Yoga Therapy for Athletic Fitness, Recovery, Wellbeing, and Happiness: my story, by Steve Bickel the director of MyYogaVideo.com

Just prior to the new millenium my stress levels had been increasing slowly. Computer project deadlines crept up on me faster than I expected. Managers in the software industry regularly misjudge the effort required. Why is that? An internal time estimation malfunction? Not sure but I was caught up in it and with the impending separation from my girl friend things were deteriorating. I thought I had a decent solution to it all. I would simply increase my weekly running mileage from 20 to 25 miles, throw in a few hills, and it would be easy going. In the past a bit more exercise seemed to work well.
One night I ran halfway up the 600 ft Mount Soledad in La Jolla, Ca, turned around and started back down. It was always fun running down except that morning was a little different. The job and pending end of my relationship had been building stiffness into my hips, low back, and hamstrings and I had been sitting to much. Too busy to slow down and stretch like I knew I should. On the way down I stepped off a curb in an ordinary way and planted my foot â€¦ Ouch! Now there were tingling pains shooting down my left leg. I stopped, evaluated my leg a little and thought, â€œNo biggie, I can stretch this out when I get home. I have felt this kind of sciatic stuff before.â€, so I walked a mile or so back home, stretched a little bit and went to work which meant 6-8 hour in a chair. All day I had a low level dull ache in my left hip. I thought, â€œIâ€™ll stretch more over the next few days and it will be fine.â€ But by the end of the week my hip muscles were still tight and I had occasional sciatic pains shooting down my leg.
I decided to rest and really stretch. I knew all the muscles, the Piriformis, Gemelis, Gluteus Minimus, Hamstrings â€¦ they were all involved and I would just spend the extra time to stretch them just like the athletic trainers had shown me. I would put the extra time into the stretching that I was not allowing because of my busy schedule and everything would be fine right? Not quite right. The next few years would be different. I would not exercise regularly and I would often struggle with low back pain during my long days of sitting in an office chair.
I was in my still fairly young and things were getting stiffer. For years I had a minimalist stretching routine, a regular exercise schedule, and I was spending 8 hours a day in a chair. It did not seem like a â€œreallyâ€ big deal; the big Ouch!, but that pain was sitting on top of a mountain of muscular tension that I was mostly unaware of. For years I was not doing any regular deep stretches. I was only doing the maintenance stretches that I thought athletes should do. I did the stretches I knew well enough to do quickly before I had to hurry off to work or to dinner or anywhere else. I did not have a pattern of long slow stretches. Just like most non professional athletes I had been slowly increasing the tightness in the legs, hips, and back and slowly decreasing the strength in the core abdominals muscles. I simply did not know about the micro spasms that occur for everyone in deep stabilizing muscles. I was getting tighter and tighter in certain muscles and weak and weaker in others which is a recipe for disaster.
For the year following the big â€œOuch!â€ I stopped running, increased my tried and tested stretching routine, visited chiropractors, got MRI scans, got foot supporting orthotics for my shoes, adjusted my chair posture, tried some acupuncture, and took plenty of Ibuprofen. Things got better but were never right. I had a chronic postural condition.
Eventually I decided to try a yoga class that I had been to years before. Luckily for me it was a class taught by Rama Birch the founder of the Yoga Alliance. The Yoga Alliance creates the standards for certified yoga teachers nationwide. Rama is a very knowledgeable yoga teacher. Her conviction and experience were amazing to me. I told her about my never ending injury history and she said something like, â€œWell, I saw you moving across the room and your spine is all locked up. You need to unwind your spine. Itâ€™s going to take time.â€ I thought to myself, â€œgeez, my spine is locked up, hmmm; I can touch my toes and even get my legs into a semi lotus position.â€ I had even done extra stretching the month before class so how could I be that locked up?
