neglected or received conditional love. In time, this child learned that they have to fight for their affection, attention, or for a kind word. That if they only did this one thing, then this other person would love them more. And these gifts of attention were so inconsistent that when they receive them, even as an adult, they devoured them like the hungry belly which doesn’t know when the next meal is going to show up. 

There’s a way for the inner child to become the secure adult and it starts with the ability to pause and notice that passing thought that says “this doesn’t feel right”! That’s the glimmer you need, that’s the inner child knowing that they were born perfect, that they are an earthly expression of the divine, and that while they are hungry and accepting the crumbs of affection right now, there might be a different way. Let’s start with “what if…” What if there was a different way? What if I ask for more? What if I love myself first? What if I am enough? 

Doing inner child work and integrating our childhood experiences open the door for the secure adult to emerge.

/by