Changing the Face of Yoga; episode 128. Aqua Yoga with Christa Fairbrother

Major points:

1. Balance between offloading weight by being in the water and the hydrostatic pressure ("maple syrup" effect) that has the water pressing on the body from all directions.
2. Offloading weight by being in the water is very helpful for people with joint problems.
3. Aqua yoga is a form of accessible yoga that is very helpful for older students, students with arthritis and chronic pain.

00:45                                     This is Changing the Face of Yoga and this is the 128th episode. My guest today is Christa Fairbrother and we're going to talk about something that we've never had on the podcast before. And that's about aqua yoga. And I find this very fascinating. I tried it once, teaching it. I was really much pretty, pretty awful at it. So I am really looking forward to talking to Christa about things that you should do for your students when you're participant or guiding that kind of yoga class. So welcome Christa. Christa has been living with arthritis and teaching yoga. She believes they are integrated. She had arthritis for more than 20 years before she knew about it and had a hard time reconciling everything she had achieved and her relative lack of pain and extensive joint damage. She gave her lifelong yoga practice the credit and now helps other people get more comfort in their joints and use the tools of yoga to manage their health. Aqua Yoga is their focus because it is kind to people's joints and is so accessible. It's an easy way to start a yoga practice. It allows people who've lost a land practice to continue and challenges people with an active land practice to explore their bodies in new ways. Welcome Christa. And I think there's going to be a fascinating podcast that this is a very interesting topic, I think.

02:26                                     Well thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

02:31                                     Great, like I said, I had my students ask me if I would give them an aqua yoga class and I found it amazingly difficult. It was very hard to keep them moving enough to keep them warm.

02:48                                     Yes.

02:48                                     That's good. I wasn't just me. All right.

02:52                                     No, it is a different medium. You're in the water and there are some considerations. The facility you're working at, the water temperature might be a challenge and so you have to teach to your environment the same as you would in a land class. As yoga teachers who teach on land, we wouldn't think about that. Right?

                                                It's like we put somebody in a posture and talk about yoga philosophy, intention and breath, not in the pool. People are starting to shiver and looking at you like, I've been standing here and I'm dying. It is not aerobics. And that's a concern I get from yoga professionals is, well, how is this really yoga? You're getting in the pool and you're maybe moving around and that's maybe not mindful. It's not grounding. There's no yoga philosophy. How do you incorporate breathwork? I hear different concerns from people and these are all valid concerns that we do manage as teachers and we do, at least the way I teach them, the other professionals I know really do try to stay true to the lineage and practice of yoga. It's just that we're doing it in a different medium of water, which means you might have to approach it a little differently to keep the warmth.

04:15                                     Yeah, I realized that. When I got in the middle of the class, I should have prepared a bit better because I really wasn't expecting that and I was up on the side so I wasn't getting cold.

04:29                                     But you're getting warm.

04:31                                     Yes, so what does an aqua yoga class look like?

04:43                                     Yes. So great question. I'll just round out the temperature thing by saying if you're in 80 (degrees) would be the end range of like really what's too cool. And then all the way up to 90 is, especially you mentioned in the intro how I have arthritis and I work with people who have arthritis. If you have the choice to work in a therapy pool, which is like that 90 degree temperature, that's really great. So on average for most people there are considerations where that can be, you know, have to change a little bit. That's a great temperature. So I don't know what you were working at if you were at 76 degrees. That's why everybody was shivering.

05:22                                     I don't think it was heated at all.

05:24                                     So there you go. Yeah. So you were struggling. So the typical aqua yoga class that you know that temperature can be a consideration in terms of the pacing. But how I like to format a class is we do like some big body moving to warm up. What is big body moving? That could be like walking forwards and then backwards and then taking it in strides and then to the side and let's start to integrate some arm movements with that. And I like asymmetrical movements because of what it does for neural networks and stuff. So you're maybe stepping with your right foot while you're moving your left arm in a different direction. So that's just, it gets us mindful, it gets us moving. Right.