I started taking classes and did the extra homework that Rama suggested. For a one hour a day for several months I did this: 1, the seated forward bend (head hanging between the knees), #2, the chair cross legged forward fold for both legs (in a chair, ankle on opposite knee and fold forward), #3, kneeling lunge for both legs (knee on the ground and opposite foot out in front and bring the front leg to vertical), #4, lying stomach twist both sides (lying on your side you look like your in a chair with you head looking the opposite way of your knees). I added a few more yoga postures and some abdominal exercises given to me by a chiropractor that also helped relieve the small muscle spasms and tightness. Slowly over time my body changed. The pains started disappearing and a few months later there were significant improvements that allowed me to jog a bit and go dancing. After awhile I was taking regular Vinyasa flow yoga classes at the gym I had joined. I was going to yoga every other day and feeling great. I was running 1 mile a day and cycling a lot.
I lived this way for a few years and I felt pretty good but was never really satisfied. I was more restricted than I wanted to be by the pain that was waiting if I did too much. I wanted an exercise level that made me feel alive. I wanted to feel really healthy. Every time I tried to run more than a mile or so the pains would come back and linger throughout my day. I tried to work out the pains in the Vinyasa yoga classes and that helped but not enough.
Rama stopped teaching regularly and started working on the Yoga Alliance all the time so I made it my goal to find another teacher. I wanted a teacher trained by Rama because I sensed that I needed to release the deeper muscles that Rama would talk about. I found Skyler Myers at yoganic studio and I started taking her bliss classes (restorative yoga). After a few months my body started changing on a deeper level. I was slowly releasing more of the years of bound up tension from deep within my spine, tailbone, hips, hamstrings etc. With these classes I was doing a larger variety of yoga postures and I was discovering new poses that I needed to add to my regular routine. After a year of yoga with Skyler I started running a few miles at a time again without pain. I was gliding like a gazelle as if I was still in my early 20s. Everything started getting easier. My stress level was dropping to the level of many years ago and the 2-3 colds I used to get per year were now either mild or not happening at all.
I was so happy that one day I decided to share my enthusiasm for deeper yoga with the world. I borrowed a friendâ€™s video camera and created a yoga DVD with a few friends. After struggling and learning a lot I purchased a few more cameras and other equipment. Over the next couple of years we produced several yoga DVDs spending many hours waiting for nice sunsets and just the right tides (beauty was very important to us). I am especially fond of the Therapeutic and Restorative yoga DVDs because it had helped me so much. The DVDs are for sale online at Amazon.com and at MyYogaVideo.com Search for myyogavideo on Amazon.
Over the years I have tried many styles and teachers of yoga. My deeper healings happened by really slowing down and paying close attention. I also needed to try different things, experiment with positions, and find out what it was like to really relax into a pose. Without a deeply relaxing style of I doubt I would have discovered what my body needed. In regular types of yoga classes there simply was not enough relaxation. My mind did not slow down enough and let go of the deeper muscles. There are so many muscles in the body and these muscles store tension in layers. Some muscles like those deep in the tailbone area need to release before you can get a good release in the sciatic nerve area, the piriformis. And to do this you need to find out if they are tight. Right now do you know if the muscles in and around your tailbone are tight? Noticing your deep tensions takes time, patience, and the right poses with a possibility of deep relaxation.
The DVD projects were gathering steam and as they chugged along I was determined to create DVDs that would help all yogis move deeper into their practice. When I practiced yoga it was not always helpful to hear the instructor talking. I liked it when she was suggesting something new that helped me explore my body but often she was saying things that distracted me from noticing my subtle deeper muscles and my breath. I needed to escape my own minds chatter and her chatter often just added to it. This type of mental chatter is on most DVDs where the instructor is talking about alignment and it is there every time you play it. So we created a series of Vinyasa Yoga DVDs where you can choose how detailed the instruction is. You can also choose the music that inspires you, that helps you go beyond the mind, or choose no music or no detailed instruction. And we tried to make them beautiful to inspire you further.
The home website for the videos clips and DVDs is MyYogaVideo.com
you can view video clips there.
Namaste,