Winter 2017 Friday round-up

Winter 2017 Friday round-up - week 6

Published: Fri, 02/10/17

Hey ,

Welcome to week 6 Friday Round-up.

Here are this week's practice points:

pain care yoga MISSION POSSIBLE

This past week we focused on GRATITUDE.

Treating GRATITUDE as a practice can help us shift from negative thinking patterns, and become appreciative of the many gifts our lives hold for us. I find that for me, personally, practice of gratitude holds immeasurable value - I turn to gratitude whenever I feel out of sorts (which is often:). How did it work for you?

This week's mission possible is, perhaps, the most difficult challenge of them all - shifting our mindset from one perspective to another.

The mind shift that I am referring to is changing our understanding of chronic pain.

You see, over many years we've been trained to stick with a biomedical model of persistent pain:

~pain signals us that something is wrong with our tissues

~the more damage to the tissues, the more severe the pain is.

Right?

Turns out - not exactly.

Watch this video and let me know what you think

movement yoga MISSION POSSIBLE

Explore relationship between pelvis and femur to uncover hidden compensation patterns.

Here is how:

1. Review neutral pelvis (printout attached).

2. Sitting on stool or a chair (fairly firm surface is best), find your neutral pelvis.

3. Arrange your rib cage so that the bottom rim of it sits directly above the top rim of your pelvis (rib cage neutral).

4. Now slowly cross your right ankle over left knee for seated figure 4 stretch. Have you shifted out of pelvic / rib cage neutral to get here?

5. Try several times on one side and then the other. Go slow, so that you can register subtle and not so subtle shifts of the pelvis as you move in and out of this pose.

Things to consider:

Whenever we are unaware of how our body parts are moving, we often keep ourselves imprisoned in compensation patterns.

In the above scenario, ideally, we should be able to keep the pelvis quiet (stable) as we find movement in the hip joint. Were you able to do that?

If you swivel your pelvis around every time the leg moves up, you are not improving your hip joint mobility - you are getting better at displacing your pelvis to compensate for the lack of mobility in your hip. In other words, you are getting better and better at damaging compensation patterns.

Happy exploring!

See you on the mat!

Julia + Satori Team