Yoga for mobility

14/09/2020

I am delighted to announce that Yoga For Mobility has teamed up with the registered NDIS provider, All Ability Yoga. Now our services are more accessible to members of the disabled community and come under the umbrella of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

All Ability Yoga is run by Julie who has a disability herself. Like Yoga For Mobility she applies the yoga therapy that she developed to deal with her own disability to people who have similar disabilities.

Both Julie and me are very excited about the synergy we have and are looking forward to working together and sharing yoga and yoga therapy with people dealing with a disability.

15/08/2020

15/08/2020

Mark Workman, shares how he (& others) can use yoga to help when there’s been an amputation.

04/08/2020

I am delighted to let everyone know that I will be presenting on yoga for amputees and people suffering limb loss at the Global Yoga Therapy Day on the 14th of this month (August).

I will also be on a panel convened by Yoga Australia discussing Yoga Therapy for diverse communities.

I encourage anyone interested in adapting yoga to the needs of people with a disability to click on the link and register for the presentations.

https://global-yoga-therapy-day.heysummit.com/speakers/mark-workman/

16/07/2020

Little meditations - I want...

We are told by many traditions of that desire or craving is the root of all suffering. We often make the mistake of thinking it is the things we desire that are the problem, however it is really the state of desiring or craving that causes us suffering and affects our decision making. Food, s*x, money etc., are not in themselves causes of suffering but being driven by the desire for them causes all manner of misery and discontent.

A little meditation can help us understand how that functions in our life. I like to do this at night when I am laying in bed getting ready to go to sleep.

Simply say 'I want', silently in your mind or quietly out loud a number of times and notice how it makes you feel. Once you have established that, consciously relinquish the whole experience of wanting. Rather than say 'I don't want' simply let go of the whole concept of wanting. In my practice I find it doesn't take long before I just want to lay there peacefully and am completely dissatisfied with the driven and discontented state of wanting. So I just lay there content with that very moment, the past is gone and the future isn't real.

I like to reflect on the story of St Anthony, one of the Desert Fathers of the early Christian Church. He was pestered to visit Alexandria by the bishop. When he got there the bishop showed him the great new cathedral and told him of the wealth the church had gained since it became the religion of the Roman Empire.

On hearing this St Anthony said "Wealth? What is wealth?"

The bishop replied, "Wealth is when you can have anything you want."

"Ahhh..." said St Anthony, "Thank you bishop, I understand. So if I want nothing then I am wealthy." And he promptly returned to the desert.

15/07/2020

It is past time for me to update everyone on the trial 8 week program with Amputees NSW. I haven't posted anything for a while because the program with Amps NSW and the necessities of keeping body and soul together have taken all my time. So here's all the news that is fit to print...

The participants in the program range from new amputees to people that have been living with a prosthesis all their lives and include bilateral amputees, above and below the knee amputees, young people and old people.

The 8 week program has been a great success for all of them on two fronts. Firstly they have really benefited from becoming aware of their own asymmetry and having some techniques to deal with it. It has been a group effort and by applying the fundamental principles of asana practice to each person's particular situation we have adapted three asana practices, one each for laying down, sitting and standing, to the needs of all the attendee with great effect.

Secondly, focusing on the breath during asana practice and learning two pranayama techniques has given the participants considerable control over their mood and helped them improve their focus and concentration considerably.

All of the classes and discussions have been recorded and it has left me with a wealth of material to refer to in my efforts to improve the application of yoga to amputees and other people suffering limb loss. In addition to improving future programs the experience and the material that I have collected will give greater depth and broader relevance to the book that I am writing. I hope it will help broaden the reach of yoga and demonstrate its real value to people with disabilities.

Anyone who is interested in what we have been up to can have a look at the classes in a raw and unedited form on the Yoga For Mobility YouTube channel. I will post a link here once I have uploaded video of all the classes. The YouTube videos have been invaluable for people attending the program because they can go back and revise what they have learned at their leisure.

I hope to continue with the online work. At the moment I am trying to work out how to afford to buy suitable lighting etc so I can turn my former office into a more suitable place for delivering online classes and recording instructional videos. If anyone has any bright ideas on that front please don't hesitate to tell me. I have been doing all this on a meagre government benefit and it is quite a challenge.

The plan now is to offer the program to the amputee community in general and do another trial program for upper limb amputees. Thanks have to go to Amputees NSW and all the people who have helped me get this far for their amazing support and encouragement.

30/05/2020

Phantom Limb Pain Success!

