Bedtime Yoga

It's late at night, you have a big day tomorrow, you know you should go to bed (maybe on your Casper mattress - they requested this yummy post :-).  Your body is exhausted but your mind is racing.  How on earth will you ever get to sleep?  How about a little yoga to soothe your soul?

Forward folding poses all help create deeper relaxation and internal focus.  Any of your favorites are good options - paschimottanasana, resting pigeon, wide angle forward fold, and especially child's pose.

Twists help to wring out the tension that builds along your spine during the day and help you integrate one side of your body (and mind!) with the other.  As it is evening, reclining twists are especially nice - jathara parivrtti, supta matsyendrasana.

Any pose you choose, you will want it to be relatively static with deep conscious breaths throughout your hold.  Dynamic poses (and backbends) tend to raise your energy, the last thing you want when you are trying to wind down.  So leave the sun salutations til you actually see the sun!

My number one best bedtime practice?  Viparita Karani (legs up the wall) with pranayama (conscious breathing).  This one is especially great as, if your bed is against the wall, it can be done in bed. It will help your circulation as the return toward your heart is easier with your legs up and it will help move the lactic acid from your legs so you won't be sore from that workout you did earlier.  What pranayam pattern to do?  Use your favorite as it will relax you more.  And lengthen your exhale slowly and consistently - this signals to your nervous system to switch from fight or flight to rest and digest, jut where you want to be.

Finally, after you have completed your practice, however short or long, and are starting to feel relaxation and calm settling in, go to bed. Take your savasana here.  Focus on your breath and let yourself drift away....

How Yoga Changed My Life - new blogging from local yogini!

Our local yoga community is full of interesting people!  Bridget Hales started a blog this spring and has been posting about yoga, wellness, parenting, and food (yum!).  I encourage you to check out her blog, she has such a lovely writing voice - http://hotteatravelandthyme.blogspot.com/ - her latest post is How Yoga Changed My Life :-)  Enjoy and let her know it!

Can you believe it? Humans prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their thoughts

This experiment blew my mind!  We clearly need more practice being with ourselves... what do you think?  Do you spend time with yourself, alone?  Honestly, its one of my favorite things to do but I do still distract myself an awful lot (especially with all my electronics). *I am inspired now to put them down more often, less I get to a point where I'd rather shock myself than do nothing with myself*

 Read on for the article From The Verge - http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/4/5870573/rather-electrocute-ourselves-than-be-alone-with-thoughts  By Arielle Duhaime-Ross 

Humans prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their thoughts

The experiment was simple. All the participants had to do was enter an empty room, sit down, and think for six to 15 minutes. But without a cellphone, a book, or a television screen to stare at, the assignment quickly became too much to handle. In fact, even when individuals were given time to "prepare" for being alone — meaning that they were able to plan what they would think about during their moments of solitude — the participants still "found it hard," Timothy Wilson, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and lead author of the study, told The Washington Post. "People didn’t like it much."

So the researchers decided to give each participant the option of doing something else, besides just thinking. But what they came up with wasn’t exactly pleasant because, instead of just sitting there, participants were now also allowed to shock themselves as many times as they liked with a device containing a 9 volt battery. Still, for many, that option seemed like a better deal.

Most of the people who decided to shock themselves did so seven times. These results baffled the researchers. "I mean, no one was going to shock themselves by choice," Wilson, told The Washington Post in reference to his initial position during the conception of the study, published yesterday in Science. One man even gave himself 190 electric shocks over a period of 15 minutes, Wilson told The Atlantic, but his data points weren’t included in the final analysis. "I’m still just puzzled by that."

Still, the fact that they chose to shock themselves at all, on their own, was unexpected. And this had nothing to do with curiosity about what the shocks would feel like, because the researchers made sure that each individual received a shock before the beginning of the session.

Yet, people voluntarily shocking themselves repeatedly wasn’t the only surprise. According to the researchers, men showed a marked preference for the negative stimulation. Out of 24 women, only six decided to shock themselves, but 12 out of the 18 male participants figured electric shocks were worthwhile. This, the researchers hypothesize, might have to do with the fact that men appear to be more willing to take risks for the sake of a intense and complex experiences than women.

The results of this study are tentative, however, and the sample sizes — a total of 11 experiments that included between 40 and 100 university students each — were fairly small, so researchers will need to repeat them. But for now, it would appear that humans, especially men, seem to prefer receiving negative, even painful stimulation, to suffering through the bouts of obligatory "mind-wandering" — which you could also call "boredom," depending on how you want to look at it.

