Mega Yoga Stretch

There are a few yoga poses that provide a stretch that is just, well, mega.  These mega stretches may push your intensity threshold, but they are usually worth it.

Thursday classes at the moment offer one of these mega stretches.  On Thursdays we are going from the two ends of the torso to open parts of our body that will help us fly up into backbends.  They are not the only keys to the flying backbend but they really help.  In last week's blog we thought about how our orangutan arms--how our arms connect to our waist.  This week, we get a chance to go to the other end of our torso and consider how our legs also connect to our waist. 

Anatomically, this is true.  There is a muscle called the iliopsoas that goes from our thigh to just below our lower ribs. 

This is a pretty important muscle and, among other things, influences the curvature of our lower back.  If this muscle is too tight, your lower back can get habitually pulled into a curve that is exaggerated (too curved or hyperextended).  Without going into too much anatomy, if your lower back is constantly being pulled into a tighter curve this can lead to all sorts of back problems as the vertebrae get pulled closer and closer together and the discs get compressed.

Backbends require our lower back to be long and free, not tight and compressed.  If your iliopsoas is tight you are going to have trouble feeling this freedom and it is likely that you will get a 'crunching' or squashed feeling in your lower back as you try to come into backbending postures. 

Bearing this in mind, on Thursdays we are doing a mega yoga stretch to help free the iliopasas so that we can have free lower backs in backbends.  We do a wall variation of virasana (hero pose) that seems much more difficult than virasana itself.  This is probably because your thigh is fixed against the wall and cannot move, thereby preserving your alignment, whereas in the real virasana your thigh can move around (even if you try not to let it) and subtly change the alignment of the pose.  As most of you have no doubt found out by now, the smallest change in your alignment can make a huge difference to a posture.  When our body is stretching it will often find little 'escape routes', by which I mean it tries to take us away from the intensity. 

In the the mega stretch on the video clip there is little escape from the intensity.  You need to go with the flow and breathe.  Of course, as always, be mindful of any strain that might be leading to injury.  In this pose the most likely strain would be in the knee joint or possibly the lower back if you are not mindful.  Below I have outlined a few points about the integrity of the joints for this pose:

• fold up your mat like I do in the video clip.  This is actually just to act as a cushion for your knee.  The thing about this pose is that it looks like the pressure is on your knee, but your weight is actually not on your knee cap but on the bottom of the thigh bone.  I usually do this pose against a wall without my mat, but, having said that, having a little cushion does bring a bit of comfort.
• watch the front knee does not come too far in front of the ankle and definitely not over the toes.
• in the video clip I fix my shin straight up the wall and then slip my pelvis inside the heel of my foot to take it all the way back to the wall.  You do not need to do this and you should not force yourself to do this.  Remember, yoga is never about forcing.  Your body will 'do' when it is ready. Your pelvis can stay in front of your foot, it does not have to go back to the wall, and that is completely ok!  You can use this pose as a lunge variation rather than as the virasana variation as I move into.  Work within your limits. 
• this posture requires us to maintain the normal curve of our lower back.  We don't want to try and flatten it or exaggerate it.  Most people will probably find the curve exaggerating--especially if your iliopsoas is tight.  So be sure to keep your lower ribs from jutting out, which will increase the curve at the lower back. 
• if you are going to try and take your arms overhead, make sure the natural curve of your lower back is maintained.  Tight latissimus dorsi muscles (which connect your arms to your waist--see last week's post on orangutan arms) will make it difficult to take your arms overhead and the escape mechanism for them will be to try and increase the curve in your lower back to allow you to do so.  So watch what happens to the curve in your lower back as you try to take your arms overhead.  If it starts to get exaggerated then don't take them up any further. 
• ankles that are tight might make it a bit difficult to get into this posture.  If the front of your ankles are tight and you cannot get them flat against the wall then roll up a little hand towel and place it between your ankle and the wall.

See if you can hold the two poses I demonstrate in the video clip for about a minute each.  Focus on steadying your breath as you do so.  In between legs, get up and move around.  You will really feel the new 'freedom' in the leg that you have just stretched.

This mega yoga stretch really targets the front of your thighs and pelvis and, combined with your orangutan arms (see last week's blog), will help you fly up into backbends!  Have fun and practice safely.

Pelvis Vs Knee: Trikonasana

Pelvis Vs Knee: Trikonasana

I am often asked whether the pelvis should be opened fully to the side in trikonasana (triangle pose). 

