People often ask me how I started doing yoga. Basically, I started doing it for exercise. 20 years later my relationship with yoga has evolved, but it sill provides me with my primary outlet for what is essentially exercise – a physical activity that helps me stay healthy. And while I also do yoga as a kind of meditation practice, training my mind to be attentive and present, the many health benefits I’ve experienced doing yoga remain a significant motivation for me.
Yoga can be used as effective therapeutic tool for a wide variety of health issues. Either personally or with my students I have applied yoga as a modality for reducing or eliminating back pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, colds, indigestion, exhaustion, depression and anxiety to mention just a few. And while there is certainly a lot more to yoga than exercise and health, it’s not a bad place to start.
Yet for yoga or really ANY activity or exercise program I am doing for health reasons to be effective I need to be clear about one thing: what is health? The definition of health can be quite broad. For the purposes of this post I’m going to limit the scope of this discussion on health to that of a given individual person. I will also not go into a discussion of digestive health. This is not because I don’t don’t consider it to be important, but because health of the digestive system is mostly related to diet and this is a topic for another post. If I may simply say for now that diet and exercise are the keys to good health and we set aside diet for later, how does exercise contribute to health?
Let’s suppose that I am eating a good diet but I’m still having health problems, what am I missing? We’ve all heard the expression “you are what you eat.” The “you” in this expression is the physical body, which is made up of a variety of different tissues which can be further broken down into a variety of different specialized cells. Each of these cells is like a tiny specialized “you” in that they need food and oxygen to live, work and reproduce. Each cell also produces wastes that it needs to eliminate so that these wastes don’t impair the cell’s ability to function and replicate properly.
A somewhat more accurate expression might be “you are what you eat and the air you breath.” The little “you’s,” your cells, need both nutrients from the food you eat and oxygen from the air you breath and they receive these via blood flow to the tissues. When my blood flow is good and my diet is good, then the cells of my various tissues receive a good supply of nutrients and oxygen and the wastes from cellular metabolism are removed in a timely fashion. When my blood flow is not good my cells are not fed properly and their wastes accumulate and impair the health of the tissue. Therefore if my diet is good but my blood flow is not good my tissues are not necessarily benefiting from my good diet.
Certainly on the physical level, and to a great extent the psychological level as well, the degree to which a person is healthy is determined by the health of that person’s tissue, and the degree to which a person’s tissue is healthy depends on the degree to which that person’s tissue receives good blood and lymph flow. A major function of the muscles in our body is to pump blood and lymph into and out of the tissue. For a given muscle to function well as a pump that muscle must be able to contract and relax well. Therefore the degree to which a tissue receives good blood flow is determined largely by the degree to which our muscles can contract and relax well.
Few would argue with the assertion that for a person to be healthy that person’s cardiovascular system must be healthy and functioning well. In the U.S., heart disease is the leading cause of death. To promote cardiovascular health and therefore health and longevity we are encouraged to strengthen our hearts with cardiovascular exercise. The logic of this view is that if the heart is strong and can pump blood more effectively, then it can deliver more oxygen to tissues and better support the health and function of those tissues.
Unfortunately the above view of cardiovascular health ignores the role of other muscles in the body and their relationship to cardiovascular health. Most of the oxygen carrying blood in our bodies resides in the smaller vessels known as capillaries. The vast majority of these capillaries and therefore blood in general resides in our muscle tissue. When muscles contract and relax they pump blood from these capillaries into and out of the surrounding tissues. In fact our muscles have the capacity to pump much more blood than our heart. For this to happen, however, our muscles need to contract and relax well. The better a muscle contracts and relaxes the better it pumps and the more it helps to support the health of its tissue and the tissues around it.
For each muscle in the body there is a mechanism which involves that muscle, the brain and the nervous system that determines that muscle’s length. The brain and nervous system record and maintain each muscle at a particular length and often, this length is far from optimal. Muscles that are at an optimal length are strong and flexible. Muscles that are not at an optimal length tend to be weak and tight and these muscles don’t contract and relax well and therefore don’t pump blood and lymph effectively. Such muscles and the tissues surrounding them do not receive good blood flow and this impairs the health of these tissues. Cardiovascular exercise will do little to address this issue as most forms of cardiovascular exercise such as running or cycling make our muscles tighter.
