My broken collarbone: week 0

April 17, 2016 Becci Curtis

As my regular yoga students will already know, I have cancelled all of my classes for the next few weeks as a result of breaking my clavicle in a competitive cycling accident.

Having recently convened a 'yoga for cyclists' course to supplement the Cowley Road Condors' Winter training regime, I'm no stranger to combining my newly found love of two wheels with my long term yoga practice.

A broken collarbone is a common injury for cyclists, so now that I suddenly find myself with a lot more time than usual, I thought it would be a good idea to document how I am dealing with my injury, both on and off the yoga mat, and on and off the bike.

N.B. If you are coming to this post because you have similarly broken your collarbone, please note that this is not intended as a guide for 'how to fix yourself' - what is good for me in these circumstances, may not be good for you. Having never had this type of injury before, this is also an experiment; what I think will be helpful in week 1, may still prove to be unhelpful in week 3. You'll have to stick with me to find out what works (and what doesn't!).

Stress: How can yoga help?

April 10, 2016 Becci Curtis

Illustration by Min Gyo Chung; sourced from 'The mindful corporation' by Adria Vasil, Corporate Knights, Spring 2014 Issue — Illustration by Min Gyo Chung; sourced from 'The mindful corporation' by Adria Vasil, *Corporate Knights,* Spring 2014 Issue

Being stressed is easy. Being relaxed is something quite a few of us need to work at.

Stress: What is it?

January 21, 2016 Becci Curtis

Credit: I might be dead tomorrow - mental health n shit http://imightbedeadtomorrow.tumblr.com/ — Credit: *I might be dead tomorrow - mental health n shit* http://imightbedeadtomorrow.tumblr.com/

Yoga is often peddled as an antidote for stress but before we can understand how yoga can help us, we need to understand what stress is and how it affects us. So, what is ‘stress’ and when does it become a problem? (Cheat: watch the videos at the end of this article...)

Everyday stress

Stress, in basic terms, is what we associate with the feelings of 'pressure' and 'too much pressure' in our daily lives. Pressure, on its own, is not a bad thing - it motivates us from getting up in the morning, to hitting that deadline. In isolation, these everyday types of stress take place on the bottom rungs of what we could call the ‘stress ladder’ – our feet are never more than a step away from the stress-free safety of the floor.

Moving a few rungs up this ladder - a small jump away from the floor this time - an increased feeling of pressure (although we might still describe these occasions as ‘stressful’), can be encouraging and help us to achieve what we might not have achieved in a more relaxed state. For example, finding your Olympic-standard running legs in the last few minutes before your train leaves the platform; or not giving up in Sirsasana (headstand) because you feel like everyone in the class is watching you. The pressure we might feel in an everyday-kind of stressful situation makes us more efficient and alert.

Breathing space

December 8, 2015 Becci Curtis

The benefits of taking time to breathe are common sense, yet taking time to do so is counter-intuitive for most of us. When experiencing stress or feelings of panic, we instinctively know that slowing down our breath might help. We say, ‘calm down… take deep breaths…’ but for a process that happens automatically, controlling our breath can feel like a chore in comparison.

If you are new to yoga and have recently begun a class, you will notice that your teacher constantly instructs you to breathe. To begin with, it’s likely that you will ignore the instruction (intentionally or unintentionally) as you will have much to concentrate on besides when and how to inhale or exhale. How you breathe will be the least of your worries, although you will still benefit from a reminder every now and again. Holding our breath is very common when we are concentrating and it may come as a surprise that your teacher notices you doing this before you do. (Without wishing to give away all the yoga-teaching-circle secrets - your purple-blue face is a good hint!)

Once you have settled into the class routine and have become familiar with some postures, it’s likely that you will have the space to add some breath work into your practice. In the early stages, this is likely to feel unnatural (because it is) and uncomfortable (because it is). You might even feel that breathing is just another aspect of the yoga class that you are getting wrong. As you become more practiced however, this will pass. Learning to breathe (like learning anything new) is difficult – so go ahead and let yourself off the hook.

Finding Room

September 27, 2015 Becci Curtis

This room, our yoga room, is a mess sometimes.

It's an everyday place—like the bathroom or the kitchen—that we sometimes like because it feeds us, and we sometimes avoid because it requires us to work.

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Modest goals for sustainable change

For better and worse, the new year brings with it a lot of expectations.

I love working towards goals and I fully back anyone who is driven to take personal responsibility for the things they can influence and change. But we've all heard the anecdote: lots of people take out a gym membership in January and rarely attend past February.

Why? Because most people try to make too big a change, too frequently, too soon. (Yep, I’m in the ‘most people’ category too).

Unrealistic expectations set us up to fail (or fall asleep) at the first hurdle.

Small changes in behaviour that are repeated (and scaled up) over time allow new patterns of behaviour to form so that new habits can stick.