                                                Also keeping in mind people who come to aquatics classes, and I think this is a little more true than some of the traditional yoga classes, people like that social element. So if you give people a few minutes to kind of get their chatting out it helps with that. And then we always come into mountain pose and talk about, well what is mountain pose? My students are mostly new to yoga. They might be new to aquatics. They're really beginners. You have to start, okay, well I'd like to say it's Yogi homebase, right? Cause we come into it and we come out of it. And so we talked about, well what is mountain pose?

                                                And then we warm up our spine. So we take our spine through the six ranges of motion, I twist in each direction and then a side stretch to each direction and incorporating some sort of gentle back arch and then the forward fold that would be that sixth range. We do so much of it in our lives and it is a little hard to incorporate into the pool. Nobody wants to get their head wet. We're doing versions right. So forward fold is not like what we would do in a land class, but there's an element in there so and so that would be kind of like the base that gets us into about 15 minutes of practice. And then from there it would be predominantly standing postures perhaps in flows, meaning like you know a sun salutations can be done in the water and then we would finish off with just all right kind of like relaxing transition pose that works with the theme of the day and then going into a floating meditation.

07:53                                     I like floating meditation.

07:54                                     Floating meditation, it's awesome. Tons of noodles. It's like, you know, it's not a bath party cause you don't have a pool floaty but you can give yourself, you know like six, eight noodles if you wanted that. It feels like it. So that's kind of like the structure of the class. Most aquatics classes are about 45 minutes because another feature of working in the water that we don't deal with on land is you've got the hydrostatic pressure. So that's that feeling when you get in the water and you feel almost like you're in a sock and everything's pressing in on you a little bit, it makes your kidneys more efficient. So that's why everybody has to go to the bathroom.

08:30                                     Is that why ?

08:32                                     Yes. Everyone always does. It's like, oh I thought it was just me. Perhaps like with the younger real fit audience who's used to being in the pool, they can take about an hour. But frankly that's why most aquatics classes are 45 minutes in. That's considered best practice for that. So it is a slightly shorter class. Then you know, you're a teacher and you're used to working in an hour and 20 minute format, it is considerably shorter. But as you addressed you have got the issues of keeping people warm and you've got this hydrostatic pressure, people you know, need to get out and use the bathroom as well as you don't realize that working in the pool is actually kind of dehydrating because of that hydrostatic pressure. And if you're working hard enough, I wouldn't say Aqua Yoga does this to us, but some of the other aquatics disciplines, you're actually sweating in the water. You just don't feel it. So if you're working in the water for an hour and 20 minutes, you're starting to get dehydrated. That's why we keep the classes a little shorter because that's kind of the structure. We'll probably talk about props that, depending on what props we're using, obviously impacts the postures and the pacing and things like that. But that's just gives you sort of the general backbone of an idea of how I would teach it.

09:50                                     Well let's go on to props since you mentioned them. Obviously noodles are important.

09:56                                     Noodles are important about the only land product. I guess there's two: blankets and bolsters don't work out real well. So anything that gets wet, right, but we have got the pool noodles. Amazing what you can do with pool noodles. And I actually use pool noodles in my land yoga classes too cause I enjoy it so much. It's in a different way, but they're great cheap props. They're only a buck at the dollar store and you can do  so much with them. So I love them compared to blankets and bolsters with the investment and weight of those as you know, as a yoga teacher.

                                                A feature that you can use with noodles that we don't have in land classes is something called buoyancy assist and buoyancy resist. So what happens is when we exert muscular effort in the pool, it is an equal effort in both directions because you've got the resistence of the water, right? The water, it's not as solid, but it's almost like if you thought about, well what if I was moving in Maple Syrup, right? You have resistance in every direction. If you think about bending your elbow and bringing your palm up towards your shoulder and then lowering it back down on land, we put say like a barbell in our hand in the gym. And we're exerting a lot of effort in that flexion to bring the object up, we have to exert a little bit of effort to bring it down, but not as much as in the water. When you put something in like a pool noodle, which is buoyant, wanting to fly up to the surface. So when you curl your hand up, you're having to exert effort to control it. So it's not just shoving up on your shoulder.

