Yoga Is More
Than Just a Workout
Dr. Sara Gottfried
I can hardly think of a woman I know who doesn’t complain about a muffin top, or wrinkles, or the restricted menu of her latest fad diet (one that is almost guaranteed to fail). Women have a neurotic preoccupation with a distorted body image, weight, and fatness. I’m one of those women, perpetually recovering from my obsession with weight.
Unfortunately, few of us are armed with the tools and resources we need to reclaim the body we want, the corresponding body image, and the self-confidence we need to live a long life of contentment and vitality. I want to change that. My goal is to change the conversation about weight and body image, and to get us to a wabi-sabi way of looking at the female form. Yoga is one of the most powerful vehicles to help us view the world through the lens of wabi-sabi. I’m not the first to point this out—the latest way to approach the healing of your body and body image also happens to be one of the oldest ways.
Enter Wabi-Sabi
Most simply, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty and wisdom in imperfection, such as a lovely tea bowl with cracks and chips that has aged uniquely. We are all imperfect and flawed, and there is tremendous beauty in not just accepting this as true but reveling in and honoring the imperfection.
Wabi-sabi is an antidote to the false ideal of the perfect female form.
Anyone, male or female, living in today’s media-saturated world is bombarded with images of bodily perfection and what I consider to be the glorified ideal of the anorexic adolescent. Online ads feature stick-thin models (most of whom are genetic outliers); e-mail newsletters tout the latest celebrity diets; and commercials and movies showcase the willowy, the tan, and the glossy-haired. Unfortunately, instead of a society focused on attaining vibrant health and longevity, we’ve turned into a community of people obsessed with looking thin and young, at any cost.
How Perfection Harms Us
This epidemic of dissatisfied women and negative body image reveals itself in several ways.
Stress
The pressure to look a certain way only adds to the already-frazzled nerves and busy schedules of most modern women. Tanning treatments, gym sessions, Botox, buying the right skinny jeans … who has the time? In addition, our dogged pursuit of perfect beauty, often bordering on self-violence, raises cortisol, the main stress hormone.
Cortisol levels are at a record high level, and hormonal imbalances are, as a result, rampant. This is not just theoretical: research from the lab of Nobel Prize laureate Elizabeth Blackburn at the University of California at San Francisco shows that premenopausal women with high perceived stress age ten years faster than women with normal levels of stress. She documented the accelerated aging by measuring the telomeres, the caps on chromosomes that track your biological aging as opposed to your chronological aging, in stressed women versus controls.
Lack of Body Awareness
Instead of looking inward and listening to what our bodies need (more sleep, vitamin D, maybe some acupuncture), we follow what advertising tells us to do, wear, or consume. Instead of cultivating healthy lifestyle habits, we’re constantly on the hunt for the magical pill that will solve all our problems. A lifestyle of cubicles, television, and general escapism means we no longer know our bodies.
Toxic Lifestyle
What many people don’t realize is that a lifestyle that follows the suggestions of our current society is one that does the human body few favors. Cosmetics, processed foods, and synthetic textiles actually accelerate the aging process, the very problem they’re supposed to solve!
We face a silent epidemic of overwhelm—we’re cranky, fat, and have no sex drive because stress has hijacked our hormone balance. Most women run from task to task and don’t realize how the main stress hormone (cortisol) is depleting the happy brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, pulling your other hormones offline, accelerating the aging process, and setting you up for memory problems and perhaps Alzheimer’s disease. Yet cortisol is a completely tangible hormone that you can manage like you would train a puppy or track your 401K.
Fear of Fatness
While most of us don’t have a diagnosable “eating disorder,” far too many people suffer from distorted body image. For lack of a scientific name, I like to call it Fear of Fatness (FOF), based on a wonderful essay by Jungian analyst Anne Ulenov. As a doctor board-certified in everything that can go wrong in the female body, I would apply this label to nearly every woman who walks through the front door of my practice. Once we start to review her pain points, it comes out: the eagle eye on daily weight changes, the angsty depression after “eating too much,” the obsessively targeted exercise plans, the endless strategies to get back to the pre-pregnancy weight.