What's your movement mood?

We make out that moving our bodies is difficult:

No time
Can't do that
Foot won't go there
Do what with the arms?!
Breathe in, fold forward, breathe out, bend knees
Roll out the mat, put on the kit
But, it's raining

Forget about being ‘good’ for a moment and throw getting it ‘right’ to one side.

Take a few minutes to check in with yourself and explore some low, moderate, and high-energy movements.

Do your wrists feel weak? Part 2: Strengthen

“I’m having trouble holding a plank position because my wrists do not feel strong enough”.

Yes, tell me about it!

Not only have I learned how to deal with my own ‘weak-feeling wrists’ over the years (and succeeded in ditching the wrist tape, wrist straps, and wrist supports), having wrists that don’t ‘feel strong enough’ is such a common experience that I decided to share a whole host of ideas in an attempt to help you out.

This post is part of a series designed to give you more options than:

‘Just skip it’
‘Put your knees down’, or
‘Do child’s pose instead’

Because? We’re adults goddammit! We can deal with things and learn to do stuff we used to find too difficult.

You can start this series in any order, you don’t need to perfect one set of options before trying out the next. Simultaneously working on mobility and strength, plus learning to adapt what you need to adapt, is a solid approach for most people without an acute injury. (Do your wrists feel like they’re about to fall off? You need a doctor, not a yoga teacher.)

Do your wrists feel weak? Part 1: Mobilise

If your wrists feel weak, taking part in a floor-based movement (or fitness) class will probably be a frustrating experience. Even in beginner-level classes, you are likely to find many positions that require you to place some bodyweight through your hands, like:

table (all fours) and cat-cow
downward dog and upward dog
plank and push-up.

If you have trouble holding (or starting in) any of these positions, you are presented with limited options to make things more manageable:

Skip it
Spend less time there and/or
Bend your knees/place your knees down on the floor.

All of these options are valid. They might suit you and what you are trying to achieve perfectly well, and they could be very appropriate ways to keep your body moving while coping with a flare-up, or accommodating an injury. They are not options to be scoffed at, or to make you feel less than.

However (really just a nice way to avoid saying ‘but’), if these are your limited options simply because you don't know what else you could try, keep reading.

This blog series is going to give you some extra and alternative options to consider.

"How should yoga feel? Just stretchy?"

I've been delving into the murky world of internet forums (I have my reasons) and came across a thread on the modern source of all wisdom (Mumsnet) that began with:

'I realise this is a ridiculous question but I’ve never really ‘got’ yoga. I’ve tried a good 3/4 times with Adriene [the YouTube sensation] and even though I am so keen to love it I just haven’t.
But my question is how should it feel? Just stretchy? There was one pose where I had to hook one knee then put my hands behind it and pull which felt very stretchy in my hamstring but I was a bit like ‘oh is this right?’ - it wasn’t painful just different.'

There isn't anything ridiculous about this question, or the replies to it. In fact, I think this one small corner of the internet succeeds in pointing out many of the conflicting ideas and strange assumptions that are widely (and over-confidently) shared about yoga.

Speed date your hamstrings

A little anatomy knowledge can go a long way

I teach a lot of very smart people and yet, a lot of these people lack a basic understanding of how their bodies work.

Why? Because most of us weren’t taught this stuff. Only a small amount of human anatomy and physiology is taught at school; a little more is taught at upper secondary level if you opt to take a GCSE in PE, but — as someone who only really discovered that they could enjoy anything remotely sporty (let alone develop a ‘physical education’) until their mid-twenties — I certainly didn’t opt for one of those.

Anatomy can be a very dry topic with lots of complex and hard to remember names. But — having learned a lot about bodies and how they work — I also know that gaining knowledge about ourselves can go a long way, especially if it's relevant to who we are, the lives we lead, the activities we do, the ideas and beliefs we currently hold.

Knowing more about our body (the workings of its many muscles and joints, plus all the other amazing stuff it gets on with in the background) can help us make sense of how our body feels (and how we feel in our body).

If getting our nerd on wasn't reason enough, that knowledge can also save us time by helping us to make more informed choices about how we move.

Are your hamstrings a mystery?

It is very common for people to think about their hamstrings in terms of a feeling.

When I recently asked my class to define what the hamstrings were, their responses were general (both in sensation and in terms of location):

"That's easy. They're the things that hurt when I bend forward."
"They're the things at the top of the back of my thighs."

I would wager that every single yoga and movement teacher the world over has heard people talk more about their hamstrings than almost any other topic.

And yet, these words crop-up over and over again: tight, sore, stretch, more.

I think the hamstrings seem to feel like more of a problem because what they are and what they do remains a mystery to most people.

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Unrealistic expectations set us up to fail (or fall asleep) at the first hurdle.

A little anatomy knowledge can go a long way

Are your hamstrings a mystery?

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