My experience doing yoga therapy over years has shown me that, most of us have muscles that are simply too tight to be effective blood/lymph pumps. This leads to degradation of tissues which eventually leads to pain which eventually leads to further degradation and more serious health problems. Luckily with a bit of know how and some reasonable effort we can increase muscle length and improve our pumping system. To do so most of us need to emphasize postures and activities that emphasize increasing muscle length, such as stretching, rather than activities that emphasize muscle contraction such as weight training. The good news for those wishing to be “stronger” is that longer muscles are stronger muscles in that they can contract more quickly and more strongly and also have more resilience and better recovery when subjected to stress.
Furthermore, for a muscle to be strong it needs to be working in the first place. In my practice I see an almost universal tendency for clients to come to me with postural tendencies where simply by virtue of the position they are holding their bones, many large and important structural muscles are not being asked to do any work. If I stand or sit or walk with my bones aligned poorly, that is, in a way where many postural muscles that are designed to contribute to my movement are not working, then these postural muscles are not contacting and relaxing and pumping blood and lymph.
In addition, when important postural muscles whose job it is by design to support me when standing, sitting and walking don’t do that job, then the stress of these activities falls to my joints. When this is the case I put undue stress on my joints and they are subjected to significantly more wear and tear than they would be if my postural muscles were working properly and my bones better aligned.
From the standpoint of those interested in yoga this is good news as much of what we do in yoga involves increasing muscle length and muscular action with an emphasis on alignment. However, when doing yoga we need to be clear that we are lengthening the muscles that need lengthening and activating the muscles that need activating and not using the natural mobility of our joints as a substitute. This is the reason that understanding alignment in postures is so important. Deliberate and intelligent alignment of our bones in a posture will make the difference between a posture that promotes health and one that creates problems.
For those who don’t do yoga, alignment is still an important element of any activity, particularly one intended to promote health. In fact, if we practice sound alignment during our regular daily activities then everything we do can be in support of better health. I recommend that everyone, even those who do yoga, practice alignment principles when standing, sitting and walking since these are the activities we spend most of our time doing. If we incorporate good alignment and bio-mechanics into our daily activities then gradually all of our movements become health promoting movements, including those like in yoga that are intended to be.
The importance of sending the right message
in BalanceAs a teacher of yoga and restorative exercise, a big part of my work is communication. To be effective, I must convey my instructions clearly to my students. To help my students achieve their goals, I must also teach them how to communicate with their own bodies.
The human body responds perfectly to the messages we send it. Our muscles, for example, being the means by which we move our bones, will always respond to the position we place our bones. One bone position will tell a particular muscle to contract while a different position of the same bone will tell the same muscle to relax. One relative position of two bones, such as the bones at the two ends of a particular muscle, will require that the muscle increase its length. A different position of the same two bones won’t require such an increase or may even require the muscle be shorter.
Understanding how our muscles respond to our bone placement will help us better understand how to effect muscles in the way we desire. If for example I want to strengthen a particular muscle, I need to position the bones that muscle attaches to in a way that loads that muscle against gravity. If I want to stretch a particular muscle or, increase it’s length, then I want to make sure that the bones at the two ends of that muscle are moved in opposite directions.
Figure 1
When standing upright, for example, the position of my thigh bone will have a big effect on the muscles that contract to support my upright posture. If I stand with my hips over my knees and ankles and therefore with the thigh bones completely vertical, my hamstrings and gluteal muscles will contract in order to help hold me upright (see the photo to the left). This alignment of my thighs and the corresponding support of the posterior muscles of my hips and legs helps to keep the “load” of my head, trunk and pelvis firmly on the bones of my legs. The loading of these bones against gravity minimizes the impact of the load on my knees, ankles and feet and helps to improve circulation and stimulate bone growth in my legs.
