In our recent workshop on “CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH” Tiffany and I discussed a variety of ways to keep our cardiovascular system healthy. While we felt satisfied with our efforts to cover most of what we’d wanted in the workshop, we also realize that it was a lot of info to pack into a 2 hour workshop, especially when we were simultaneously teaching a posture sequence new to many of the students who attended.
So I wanted to post some of the content we presented during the workshop to serve as a review for those who attended and as a reference for those who weren’t able to make it. Here is the first part of that content.
What does the C.V. system do?
Before we can understand how to keep the C.V. system healthy, we need to be clear about what it does. The most essential role of the C.V. system is to deliver oxygen and nutrients to all of the tissues of the body and to help move cellular wastes from those tissues back into the lungs and into the lymphatic system for removal. The C.V. system is also important in maintaining consistent body temperature and fluid balance.
What makes up the C.V. system?
The C.V. system is made up of the heart, blood and blood vessels. Most of us think of the heart as the primary worker of the C.V. system, but this is an oversimplification. The vast webbing of aortas, arteries, arterioles and capillaries is a prolific network that fills up a great deal of space in the body, mostly within our muscles. It is therefore difficult to separate our cardiovascular system from our musculosekeltal system. The two systems are interrelated.
What moves blood through your C.V. system?
The heart is not the only muscle that pumps blood. Our blood is moved by the pumping of ALL of our muscles!!! In fact if our heart had to do all of the work of moving blood through the body we would wear this muscle out very quickly. Most of the work of pumping blood through the body is done by muscles other than the heart.
When we perform different movements the various muslces in our body contract and relax to move our bones and generate those movements. This contracting and relaxing of our muslces is what pulls blood out of the blood vessels and into our tissues and pulls blood out of our tissues and into our blood vessels and lymphatic system. Therefore the more muscles we move on a daily basis, the better our cardiovascular health. If we don’t move our bodies in a variety of ways most our cells don’t get fed and cannot excrete their wastes. This leads to degredation of our tissue and eventually disease.
“Sitting Kills!” i.e. “Being Stationary So Much of the Time Kills”
If we are not using our muscles, either because we are not moving very much or our exercise of choice is repetitive and does not vary, then our heart ends up doing all the work. This puts undue stress on the heart. We could run for 1 hour a day and sit for 8 hours and have used very little of our cardiovascular system. Yet sitting in and of itself is not the problem, it is being in one position, using very little muscle, that is the problem. The more muscles we use the healthier the cardiovascular system. Thus the more movements we perform with frequency the healthier our C.V. system.
Keeping our cardiovascular system healthy is achieved through frequent & varied movement throughout the day, not just exercise!
There is a big difference between movement and exercise. A great analogy is that this difference is like the difference between food and vitamins. We can easily understand that we need a varied diet of different foods to live and thrive. If we only took vitamins, regardless of the need we might have for those vitamins, we wouldn’t survive. The same is true for movement. We need varied movement to live and thrive. Exercise is like the vitamins of movement. There may be some benefits to doing a repetitive movement for short periods of time that is challenging specific parts of the body, but it isn’t a substitute for a varied diet of movements.
What should I do to increse the variety of my movements and therefore promote my C.V. health?
Some simple things we can do include setting up a standing work station and alternate using this with our sitting work station. If this isn’t practical then just getting up and standing and walking a bit periodically before sitting again for work would help. Also, we can learn how to sit and stand in ways that use more muslces and decrease the load on our joints. When standing, for example, the most important thing we can do is make sure we are standing with a neurtral pelvis and if we are not, backing our hips up to align vertically over the outer ankle bones to bring our pelvis to neutral (see the photo below).
(See my earlier post titled “The Importance of Sending the Right Message” for more on aligning the hips.)
Stretching periodically throughout the day is another good way to promote C.V. health, especially when we emphasize muscles that tend to shorten when sitting. Simple stretches for the calf muslces, hamstrings and hips are very helpful as these are big muslces that can hold a lot of blood and can move blood into a lot of important tissues. The “Double Calf Stretch” (see photo below) is a good example of a stretch that addresses these areas.
*Note – Avoid this stretch and seek the help of a skilled teacher if you get back pain when attempting it!
Finally, walking is a great way to increase the variety of movements in our movement diet. Walking is one of the most complex movements we do as human beings. If you have taken one of Tiffany’s and my “Balance & Gait” or “Hiking” workshops then you are aware of how complicated walking in a deliberate way can be. Therefore, the notion of walking as providing quite a lot of variety of movements to our movement diet will make perfect sense. If you haven’t had the opportunity to work on how you walk, consider doing it. It will surprise you how complex and difficult walking actually is and you will really appreciate it as perhaps the most complete form of cardiovascular exercise!
(See my earlier blog titled “Are we walking or falling?” for more on walking.)
New Years Reminder: Align Yourself Better in 2016
in Personal Alignment TrainingNew years resolutions are a tricky business. By making a new years resolution I am stating that I am resolved to follow through with my intentions. If I am truly resolved then I will follow through with my intentions and may enjoy the benefits of my success. If the resolve is lacking then I will likely not follow through and I may instead experience feelings of failure and disappointment.
One could argue also that if I truly have resolve with regards to some intention, say, getting into better shape, then I won’t really need to make a resolution to do that. I just go and get into better shape because my resolve requires that action. I must be careful that my new years resolutions aren’t simply an endless list of the things I’d like to change but lack the skills, the will or the resolve to change.
