FEB. 18, 2010

Instructor's new book looks at yoga as pain relief

BY TRACIE WHITE

If you thought yoga was only for the extremely fit and limber, think again.

“If you can breathe, you can do yoga,” said Kelly McGonigal, PhD, author of a new book titled Yoga for Pain Relief. McGonigal has taught yoga through Stanford University’s Health Improvement Program to people with chronic pain from back injuries, shoulder injuries, hip pain, knee replacements and carpel tunnel syndrome for almost a decade.

It’s the benefits that she’s seen in her many students, like those in the regular Tuesday afternoon “stretch and strengthening class” on the Stanford campus at the Elliot Center, that motivated her to write the book.

“It’s the only thing that’s keeping me at all flexible,” said Mike Harding, 72, a back-injured yoga enthusiast, flush-faced, gently stretched out over his right knee while seated on the floor during a recent class. Harding started McGonigal’s class nine years ago, and hasn’t stopped.

“It strengthens my core, improves my balance, my flexibility,” said Kathy Davis, 68, whose doctor first prescribed yoga as an abdominal strengthening exercise to help prepare her for back surgery. She kept up the yoga following the fusion of two vertebrae in her lower back and now she’s pain-free. “But it’s more than that. It also creates a sense of calm and peace.”

It’s this marriage of mind and body that is at the center of McGonigal’s book, and why she is such a big believer in yoga as a regular practice for chronic-pain sufferers. Her book is filled with instructions on how to do gentle postures and stretches, focus on breathing and use meditation as strategies for dealing with chronic pain.

These are the techniques she teaches every Tuesday afternoon, leading her students in stretching exercises. Lie back on your mat, she instructs. Bend your left knee. Lift your right leg. Cross your right leg over your left knee. Now clasp your hands on your left shin and pull gently.

“Breathe in,” McGonigal reminds the students at regular intervals throughout the class.

“Now breathe out.”

“What I want people to know about yoga is that even if you are on a ventilator in bed you can do yoga,” said McGonigal, who is an instructor for the Stanford Prevention Research Center, which operates the Health Improvement Program. “There’s this image of yoga as a trendy exercise that involves doing crazy things on a mat. That’s not what yoga is. There’s something for people in any type of pain.”

McGonigal, who received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford, is a well-known name in the world of yoga. She is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal for yoga professionals and health-care providers. She is also a psychology lecturer for the Continuing Studies Program at Stanford and a frequent guest lecturer on the topics of health psychology, stress reduction, meditation and yoga. She writes extensively on yoga and the science of mind-body healing for popular magazines.

During her graduate student days, her research in the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory focused on how emotions influence the body and how people cope with difficult life transitions.

McGonigal’s interest in the use of yoga for chronic pain was first sparked nine years ago when she agreed to teach a yoga class on campus for people with back pain. She’s still teaching the same class.

“It was a revelation,” McGonigal said. “It started out sort of trial and error, figuring out what was going to work, doing a lot of research into what physical therapists do for back pain. My students would come back to the next class and say, ‘Oh, my god, I had no pain. I went out dancing!’

“I’ve learned a lot about helping people with chronic pain,” she said. “The movements we do in that class make it possible for them to get on with their lives. What I love about the class is that people check in and they don’t check out. There’s a great sense of community.”

In her book, McGonigal explores the importance of the mind-body connection for pain relief, which, she writes, “has its roots in the yoga tradition” but is supported by a growing body of research in neuroscience, psychology and medicine.

“I’m a big fan of all sorts of treatment,” McGonigal said. “Lots of my students get surgery. But science suggests it’s important to get a handle on the stress that pain causes on the mind and the body. Yoga is so perfect for this.”

McGonigal has also discovered the benefits of yoga for chronic pain control through personal experience.

“I’ve had headaches every day of my life since I was about 8 years old,” McGonigal said. “I still have headaches every day, but it’s nothing like it used to be. Now there’s just this awareness of pain. It doesn’t really bother me anymore.”

Another McGonigal-inspired yoga devotee, 73-year-old Jean Thompson, has integrated yoga into her daily life during the five years she’s been taking classes. Now she does 10 to 15 minutes of gentle stretching exercises each morning in bed before she gets up, in addition to the classes. It keeps her upper and lower back flexible and pain-free.

And it also helps her keep her cycling hobby going, injury-free.

“It helps my posture too,” said Thompson, at the end of the afternoon yoga class. Then she pulled on her helmet, threw a leg over her bike and cycled back home.

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions - Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For more information, please visit the Office of Communication & Public Affairs site at http://mednews.stanford.edu/.