And I can relate. I’m one of the 90 percent of women who are dissatisfied with their bodies, constantly thinking about my weight and how my body looks on an hour-to-hour basis. Sadly, my perceived appearance can dictate my mood for the day. I’m sure I’m squandering far too much of my neuronal activity and energy bio-hacking my food plan, exercise, and lean body mass. For myself and the millions of people like me, it’s not anorexia or bulimia, or psychosis exactly, but rather, it’s “normal” for a female in this body-obsessed culture.
As a physician and scientist, the next question I ask is: Why? While cultural conditioning is certainly a factor, can I really blame the media for all these body image issues? No, I blame my tenuous connection to a deeper spiritual core. It’s easier to focus on my distorted body image than on the true work that needs to be done on my inner self. The truth is that radical acceptance and cultivation of secular spiritual connection require a dedicated effort. And that takes a lot more time and effort than the South Beach Diet.
The wonderful news is that there is a solution to this disconnect. It isn’t expensive, anyone can do it, and it’s scientifically proven to address the issues I outlined above.
I’m talking yoga, my friends.
How Yoga Changed My Path
When I was in my 30s, I was working hard. I won’t tell you that I was working too hard, but I was working without sufficient balance. My day job was as a doctor at a health maintenance organization (HMO), which I regard as my years in McMedicine. It meant seeing dozens of patients every day in assembly-line fashion, never stopping for a lunch break, and squeezing extra-extra hours of paperwork into the week whenever possible. I was often stressed out, angry, and resentful.
I was 25 pounds overweight and thought PMS stood for “Pass My Shotgun.” I preferred a glass of wine to sex with my husband, didn’t spend enough time with my girlfriends, was chronically low in oxytocin (the hormone of love, bonding, and social affiliation), and I can tell you that many modern women (and men) feel this way. I had never been unhealthier in my life.
And then I found yoga. Rather, I rediscovered yoga, because it was in my genes. Yoga had been part of my world before, but it took some serious overwhelm before I embraced it. Turns out, it was the optimal prescription for my stressed-out life.
Mud: Miracle Great-Granny
Growing up, I had an eccentric great-grandmother nicknamed Mud (my grandfather couldn’t pronounce the full German word for “mother” and the name stuck). Mud was a whole-foodist. She never touched alcohol (“I love wine, but it doesn’t love me”), she slept on a board (“good for the posture, my dear”), and she was a dedicated yogi decades before it was fashionable. She looked far younger than her peers, outlived four husbands, and rocked a vigorous, joyful life until she died peacefully in her sleep at age 97. Mud planted the seed early on in my mind that optimal health could be achieved through lifestyle and exercise, and often without pharmaceuticals.
Vitamin Y
When I started researching natural strategies for how to solve my stress, my weight gain, and my feelings of “meh,” a world of hormone imbalances (and their amazingly simple preventive strategies) opened up before me. The most effective treatment that I found is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to reducing stress, losing weight, revving up metabolism, and increasing longevity. Yep: yoga.
I didn’t just adopt a regular yoga practice—I became a certified yoga teacher and now share yoga’s health benefits with anyone who will listen (we teach what we most need to learn). Luckily, when the yoga talk is backed by hard scientific data, you can hold the attention of even the most cynical doctors and patients.
It’s not fair, but it’s a fact: women are much more vulnerable to hormonal imbalance than men. Hormonal problems are the top reason I find for accelerated aging. Hormones are chemical messengers, like snail-mail in the body. They influence behavior, emotion, brain chemicals, the immune system, and how you turn food into fuel. When your hormones are in balance, neither too high nor too low, you look and feel your best. But when they are imbalanced, they become the mean girls in high school, making your life miserable. You can feel lethargic, irritable, weepy, grumpy, unappreciated, anxious, and depressed. Yoga is one of the most reliable ways to balance your hormones (especially their ringleader, cortisol), but it brings to the table a whole host of rejuvenating, life-extending benefits. The following are nine unexpected ways yoga improves body image and the innate intelligence of your body.