I’d like to suggest an alternative to new years resolutions: “new years reminders.” I can use the new year to simply remind myself of the changes I’d like to see in my life but have yet, for whatever reason, failed to manifest. I’d also like to suggest that of the many possibilities for new years reminders, BETTER ALIGNMENT be moved up the list!
Why better alignment? Well it’s to do with the fact that our alignment impacts our health in so many ways, physically and psychologically, and that it is the essential first step for many other popular new years reminders including “getting into better shape”, “losing weight” and “reducing stress”, just to name a few.
Improving our alignment has the following benefits with regards to getting into better shape:
In additon to the above, improving our alignment has the following benefits with regards to weight loss:
And it that weren’t enough better alignment helps to reduce stress in the following ways:
So consider making a “New Years Reminder” to develop the alignment skills you have as well as learning new ones. Consider reminding yourself to do the things you’re already doing, walking, standing, sitting, etc. with better alignment and with more of the health promoting effects you want.
What Does a Muscle Do?
in Movement Article, Personal Alignment Training, YogaAt my Restorative Exercise certification training in spring of 2014, Katy Bowman, the founder of R.E. posed a question to our group – “What do muscles do?” Her answer – “they respond.” To be honest I didn’t give her comment much thought at the time, but since that day her words have come back to me time and time again and the truth of them has been born out of my experiences working with clients and in my own body.
What do we typically think of when we want to affect a muscle? Generally either stretching it or strengthening it. If I want to stretch a muscle, what do I really want to happen? I want that muscle to change it’s length. Specifically, I want that muscle to be longer that it currently is.
Let’s say I find out I have tight hamstrings and that having tight hamstrings is not a good thing so I decide I’m going to stretch them. I stand and bend forward and try to reach the floor, pulling strongly on the muscles in the backs of my legs. It certainly feels like I am stretching my hamstrings, but usually I am stretching the muscles in my back even more. In fact, because of the difference in the way these 2 groups of muscles are meant to function, the way that the hamstring muscles and the muscles in my lower back “respond” in this scenario can be very different than I intend.
Bending from the lower back
The hamstrings consist of three muscles located on the back of the thigh which are called the semimembranosus, the semitendinosus, and the biceps femoris. The primary job of the hamstrings collectively is to extend the hip joint (pull the femur back relative to the pelvis) and flex (bend) the knee. When the knees are kept straight and the hips are flexed as in a standing forward bend, the hamstrings do the job of hip extension by acting as the main muscles that support the weight of my upper body as it moves forward and down. In other words, as I flex my hips to bend forward the hamstrings apply a counter force in the opposite direction, that of hip extension, to help carry the weight of my pelvis, trunk and head.
In this example, the muscles in my lower back have a job to do as well, particular the erector spinae whose job it is to help stabilize my spine and prevent it from distorting to the point that it puts undue stress on the spinal joints. These muscles work in combination with my hamstrings and my gluteal (buttock) muscles to enable me to bend forward without damaging the very important and essential tissue contained within my spinal column, namely the spinal cord.
Thus the job of my hamstrings in a forward bend, as well as those of the lower back, is to “respond” to that movement by acting as a kind of breaking mechanism, carrying the load of my trunk. Of the two muscle groups, the hamstrings are the bigger and stronger and therefore should be encouraged to do more of the work in a forward bend. For the hamstrings to respond this way I need to emphasize bending more from my hips and minimize the bend from my lower back. When the hamstrings are tight they don’t allow for much movement from the hips before they can no longer respond to my motion of bending forward.
Bending forward from the hips
If I keep bending forward, even when the hamstrings cannot respond anymore, then my lower back has to carry the load instead. My head and trunk are pretty darn heavy and therefore this puts a lot of stress on my back. If I keep doing my forward bend this way not only will I eventually hurt my back, but I will also not make much progress in increasing the length of my hamstrings. That’s because when I bend well beyond the range of my hamstring length the hamstrings cannot respond anymore and therefore will not increase their length. Meanwhile the muscles in my low back will respond, and quite appropriately, to the consistent excessive loading I’m putting on them by getting weaker less able to effectively do the job of maintaining a functional position of my lower spine that keeps the joints healthy, mobile and pain free.
This is just one of many possible examples of the way in which muscles respond to the input we give them in both helpful and not so helpful ways. Therefore when I recognize that I have a muscle that hurts or that is too tight or too week, before I go about stretching or strengthening I should consider what I may already be doing that is causing the muscle to respond as it is.
In the example of my hamstrings, I need to consider how much time I spend sitting or wearing shoes with heels or standing with my pelvis tucked. Any of these “activities” will result in shorter hamstrings because when I engage in these very common activities I am effectively telling my hamstrings to shorten. My tight hamstrings are just responding appropriately to the message I’m sending!
Standing with tucked pelvis
What is a Hip Opener? (part 3)
in Movement Article, Personal Alignment Training, YogaIn the previous post we looked at hip extension from a prone position. One important feature of extending the hip this way is that it is extended with active, muscularly driven movement. Active hip extension has the important benefit of stregthening the hip extensor muslces. Another benefit to active hip extension (versus passive) is that it is somewhat safer because we have to use whatever strength our hip extensors have to overcome the tension in the antagonist hip flexors. This avoids overstretching the hip flexors and minimizes stress on the lower back. Finally, doing active hip extension allows us to better assess the ROM of our hips and therefore establish a more accurate baseline from which to make progress.