                                                And then when you bring that noodle back under the water, well again, it wants to fly to the surface. So now you're exerting effort to get it back below the water. So it's a very equal muscular effort that you get from that noodle, which is a kind of a unique thing. Also we use them to support us. So it'd be like buoyancy-supported and that's the example of the floating meditation where you just kind of use them as a neutral space on the surface of the water. So that's something noodles can do for us.

                                                Yoga belts, there are some other aqua yoga teachers I know who've really pioneered using yoga belts in the water. I prefer personally because I work with people with arthritis. I really like inner tubes. So you go to that in your local bike shop, shout out for your local small business and you get a regular bike inner tube and cut out the stem and now you've got this great durable free yoga prop. It is rubberized, right? So you get that action. We were talking about about this buoyancy as system resists that it doesn't involve your hands because you can wrap it around your wrist. For a lot of aquatics prop, that is a big issue for people who have arthritis in their hands. If you think about noodles and dumbbells and all these things we grabbed and then you move them through the water, it can be really hard on your wrists and fingers if you've got arthritis in your hands. So to eliminate that with the these bike inner tubes is I think really great. So we would use them the same way when you use a yoga belt.

                                                 So you know, in the Yoga studio we think about, well a belt, it's either basically like trying to bring the floor closer to us or us closer to the floor, right? Same way we would use an inner tube in the pool. If you're not in the pose and you would want to do a leg lift, you could use that inner tube to help you get your foot a little closer to the surface of the water and connect your lens there in that way. Iinner tubes are really fun.

                                                Kick boards. Most pools have kick boards because most, especially public pools, cater to swimmers and kick boards are a really nice, solid prompt there. They have a lot of surface area. They feel very secure. And so when you use them to support you in a standing posture, like you think about taking triangle pose in the water and if you think about what your hands are just on the surface of the water, you're going to be really interacting with all that movement. Maybe feel a little unstable. But if you put a kickboard under one hand, it almost like gives you this little platform to work against.

                                                So those can be a real nice props. Those are the three in addition to the aquatic barbells or dumbbells, whichever you want to call them, that people think of for aqua aerobics. I do incorporate those in my classes from a yoga perspective as well. Those are real traditional aquatics props, but those are the four main props I use most often.

14:41                                     Oh, that's interesting. I would assume the breathing would be very much the same in in the water. I mean, just being really aware of your breath and that kind of thing.

14:58                                     Great question. Yes. Same in the sense that you can teach the same perspectives of yes, mindfulness and being aware of your breath. But we already talked about the hydrostatic pressure. The ideal height to do aqua yoga at is about mid chest height. So if you're thinking about where your body is, it's at mid chest height, that's basically kind of bisecting your lungs. If anything you have a little bit more lung out of the water right? But your whole diaphragm is under the water, for example.

                                                And since we've got that hydrostatic pressure pushing in on us a little bit, it actually we have to exert more muscular effort to breathe. So it can be a very powerful Pranayama practice in that you're really building your breath capacity. Sometimes people who live with anxiety or breathing issues like COPD, they'll really struggle because of that pressure that you wouldn't have on land. So there's some slightly different considerations. It can impact you and that it helps you kind of build your breath and build a potentially stronger Pranayama practice because you really feel that inhalation and exhale interacting with the water.

16:25                                     I hadn't thought of that but that makes a lot of sense. You said that you had arthritis undiagnosed for 20 years and that one of the reasons that you're doing aqua yoga is because you believe that it's really good for people with arthritis. I can see that because it certainly wouldn't impact their joints like being on land might. Do you have a lot of people with arthritis that find this a really easy entrance into yoga?

