Legs Up The Wall When Menstruating

Is it good to be in legs up wall if I’m menstruating?

Love this class!  (Restore Your Energy) Namaste, Madeline

Dear Madeline,

This is such a great question, and as always, I am not a medical doctor, but rather a Ph.D. in communications and cultural studies, so as always the last word goes to your medical doctor particularly if you have menstrual issues and complications.

The reason why this question comes up is that there is an important guideline to avoid inversions when you are menstruating because they disrupt the downward flow of menstrual flow.

I feel legs up the wall are a bit of a gray zone because your pelvis is not technically inverted. If you are lying with your pelvis level and flat on the ground then your pelvis isn’t any more inverted than it would be in savasana or knees to chest or reclined bound angle pose.

So for the most part, I do not avoid legs up the wall when I am menstruating, outside of the heaviest flow days, the first day or two of my period. That day or two I keep my legs on the ground.

I’d be curious to hear how other women treat this gray zone in their practice? Do you practice legs up the wall during your menstrual cycle? Why or why not? Has it been a helpful pose for your during your menstrual cycle or has it been disruptive for you?

Leave your comments below.

If you found this video helpful you will also like:

Can I do inversions when I’m menstruating:

http://www.melissawest.com/can-i-do-inversions-in-yoga-when-im-menstruating/

Yoga for menstruation:

Yoga for Menstruation

Yoga for your menstrual cycle:

Yoga for Menstrual Cycle

Yoga for menstrual cramps:

Yoga for Menstrual Cramps

How to prevent menstrual cramps with yoga:

Yoga Pose to Prevent Menstrual Cramp

Yoga pose to relieve menstrual cramps:

Yoga Pose to Relieve Menstrual Cramps

That’s a lot of videos we have done on this topic, but that makes sense, this is something that affects women every 28 days!

If you know somebody who would find this video helpful, please share it with them. I put out a new video like this every Wednesday, so please subscribe.

Namaste, Melissa

 

Yoga for Relaxation

Today’s beginner yoga class is all about relaxation. Throughout the class we will focus on letting go of unnecessary tension in our body. Instead of bracing our bodies against gravity, we will allow the support of the earth to release our tension. During this class we will continually bring our attention to our physical bodies and notice where our bodies are connecting to the ground. Through this connection we can relax more deeply into the support of gravity. Additionally we will be scanning our bodies for tension and through breath and gravity letting go of any holding patterns that we find.

Today’s yoga class is a beginner’s yoga class for complete beginners.

In this yoga class I will offer lots of modifications and explain how to relax in each pose. I offer easy to follow, step by step instructions in each yoga pose. The class begins with a preview of all the poses so that you will know if this is a class you can do.

Props Needed: Yoga Mat and maybe a strap or belt

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Savasana or Corpse Pose, Knee to chest Pose, Thread the needle, Cat Pose, Lunge Pose, Side Angle Pose, Extended Side Angle Pose, Forward Fold, Sphinx Pose, Seated Twist, One Legged Forward Fold, Meditation

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If you are a beginner, what is the biggest challenge that you face? What can I help you with in a beginner yoga class?

Beginner’s we have a 31 day beginner yoga challenge just for you. 31 beginner classes set up in the exact order to progress you from the very beginning and teach you the poses of yoga. If you go to melissawest.com and click on the triangle that says New to Yoga

31 Day Beginner Yoga Challenge

Or at the very top there is an opt in box, put in your email address and we will send you a beginner class, one a day for the next 31 days, right to your inbox to keep you on track

Neti Pot

I’ve spoken about the magic of using a neti pot for nasal irrigation here on my channel quite a few times before:

Videos of Neti Pot mentions below the post

You simply fill a neti pot with a saline solution (a combination of boiled water that has cooled and a teaspoon of salt). You lean over a sink and you pour the solution into one nostril, the saline solution travels around the septum, and out the other nostril. There is no force, it just goes in one nostril and out the other.

There are scientific studies that show that nasal irrigation using the neti pot benefits:

* Allergies

* Sinusitis

* Sinus congestion

* Rhinorrhea (this is a fancy way of saying your nose is stuffed up, filled with mucous, or you have runny nose, this can occur from allergies or even the common cold)

* Sneezing

* Nasal itching

There have even been studies that have shown people have contracted less colds when they have used a neti pot regularly.

