Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (54 page)

It wasn’t until a year ago Thanksgiving that my son, Bruce, organized a yoga instructor to come to the family compound in the desert as a gift. That way all of us could take yoga classes together for the week. Well, I would never turn down Bruce for anything, and the chance to do any activity with the family is always a thrill.

To my surprise I took to it from the very first class. The breathing and stretching felt better than any form of exercise I had ever done before. There was a peacefulness, beauty, and elegance to it, and I loved the focus and concentration. I opened my eyes at one point, and the sky looked more blue;
vivid
is the word I’d use to describe it. The birds were singing more melodically, the bees were “bee-ing.” I was one with nature, and something about it all felt so … right.

That experience alone was enough to convert me to this ancient form of exercise. After the family left to go back home to their own lives, I continued with our yoga teacher, and to my great surprise and delight, so did my husband, Alan. Now we had this great activity to do together three or four mornings a week.

Unlike other forms of exercise that I have tried over the years,
yoga made me look forward to the alarm going off in the mornings. Instead of dreading the next hour, I found myself leaping out of bed to get up, go outside, breathe in the fresh air, and begin the luxurious stretching that is such a part of yoga.

I had always noticed that our cat, Chrissy Snow (I know, I know), a beautiful white Persian, woke up every day of her life and stretched and scratched and stretched some more. Nature knows. Now I was taking part in this ritual of nature, and my body loved it.

I have always exercised. I’ve had trainers come to my house for years. But there have always been pockets of fat here and there on my body that just wouldn’t go away no matter how hard I worked out. It was as if a couple of pieces of pie had settled right on the back top of my hips, like two pie shelves. Twisting, crunching, and sit-ups did nothing for these shelves … and they were laughing at me. Then the skin on my back started to drape, like a curtain, starting just about at the bra line. I lifted weights and did push-ups and not much happened; the curtains remained, flapping and waving. But with yoga, in a few weeks I began to see results such as I had never experienced before. The breath (it is all about the breath) would seep down into those fatty areas with each stretch and inhale; as I exhaled the breath would melt the fat. Literally, in a few months these problem areas were tighter, smaller, and smoother. I have not seen my hips, thighs, and back look this good in years. The big surprise is that I so loved the art and form of yoga that I stopped thinking of it as a means to improve my figure outwardly. I did it because my body and soul were wanting it, needing it. It was natural and felt as though my body had been looking for this outlet all my life. I took to yoga because it made me feel centered and in touch with my “self” and nature; the exciting result was a long, lean, flexible body.

For the first time I feel that I have found a form of daily exercise that I will do my entire life. I can’t see myself ever stopping. It is the one form of exercise that has no age barriers. It is not competitive; even my husband and I are not looking over our shoulders to check each other out. If you do that, you lose concentration, and concentration is required to hold these poses.

I am now two years into yoga. I consider myself a beginner, and
that is the exciting part. Every time my body is able to move forward to another pose that in the beginning felt impossible, I feel a personal triumph. I am now doing back bends … imagine being so flexible that I can do a back bend at sixty! Who would have thought? Between hormone replacement, which has kept my bones intact, and yoga, I can only imagine (and look forward to) what my body will allow me to do by year three. I am getting close to doing a handstand without my instructor standing guard—that amazes me.

So now I am going to do for you what so many tried to do for me for many years while I remained deaf to it. Try yoga. Try it. Before long, you will be waxing poetic as I am.

Yoga is great for cardio as well. Last summer, I debuted my one-woman show on Broadway. It was highly energetic; I ran back and forth from one end of the stage to the other and leaped and danced and sang and talked for ninety minutes each night, and the only form of exercise I did to get in shape was yoga. I was never out of breath onstage. Truly remarkable. My singing was better than ever before because now I used my yoga breath to pull the oxygen from the lowest part of my diaphragm. Singing became effortless.

