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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Why Drinking Too Much Water Is Dangerous

[This article was extracted from Dr. Ben Kim's blog and is indeed a very good piece of information, in which many people have been ignorant and misinformed]

On January 12, 2007, a 28-year old Californian wife and mother of three children died from drinking too much water. Her body was found in her home shortly after she took part in a water-drinking contest that was sponsored by a local radio show. Entitled "Hold Your Wee For A Wii," the contest promoters promised a free Wii video game machine to the contestant who drank the most water without urinating.

It is estimated that the woman who died drank approximately 2 gallons of water during the contest. When she and other contestants complained of discomfort and showed visible signs of distress, they were laughed at by the promoters and even heckled.

This tragic news story highlights the importance of understanding why drinking too much water can be dangerous to your health.

Whenever you disregard your sense of thirst and strive to ingest several glasses of water a day just because you have been told that doing so is good for your health, you actually put unnecessary strain on your body in two major ways :

1. Ingesting more water than you need can increase your total blood volume. And since your blood volume exists within a closed system - your blood circulatory system - needlessly increasing your blood volume on a regular basis puts unnecessary burden on your heart and blood vessels.

2. Your kidneys must work overtime to filter excess water out of your blood circulatory system. Your kidneys are not the equivalent of a pair of plumbing pipes whereby the more water you flush through your kidneys, the cleaner they become; rather, the filtration system that exists in your kidneys is composed in part by a series of specialized capillary beds called glomeruli. Your glomeruli can get damaged by unnecessary wear and tear over time, and drowning your system with large amounts of water is one of many potential causes of said damage.

Putting unnecessary burden on your cardiovascular system and your kidneys by ingesting unnecessary water is a subtle process. For the average person, it is virtually impossible to know that this burden exists, as there are usually no obvious symptoms on a moment-to-moment basis. But make no mistake about it: this burden is real and can hurt your health over the long term.



Forcing your body to accept a large amount of water within a short period of time - say, an hour or two - as several contestants did during the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest can be fatally dangerous to your health. Here's why:

If you force large amounts of water into your system over a short period of time, your kidneys will struggle to eliminate enough water from your system to keep the overall amount at a safe level.

As your blood circulatory system becomes diluted with excess water, the concentration of electrolytes in your blood will drop relative to the concentration of electrolytes in your cells. In an effort to maintain an equal balance of electrolytes between your blood and your cells, water will seep into your cells from your blood, causing your cells to swell.

If this swelling occurs in your brain, the bones that make up your skull hardly budge. The result is an increase in intracranial pressure i.e. your brain gets squeezed. Depending on how much water your drink in a short period of time, you could experience a wide variety of symptoms, ranging from a mild headache to impaired breathing. And as occurred recently in the tragic water-drinking contest, it is quite possible to die if you drink enough water in a short enough period of time.

This information is particularly important for parents to pass on to their children. Foolish water-drinking contests are not uncommon among high school and university students, especially while playing cards.

So how much water should you drink to best support your health ?

The answer to this question depends on your unique circumstances, including your diet, exercise habits, and environment.

If you eat plenty of foods that are naturally rich in water, such as vegetables, fruits, and cooked legumes and whole grains, you may not need to drink very much water at all. If you do not use much or any salt and other seasonings, your need for drinking water goes down even further.

Conversely, if you do not eat a lot of plant foods and/or you add substantial salt and spices to your meals, you may need to drink several glasses of water every day.

Regardless of what your diet looks like, if you sweat on a regular basis because of exercise or a warm climate, you will need to supply your body with more water (through food and/or liquids) than someone who does not sweat regularly.

Ultimately, the best guidance I can provide on this issue is to follow your sense of thirst. Some people believe that thirst is not a reliable indicator of how much water you need, since many people suffer with symptoms related to dehydration and don't seem to feel a need to drink water on a regular basis. My experience has been that most people who are chronically dehydrated have learned to ignore a parched mouth. If you ask such people if they are thirsty and would like a piece of fruit or a glass of water, they will almost always realize that they are indeed thirsty.

Some people suggest observing the color of your urine as a way of looking out for dehydration. The idea is that clear urine indicates that you are well hydrated, while yellow urine indicates that you need more water in your system. While this advice is somewhat useful, it is important to remember that some chemicals (like synthetic vitamins) and heavily pigmented foods (like red beets) can add substantial color to your urine. Thumbs down for synthetic vitamins, and thumbs up for red beets and other richly colored vegetables and fruits.

The main idea that I wish to share through this article is to beware of mindlessly drinking several glasses of water per day without considering your diet, exercise habits, climate, and sense of thirst. And when you do find yourself in need of water, remember that you can get it from liquids and/or whole foods.

Please share this article with family and friends