17:03                                     Yes, definitely. So when we talked about that mid chest height for example, that we're working at, when you're at mid chest height, your offloading approximately 70% of your body weight. So if you live with any kind of arthritis below mid chest, your joints just got an automatic little opening for example. And helped restore your original range of motion that you had because you're offloading that weight. So I do work predominantly with seniors, so my most common clients have osteoarthritis and osteoarthritis is we've now learned, it's much more complicated, but we used to just describe it as, well, you've old and you've just worn out your joint, right? It's a wear and tear kind of arthritis. Obviously we, we know it's a little more complicated than that now, but most of the people who have arthritis that I work with have that. I personally have the autoimmune, I actually have several arthritic or immune diseases and a smaller slice of the people I work with have that. So the differences is kind of what Aqua Yoga can do for you, depending on which kind of arthritis that you have, compared to land yoga, is you do get that huge offload of weight.

                                                And what that can mean for example, is if you're in a lot of pain and you come to a yoga class, there's that whole element of getting on and off the ground. And if you're going to do mat yoga, and even if you can get on the ground and then the teacher leaves you there for 20 minutes and you're just like, oh my God, I'm sitting here and I'm not moving. Because that lubrication of the joints by that subtle movement all the time is how a lot of people will manage a chronic arthritic pain condition, right? So they're just kind of a little bit of moving all the time, which is frowned on in Yoga when you do your opening meditation and then you're starting postures and you're just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, right?

                                                And then you might move into a whole lot of sun salutations. So now you're being asked to bear all this weight on your hands and your wrists. If you do not have arthritis there, perhaps especially we as women are faced with this even more, is you've got rotator cuff stuff going on up on your shoulder assembly, right? So even if your hands and your wrists are okay, you've got something going on in your shoulders. So by moving our practice into the pool, not only have we offloaded all that weight, we're not required to get on and off the floor, nor are we having to bear weight on our hands or take a lot of weight on our shoulders.

                                                It's not just about being in the water. It's also kind of the shift of format just automatically because of what the water requires so to speak. Since we're not doing the inversions and we're not getting on and off our hands and we're not sitting down, it's just like, well, all those problems just became not problems, right? You don't even have to say, I had a joint replacement and this knee is a real problem because there's no expectation you have to get on and off. So it's very empowering. Right.

                                                Because you have offloaded all that weight, you can get people who have a very active physical practice and can handle all those sun salutations and do half- moon and tree and dancers and those postures that become less accessible to us. You can continue to do them in the water in a way that you can't on land. So that is also really empowering and allows people who maybe because of their arthritis or many other issues have to give up aspects of their practice to continue to practice. And that's really wonderful. It is.

20:54                                     Is there a trade-off between the buoyancy of the water that takes away some part of your weight and the Maple Syrup effect of walking through the water and things pressing on you no matter which way you go. I'm just wondering if someone is going to be really tired after 45 minutes of doing that or whether it's kind of a trade-off and it's not a big problem.

21:26                                     Yeah, great question. And so what I find is that there's pros and cons to everything. I find that most people think it's easy as we talked about things like pressure and range of motion. It's like, wow, that was such a relief. I wasn't like struggling just to stand on one leg, right? So that becomes easier, right? But then because you're working in this new environment, you're using your body in different ways than you would on land. So you're perhaps using more muscles and in a different way. And working in the water is a very back body focused practice, which I find as another element that makes it really powerful.

                                                 As we sit in chairs, we drive our cars, we're on our devices and we really don't take care of our back extensor muscles, particularly much in our culture. And so then you get in the water and it really asks people to balance and engage with those. And so they're potentially using muscles in a new way. So what I often hear, wow, that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Because it took so much balance, but I could do so much stuff that I can't do on land. And then you talked to them the next day and they say, oh, I'm really more sore than I was expecting. You just don't really feel it until the next day. Yep. So there's exactly like you just described it as there's some trade-offs. Overall, it's not as cardio compared to a flow class. It doesn't have quite the same cardio element. So if that's a need of yours, you would potentially want to add in a different aquatics class or continue that element of your land class.

