So today I want to talk a little bit about how much is enough and how much is too much. This, coincidentally (or not!), has been one of the HUGE lessons on my solo mountain trip last weekend.
You see, my good old Russian training and hard-headed type A personality combine to
create an almost inescapable drive for 99.99% output, ALL OF THE TIME. When I schedule, I am instinctively driven to schedule to a millisecond precision. And I schedule 99.99% of my time.
When I do anything - and I mean anything - I put out a full 150!
What this weekend taught me - with a slight slap in the face, I might add - is that pushing yourself to that 99.99 percentile mark leaves no time or
energy for recovery.
That's when I remembered one of my teachers' words: "65 - 70% is how much you need to put out to improve."
Duh!
It only took 5 years for those words to sink in!
Ease is the new
name of the new game!
Coincidentally - or not coincidentally at all! - this approach mirrors the working of our musculature and the nervous system. Here is how:
Receptors within the joints and muscles detect movement and changes in muscular tension and length. These receptors alert our central nervous system to changes that are
occurring.
Spinal cord communicates this information upward to the brain where the decision is made: does this change feel safe or threatening?
Human nervous system prefers equilibrium to anything else - even if this place of equilibrium currently feels yucky to you. So if we make too much change all at once our nervous system
might just rebel, and when it does it lets you know.
If you have come home after a class with a searing, burning pain anywhere, know that your nervous system just went into a freak out mode.
All of us are trained to think that we "tweaked something" during the yoga practice. While it is not impossible to "tweak something"
during a yoga practice, the chances of you having a nervous system freakout are that much higher.
{I have a rather intimate relationship with both "yoga tweaks" and "NS freakouts" so I do try to structure classes in a way that helps you navigate the mat without those kind of post-class experiences}.
So case in point is this: taking the stretch / sensation level to the
max is not the best idea. It doesn't serve your greatest good.
60 - 75% sensation level / output is about where most people find that fine balance between feeling challenged and engaged, yet not overdone.
Current stress and pain levels would drop the 60 - 75% threshold to a much lower one - so this freak out / no freak out mechanism begins to work as a feedback tool.
Don't freak out about "the freakout." Pay attention!
