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So You’re Worried About Yoga Injuries? Here’s Some Excellent Advice.

      Inquiry and Experience #6 and #7   There’s a surge of disclosure on yoga injuries due to the quickly growing number of students and their use of social media. Don’t panic. Although you will likely be injured at one time or another doing yoga (including muscle strain as injury), it’s unlikely to have a lasting effect for the majority of you.   On the other hand you might get yourself in trouble if you have a condition that will be ill served by the yoga practice you’ve engaged in. Not every body should do every thing. You may have a health or skeletal, soft tissue or muscular issue that warrants caution. Even those of sound body can be at risk engaging in the wrong practice or becoming overzealous. Innocent people have suffered at the hands of unskilled or thoughtless teachers as well.   Here’s my sincere advice for new and old students:   Stay in Your Own Lane ~ move at your own pace and do the best you can without overreaching. You might research range of motion often referred to as R.O.M. Everyone’s is different but there are normal ranges. Are you practicing for a circus career? Can you be content not putting your foot behind your head like the guy next to you? Take a good look. Do you really want to look like that? No. It’s damn unattractive and you don’t.   Pay Attention ~ this is the fruit of staying interested and the two are co-dependent. Don’t space out or move by rote. Notice everything about sensation. Take your time. Notice everything...

Memory:If the System Goes Down Will Your Data Be Saved? Inquiry and Experience #5

  In the last inquiry post I wrote that the body and mind collaborate through an unspoken language. It is a system of organization by automatic pilot that moves you in the right direction if all the signals are clear.   But what happens if the signals are not clear and your organization goes offline so to speak? Will you be able to willfully remember and retrieve data so that you can manage yourself manually?   Most of us have had the experience of changing computers or programs and losing automatic access to a site that had “remembered” our password for us. If we’ve forgotten or lost our password we’re now locked out. It’s important to keep the muscle memory of our secret keys.   I was a dancer. My muscle memory allowed me to move with grace. It was automatic. Now I have a damaged hip and a fused lumbar spine. I cannot automatically move according to the data that worked for a healthy system. I must input unique passwords to retrieve healthy movement. Otherwise what follows the first flawed motion will take me down a bad path.   It’s called compensation and it’s a useful way for the body to organize in emergencies but it’s just for emergencies. When it is used as a permanent fix, things can go badly.   They went badly for me. I was intense and too impatient to heed injuries so by the time I noticed them I was already in the weeds. I’ve had to retrain muscles that would not fire. I am trying to encourage opportunity for damaged nerves to...

Savasana~Every Move You Make I’ll Be Watching You: Inquiry and Experience #3

  You are lying down, face up on a hard floor in a public place. You have completed your yoga practice which required attention and vigilance. You trained yourself to stay alert. You are used to watching out for yourself more than watching into yourself so it was a beautiful effort. When you are asked to transition from that effort to effortless relaxation your nerves grasp and rush for a place to rest that is not immediately obvious. The mind is still scanning the horizon as is its habit.   Savasana: Place a blanket with no more than an inch or so of height under the head with the edge touching the tops of the shoulders but not under the shoulders. You are connecting your head to your trunk for the sake of the nervous system which can stand down. (If your chin is jutted to the ceiling and you cannot lengthen your neck you may add height until the throat recedes below the Adams Apple. You may alternately bend your knees and rest a bolster under your thighs to soften the tight back line of the spine, pelvis or legs.) Turn the palms up and let no part of the arm touch the trunk but no farther than this necessitates. You are now un-tethered. Let the upper eyelid drop rather than squeezing the lower lid and upper lid together to close the eyes. You are more un-tethered, disconnecting one part of your skin to another. Boundaries fade and the lightness that comes may feel disorienting. You may find you need an anchor. Place something with weight on your...

Everyone is Uneven: Inquiry and Experience #2

    Study a photograph of your face cut down the middle and notice that the two sides are not identical. The naked body will reveal the same thing. Most of us are uneven.   When I started teaching yoga I saw a room full of people. As I became more seasoned I saw a room full of individuals. How would I teach them all with their disparate unevenness!   I explore sensation with my own body, examine the process of dealing with my own pain and pleasure and begin with the assumption that no one is even. I can only offer what I know for fact. Insight and experience give me the confidence to teach through the template of my own crooked being and all it has done to right itself toward an experience of quality. New students are usually less sensitive to imbalance and it gives them the opportunity of awareness. My most uneven students are teachers or experienced students who reap tremendous benefit from this approach. People who are fairly balanced have the opportunity to work with more precision.   Here are a few explorations of potential imbalance that might lead to harm if not considered in a yoga practice.   Inquiry # 2:   Sitting ~ Contract your buttocks. Does one side contract faster than the other? If so, contract the slacker side first when doing symmetrical strength postures or exercises.   Standing~ Bend your knees. Does one knee bend faster than the other? If so, drive the heel of the foot on the side that is slacker harder into the floor as you proceed....

Pull Your Socks Up

  Sharon’s mother is British. If life is making her daughter gloomy she says;” pull your socks up!” I have an image of England as a country which doesn’t approve of depression. Citizens should keep their sunny sides up by doing something pro-active rather than despairing; an attitude one cannot argue with even if it is only my imagining.   This morning I needed to pull my socks up though I didn’t notice until I was standing on my head in front of a mirror in my folk’s house.  It’s not usual to watch ourselves as we practice but the sight of yourself with your own eyes is a good idea now and again. I like to look, adjust, close my eyes to feel and then look back again. That’s how I noticed what it felt like to pull my socks up. That’s how I noticed how good it felt to keep my sunny side up.   I’ve been standing on my head for a few decades but it doesn’t mean I always know where I am because I have the common combination of flexibility and injuries that can pull the veil of illusion over any yoga pose   Headstand is one of the kindest postures on hip joints as they are unloaded. And it is liberation for the belly. When doable, one should learn to stand on legs no matter where they are in space to notice the support born from rising which is different than the support of leaning or collapsing. It is the support of oneself. It is independence.   I’m surprised to note that I’m...