Active hip extension does, however, have one major disadvantage, and if you’ve worked on either or both of the postures I presented in part 2 you would have noticed this rather quickly. It is difficult to hold these postures long enough to facilitate rapid progress. Therefore I’d like offer a way of increasing hip extension passively that is both safe and effective as well as somewhat pleasurable to do.
The posture below is demonstrated in the video you see above. I recommend reading the description first and then watching the video after for clarification.
Lie down on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. Place your feet pelvis width apart (about 6 inches) with the shin bones vertical and the knees directly over the ankles. If either or both of your knees don’t bend this much, only bend the knees as much as is comfortable for your most limited knee. Tuck your chin in toward the top of your throat and legthen the back of your neck until you can feel that the head is not at all tilting backwards. If you find it difficult to keep the chin in, place a folded blanket under the base of the skull to increase the height of the head. Make the blanket high enough that it removes any posterior tilt from the skull.
Place a standard size yoga block in between your knees and hold it. Without dropping the block, slowly lift the pelvis up off the floor and place a second block on its side under your pelvis. If you cannot lift the pelvis high enough to fit a standard size block without dropping the block between your knees then a standard size block is too hight for you. Use a half block or some equivalent height instead. You should feel absolutely no pain in your back! If you do feel pain in your back, decrease the height until you no longer feel back pain. If you cannot lie this way with the pelvis elevated and without back pain seek help from an experienced teacher.
Once you have the pelvis elevated and supported, making sure the support is only under the pelvis and not under the lumbar spine, remove the block from between your knees. Then notice the way the pelvis automatically rolls back a little toward the rib cage. This keeps your lumbar and thoracic spine neutral. Avoid actively rolling the pelvis back (i.e. tucking the pelvis). Simply allow the pelvis to roll back to the extent that it is naturally inclined. If the pelvis doesn’t roll back this way at all, try moving the support under the pelvis a little closer to your feet.
Next, keeping your foot in contact with the floor, move your left foot gradually out away from the support, keeping it in line with the hip. Remain aware of the position of the pelvis relative to the rib cage and notice if at any point moving the leg starts to pull the pelvis out of its position. When you reach such a point, pause there and let the weight of your leg gently pull on the hip flexors. In the beginning you may not feel much. As you practice more your sensitivity will increase and you will perceive the sensation of loading on the hip flexors in the groin and in front of your hip. You will also being to perceive the sensation of these musles letting go. This is your cue to start gradually moving your foot further away from your hip.
Stay for 20-30 seconds. Then bring the foot back to its original position and try this with the right leg. After you’ve done each leg once, lift the pelvis up remove the block under it and come down. If you feel any pain in your back upon lifting the pelvis up off the block it is telling you that you have used too much height. Try decreasing the height and repeating the sequence described in the preious 2 paragraphs.
When you’ve found a height you can use to do one repetition without experiencing any pain after, then you’re ready to begin more repetitions and with longer holds times. Repeat the above 2-3 times on each leg, first for 20-30 seconds and then over the course of a couple of weeks working up to a minute on each leg.
Eventually you’ll reach a point where you’ll be able to stretch each leg all the way out without any response from the pelvis. When you reach this point the next step is to increase the height of the block under the pelvis. When you feel you’re ready to do this, increase the height by turning the block on its side. Avoid placing the block on its end or making the block so high that you are forced to arch your lower back. Using too much height may lead to a back injury and will not be as effective in increasing your hip extension as will extending the hip while maintaining a neutral spine.
Conisider doing this passive hip extension in combination with active hip extension to see how one improves the other. You may also enjoy combining these hip extension postures with the standing forward bend described in “What is a Hip Opener, Part 1” to see how increasing the length of the hip flexors with hip extension helps them to contribute more to your hip flexion. However you use these postures, enjoy the increase in ease and freedom of movement these postures give to your hips!
What is a Hip Opener? (part 2)
in Movement Article, Personal Alignment Training, YogaA hip opener is a posture meant to increase a particular range of motion or multiple ranges of motion in the hip joint. The most important aspect of such a posture is that the hip be targeted and that the force applied to the hip to create the opening not be diverted into the lower back or the knee. Hip extension is one ROM of the hip that often gets neglected because of the ease with which many of us use the joints in the lower spine to do motions that would otherwise be done from the hip. Working on hip extension is therefore extrememly hepful and important not only for health and function of the hips but also that of the lower back.
Improving hip extension will help prepare the body for backbends as well as help to support healthy gait mechanics. The simplest way to work on hip extension is from a prone position. Lie face down on the floor and find a comfortable position for you head, perhaps resting your forehead on a blanket or on your forearm. Check and see if the pubic bone and the frontal most aspect of the 2 ilium (the A.S.I.S. or anterior superior iliac spine) are resting on the floor. If the pubic bone doesn’t easily rest on the floor, try placing a folded blanket just above it on the 2 A.S.I.S.. The idea is to tilt the pelvis back a bit to bring the pubic bone in contact with the floor (see figure 1).
figure 1
If the 2 A.S.I.S. are not able to rest on the floor when the pubic bone is in contact with the floor the blanket support will offer something for the 2 A.S.I.S. to rest against. Whatever the case, getting the pubic bone in contact with the floor is crucial. Once you have it down, then lift your right leg off the floor while keeping the knee straight. Make sure the pubic bone stays in contact with the floor. This is hip extension (see figure 2).
figure 2
Hold the position for a few seconds, making sure that the pelvis doesn’t roll to one side when the leg is lifted. Lower the right leg and try it with the left leg. If your feel pain in your back and/or on either side of the sacrum (on the back of the pelvis) when doing hip extension as described above, try pushing the pubic bone down into the floor with moderate force and then lifting the leg again. If this doesn’t at least reduce if not resolve the pain then suspend working on hip extension this way and move on to the next option (see figures 3-5 below). If you can lift each leg with your pubic bone remaining in contact with the floor and without pain in your back, then try doing this in front of a mirror so you can see how much hip extension you actually have. How high does the leg lift before your pubic bone starts to lift as well? 6 inches? 10 inches? 1 inch? See what you’ve got currently so you have a baseline from with to assess progress.