I could not be more pleased. I taught a practice to deal with phantom limb sensations to a lady in Kashmir who was very troubled by phantom limb pain. She found it helped with pain very rapidly and after only four days her phantom limb sensations have decreased significantly. She has stopped taking the strong pain medication she was on and is feeling much better. Such is the power of authentic yoga. :)

28/05/2020

In spite of the fact that I am not personally that comfortable with a lot of exposure I created a YouTube channel to help make yoga for people with limb loss more accessible and give students the ability to revise what they have learnt. If you feel so inclined check it out.

11/05/2020

Little meditations

I am planning to do a short series of little meditations that I have found helpful. I often write about quite serious subjects and I think I should balance them with simple things that I have found helpful and may be of interest to others.

Breathing the ocean

This meditation just occurred to me years ago and I still like it so I thought I would share it.

When you breath, especially if you breath using Ujjayi breathing (controlling the breath by slightly contracting your vocal chords) you will notice that breathing in and breathing out have different sounds. That is the basis of this little practice.

Visualise a very large statue of whatever form of the divine you relate to best sitting cross legged on a lonely little beach facing the ocean. Visualise yourself sitting in the lap of the statue, comfortable, safe and quiet. The ocean swell is gentle. You can see and hear the ocean washing up the beach and then draining away.

Listen to your breath and let the sound of your inhalation merge with the water as it is washing up the beach and the sound of your exhalation merge with the water as it is draining away.

That’s it.

From there you can go anywhere or nowhere. You can merge with the statue, notice the ocean swell is the heart beat of creation, reflect on the ocean as an ocean of awareness or just sit and listen until there is nothing but the ocean swell.

11/05/2020

A case of Upaya

I have procrastinated about this post for weeks. I don’t want to seem like I am preaching to the choir nor do I want to make it appear that dealing with a person who is self harming is easy. However, I think that stories about the application of Upaya – skilful or expedient means - are always useful. I also feel that this story shows the value of the Daoist idea that everyone needs a Gong, i.e., a skill developed through practice and perseverance that typically involves both mind and body.

Lock down anxiety

I was the caretaker at a facility for homeless people during the beginning of the lock down in Australia. One of the residents was a guy who, for whatever reason, was totally dependent on the women in his life to solve his problems, both practical and emotional. Due to the lock down he couldn’t visit his mum or his girlfriend. He tried to get a solution to his difficulties in dealing with the lock down by calling his girlfriend but unsurprisingly the phone calls ended disastrously. There was nothing his girlfriend could actually do and in any case she was trying to manage a house full of bored children herself.

Self harm

He started self harming. He took a fairly serious over dose of Diazepam and physically injured his head. I saw him the day after very groggy and with a bloodied makeshift bandage on his head. He had come to me looking for help. Not as a therapist but just because I was the the most stable person he had access to.

It was pretty clear that buying into the dependency wouldn’t do any good – I didn’t have those answers anyway. However, I did support him emotionally. I talked to him and agreed that he wasn’t in very good shape. It became obvious that he was in a cycle of getting anxious about getting anxious. He needed to change his mind but suggesting direct techniques like asana or pranayama clearly would be rejected. He was looking for someone else to solve his problem and he wasn’t going to be receptive to a discussion about personal responsibility in the state he was in. For him the problem was all about access to his mother and girlfriend not what was happening in his mind.

Finding a valued skill

So what did I have to work with? He was a good singer and guitarist. Those things he had developed himself. It was his Gong – a skill he had developed over time and something he valued about himself. So I talked to him about music and ended up lending him my guitar because it was something I could actively do for him that wasn’t buying into the dependency.

Happily he spent the next two days playing the guitar and writing songs. I helped him with a plan to get himself a good guitar and he even ended up doing a band rehearsal with a band that were interested in him playing lead guitar and doing vocals for them. He ended up with a solution to his immediate problem that didn’t depend on anything else and a plan of action for his future.

What worked?

From my point of view there were three key things that made the guitar strategy work.

1) I talked to him as an ordinary person rather than a therapist or wise person and reinforced the things he told me about himself that he valued and didn’t depend on other people. We talked about his skills - fishing, his business cleaning out rainwater tanks and music. He is better than me at all of those things so I could genuinely ask his advice or remark on what he said in a way that contributed to his self esteem.

2) I didn’t say that he must stop self harming. My comment was ‘Do you think you could use a better strategy than hurting yourself?’ That was simply a recognition that self harm wasn’t the central problem. His feeling of helplessness and his inability to even think of a solution that was independent of other people was the real issue.

3) Finally I saw an opportunity to do something that encouraged things he valued about himself and that supported self reliance and rather than reinforced dependency.

I am pleased to say that he successfully changed his mind, he bought a good guitar and he is now playing in a band that really does need his talents.