Why I went from being a nurse to a yoga teacher.

Life on the front line in Accident and Emergency as a nurse

Having been a nurse for 10 years ish, I had really started to get fed up with seeing the short sighted way patients were treated within the hospital/general practice. I had spent half my career in coronary care and half in accident and emergency and I always felt as if we were trying to shut the gate after the horse had bolted (or what ever the saying is.)

Now I understand that by the time people get into hospital teaching people to understand their health and physiology is too late, but it inspired me to want to help prevent people having to get to the stage of being in hospital. There are a whole bunch of things that we can’t do a whole bunch about with our health (environment toxins, genetic variability etc), but there is also so so so so much that can be done to improve your chances of living a happy and healthy life. 

One of the biggest things I notice is the amount of people who come into hospital chronically, overly mouth breathing. It is now seen as normal for people to have a respiratory rate (amount of times breathing in and out a minute) of 20.

Yoga teaches us, through the practice of pranayama, to be able to slow our breathing and find self awareness. When we slow our breathing and use our noses in particular, there is/should be  a knock on effect which slows our heart rates and lowers our blood pressure (and can even help control blood sugars for you diabetics too) Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer in the western world these days and having higher bloody pressure and heart rates will play a major part in this (hence why you get prescribed medication to help lower both) 

A slower life of stillness in yoga

Pranayama teaches us to become far more aware of being present and in the moment which helps to alleviate feelings of stress and anxiety which also increase our risk of cardiovascular disease. In todays modern busy go go go society, stress and anxiety have become ubiquitous and something that many actually look on like a badge of honour. In my eyes this really really needs to change. Stress causing anxiety and panic attacks can play havoc with mental health and is becoming increasingly common, especially among teens and younger adults. There is a physiological reason stress can cause people to panic and cause anxiety which if understood can be leveraged to bring back a sense of calm and inner peace

Yoga isn’t exactly a panacea for all lifestyle conditions, I have realised many things in yoga miss out a lot on an understanding of modern physiology but there is so much that we as health professionals could learn from the world of yoga .

So if you are someone who is worrying about there health or have been told they need to start looking after themselves, finding a decent yoga teacher that has a decent understanding of movement, breathing and the physiology behind them, can be a great place to start. I have tried to just highlight a little bit about how the breathing side of yoga can play a crucial roll in taking control of your own lifestyle and health, there is another essay that can be written about the joy that can come from the physical aspect of asana (yoga poses) but I will save that for another day.

If you are interested in learning more about yoga/breath work and health why not sign up for our news letter and our online membership at https://www.mandukyayoga.com/become-a-member (the news letter sign up will appear as a pop up) where you can have access to 11 weekly classes of movement, yoga, Breathwork and meditation all for £15 a month with both myself and my beautiful wife Jenny, who is also a long standing nurse with backgrounds in vascular care, accident and emergency and much more

Improving posture and gait in traumatic brain injury…using Anatomy in Motion.

The wonders of understand the human body and movement through the lens of @garyward_aim and his anatomy in motion lens.

This week I started working with a client who suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling three floors  from a roof.

The Left Hemisphere Traumatic Brain Injury left him with Right Sided Ataxia (A Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement )along Painful and slow walking for 21 years.

When we explored what his feet were doing on the floor, how he stood and walked there were some pretty key things happening that would affect his balance. 

Getting his foot tripod on the floor was a big one and allowing the joints to move as they have evolved to suddenly have him a strong, deep grounded sensation. 

He could also actually balance on his foot which he said he hasn’t since his accident. 

If a brain is to maybe relearn lost movements, perhaps we need to change the lens through which we rehab them. 

Gary ward has 5 big rules, one of which is that rather than looking at the body in a way that muscles move joints, we get the joints to move the muscles. 

How does that even work?? We all know that the muscles pull on the bones to move the joints right??

Well perhaps yes, while we are working out, trying to get fit and strong, but in gait, as we walk, no. 

Take 20 seconds right now to stand up, close your eyes and just observe yourself in space. 

Observe how you cannot stand still.

Observe how you drift forward/back/left/right

All without having any control, your joints are moving/swaying/falling with gravity and you muscles are reacting to hold you upright.

This is the same principle we put into practice when working with our lens turned to see through anatomy in motion.

If someone, say this clients, balance/gait is hideous and we just say it’s due to his accident and tough shit, but don’t dig down, we are doing ourselves and them a disservice by not looking into some fundamentals of how perhaps we are reacting with our environment 

This clients feet, had compensated to his new way of walking such that he was on the outside of one foot with his toes gripping the floor, holding his tripod away from the ground.

The optimal tripod is when we have out 1st/5th metatarsals and our heel all firming connected neurologically with the ground. If just the big toe rather than the metatarsal head is grounding, it can throw the whole body off.