Now, if you asked five different yoga teachers they would probably give you five different answers about how to do trikonasana, but they would all no doubt tell you that to answer the question you need to look at the relationship between the pelvis and the knee.   

In trikonasana there is a little tug of war going on between the movement on your front thigh and the opposite side of the pelvis.   The front thigh is trying to roll out while the opposite side of your pelvis is trying to move back and roll up towards the sky. 

A key action at the front hip joint is external rotation (it is also flexing and abducting—check out last week’s blog about defining movements of the hip joint).   As your front thigh rolls out, your front knee comes into alignment over the centre of your front foot. 

You can then try to roll that (front) side of your bottom underneath and press it forward at the same time so that it is not sticking out to the yogi behind you.  To do all of this you will find you need to maintain strong actions in the front leg of lifting the thigh up, rolling it out and under while pressing the big toe down so as not to roll on to the outside edge of your foot.    As you move into the posture more deeply by tipping the pelvis, you will feel the stretch on the inner front thigh and back of the front thigh as a result of these actions. 

But trikonasana is not all about the front leg.  You need to balance the work in the front leg with the work in the back leg.  And this means while you are doing all of that work in front, you are also trying to broaden the front of your pelvis and prevent the top of the pelvis (back leg side) from rolling forward and toppling over towards the floor.  To do this you need to strongly engage your back leg, pressing down through the outer edge of the foot, trying to roll the thigh out and trying to draw the whole inner thigh from the knee up and in towards your pelvis. 

But there is a reason the top of the pelvis wants to roll forward towards the floor.  And,  for many of us, it will be because allowing this action of the pelvis releases some of the stretch on the front leg and also lets us get closer to the floor with our arm if that is where we think our arm should be.

However, one of the (muscular) functions of trikonasana is to help open up the inner thighs and hamstrings so practicing in this way might not help you too much towards that end. 

What this all means is that you need to keep trying to roll the top (back leg side) of your pelvis up and back but, and here’s the point, there is no need to take it so that it is right on top of the bottom (front leg side) of your pelvis.  You do not need to square your pelvis to the side.  For most of us this is probably not even possible, and, if you persist in doing so you may find that your front leg starts to roll in and your front knee will lose its careful alignment (see my video link).  Over time this will transfer strain onto your inner knee joint, which is not something you want. 

So, should you be trying to get your pelvis open to the side?  The short answer is, start with the correct alignment of your front knee and then open the pelvis to the extent that is possible.   In the tug-of-war between knee and pelvis, the integrity of your knee needs to win. 

Trikonasana is a great pose and nearly every yoga class will include it whether or not it is for beginners or advanced students.  Thereis a whole lot more to it than I have mentioned here (did not even mention the upper body!), but more on that later.  For now, happy and safe practicing!

Mettha

What Lies Beneath (Our Bums): Observing the Hip Joint to Protect the Knees

“The Day My Bum Went Psycho” is a book written by Australian children’s author Andy Griffiths.  It’s a story about detachable bums that jump off their owners.  Zach, the main character, wakes up one night bumless and has to get help from some bum-hunters to recover his rogue bum, which has become the leader of a group of bum scoundrels that have set out to rule the world. 

If you actually removed your bum, or what most of us thought of as our bums, you would probably be removing the fat that is stored there along with large muscle that almost everyone knows the name of—the gluteus maximus.  Removing this muscle would make some things very difficult or awkward, such as walking and running or getting up from a chair. 

Now, we know the gluteus maximus is big and important because if someone had named you Samantha Maximus or Tilak Maximus it was probably not without reason.  But if you removed your gluteus maximus (for example if your bum went psycho) you would find some other very important muscles called external rotators.  You can see the people who named our body parts are in fact very clever because, as you could probably guess, it is their job to perform a movement called external rotation at your hip joint.

Understanding the basic movements at your hip joint is important for deep hip opening postures and, understanding external rotation in particular, can help prevent injury to the knee joint in some of these poses where you also need to bend your knee (think lotus, pigeon etc).

In this blog I want to talk about the six basic movements of the hip joint and then focus on the idea of external rotation in the context of protecting the knee joint.  Hip opening postures are sure to give even the most open-hipped yogi a little pain in the butt.  Practicing with awareness and alignment will also help you protect your knee joints.