Poor as a mouse and still rich?

Keep your posture – stay long – grow beyond yourself – upright gait – lightness – different movement patterns – open your heart – less is more – stretch to the max – deep breath

Recently I visited my physiotherapist again – yes, even yoga teachers are only human beings and need them now and then. And first of all I had to be told that I should be more selfish. SELFISH? Really? That could be the solution to my problems in my right forearm? “If you keep making the same small movements, the inflammation and pain won’t go away,” he said succinctly. Repetitive Strain Injury Syndrome (RSI) is what this issue is called – the same small movements over and over again caused an inflammation at the base of my forearm. I am poor as a computer mouse, no, perhaps I got the “golfers-elbow” now. Anyway, it means I listened to my body too late and despite unpleasant sensations like tingling and constantly cold hands I continued typing, writing texts and yes, playing golf. So from now on I need to take care of the ergonomic mouse, just text on my mobile phone with my left thumb and ignore the golf club for some time – anything else? Yes, someone else will have to be in charge of cleaning the apartment and ironing the shirts – so I can become selfish after all! “The complaints associated with the RIS syndrome can affect different tissues such as nerves, tendons, muscles, joints or connective tissue.” is what it says in a description of the RSI syndrome in some publication. The therapy should therefore address all these issues if long-term improvement and healing is to be achieved. This is where my yoga classes come into play. Being selfish means for me to focus more on arms, neck and upper body when sequencing my classes. My students, like me, work with mouse, keyboard or touchpad all day long. So I hope that they won’t judge me as selfish when the next yoga classes are suddenly full of exercises and stretches that can be felt mainly in the upper body and in the arms. They all will benefit somehow and it’s way too hot anyway at the moment to practice sun salutations and arm balancing asanas. My tips: 1. Keep a good posture when typing and make sure to have an ergonomic working environment. 2. Act immediately when symptoms occur (breaks, stretching, etc.) and don’t postpone a visit to a physiotherapist. 3. Your yoga practice should include a lot of stretching the upper body and arms movement (heart opener, backbends, arms over head, e.g. Anahatasana, Urdva Hastasana, and if possible similar Yin Yoga postures)

There is a lot of useful information about RSI on the web, here is a small selection: Prof. Clayton Scott’s website: https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~cscott/rsi.html##risk (English) Beobachter Magazin https://www.beobachter.ch/gesundheit/krankheit/mausarm-rsi-syndrom-repetitive-strain-injury# (German)