Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (173 page)

Here’s more incentive to pay attention to these subtle but powerful approaches. Kathleen Porter, author of
Ageless Spine, Lasting Health
(Synergy Books, 2006), notes the ease with which women in other cultures walk while carrying heavy weights on their heads, thanks to their perfect spinal alignments. I urge you to check out Kathleen’s website (
http://naturalalignment.com
to see the compelling pictures of what natural and unnatural alignment look like and to correct your own alignment. I know that doing this (through Pilates—which I started at the age of forty-nine) has prevented me from having to have a hip replacement!

I’ve seen women totally transform their bodies through Pilates and/or yoga, myself included. My Pilates experience more than any other exercise has convinced me that it’s possible to grow stronger, more fit, and more flexible with age—not the opposite.

Yoga is the mother of all mind-body fitness approaches and is the most ancient exercise system on the planet. Yoga also helps you build and maintain a stronger, more flexible, and healthier body. You don’t even need to join a yoga class to benefit. Popular and accomplished instructors Rodney Yee and his wife, Colleen Saidman, have designed a novel online yoga program that can be modified for any skill level or to accommodate most physical limitations. Their self-paced program has twelve units, so you can move forward when you’re ready. It includes audiocasts that you can download from the Internet to guide you step-by-step through a series of poses. These audiocasts also provide guided relaxation and meditation exercises. The affordable subscription also includes access to online chats, blogs, and community message boards for support. (See
www.gaiamyogaclub.com
.)

Rodney and Colleen are also co-directors of the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program, which trains yoga practitioners and health care professionals in yoga therapy, aromatherapy, reiki, nutrition, and death and dying awareness in order to bring comfort and peace to those suffering from life-threatening illnesses. (For more information, visit
www.urbanzen.org
.)

THE PSOAS MUSCLE

In my early thirties, I often experienced right hip pain and the inability to walk normally for several minutes after getting up from prolonged sitting. I’d have to swing my right leg back and forth for a bit to get the leg to work properly. My then-husband, an orthopedic surgeon, ordered hip X-rays, which were, of course, normal. Now after ten years of Pilates, I no longer have this pain and dysfunction because I have learned how to stretch, strengthen, and relax both my psoas muscles. Hip pain and limitation run in my family, and I know that if I hadn’t learned how to work with my psoas muscles, I would most likely have had a hip replacement by now. Hip and low back pain are remarkably common in women, and many times the problem lies in a contracted psoas muscle—the place in the body that we tend to store tension.

The psoas is a huge muscle that is about 16 inches long, stretching from the rib cage and trunk to the legs. It passes through the pelvis and over the ball and socket of the hip joint and attaches at the inner side of the femur. Most hip pain in women originates in a tight psoas muscle, a muscle that is right in the center of the body and very sensitive to our emotions. It contracts when we are afraid, and it helps us move freely when relaxed and toned. By learning how to relax and release my psoas, I have a stronger core and more aligned hips than ever before. I urge you to get in touch with your psoas for a lifetime of joyful movement. To do this, you can work with a physical therapist, a neuromuscular therapist, a classically trained Pilates instructor, or a yoga teacher. Or you can simply read and do the exercises in
The Psoas Book
(Guinea Pig Publications, 1981, revised 1997) by Liz Koch (see
www.coreawareness.com
).

Martial Arts

Martial arts training such as aikido or tai chi combines the body, mind, and spirit very consciously. This approach also increases strength, endurance, and flexibility simultaneously. Studies of individu als who do tai chi regularly, for example, have found that tai chi mod ifies their biological function via their nervous and hormonal systems. It has been shown to be effective in the treatment of heart disease, hy pertension, insomnia, asthma, and osteoporosis. It decreases depression, tension, anger, fatigue, confusion, and anxiety.
²⁶
A more recent study of two hundred people over the age of seventy found that tai chi decreased the risk of falls—a major factor in hip fracture.
²⁷

When I was in college, I got a green belt in jujitsu. Though that’s not a high ranking, I did have to spar with a couple of big guys from Cleveland Heights in order to earn it. From that, I learned that I have the strength and the will to fight someone in self-defense if I need to. Studies of men who rape show that they tend to go after women who seem the most vulnerable. The self-confidence and resulting self-confident stance that come from knowing you can fight for yourself is conveyed in the energy field around you and is one way to decrease your chances of being raped. Martial arts can also help you discover your voice.
²⁸

EXERCISE AND ADDICTION

Just about anything can be used addictively, and exercise is no exception. The call to use physical activity as a way to disconnect from our feelings saturates our culture. Some people have actually had to go to rehab for running addic tion. You might think running could not possibly be a health problem (aside from the wear and tear on muscles and joints). In fact, it is well documented that endurance sports such as marathon running actually depress immunity and increase the risk of premature death. This is, in part, because of the free radical damage done by overexercising without adequate antioxidant intake or rest.
²⁹

Several years ago, I visited a popular spa to give some lectures. One of the women in the group spent three hours per morning on a treadmill, worked out with a personal trainer most of each afternoon, and then went out every evening to buy alcohol, which she’d imbibe until drunk! Though she looked good, I knew that at the rate she was going, her health and her beauty were both in jeopardy. When we use exercise to run away from the stress in our lives or to disconnect from our deepest selves, it is no different from the addictive use of Valium. It may be a healthier choice initially, but it is still an addiction.

