Yoga and Parkinson's Disease

Took my first yoga class for people with Parkinson's Disease this morning, and it was a very refreshing experience. There were 10 of us there, three women and seven men, plus our young, earnest and studious instructor, Tim. It's a welcome change for me to be able to sit and relax in a room full of people, without feeling self-conscious about the tremor in my right hand and arm.

This was an older group, of course, probably everybody (except Tim) is over 55. Some are in worse shape than others, but we have the illness in common. As we introduced ourselves, Tim asked each of us to mention a favorite book. I said mine was a toss-up between "Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe and "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. As it turned out, one of the other practitioners, a former professor of literature at Lehigh University, recently finished writing a readers' companion volume to accompany "Catcher in the Rye," published by Seattle's Coffeetown Press.

The first third of the hour-and-a-half class we did seated poses in the folding chairs. After that we stood up behind the chairs and had the choice of either doing the movements while holding on to the chair backs or opting for the more vigorous, hands-free versions of the poses, so even in that setting those who preferred to could move energetically enough to raise some heat in the body and get the "burn" of a real workout. The last third of the session was supine poses and savasana.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and also is the direction I hope to go in my own teaching. I was apologizing for the fact that I can't show up too often, as it costs me $30 now to go to Seattle and return home, but I'm already scheming on a way that I might be able to stay in town on Thursday night after my teacher training class so that I can attend Tim's Friday morning session.

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