120 of 121 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, March 6, 2006
This review is from: Relief Is in the Stretch: End Back Pain Through Yoga (Hardcover)
As a journalist and Iyengar Yoga Teacher who uses yoga for people with back problems, I was excited to see this new book by a physician and someone who claims to have studied with BKS Iyengar. The reality was a disappointment for a number of reasons.
Where to start? His choice of poses, is in my opinion far too challenging for the average person coming to this book - and possibly yoga for the first time - looking for an answer to back pain. The second pose offered for idiopathic (no obvious cause) back pain is Janu Sirsasana, a seated forward bend. He rightly insructs students to keep their back straight and bend from the hip crease. However the vast majority of students will bend at the mid back because of tight hamstrings and lack of body awareness - likely making their back ache worse. This danger will be enhanced because the author does not suggest putting height under the hips, a standard instruction to help students perform seated forward bends correctly. The next pose, Paschimottanasana, another seated forward bend, is even more intense. Here he does suggest holding a strap to help reach the feet for the modified version, but why not in Janu Sirsana? Still no blanket or other height under the hips. He then offers the full version of the same forward bend with one hand grasping the wrist of the other hand around the end of the feet. This is available to about two per cent of the population I would estimate, and would likely exacerbate the back condition of many unsuspecting people opening this book to yoga for the first time and not recognizing their own limitations. While gentle twisting is recommended for back pain by Iyengar, no twisting poses appear in this chapter or many others. He gives a chapter over to weight control and another to pregnancy, but I could find no reference to scoliosis. As there was no index I could possibly be mistaken.
The pictures themselves are poor and underexposed. They have no caption, which means the reader is left to figure out which picture refers to which description.
The beginning of the book gives a lot of space to describing different styles of yoga, including a number, like Ashtanga and Bickram which the author, then says may not be appropriate for people with back pain. However he still offers an address for Ashtanga Yoga among the resources at the end of the book, but no guidance on finding an Iyengar teacher - the style he professes to use, and whose teachers are often highly trained in therapeutic yoga.
The suggested reading includes BKS Iyengar's classic Light on Yoga, which, although brilliant, would be next to useless for most people seeking help with back pain. However, he fails to include Iyengar's other book, Yoga: the Path to Holistic Health, which includes many therapeutic poses and three routines for lower, mid and upper back pain.
I would strongly recommend instead: Back Care Basics: A Doctor's Gentle Yoga Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief by Mary Pullig Schatz, a book actually endorsed by BKS Iyengar, which introduces us to many very modified and safe poses, and which makes this new volume, in my opinion, largely redundant.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enlightening, June 11, 2005
This review is from: Relief Is in the Stretch: End Back Pain Through Yoga (Hardcover)
An excellent book, neatly divided into two parts, the first part describing succinctly yoga and back pain and the second part suggesting poses for nine different diagnoses. Having suffered severe crippling leg pains that my general practioner finally diagnosed as relating to my back, I sought relief. Relief in the Stretch opened up a whole new world for me. It suggested Iyengar yoga, a form of yoga that focuses on the accuracy of poses. I started seeing an Iyengar yoga teacher and concurrently reading and rereading this book. I learn that yoga is the right thing for chronic pain. It does indeed "increase flexibility, strengthening muscles and bones, increasing range of motion, sharpening focus, heightening self-awareness, and producing calm." There are numerous helpful medical tidbits, such as when one muscles flexes another muscle relaxes: "every time the biceps contracts . . . its opposite, the triceps . . . must relax." When I tighten my abdominal muscles I relax the muscles in my back, the muscles that are partly the cause of my pain. I learned that a patient has symptoms, i.e. sharp pains in my leg in my case, but that the doctor needs signs to diagnose the cause, i.e. the films from an MRI. Nine different types of back pain are discussed (including Herniated Discs, Arthritis, Sacroliac Joint Derangement, Pirformis Syndrome and Weight Control) with yoga poses for each. Everytime I reread a chapter I discover something new. If you have back problems, this is not just a book to buy, read and shelve in your library. Rather it is also a book that will be a continuing source of information as you work at obtaining long-term relief through yoga.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very Basic, May 3, 2005
This review is from: Relief Is in the Stretch: End Back Pain Through Yoga (Hardcover)
I thought this book would be good to add to my collection, but found it to be very basic. Good if you are just starting out and suffer from some forms of back pain but not all types,like disc injuries should be very careful with any type of bending at the waist with straight leg movements. I am a fan of yoga over all is very helpful for those trying to reduce the muscle pain but be very carful with any form of twist. Guarded recommendation.
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