1. Yoga Lowers Stress (and Cortisol)
After decades of balancing the hormones of thousands of women, I can confidently tell you that chronic stress and elevated cortisol are wreaking havoc on the weight, memory, mood, and sex drive of millions of women. Our modern lifestyle has turned us into stress-cases who would rather go on Facebook than have sex with our partners. The worst part is that cortisol has the power to throw the other main hormones—estrogen, testosterone, thyroid—out of whack.
2. Yoga Conquers Cravings
You might be surprised to learn that the way to banish food cravings is not with meager 100-calorie snacks or the latest “Lose weight!” bar. In fact, it’s managing your stress and cortisol levels, and the downstream benefit is fewer cravings for the carb-of-the-day.
Lower your cortisol, manage your stress, lower your glucose levels, and you’ll see your cravings disappear. Massage and acupuncture have both been shown to lower stress, and so have low-impact exercises such as yoga. Although stress may keep you up at night now, getting at least seven hours of shut-eye per night will also help you regulate cortisol levels and stay on the right cortisol schedule—a burst in the morning to wake you up, and then a slow taper off over the course of the day that aids relaxation.
3. Yoga Is Superb Exercise
Unlike high-impact running, which increases cortisol, yoga lowers it. I’ve been a runner my entire life, but after adding to yoga to my routine, I lost weight, gained energy, and actually felt rejuvenated instead of depleted after my workouts. For stressed-out people, yoga provides a form of exercise that prevents hormones from going haywire and keeps cortisol in check.
4. Yoga Makes Your Breath Beautiful
The focus on breath and the meditative aspect of yoga also help change the way your mind interprets stress, leading to lowered cortisol levels and a calmer day-to-day. Yoga can be a serious workout, yes, but it can also be a quiet moment to yourself. Ahh-omm.
5. Yoga Upgrades Awareness
It’s my opinion that body awareness is at an all-time low. Women are more likely to indulge a sugar craving than they are to set an earlier bedtime because they have never had a chance to get to know their own personal needs and rhythms. Becoming intimately familiar with your body’s flexibility, breath, and the quietness (or lack thereof) of mind is a sorely under-recognized benefit of yoga.
One of the most important types of awareness that yoga emphasizes is that of your breath. Pranayama is the breathing technique of yoga that is said to increase physical and psychological performance. Deep breathing on its own has been proven to reduce stress and improve heart rate variability, but when you combine it with deep stretching, balance, and muscle-building? That’s one heck of a recipe.
6. Yoga Amplifies the Happy Brain Chemicals
Have you ever talked to someone who practices yoga? I bet you’ve heard them say something to the effect of “I just feel so good after I do yoga.” They’re not just talking about the pride that comes from completing 90 minutes of Bikram. Yoga has been shown to raise your serotonin, the happy brain chemical responsible for mood, sleep, and appetite. Women have 52 percent less serotonin than men, according to my friend Daniel Amen, so that may be just one of the reasons we see fewer dudes on the mat—women need yoga to balance our serotonin, feel buoyant, sleep soundly, and put down the fork.
When you increase body awareness, one of the greatest benefits is the knowledge of how your actions affect your health. Rather than overeating, you remember how bad you felt last time you binged on ice cream. Yoga also teaches us how to recognize and forgive ourselves for bad habits. Instead of the depressing cycle of eat-guilt-eat, we learn to let our past transgressions go, and pave the way for better, healthier life choices.
7. Yoga Freshens Up Your Blood and Organs
The twisting, bending, and micro-adjustments of yoga keep your spine and joints strong and supple. Can you touch your toes? Getting to know your flexibility and physical limits can provide some enlightening insight into your own physical health. B. K. S. Iyengar tells us that yoga squeezes your organs like a sponge, removing the stale blood so that fresh, oxygenated blood can rush in when you release your twist. Maintaining your energy, flexibility, and strength using movements like these keeps exercise an option long into old age.