Finding Your Happiest Yoga Hips - Integrated Practice and Pelvic Floor Awareness

Our final class incorporates some awareness of the pelvic floor and exploration of how the many ways our hips move can enhance our postures...

The pelvic floor isn't really a part of the hips, but it can have a very significant impact on the hips if it is tight. This will impact flexibility in the hips as it inhibits ROM for the pelvis and sacrum – as you already know most of the hip muscles attach to these two boney structures.

Go ahead and lie down and let's find the muscles groups that form the pelvic floor. The contraction of these muscles can be very subtle, especially if they are tight, so focus and be patient with yourself. Lie in Supta Baddha Konasana (knees apart, feet together), this stretches the pelvic floor a bit and can make it easier to sense.

- The first (outermost) layer of your pelvic floor attaches public bone ↔ tailbone. Draw these bones toward each other, can you sense the layer? What else happens in your body?

• The second layer attaches SITZ bone ↔ SITZ bone. Draw these bones toward each other, can you sense the layer? What else happens in your body?
• The third layer attaches sacrum ↔ pubic bone. Draw these toward each other, can you sense the layer? What happens elsewhere in your body?
• Try engaging all the layer – what does that feel like, what do you notice?
• Deepen your breath – can you feel it as it moves your organs toward your pelvic floor? If you can, try contracting the pelvic floor, then the belly as you exhale – really moving the breath UP.

For our hips purposes, we are not going to work on strengthening these muscles, rather we will focus on awareness to bring a greater understanding to their role and maybe a little extra relaxation. For all intents and purposes, these muscles are really a part of your core, working with your central body muscles, i.e. abs.  As you move through your practice, take a moment in each pose and see if you can sense the role of your pelvic floor.

As you practice, explore the engagement and release of different muscle groups toward the enhancement of the pose.  How would it feel to engage more internal rotation in your utkatasana or uttanasana?  How would it feel to engage more flexion in your anjaneyasanas?  Experiment, play, develop your awareness.  Each body is different, find what support you best, find what opens your pose more deliciously.  Consider working antagonist groups against each other (these are muscles that oppose each other - flexors/extensors, adductors/abductors, internal rotators/external rotators).  Incorporate this new knowledge into your everyday practice for happier hips.

Note – I am working on a pelvic floor series class and will offer it as soon as I find the time. Stay tuned!

Yoga for Happy Hips: Rotators

Marisa's Class Notes:

External Rotation – the “Deep Six” external rotators attaching from sacrum and pelvis to femur + gluteous maximus, with a little help from some of your hip flexors and adductors. Most of us have some natural turn out here because of how our thigh bones sit in the acetabulum. But many of us have more turn out than that because these muscles are tight from every postures esp. sitting and stressing. This can lead to piriformis syndrome (often called sciatica) as one of the deep six – the piriformus – gets tight and applies pressure to the sciatic nerve. If these are tight for you, a very simply way to stretch them is to change your standing posture so that the insides of your feet are parallel instead of turned out.

Find your external rotators with Gary's Twist - lie on back, take one leg over body into twist.  Turning from hips, turn kneecap toward sky.  You should feel this distinctly in your bottom.

Internal Rotation – the internal rotators and the abductors are one and the same – minimus, medius, and tfl with a little help from a couple of your hams.

Normal range of motion for both is about 45 degrees. We will explore this in our practice where you should feel the movement of internal rotation under the hand on your hip.  In external rotation, try to shift the work out of the space under your hand and into your bottom, nearer your sacrum.

Happy Hips: Yoga for Adductors (inner thighs) and Abductors (outer hips)

From the second in our Happy Hips Series Class...

Marisa's Notes:

Adductors – muscles of the inner thigh. Some are short, some are long. All connect sequentially to thigh bone or lower leg bones. All connect to pubic bone (and one also connects to SITZ). These muscles bring your legs together (ADD them together!)  Need a visual?  Check here and look for the inner thigh muscles.

Find them - Lie down, use a strap to help find your adductors. Be sure they are all inner thigh, not the inside back of your thigh (the inner hamstring often stretches with the adductors). Reasonable ROM here is supine, 90 degrees at hips, take leg to the side. Each side should be able to achieve 45 degree angle or more without lifting opposite hip or changing hip crease angle. Bear in mind, this assumes normal ROM in hams. When strengthened in asana, these muscles are major stabilizers, bringing in your center of gravity and taking excess work from surrounding muscles.