So the question is, how often should I use a neti pot?

While it is important to clear your nasal passages of mucus or environmental toxins such as pollutants and infectious agents, it is also important to remember that our nasal passages contain important immune cells and probiotic colonies. Remember this class? Yoga with Melissa Episode 347 If you use the neti pot every single day, you could be stripping your nose of important probiotics and immune cells.

Dr. Nsouli recommends using a neti pot 3-4 times a week, in moderation, but avoiding daily nasal irrigation for long periods of time for healthy mucous membranes.

http://www.melissawest.com/yoga-for-allergies/

Yoga for Flu Season

Clearing Sinuses

Yoga for Sinus Drainage

 

Endurance

Today’s yoga class is about endurance. In our culture, it is unusual for us to stay with one thing for any length of time. There is so much choice with everything from yoga teachers, yoga styles, food, books, movies, entertainment, and education it is easy for us to go from one thing to the next when we come to an edge, come up against a difficulty, become bored or challenged.

Today we are focusing on endurance, the capacity to stay with something, without moving on. In this class I challenge you to stay with the difficulty, the boredom and the challenge and resist the urge to click off the video and find something more interesting, more engaging, more entertaining. Today you will be challenged stay with the sensations in your body, to stay with boredom when it comes up, to stay with the itch to move to something more “interesting” and just notice how often that happens for you.

This class will blend a combination of breathing or pranayama, strengthening yoga poses, hip openers and restorative yoga postures. We will explore the challenge of being in our bodies, connecting with the earth and yielding to the ground while letting go of effort and tension rather than pushing and doing in poses in order to succeed in sustaining the yoga poses for greater lengths of time.

Props Needed: Blocks, Bolster, Blanket

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Three Part Breathing, Setu Bandhasana or Bridge Pose, Lunge Pose or Anjaneyasana, Pigeon Pose or Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, Child’s Pose or Balasana, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

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Thank you for your donations: Linda, Lois, Hilary, Sonja,

If you are receiving value from Yoga with Melissa you can make a monetary donation below.

You can also contribute of your time and influence the direction of the next Yoga with Melissa by answering the following question in the comments:

What balancing poses do you find the most challenging and why? I am planning on doing a whole series on balance and I will include the yoga balancing poses that you find most challenging in this series if you leave them in the comments

yoga for balance

Balance is your ability to maintain your body’s center of mass over its base of support. Put more simply it is your competency to not fall over.

Your ability or inability to balance is the result of three systems:

* Your vestibular system

* Your proprioceptive system

* Your visual system

Your Vestibular System

Your Vestibular System is your inner ear. Your inner ear sense information about motion, equilibrium and spatial orientation. This information is collected in your inner ear by the utricle, saccule and three semicircular canals.

Your utricle and saccule detect gravity, that is information in a linear orientation, as well as linear movement. Your semicircular canals detect rotational movement.

When you look up and down at the ground and the sky and you are stimulating your utricle and saccule to detect gravity, that is information in a linear orientation as well as linear movement. When you turn your head side to side and you are stimulating your semicircular canals, this is allowing your vestibular system to detect rotational movement. These simple movement patterns will stimulate your vestibular system and help to improve your balance.

Your Proprioceptive System

Proprioception is defined as the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself. We receive proprioceptive input from our skin, muscles, joints and sensory receptors that are sensitive to movement and pressure in our connective tissue.

Proprioception is sensed by your entire nervous system. Inside each muscle and joint, you have tiny meters called muscle spindles and golgi tendons that are constantly measuring the amount of tension and degree of contraction that are happening. This information travels up your spinal cord through your spinocerebellar tract and makes its way to your cerebellum. Your cerebellum accepts information from your skin, muscles and joints throughout your whole body and calculates where your body should be in space.

We challenge our proprioceptive system all the time as yogis. When we take our socks and shoes off and practice in our bare foot, we experience maximum input through our feet from the ground. As we move around in different yoga postures our nervous system and brain responds to this proprioceptive input from the ground, your joints, muscles and position in space.

Your Visual System

You have sensory receptors in your retina called rods and cones. When light strikes the rods and cones of your retina, the rods and cones send impulses to your brain that provide visual cues that tell your brain how you are oriented relative to the objects around you.

