Translated variously as powerful, wild, intense, frightening, and fierce, the first part of utkatasana's name captures the nature of the pose. Selected as the pose of the month for April, utkatasana evokes the power of spring, a season in which new life roots and shoots at once. Growing in opposite directions at the same time, the seed that lay dormant through the winter leaps up while planting itself deeper into fertile ground.

This month, utkatasana reminds us of the determination needed for new growth. It challenges us to dig deep and reach high, finding truth in that vital opposition. If we have the courage to balance at the edge of this paradox, finding stillness and release, utkatasana rewards us with increased strength and stability. It stimulates growth and clears away the emotional and mental blocks that set illusory limits on our potential to spring forth. Best of all, utkatasana generates a budding energy in our center that blooms throughout the body as we flower through our day.

While we will enter utkatasana at the end of the warm-up series during class, the pose is a great way to wake and tone the body during a break from sitting or working at a desk. If you are planning to enter utkatasana on your own, take care to coax the body through some gentle stretches that open the back and shoulders. Also, be sure to engage the muscles of the core to prepare the trunk to support the torso's weight.

To move into utkatasana, place the feet parallel and together, pressing the whole foot into the ground. Next, engage the mudra bandha, which corresponds to the muscles of the pelvic floor. Draw the muscles from the navel to the perineum up and in, tilting the top of pelvis just slightly forward of perpendicular to the floor. Keeping the abdominal muscles firm, engage the quads and glutes. Once the pelvic floor, the abs, the quads, and the glutes are all engaged, lower slowly into a seat by gently bending the knees and pressing the heels into the floor.

Once you find yourself in a seat, balance the pelvis by tucking the tailbone under slightly until the muscles of the low back release. Take a deep breath and extend your arms in front of you. When you feel steady, inhale and let your breath lift your hands. If balanced and properly aligned, yogis looking for an additional challenge may shift their weight back from here to bring their knees over their ankles.

Balancing here, harness the opposing forces that energize the pose. Ground the body actively by rooting through the feet, but let gravity pull the pelvis down to release the muscles of the lower back. Keep the ribs relaxed, but draw the abdominal muscles up and in to support the spine. Breathe as the pose's dynamic forces feed the budding energy that sprouts in the body's core. As this power builds, draw the shoulder blades down to release the upper back. Mindful not to arch the back and let the lower ribs pop out, lift the chest slightly as the arms shoot toward the sky.  Engage the muscles at the top of the arms to relax the shoulders and relieve any strain on the neck. Finally, lift the chin slightly to gaze up at the fingertips. If this causes any discomfort, lower the gaze to relieve any tension in the neck.

Breathing deeply, feel the power of this paradoxical pose center and strengthen the body. Focus inward and seek stillness to clear away the mental noise. Growing long and strong in opposite directions, shoot up and root down with the breath, using each inhale to lift and each exhale to ground.

After a few breaths, release utkatasana and feel the budding energy bloom throughout the body. As we deepen and refine the pose this month, may our roots grow stronger as our efforts blossom and lighten every limb.

Off to El Salvador this week for TogetherYoga's first winter retreat! Looking forward to reuniting with TogetherYogis from as far away as Texas and meeting new friends from around the world.

Scarred by its twelve-year civil war, battered by gang violence, and marked by the small pox epidemic and exploitation brought by the conquistadors, El Salvador is the perfect place to cultivate peace through our practice. With the smallest stretch of land but the third largest economy in Central America, El Salvador is developing at breakneck speed. Its expansion brings new opportunities and dilemmas, creating a national exercise in stretching and balancing that mirrors our asanas. Home to many endangered species, including six out of eight species of sea turtle, El Salvador is rich with life and riddled with development choices.

TogetherYoga hopes to support El Salvador's healing and growth, just as its beautiful environment and rich culture promises to support our own. Taking our practice on the road gives us the chance to cultivate peace and connection in a country that can benefit from our respect and concern. 

Our peaceful intentions are a direct investment in a nation working through its share of strife. Despite its recent economic growth, El Salvador faces challenges and growing pains. Its median income of about $4,500 USD per year is largely dependent on remittances from abroad, which bring in more money than exports. The economic downturn in the United States has reduced the income from these remittances, leaving many people feeling the squeeze. Unfortunately, the commercial enterprises that could reduce this dependence and boost GDP can also threaten the environment with water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, and the destruction of coastal habitats. Moreover, El Salvador's underfunded education system still leaves children in rural areas without access to the kind of public schooling that we take for granted—schooling that can give Salvadorians more choices about how to participate in the global economy and more information to decide how best to use their resources and develop their land.

While our yoga retreats are wonderful opportunities to deepen our personal practice, I believe they also offer a chance to engage in bhakti, the service component of yoga that gives the practice more meaning. In a practical sense, our eco-tourism has the power to promote sustainable development and encourage stewardship. Our patronage supports socially-conscious entrepreneurs, like our hosts at La Tortuga Verde, who are working to protect the environment, expand employment opportunities, and improve local schools. In a spiritual sense, our presence and our intentions resonate with a desire for peace, progress, friendship, and exchange.