23:14                                     Well I think that's good to know. I taught seniors too andnot many of them could just stand for 45 minutes. so I just wondered if the water buoyancy was being helpful.

23:29                                     It does, it makes a huge difference. And, I will share, I've had multiple clients cause I teach chair yoga as well, and I've had multiple clients come to chair yoga with me as a teacher and then the aqua yoga with me as a teacher. We don't teach that differently depending on our medium. Right. I feel like it's a fair comparison. And they say the chair yoga class is harder than the aqua yoga class and they feel like they're exerting more in chair yoga in terms of the actual muscular effort, but they feel like the aqua yoga class, they get so much out of their balance and challenge from their balance. So to give you that sort of perspective as a student, and I've heard that from many people, so I think it's, I think it's a valid comparison for them to make.

24:16                                     You said that, you have rheumatoid arthritis or you have the audio immune arthritis. Are there a different things that you do for that type of arthritis as opposed to the osteoarthritis?

24:37                                     Great question. Yes, definitely. The main difference between say Osteo, that wearing out of joints arthritis, and one of the systemic arthritis conditions, which is what the auto immune forms are, is that the osteoarthritis is going to be isolated to certain joints. So it's very common to get it in your knee, your hip, saddle joint of your thumb. You get it where you have used yourself well, so to speak. I like to think of it that way. It's not like you wear yourself out. It's, you had a really good time with those, certainly for a long time. And it shows. There is, as I said, there's kind of more to it. We now know there's a slight genetic component and I have said, oh well it's just worn out one joint. But there is a lot of systemic inflammation that goes with osteoarthritis that we now know.

                                                The autoimmune forms of arthritis though will cause basically systemic inflammation in all your joints. So I also live with Lupus, which will do the same thing. I live with Sjogren's, which will do the same thing and Psoriatic arthritis, will do the same thing. If you're living with one of those autoimmune forms, you potentially hurt everywhere. Beauty of getting in the water is, it just kinda took the load off. Right.

                                                And so for an osteoarthritis person, you're just trying to manage their practice and the queuing that you would give them. So they're aware of the needs and range of motion of a particular joints, for example. Right? So, we'll take knee osteoarthritis because that is the most common form of arthritis and the most common place, right? So I mentioned we do a lot of standing on one leg. So if you've got osteoarthritis in your knee and you raise your leg up off the ground and you've got a bent knee, when you start to move that leg side to side in the water (this is an example of what we would do to keep people warm, right).

                                                 We're not just standing there with one leg in the air. It's like, okay, well now we're going to open that leg in and out. So if you're opening that leg in and out like window shutter and you've got osteoarthritis in your knee, you would not want that ankle below that eggbeatering around because now you've got a lot of lateral movement going on in that knee and you just don't really like lateral movement. And if she's got arthritis in it, they like it even less. Right? So that's an example of how you would manage a common osteoarthritis thing.

                                                For an RA person, you are really trying to help teach them some self-efficacy skills and really sort of pain management techniques in terms of, okay, well how are you feeling today? Because the nature of autoimmune diseases as they vary hugely day to day. If you're not feeling really good today, let's do a mellow practice, take care of yourself, be kind, maybe a longer floating meditation, drop some poses, do a shorter practice. Whatever it is to honor what's going on with you. And then on the days when you are feeling more capable and maybe you're not having a flare up, push yourself a little harder. It's a real mindset and learning how to work with yourself within your yoga practice that potentially an osteoarthritis person doesn't have to face.

28:04                                     That makes sense. I thought I would tell everyone this just because I think it's very interesting, but Christa was a farrier for 10 years.

28:17                                     I absolutely loved it. Everybody always asks did you get kicked, yes unfortunately, I got kicked many times.

28:28                                     Well, I can understand that. I wouldn't like somebody grabbing my foot.