If however I stand with my hips and thigh bones forward of my knees and ankles, my quadraceps on the front of my thighs must contract to help prevent me from falling forward, I am sending my muscles a very different message. This alignment transfers the load from the back of my legs and hips to the front of my hips, knees, ankles and feet. In contrast to the “load profile” described in the previous paragraph, this “hips forward” alignment puts much more stress on these joints. This alignment also sends the message to the hamstrings and posterior hip muscles to relax, robbing the hips of a great deal of important muscular support and placing a further load on the hip joints (see the photo just below).
Another significant effect of placing my hips forward of my knees and ankles while standing is the resulting posterior tilt or “tuck” of the pelvis. When the pelvis tilts backwards this way, the sit bones, a primary attachment point of the hamstrings, are brought closer to the back of the knees at the other end of the hamstrings. When these two attachment points of the hamstrings are brought closer together, the message to the hamstrings is “get shorter”. This effect, provided very willingly by the hamstrings on my request, serves to anchor the pelvis in this backward tilt, placing a greater load when standing or bending forward on the spine and further exacerbating the undesirable effects described above.
If I recognize this effect on my hamstrings, I may take the very correct and intelligent course of deciding to stretch the hamstrings to increase their length. A standing forward bend can be an effective way to increase the length of my hamstrings. And if I’m to successfully increase their length, I want to make sure the message I’m sending to the hamstrings is a clear message. It is therefore important that I start by bringing the hips back and allow the pelvis to tilt forward. I thus remove the conflicting message of allowing the pelvis to tuck and the hamstrings to maintain their shortened length. If I “un-tuck” the pelvis first my message to the hamstrings is very clear, “get longer!” But without this first step of backing the hips up and un-tucking the pelvis, the message I’m sending is either very different or at the very least diluted, and I won’t succeed in my efforts. This effect is highlighted in the two forward bends depicted in the photos below.
The above scenario is just one example of the many ways that seemingly small changes in the alignment of my bones dramatically changes the message I am sending to my muscles. It also highlights how the corresponding effects on my health and function can be just as dramatic. If I want to improve the health and function of the body, it’s not enough to just know the correct course of action. I also need to make sure I send the right message.
The Importance of Alignment
in Balance, Health Article, Movement Article, YogaI was first introduced to alignment in the context of yoga. The Iyengar Yoga system in particular is often characterized as emphasizing “alignment” in postures. It’s only recently, however, with the study of biomechanics, that I have begun to understand better what alignment really means and why it’s so important.
Katy Bowman, M.S., whose work I’ve been studying describes our alignment as being distinct from our posture. She points out that posture is cultural while alignment is based on objectivity. For example, some women I have talked to about posture and alignment have told me that their parents encouraged them not “to stick their butts out.” This view of posture is purely subjective as it is based a particular point of view. Alignment must be objective and must therefore be based solely on identifiable objective markers.
One such marker is the alignment of the hips relative to that of the knees and ankles. When standing in a bio-mechanically functional alignment the hip joints must sit directly over the center of the knees and the center of the outer ankle bones. Most of us tend to stand with the hips pushed forward of the knees and ankles. This tends to rotate the pelvis back (posteriorly) such that the pelvis sits a little “tucked”. To correct this misalignment we must back our hips up until our hip joints align over the outer ankle bones. When the hips are backed up this way it not only brings the pelvis and hips into a more functional alignment with the legs, it also tends to correct the “tuck” of the pelvis and rotate the pelvis back to neutral.
Figure 2
When I ask students to back their hips up this way, they usually say they feel like they are “sticking their butt out,” something some have been deliberately trying NOT to do! This is partly because they’ve gotten so accustomed to having their hips forward and their pelvis tucked that this misaligned position feels normal and the new position feels “strange” or “wrong” relative to what they are used to.
This example is a strong argument for using objective markers when aligning our bodies. We cannot rely on what “feels right” to us. When it comes to our own bodies we are not all that objective.