Realizing that what we find in a place depends on what we bring to it, I've loaded up the luggage with love and crammed my carry-on with care. On the packing list:

• Yoga mat
• Yoga pants
• Sunscreen
• Camera
• Copies of Yoga Masters
• Copies of Ray Long's Key Poses of Yoga and Key Muscles of Yoga
• The TogetherYoga Traveling Buddha
• Mala beads
• Dog-eared copy of the Upanishads
• Donated books for the local school
• Love and blessings for everyone who joins us and everyone we meet

With a happy hasta luego, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported this adventure. Thank you to our hosts at La Tortuga Verde and to the local community that has offered to share both their hospitality and their land. Many thanks also to everyone who spread the word about the retreat and to all the TogetherYogis who sent along books for town's school.

May the kind intentions of the entire TogetherYoga community shine this week, bringing peace and light with us as we take our practice on the road. 

The pose of the month for March celebrates the pisces in all of us and awakens the blue chakra of personal expression, spirituality, and transformation.

Matsyasana, fish pose, stimulates the 5th chakra, located in the throat. Associated with the color blue and named for purity in the form of wisdom or Visuddha, the throat chakra is the body's gateway to spirituality, expression, compassion, and will. Too often neglected, this chakra bridges the divide between our inner and outer world. It shapes our circumstances and creates the conditions that manifest in our lives. Caring for the throat chakra promotes clarity, creativity, vitality, and balance, while blockages bring miscommunication, frustration, impatience, and addiction.

Anatomically, the throat chakra encompasses the trachea, larynyx, and thyroid, as well as the cervical and brachial nerves that branch off of the vertebrae at the top of the spine. Ancient yogic texts call fish pose a cure for all diseases. Providing relief for fatigue, constipation, anxiety, congestion, and back pain, fish gently lengthens the spine, opens the throat, and stretches the front body, expanding the abdominal and intercostal muscles while elongating the psoas. Fish is a special gift for anyone who hunches over a computer all day. It energizes the body by stimulating the thyroid and improves posture by strengthening the intercostal muscles and decompressing the vertebrae in the upper spine. 

In class, we will enter fish after leaving our inversion. If you are practicing independently, you can find your way to fish anytime, as long as your back and chest muscles are warm. If you are new to the pose, take care to feel for any signs of strain in your neck. If you experience discomfort in your neck or throat, reduce the angle of the extension until you feel at ease. You can also place a rolled blanket under the back of your head. Simply place the blanket in the space where your neck arches away from the floor.

To find your way into fish, lay flat on your back with your arms pressed to your sides. Bend your elbows and draw your arms back, sliding your hands, palms down, under your buttocks as you lift your pelvis just barely off the floor. Your glutes should be resting on the backs of your hands with your elbows supporting your weight and your forearms drawn in under the sides of your torso. When you feel steady here, inhale, draw your shoulder blades down, and lift your chest.  Continue pressing into your elbows and forearms to take the weight off of your spine. Use your breath to float the ribs up as you arch back, gently extending your neck as you release the crown of your head to the floor. Engage your thighs and press your toes away to keep the pose active. Follow your breath for several moments and meditate on the throat chakra, opening this gateway to free your voice, speak your truth, and transform your life.

Now that the new year is rolling and life is back to business as usual, it's easy for old thoughts and habits to drift back into our lives. If you find yourself settling back into negative patterns that you had wished to break, now is the perfect time to reawaken. Whether you made a resolution to be more conscious or had committed to seeing things in a positive light, there's no time like the present to reconsider any thoughts that may be standing in your way.

Twenty years ago, when I found myself moving through a dark time, my medicine teacher told me a story that has stuck with me ever since. It had such a profound effect on my outlook that I always keep it in mind, and I share it with my students a few times each year. Using a simple parable, the story reminds us that how we see the world is always up to us.

In the story, which has been passed down from generation to generation, a grandfather and grandson sat in silence, staring into the fire. Reflecting on the nature of life, the grandfather looked at the child and said, "There are two wolves that live inside each heart, and they fight each other all our lives. One is full of turmoil and anger and jealousy and hatred because it feeds on fear. The other is full of peace and hope and compassion and joy because it lives on love."

The evening passed, and the fire burned down. "So, which one wins?" the boy whispered.

The grandfather's eyebrows rose as he replied. He said:

"The one you feed."

And so it is that the wolves of love and fear are always tussling deep inside us. While we must embrace them both, we should remember that we can choose how our thinking feeds them. In the end, that choice decides which wins.

It takes practice to control which wolf we strengthen. The fear wolf begs for nasty little tasty thoughts about the world around us, and when we try to lean him down, he digs up regrets and rotten old reminders. He roots around for negativity and sniffs out fattening bits of fear. The love wolf, on the other hand, noses gently for attention. Trusting us to nourish her, she waits patiently to get her share. 

In the end, it's up to us to be conscious and to examine what we're thinking. We must realize that we have a choice and ask ourselves which wolf we feed.

In honor of La Tortuga Verde's turtle sanctuary, the pose of the month for February is kurmasana. Traditionally, kurmasana translates as tortoise pose, but to send some love and awareness to endangered sea turtles everywhere, let's call it turtle pose this month.