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Head Rolls, Anantasana or Couch Pose, Cat Pose or Marjaryasana, Balancing Table Pose or Dandayamana Bharmanasana, Side Plank or vasisthasana, Lunge pose or Anjaneyasana, Chair Pose or Utkatasana, Tree Pose or Vrksasana, Standing Knee to, Mountain step back to High Lunge or Tadasana to Utthita Ashwa Sanchalanasana, Mountain to Chair to Tree, Downward Facing Dog or Adho Mukha Svanasana, Lunge Pose or Anjaneyasana, Revolved Lunge Pose or Parivrtta Anjaneyasana, Pigeon or Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, Balancing Bound Angle Pose or Dandayamana Baddha Konasana, Savasana or Corpse Pose, Shunya Mudra

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

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* Share it with a friend, family member or email it to a coworker.

* Like

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Thank you for your donations: Julian, Linda, Stephanie, Donna, Leah, Eva, Tina,

How to Improve your Balance

Linda from facebook wants to know, “Why do I have difficulty balancing in yoga?”

I get so many questions on balance and yoga I can’t even tell you! The reasons for difficulty in balance in yoga could be one of three things or a combination of all three.

First of all, what is balance? Balance is your ability to maintain your body’s center of mass over its base of support. Put more simply it is your competency to not fall over.

Your ability or inability to balance is the result of three systems:

* Your vestibular system

* Your proprioceptive system

* Your visual system

Your Vestibular System

Your Vestibular System is your inner ear. Your inner ear sense information about motion, equilibrium and spatial orientation. This information is collected in your inner ear by the utricle, saccule and three semicircular canals.

Your utricle and saccule detect gravity, that is information in a linear orientation, as well as linear movement. Your semicircular canals detect rotational movement.

So let’s train your vestibular system right now. Look up and down at the ground and the sky and you are stimulating your utricle and saccule to detect gravity, that is information in a linear orientation as well as linear movement. Now turn your head side to side and you are stimulating your semicircular canals, this is allowing your vestibular system to detect rotational movement. These simple movement patterns will stimulate your vestibular system and help to improve your balance.

Your Proprioceptive System

Proprioception is defined as the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself. We receive proprioceptive input from our skin, muscles, joints and sensory receptors that are sensitive to movement and pressure in our connective tissue.

Proprioception is sensed by your entire nervous system. Inside each muscle and joint, you have tiny meters called muscle spindles and golgi tendons that are constantly measuring the amount of tension and degree of contraction that are happening. This information travels up your spinal cord through your spinocerebellar tract and makes its way to your cerebellum. Your cerebellum accepts information from your skin, muscles and joints throughout your whole body and calculates where your body should be in space.

Let’s try and load our proprioceptive system now. If you have shoes on, take them off so you can have maximum input from your feet through the ground. Now lift one knee off the ground in front of you. Lean forward and back and notice how your nervous system and brain responds to this proprioceptive input from the ground, your joints, muscles and position in space. If you want to make it even more challenging, close your eyes.

Your Visual System

You have sensory receptors in your retina called rods and cones. When light strikes the rods and cones of your retina, the rods and cones send impulses to your brain that provide visual cues that tell your brain how you are oriented relative to the objects around you.

You can test this out right now too. Stand on one leg and focus on something that is not moving. Now close your eyes and notice that without the visual input balancing is more difficult.

One of the most popular videos in our membership community at the moment is our brain yoga for standing balancing postures. This class includes postures that stimulate your vestibular, proprioceptive and visual systems to help you with your standing balancing postures in yoga.

Beverly said,

“Hi Melissa,

Intention in Yoga

Michael Lee, founder of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, translates intention as “that which we hold within.” Michael Lee says, “What we hold within us has a good chance of becoming our reality because we are holding it at a subconscious level.” I love this definition of intention because it lets go of doing and opens us to being. That which we hold within us, allows us to remember and connect to a way of being. Intention is an inward journey to our deepest aspiration and truest longing.

With intention we ask ourselves, why am I practicing yoga today?

Why am I here?

Why did I roll out my yoga mat today and show up?

What did I hope to receive by doing this?

