Yoga Health Secrets

Yoga for arthritis and rheumatism

It is also highly beneficial to arthritis sufferers to eat one or two finely grated raw potatoes, including the skin, every day. I know it sounds revolting but, added to soups, stews, salads or vegetables just before serving you would hardly know it was there! However, your system will know it is there and react ”n a very favourable way. It is worth trying is it not? and I would be most interested to hear from my readers who notice an improvement in their condition through the ‘potato cure’.

But let us now turn this from a cookery book back into a book on HathaYoga! Here is an exercise known as HALAS ANA or the PLOUGH POSTURE. One of the basic Yoga asanas, it stretches the vertebrae to the maximum, and subjects the abdomen and its organs and muscles to a powerful massage. The nerve centre and cells along the spine are stimulated as they receive a richer supply of blood. By practising this exercise your spine will gradually become more elastic and as it effects the kidneys it is a powerful way of eliminating the toxic waste that is the primary cause of arthritis and allied complaints. Waste is the foundation of all disease. It cannot flourish if the body is purified. And now for the PLOUGH POSTURE. (See page 137.)

1. Lie down on your back, feet together and hands along your sides. Raise your legs and buttocks off the ground and as you put your hands on your hips to steady yourself push your legs over your head while keeping your knees straight. The first stage of the Plough Posture is pictured in figure 44, page 137.

2. Bend your legs backwards until your toes touch the ground. Press your chin firmly against your chest in a chin lock and place your hands, palms down, facing the opposite way to your legs. Your body now roughly resembles an old-fashioned plough. Try to increase the stretch of your spine by pushing your toes away from your head as far as you can. I have demonstrated the correct position in figure 45. Your hands may be placed in two other ways if you wish. One way is to lace them together and place them behind your head just above the neck and the other is to keep them on the hips as in stage one. Indeed this way may help you to push your body over a little more and increase the stretch of the spine.

Some of my older readers may find difficulty with Halasana at first so try it this way. Take your starting position with your head two, three, or more feet away from the wall according to your height and convenience. When you swing your legs over your head your toes will touch the wall. Try then to walk down the wall with your toes, but gently please. Do not try to force your toes lower down the wall than they will comfortably go, otherwise an enraged and rigid muscle could repay your lack of consideration by giving you agony for weeks, which would have the effect of scaring you away for evermore from this most valuable posture. So careful, please.

When you are able to perform this Plough Posture to your liking try to increase, all the time, the overall stretch, as this position is most beneficial when carried to its extreme form, i.e. with the toes at the maximum distance from the head and the chin pressed firmly into the middle of the chest, as in the illustration.

The way you unwind yourself from the Plough Posture is equally important as the way you get into it. Performed in its correct way, the unwinding of the Plough requires considerable muscular control so, as always, go slowly at first and constant practice will give you the control you need. As you unwind this posture keep your head on the floor throughout until you return to the starting position flat on your back. Your natural tendency will be to raise your head as you unwind but, although you must do it this way when you first begin, always bear in mind what you are aiming for. The keeping of your head on the floor increases the work on your dorsal and abdominal muscles and gives them a very powerful massage and exercise. As you unwind bend your knees as this will make things easier for you than keeping them straight, and above all unwind slowly- This posture is, as you will have realized by now, deceptively simple looking. Graceful in execution and beautiful in its static stage, nevertheless it uses a lot of muscles which you may seldom have used before in this particular manner, and it also requires a high degree of muscular control to perform it to perfection.