Work-Life Balance
YogaPhile: Lisa Edelstein
As told to Dana Meltzer Zepeda
The House actress explains to Dana Meltzer Zepeda how yoga saved her back
She plays the prickly Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the medical drama
House
.
But as the 40-year-old actress who thought she’d undergo a lifetime of
spinal surgeries explains to Dana Meltzer Zepeda, she has her ratty
yoga rugs and 4 A.M. yoga sessions to thank for keeping her out of the
real-life operating room.
The first time I took a yoga class I didn’t relate to it at all. But 9 years ago my doctor told me that I was going to need spinal fusions (sawing the bone off my pelvis and putting it in my neck) for the rest of my life because every few years my discs would go like dominoes. I was in pain so I started doing Bikram yoga. Within 3 months, I was pain-free. After 6 months, I never had a neck injury again.
A lot of pain is emotional more than physical. I read a book on back pain and realized that what was hurting me the most was the way I was handling stress.
I don’t like saying I “opened my mind” to yoga because that sounds really hippie-dippie. I really just had to be hungry enough for another solution.
Within a year I fell in love with Mysore-style Ashtanga (self-led, specific series of poses named after the place in India where it originated). It’s old and traditional. I don’t feel like it’s an Americanized version of yoga or an exercise class.
Anyway, great article, and in yoga the best is when your family wake up 5:30am they are so sleepy, they can't see anything just want to get back to bed, and you are already cheery, energetic and ready to do uncountable useful things on that day. And of course you're already clear and well-dressed in D&G and Jimmy Chooo <3