Thankfully, this isn’t one of my harder poses, so making the video was fun.  The adjustment with the yoga belt is the best one for me.

For more videos like this visit www.leeanncareyyoga.com

As always, I’m available for Private Yoga Lessons in Hermosa Beach, CA. Just email me at yoga@julesmitchell.com

Enjoy.

The lovely Dawn DelVecchio from The Healers Way interviewed me about Yaapana Yoga.  Watch it here.  There is a special offer at the end, but it expires Dec 23, 2011.  Enjoy.

As always, I’m available for private yoga lessons in the South Bay.  If you live in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach or Redondo Beach and want some yoga therapy, email me at yoga@julesmitchell.com.

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged.  It’s not that I haven’t been writing, I have been.  It’s just that I’ve been writing academically for my graduate program in Kinesiology.  Academic writing is not the same as blogging, not even close.

So while I am ready to write some more material, I have a few other projects lined up.  One of these is rebuilding my website.  So, until I do that, I won’t be posting any elaborate yoga blogs.  You might find some of my yoga anatomy blogs over at Elephant Journal.

For now, I will post a few videos.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth ten thousand words, right?

The particular video below is perfect for today. This semester of academic writing meant extended hours researching and typing. My posture suffered terribly…especially in my hip flexors and upper back. With my flattened lumbar curve, I’m already working against gravity for good posture. In this video, Leeann Carey and I look at “how to stand” – which is much harder than you think.

Enjoy the Yaapana Yoga videos and stay tuned for a new website.

As always, I’m available for private yoga lessons in Hermosa Beach, CA.  I focus on yoga therapy for everyone, kinematic skills for the beginning yoga student,  and proper alignment for the experienced yogi.

Much love,

Jules

For today’s anatomy discussion, let’s look at the cyclical hip extension and hip flexion when running. (I promise, this will end up totally yoga related, so trust and follow along). First, let’s define the terms:

Hip Extension: When the femur bone (the thigh) is behind you as in the back leg during running. This is an increase in the hip joint angle.

Hip Flexion: When the femur is in front of you as in the front leg during running. This is a decrease in the hip joint angle.

Since these actions are opposing actions, when the hip extensors contract, the hip flexors stretch and vice versa. When running, the legs continually cycle through these two muscular actions. Let’s look at the primary muscles associated with these actions (and recognize there are many other contributing muscles that we will leave out of today’s discussion).

Hip Extension: The Hamstrings
Three muscles make up the group called the Hamstrings. They are:

Biceps femoris
Origin: ischial tuberosity, linea aspera, lateral supracondylar line, and distal femur
Insertion: head of fibula and lateral condyle of tibia

Semimembranosus
Origin: ischial tuberosity
Insertion: medial condyle of tibia, via oblique popliteal ligament to lateral condyle of femur

Semitendinosus
Origin: ischial tuberosity
Insertion: medial aspect of upper tibial shaft

Hip Flexion: Iliopsoas
Two muscles make up the group called the Iliospsoas. They are:

Iliacus
Origin: iliac fossa and crest, ala of sacrum
Insertion: lesser trochanter of the femur via iliopsoas tendon

Psoas Major
Origin: transverse processes, bodies, and discs of lumbar vertebrae and T12
Insertion: lesser trochanter of the femur via iliopsoas tendon

Since running (and everyday walking in case you don’t like to run and think this article is not for you) is a powerful sport that calls these muscle into action repeatedly, these muscle can become strong and tight. Depending on who you are, you might find that your tightened iliopsoas pulls your pelvis into an anterior tilt. Or perhaps your shortened hamstrings pull your pelvis the opposite direction into a posterior tilt. This is something you learn to discover for yourself in a private yoga session with me.

So what can you do to help bring these powerful muscles into a state of balance? Yoga, of course! Holding yoga poses with support provides an opportunity for you to encourage muscles to let go. Depending on who you are, this can happen quickly or not so quickly.

A pose I would recommend is Hanumanasana (splits) with support. Take a look at me in this daring variation! While not for the faint of heart, it is very effective. Don’t worry, I have many other options where both feet remain on the floor. Join me for a private yoga class in my Hermosa Beach studio and let’s explore who you are in the pose.