Though exercise can blow off steam, if it’s used primarily for this purpose it can become a “fix” anytime you feel stressed; you’ll use exercise to medicate your emotional pain. It’s much better to deal with the source of the stress than to use exercise as a fix. On the other hand, a ten-to fifteen-minute brisk walk will often elevate your mood and help you put things in perspective. It also helps the body get rid of the effects of stress hormones that often trigger overeating. When you experience stress, your body makes the hormone cortisol to mobilize you to move in response to a perceived threat. When you go for a ten-to fifteen-minute walk (or even climb stairs at work), you will be metabolizing the cortisol—and using up the extra calories that your body wanted to consume in response to running away from the stress (which our Stone Age bodies rarely do anymore). The stresses today are different from those of the ancient past, but the body’s response is the same: mobilize all resources and prepare to run. When you actually do move, you’ll find that the short period of exercise will decrease your appetite and take away the munchies.

Unfortunately, many women do use exercise as a fix to run away from stress or as a way to keep their weights down. While exercise does accomplish both of these goals, you’ll never establish a healthy relationship with exercise and your body if you do the exercise strictly for stress and/or weight control.

EXERCISE, AMENORRHEA, AND BONE LOSS

Studies have repeatedly shown that many female athletes have stopped having men strual cycles and suffer from premature bone loss.
³⁰
In the past, I feared that this data would be used to scare women away from choosing to use their bodies as fully and powerfully as men. Follow-up studies, however, have shown that many women athletes stop having periods for the same reason as women who go on stringent diets or become anorexic: They don’t eat enough, and their total body fat drops to a level that is too low. This results in loss of periods (amenorrhea) and early osteoporosis.
³¹
In one study, when women who had developed amenorrhea from exercise ate five hundred to seven hundred calories more per day, their periods returned. (Most competitive women runners won’t do this.)

One of my friends, a former competitive bodybuilder, told me that competitors in women’s bodybuilding actually look forward to losing their periods and consider it a sign of adequate training. Competitive runners have told me the same thing. Hormonal shutdown of this na ture is actually a training goal! Clearly, this is a sign of unhealthy behavior. It’s not surprising that drug use in the form of anabolic steroids is the norm rather than the exception in high-level competitions.

Studies indicate that women marathon runners who exercise to the point of becoming amenorrheic often have bone densities comparable to those of osteoporotic women who are much older. There is no definite point at which running may begin to have deleterious effects on a woman’s body, although in competitive runners it appears to begin at about fifty miles of training per week.

Still another reason these women become amenorrheic is that, as studies have shown, leanness
combined
with chronic concern about becoming overweight is associated with brain changes that lead to dis turbed menstrual cycles.
³²
Women athletes are just as influenced by the cultural desire to be thin as other women. For that reason, their caloric intake is often lower than it has to be for the level of activity in which they participate. Eating disorders are just as common in athletic women as they are in nonathletic women, but athletic women sometimes use the training as a form of weight control. They exercise heavily—then they don’t eat. This is no different from other forms of anorexia.

Since resumption of menses can take some time, progesterone therapy to help restore bone mass is often helpful. Once ovulatory periods have resumed, bone mineral density also begins to improve.
³³

Not all women are at risk for losing their periods from extreme amounts of exercise. In a study by Nancy Lane, M.D., amenorrhea from excessive exercise was primarily a problem of young, childless women. After a woman has had children, she is less likely to develop this problem because childbearing appears to make her hormonal system difficult to suppress via extreme exercise. Her monthly cycling becomes harder to turn off. That’s why women runners in their thirties and forties who’ve had children rarely become amenorrheic.
³⁴
I believe that there’s another reason why women who have had children are at less risk for exercise-induced amenorrhea: They are much less likely to maintain ruthless competitiveness, and this shift is associated with an opening of the heart that changes body chemistry. Having a child changes a woman in very fundamental ways—emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Her priorities about what’s really important change. (By the way, having a baby uses your body as fully and powerfully as any athletic event I can think of, but we can’t do this routine every week!)

MY EXERCISE STORY: MAKING PEACE

I grew up, as I’ve mentioned, in an atmosphere teeming with physical activity and exercise. Most of it was outgoing and energetic, like jogging and skiing. Even on Christmas Day, to my chagrin, my parents and siblings would race out the door to hit the slopes. Though my mother did yoga and I learned the basic postures in the eighth grade, this was done not as an inner meditation with attention to breathing but as a humorous competition to see who could actually get their bodies into the postures. We especially liked doing yoga headstands—they looked impressive.

My sister regarded my meditative stretching or muscle toning as a sissy approach. When not on the racing circuit, she was out running up our back hill with ski poles doing dry-land training. Every family vacation was camping or hiking; most of the hiking had a “race to the sum mit” feeling, and I didn’t even pretend to be interested. I enjoyed being out in nature, but not as a competitive event.

My ski-racer sister now does yoga and tai chi regularly, paying attention to her breathing and inner feelings. After years of pushing and multiple injuries, she no longer approaches fitness in the old, abusive way. For years, she couldn’t even look at a Nautilus or other weight machine—right about the same time that I got into weight training very enthusiastically. Now we both enjoy yoga and dance as well as some weight training and aerobic activity. Our paths have crossed as both of us have reached a balanced approach to physical activity. She admits that even though she has dialed back the intensity, her natural approach, after years of grueling physical training, is still to overdo it. This is true of me as well. On the other hand, most people don’t have any idea what “too much” feels like and would do well to push themselves more and explore their growing edge.

GETTING STARTED
Step One: Choose an Exercise Program

It is just as healthy to discard the concept of the “ideal” amount of exercise as it is to discard the con cept of the “ideal” weight. When people ask me what exercise program is best, I reply, “The one that you’ll actually do.” Women can find joy and fitness by participating in a very wide variety of activities, ranging from yoga, tai chi, and dance to teaching Outward Bound courses.