I didn't know much about sea turtles before I went to El Salvador to finalize plans for our March retreat. Upon arrival, however, our host Tom was quick to introduce me to the latest hatchlings, which had just emerged from  their protected beds. Every time turtles return to La Tortuga's beach, Tom and his staff collect their eggs, moving them to the resort's sheltered nursery, where they're safe from poaching (and scrambling, too) until they hatch.

Tom's dedication to the turtles is quite moving. Not only has he devoted a portion of the resort's beachfront property to the protected beds, he even buys stolen eggs from poachers to save them from the local market. Paying as much as $3 per dozen, Tom returns the eggs to the sanctuary's fenced nursery, where the baby turtles can grow and hatch in peace. Since all varieties of sea turtles are endangered, Tom's purchases are a direct investment in the survival of this sacred species. 

Thanks to Tom's work, La Tortuga's sanctuary is a small island of safety in an ocean of manmade dangers that threaten these kindred creatures en masse. In the waters of Nicaragua and Mexico, which surround El Salvador, a black market trade in meat and shells kills an estimated 35,000 turtles each year.  And the development of Central American coastlines is quickly destroying the delicate dunes that turtles need to shelter their eggs.  Even at officially protected beaches, electric lights on land confuse hatchlings, which emerge at night and find the ocean by following the lighter sky above the sea.

While Tom's hatchlings face constant peril once they reach the waves, the turtles who return to La Tortuga's shore will have their eggs protected as long as the eco-resort's nurseries survive. Since the turtle holds a spiritual place in the human imagination, Tom's work keeps something sacred in us alive as well.

Translating the turtle's symbolism into movement, kurmasana is a reflection of this animal's serene solitude and strength. Wearing its home on its back, the turtle finds refuge within. Like its namesake, kurmasana directs our focus inward to explore the thoughts and creativity within our core. Rolling our backs up and over into a protective shell, the pose also celebrates our enduring strength. In Hindu mythology, the world rests on the shell of a divine cosmic turtle that, depending on the version, may or may not be supporting an elephant quartet as well. Imagine how strong and patient that cosmic turtle must be! As we move through our practice, its example encourages us to appreciate our own fortitude and endurance.

In a colorfully apocryphal tale, the philosopher Bertrand Russell was once heckled by an old woman who rejected his scientific explanation of the universe. After his astronomy lecture, the old lady declared, "What you told us is rubbish. The world is flat plate that sits on the back of giant tortoise." When Russell asked her what supported the tortoise, the old woman shook her head and said, "You're very clever young man, but it's turtles all the way down!" Whatever the configuration of the cosmos, it's turtles all the way in for us this month, as we explore the wonders of our inner space. 

If you plan to enter turtle in your personal practice, place it at the end of a warm-up and strengthening series, when your back and leg muscles are warm and ready to lengthen. In class, we will move into the pose toward the end of our floor series, finding ourselves seated with our legs out in front of us. From here, we will widen the distance between our feet as far as possible as we bend our knees slightly.  Our heels will rest on the floor as we lean forward from the hips, activating our quads to prevent a strain on the lower back. Moving into the forward bend, we will place our hands under our knees. If our muscles are limber enough, we will then lean forward and slide our arms outward, under our legs, until our elbows are nearly in line with the backs of our knees. 

For yogis who can go further, we can deepen the pose by sliding the heels forward and straightening the legs.  From here, the body can continue to bend forward until the forehead or chin rests on the floor. Very flexible yogis may then wrap the arms around the back, lacing the fingers of the hands together as they rest on the floor, under the glutes.

Yogis who encounter turtle for the first time this month may find it difficult initially. Turtle teaches us to feel for tightness in our hamstrings, our groin muscles, our erectors, and our hips. Even when our muscles are warm, we may find our range of motion is limited in the beginning. It's important not to force ourselves into the pose. Instead, draw your attention inward to sense the tightness in your muscles. Focus on using your breath to gradually relax the body into a gentle fold. Deep meditative breathing will encourage alpha wave activity in the brain, which increases the body's sense of relaxation and well-being. Wherever you find yourself in turtle, peaceful breathing will enhance the pose's calming, fortifying effect. As our practice evolves over the course of the month, you may eventually find your muscles lengthening, relaxing further with each voyage all the way in.

I received a barrage of emails this week with links to the recent New York Times article, How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body. I hate to feed the beast by making it this week’s topic, but I can't ignore it. There are simply too many people who were troubled by it and have asked me to respond. To be fair and thorough, this post will look at the article’s tone, motivation, structure, and sources. To balance the anecdotal evidence in the story, I will discuss the injury that brought me to yoga and survey some counterexamples from my work as a teacher and therapist. I apologize in advance for the length of this post: I hope its scope provides enough information to facilitate a more rational evaluation and proactive discussion of risk.

(Please note that some new information has entered into the discussion since this blog was first published. First, the yoga reformer and modifications advocate mentioned in the article, Dr. Roger Cole, left an illuminating comment after this post. In his comment, Dr. Cole explains that he was never actually interviewed for this article, nor was his colleague, the Yoga Journal medical editor, Dr. Timothy McCall. Dr. McCall has written a thorough response to this article, in which he clarifies his position on headstands. You may want to take a moment to read what he has to say here.)