28:35                                     I honestly think it makes me a better yoga teacher really. Because basically for 10 years I would watch horses walk and figure out what they needed to get them moving smoother and more ergonomically in their bodies. Now I go to yoga, I watch people walk, I watch people stand there and I give them active verbs to help them move better and be more comfortable in their walk.

                                                 It's really the same, the same things. It's just that I do it with words instead of sharp hot tools. People don't like to be hurt. But it was part of the process. It's very similar. I think it's interesting and I think I am a better yoga teacher because of it, because I have a very good understanding of ergonomics and chains of motion and weight-bearing. You know that I would say that it's not real common in the yoga cannon.

29:38                                     No, I think you may be a member of a very small group.

29:46                                     I am 100% confident. I am the only aqua yoga teacher in the world who used to be a farrier. I got that one. I am one of a million.

29:58                                     All right. Well, it's nice to be unique. At the end of the podcast I always ask if there's something that you would like to cover in more depth or something that we didn't cover at all that you think is important to the listeners to know about aqua yoga or your teaching.

30:23                                     I would just like to share that it's a real new modality. I would say that it's still very much within the tradition of yoga. So if you heard this and you're like, wow, I don't know, that sounds like goat yoga or beer yoga or something, I would just really encourage you to go try it. I'm assuming all your listeners are yoga devotee's, right? That's why you would listen to your podcast. So you have a strong yoga practice already. So just take it to the pool sometime and experiment with what you already know and see what you get out of it.

                                                 One of the things I think is most powerful in working in the water, and it has made me a much better teacher teaching on land. When we work on land, we've got that little mat and we're just obsessed with our little mat. And all we do is work in this sagittal plane, right? It's just front to back. When you get in the pool, you have 360 degrees, you can move in any direction. So what are you going to learn about your practice and your body and yourself if you move in every direction and you kind of liberate yourself to maybe take the traditional form of yoga, but maybe add in a diagonal or a curve, right? No yoga God will strike you dead. You going to learn about your practice and yourself if you try some of these new things. So that's what I would just really kind of leave everybody with is don't knock it until you try it.

31:48                                     That sounds good. I want to give Christa's contact details. Her email is [email protected] and her website is christafairbrother.com  Her Instagram is aqua content yogi and her Facebook is also aqua content yogi and Christa Fairbrother. So if you would like to explore a little bit what Christa's been doing and learn a bit more about it and I'm very tempted to go out and try a yoga class. Actually I would like to say though that I think having taught seniors, I think it's a really nice accessible way for them either to start yoga or as perhaps their bodies become more fragile or perhaps less physical maybe or they can't move as well as they did. I think it's a really great way to get them still into yoga because most of them, if they stay with you really love Yoga and they want to continue. I think that should be said that this sounds like a great accessible type of yoga for older people and for people that may have some other kinds of chronic pain.

33:17                                     Yes, it's very, very accessible. I have worked with people with a diverse range of challenges. And I have to say, the only thing that's been really hard is if somebody is hard of hearing to the point of being deaf because that's just becomes a safety concern in the water. Working in the water, we do have some safety concerns we don't have on land. The odds of you dying on your mat are pretty rare, right? You might have heart attacks per se. In the pool you have to remember that safety concern. I've worked with amputees. People using walkers are real regulars in my classes. It is very accessible and if you're blind, that's OK. But the hearing is the only trouble I've had with just safety.

                                                If you think about what aging is from an eastern medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic perspective is aging as kind of a drying process. We're kind of drying out. We're getting a little brittle and so to get us back in the water helps us really kind of move us up and return us to that environment that we were born out of. And so it, it does definitely keep us a limber and flexible.

34:42                                     Well thank you so much Christa. I really enjoyed this. Lots of great information and, like I said, if I can find one, I might go try an Aqua class.

34:53                                     Yes. Yeah, just try a nice warmer pool and take yourself in. Thank you. I really appreciate it.