When people think of yoga, they sometimes conjure up images of students contorting their body into unusual positions and holding them for interminable amounts of time. Yoga instructor Mary Cavanaugh proves that there are much simpler ways to use the discipline that even those with spinal cord impairment can practice.

When she was in her 20s, Cavanaugh fell from a horse. “I broke my pelvis, but I hit on my back, on the fourth and fifth lumbar,” she remembers. As a result, she had back problems years later, for which doctors wanted to do surgery. Instead, Mary found that certain yoga stretches helped to alleviate her pain.

“That’s how I got into yoga. I started teaching yoga in the 1970s. I was teaching for the night school at Saddleback Unified School District (SUSD) in Mission Viejo, California. They sent me over to a retirement home, and asked if I could teach these people, and I said, ‘If they can breathe, I can teach them yoga.’”

Doing Yoga While Sitting Down

Wondering what to do, Cavanaugh spotted a chair in the room. “That’s how I started teaching chair yoga,” she says. “It just grew, because I was the person who seemed to be able to work with people that have disabilities. Right now, I have a class where I teach people in a chair, and then I gradually work them so that they’ll be able to get on the floor. They’re usually older people, and people that have had injuries or disabilities of some kind.” She teaches 20 students with disabilities in the San Diego, California area.

Cavanaugh also teaches people with multiple sclerosis (MS), in various stages of the disease. Some of them are very limber, and some are in wheelchairs. “One week, they’re feeling good, and one week, they’re not feeling good,” Cavanaugh says. “I’m so careful to watch that they don’t overdo it. It’s a personal thing; the teacher and student understand each other. When possible, we do standing postures. I have them stand against the wall. It gives them support and balance, and confidence to do more because they have the security of the wall to fall back on. The MS Society acknowledges yoga as a physical therapy treatment, and they pay for a lot of the MS students that come in.”

Breathing Lessons

I had medical management right there. That’s how it is with SCI. I teach a lot of breathing in my classes, because oxygenated blood nourishes the cells of the body that are constantly regrouping and replenishing themselves. I would recommend yoga breathing to everybody on the planet. Even if a person can’t move at all, just about any category of disability can benefit from deep breathing.”

In some cases, patients with SCI can do much more than that. For example, a person with an injury to the lower spine, who can move his or her arms and neck, can participate in stretches that affect those areas. “Just think about how it feels to move your arms up in the air, about how your shoulders are feeling. It multiplies itself a hundredfold when a person is in an injured capacity, because things that are easy for able-bodied people to do really tire people that have any kind of injury. In classes, I get people who can only move them as high as their ear. I can sometimes work with them until they can get them up over their head, and this is really quite a feat for them. Just imagine somebody in a wheelchair that’s able to take their right hand and reach over and grab the left arm of the chair, and turn their torso. This is a tremendous movement for them.”

In contrast, if a student in a wheelchair has no feeling in his or her legs and has somebody who is willing to work with them, Cavanaugh uses a different technique. “I use a belt, and I’ll have the helper put the belt over the ball of the student’s foot and have the helper take their hands and lift that foot up and move that leg back and forth,” she explains. “By doing this, you’re opening the hip and the area of the groin. You’re getting the energy lines open, so that oxygen and blood get into those areas.”

If a patient with SCI is bedridden, they can still do yoga. Yoga from a bed involves arching the back up and down and breathing. “Feel the chest open, and feel from arching the back that the spinal cord is moving,” Cavanaugh suggests.

Positive Feedback

“I go to a lot of these classes that Mary teaches, and I observe the students a lot,” says Sherry Zak Morris, producer of the Secrets for Feeling Better DVD series, and a student of Mary’s. “I can see, week by week, just a little progress. Maybe they couldn’t hold their arms up level to their shoulders, and in the next week or two, they’re forty- five degrees up, over towards their head. They see that in themselves. They see their progress, and they feel so good that they see that accomplishment. That keeps them going.”

In November 2003, the idea for the DVDs sprung from Mary’s success as host of Yoga for Seniors, a cable television series that airs twice daily on KCOT in Oceanside, California, which Mary has hosted since she was 78 years old. “We basically looked at the shows that were the most successful, and that appealed to two audiences, seniors, and the physically challenged. We thought that we would take a DVD series and focus primarily on that market, because, with yoga, that market is not being serviced,” Sherry explains.

“In the last 5 years, I’ve dedicated myself to older people,” Mary points out. “I quit doing Ashtanga yoga when I was 67, because I figured I’m old enough, and proved everything that I have to prove. Then, I started to relate more to my own age group.”

“With other yoga DVDs, you get 30something hard bodies, and people can get a little intimidated by that, but yoga can benefit any age or physical condition,” Sherry declares

For people who are stronger and may not need a chair or bed to do yoga, the Secrets to a Long and Healthy Life DVD series was developed. It teaches how yoga can become a lifestyle, and give people a longer life. Both series were recorded at the same time. The second is a more advanced version of the first series. When Mary describes exercises for home viewers, she’s careful to tell them to pace themselves. “You are your own moderator in the DVD setting. There’s no teacher there,” Sherry stresses, “but Mary coaches you through the whole process, almost like having a custom teacher right there.” One should always consult a doctor, however, before undertaking a program of physical exercise.

The series is available at www.yogajp.com. In January 2005, she started a stress- reduction workshop that teaches chair exercises to people who work in offices and spend long hours sitting at computers. “Chair exercises are not confined to people who have disabilities,” explains Cavanaugh. “They are great for everyone!”