Namaste,
Jules

Supported Bridge with a Block

Not so much. I had one student that told me she gets piercing pain all the way down into her leg when she does this. In fact, she is not the first student to share this with me. For a pose that is loved by so many, I must acknowledge her for speaking up to share her discomfort.

However as a yoga teacher, there is more to do than just listen. In the Leeann Carey Yoga Certification program you learn to inquire and to problem solve. Sometimes you don’t get it right the first time, but you keep at it. Let me share with you what this looked like this morning.

First, I asked her if she would consider doing bridge without the block at all. I wanted to see if it was only the pressure of the block into the SI joints that was causing discomfort, or if it was a holding pattern she had in Bridge in general. It turns out, she didn’t like Bridge so much either. I wasn’t surprised. Mental note….next week’s class will focus on skills useful in Bridge.

I didn’t want to leave her just lying there on her back without an option, feeling discouraged, but I still had a class to tend to, so I had to be quick. Also, keep in mind that this was a one hour class in a fitness club, so my props and time were quite limited. No problem. I asked her to hug her knees into her chest and asked if the resulting stretch alleviated some of the discomfort she had just experienced. She sighed with gratitude, a big “yes”.

I instructed her to a reclined pigeon stretch and asked her if she could stay after class for a few moments. At this point, I was more concerned with her getting some relief from the pain so she could be still in quickly approaching Savasana than her getting the effects of bridge.

Reclined Pigeon with Kitty

After class, we spent 5 minutes discussing some restorative versions of the pose with bolsters, blankets, and straps, as well as some alternative poses she could do in a fitness club without props when the teacher led the class in supported Bridge with a block. We discussed the possible causes of the shooting pain down the leg and explored which movements caused it and which didn’t. She was grateful and left smiling and empowered.

If you are a yoga student who want more great tips like this to grow your practice, contact me for private yoga lessons. I’m in Hermosa Beach.

Jules Mitchell E-RYT
yoga@julesmitchell.com

If you relate to either of these, then keep reading. If you love Navasana, then keep reading anyway and post some comments that will encourage your friends of yoga to become friends with Navasana.

Smiling in Navasana

While every pose has an unlimited of aspects we could study (which is one of the greatest seductions of the yoga practice) today, we will look at one way of accessing the abdominals in the pose. For many of us, either the hip flexors are doing all the work or the low back is doing all the work but we can actually distribute much that workload to the abdominal wall, which is often dormant in the pose.

In the Leeann Carey Yoga School, we always teach that it is easier to awaken dormant muscles in the most basic variations of any pose. As soon as we complicate the pose by adding too many variables, the clarity of learning a skill becomes muddled. In Navasana, a tremendous amount of effort goes into resisting the force of gravity in order to prevent collapsing onto floor. So let’s look at the shape of the pose but change the orientation so gravity can help us rather than distract us. A variation of Uttana Padasana (extend foot pose) is a great option.

Uttana Padasana variation

To begin, lie on your back with your legs straight up, reaching through your heels toward the ceiling. Your arms will be at a comfortable position alongside your body, palms down to stabilize the upper body. Check for a few things here:

• Straighten your legs. If tight hamstrings prevent this, put your heels up a wall at an angle that allows your legs to be straight.
• Stack your heels directly above your sitting bones. (This is a Key Positioning Skill taught at our Foundation Weekend in the Leeann Carey Yoga RYT 200 certification.)
• Bring your legs together – they work more powerfully as one than as two.
• Feel your entire low back (lumbar region) descending with gravity. If you are arching in your low back, lower your legs, lengthen your pelvis away from the rest of your spine and slowly bring the legs up again.
• If the scalenes are hard (anterior neck muscles) soften the force with which the back of your head is connecting with the floor. Your neck should be comfortable and soft, encouraging an unobstructed air passageway.