Besides the fact that it just feels right to push the hips forward, there’s another reason we tend to stand with our hips pushed forward – it’s easier! Standing with the hips forward is essentially us sitting loosely into the front of our hip joints. We often do the same thing to one side, swaying the hip out to act as a fulcrum to support our weight. This puts a great deal of stress on our hip joints and will eventually lead to pain. It takes a lot less effort to stand this way because the bones are in a position that doesn’t require (or to some extent even allow) important stabilizing muscles in our hips to work. When we back the hips up and align the hip joints with the outer ankles bones, it suddenly takes a lot more effort to stand!
This alignment of the hip joints helps a great deal in yoga with many of the standing postures. In the posture “samasthithahi,” for instance, where I am standing with my feet “hips width” apart (as opposed to “tadasana” where the feet are kept together), judging the position of the hips relative to the knees and ankles can be done by using a belt with a buckle as a plum bob to tell if my hips are lined vertically up over the outer ankle bones (see the diagram above). When I get the hips aligned I can feel that I’m anchored through the heels and the legs and hips are active and alive while I have a distinct sense of depth and space in the groin. Re-establishing neutral pelvis also does wonders for the function of the pelvic floor and is an essential step in the practice of the mula bandha.
Most importantly, aligning the hips properly in a yoga posture brings life into the posture. And this is not just true for samasthitahi but can be applied in many of the standing postures including trikonasana, parsvakonasana and ardhachandrasana to name just a few. In fact, this bringing of life into the postures can be manifested in just about any yoga posture when I can establish a better anchored and neutral pelvis.
Bio-mechanically sound alignment in yoga postures not only makes them better postures, it also helps us avoid injury and derive more benefit from our postures. So it’s worth the time and energy in a yoga practice to improve our alignment.
But ultimately, it’s our day to day activities that have the biggest impact on our health and function. Therefore alignment should not be limited to the domain of yoga but be a feature of how I stand, sit, walk and move throughout the day. In fact, the better my alignment in these every day activities the better my yoga postures will also become.
Yoga, Exercise and Health
in YogaPeople often ask me how I started doing yoga. Basically, I started doing it for exercise. 20 years later my relationship with yoga has evolved, but it sill provides me with my primary outlet for what is essentially exercise – a physical activity that helps me stay healthy. And while I also do yoga as a kind of meditation practice, training my mind to be attentive and present, the many health benefits I’ve experienced doing yoga remain a significant motivation for me.
Yoga can be used as effective therapeutic tool for a wide variety of health issues. Either personally or with my students I have applied yoga as a modality for reducing or eliminating back pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, colds, indigestion, exhaustion, depression and anxiety to mention just a few. And while there is certainly a lot more to yoga than exercise and health, it’s not a bad place to start.
Yet for yoga or really ANY activity or exercise program I am doing for health reasons to be effective I need to be clear about one thing: what is health? The definition of health can be quite broad. For the purposes of this post I’m going to limit the scope of this discussion on health to that of a given individual person. I will also not go into a discussion of digestive health. This is not because I don’t don’t consider it to be important, but because health of the digestive system is mostly related to diet and this is a topic for another post. If I may simply say for now that diet and exercise are the keys to good health and we set aside diet for later, how does exercise contribute to health?
Let’s suppose that I am eating a good diet but I’m still having health problems, what am I missing? We’ve all heard the expression “you are what you eat.” The “you” in this expression is the physical body, which is made up of a variety of different tissues which can be further broken down into a variety of different specialized cells. Each of these cells is like a tiny specialized “you” in that they need food and oxygen to live, work and reproduce. Each cell also produces wastes that it needs to eliminate so that these wastes don’t impair the cell’s ability to function and replicate properly.
A somewhat more accurate expression might be “you are what you eat and the air you breath.” The little “you’s,” your cells, need both nutrients from the food you eat and oxygen from the air you breath and they receive these via blood flow to the tissues. When my blood flow is good and my diet is good, then the cells of my various tissues receive a good supply of nutrients and oxygen and the wastes from cellular metabolism are removed in a timely fashion. When my blood flow is not good my cells are not fed properly and their wastes accumulate and impair the health of the tissue. Therefore if my diet is good but my blood flow is not good my tissues are not necessarily benefiting from my good diet.