Repeat this method of extending the hip 3-4 times on each leg, feeling the muscles in the back of the hip and thigh working to lift the leg. Continue to keep the knee straight and the pubic bone in contact with the floor. If your low back starts to hurt as you’re holding the leg up, decrease the height of the leg until the pain goes away and continue. As long as you’re not experiencing back pain, begin increasing the time of hold to 20-30 seconds. Then rest a few breaths and come up.
If your back hurts when you try the above, no matter how high or low you lift the leg, then try the following instead. Come to your hands and knees with your fingers and thumbs spread, your wrists directly over your hands and your knees directly under your hips. If you knee caps are sensitive to pressure, have your knees on a blanket for more cushion. Allow the pelvis to rotate forward and your back to arch as much as is comfortable. Try not to actively arch the back but let the arch happen by relaxing the abdomen toward the floor (see figure 3). Then, using your abdominal muscles, lift your lower front ribs up away from the floor and pull them in toward the spine until you feel the middle of your spine round out slightly. Be careful not to tuck your pelvis when you do this.
figure 3
You can use a mirror to get feedback. You should see a clearly concave lumbar spine and a clearly convex thoracic spine. If upon looking at your image in the mirror you find it’s hard to tell where the lumbar ends and the thoracic begins, continue to lift the lower ribs up and in toward the spine until you can begin to see the junction of lumbar and thoracic. Then lift up the portion of the thoracic spine in between the shoulder blades by pushing your palms into the floor with your arms held straight. Try to feel the rhomboids, the muscles that connect your shoulder blades to your spine, becoming longer and more active(figure 4).
figure 4
Now push down through your left knee until your left hip engages and your right knee begins to lift off the floor. Be conscious of lifting the right knee up by using the left hip and not by using the muscles in your lower back. Once the right knee is lifted, stretch the leg out behind you until the knee is straight. Keeping the left hip active and the right knee straight, gradually lift your right thigh toward the ceiling (figure 5). Avoid arching your back and dropping your lower ribs toward the floor. Also be sure to keep the upper thoracic spine lifted and the shoulder blades wide. Hold the leg up for 10-15 seconds, then lower the leg and repeat on the opposite leg. Repeat each side 3 times.
figure 5
This is also hip extension and this version will typically work for everyone and is particularly helpful for those who’s hip extension is limited. The exception is anyone who cannot bear weight on their hands this way. If this includes you then seek help from an experienced teacher to work on your hip extension. There are many postures that can be used to increase hip extension in addition to the above. In the part 3 I will discuss another of my favorites!
What is a Hip Opener? (part 1)
in Movement Article, Personal Alignment Training, YogaConsidering how often they are requested, “hip openers” have to be one of the more desirable categories of postures offered at any yoga class, and for good reason. Any student of yoga wants more open hips as the benefits of increasing the mobility of the hip joints are numerous. Increased mobility of the hips can relieve hip, low back and knee pain, as well as improve leg strength, balance and pelvic floor function, to name just a few. More mobile hips are also essential for performing more advanced postures.
But common approaches to opening the hips taught in yoga classes frequently range from ineffective to downright injurious. Considering the fact that hip replacement surgery is becoming commonplace in the western world, the dubiousness of the “hip opening” often offered to yoga students is unfortunate to say the least. Especially when, as you’ll see here, a little knowledge and a bit of know how is enough to allow anyone who’s interested to increase the mobility of their hips safely and effectively.
So what is a safe and effective way of hip opening? It starts with seeing where our body is actually at and understanding where we want it to go and how to get it there. So first we need to look objectively at the range of motion our hips currently have. Next we need to learn to see what is a movement of the hip joint and what is a movement of some other part of the body. Finally, we need to learn ways of increasing our range of motion (ROM) that maintain the integrity of the hip joints and do not place inappropriate loads on the spine or the knee.
The hip joint has 6 different ranges of motion. These are flexion, extension, external rotation, internal rotation, adduction and abduction. Flexion involves the thigh bone or femur moving toward the front of the pelvis or the pelvis rotating toward the front of the femur. This is the ROM that is most crucial for doing a forward bend. Extension is the opposite of flexion. In hip extension the femur moves toward the back of the pelvis. Extension is the ROM used primarily in back bends, but it is also important for walking.
External and internal rotation are the femur rotating away from or toward the opposite leg respectively. Adduction and abduction are the femur moving laterally (as opposed to rotating) towards and away from the opposite leg respectively. Adduction also describes when the femur moves across the midline of the body and beyond the the opposite leg and hip. All of these ROM’s are important in both standing and seated postures.