The primary aim of yoga is to restore the mind to simplicity and peace. Yoga frees you from confusion and stress. Other forms of exercise strain muscles and bones, but yoga rejuvenates the body. By restoring the body, yoga frees the mind from the negative feelings caused by the fast pace of our modern lives. We are all going a mile a minute. We have lists in our heads, we walk down the street with cell phones, multitasking. We are a generation of superwomen and supermen, and it is making us sick. We have to find something to counterbalance the insanity, and for me yoga is the answer.

“Yoga is a light which, once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame,” said B. K. S. Iyengar, a yoga master.

I agree. Once the light of yoga was lit within me, I knew I would do this forever. It is now a part of me. I feel better, lighter, calmer … thinner (now you’re listening). After a yoga session, my mind becomes tranquil. Regular practice helps you face the turmoil of life. Our bodies are our temples. We need to care for them, and yoga keeps not only your body, but also your mind, healthy and active.

Yoga can heal parts of our bodies that have been injured, traumatized, or simply ignored and neglected. Western medicine can accelerate the healing process but all too often cannot tackle the source of the problem. Yoga is wonderful for ailments because it stimulates injured parts of the body by increasing the blood supply to those areas. The body is a complex piece of machinery, a finely connected network of muscles, joints, nerves, veins, arteries, and capillaries. The science of yoga classifies ailments that afflict the body and mind into three basic categories:

• self-inflicted ailments, caused by neglect or abuse of the body
  
• congenital ailments, present from birth
  
• ailments caused by the imbalance of any of the five elements of ether, air, fire, water, and earth in our system
  

Yoga can treat all three categories, but it requires a commitment to the treatment.

Yoga is good for people with cold extremities, which is caused by a slowdown in circulation when blood collects in the torso and fails to correctly reach the extremities. It gives rise to ailments of the chest and of the intestinal and abdominal organs. It is often the result of a sluggish thyroid, stress, or nervousness. Headstands and/or shoulder stands are great for the thyroid because the reverse position allows the blood to flow down and flush the thyroid with fresh blood.

Yoga is great for the heart and circulation, varicose veins, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, blocked arteries, angina, heart attack, colds, breathlessness, sinusitis, bronchitis, asthma, indigestion, acidity, and constipation.

I don’t know anyone over the age of fifty who isn’t troubled by constipation at some time or another. For some it is chronic and ongoing. Yoga is magical in its alleviation of constipation. After a series of yoga twists and positions, relief is immediate. This alone makes yoga worthwhile.

Yoga is also great for diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, duodenal ulcers, gastric ulcers, ulcerative colitis, incontinence, obesity, diabetes, low immune system, physical fatigue, muscle cramps, lower,
middle, and upper backache, osteoarthritis, skin conditions and skin health, the brain and nervous systems, the mind and emotions, women’s health, men’s health, and the balancing of the hormonal system. Need I say more? And you’ll get thin and flexible.

In the next chapter, you’ll read about what my yoga instructor, Julie Carmen, has to say about yoga.

CHAPTER 30
J
ULIE
C
ARMEN:
Y
OGA

Julie Carmen and I met filming a movie together in Tucson, Arizona. Several years later, we found ourselves virtually as neighbors living in Malibu, California. It seemed serendipitous that we would find each other again. I enjoy Julie’s technique; she has studied with several of the great yogi masters, and her approach is gentle yet informative. She explains each position thoroughly and motivates us to want to do the positions perfectly. She is a natural teacher, and I think you will get turned on to yoga after reading her interview, even if you have never thought about it
.

SS:
Thank you for your time. Through you as my teacher, I have come to love my yoga practice, but for those who have no idea of what to expect, walk me through the reasons why one would want to do yoga.

JC:
Yoga “tunes the instrument”—in other words, your body. I couldn’t imagine if, for instance, I was in an orchestra and played the violin, that I would not tune my instrument before playing. Each day, whether we’re going off to a stressful job, or being with children, or perhaps struggling with a personal illness, you can deal with your day more effectively if your body has been tuned.

SS:
Yes, but most people are interested in an exercise program because they want to get their bodies in shape. Tuning the instrument comes afterward because (as I now know) you get turned on by what yoga does to your body. You see results like never before.

