Interview with Vickie Russell Bell Yoga for Parkinsons Disease Rerun

by Baxter

In October, we were fortunate to have long-time yoga teacher and yoga writer Richard Rosen contribute a post about his personal journey with Parkinson’s Disease and the recommendations he has for working with the condition (see Yoga and Parkinson's Disease, Part 1). This month, I am pleased to share with you an interview with another yoga teacher, Vickie Russell Bell, who has been involved in serving the Parkinson’s community for several years now. You can learn more about her teaching here. 

Baxter: Vickie, I know that you have been offering a Parkinson’s Yoga Class at Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland for some time now. How did that come about, and what’s the class like?

Vickie: I’ve been teaching a yoga class for people with Parkinson’s Disease (PWPD) for a little more than three years now. I started off assisting Richard Rosen, teaching about 8-10 students, and then took over leading the classes. I now offer two classes weekly through a local organization called PD Active! In a given week there are usually 12-18 participants per class. These students have varying physical abilities. I have two assistants helping in each class.

As Richard Rosen stated in a previous post about PD (see Yoga and Parkinson's Disease, Part 1): it is a progressive degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. Common physical symptoms are loss of muscular flexibility (PWPD become very stiff), loss of balance, loss of strength and often a noticeable resting tremor. Sometimes people who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s are in denial, resentment or rejection of their condition. PD affects the body, mind and spirit and needs to be looked at holistically. Asana practice done regularly can help students to cultivate and refine their body awareness so as to work productively with some of these symptoms.

My students with Parkinson’s definitely need extra attention during classes. I attempt to adapt what I’m teaching in my public classes that week for the classes (for example, Downward Dog with hands on a chair seat, Warrior I with the front knee supported by a block and the wall, Bakasana (Crane pose) lying on the back). Often in class there is an extra emphasis on keeping the feet stretched, open and supple to increase awareness of the base, on balance, on opening the upper back/chest/lungs, and on restorative poses (PWPD are often taking various medications that can make them fatigued or affect sleep adversely).

Baxter: Can you share with our readers any observations of the benefits your students have discovered by regular attendance in your class?

Vickie: I can do even better! Here is some testimonial directly from one of mty PD Active yoga students:

“The yoga exercise class has helped me immensely and I feel it is due mostly to stretching of the muscles. Parkinson’s causes atrophy in our muscles and the yoga exercises are a direct hit against that atrophy. I walk straighter and breathe properly when I walk now. Learning to breathe properly in the yoga class has helped my freezing of feet problem as well. When my feet freeze now I stop, breathe, relax and off I go again. Before, I would go into panic mode, struggle and usually fall. I have had fewer falls since I started the yoga class. I used to fall about three times a week and now it is about twice a month and that’s usually due to my own inability to breathe properly and stay relaxed. Yoga has added to the quality of my life.”

Baxter: In Richard’s post, he mentioned the benefits of supported backbend over a bolster. Where do you see that pose fitting in, and what are two or three other essential poses you find helpful for your classes?

Vickie: I often incorporate the backbend over a bolster that Richard described in my classes. My students also love supported twists over a bolster as well as a Viparita Karani variation. Legs up the Wall is difficult for many Parkinson’s students due to tight hips and hamstrings, and rounded upper backs. So this is how I teach the Viparita Karani variation:

Fold two long, single fold blankets (Shoulderstand size in half long ways) and place them on the floor in front of a chair seat. Have the student sit with their tailbone right on the front edge of the blankets and lie back so that the blankets are perpendicular to the spine and support the lumbar curve and back of the pelvis. Some PD students may need help lying back safely, or may need help adjusting the blankets. The student then hooks the back of their knees on the front edge of the chair seat, resting the calves on the seat. If your student has a rounded upper back they might benefit from a lift under their head so that the chin and forehead are on the same level. Here's a photograph from one of my classes of a student in the pose:

Viparita Karani variation (also called Easy Inverted pose)

This pose allows the low back (lumbar spine) to have a neutral curve or for some a slight backbend and allows the shoulders and chest to gently open. This can be a delicious pose for someone who spends most of their day with the head and shoulders hunched forward! I also teach PWPD adaptations of many standing poses and other beneficial active poses.

Tune in tomorrow for the second half of Baxter's interview with Vickie Russell Bell, in which she will talk about how to teach students with Parkinson's Disease.

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Regaining Balance and So Much More Interview with Anita Berlanga

by Nina

Anita's 2016 New Bed

Back in 2013, I decided to follow up on this comment that Anita Berlanga left on my post Regaining Stability for Free.

"Omgosh. I ....this took my breath away. This is exactly what happened to me! I was this vibrant, moving being....then a stupid, nasty fall (via a piece of gravel on the sidewalk) ended all that. And my subsequent life mirrors your friend's. Thank you SO much for giving us hope!"

I reached out to Anita because I wanted to see if there was something we could do to help! You can see her original story in our post Starting to Move Again. After some behind the scenes emailing with Anita, and then some consulting with Shari and Baxter, we came up with some yoga recommendations for Anita, which you can read about in our post  Starting to Move Again, Part 2, along  with some early progress reports about how she was doing now that she started to practice yoga for regaining stability. Now that a couple of years have passed—and I heard that Anita was feeling like her life had been transformed by yoga—so I decided to check in with her again and let her tell you her story in her own words.  