Certainly on the physical level, and to a great extent the psychological level as well, the degree to which a person is healthy is determined by the health of that person’s tissue, and the degree to which a person’s tissue is healthy depends on the degree to which that person’s tissue receives good blood and lymph flow. A major function of the muscles in our body is to pump blood and lymph into and out of the tissue. For a given muscle to function well as a pump that muscle must be able to contract and relax well. Therefore the degree to which a tissue receives good blood flow is determined largely by the degree to which our muscles can contract and relax well.
Few would argue with the assertion that for a person to be healthy that person’s cardiovascular system must be healthy and functioning well. In the U.S., heart disease is the leading cause of death. To promote cardiovascular health and therefore health and longevity we are encouraged to strengthen our hearts with cardiovascular exercise. The logic of this view is that if the heart is strong and can pump blood more effectively, then it can deliver more oxygen to tissues and better support the health and function of those tissues.
Unfortunately the above view of cardiovascular health ignores the role of other muscles in the body and their relationship to cardiovascular health. Most of the oxygen carrying blood in our bodies resides in the smaller vessels known as capillaries. The vast majority of these capillaries and therefore blood in general resides in our muscle tissue. When muscles contract and relax they pump blood from these capillaries into and out of the surrounding tissues. In fact our muscles have the capacity to pump much more blood than our heart. For this to happen, however, our muscles need to contract and relax well. The better a muscle contracts and relaxes the better it pumps and the more it helps to support the health of its tissue and the tissues around it.
For each muscle in the body there is a mechanism which involves that muscle, the brain and the nervous system that determines that muscle’s length. The brain and nervous system record and maintain each muscle at a particular length and often, this length is far from optimal. Muscles that are at an optimal length are strong and flexible. Muscles that are not at an optimal length tend to be weak and tight and these muscles don’t contract and relax well and therefore don’t pump blood and lymph effectively. Such muscles and the tissues surrounding them do not receive good blood flow and this impairs the health of these tissues. Cardiovascular exercise will do little to address this issue as most forms of cardiovascular exercise such as running or cycling make our muscles tighter.
My experience doing yoga therapy over years has shown me that, most of us have muscles that are simply too tight to be effective blood/lymph pumps. This leads to degradation of tissues which eventually leads to pain which eventually leads to further degradation and more serious health problems. Luckily with a bit of know how and some reasonable effort we can increase muscle length and improve our pumping system. To do so most of us need to emphasize postures and activities that emphasize increasing muscle length, such as stretching, rather than activities that emphasize muscle contraction such as weight training. The good news for those wishing to be “stronger” is that longer muscles are stronger muscles in that they can contract more quickly and more strongly and also have more resilience and better recovery when subjected to stress.
Furthermore, for a muscle to be strong it needs to be working in the first place. In my practice I see an almost universal tendency for clients to come to me with postural tendencies where simply by virtue of the position they are holding their bones, many large and important structural muscles are not being asked to do any work. If I stand or sit or walk with my bones aligned poorly, that is, in a way where many postural muscles that are designed to contribute to my movement are not working, then these postural muscles are not contacting and relaxing and pumping blood and lymph.
In addition, when important postural muscles whose job it is by design to support me when standing, sitting and walking don’t do that job, then the stress of these activities falls to my joints. When this is the case I put undue stress on my joints and they are subjected to significantly more wear and tear than they would be if my postural muscles were working properly and my bones better aligned.
From the standpoint of those interested in yoga this is good news as much of what we do in yoga involves increasing muscle length and muscular action with an emphasis on alignment. However, when doing yoga we need to be clear that we are lengthening the muscles that need lengthening and activating the muscles that need activating and not using the natural mobility of our joints as a substitute. This is the reason that understanding alignment in postures is so important. Deliberate and intelligent alignment of our bones in a posture will make the difference between a posture that promotes health and one that creates problems.