Now start to notice what is holding your legs up. Can you feel your lower abdominals gently drawing into the spine? Begin to teach your transverse abdominus to awaken and participate in holding the legs up. The action of the transverse abdominus is to compress the abdomen. Is your lower belly bulging out instead? Can you engage the deep abdominal wall and by feeling that gentle compression on the abdomen? Hint: if your low back is arching, this will directly interfere with your ability to access this skill. Lower your legs, lengthen the low back and start again.

At this point you should be in the pose about two minutes or so. Only 3 more to go!

Now let’s bring our attention to our hip flexors. Are they gripping? Reach through the heels more and then some more again. Bring your awareness back to your abdominals and then back through your heels. Your hip flexors shall grip less and the work load should be distributed to the rest of the leg, including the quadriceps, which are keeping the legs straight so you can reach through heels even more. For some of you, releasing the grip in the hip flexors will be natural. But for others, it will take the utmost of will and mental strength to shift the focus of the pose. Keep practicing. You don’t have to get it today.
After 5 minutes, hug your knees into your chest, roll to one side, and sit up. The next time you practice Navasana, apply these skills and feel the transformation in the pose!

If you are a yoga student who want more great tips like this to grow your practice, contact me for private yoga lessons. I’m in Hermosa Beach.

Jules Mitchell E-RYT
yoga@julesmitchell.com

Backbends have been on my radar lately for several reasons. First, I have been on a long, arduous, yet fulfilling backbend journey of my own. I have really had to unlearn what my body wanted to tell me it knew about bending over backwards and teach my body an entirely new skill set to find the beautiful balance of effort and ease that we seek in any yoga asana. Sound familiar to you? As a teacher who teaches other teachers how to teach yoga, I am at ease describing, cuing, adjusting, and demonstrating crucial segments of the poses. But the reality is that a long, evenly proportioned spinal extension is not my go to pose.

Secondly, I see very clearly that I am not alone here. In fact, students who really love backbends are often most at risk for settling into their unique movement patterns. Where there is little resistance, there is often less awareness since there is less to overcome. Basically, students are either inhibited their arms and legs, or not inhibited by their extremities and the various joints. In both cases, specific skills can be called into action to achieve more in the pose with less “work”.

In order to keep the subject of backbends manageable in this post, let’s discuss what occurs in the legs. Even more specifically, we will look at hip extension during Urdhva Dhanurasana (upward facing bow). This is only one small component of the pose, but I will adhere to the wise words of my teacher, “we learn in layers.” There is a great benefit to breaking down any subject into manageable pieces and then repeatedly returning to them for review.

Urdhva Dhanurasana

In Urdhva Dhanurasana the hip goes into extension, which means that the thigh bones move behind the pelvis to some degree. Our primary hip extensors are the gluteus maximus and the hamstrings. In many of us, the gluteus maximus is a very powerful muscle that originates at the ilium and the sacrum and inserts on the femur and the iliotibial tract (IT band). The key to this discussion is that the gluteus maximus also externally rotates the thigh. So, if you powerfully engage your gluteus maximus to pull the hip into extension as you press up into upward facing bow, you might also externally rotate the femurs.

What does this look like? Well, it depends, but most cases, the feet turn out, the butt squeezes together and gets hard, the groin also gets hard and pushes out, and the spinal extension gets stuck somewhere in the lumbar spine so it can’t sequence through all the segments of the spine. Over time, this could cause discomfort in the low back and the sacroiliac joints. Furthermore, the experience of the backbend is not fully achieved. This is why you often hear teachers say “feet parallel”. They are essentially encouraging less external rotation at the hip, but “feet parallel” is easier to execute if you are new to yoga anatomy.

So what do we do next? Unfortunately (or fortunately), my answer is always “it depends”. Truly, we would have to look at the individual in the pose and test a few theories. But there are some general solutions that work for most people.

First, let’s invite the hamstrings to the party. The hamstrings are also hip extensors and would be happy to share the work load with the gluteus maximus. However, since the hamstrings are also knee flexors, the quadriceps are also invited to the party to help straighten the legs by signaling to the hamstrings to work the upper fibers more than the lower fibers.