Nina: Tell us a bit about yourself and what things were like for you before you slipped and fell. 

Anita: I was The Strider. I would walk for MILES with a confident, strong stride. So strong, so confident, I could run up 3 flights of stairs without a break. I was relatively flexible—and pretty much fearless. Though a bad motorcycle crash had done a job on my knees I was still flexible enough to walk for miles and lift things and just, in general, feel strong and confident. In my young adulthood I would walk from work (downtown Chicago) to my Lincoln Park apartment, a distance of about 10 miles. I miss walking in the City. But I still managed to get in a 2-4 miles walk here in the sticks. Every day.  

Nina: What happened when you fell, and how did you feel afterward? 

Anita: Well, it wasn't one fall. It was two. The first one was an absurd face-plant on the sidewalk when I, striding (in GYMSHOES! for the love of Pete!), twisted my ankle on a piece of gravel. Went down like a sack of potatoes. Blew out my hip and my knee (oh, that knee-scrape burned like fire!). I think I would've managed that a lot better than I did, except that about 2 days later I split open my Achilles tendon (a vicious storm door that always had it in for me—just biding its time...evil door). Alas, that gash was on the OTHER foot. So you can imagine—I was then pretty much incapacitated, since I needed shoes with backs and, omg, do you know how much it hurts to have the seam of a shoe hit a gash on your Achilles tendon? OMG. 

By the time that healed I was very stiff—and I'd gotten used to a very sedentary life. Walking was more of a shuffle and walking 2 blocks felt like a mile. But little by little I started walking again. Alas, the first fall was in October. The really awful fall...that happened in January. We'd had some freezing rain—typical Midwest winter. Our driveway is slightly sloped and faces north so it continued to build up. I was walking to my car and did an alley oop that tore up my shoulder and hip. The fact that I am terrified of falling on the ice made this really bad. Then I found out a client fell in her driveway the day before—she died. Any tiny bit of confidence I had regarding walking on ice evaporated. At that point I was pretty much housebound.  

Nina: Why did you decide that yoga might be a good way for you to regain confidence?  

Anita: One of those weird Six Degrees things. I'd first started yoga in undergraduate school but left it there. I was always relatively limber and cardio exercise kept that going. And in the Midwest yoga wasn't as huge as it was on the West Coast so I never picked it up again. 

When I moved down here to Hooterville my nerves were completely shot—I hated this place and mostly just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep until I was dead. A friend gave me a Rodney Yee DVD and after a whole lot of procrastination I decided to check it out. It was the AM/PM DVD and once I slowed the exercises down a bit (boy, he is FAST with the poses) I found myself really enjoying it. Then…I dunno...I think it was Facebook. Nina is Facebook friend and the algorithms must've put her posts on my feed...all of a sudden Yoga for Healthy Aging started showing up on my page. I sort of glanced at them but didn't really take it very seriously—until one day I realized not only was I not getting 'better,' I was rapidly becoming unable to do much more than walk through the house and sit at the computer. I gained 30 lbs. My spine felt compressed all the time. Omg. That was terrifying! So I started reading the blog posts and then I contacted you, Nina.

Nina: What kind of yoga did you practice? 

Anita: The three sequences you and Baxter told me practice (see Low Back Care Practice, Mini Restorative Practice, and Gentle All-Around Practice). Seriously. I am not a devotee. I just do the poses that work best for my issues and I do the relaxation poses so I don't explode. And that's pretty much it. It feels so good, though, I probably should work more diligently at it. I still do the PM yoga poses because it helps me to sleep. I'm in menopause and own a small business that is my sole income—that combination is lethal for a good night's sleep. Yoga relaxation poses really do help. You know my saying: Sleep is the New Sex. A good night's sleep is priceless!  

Nina: A few years later, how are you feeling about your body, your balance, and your life? 

Anita: OMG. SO much better. Continuing weight loss and regaining flexibility and balance. Who would've thought balance was so important—but...yep! To regain it Nina started me out by making me walk barefoot. I was SO resistant (I'm just not a barefoot kinda gal, having stepped on glass, 2 bees and a scorpion—really—and living with giant dogs has made me very leery) But here's the thing: walking barefoot—even just in the house—really does help my balance. 

My sacrum is a bit wonky and I have some pinched nerves that numb out my toes (omg I sound like a wreck!). Walking barefoot allows me to stretch my toes out in ways that shoes simply don't allow. And with that I can feel how my feet relate to the rest of my body, if that makes any sense? I still get a little unbalanced because I am frequently unfocused but when that happens I take my shoes off, stand there for a few minutes, regroup. When that doesn't do the trick I lie down and do Legs Against the Wall, which ALWAYS does the trick. Good thing I usually work from home. 

Oh, I forgot to talk about Reclined Leg Stretch when I talked about my sacrum. That pose is THE BEST for wonky hips. My sacrum gets cocked out of place and RLS helps put it back. After I do the RLS—I do the one where you gently pull the knee over—that really opens up the hips.

Nina: Anything else you’d like to tell our readers?

Anita: Too much to say here. I would just say: Do not be afraid to ask for help. Thought I was at the end of my healthy life, with a rigid body and a terrified mind. Reaching out to you and YFHA was a lifesaver. I have so much more body confidence and...well, I don't fear the onset of advancing age any more. Or at least not as much. 

Nina: Thanks so much, Anita, for taking the time to share your story with us! 

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