Of all of the ROM’s of the hip I mentioned above, flexion is the movement our hips do most often. Flexion is the primary movement done in forward bends, but it’s also the hip motion we do every time we sit and we should but don’t necessarily do every time we reach forward to pick something up or use the sink or the toilet (we often bend the spine instead of the hip). Therefore improving our hip flexion will not only help our forward bends in yoga but also help us with the everyday activities that, when our hip ROM is limited, put constant stress on our knees and lower backs.
Let’s start by looking at how much hip flexion we have. Stand with your feet separated about 5-6 inches and parallel. If possible, stand profile to a mirror so that you can see the shape of your spine. If you tend to get lower back pain when bending forward, put a chair or stool in front of you so you can take some support from it. Next, move your hips back just a little, that is, just until you begin to perceive the pelvis tilting forward (see figure 1). Now look at the shape of your back in the mirror. The lower part of the spine or lumbar spine should be somewhat concave. If you don’t have a mirror, you can try feeling the shape of your spine with your finger tips(see figure 2). If the lumbar does not curve in but rather rounds out, lift your sit bones and your tailbone up away from your feet until you’ve restored the concave shape. This is hip flexion.
figure 1
figure 2
Once you have established a concave lumber position in this very modest forward bend, continue to move your hips back and lift your sit bones up to increase hip flexion. Still using the mirror or your finger tips, notice when your pelvis can no longer tilt forward and the shape of your lower back starts to change. When it does you have reached the end of your ROM of hip flexion and have begun flexing your lumbar spine instead (see Figure 3). If you do this enough it will eventually cause back pain and may compromise the integrity of the spinal joints. Conversely, if you can learn to maintain your lumbar curve more often it will help develop the ROM in your hips you need to do deep forward bends safely.
figure 3
Now lift your trunk slightly back up until you have restored the concave lumbar position. To establish a marker, see how far your hands are from the floor. You might use yoga blocks, for example, to see how far you are. Are you one block? Two blocks? A block and a half? Get an objective measure you can use as a baseline you can refer to later and evaluate progress (See Figure 4). Then come up from your forward bend, preferably with your knees straight. If your back hurts coming up with the knees straight then bend your knees to come out. As you hip ROM improves and your legs get stronger you will gradually find it easier to come out of this forward bend without bending your knees. This is another measure you can use to monitor your progress.
figure 4
To work on increasing your ROM of hip flexion, repeat the above but begin to hold the position for a period of time. Start with holding the fully hip flexed position with your still concave lumbar for 20-30 seconds. Repeat it 3-4 times. In time you’ll find you can increase your time in the posture and with increased time you’ll see progress. Your hip flexion with increase and your forward bends will improve!
Stay tuned! Next we’ll look at hip extension.
Tips for Promoting Cardiovascular Health, Part 3
in Cardiovascular HealthAs we’ve seen in the earlier posts on CV health, much of what we can do to promote CV health goes beyond diet, exercise and medications. The way we hold and move our bodies has a dramatic impact on whether our CV system will experience turbulent flow, wall wounding and the subsequent plaque formation that leads to CV disease. Correcting the mis-alignments that distort our blood vessel geometry goes a long way toward minimizing turbulent flow, particularly in the abdominal aorta and the carotid arteries. But what else can we do to reduce turbulent flow and the resulting damage to our CV system?
What else reduces turbulent flow?
Besides our blood vessel geometry, there are several other causes of turbulent flow that we have it in our power to correct or minimize. One is sudden changes to the size of our blood vessels. This refers to a sudden dilation of a blood vessel which results in blood squirting through the vessel in much the same way that water in a kinked hose squirts through rapidly when unkinked. The result of this sudden rush of blood through the vessel is turbulent flow.
What causes sudden a change to blood vessel size?
There are several factors which contribute to sudden change in blood vessel size. One major one is biological stress. Biological stress results when we ignore our biological needs to the point that it impacts our health. This is a distinct category of stress from what most of us are referring to when we say “I’m stressed,” although they are often related.
When the word “stress” is used in common language, usually we are referring to the pressures of modern life. Things like work, traffic, relationships and taking too many things on at once can produce a feeling we call “stressed”. Certainly this type of stress can be problematic for CV health as it tends to increase blood pressure, but biological stress is different.
Understanding Biological Stress
If I am working and perhaps on a deadline and I decide to skip a meal to get more work done even though I am hungry, then I am creating biological stress. If I decide to work very late into the night and I fail to get enough sleep so that I return to work tired the next day, then I am creating biological stress. If I need to use the bathroom but I ignore the urge because it’s inconvenient for some reason, then I am creating biological stress.
These types of stressors, while they may very well be related to the “stress” in my life are different in that they trigger the release of hormones in my body that cause my blood vessels to dilate suddenly. This sudden change in the blood vessel size causes turbulent flow. This is similar to the affect that cigarette smoking would have on my CV system if I were a smoker.
What can I do about Biological Stress?
It may seem obvious, but reducing biological stress is as easy as the not so easy solution of eating when I’m hungry, sleeping when I’m tired and using the bathroom when the urge comes. If I’ve been supresssing biological urges for a long time, it may be necessary for me to reaccustom myself to the feeling of these urges to know when an appropriate response is called for. Typically I’ll need to make responding to these urges more of a priority, relative to the activities which are impeding my response. The demands on my time and energy are important, but are they so important that I must neglect my most basic human needs?
What else can I do to reduce turbulent flow?
Besides improving blood vessel geometry and minimizing biological stress we can also reduce turbulent flow by keeping our blood sugar at healthy levels. This is because sugar in the blood causes it to be thicker and stickier and this alters the way it moves through blood vessels. This alteration in blood viscosity in turn leads to turbulent flow, wall wounding and plaque formation.
