In this episode of The Dr. Hedberg Show, I interview Sara Lewis in a discussion about the health benefits of yoga.
If you struggle with pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, insomnia, gut issues, or have adverse childhood experiences, this is one episode you should really listen to.
Sara spent 25 years providing program management expertise to international public health projects in South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and South Asia. The work included directing, managing and planning projects in maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition. After her career in public health, Sara began a second career as a Holistic Health Coach and Yoga Instructor. As a Health Coach, she helps clients discover the benefits of using food as medicine and making small lifestyle changes that have big impacts. She has been practicing yoga for over 15 years and teaching since 2014. Her passion for cooking and food led her to yoga when she began studying the connection between mindfulness and stress eating. Sara teaches both vinyasa flow and yin/restorative classes. Her yin classes include pranayama (breath work) and deep relaxation. When she's not on the mat or working with clients, Sara can be found in the kitchen fermenting foods, experimenting with locally sourced ingredients from the farmers market or out exploring the hills of Western NC on a bicycle.
Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to "The Dr. Hedberg Show." This is Dr. Hedberg and I'm excited today to have my good friend and colleague Sara Lewis on and we're gonna be talking about yoga. So I've known Sara for quite a while and she's actually my yoga teacher and she's also a health coach. So Sara, welcome to the show.
Sara: Thank you Dr. Hedberg, great to be here.
Dr. Hedberg: So why don't we just start off by you filling everyone in on your background and what you do and what you've been working on lately?
Sara: Sure. So I had a career in international public health for about 25 years and I traveled all over the world. I was in Latin America, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. And I worked mostly in maternal/child healthcare and nutrition and it was a very gratifying career, but at the same time, it was very stressful with all that travel. And so I looked for support from the health coach and I got so much from my health coach that I decided to become one myself. And one of the healing modes that my health coach suggested was to increase my yoga practice and that led me to become a yoga instructor in addition to the health coaching.
So now I have a business called Simply Sara Wellness and Yoga, and I teach about six classes a week at the Waynesville, North Carolina Yoga Center and I provide health coaching to individuals and group clients. So sometimes people will say to me, "Well, what is health coaching?" Health coaching is similar to a personal trainer, but I focus on food and nutrition and lifestyle. So if you came to me and you said, "Sara, I need help with insomnia or my IBS, or I want to prevent type two diabetes because it runs in my family," then I would work with you to create short-term and long-term goals and I would support you and I would challenge you. I'd probably gave you some homework. I'd wanna know about your life's ambitions and your fears. I'd probably ask you what you had to eat today. But health coaching is much bigger than food and nutrition. It's about finding balance in your life and feeling your best.
Dr. Hedberg: Excellent. So I've been doing yoga for many years. It's been very beneficial. Some of our listeners are probably already doing yoga or have done it so far. And even those who have been doing it, they might not really know the background of it. So for those who have never done it before and don't really know about it, can you just kind of break down the basics of yoga and where it comes from?
Sara: Sure. So the word "yoga" is an ancient Sanskrit language word and it means "yoke" or "union." And yoga began in India about 5,000 years ago as a comprehensive system for wellbeing. So it wasn't really an exercise program. And there are multiple branches of yoga, but there's only one that uses poses or asanas and that's called Hatha yoga and that's typically what we practiced in the U.S., Hatha yoga. So in addition to these various branches of yoga, there's also a lot of different styles of physical yoga. So you've probably heard of Iyengar, Ashtanga, yin yoga, but all of these different styles work towards improving your quality of life and relieving stress and improving mental clarity.
Dr. Hedberg: And one of the ones you listed here as the Bikram yoga, is that the very hot yoga?
Sara: Yes. That's hot yoga. It's usually practiced at between 90 to 105 degrees temperature.
Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. I've seen, you know, quite a few patients who have done that or try to, seems to be a little bit too traumatic actually for some people who are under a lot of stress. You add in the intensity of the yoga and then all of the extra heat and it just seems to be a little bit too much for some people. Have you seen that?
Sara: Yes, I would agree with that. I think for some people it can be too much. It depends on your personality and it depends on the studio. Some studios keep the heat very high, others not quite so much. Depends on the teacher as well. You really need a good introduction about what you're getting into. You need to be careful about drinking a lot of water and not going too deep. Sometimes you can go into a pose a little too deep for your body.
Dr. Hedberg: So when a lot of people think about yoga, they think about flexibility. Someone who is extremely flexible, you know, when you look at some of the different yoga poses, people might look at it and think, wow, I don't think I could ever get into that position. So can you just talk a little bit about how yoga can improve flexibility and what people should be thinking about as far as how to improve their flexibility?
Sara: Sure. So I always tell my new students that during their first class, they probably won't be able to touch their toes when they're bending forward in a forward fold. That it's really never about touching your toes. As we say, it's about what you learned on the way down to touching your toes. And so if you stick to it and you have a regular practice, you will notice that you start to loosen up and your hamstrings will gradually loosen and you will eventually be able to touch your toes and bend your knees as much as you need to. So flexibility is really the ability to move your muscles and joints through their complete range, which is something that you're born with. So if you think about a baby and how easy it is for them to reach their feet while they're lying on their back or how toddlers just sort of squat down there.
As we age, we start to lose that flexibility and that's especially true if you sit a lot or if you're sedentary, so your bones and your joints and your ligaments kind of settle in if you don't challenge them. And that's the beauty of having a yoga practice because you noticed that as you start to become more flexible that your aches and pains might even start to disappear. So if you have tight hips, for example, you're gonna put strain on your knee joints. And then also, for example, if you have tight hamstrings, it's gonna affect your lumbar spine and that can cause you back pain. But once you start to move and get that flexibility, then your aches and pains will start to disappear.
Dr. Hedberg: Right. So pain is pain, and chronic pain, it's actually the number one reason why Americans go to the doctor. So it's an area in medicine that has really failed the population if we look at the current opioid addiction epidemic and how pain is approached. So yoga can definitely relieve pain. Can you talk a little more about how yoga can help with pain?
Sara: Exactly, right. So yoga is particularly helpful for back pain. And as you mentioned, that's a big issue here. Back pain is one of the main issues that we have in our society. There was a study that was conducted at Boston University School of medicine that found that yoga was just as effective as physical therapy for improving back pain. They have a beautiful curriculum that I've used in my class before. It's called Back to Health. And so one of the reasons that that back pain is relieved with yoga practice is because we focus on diaphragmatic breathing. So the diaphragm muscle is positioned in the middle of the torso from the nipple to the navel. And when you use that diaphragmatic breathing, then you're really using all of that, the...I'm sorry, if you don't use the diaphragm, then you're losing the strength and the other muscles take over, your back muscles take over and they can tighten up. But when you use your diaphragm, then you're actually strengthening it and strengthening that whole core area. So if you were to right now, say, put one hand on your belly and one hand behind you, and your listeners could do this too, and just take a really deep, deep inhale and then notice how both of your hands are expanding or moving. And that's using your entire, your diaphragm. So then there...I'm sorry, go ahead.
Dr. Hedberg: No. Was there anything else you wanted to add there to pain?
Sara: Right. So there's some other studies that show that yoga poses or meditation or combining both the yoga poses and the meditation can reduce chronic pain in people who have, for example, arthritis or fibromyalgia or other conditions. And their mood starts to improve through a regular yoga practice. And so then they don't need as much medication to relieve the pain.
Dr. Hedberg: So many of our listeners work sitting at a desk all day. They might have developed bad posture, bad habits. And so along with pain reduction and improved flexibility, can you talk about how yoga could improve posture?
Sara: Yes. I am a huge proponent of proper posture.