Let me begin by saying that the subject of the article is important—important enough to deserve better treatment than the Times story gave it. Everyone in the yoga community should be thinking about how to identify, assess, and mitigate the risk of injury. This article does its readers a disservice, however, by focusing on old studies and statistics, cherry-picking sources, and relying more heavily on anecdote and opinion than research. It also does something more insidious—it adopts an alarmist tone to foment controversy that will boost readership and book sales. This specious treatment distorts the perception of risk, polarizes the conversation, and diverts attention away from rational scrutiny.

The first thing that struck me about the piece was its negative and sensationalist title, which juxtaposes yoga and wreck to shock us.  Word choice matters, and wreck is a strong word that implies irreparable damage and catastrophic loss. The title exploits this association to get us to read the article. The title could have been Yoga May Not Be As Safe As You Think or (perhaps more accurately) Old Research and Select Anecdotes Suggest Yoga is Not Perfect. Those titles would have been more appropriate given the nature of the story, but measured words like that would not have sent the article to the top of the Most Emailed list. 

It's no accident that the title is both controversial and negative. In the age of digital media, the emphasis on getting an article to "go viral" encourages stories that arouse us through awe, anger, anxiety, fear, and sadness, the trigger emotions that Wharton researchers identified in a marketing study of the New York Times' own Most Emailed list. While the Wharton study found that readers email positive news more often than negative news, the identification of four negative emotions for arousal (anger, anxiety, fear, sadness) to one positive emotion (awe) speaks to our brain's natural negative bias. This bias is the main reason, according to Psychology Today, that bad news reports outnumber good ones 17-1. Editors who want us to click on an article and share it know that we seize on potential threats and are more likely to forward a story that has "practical value." An article that features a warning hits both targets: it arouses our anxiety and spurs us to spread the word. Controversial warnings are even better, since they galvanize people on all sides of the debate, arousing anger, anxiety, and fear. One would hope the paper of record would rise above tactics for manipulating our limbic system and refrain from exploiting our concern for others, but this article shows even the venerable Grey Lady is not above pushing our buttons to boost readership and revenue.

Alarmist and manipulative title aside, valid news about potential danger performs a vital public service. When I see a story about risk, I look at what triggered it—an accident, a recent study, a flood of new statistical data. An article's integrity owes much to the sincerity of its motivation. Accurate, muckraking journalism has immediacy and authenticity. This article, which draws on research from forty years ago and statistics that are a decade old, however, lacks both. The information in the story is stale and thin because its impetus is the release of the writer’s new book. As the italic text under the web version of the story tells us, it’s not an original piece of reporting, but an adaptation from the forthcoming tome, which will be released next month—just enough lead time to make sure the story circulates around the internet and makes the evening news. I don’t mind being marketed to, but I’d rather not be manipulated: the title of the book, The Science of Yoga: Risks and Rewards, makes the author's inquiry sound much more balanced and thorough than the passages adapted for the article. It’s as if controversy took precedence over reportage. This may not mean much to the writer and the editor, but the article’s grim tone made a lot of my students uneasy and upset. It’s not fair to panic people just to sell a book.

Moving from the title to the photograph that accompanied the web edition, I again felt like something was amiss. The clownish depiction of grimacing people doing yoga poses incorrectly makes yoga look absurd and painful. This is not the practice I know, believe in, or teach, and it saddens me that such a derogatory image may cause readers to subconsciously avoid yoga or dismiss it.

The image also subverts the seriousness of the issue. There's nothing funny or clown-like about strokes, nerve damage, and spinal injury.  A search of the Times' database revealed that similar stories about the potential dangers of stretching,  cycling and running were accompanied by far more appropriate pictures. I can't help wondering why the Times believes running, cycling, and other forms of exercise deserve more respect than yoga, nor can I fathom how the editors could be so insensitive towards the subject of their own report.

That report is more important than the Times' treatment of it conveys. If people are popping ribs, bulging disks, snapping hamstrings, detaching retinas, and having strokes in yoga classes across the country, then we deserve a thorough exposé. This story shouldn't be in the Times weekend magazine, it should be front page news. Twenty million people in the United States alone are at risk and India, where yoga is offered through grade school, is almost certainly doomed. If the article's anecdotes and opinions are prescient, then this is nothing short of an international public health crisis.

Or not. The article’s dim picture relies on highly selective information. It opens with the author's personal experience of a yoga-related injury and presents a collection of horror stories so sensational that they overshadow the writer’s own admission that yoga has many proven benefits and that catastrophic injuries are rare. I recognize that science and statistics can be incomplete or lag behind. I value individual experience, storytelling, and candor. But the article does readers a disservice to conclude that isolated instances of extreme injury and dramatic anecdotes show that “yoga can wreck your body." Even if the science isn’t perfect, Glenn Black’s account of ribs going "pop, pop, pop" in an Indian ashram and his morality tale about an unnamed yoga celebrity destroying her hips instead of tempering her practice should not set the tone for a balanced investigation.