Because of this, he always felt as if he was standing/walking on a thin blade of his foot, Making walking, standing balancing feel off balance, uncomfortable and unsafe.

By allowing the bones to move the muscle, using AIM wedges, by getting the client to relax and try to do less, the foot bones did the only thing they could really do and following the joints shapes they have.

As the joint surfaces in the foot glide over one another properly, the muscles attached to them will have no choice BUT to lengthen, causing them to slow the movement and pull those joints away from their end range.

This is really where, in this kind of brain injury, I would suggest the best changes can be made. By not making the body try to move but by allowing the body to move itself so that all those tissues are just lengthen to slow movement down naturally to return it to centre. 

And what seems to be even better is that, perhaps, even in a brain injury where the movement has been lost for 20 years, that very movement is actually hardwired in and when it feels that ability to pass through centre, to both lengthen and contract properly, the brain grabs hold of that movement and says “I’m keeping that”.

Efficient movement is hard wired into us, efficient movement is less energetic meaning we would have more for over endeavours, evolutionary speaking. 

If we can have a body that wants to stand upright, stacked on its axis’ properly then it gives the greatest amount of of opportunity to both lengthen/contract, flex/extend, rotate left/right and always return back to centre. 

As if I wasn’t already aware that Gary Ward’s anatomy in motion model was the best through which to view human movement, working with a traumatic brain injury that’s 20 years old and seeing such a marked change and have the client also immediately notice it too, just puts the cherry on the cake. 

If someone with a traumatic brain injury can begin to move and feel better within 90 minutes, perhaps you can too. 

Why not get in touch to start your own movement journey to move with less pain, more confidence and a far greater understanding of your own body and how to move it better in the future yourself.

BAM!!!!!!!! (no, not batman Bam, but BAMBOO clothing Bam)

skandasana in Bamboo yoga hoody and Bamboo Balance pants - https://bambooclothing.co.uk/shop/bamboo-yoga-hoody/

https://bambooclothing.co.uk/shop/bamboo-balance-pants/

Well what can i say, except that i am super excited to say that, having been harassing you all with my early morning videos of yoga in just my BAM boxer shorts, i am now an ambassador (or you might like to say a BAMbassador.)

I have been extolling the wonders of the super soft and comfortable underwear produced by BAM for about a year now but of late i have also been getting to wear the super cozy yoga hoody too. Not only do you get to keep your head warm (and if you have a beard look a bit like the knight at the end of Indiana Jones and the las crusade…if you are old enough to know, you will know) but it also has thumb holes and hand covers to keep the hands covered and sorted in the cold english mornings too.

Whats been lovely to is to find that while they make amazingly soft and easy to move in clothes for yoga/climbing/generally active lives, they also make some great day to day clothes too. The fleece covered over shirt has been lived in since i first got it. so warm, soft and damn cozy….seems that those three words just keep coming up again and again but they really do just hit the nail on the head with these cloths.

Fleece Lined bamboo overshirt - https://bambooclothing.co.uk/shop/fleeced-lined-bamboo-overshirt-2/

I am super excited to say that i will be working with BAM to bring some yoga content and some education on the importance of movement in general, especially in regards to how the feet can play huge rolls, in moving and feeling better in and about our selves. So keep an eye out on their pages and mine for more details.

Being a yogi, brings with it the ever nagging feeling of Ahimsa, or the idea of non-harm. I have to say i have been a bit concerned about the whole “fast fashion” problems blighting the world and how it affects the environment…from over irrigation/watering of plants, drawing water away from the life bloods of rivers and lakes to how plant material is turned into the fibres which make up the clothes we wear. I was pretty happy to find out from talking to the guys at BAM, that the factories which makes the bamboo viscose where spending millions on becoming world leaders in waste treatment and sustainable production techniques in regards to the chemicals that are used.

I honestly believe that if we are going to buy new clothing, we should be buying as sustainably and conscientiously as possible and with an eye to giving that item of clothing as long a life as possible, hence if you look in my cupboard basically everything from t-shirts to trousers to shirts and jumpers are nearly all AT LEAST 5-6 years old and still going strong. i have found that the Bam clothing i have been wearing for the last 2 years just keep on going and is still as soft and comfortable despite many washes (and sometimes some of those were not in line with the makers washing suggestions ;-) haha im so bad at laundry, just ask Jen.)

So whether you are looking for sports wear (that’s right, we all love to live in our yoga leggings as much as possible) or everyday clothing (including those ever needed undies and socks….we all know that people always need them at christmas and that is just now around the corner) why not go use my code WIBBS10 to get yourself a bit of a discount on them and give yourself or a family member a BAMtastic christmas (hahaha, i know how many times can i make a word work with BAM in front of it hahaha)