Welcome to week three Sunday Round-up.
In this week's round-up:
pain care yoga: how to find your baseline;
corrective movement yoga: rib cage alignment and why that is important.
PAIN CARE YOGA - BASELINE and how to find it:
Here is a reminder of some fundamental concepts.
What is a baseline:
A baseline is that amount of activity that you can do and know that the pain
won’t flare up. A flare up is that increase in pain, often sudden, that leaves you debilitated for hours, feeling really desperate and doing desperate things. For some people flare up happens the next day or even later.
Pain as an alarm system:
Pain is one of the body's protective mechanisms. Pain's job is to make you change your behavior, not accurately inform you about the actual health of your tissues.
(more on these concepts in the weeks to come).
Here in lies a question:
How do we accurately assess what types of movement | ranges of motion | number of repetitions is safe for us to perform? How do we identify our baseline if we know that pain / numbness / weakness are not the accurate indicators of what's going on in our tissues.
The major goal of pain care yoga is to calm down
the over sensitized nervous system, retrain the over protective brain (neuroplasticity in action!), and teach our bodies that movement is safe. We cannot create this neuroplastic change if we are continuously triggering / ignoring our internal alarms.
In class we've used these strategies:
1. Observe your breath: breath is a direct link to the nervous system. Changes in the breath flow indicate what your
nervous system perceives as safe or unsafe.
When breathing becomes a bigger priority than danger signals, calm breathing can / will engage the nervous system and lead to lasting improvements.
Reassess what you are doing if you are shortening or holding your breath, especially the exhale.
2. Ask the questions: Do this feel safe? Will I pay for this tomorrow?
I know this sounds silly (at first!), but once you begin to tune in
and really listen to the answers, they can and will provide you with an insight. They might even surprise you!
This week's PAIN CARE YOGA challenge:
1. This week, whenever your attention is drawn to your pain or discomfort, remind yourself that pain is an alarm system, and not an accurate indicator of your tissue health. (I know, completely counter intuitive. I struggled with that one for a while. This
concept alone, once you get it, will free you to move forward.)
Once you have, bring your attention to your breath; smooth and even out your breathing.
Say to yourself: "Breathing is way more important than danger signals."
2. Try breathing meditation whenever you are caught in the pain inducing thinking (we call these "thought viruses"):
Inhale, and say to yourself: "Breathing in, I feel
calm."
Exhale, and say: "Breathing out, I smile."
3. Use the 3-fold Breathing Practice to gain insight on your breathing patterns (the printout is attached.)
Corrective Movement Yoga - Rib Cage
Alignment:
Try this postural exploration:
Stand in your regular posture. I hope your toes are pointing at least somewhat forward:)
Become aware of
your pelvis.
Imagine your pelvis as a funnel - the upper rim of your pelvis is quite a bit wider than the bottom.
Now become aware of your bottom rib cage - can you feel the full circumference of your bottom ribs?
Picture picture your rib cage as a flash light shining down toward the funnel of your pelvis:
~ is it shining directly down through the whole funnel?
~ more forward?
~ more backward?
~ more to one
side?
In a neutral alignment the rib cage sits directly atop of the upper part of pelvic funnel - so the imaginary light shines directly downward.
The most common postural compensation is to carry the rib cage forward of the pelvis, which can cause dysfunction / pain in the hip and shoulder girdle, and changes in breathing, digestion and elimination.
Movement explorations:
Now that you are aware of your alignment when standing still, let's check your movement patterns:
1. Are you able to separate your arm / shoulder movement from the rib cage / back?
This exploration will let you know whether or not you are driving your arms from your back (more on that in class:)
Lie down on your back with your knees bent; have your arms rest beside your body, palms
down.
Note the position of your pelvis and rib cage in relationship to the mat. Are your back bottom ribs on the mat? Off the mat?
Now slowly lift your right arm up and slowly begin to take it overhead; pay attention to what happens as you continue to move your arm further - do your bottom ribs lift off the mat right at the start or at some point throughout the movement?
2. Are you able to separate your leg movement from the pelvis and rib
cage?
This exploration will let you know whether or not you are driving your legs from your hips and back (more on that in class as well)
Lie on your belly; position your head in the way that feels comfortable.
Feel the front of your pelvis on the mat; note the position of your rib cage as well.
Now bend your right knee - keep your torso quiet though - can you do that? No rocking in the hips or dipping in the front ribs.
If you
are able to bend the knee while keeping the upper body quiet, the next challenge is to lift the entire leg while still keeping the whole trunk quiet. Is that possible for you?
Why so much tedious exploration?
Simple.
You cannot move efficiently through your hip and shoulder girdle, unless you are able to use the big muscles of your hips and shoulders ( gluts, hams,
quads, biceps, triceps) to drive your movement.
I haven't even touched on the multitude of postural compensations that arise from incorrect rib cage alignment. I think I will bring my friend the skeleton to classes next week so we can streamline this conversation.
So how do we get out of this alignment predicament?
In order to improve our first step is
always the same - we have to become aware of the current situation.
Corrective movement yoga challenge for the next week (if you are willing to accept it!) is to sense the position of your rib cage, and how that position changes whenever you use your arms or legs.