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Truth be told, while the birth of no was inspired by last Friday’s giant migraine, it’s been building up since I got my osteoporosis diagnosis a few weeks ago.  I think there comes a time in everybody’s life when they realise they have to give themselves some slack, pat themselves on the back for how bloody well they’ve been doing and accept that sometimes limitations do not have to be kicked against endlessly.

That time for me is right now.  It brings with it an unusual mix of emotions, that’s for sure. Part of me is so tempted to keep on kicking and that part of me feels kind of redundant. But another part of me, and this is the best bit, is filled with a ball of fluttering butterfly-esque excitement for what the future may hold.

But in the interests of acceptance, saying “no” and being right here, we’re not thinking about what might happen but instead what is happening.  And primarily right now it’s all about looking after my bones, so here are a few things I’ve been doing to keep my swiss-cheese thighbones as strong as possible!

1. Walking every day: We hear a lot about weightbearing exercise as a way to keep the bones strong, but what exactly is it? Weightbearing exercise is any activity you do while on your feet and legs that works your muscles and bones against gravity. During weightbearing exercise, bone adapts to the impact of weight and the pull of muscle by building more bone cells. Consequently, bone becomes stronger and more dense. And the best of all weightbearing exercises is walking.  I’m trying to do at least 20 minutes every day with a couple of longer walks (45 minutes) each week. Even if you just walk to the corner and back it’s better than nothing.  Running and jogging are also good weightbearing exercises but new research has shown that the low impact of walking could be more useful for building those bone cells.  Also, while swimming and cycling are great exercise, they aren’t weightbearing unfortunately (that said of course, any exercise is better than none!).

2.  Pilates/Yoga: Because both Pilates and Yoga use the resistence of your own body weight against the floor they are also great weightbearing exercises.  However, choose the class you go to carefully.  If you already have osteoporosis/osteopenia or are at high risk of them you must make sure you are doing the right exercises, otherwise you will do more harm than good.  People with osteoporosis/osteopenia shouldn’t be practising spinal flexion (forward bends), lateral flexion (side bends such as Trikonasana) or rotation (any kind of spinal twist)**.  Narrows your practice down a bit doesn’t it?  But I have developed a really good practice without these things and you can too if you make sure your are working with a teacher who knows what they are doing.

3. Vitamin D: The best source of Vitamin D is the sunshine but I live in a country with a climate that can only really be described as grey! Vitamin D deficiency is rife in northern Europe and with it can come muscle pain and fatigue.  More importantly the body needs Vitamin D to absorb magnesium and calcium (and you need both to build healthy bone, calcium alone is pretty useless) from the diet.  And I’m sure you knew this but there is far more calcium in a serving of broccoli than in a serving of milk.  The more I read about broccoli the more I’m convinced it is truly amazing! Because I know my vitamin D levels are low I take an oral Vitamin D spray every day.

4. Stop smoking, cut down on alcohol, caffeine and salt: That pretty much goes without saying in all areas of life these days right? All factors that can, amongst other things, inhibit bone growth and absorption of key minerals. Oh, and drink gallons of water. But you knew that was coming!

5. De-stress as much as possible: Do yoga, do pilates, meditate, get lots of fresh air, try not to worry, say ‘no’ whenever you need to, get lots of sleep, trust in the universe. Do whatever it is that brings a little bit of peace into your life. Because stress, especially long term stress, as we are all too aware is one of the most health destroying things in the world. Plus it is now thought that the hormone shifts that happen during stress (increased cortisol, decreased serotonin) inhibit the production of osteoblasts (bone-building cells).

So as always: move, breathe, smile, eat (a little) cake. Look after yourselves.

I’ve covered exercise and lifestyle rather than diet in this post for two reasons. Firstly because exercise and lifestyle is what I do, what I’m qualified to do – I’m no dietician. But if there are any dieticians out there who would like to write a guest post on diet and osteoporosis I’d love that! Secondly, while a balanced diet is essential for healthy bones, it’s that actual weight-bearing stuff that builds the bone cells.

** The reason for avoiding these exercises is to do with load bearing through the facet joints of the spine. Forward flexion causes excessive force on the front of the vertebral bodies and weakened bone may not be able to withstand the force. Likewise in lateral flexion and rotation (and especially when lateral flexion is mixed with rotation such as in Triangle pose) compression forces on the facet joints and vertebral body can be excessive. Spinal extension however is a different story (backbends such as cobra, upward dog). The part of the vertebra involved in the weight bearing is much more able to bear the load. Also strong back extensors are built up during extension work and these help with avoidance of spinal fracture.

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“Because we had waited so long for anyone to ask us to do something, we were saying yes, yes, yes.  That was a moment where it was really evident that there was always going to be one more thing that they’d want you to do.  At some point you had to say no.  That was the birth of no.”
–Stone Gossard (PJ20, 2011)

The regular reader may already be aware of the fact that I have a tendency to do too much.  I have a virtual incapacity to say no.  I’ve always worked harder than I needed to (16 hour coffee shop shifts while at university – why was I not out having fun like normal students?), committed to more than I wanted to, endlessly tried to make everyone happy.

When you work for yourself there is a tendency to say yes to every given opportunity, even the ones you don’t want to do, because of the fear of never being asked again.

Saying yes is fine at the beginning.  You need to fine tune your client base, work out the things you love and the things you don’t love.  But eventually, endlessly saying yes means that you find yourself working 11-hour days (and when they are 11 hours of standing on your feet doing something pretty physical it really takes its toll) and realising you haven’t had a full day off for a fortnight.

On Friday I got the migraine from hell.  That’s always a sign that I’m doing too much.  My mother said just thinking about what I was doing gave her a migraine.  The day before I was to lead my first training day teaching people to teach yoga to kids, instead of calmly going through my notes I was lying in a darkened room with an increasing sense of panic in my stomach.**

And that was the birth of no.