The imbalance continues as the writer spends nine paragraphs discussing the danger and horrible aftermath of yoga-induced stroke but only presents two cases, both of which date to some undisclosed time in the 1970s. After he admits that “these cases may seem exceedingly rare,” he cites the US Consumer Product Safety Commissions’ (CPSC) statistics to warn that yoga injuries were on the rise as of 2002, but here he doesn’t state how many of the injuries in his CPSC statistics were strokes. Then, when Columbia’s “ambitious worldwide survey” in 2009 turns up only four cases of stroke, he admits the numbers actually aren’t “alarming.” 

If the numbers aren't alarming, why do we feel so alarmed? It must be the article's selective focus. I couldn't help wondering why the author relies exclusively on papers and cases from the 1970s to ground his investigation of the incidence of yoga-induced strokes. Maybe it's because a search of recent research using the terms "yoga" and "stroke" was more likely to turn up studies about how yoga is helpful for lowering blood pressure to reduce the risk of stroke and for rehabilitating stroke survivors. The author does not give this any mention. I don’t mean to gloss over the risk and horror of stroke, but the dangers of extreme neck twisting and hyperflexion are well known. It’s important to be aware of them and to modify traditional poses that push the neck too far, but even a superficial survey of recent studies shows the writer is ignoring the larger context of research and overstating his case.

Despite the overwhelming medical evidence that yoga is therapeutic for many ailments, the writer focuses on extreme cases, such as the college student who experienced nerve damage from kneeling “for hours” while chanting for world peace. I admire the devotion to peace, but I don’t know anyone who does this, and I certainly don’t do this in my classes. I think this is an injury we can all easily avoid. It’s so bizarre and remote that I’m not sure why the article mentioned it—except to shock and alarm.

After this, the writer consults experts at Yoga Journal to show that even the most advanced and dedicated yogis can get injured. After raising the alarm with two accounts of injury, he gives only one paragraph to a teacher advocating injury-prevention and reforms. Devoting three sentences to a useful explanation of how to make poses safer, the writer quickly dismisses modifications because they’re “not always the solution.” To keep the fear train rolling, he moves on to testimony from a doctor whose personal experience led him to conclude that headstands are too dangerous for general yoga classes. I don’t completely disagree, but one doctor’s finding is not conclusive. My search of published studies on the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) database didn’t turn up any research about inversions causing the thoracic outlet syndrome, cervical spine degeneration, or retinal tears that the doctor associates with them.

This brings me to the writer’s focus on the subjective experience of Glenn Black, who provides several sensational but nameless gore stories and offers his own experience of spinal stenosis, which he blames on yoga. Because the writer chose to focus on Glenn’s singular experience, instead of reviewing several accounts or surveying the medical literature, we have no way to gauge the causation or correlation between yoga and Glenn’s condition. In isolation, Glenn’s story doesn’t tell us very much about injury and risk. To measure risk, we need to know the rate of incidence across a large sample.

If spinal stenosis were a common problem among yoga practitioners, there should be some way to trace it. I couldn’t help wondering why the author didn’t just look at research about spinal stenosis and yoga. Perhaps, it’s because a search of the NIH database only turns up one result for spinal stenosis and yoga: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society that recommends yoga as a self-care option to treat spinal stenosis. The article probably doesn't mention this because it would balance Glenn's alarming conclusions.

The author doesn’t mention a lot of things that might soften the picture and ease our concern. The most glaring omissions involve his selective use of CPSC statistics. After concluding his nine paragraphs on stroke by conceding these “cases may seem exceedingly rare,” the writer reignites our alarm by citing CPSC data that show ER visits for yoga injury were “rising quickly.” Here, the author is citing the CPSC’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which aggregates data reported by 100 hospitals across the country. The NEISS, which is available online, files yoga under "exercise without equipment," a category  that includes running, jogging, aerobics, and stretching. To show a dramatic increase in yoga injuries, the writer relies on data from 2000-2002, when the injury rate spiked rapidly, jumping from 13 to 20 to a whopping 46 injuries per year. Here, the writer is cherry-picking his data: the NEISS provides statistics for the last thirty years, ending with the most recent stats from 2010. The article ominously warns that yoga-related injuries doubled between 2001 and 2002, but it doesn't say what happened after, nor does it give us any information about the injuries themselves. This is a deliberate omission since the NEISS includes data on everything from diagnosis and treatment to a summary of how each injury occurred. After the nine paragraphs about stroke, the author leaves us with the impression that these injuries are probably horrific and debilitating. But this is just not true.

I looked at the most recent data for yoga-related injuries, just to see what happened between 2002 and 2010. The author is right, the number of yoga injuries has increased, but it did not double again that period. It went from 46 in 2002 to 64 in 2010. That's an increase of almost 40% over eight years, as the number of people practicing yoga climbed about 21%, from 16.5 to 20 million. The increase raises obvious concerns, but the numbers don’t paint a complete picture.

There were 6,262 injuries attributed to exercise without equipment in 2010. Of those, 64 were related to yoga, about 1.2%, which means 98.8% of these injuries were not caused by yoga. I'm not a statistician, but I think that means people engaging in fitness activities that involved running, jogging, stretching, and aerobics suffered more injuries than people practicing yoga. In the larger context of exercise-related injuries, the risk of injury in yoga suddenly appears very small.

