Turning (and twisting) to yoga

Serious back problems can impact on exercise regimes – but there are fitness alternatives, writes Michelle McBride.

Turning (and twisting) to yoga

Serious back problems can impact on exercise regimes – but there are fitness alternatives, writes Michelle McBride.

My back downed tools about two years ago. It stopped playing ball – literally. Bulging discs barged their way into my physical world and left no room for the recreational activities that used to inhabit that space.

I had to cut all ties with football, Crossfit, tag rugby and all the other fun stuff. Cold turkey — for the time being at least.

The Catch 22 of a bad back is that you’re also not allowed to sit down, put your feet up and wallow in the comfort your self-inflicted sedentary lifestyle with a packet of Pringles and some hot chocolate.

My physio warned me that abandoning exercise would only anger my back. Movement is (or so I was told) medicine. I had just been taking the wrong dose.

And so a new prescription was needed. While the discs settled I called on the old reliable, ‘spinning’. It sufficed but didn’t excite or even distract. With spinning you’re on a bike, going nowhere, it takes Shakespearean levels of disbelief to keep imagining that hill.

It is hard to find a good spin class. One that doesn’t pretend you are doing this just to get into a bikini or make you feel guilty because you like to eat cake. Eating cake is the least of my worries.

On my hunt, I did stumble upon a good one and I go back every Monday, probably more because of the instructor. She scares me.

It soon dawned on that if I was going to peddle myself away from a more cantankerous back, I would have to search for more interesting alternatives to accompany dry needling to punctuate my week and keep the pain at bay.

First up came reformer pilates — Mr Pilates’ more adventurous cousin. Curiosity is what got me in the door — a mix of ‘how hard/weird can it be?’ It turns out it’s only a little weird. But it is very hard.

Reformer studios look like a mix of Fifty Shades and a doctor’s surgery. Black beds with springs, straps for your legs and arms, a headrest, some squishy air-filled plastic balls and purple blocks. A definite shade darker than the conventional pilates I’d come to know and hate.

The Shakespearean disbelief comes a little easier here. I was shocked by how hard the smallest of movements were on this machine of pain. And what’s worse, they were even harder when I had to do them right. My tummy muscles hurt like the best bellyache laugh I had as a kid. It seemed I had found my poison.

Or, at least, I thought I had.

But the financial reality of reformer pilates had other plans. It might fix my back but it would break my bank. I dip in and out but consistent ‘reforming’ is out of my paygrade.

Swimming is probably one of the more obvious solutions but my problem is I haven’t quite mastered the art of ‘swim breathing’ and there are days (a lot of days) when I just don’t want to look at my legs in public. So, I’m steering clear of the pool for now.

I decided to turn to yoga. It might also help me deal with the growing levels of anxiety building up because of my diminished outlet for exercise. I had tried Bikram before and found it a little too smelly for my liking, so I found myself at kundalini’s door. I knew very little when I first walked in, all I knew was that it was different to Bikram.

I had chosen a class set in Baldoyle Library. Initially I thought this might mean I would be doing a downward dog in the adult fiction section and I couldn’t quite picture it.

Turns out I was way off. The room the class is set in has a ‘floor to ceiling’ window that lets the kind of light in that Dermot Bannon would be envious of and a view of Ireland’s Eye that distracts you, momentarily, from why you are there.

Pic: Jim Coughlan
Pic: Jim Coughlan

To my delight there was no carpet, like the one in Bikram, to assault your nostrils with the stench of freshly steamed sweat even before you get to the mat.

The floor here was wooden, the lights were soft and there was some manner of incense smouldering in the corner, not the type you burned when you were a teenager trying to recreate Woodstock in your living room, but the subtler type that lets you breathe.

But be wary, it’s not all sweetness and light. Kundalini is the type of yoga that confronts your self-conscious self-head on, or at least it confronted mine. Ripped it off like a plaster in one go. You can’t just sit back and relax. It’s all singing, all chanting here.

The instructor opened the class with some mantras and, even though I had no idea what I was saying, I joined in. It felt wrong not to and bizarrely once I got over myself, this mystery chanting felt good.

It was also a nice introduction to the ‘get over yourself’ quality of many of the postures to come in the class. Panting like a lion, jumping like a frog.

Just when you thought you had got comfortable out of your comfort zone the instructor moved the goalposts with another move you never thought you’d do in a room full of strangers.

It’s not until you are lying on the mat at the end of the class that the penny drops. Yoga is not as easy as it looks. Physically and mentally. And there is strong possibility you will look and/or sound silly.

But because you finish by nearly falling asleep you forget that it was slightly torturous and you decide to come back. And each time you do your body cooperates a little more and your chants sound a little less like the time you were forced audition for the school musical.

Yoga and pilates might not offer the same endorphin based rush you get doing a lane runs after 50 ‘wall balls’ and 20 ‘thrusters’ in Crossfit, but it is a little easier on your body and you find yourself looking forward to that uncomfortable zone.

And taking to the yoga mat and the pilates bed is what has allowed me to rekindle some of my former fitness flames and realise that there is life after a bad back-you just have to look for it.

Chants would be a fine thing to master moods

Jenny-Lee Masterson teaches Kundalini Yoga in various locations around Dublin.

She was introduced to Kundalini about five years ago and within days started to notice changes in her mood, spirit and zest for life.

Jenny-Lee attributes the effectiveness of Kundalini to the emphasis it places on the breath.

“I had been practicing other styles of yoga and I was always worried about whether my feet were in the right place and how I was supposed to be feeling.”

But that all changed when she started practicing Kundalini, where she found there was no real emphasis on perfecting alignment. All the work was with the breath.

“It just sort of blew my mind,” says Jenny-Lee, ”The meditations and the chanting of the Mantra is so powerful and so medicinal, it’s quite a transformative and beautiful practice.”

Why the chanting?

“When we chant it is almost like entering a code into a computer to get a result. We use our tongue to hit against the roof of our mouth as we chant, so the tongue and the mouth act like a keyboard and our brain is the computer,” explains Jenny Lee.

She is also all too aware how daunting the chanting can be for newcomers.

“I was reluctant in my early days to partake in the chanting at home for fear my family thought I’d entered a cult.”

But, according to Jenny-Lee the chanting is “nurturing and centring and people are surprised by how much they love [it].

"If you find you don’t want to do a physical practice, just sit and chant and boy you’ll feel good.”

No two Kundalini classes are the same.

“Come to chant, if you’ve never done this before and let’s all fumble through this together. There is nothing to be fearful about.”

Kundalini Yoga, classes and workshops: www.meditate.ie

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