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Abductors – Outer hip. These guys really hold your leg in the hip socket and help with everyday activities like walking. Tensor Fascia Latae TFL (talked about last week), gluteus medius and gluteus minimus.  Need a visual?  Look here.

Find your abductors – lie on your side, hand on hip between the top of your pelvis and the head of your thigh bone. Lift leg with knee pointing straight ahead (no rotation) and no movement of pelvis, you should feel those muscles engage. This is also a great way to strengthen. Good ROM varies, mostly due to the restriction of other muscles and the shape of your acetabulum.

These are also stabilizers and worked against one another, the adds and abs can help you gain more space in your hip and better balance. See if you can activate these muscles in the standing leg of you tree pose. While working against each other, you can also gain greater ROM in flexion and extension as they seat the hip. In other words, its worth playing with these muscles isometically in most yoga poses, even (maybe especially as it will increase your proprioception) when they are being stretched.

In the accompanying practice, you may wish to do Yin Half Frog if your adductors are a great deal tighter on one side than the other.  Spend more time on the side that is tighter and do the looser side first (this sends signals to the tighter side to begin to let go).  To do half frog, lie on your belly and take one leg out to the side, right angles in ankle, knee and hip.

For the Trikonasana (Triangle pose)  be sure to work to keep the back abductors (outer hip) engaged as you move.   This is not easy but will greatly develop your awareness.

This adductor/abductor practice can be integrated with the flexor extensor practice.  Do all the yin, then all the Slow Flow asana, and don't forget your Savasana.

Yoga for Happy Hips! Flexors and Extensors

We are starting up a series for Happy Hips tonight at Yoga del Sol.  Exploring anatomy, yin asana and slow flow movement for better functioning hips.  Juicy!  Here is the home practice for our first week - working with flexors and extensors.  Short and sweet :-)  And for those of you that are geeks like me, you can find my class notes below...

Complex joint – Femur head into the acetabulum of pelvis.

Ligaments hold the bone in the socket and allow it range of motion in every direction.

Muscularly very complex. Muscles to move the femur in all those directions, many performing more than one action. All these muscles attach to other aspects of the body, creating a variety of tug of wars up into the back and belly, down into the knees.

So, if your hips aren't happy, chances are something else isn't happy either. And chances are good that that something else made itself known before the hips became obvious.

Common ailments of the hips..

Osteo-Arthritis – inflammation of the joint

Osteoporosis – loss of bone density

Bursitis – inflammation of the bursa (the fluid filled cushions within the joint)

Sciatica/Piriformis Syndrome – Sciatica comes from the vertabra, not a hip condition tho it sure feels like it! Piriformis Syndrone is the compression of the sciatic nerve.

Stand up and try all movements...

Hips can flex, extend, internally rotate, externally rotate, abduct, adduct.

We will focus on flexion and extension today.

Hip Flexors = quads, iliopsoas, tfl, with a little help from your adductors

Are you tight or loose in the flexors?

Lie down and draw one knee in toward your chest, allowing the extended leg to be completely relaxed. If that extended leg pops up, you've got tight flexors.

Normal range of motion is 125 degrees for flexion.

Now, if you don't have normal range of motion, that may not be the fault of your flexors, but of your extensors that are the antagonists to flexion.

Extensors = Hams, Gluteous Maximus

If you had trouble drawing your knee toward your chest, you may have a tight gluteous maximus. It may also be about your low back

How do you know if your hams are tight? Stand up in Mountain Pose and put your hands on your low back, notice the lumbar curve. With your knees straight but not locked, begin to fold at the hip crease (what is this?). Stop when it feels like you can go no further without bending your knees or rounding your low back. Your flexors just made that happen! If your hams are tight you will not have achieved the normal range of motion of 80 degrees flexion that your hams should allow for. As for extension, normal extension for the hip is 10-15 degrees. If you are not able to achieve this, its possible that your flexors are tight or your extensors are weak (they are notorious for this).

In order to truly strengthen muscles, they need a certain amount of flexibility. If they are too tight, there won't be reasonable communication to the muscle fibers, as well the muscle fibers will not be able to contract as they are already tight. This is why the stretch is as important as the strength. We will be starting our practices with yin yoga to provide this stretch. Yin affects the ligaments, tendons, and fascia that surrounds the muscles, as well as the muscles themselves. We begin with this passive stretch before moving into stretch AND strengthen to build strength and greater flexibility.

Practice