There is always intention behind every action – it is important that we bring awareness to our motivations when we practice our yoga. We have an opportunity to connect to deep seated intentions each time we practice – to connect to something deeper within ourselves. We can ask ourselves, how is my yoga practice going to help me better understand myself?

Being clear on the reason behind why we are on our yoga mat helps us to connect with our most inspired Self. Intention allows us to align our personal will with our deeper needs.

Rod Stryker translates kalpa as vow or the rule to be followed above all other rules. He translates san as our connection with our highest truth. He translates sankalpa as our connection to our highest truth. When we think about creating a sankalpa we are committing to supporting our highest truth. We create sankalpa in our yoga practice to guide our choices and to bring our true nature to the foreground.

There is a difference between sankalpa/intention and goal setting. The difference is our why. Robert Butera says we should keep asking why until we reach a virtue: love, compassion, peace, joy, service, balance, faith, trust, hope, acceptance, forgiveness, patience, devotion. For example, wanting more abundance in your life may actually be a desire for more balance and peace in your life due to an overly packed schedule.

Your sankalpa will change over time. You may have an intention for your yoga practice, for the short term and a life long intention that shifts and changes as you shift and change. What was true for you five years ago will probably not be true for you now.

Sally Kempton suggests that you sit quietly following your breath, until you feel a sense of connection to Presence. Say to yourself, “May my deeper Self, the teacher inside me, tell me what is the right thing to do.”

Your intention will be clear, stated in the affirmative, and might be about creating, sustaining, nurturing, transforming or reflecting. For example, this autumn I had a sankalpa, “I am stronger for longer” I have a long term intention, “I place my awakening at the center of my life” Currently I am feeling the need to change my seasonal intention to turn inward and nurture myself more so something new is coming to the surface. Each time I come to my meditation practice, I open to my body and I listen to what my body is telling me, what I need on any given day.

Props Needed: chair or wall for balance, folded blanket,

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Guided Relaxation, Reclined Side Bend or Supta Ardha Chandrasana, Keyhole Stretch or Figure Four, Balasana or Child’s Pose, Cat Pose or Marjaryasana, Downward Facing Dog or Adho Mukha Svanasana, Tadasana or Mountain Pose, Warrior One or Virabhadrasana One, Warrior Three or Virabhadrasana Three, Dancer Pose or Natarajasana, Uttanasana or Standing Forward Fold, Locust Pose or Salabhasana, Seated Twist or Parivrtta Sukhasana, Ardha Gomukhasana or Half Cow’s Face Forward Fold, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

Body Image

In my experience and from what I have heard of yours, is that when watching yoga videos on YouTube they tend to be focused externally on the mastery of the body in physical form in asana, that is yoga posture. Many of you have spoken of your frustration with other classes and the ease when you come here to Yoga with Melissa to bring acceptance to the realness of your bodies.

Our yoga practice shapes how we feel and think about our bodies. It also shapes how we imagine other people see us. The people around us and our culture strongly influence our body image. We are surrounded by images in the media that tell us we are not young enough, thin enough or beautiful enough. Many yoga videos contribute to negative body images with contortionist physical extremes being performed online. However in real life, only a small percentage of the population are hyperly mobile and bodies in real life are much more diverse than those in most yoga videos, human beings come in all ages, shapes, and gender identities.

In an online video culture that focuses predominantly on how the body looks in a yoga pose we are focusing on something quite different here. Rather than looking at our bodies from the outside, we are bringing awareness to our experience from the inside. In our yoga practice we ask the question: what is happening inside my body? Our awareness turns inward.

This way of experiencing our yoga practice from the inside out is a subtle and more mature form of awareness. When we turn our awareness inwards to mindfulness from the inside of our body, we let go of knowing what we will find when we turn our attention to our physical, mental, emotional and energetic experience. We come to our experience without expectation. Each time we turn inward it may be different.

When you turn inward and bring awareness to your experience your embodied experience know that your moment to moment experience changes. It may be tempting to stay with one sensation, however, being open to the sensations changing is part of mindful embodiment.

When we bring our awareness to our embodied experience it allows us to turn down the mental chatter. Our brains think, that is what they do. Their default is to think about the past, wish things were different, and plan for the future. Bo Forbes, an expert on interoception explains that this creates a tendency towards negative self talk, “I am not worthy” and “I will never get what I need” including negative body image. It is just the way our brain is wired. It is not personal.