For those who don’t do yoga, alignment is still an important element of any activity, particularly one intended to promote health. In fact, if we practice sound alignment during our regular daily activities then everything we do can be in support of better health. I recommend that everyone, even those who do yoga, practice alignment principles when standing, sitting and walking since these are the activities we spend most of our time doing. If we incorporate good alignment and bio-mechanics into our daily activities then gradually all of our movements become health promoting movements, including those like in yoga that are intended to be.
What I’m Teaching Now
in Balance, YogaAfter teaching yoga now for nearly 20 years my teaching has undergone quite a few changes, but there have been 2 major shifts. The first was when I stopped teaching Ashtanga Yoga (as taught be Pattabhi Jois, may he rest in peace) and started teaching in a way that most students have characterized as “Iyengar Yoga.” I have never received any formal certification in this system, but for about 13 years my teaching has drawn heavily on my studies with Ramanand Patel who holds a senior level teaching certificate in Iyengar Yoga and studied closely with B.K.S. Iyengar for many years.
The second major shift in my teaching started over a year ago and is continuing now. For more than a year I have been studying bio-mechanics and the work of Katy Bowman, MS. I have found that what Katy teaches, which incidentally I consider to be somewhat out of the realm of yoga, has a lot to say about how to practice yoga and how to teach it.
Those of you who take my classes have seen this shift happening. It has not been easy as it has forced me to reconsider nearly every instruction I give in every posture. It has, however, begun to transform my work in a profound way. This has been especially true when doing therapeutic work. I am seeing much better results working with the wide variety of health issues that clients present to me every day. I am also better able to help clients translate the work they do with me at Sadhana Therapies into better health and function in their daily lives.
Part of the challenge with this change is to begin to describe what I’m doing, perhaps name it. I’m not going to rush into this as the name is very important and will no doubt contribute to setting the tone for the future of our business. For now, I am just going to call what I”m teaching “yoga” and leave it at that. But here’s a bit more info on the kind of “yoga” I’m teaching now.
The yoga I am currently teaching focuses on “Yogasana” or the study and practice of yoga postures or “asana” for promoting optimal physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. While any number of a vast array of classical yoga postures may be employed this way, it is the more basic, foundational postures that are the most essential for success.
Foundational postures tend to be the most similar to the postures we use in our daily life and can therefore have the greatest impact on health and function. Simply standing, walking and sitting in a well aligned, mindful way can have a huge impact on our health on a variety of different levels. When sound bio-mechanics and mindful awareness are applied to daily activities it can mean the difference between an activity that builds our strength, stability and flexibility and one that damages our joints, weakens our muscles and bones, degrades our function and shortens our lifespan.
Any activity that we take up for the purpose of our health must therefore be bio-mechanically sound. Bio-mechanically sound posture and movement must also have the effect of either reducing the impact of stress on our health or support our ability to better respond to and recover from it. This is especially true of yogasana. Yoga postures can be approached, modified and sequenced to enhance alignment and support function and therefore reduce and even reverse the effects of stress, both on and off the mat!
Of course, the impact of stress is not limited to the physical body. Very often the mental effects of stress are an even bigger issue. It is with respect to managing mental stress that yogasana really shines.
Above all else, yoga is a tool for training the mind. Yogasana is an important part of this as it begins to develop our mind’s ability to pay attention to and perceive the feedback it receives from our body through the senses. Yogasana also builds our capacity for discernment which helps us to act willfully and intelligently, rather than simply Re-acting. It is by way of this attentiveness that the mind can begin to see itself more clearly and through discernment that it begins respond in situationallly appropriate ways.
Discernment also enables the mind to see its patterns which is the first step toward changing those patterns. This leads to the kind of growth which we might call “spiritual.” Whether we want to cultivate this kind of growth, or not, is a question each of us must eventually answer at some point when doing yoga. This kind of growth requires a lot of honesty with ourself. And this may be a subject for a different post.
At the very least we should be honest with ourselves about why we are doing yoga. If health is the reason, alignment and bio-mechanics have a lot to offer any yoga student.