Welcome to week 2 Friday Round-up.
PAIN CARE YOGA challenge of the week:
Last week we challenged ourselves to find an escape from pain: I asked you to identify and implement a diversion - something that takes your attention away from pain.
How did that go?
What worked?
What didn't?
Here is this week's challenge:
From in-class practice you already know that breath can be an excellent diversion - we use many different (and some very complex)
breathing practices to channel our attention in a positive way.
What we haven't yet talked about is that certain types of breathing can also be used to calm the nervous system down. So naturally, breathing practices fold well into the ESCAPE - CALM - CHALLENGE approach of Pain Care Yoga.
This week, practice smoother, softer, longer breath - as often as you can fit it into your daily life. Use things, objects and daily routines as your
reminders:
Can you do a few smoother, softer, longer breaths at every red light?
Before each meal?
While brushing your teeth?
I am practicing smoother - softer - longer as I type this love note - where else can you fit a better breath?
Are you willing to accept this challenge?
Movement Yoga Challenge
So we started working on lunges - in most classes anyways.
And we've discovered some rather interesting things.
Things such as:
~ my leg simply doesn't want to step forward
~ ooooh - ooooh - ooooh - my hip doesn't open like this
~ shoot, I keep falling over. Oh, my
balance!
~ no, I can't lift my torso to vertical
~ my front knee seem to really want to track to center - why is that exactly?
So here is a delightful (well, in my humble opinion) way to prepare yourself - your hip flexors and quads - for a lunge position. We are most definitely going to be utilizing this in most classes.
- Begin in standing. Have a chair in front of you to assist with balance, if needed.
- Shift
your balance onto your R foot, and bend your left knee.
- Bring you left heel toward your buttock, and grasp your left ankle with your left hand.
- Be sure that your knees are squeezing together.
- Just getting into this position might reveal how tightness in your psoas (one of the hip flexor group muscles) and quad (front of the thigh) are affecting your ability to bend your knee. If this feels horrible and tight, use a strap and practice this stretch several times a week to
free up the bound up front-of-the-hip muscles.
- Moving further: slowly bend forward, and place one hand on the chair. If your psoas - quad is tight, your spine will bend forward, but your leg won't budge.
- Ideally, the left thigh is in line with your torso as you bend forward.
- And in an awesome and ideal world you are able to touch the floor while lifting the bent knee towards the sky. Chair is a good place to start!
Are you wiling to accept
this challenge?
Not sure?
Here is why you want optimal-length psoas. It'll be short, I promise.
