Fishman Loren - Yoga for Arthritis: The Complete Guide Kindle Edition

Yoga
for
Arthritis

Also by Loren M. Fishman, MD, BPhil, (oxon.)

Back Pain: How to Relieve Low Back Pain and Sciatica
with Carol Ardman

Cure Back Pain with Yoga
with Carol Ardman

Sciatica Solutions: Diagnosis, Treatment, and
Cure of Spinal and Piriformis Problems
with Carol Ardman

Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis:
A Journey to Health and Healing
with Eric Small

Also by Ellen Saltonstall, MA,

Kinetic Awareness, Discovering Your Bodymind

THE COMPLETE GUIDE

Loren M. Fishman, MD, BPhil, (oxon.)
Ellen Saltonstall, MA

Copyright 2008 by Loren M. Fishman, MD, and Ellen Saltonstall

All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fishman, Loren.
Yoga for arthritis : the complete guide / Loren M. Fishman,
Ellen Saltonstall. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-393-33058-8 (pbk.)
1. ArthritisExercise therapy. 2. YogaTherapeutic use.
I. Saltonstall, Ellen. II. Title.
RC933.F543 2008
616.7'220642dc22

2007044693

ISBN 978-0-393-34299-4 (e-book)

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To all the yoga teachers, physicians, and true healers who have taught their craft, who have handed down their knowledge and kept it alive from preliterate times, and who are doing so now.

For the aid of therapists, the actions of poses are tabulated at the end of each chapter.

We are grateful to our revered teachers, B. K. S. Iyengar and John Friend, and many others for their patient teaching and spontaneous inspiration; to Diva Robinson and Denna Reilly, our co-models; Donal Holway and Julio Torres for their fine-sensed and reliably good judgment in doing the photography; Susan Genis, Bindu Wiles, Sally Hess, and Tova Ovadia for their discerning eyes and practical suggestions; Carol Stratten, Dr. David Palmieri, Dr. Allan Cummings, and Norman Brettler for their work and help with dynamic MRI studies; Mary Ann Dunkin of the Arthritis Foundation for all her help; Jill Bialosky and Evan Carver for unfailing trust and continued editorial support; our students and patients for all they have taught us; and our families for their articulate silence and kind forebearance while we were not there.

O ne of the chief differences between sciences and religions is that sciences cooperate with one another. Since all truth is necessarily consistent, no true statement can be a contradiction of any other. Therefore, Darwin used the work of geologists and biologists equally. Watson and Crick depended on X-ray crystallography, and Newton had recourse to optics in his work on gravity.

Religions, alas, do not have this unanimous acceptance of one anothers truth. A striking example may be the three Western monotheistic religions, which define one god as the creator of the universe and thus are in total agreement. There could not be more than one such creator, so it follows that they all worship the very same being. Nevertheless, no one could mistake the historical or current situation for the unanimity that this implies. Europe was in flames for hundreds of years in the name of the Prince of Peace. This day, explosions will likely murder or maim innocent people who believe the vast majority of what their attackers do. We may ask after the basis of loyalty to a leader who revives hate based on small differences rather than use his or her life-force to lay bare our commonality.

Without resorting to physical violence, yoga is in danger of slipping into the same sort of factionalism.

It is our intent in this book to merge together somewhat different traditions, yogic and scientific. Our goal is to find (and to encourage other people to search for) what is most helpful for our fellow beings, based on all peoples similarities as described by science. While there is certainly room for individual preference, there is nothing discretionary about the truth. We hope that this book, based on our inherently limited experience and ideas, will be of some value, and that its many flaws will serve to stimulate others to do better.

Most skills represent an internalization of what was once a consciously learned practice. Painters second natureis to follow their rules of composition, drummers deftly hold the sticks just so, experienced debaters almost unconsciously shape a phrase. Yoga is somewhat the opposite. Yogis may slow their hearts, work to regulate their breathing, and bring up to consciousness and refine what was mastered and became automaticas an infant. People can perform yoga poses like trained seals perform their tricks, having learned what to do,but it is not exactly what Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutra, or alert contemporary practitioners have in mind. Yoga promotes familiarity with the unconscious factors within the mind in order to master them.

In Classical Yoga, in order to gain control over the mind, one moves and manipulates the body. By using what is outsideheart rate, breaths, postureto gain control of what is insidethoughts and emotionsyoga has launched a Copernican revolution of great promise. Later developments in yoga recognize the beauty and capacity of the human spirit as it manifests in everyday life, and teach us to experience that through the disciplined practice of yoga. We have been inspired by B. K. S. Iyengar, who has discovered, perfected, or totally created hundreds of poses. John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga, has analyzed these and added his own principles, to form an almost axiomatic approach. But despite the science we explain in this book, yoga itself is not a science. An individual may pick a type of yoga or a teacher for aesthetic, cultural, or personal reasons, or for convenience, because of ones friends or parents, or the persuasive power of a book, and any of these reasons is acceptable. In this respect, the schools of yoga are like contemporaneous movements in art: Dadaism living alongside Impressionism, Neoclassicism, and the Bauhaus. The simile is limited, though, since movements in art are often directly and explicitly opposed to one another, and aimed at replacing the ones that precede them. But any free society encourages this diversity.

In a sense, the happy diversity of schools of yoga is like freedom of religion: every religion is equally welcome, provided it, like the others, has a common belief in the perfectibility of man, the desire for peace, and the right of other religions to thrive. Jacob Burckhardt wrote of religion: Now, no religion has ever been quite independent of the culture of its people and its time. It is just when it is interwoven with life as a whole that life will most infallibly react upon it. Though yoga is emphatically not a religion, but simply a practice, it too intends to be interwoven with life as a whole.One example of yogas integration is mixed-gender classes, which were unthinkable a hundred years ago and are still shunned in some parts of the world. Another is the possibly more serious contact between yoga and contemporary science.