Dropping inwards with awareness allows us to build a relationship between our body and our mind to pay attention at a deep level to what is happening in our bodies from moment to moment.

When we come to our physical bodies with this level of awareness we do so with loving kindness and tremendous tenderness. We are gentle and compassionate with the sensations, discomfort, pain, and tension that awaits our awareness.

Resource:

Mindfulness in the Body

Interoception in Practice with Bo Forbes

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

Props Needed: Folded Blanket

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Knee to Chest Pose or Apanasana, jathara parivartanasana or reclined twist, Cat Pose or Marjaryasana, Pigeon Pose or Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, Downward Facing Dog or Adho Mukha Svanasana, Tree Pose or Vrksasana, Reverse Warrior or Peaceful Warrior, Wide Legged Standing Forward Fold or Prasarita Padottanasana, Sphinx Pose or Salamba Bhujangasana, Parivrtta Upavistha Konasana, Upavistha Konasana, Savasana or Corpse Pose

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Herbal Tea for Anxiety

Hi it’s Melissa and today I am going to introduce you to a new feature on my channel,

Melissa’s Medicinal Teas and Tinctures.

Today I am going to review one of my favourite teas for stress and anxiety Simple Remedies Deep Nerve Tonic Tea.

As we come into the Autumn season vata dosha can be disturbed. Autumn is a season of transition and change and is dry, rough, windy, and erratic, just like vata dosha. According to Ayurvedic medicine, like increases like, so it is a time of year that vata dosha can easily become imbalanced. Those with high vata dosha can easily start to feel anxious, nervous, spacey, confused, on edge, ungrounded, bloating, constipation, and have dry skin.

That is why one of my favourite teas this time of year is Simple Remedies Deep Nerve Tonic

It contains:

* Holy Basil: relieves stress and anxiety naturally

* St. John’s Wort: treats depression, eases mood swings and eases anxiety

* Skullcap: reduces anxiety and soothes the nervous system

* Lemon Balm: eases anxiety

* Chamomile: calming

* Ginger: warming, improves circulation

* Hops: calms nerves, relieves stress and anxiety

You can make your own or order some from Simple Remedies Herbal Solutions here in Victoria B.C. (click here for their website)

Here is a video where I offer you 3 further tips to ease anxiety

3 Tips for Easing Anxiety with Yoga

Namaste, Melissa

 

Strength

At this time of year it is not unusual to feel run down worn out, and exhausted. Our schedules are filled to the brim and it is possible that our self-care suffers. In this class we are going to focus on strengthening our physical bodies and strengthening our immune system in preparation for winter.

In the Autumn it can be overwhelming to deal with all the demands placed on us, especially after a relaxing summer. Building strength, both in our physical body, but also internally, will help to support our bodies to have the fortitude and resilience.

Increasing our strength gives a sense of grounding, stability and focus and can ultimately have a deeply calming effect mentally, emotionally and energetically for our bodies.

In the Autumn it is important to strengthen our lungs in preparation for winter and so we will focus on our breathing.

By strengthening our physical body it allows us to be stronger internally as well and ultimately more internally focused and introspective as we move into a quieter and reflective time of year.

Props Needed: Bolster, Blocks,

Yoga Postures/Asanas: Guided Relaxation in Savasana, Bridge Pose or Setu Bandhasana, Samanasana or Side Lying Pose, Plank Pose, Chaturanga or Kumbhakasana , Side Plank or Vasthisasana, Downward Facing Dog or Adho Mukha Svanasana, Warrior One or Virabhadrasana One, Warrior Two or Virabhadrasana Two, Goddess Victory Squat or Utkata Konasana, Dolphin Pose or Ardha Pincha Mayurasana, Upward Facing Dog or Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Boat pose or Navasana, Janu Sirsasana or Head Beyond Knee Pose, Savasana or Corpse Pose

Did you like today’s show?

* Share it with a friend, family member or email it to a coworker.

* Like

* Subscribe to our channel. Subscribe to my Living Your Yoga Channel

* Please leave us a 5-star review on Itunes

* Leave your comment below.

Thank you for your donations: Sonja, Hilary, and Diane