Still, if the author’s subjective sources are right or their experiences are good predictors of yoga’s risk, we would expect to see some serious injuries in those statistics. There should be some torn hamstrings, a few strokes, some major trauma, and at least a retinal tear or two. 

Not so for the CPSC data in 2010. Of the 64 cases last year, there were 33 strains/sprains, 2 fractures (one rib, one toe), 7 bruises (including two stubbed toes), 1 sciatic irritation, 1 flare up of hip bursitis, 2 dislocations (one knee, one shoulder), 10 complaints of pain (back pain, chest pain, abdominal pain, and rib pain), and one headache. In addition, one face was cut by a neighboring yogi's errant knee, three people passed out (one of them during a Bikram class), and one yogi fell out of a pose and hit her head.  Every single patient was treated and released. No patient was hospitalized for longer care. The complete report is available for download here.

The details put the numbers in perspective and help us assess the extent of the risk. The Times writer could have included the nature of the injuries in the statistics he reported for 2000—2002. He could also have surveyed the most recent data we just examined above. Moreover, he could have broken down the numbers to explore where the injuries took place. While he notes the increase in the number of new teachers and the dangers of their inexperience, he doesn't consider how many of the injuries happened when people were practicing on their own. In 2010, for example, seven out of the 64 cases happened outside of yoga class—with one patient reporting that he injured himself while practicing what he called "drunk yoga."  I can't believe that even counts!

I don't mean to trivialize the risk of injury or discount the pain and cost. The cases I surveyed are only a sample from the 100 hospitals that report to the NEISS. As the writer says, there may be many more that happened too slowly or too long after to discern their true cause. There may also be a host of minor injuries that didn't even make it to the ER. So, we must be aware of the risks. We must listen to our bodies, understand their limitations, and adapt our practices to protect our health.

My training in massage grounds my teaching in the mechanics of anatomy and uses my understanding of how the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia work. I carefully design sequences that warm the muscles and strengthen the core. I work hard to get to know my students by watching their practice progress, and I purposely walk around the room to make adjustments and check technique.

I do my best to promote a safe practice, but I acknowledge that Glenn Black may be right: yoga probably “shouldn’t be used for a general class” because large classes are a breeding ground for bad technique. Lost in the crowd, many people let their poses slide to compensate for weak muscles because they feel pressure to “keep up.” Others may push too hard because they want to leapfrog their personal progress. The movements in yoga are so exact in their design that everything matters. Failing to raise the chest strains the shoulders. Letting the arms sag shifts their weight to the wrong spots. Not squaring the hips puts more pressure on the spine. 

If I had my way, I would do an hour of private yoga with every student to explain the structure of each sequence and fine tune everyone’s technique. Yoga is safe, but it’s incredibly precise. Using the correct muscle group for support is critical. Alignment is essential. Everyone deserves a private session to find that perfect balance where the skeleton channels the weight into the bones so the force doesn’t put pressure on joints and connective tissue. The most common injuries in yoga are strains from poor alignment and failure to engage the core. I can slash that risk in an hour of working one-to-one.

And consciously working to improve the practice and reduce the risk is worth it. My personal experience sides with the body of research that suggests yoga helps people more than it harms them, easing orthopedic ills like sciatic pain, rotator cuff tears, osteoporosis, and scoliosis. It may even prevent or reverse hyperkyphosis. Like the studies in these links, I've found that it can help older adults regain their balance. It can reenergize breast cancer survivors. It can help people with osteo-arthritic knees live better lives. It can improve posture and strength, respiration, mood, sleep, and circulation. Moreover, my experience supports research that suggests longtime yoga practitioners have healthier BMIs and less degenerative disc disease than non-yogis. I have seen people slim, heal, straighten, and stay fit.

The prospect that a cynical article in such a reputable paper could convince people to give up yoga out of fear or never try it at all breaks my heart since the truth is that yoga can do so much good. I started doing yoga ten years ago when a back injury floored me for a week. After a chiropractic treatment and some heavy pain-killers, I was forcing myself to run some errands, using a shopping cart as a walker when I found a three-pack of Brian Kest's power yoga videotapes. I was overweight, solid and strong, but weak in my core when I started. I could carry 90 lbs of concrete lapboard on a job site, but I couldn't hold a downward dog. Yoga was the hardest thing I ever attempted because it showed me that my body was suffering, and it challenged me to rebuild. 

Yoga didn't cure me overnight, and it still tweaks my knee from time to time, or reminds me that I have to actively care for my spine. You'll notice that I don't always go as far or stretch as deeply on both sides. If my right side is tighter than my left, I listen to it. I don't push myself to look like the perfect yogi. I don't push my students towards injury either, nor do I indulge them when they ask me take them to an unsafe edge.