Decreasing blood sugar goes beyond diet.
How then do I keep blood sugar at healthy levels? Reducing simple sugars in the diet of course helps and is important, but we should also consider something else when addressing blood sugar – how we are moving. Movement that requires more muscles to work will also increase cellular metabolism and decrease blood sugar because the cells of active muscles require more food to do their work. Obviously we shouldn’t be eating a lot of sugar, but perhaps it’s even more important that we move more throughout our day to increase muslce use and cellular metabolism.
In conclusion, let me suggest that movement in alignment and with regular frequency is not optional for our health, cardiovascular or otherwise. Natural movement, like food, sleep and regular elimination is a biological imperative.
Tips for Promoting Cardiovascular Health, Part 2
in Cardiovascular HealthIn my last post I discussed the function of the C.V. system and it’s component parts and I highlighted the imperative of movement to our cardiovascular health. In this post I’d like to discuss what behaviors and circumstances damage our C.V. system and might lead to C.V. disease.
What Damages the C.V. System?
The main contributor to diminished C.V. health and overall health in general is plaque formation in our blood vessels. Plaques are formed from cholesterol and when enough of them form inside a blood vessel they harden the vessel walls. Plaques can also accumulate to the point of blocking a major artery which is clearly a very serious condition. Thus for obvious reasons medicine has aggressively sought to reduce the buildup of cholesterol plaques by recommending diets low in cholesterol and prescribing cholesterol reducing drugs to patients. But is too much cholesterol the whole story?
Why Does Plaque Form?
While the majority of us know about cholesterol and it’s capacity build up and harden or even block our blood vessels, why this happens is typically less understood. Cholesterol plaques forming in our blood vessels are a natural result of tiny injuries to the walls of our blood vessels called wall wounding. When such a wall wound manifests our bodies use plaque to patch the wound in the same way we form scabs when we suffer wounds to our skin. The plaque protects the site of injury so that it has a chance to heal. Therefore plaque and cholesterol are not really the primary cause of C.V. disease. The primary cause is wall wounding.
What Causes Wall Wounding?
Under normal circumstances our blood flows smoothly through our blood vessels. However, when blood flow is not optimal our blood cells can hit the inner walls of our blood vessels strongly enough to leave little nicks in the vessel walls. This pathological movement of blood through the vessels causing wall wounding is called turbulent flow. If we can reduce turbulent flow in our blood vessels then we can also reduce wall wounding and plaque formation.
What Causes Turbulent Flow?
Turbulent flow has a variety of causes, all of which are preventable. Of these causes the one I’d like to discuss here is blood vessel geometry. In the same way that our muscles, bones and joints have an ideal relative alignment, that is, one that optimizes functionality and minimizes wear and tear, our blood vessels also have an ideal alignment or geometry. The ideal alignment of our blood vessels is one that allows our blood to flow freely and without turbulent flow. Misalignment of the musculoskeletal system typically result in misalignment of our blood vessels. Often this places a bend in the vessel where, were the body better aligned, there would be no such bend.
A great example of this is the way a common misalignment of the cervical spine puts a bend in the carotid arteries. Since these arteries are the main suppliers of oxygen to the front part of the brain any wall wounding and plaque formation in these vessels which might impede or even block flow is a clearly not good. But we can reduce or even eliminate damage to these arteries by improving the alignment of our head and neck.
Figure 1
In the photo below (see figure 1) you can see a very common misalignment of the head and neck referred to as “chin forward posture.” Chin forward posture misaligns our cervical spine in a way that excessively loads the discs, contributes to muscle tension, muscle weakness and unnecessarily stresses the spinal cord. It also misaligns the carotid arteries contributing to turbulent flow, wall wounding and plaque formation in these arteries.
Comparing this photo to the one below it (see figure 2) you can see the head and neck brought back into a healthier alignment. This not only reduces stress on the neck muscles, cervical vertebra and spinal cord but will also be a better alignment for blood flow to the brain and will reduce turbulent flow and wall wounding. This is clearly a good thing.
While there are other causes of turbulent flow, blood vessel geometry is an important one and one that is often overlooked as a contributing factor in C.V. disease. The next post will look at the other causes of turbulent flow and discuss other ways we can avoid it and avoid this important contributing factor to C.V. disease.
Figure 2
Tips For Promoting Cardiovascular Health, Part 1
in Cardiovascular HealthIn our recent workshop on “CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH” Tiffany and I discussed a variety of ways to keep our cardiovascular system healthy. While we felt satisfied with our efforts to cover most of what we’d wanted in the workshop, we also realize that it was a lot of info to pack into a 2 hour workshop, especially when we were simultaneously teaching a posture sequence new to many of the students who attended.
So I wanted to post some of the content we presented during the workshop to serve as a review for those who attended and as a reference for those who weren’t able to make it. Here is the first part of that content.
What does the C.V. system do?
Before we can understand how to keep the C.V. system healthy, we need to be clear about what it does. The most essential role of the C.V. system is to deliver oxygen and nutrients to all of the tissues of the body and to help move cellular wastes from those tissues back into the lungs and into the lymphatic system for removal. The C.V. system is also important in maintaining consistent body temperature and fluid balance.
What makes up the C.V. system?