8. Yoga Is Good Medicine
Ayurveda is an ancient medical system of India that is based on the use of food, botanicals, meditation, and movement such as yoga. The Sanskrit term literally translates to “scripture for longevity.” To me, Ayurveda is the true fountain of youth.
It promotes a lifestyle that is designed for not just a long life, but a happy life. Although starting a yoga practice doesn’t mean you have to wear flowing clothes and grow dreadlocks, it does often result in new ways of thinking about yourself, your environment, and the relationship between the two.
9. Yoga Is Self-Love
There are certain habits and practices woven into the yogi’s lifestyle that promote longevity and happiness, such as eating whole, seasonal foods, wearing comfortable clothes that are made out of natural fibers, and supplementing your lifestyle with botanicals that make you feel better, lighter, and happier. When you start doing things for yourself that create such positive effects—from weight loss to a sunnier mood—it’s addicting, in the best sense of the word. If I could, I would prescribe “self-love” of this nature to every single person I meet.
You were born with intrinsic knowledge of how to heal. Somehow, cultural distortions and conditioning derailed you. Radical self-acceptance and self-love are your birthright, and you can reclaim them.
Healthy and Hormonally Balanced:
Your Wabi-Sabi Approach
I struggled for many years to heal my own hormonal problems naturally by using the best science, and then I brought my carefully crafted protocols to the women I served. As a gynecologist, teacher, wife, mom, scientist, and yoga teacher, I spent years formulating, synthesizing, and testing a comprehensive plan for hormonal problems. It’s my life’s mission—to bring the fruits of my study, inquiry, and obsession with neuroendocrine optimization to help other women feel balanced again.
Just as hormonal imbalance can be a vicious cycle that directly affects body image, hormonal balance can be the exact, wonderful opposite. Yoga is an important ingredient for me, as well as for hundreds of my patients, in our search for perfect health. It fits my exacting requirements for a recommended treatment: it’s natural, proven, and effective. Yoga lowers cortisol, reduces inflammation, improves flexibility and circulation, raises awareness, and, when followed properly, increases forgiveness. All of these translate into a more positive body image and a healthier vessel for that hard-working brain.
Over time with yoga, we hone the ability to simply watch our actions and reactions without getting too involved. We develop a kind of spiritual toolkit that prepares us for dealing with our own particular body image baggage. Instead of spending hours obsessing about arm fat, you simply notice this as a thought and don’t get involved. Instead of hating yourself for eating five after-dinner cookies, you forgive yourself. Overexercising becomes unnecessary simply because you are so attuned to your body that it doesn’t feel good. Yoga provides specific tools that ground us in more meaningful self-inquiry than the number on the bathroom scale. It’s one path off the roller coaster of obsession with female fatness. Armed with these skills, self-loathing, obsession with fatness, and displaced aggression have the potential to melt away. Yoga allows us to right-size the cultural conditioning that tells us what we should look like. We know better, and not because we saw it on an infomercial. This knowledge comes from inside. It’s not a miracle cure. But it’s one that works.
Today, I use yoga to live longer, love better, laugh louder, keep my mind clear, and prevent the most common health concerns that I know we all face. Yoga provides me the balance of work and play, of mindfulness and escape, and of relaxation and challenge. It also helps me maintain a positive body image and wabi-sabi perspective, because I know I look and feel healthier when I stick to a regular yoga practice, and also because staying in touch with my body in such a complete way keeps me on the path to balance and joy.
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Sara Gottfried, MD, is a natural hormone expert, Harvard-educated physician, keynote speaker, and author of New York Times bestseller The Hormone Cure: Reclaim Balance, Sleep, Sex Drive and Vitality Naturally with the Gottfried Protocol (Simon & Schuster, 2013). For the past twenty years, Dr. Gottfried has been dedicated to helping women and men feel at home in their bodies with natural hormone balancing through her virtual medicine practice and online learning center, the Gottfried Institute. www.SaraGottfriedMD.com