... and with yoga the rest will follow. More than
a New Age trend, this time-tested technique can help HIVers cope
with pain, relieve stress and boost overall health.
Kevin Kelly has been practicing yoga off and on for nearly 15
years. But it wasn't until last summer that the 43-year-old HIV
positive fitness instructor fully understood the impact this
2,000-year-old Indian movement system could have on his life.
His longtime partner died of AIDS in 1994, and after that Kelly
slipped into a lonely existence. He continued teaching at New York
City health clubs but, he says, "I had lost my whole purpose in life
and my dreams for the future." Things got worse in 1998 when his
health began to unravel. By last June, he found himself in the
hospital with a viral brain infection.
Now his health had to become his primary focus. He gave up
coffee, added tofu to his diet and began to take yoga more
seriously, making it a major part of his treatment plan. "When you
really learn how to do yoga," he says, "it's so different than
exercise. I'm now more in touch with my body, I'm recovering fast
and I've found a lot of courage as I face this depression."
In Sanskrit, yoga means "communion," in other words, a union of
the mind, body and spirit. The physical discipline of yoga, called
hatha, is composed of about 200 poses (called asanas)
that are designed to prepare the body for meditation by instilling a
still, restful mind and by building physical strength and stamina.
Yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar has explained it this way: "Yoga is more
than physical. It is cellular, mental, intellectual and spiritual --
it involves [one's] entire being."
|
Breathing Lessons
Throughout your yoga practice, remember to
breathe -- it's quite easy to forget while you're stretching.
Try focusing on your breath using these steps from
Iyengar:
1. Inhale normally.
2.
Exhale normally.
3. At the end of each exhalation, pause
for a second or two before inhaling again.
You may notice a spontaneous continuation of
the exhalation during this pause. The way we usually breathe,
exhalation is incomplete. With the additional release of
breath during this pause, we completely exhale. Maintain this
breath awareness while you do yoga, or even use it during the
day when you need a calm moment. |
Anyone who's tried to take a yoga class knows that there are a
bewildering variety of techniques, but they all work toward the same
basic goals. Of the schools, Ashtanga yoga is a demanding approach
that emphasizes the flow of movement. Iyengar focuses more on
placement and alignment, making for a more precise, detail-oriented
practice. Vigorous use of the breath, chanting and meditation are
the core elements of Kundalini, while Integral teaches the
integration of yoga principles into daily life.
Very preliminary research has found that yoga improves PWAs'
quality of life, and dozens of studies have shown that yoga benefits
ailments that some PWAs experience, such as heart disease, high
blood pressure, depression and anxiety. For example, in a 1999 study
published in the India Heart Journal, yoga was found to help
prevent coronary artery disease by decreasing blood sugar and
cholesterol levels. Studies on arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome and
chronic headaches and back pain have all found that yoga measurably
reduced pain.
All eight HIV yoga instructors interviewed by POZ have
found that yoga can help PWAs cope with medication side effects such
as diarrhea, indigestion and neuropathy. Since 1988, Denise Johnson
has been teaching at Denver's Yoga Group, an organization that
teaches yoga to people with HIV. "I've really seen yoga help people
deal with the negative side effects of the [antiretroviral] drugs,"
she says. "It's an organic way to help with the digestive problems
and the havoc that protease inhibitors wreak on the kidneys." Many
yoga poses, such as twists and inversions, were designed to massage
and manipulate the organs, and may in this way help cleanse
them.
"I strongly recommend that patients with HIV take time each day
to practice deep relaxation," says Jon Kaiser, MD, an HIV doctor in
San Francisco. "Yoga quiets the mind, improves breathing and
circulation and reduces stress. Daily practice of yoga helps to
support the immune system within a comprehensive HIV treatment
program." Rick Elion, MD, an HIV doctor in Washington, DC, says that
he's found yoga to be especially beneficial for people going through
detox.
Yoga's most important benefit is stress reduction. There has been
mounting evidence since the '70s that stress can degrade health, and
a May 1999 study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
found that PWAs with more-than-average amounts of stress got sick
two to three times faster. Judith Lasatar, PhD, a physical therapist
who has been teaching yoga in San Francisco for almost 30 years,
says, "Stress assaults our nervous systems and our endocrine systems
all day long. Doing relaxation exercises 20 minutes a day can help
us digest and eliminate better and takes stress off the organs."
|
Resources
The best way to start yoga is to try one of
the many free or low-cost HIV yoga classes around the country.
Check http://www.yogagroup.org/
for listings in about a dozen cities.
If there are no classes near you, try using a
video at home: Living With AIDS Through Yoga and
Meditation, available from Kripa West, 403.270.9671,
features poses and meditations designed speifically for PWAs,
or Living Arts Yoga Journal Video for Beginners, a safe
way to begin your own home practice, available from http://www.livingarts.com/
Or pick up Judith Lasatar's book, Relax
& Renew: Restful Yoga for Stressful Times, a detailed
guide to poses that release stress and promote deep
relaxation, available from Rodmell Press in Berkeley,
California. |
Even low-level stress -- not to mention major events like a
hospitalization or a friend's death -- can set off our body's
"flight-or-fight" response, a physical state of emergency. Once
triggered, our blood pressure rises, our metabolism begins to speed
up and our blood sugar spikes. According to Ann Webster, PhD, who
directs the mind/body program for HIV/AIDS at the Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard University, regular yoga
practice helps to reverse these abnormal conditions, allowing the
body -- and the immune system -- to function normally. Additionally,
she says, yoga can stimulate the release of beta-endorphins, the
body's natural painkillers and mood boosters. "Yoga combats fatigue,
it gets your juices flowing, and it increases confidence and
self-esteem," Webster says.
