Dr. Renu Mahtani - The Power of Posture

Published by Jaico Publishing House
A-2 Jash Chambers, 7-A Sir Phirozshah Mehta Road
Fort, Mumbai 400 001
www.jaicobooks.com

Dr. Renu Mahtani M.D.

Editor: Meeta Kabra

THE POWER OF POSTURE
ISBN 978-81-8495-618-4

First Jaico Impression: 2015

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Page design and layouts: Special Effects, Mumbai

Dedication

To all those who have taken charge of themselves
and have actively participated in their health and well-being.

GRATITUDE

I thank the Divine for uniting me with yoga and for giving me innumerable opportunities to serve those in pain and help them discover the magic of awareness for living pain-free lives.

Doing the book was challenging and needed opinions and inputs of many that I could share, with utmost joy, every detail of yoga postures with lucidity. I am grateful and owe deep gratitude to each one of them.

I thank my loving family and dear friends who have encouraged and supported me in my quest to explore healing and health:

Dr Nagarathna from SVYASA, Bangalore, for guiding me to combine medical knowledge with the fundamentals of yoga. Dr Warren Reaves, FRCS Orthopaedics, the most revered osteopath and chiropractitioner, who is a role model of good posture. Your trust and blessings in this project have been invaluable; you have been an extraordinary mentor.

Surhuda Kulkarni and Devika Mundkur, for your expert inputs to my first draft. This project got the kickstart it needed because of your efforts.

Meeta Kabra, you were Godsend for the project. Being a content designer and yoga teacher, you understood the subject and put all your passion into enhancing it a feat that you alone could have accomplished.

Anuradha Sule, for the monumental task of sketching my ideas into simple, comprehendible pictures. The readers will truly benefit from your illustrations.

My incredible team of yoga teachers my second family; who motivated me to bring out these simple yet effective concepts in the public arena. Many thanks to Dr Sanyogita Nimbalkar, Deepa Nair, Aakash Ramchandani and Anjeli Singh our yoga teachers, for being the models in the photographs. Your poise, enthusiasm and smiling faces will be the biggest motivators for the readers. Vinay and Sanjay, for your remarkable talent through the lens and adding life to the photographs.

Last but the most important of them all, my clients, who have complete faith in me and without whose love and conviction, I would not have become a better person and a better doctor.

Thank you every one for making this project happen!

PROLOGUE

L iving with awareness should be a way of life. Being aware of yourself helps feel well, look well and stay healthy. I learned this the hard way when a chronic and stubborn skin disease struck me. It prompted me to look for a holistic solution to a problem that was more than skin-deep. That is when the pill of awareness came into my life in the form of yoga. The varied physical practices and breathing exercises of yoga not only cured my skin problem, but also improved my general health and energy levels over time.

I also had a slight hunch on my back and suffered frequent neck and upper back pain. Sitting for long hours to study the voluminous medical text books added to the discomfort. I had been told that the hunch was genetic since my brother and uncles had it too. I took this to mean that I had to live with the hunch and accept that my aches would keep surfacing intermittently. Therefore, I never paid heed to the pain and continued racing with life with my distorted frame and associated aches.

The yoga practices prescribed for the skin disease started spilling out, off the yoga mat, into other aspects of my life. I carried the straight back posture to my office chair keeping my head, neck and spine in one line. I also started sleeping correctly in tune with my physical axis, acknowledging Lord Krishna's words in the Bhagwad Gita

Sama Kaya ShiroGreeva Keep the head, the neck and the spine in one line.

Without any conscious effort, to my utmost surprise, the depth of my hunched back reduced. Needless to say, the nagging neck and upper back pain totally disappeared!

I then realized that being a doctor was my biggest strength and doing yoga my greatest passion. It was at this point in time that I decided to fuse the two so that I could share the age-old wonders of holistic living with all my very dear patients. I not only ventured out as a student to various yoga institutes for learning yoga in depth, but also started sharing its simple techniques with my patients as and when my medically logical and intuitive mind guided me.

I gained tremendous experience in treating a wide range of diseases from the simplest to the most critical ones and changed my treatment methods from prescribing medicines to patients to getting them off prescriptions. I started bringing them to participate in achieving their own good health.

With my medical experience and formal training from four different yoga institutes in India and outside, I began yoga sessions for small groups based on their specific needs. In no time, these sessions for small groups took the form of an organization where different forms of yoga were offered according to the needs of the participating individuals.

The establishment of the organization meant an exposure to an even wider variety of health problems in patients ranging from 20 to 80 years. They came to the organization after being exhausted with the conventional prescriptions and hoping to receive holistic solutions. Yoga, a holistic science, is known to offer solutions for the most chronic diseases. It has not only given relief to my patients with chronic lifestyle diseases, but has also helped them look for solutions for their nagging physical pains. Many of my patients suffering from excruciating chronic pain were already doing physiotherapy or yoga, but their pains and aches persisted. To determine the cause of the pain, I would often ask them to perform their exercises before me. The demonstrations given by the patients became a turning point in my life as I began noticing that:

• People have different body frameworks, depending on gender, genetics, lifestyle and level of awareness.
• Patients who have experienced a particular type of pain in a specific part of the body cannot be prescribed the same set of exercises.
• People need to adapt themselves to exercises such that they meet the need of that particular body framework.
• People tend to overdo the exercises, both in the range of movement and in the speed. Overdoing a practice does more harm than good.
• Inaccurately performed physical exercises eventually do more harm than good, even to very physically fit and athletic individuals.
• Sedentary lifestyle destabilizes the baseline tone of our muscles; without regaining this tone, no pain will ever go.

Slowly, a mantra started emerging: How you do is as important as what you do.

In spite of having an exercise routine, the number of out-of-shape, round-shouldered white-collared professionals there are is shocking. Even people who are seemingly aware of their bodies do not actually have enough practical knowledge regarding how to carry themselves in commonplace activities.

The digital age has brought conveniences in our lives that are now necessities rather than luxuries. However, urbanization and industrialization coupled with mobile and other wireless devices have, in many ways, made us immobile. For the growing number of young professionals, work and life today revolves around computers, TVs, and mobiles. As a result, they end up with rounded shoulders, protruded heads, upper back humps, slumped gait and so on.