In the end, the risks and rewards of yoga are contingent on the quality of the practice: its mindfulness, its motivations, its devotion to wellness above all else. The Times article doesn't even begin to capture the amazing difference I have seen yoga make in the lives of my students and my clients. Just last year, I had a client completely immobilized by a back injury. I carried her up to my studio and worked on her for an hour. She felt so much better afterward that she walked the twelve blocks home. The injury didn't disappear, but after a month of private sessions, she regained enough body awareness and core strength to do an unassisted headstand. Yoga hasn’t cured her, but it’s helped her live her life. I have an older student who was bent over with kyphosis from decades of degenerating posture. He's been practicing with me for a couple years, and his dedication has made it possible for him to very nearly stand up straight. It didn’t happen instantly, and it’s not miraculous, but he feels like his practice has made his back feel better.

This is the other side of the anecdote coin, a counterbalance to the horror stories in the Times piece. None of this is definitive, but I hope it keeps things in perspective. Maybe yoga can wreck your body, but scores of research, years of individual experience, and continued mobility on the Indian subcontinent suggest it probably won't.

In honor of the birth of the new year, January's pose of the month is Ananda Balasana, blissful baby pose. A peaceful floor pose, blissful baby lengthens the spine, stretches the groin, and opens the hips. It relieves stress and fatigue, improving the body's energy flow by creating a closed circuit where the hands and feet unite.

While gentle, blissful baby is a powerful pose that can stimulate electric sensations in the body. It is not uncommon to experience the kind of twitch or slight tingle that comes when tight muscles approach the point of release. These gentle, internal fireworks suggest the presence of energy blocks, which cause physical imbalances by forcing the body to compensate for muscle tension, loss of mobility, and a reduction in circulation.  Spending time in blissful baby helps remove these blocks by stimulating the spine and peripheral nerves while encouraging blood flow through the muscles. Almost immediately, blissful baby can improve the body's range of motion and relieve seemingly unrelated chronic muscle and back pain.

In class, blissful baby appears at the beginning of the final floor exercises, when the body and mind are fully engaged.  If practicing independently, enter blissful baby after the muscles are warm and ready to open. To move into blissful baby, lie on your back and tuck your knees towards your chest on a deep exhale. Filling your body with breath, gently take your feet in your hands, careful to give your hips and low back time to settle and relax into the floor. Allow your knees to open to either side of your torso while your lower legs extend up. Your shins should end up perpendicular to the floor. Knees and ankles vertically aligned, your legs should form a gentle right angle at the knee. Keeping your spine long and your pelvis flat on the floor, slowly relax to let your arms to hang from the balls of your feet. Your hands will naturally exert some downward pressure that flexes each foot. Your toes, in return, should press up slightly into your fingers, creating a touch of dynamic tension as the energy circuit closes.

As the body settles into the pose and the muscles begin to open, allow the thighs to relax down toward the torso, lengthening the muscles in the hips and groin. Elongate the spine by pressing the tail bone into the floor as the chin tucks slightly, easing the base of the head away from the hips.

Hold the pose for a minute or two, feeling the breath and energy as it flows through the body. Stay present and survey your thoughts. The hips and groin are so essential for stability that they often tighten up from the physical and emotional stress that accompanies our heavy investment in staying upright. Take a few moments in blissful baby to monitor and release any unnecessary tension that may collect here. Anxieties about weakness and rejection, along with the drive to overcompensate by competing, pushing, and defensively "holding your ground" may all affect flexibility and energy balance in this region.

Most importantly, give yourself the space to renew and open in this pose. Take a moment to be an infant again, soft and open, full of love and wonder for the world.

With the avalanche of presents unwrapped and packed away, the tokens we exchanged this year will vanish into daily life. Shelved, stacked, stored, scarfed, spent, and stuffed: the gifts we got and gave fade into the montage of memories from seasons past.

The quietude of the week before New Year's Eve offers a chance to breathe and reflect before we flip the calendar forward. Using this time to refocus our priorities and distill our intentions, we have a chance to prepare a truly precious gift that will last the whole year long.

As the Buddha taught, that precious gift is our presence. Presence, in this sense, is more than showing up or sticking around. It isn’t dependent on getting stuff done, seeing things through, or packing life in. It doesn't pass judgment on our hours, distinguishing quality time from regular time and regular time from wasted time. It embraces every single moment and engages us fully in the practice of being.

Presence is mindful attention, complete engagement with the experience of living. It is the energetic embrace of where we find ourselves right now. To be present is to dwell in the sensation of being in the world and to openly encounter the momentary what, where, who that surrounds us in every discernible dimension.

As the greatest gift we can give ourselves, presence centers us and balances our perception. Evolutionarily hardwired to focus on red flags—problems that run the spectrum from inconveniences to mortal threats—our attention often wakes to confront unpleasantness. Left unchecked, this reflex can dim our view of ourselves and everything around us. In yoga, we don't notice all the poses we glide through, but we beat ourselves up over the asanas that make us struggle. In life, we discount what works out for us, but we fixate on whatever goes the least bit wrong.

This selective engagement warps our experience of the world. How can we feel great about life when we don't notice the bus unless it's late, the soup unless it's cold, the work unless it's wrong, the news unless it's grim, the interaction unless it hurts? Unconsciously aware of this negative preoccupation, we fill our lives with diversions that we hope will hold our attention in a much more pleasing way. We seek focus and engagement in everything from dates to movies to yoga to sky diving. We sign on for anything that promises to make us feel alive, a phrase that stands in for how we feel when present.  Unfortunately, as much as we enjoy these vivid bursts, unless we maintain our mindful attention these fleeting moments are just snapshots of our passing lives.