Second, we should also invite the anterior fibers of the gluteus medius and the gluteus minumus to contribute. These muscle fibers are internal rotators and when turned on will counter the external rotation caused by the gluteus maximus. As an added bonus, both the medius and minumus are also abductors will help stabilize the pelvic girdle.

glute complex

You learn in a yoga teacher certification program like ours that these cues don’t usually cause results in poses. This is why you hear “soften the groins” or “roll the inner thighs down” in Urdhva Dhanurasana – usually right after “feet parallel”. Your yoga teacher is guiding you work dominant muscles less and search for less commonly used muscle to grow in the pose.

So how do you experience this when you are working so hard in the pose and you also have the core and shoulders giving you their own special dose of difficulty? You take as many variables out of the equation as you can.

Supported Ustrasana - Doing

My personal go to pose is supported Ustrasana. It is still an active pose, this is a key point. If you look at the picture here of me in those, I am working. If I were to relax, my pelvis would drop into flexion – not the position we want in Urdhva Dhanurasana. While supported in this manner, I can safely experiment with the various muscle actions in the legs and hips that I mentioned above. The wall is in front of me to give me feedback on how much I am using my gluteus maximus. All the while, I can experience a long hold in spinal extension where I would otherwise fatigue.

Try it out and let me know how it works for you. I would love to see you in Anatomy: Form and Function, where we discuss and experience all this and more. This module in the Leeann Carey Yoga School is part of our 300 RYT curriculum, but can also be used as continuing education for any 200 RYTs out there. Let’s yoga together, register here.

The latissimus dorsi is a paired superficial back muscle originating at the spinous processes of the sacrum, lumbar vertebra and lower thoracic vertebrae, twisting through the armpit and inserting at the inner upper arm bone. The lats chief action is to extend the arm (moving it behind the trunk), medially rotate (turn inward) and adduct the arm (draw the arm toward the body). Since the lats are shoulder extensors, tight lats will limit shoulder flexion (arms moving forward and overhead) as in Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog), Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I), and Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Handstand). The lower back will be pulled into extension (or arching) to compensate for tight lats.

tight lats pull the lower back into extension in handstand

A great stretch for the lats is to lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. With your arms by your side, externally rotate your shoulders so your palms turn up. Do not confuse the palms up cue with supination (an action of the forearm), be sure to rotate from the humerus (upper arm bone). This external rotation will spool the lats around the humerus for an extra bit of stretch. Now slowly lift your arms up and overhead, your palms will now be facing the floor. Notice if your lower back arched to give the illusion of greater range of motion.

Repeat this exercise paying special attention to the low back. From the starting position of the knees bent and feet on the floor, lift your pelvis only a few inches off the floor and use your hands to move the back of your pelvis toward your heels. Lower your pelvis, feel this extra length and maintain this position as you add previous arm movements. Hold the stretch 2 to 3 minutes, breathing comfortably.

straighten the elbows or hold opposite elbows

When you are ready for more stretch, roll up a yoga mat and place it across the top of your shoulder blades just beneath the nape of your neck. Be sure not to arch the lower back, even with the added height.

Register for Anatomy: Form and Function at www.leeanncareyyoga.com to learn more.

Happy stretching!

Understanding how the body works as a whole will greatly increase your adjustment skills.  For example, once you understand that how a student places her hands in adho mukha svanasana (down dog) can be an indicator of muscle tightness in the arms or back, limited range of motion in the shoulder joint, or even a hip imbalance, you are no longer concerned with only where the hand should go, but how that adjustments translates through the rest of the body.  Let’s look at the common adjustment where a teacher encourages a student to press through the base of the index finger because the student is rolling to the outer edges of the hand and wrist.  The eager adjuster will gently press down on the area that is lifting and be satisfied.  The patient, perhaps inquisitive, adjuster will watch to see how this change communicates to other areas of the body and will guide the student to become aware of the connection.

Adjustments will vary among students and will change as each individual practice grows.  The adjustment I received in trikonasana 5 years ago is not the adjustment I received in trikonasana yesterday, yet both transformed my experience of the pose.   My recommendation for teachers new to adjusting is to slow down, watch and look more, keep studying anatomy, and continue your own practice.