I have a huge Pilates exam coming up in June.  I am starting to teach yoga in schools two days a week after the Easter holidays.  Both of these things fill me with so much joy that I can’t imagine not doing them.

But I can’t do them if I’m working 11 hours a day in the clinic.

So this week sees the start of me changing my hours at the clinic. And as of 1st April I will be there from 2-7 on Sundays and Tuesdays, 12-7 on Mondays.

And when I’m full I’m full.

Because life is too short to keep saying yes and hoping that you’ll make enough money to say no in five years’ time.  Life is too short to be so tired you can’t move.  Life is too precious to have the joy sucked out of it by exhaustion.  Because no matter how much you love your job, it’s still just your job.  I cannot give my clients the energy they deserve, I cannot give myself the energy I deserve unless I have that space for no.

Bring it.

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** the training went well, Saturday dawned migraine-free, thank all the gods, and I taught on a wing and a prayer – which has a tendency to always work well for me!

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I’m not a particularly touchy feely person. I’m not really into big hugs unless I know you very well and the way things feel doesn’t really bother me (with the possible exception of polystyrene). I don’t, for example, miss the touch and feel of paper books at all since I got my Kindle and I couldn’t care less how a mobile phone feels in my hands as long as it does the things it needs to do.

But when it comes to music it’s a different story – I can travel back decades in my mind at the sound of a single chord structure and I cannot, will not, pay money for MP3s. My music has to be as sound quality perfect as it can get and while I understand the convenience of MP3s when out and about I do not want to buy my music in a compressed format. It hurts my ears and my heart. If I could I’d still buy everything on vinyl….

My friend and fellow yoga teacher Rosanna was talking the other day about music during yoga class. Some teachers create huge playlists that work perfectly with the sequence they are teaching but that doesn’t work for me. I do play a little bit of classical music (as a massage therapist I have a natural aversion to plinky plonky chanting, panpipes and whale noises), very quietly in the background when I teach simply to offset the annoying noise of rattling radiators and people in the flats upstairs, but that is all.

Apart from my family and my work, music is probably the single most important thing in my life. Outside of yoga and anatomy trainings I spend most of my money on CDs and gig tickets. Music is something that catches me in its net and takes me away to some far off distant place. It does not, therefore, mix well when it comes to yoga as far as I’m concerned. I cannot go to or teach a class where the music is anything more than a whisper in the background. There is no place for pratyahara when music is playing for me, because I can only be with the music. While I spend my time making fancy Spotify playlists for people (it’s the modern day equivalent of a mix tape), don’t ever expect to hear one in any class I teach.

But I’m not teaching a class to you today readers, so I have made you a mix tape. The theme of this one is songs that make me cry. As with most things in life, music is completely subjective and I have no idea why some of these songs make me weep so much. But it’s all in a good way, crying is cathartic and these are a handful of the songs I’ll turn to when I need a good weep. Just press play!

Music in the key of tears from suburbanyogini on 8tracks.

1. Razor – Foo Fighters: The ultimate break up song. When Dave sings the word ‘goodbye’ I think my heart will break. This version is live from the Foos’ acoustic tour in 2006.

2. Slide Away – Oasis: Much as I love Gallagher Senior, his music isn’t the first thing you think of when it comes to tearjerkers. But this song is probably the most beautiful thing he ever wrote. Recorded while Liam still had that untainted voice, before it turned into the bitter snarl it has become today, this is has always been a breathtaking moment of love and loss for me.

3. Fix You – Coldplay: Himself always says that I cry at the first hint of a minor key (for example I just can’t listen to Ben Folds without tears springing to my eyes) so Coldplay have always been a bit too much for me to cope with. I only have to hear the intro to Fix You and I’m weeping all over the place. It was on X-Factor last winter and as soon as Himself heard the opening note he turned to me and said “are you crying yet?” (I was). It’s also the music to the closing scene of my favourite movie (wow, I’m really outing myself as completely uncool aren’t I??!).

4. Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns – Mother Love Bone: This is that song that everyone knows as “the one from Singles“. While slightly ruined for me by Rhian (I’m not going to tell you what she said, you’ll have to ask her yourself), it’s always been those opening piano notes that do it for me. That and the fact that Andy died not long after it was recorded.

5. Black – Pearl Jam: And so, with Andy dead the search for a new singer began. Black started life as ‘E-Ballad’ on the Gossman Project demos (something I thought to be apocryphal until, oh happy day, Himself found them online a few weeks ago). These vocal-less demos wound their way to Southern California and into the hands of a man named Vedder. The rest is history. The lyrics to Black (and seriously if “I know some day you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be the star, in somebody else’s sky. Why? Why? Why, can’t it be mine?” doesn’t bring a tear to your eye you have a heart of stone) were written on the journey from San Diego to Seattle.

For nostalgia purposes you get a video for this one too. I think this is Lollapalooza ‘92. It probably says in the comments, but I don’t read YouTube comments for the sake of my sanity. A special note should be taken of the drummer’s cigarette – it’s quite an achievement. I’d tell you which drummer this is but I don’t know. Is it one of the Daves? PJ changed drummers every 15 minutes back then so it’s hard to tell….

Because 8tracks.com only lets you upload a minimum of 8 tracks you get three bonuses here. First up is February Stars by Foo Fighters as Himself says this, not Razor, is their saddest song. Then you get E-Ballad, which became Black. And just for fun you get Dollar Short as well (I think if you listen to it you’ll work out what that became). (NB I cannot be held responsible for the sound quality of MP3s that have been ripped from a 22-year-old tape).

And if these songs didn’t make you cry, which ones do?