Even if we perversely prefer slipping in and out of consciousness because we’re resistant to being fully present in our daily lives, (it's not unusual to feel this way and the impulse behind it may be worth exploring), mindful presence is a gift we should cultivate to share with others. When we tune in briefly just to deal with problems, the people on the receiving end of our abrupt attention experience the negativity that has forced us to focus. In the case of children and those who crave connection, this negative flood of attention may seem better than getting none at all. Unfortunately, this channels the natural instinct to seek love into the destructive impulse to transgress. Imagine the energy that would be freed to build, explore, share, and cherish if this negative cycle were replaced with a supportive, steady stream of presence.

Moreover, imagine the nurturing energy and reaffirming solace you could offer the lonely, the numb, the discouraged, the bitter, and the lost just by being conscious in our common space. Think of the sleepwalkers who might wake and all the lives that just might bloom.

.. .. ..

May the new year dawn to find you present.
May you rise to greet it, wide awake.

As we approach the winter solstice, we find ourselves moving through the darkest days of the calendar year.  Responding to the absence of the sun, we gravitate towards anything that makes the darkness brighter. We light candles, gather by the fire, decorate with strands of bulbs.  This instinctive attraction to light not only reveals our natural need for illumination, it betrays our belief that the light we seek is out there.

We are like the king in the Brhad-aranyaka Upanishad, who once asked a sage, "What serves as the light for man?" and who bristled when the sage replied, "The light of the sun, Your Majesty." 

"But what about when the sun sets?" the king asked, still feeling anxious. The sage invoked the moon to reassure the sovereign. The king listened, but he shook his head. "No, no, the moon also sets, and what light does man have when it's gone?"  The sage shrugged and pointed to the fire, but it also failed to satisfy the king, who lamented that no flame burns forever. 

"Speech, then," said the sage. 

"But what about when speech stops?" The king quibbled.

The sage smiled, for at last they had arrived at the heart of the matter: When the sun and moon have set, the fire is gone, and speech is silenced, what light does a person have then?  

"The self, indeed, is his light," said the sage. "With the self as the light, one sits, moves about, does one's work and returns."

As the sage in the story revealed, the light to cultivate and live by shines within. Powered by the network of energy flowing through us, it is our constant comfort in the darkness—the light that never goes out. The more we can learn to trust our light and identify with the energy behind it, the less we will fret about the shadows cast by fear, pain, lack, and death.

Psychology, self-help books, and spiritual guides have made much of the distinctions between the body, the mind, the ego, the consciousness, the spirit, and the soul. Definitions abound for each concept and semantics spur endless confusion and debate. To make it simple, I focus on the light that shines in all of us, which is a byproduct of the common network of energy that flows through all creation. I think of our lights as being bulbs on a strand—each of us glowing individually but together, like a series of Christmas lights on an infinite string.

In my metaphor, the bulb is the body and consciousness is the power that flows through it. This power is infinite, impersonal, eternal, and shared. The light in the bulb comes from the power of consciousness energizing our ego, which channels the energy but radiates some of it in the process of acting out our will in the world.

The current would exist without the bulbs. The light would move through the universe in a different form. But our lives give us the chance to engage the energy that flows through us. Our physicality, our agency, and our individuality enable us to give that energy expression. No matter how trivial or transient, our thoughts and actions radiate. In effect, they glow.

The resulting light show is enlightening. Next time you find yourself in a crowd of people, pick out the string of lights and feel the current flowing through it. When the darkness closes in at dusk, feel your own light shining steady and look around to trace the energetic strand. The shadows recede when we see ourselves connected to this illuminated web.

The Upanishads use the metaphor of the string that runs through all creation to explain the interdependence of our being and its timeless connection to the universe. The writers assert that “Man is a bead strung on the thread of the conscious self, and just as puppets are worked by strings, so the world is operated by the thread spirit.” Imagine that the thread is spun from energy and the bead is a bulb strung on its infinite strand. 

The Upanishads describe the thread spirit as the undifferentiated, abstract energy that powers everything and runs through all of us. It is the unconditioned, undifferentiated self—a self so pure and abstract that it is more easily described by enumerating what it’s not. This unconditioned self, the energy, the thread spirit, the current of consciousness that we all share is beyond speech and mind. It channels eternal knowledge and power. In the Upanishads, it is called the inner controller, the Imperishable Supreme Self, that which is free to flow everywhere and appear in different forms. 

Identifying with this energy and fully inhabiting this dimension of our self frees us from fear, pain, lack, and death. Urging us to identify with the strand instead of the bulb, the Brhad-aranyaka Upanishad remarks that this supreme self  “is indestructible for it cannot be destroyed. It is unattached for it does not attach itself. It is unfettered. It does not suffer. It is not injured. It has reached the state of fearlessness." The bulb may break or burn out, but the strand of energy is fluid and eternal.

It does not know darkness; it is the origin of universal light.

Through these darker days, may we all remember to connect to our consciousness, to draw on its boundless energy, and to take comfort in its constant illumination.