The C.V. system is made up of the heart, blood and blood vessels. Most of us think of the heart as the primary worker of the C.V. system, but this is an oversimplification. The vast webbing of aortas, arteries, arterioles and capillaries is a prolific network that fills up a great deal of space in the body, mostly within our muscles. It is therefore difficult to separate our cardiovascular system from our musculosekeltal system. The two systems are interrelated.
What moves blood through your C.V. system?
The heart is not the only muscle that pumps blood. Our blood is moved by the pumping of ALL of our muscles!!! In fact if our heart had to do all of the work of moving blood through the body we would wear this muscle out very quickly. Most of the work of pumping blood through the body is done by muscles other than the heart.
When we perform different movements the various muslces in our body contract and relax to move our bones and generate those movements. This contracting and relaxing of our muslces is what pulls blood out of the blood vessels and into our tissues and pulls blood out of our tissues and into our blood vessels and lymphatic system. Therefore the more muscles we move on a daily basis, the better our cardiovascular health. If we don’t move our bodies in a variety of ways most our cells don’t get fed and cannot excrete their wastes. This leads to degredation of our tissue and eventually disease.
“Sitting Kills!” i.e. “Being Stationary So Much of the Time Kills”
If we are not using our muscles, either because we are not moving very much or our exercise of choice is repetitive and does not vary, then our heart ends up doing all the work. This puts undue stress on the heart. We could run for 1 hour a day and sit for 8 hours and have used very little of our cardiovascular system. Yet sitting in and of itself is not the problem, it is being in one position, using very little muscle, that is the problem. The more muscles we use the healthier the cardiovascular system. Thus the more movements we perform with frequency the healthier our C.V. system.
Keeping our cardiovascular system healthy is achieved through frequent & varied movement throughout the day, not just exercise!
There is a big difference between movement and exercise. A great analogy is that this difference is like the difference between food and vitamins. We can easily understand that we need a varied diet of different foods to live and thrive. If we only took vitamins, regardless of the need we might have for those vitamins, we wouldn’t survive. The same is true for movement. We need varied movement to live and thrive. Exercise is like the vitamins of movement. There may be some benefits to doing a repetitive movement for short periods of time that is challenging specific parts of the body, but it isn’t a substitute for a varied diet of movements.
What should I do to increse the variety of my movements and therefore promote my C.V. health?
Some simple things we can do include setting up a standing work station and alternate using this with our sitting work station. If this isn’t practical then just getting up and standing and walking a bit periodically before sitting again for work would help. Also, we can learn how to sit and stand in ways that use more muslces and decrease the load on our joints. When standing, for example, the most important thing we can do is make sure we are standing with a neurtral pelvis and if we are not, backing our hips up to align vertically over the outer ankle bones to bring our pelvis to neutral (see the photo below).
(See my earlier post titled “The Importance of Sending the Right Message” for more on aligning the hips.)
Stretching periodically throughout the day is another good way to promote C.V. health, especially when we emphasize muscles that tend to shorten when sitting. Simple stretches for the calf muslces, hamstrings and hips are very helpful as these are big muslces that can hold a lot of blood and can move blood into a lot of important tissues. The “Double Calf Stretch” (see photo below) is a good example of a stretch that addresses these areas.
*Note – Avoid this stretch and seek the help of a skilled teacher if you get back pain when attempting it!
Finally, walking is a great way to increase the variety of movements in our movement diet. Walking is one of the most complex movements we do as human beings. If you have taken one of Tiffany’s and my “Balance & Gait” or “Hiking” workshops then you are aware of how complicated walking in a deliberate way can be. Therefore, the notion of walking as providing quite a lot of variety of movements to our movement diet will make perfect sense. If you haven’t had the opportunity to work on how you walk, consider doing it. It will surprise you how complex and difficult walking actually is and you will really appreciate it as perhaps the most complete form of cardiovascular exercise!
(See my earlier blog titled “Are we walking or falling?” for more on walking.)
Balance and Yoga
in Balance, YogaIn part one of the introduction to B.K.S. Iyengar’s classic book ‘Light On Yoga’ Iyengar spends 2 1/2 pages offering various definitions of yoga. One that I particularly like describes yoga as “…a poise of the soul which enables one to look at life in all it’s aspects evenly.” Considering this definition some other words come to mind which further suggest the meaning of yoga – “balance”, “control”, “calm”, “equanimity”, “grace”. Of these, I’d like to suggest that “balance” is the most fundamental component of any yoga practice.
The word “balance” can have very different meanings depending on how it’s used. For example, if “balance” is used as a verb it suggests something we do to acheive stability. . .poise. If I say to you, “balance on one leg!,” your mental and physical effort is directed into maintaining your position with one leg lifted. Standing on one leg can be challenging for many of us, but sometimes the effort to do it results in something very different from stabiltiy or poise. In fact, our effort to “balance” often results in an increase of tension in the body and mind that not only doesn’t help with balance but in fact impairs it. When we try to “do balancing” rather than recognizing and rectifying the cause of our instability our ability to balance remains elusive.
Recognizing and rectifying the cause of our instability requires that we train the mind not just to see what we need to do to acheive stability, but also to see what we are already doing that is promoting instability. As a human being with a mind I am very prone to habits. Perhaps I have a habit of standing with my hips pushed forward. I may do this so often that I don’t even see that I’m doing it until I have occasion to stand with my hips backed up over my ankles. Then my mind sees that I was pushing my hips forward and likely has been for some time. This recognition is the essential step to breaking the habit and changing what I do.