In a society where our esteem is often directly linked to body
image, Kelly, like other PWAs interviewed by POZ, says that
yoga has helped him, despite illness and the pain of neuropathy, to
learn to love his body again. "I've really gotten away from being so
worried about how I look and pushing my body to go for the burn,"
Kelly explains. "Yoga works with my body, not against it."
For Chicago's Michael McColly, 42, yoga was the way he
reconnected to the body he'd given over to doctors and drugs once he
was diagnosed with HIV four years ago. Yoga's breath work,
stretching, muscle strengthening and meditation not only helped him
work through his depression, it opened his eyes to the idea that his
body was, indeed, his temple. He's since started teaching yoga to
PWAs at Illinois Masonic Hospital's alternative clinic. "We need to
be in charge of our own health," he says. "In yoga you automatically
take charge. And it gives people a way to do something to manage
some of this [HIV drug] toxicity."
What attracted Victoria Hernandez (not her real name), 44, to the
practice is that you don't have to be in great shape to benefit.
When she started taking yoga at Women Alive, an LA AIDS
organization, she couldn't touch her toes, and her only exercise was
an occasional walk around the block. Yoga was her first introduction
to a structured physical program; she sees her weekly classes as a
welcome respite from the stress of living with HIV. In one year, her
flexibility has improved (she can reach down to tie her shoes) and
yoga's breathing techniques have helped her endure the pain of
neuropathy and frequent headaches. "I'd encourage anyone to try
yoga," Hernandez says. "We don't make enough time for ourselves.
Even 10 minutes can make a difference if we just stop and meditate
and think about our bodies and nothing else."
The following gentle poses are designed to
introduce you to yoga, increase your flexibility and improve
your breathing and ability to relax. Set aside about 45
minutes to try these at home (doing the sequence in order).
Stay aware of how your body feels. Listen to your breath and
only do what feels good -- relaxation is the key.
1. Child's Pose (virasana)
2. Easy Pose (sukhasana with forward bend)
3. Chair Forward Bend (uttanasana)
4. Downward Dog (adho mukha svanasana)
5. Chest Opener
6. Legs Up The Wall (viparita karani)
7. Supine Twist (jathara parivartanasana)
8. Final Deep Relaxation (savasana)
YOGAS PROFILES
Brooke Myers, New York City
Yoga instructor for HIVers: 8
years
Yoga student: 25 years
What does yoga offer people with HIV?
It gives people a wonderful sense of well-being. People
with HIV are used to looking at their bodies in a medical way,
but yoga is an antidote to the invasiveness of the medical
approach. Instead of always fighting the body, or feeling like
it's fighting them, yoga allows people to feel more at one
with their body.
If you're really suffering and in pain, you want to go out
of your body. But the asanas [poses] seem to take people into
their body, away from superficial pains. And everyone says
they feel much better after.
Why did you begin teaching yoga to PWAs?
I had a lot of students with HIV, and I found myself in a
circle of people who were affected. I teach yoga for a living,
but the free HIV class is my way of serving.
How would you describe the philosophy of Iyengar yoga,
the method you teach?
B.K.S. Iyengar's method is a very intense, very
concentrated kind of yoga where you stay in poses for a long
time. His philosophy is that we don't live fully in the moment
so we don't experience our true nature. His method is an
experience of being fully present in our bodies in the
moment.
Jorge Moncaylo, New York
City
Tested HIV positive: 1983
Yoga student: 3
months
Why did you become interested in yoga?
About five years ago I found out that I had non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma. After that I really went down. I got PCP twice,
while I was getting chemo. I was at zero, just waiting every
night, thinking, OK, tomorrow's going to be the end of it.
That was in January 1998. I was very fragile. First I worked
on eating and getting healthier, and then I started
yoga.
How has it affected you?
I'm absolutely a different person. I'm more focused.
Before, I was getting angry over any little thing -- now I
just breathe. I see my body differently. I enjoy my body more.
In yoga, you keep telling yourself you're beautiful and life
is beautiful, and it stays with you.
Has yoga also helped you physically?
Yes. People with HIV who take medicine are experiencing a
lot of problems with the intestines, the stomach, all these
horrible things we go through every day. I notice that yoga
has changed my habits. In other words, I've been able to cut
down on Imodium.
What about emotionally?
Oh, definitely. In fact, I've been telling my friends how
good it is, especially my friends with HIV who have emotional
problems. I say, "You should try yoga, maybe it will help you;
it's been helping me." You learn how to breathe. And that's a
big deal.
I've even cut down on therapy, because I'd rather do yoga.
With yoga I feel so relaxed, it's amazing. When I get out of
class, I feel like I'm flying.