JC:
Yes. Yoga has been practiced for more than five thousand
years, so it’s a time-honored system. Yoga aligns the joints into their natural, healthy posture, so that in a short period of time, muscle groups develop and maintain that alignment with a beautiful sculpting. With a balanced yoga practice, you’ll notice that there is definition in your glutes. Your stomach becomes more scooped; there’s more of a waistline, and your torso elongates so that your rib cage lifts out of your pelvis. Yoga helps you develop the muscle strength to be able to maintain that lift, so whether you’re sitting in the car or at a desk or computer, your waist is still long.

There are a lot of spine stability exercises in yoga. It really depends upon what the teacher teaches, but those spine-stabilizing postures help keep length in the waistline, and this also increases digestion and respiration so that the lungs aren’t sitting right on the stomach. There’s some space in there, so you can actually take a deep breath and digest more efficiently. Also, the neck is held long through yoga practice, and that gives a lifted feeling. A youthful look is about posture. A twenty-year-old who has been carrying a backpack and sitting over a Game Boy or video games can look older than his years just because his posture has collapsed.

SS:
That’s so true. Look at elderly people. My father-in-law had beautiful posture and walked erect and straight at the age of ninety-two. He always seemed so much younger than his years. Yet an elderly person who is hunched over looks frail and fragile.

JC:
Absolutely. You see a sixty-year-old with magnificent posture and say, “Wow! What’s their secret?” The secret is posture, and yoga is famous for developing magnificent posture.

SS:
Frankly, Julie, I don’t think sixty is “old” (laugh), seeing how that is my age!

JC:
You are so right! Sorry! It’s difficult to equate that age with you. It used to be deemed “old.”

SS:
But no more! I worked out for years with a trainer, and I always had fat deposits around the upper part of the back of my hips and waist, and then there was this extra “stuff” that popped out from under the back of my bra strap. No matter how hard I worked out, it wouldn’t go away. With yoga it is
melting
away. Why is that?

JC:
Yoga is thorough. There are thousands of postures. A teacher
is able to look at a body without a lot of clothes on and see where there are fat deposits. Usually the muscles in that area need more developing and strengthening. There’s a balance between stretch and strength. So the answer to your question is twofold: Number one, the cardio system has kicked up, and a strong yoga practice can make the heart beat fast for an extended period of time so you’re burning fat. And number two: You’re strengthening the muscles underneath where there are fat deposits so you’re toning that area. It’s different from weight lifting in a targeted way. Also, it relates hormonally because hormones are affected by yoga postures. For instance, if we’re upside down for five to seven minutes in different comfortable inversions, just being in that position affects the thyroid gland and stimulates thyroid action.

SS:
And we know from this book that the thyroid is a major hormone. I love the visual you create when I’m upside down. Can you tell me what you say?

JC:
Well, the blood flows in reverse and stimulates the thyroid. If you just have your legs up a wall, lying flat on your back relaxing, the blood will flow down and pool. I use poetic images such as “Imagine it’s a waterfall, and the blood and all the liquid in your body is draining out of your feet, draining out of your legs, and pooling or landing into a beautiful lake into a pool, which is your thyroid.” Those relaxing images also allow the brain to relax and not pump the stress hormones. Now if you have a hyperactive thyroid or high blood pressure, you should check with your doctor about having your head below your heart.

SS:
The first time you did that image for me, I could feel this lake at my thyroid, which I loved. Now what about constipation? As we get older, it seems that everybody has trouble with constipation. Is yoga good for that?

JC:
Yoga twists are good for constipation. You first want to warm up the body and then do gentle twists where you’re compressing the digestive organs, twisting and putting pressure on the colon, on the liver, and on the kidneys in your back. Then you unwind the twist and release the pressure. That area then fills up with nutrients and oxygen and blood, and then you twist again. You create stimulation in that
area. Being upside down also helps because gravity is pulling in an opposite way. If you’re standing all day long, often blood pools in your feet or intestines, and there’s a downward pull because of gravity. If you’re upside down in a shoulder stand or a headstand, eventually gravity’s pulling in a different direction.