From the standpoint of balance, standing with my hips pushed forward is perhaps the most reliable thing I can do if I want to have difficulty balancing. Standing this way turns off the lateral and posterior hip muscles that are built and positioned for supporting my full weight without undue stress on my joints. Try standing and putting your hands on the lateral and posterior hip with the hips pushed forward. You can easily feel that the muscles are not working to hold you up. This helps the mind to see objectively what you are doing and how it is affecting your ability to stand with stability. In other words, this recognition by the mind is essential for you to balance.
The word “balance” can also be used as a noun in which case the meaning will be quite different. “Balance” as a noun means not something I do but rather something I have. Taking the earlier example, if I simply say to you, “stand on one leg,” it suggests something very different than “balance on one leg”. If you stand on one leg, your effort will be directed toward standing rather than balancing. This will automatically lead to greater stability.
In the earlier example of standing with the hips pushed forward, the word “standing” is really the wrong word. Standing with the hips pushed forward is not really standing but rather falling forward and being held up by the quadraceps. Before you can have the quality of balance you must first stand. If your ability to stand, whether it be on one leg or two, is well developed then the whole notion of “balancing” is a non-issue. Your standing is stable and therefore you are stable. You have that quality.
In yoga we seek to move beyond balance as something we do or something we have and realize that is it something we are. We seek to reveal balance as simply one aspect of our nature. Discovering correct alignment of the body through recognition by the mind (such as seeing that we habitually “stand” with our hips pushed forward and then backing the hips up and actually standing with the hips aligned over the ankles) is an important part of this.
As a human being with a body and a mind, I am subject to the universal laws which govern life, including the laws of physics which govern my physical movements. In practicing yoga I am teaching the mind to recognize these laws and the body to express itself with respect to them. When this happens, I am doing yoga, and control, calm, equanimity and grace manifest automatically.
Are we walking or falling?
in BalanceWalking is one of the most basic human functions and one that we tend to take for granted. That is until we sprain an ankle or break a toe or god forbid break a leg and we’re either not able to walk or our ability to walk is hampered. In these circumstances we’d do almost anything to “walk normally” again.
Walking is essential to our health and longevity. A 2010 study of 428 hip fracture patients age 65 and older showed a 3 fold increase in mortality risk compared with the general population. And that included every major cause of death. It seems reasonable to surmise from these statistics that a sudden suspension in the ability to walk can lead to a rapid decrease in overall health and longevity. Clearly we don’t want to stop walking.
There are any number of studies and medical opinions that indicate that walking is perhaps the best form of exercise. Regular walking has been linked to a decrease in risk of several serious diseases including cardiovascular disease and Type 2 Diabetes. But are we really walking? This depends on how we define walking; and realizing an accurate definition of walking is greatly enhanced by some understanding of the biomechanics of human gait.
Most definitions of human walking are characterized by 2 things: a moderate or slow pace and never having both feet off the ground at once. In other words, not running or jumping. But what about falling? Do we need to completely fall down on the ground for it to be considered a fall? Might we simply be falling from one foot to the other at a moderate pace rather than actually walking? The fact is, most of us are ambulating by way of a somewhat controlled fall.
Figure 1
This is illustrated by understanding one very key feature of walking from the standpoint of biomechanics – walking should be posteriorly driven. This means we must push backward to move forward. For this to happen we need to have our center of gravity under our trunk and not out in front. Human movement where the center of gravity (about where our hip joints are) stays under the trunk is walking. Human movement where our center of gravity is pushed out in front of our trunk is falling.
Seeing the truth of this is easy. Stand up, push your hips forward (see figure 1) and then lift one foot off the floor without bending your knees. Notice how the lifted foot moved forward. In fact, you may have felt you needed this lifted foot to catch you from falling forward. This is the way most of us are ambulating – falling from one foot to the other.
Try the following instead. Stand and deliberately back your hips up such that your hip joints are aligned vertically over the outer ankle bones (see figure 2). Now lift one foot off the floor without bending your knees. What happened to the lifted foot this time? Chances are it didn’t go anywhere. That’s because you needed to push your standing leg thigh and hip backward in order to move your body forward. Try it again and see what happens if you lift the leg and then push your standing leg heel down and push your thigh back. Viola! That’s walking.
Figure 2
Actually, walking is much more complex that this. It involves a rather staggering number of muscles (600), joints (230) and bones (200). But it can be broken down into 2 basic motor skills. The first is what I described in the previous paragraph. That is, ‘posterior push off’. The second is called ‘pelvic list’.
If you tried the experiment above and succeeded, you’ve just done a pelvic list. A pelvic list is basically using the downward force of one straight leg to lift the other (see figure 3). This action recruits the lateral and posterior hip muscles which are a big source of stability for us when standing and walking. But this is only true when the hips are not pushed forward. If the hips are pushed forward then we’re not able to effectively recruit the lateral and posterior hip and we’re forced to use the quadriceps, forefoot and toes to hold us up. Not only will this lead to foot, knee and hip problems, this will also produce a gait pattern that is far from optimal.
Figure 3
If you tried the experiment above and found that you weren’t able lift one leg up with both knees straight, particularly when your hips were backed up, then you are currently unable to do a pelvic list. This means that whatever you might call how you ambulate, it isn’t really walking, not from a biomechanic standpoint. You’ll want to work on this regularly until it’s easy for you. Then you can actually start walking again and begin to get the many cardiovascular, strength and bone building benefits of what is arguably the most important and health promoting of human functions.