Which Way Should Your Shoulder Blades Go? (Rerun)

by Baxter

Let’s talk about the shoulder blades today. Recently, while evaluating my newest batch of teacher trainees during their teaching intensive, I was surprised to hear the instructions to “move the shoulder blades toward the pelvis” when the arms were in the overhead position, such as in Urdhva Hastasana. I heard it in Warrior 1, in Utkatasana, in Downward-Facing Dog, and virtually anytime my young wards had the arms overhead. And I flinched each time they uttered it, which just about every one of them did for the four classes they taught. Without naming names, I should mention “always move your shoulder blades down your back” is an instruction that I have heard on many occasions from very experienced teachers. These trainees did not hear me utter such words, but I realized that some of their instructors were still using this outdated understanding. This is too simplistic, as it is not what actually needs to happen for healthy movement of the arms overhead and it can actually restrict the mobility of the shoulder joint for most students.

If you look at photos of Mr. Iyengar in the classic “Light on Yoga,” you can see that he is not doing that. His shoulder blades are clearly moving towards his arms, not away from them. (I refer you to the following plates: 12, 23, 42, 91 and 96.) So what is going on here, or more accurately, what is going on with the shoulder blades when the arms go overhead?

When your arms are hanging at your sides, your shoulder blades have several common ways they move: sliding upwards is called elevation, such as when you shrug your shoulders; sliding slightly downwards, called depression, like when you tug the bottom of a shirt downwards; sliding them apart or side ways, called protraction or abduction, like when you give yourself a hug; and squeezing them together called retraction or adduction, like when doing the Cobra with a doorknob.

Shoulder Blade in Neutral (Mountain Pose)

In these four basic movements, the shoulder blades don’t rotate much. Instead, they slide around in the general way they sit on your back upper rib cage. But in addition to those movements, there are two more movements that require a bit more imagination on your part, since we can’t quite see what is going on under the skin and muscles. The first happens when you take your arms overhead, whether forward and up or out the sides and up. It is called upward rotation of the scapula.  There is usually a bit of elevation of the entire shoulder blade from its neutral position, like in Mountain Pose, and a bit of protraction. But more noticeable is the out and up swing of the shoulder blade that allows for the greatest reach of the arms overhead.

Rotating Shoulder Blade

The opposite action is required to get the arms back down to your sides, and is called downward rotation. It is likely that a bit of depression of the shoulder blade and retraction also accompanies this action.

My teacher Donald Moyer refers to the rotational movement of the shoulder blades as “traffic circles.” Depending on which way the arms are moving or how they are positioned on the body, the traffic around the outer edges of the circle will flow in one direction the other. As an example of how you might imagine this, you might start with your awareness at the lower tip of your right shoulder blade. You can likely reach around and feel this with your fingers of your left hand. When your arm goes overhead, the traffic flows up the outer edge, across the top edge from right to left, and down the inner edge back to the lower tip of the shoulder blade. You might have to imagine there is a central pivot point in the shoulder blade, and the traffic causes the shoulder blade to rotate around that point. Then the traffic flows in the opposite direction as the arm comes down to Mountain pose position.

You might be asking yourself if there are times when saying “move the shoulder blades down the back” would be appropriate? And the answer is yes. For instance, with new students who have hunched shoulder blades that are semi-permanently elevated and forward rounded, you might have to ask, show and encourage them to depress the shoulder blades in Mountain pose.  I will keep a slight feeling of downward movement even as the arms approach the 90 degree mark, such as in Warrior 2 pose. In Warrior 2, there is a bit of upward rotation of the blades, but mostly protraction or widening away from the spine. The downward movement is helpful for those with the tendency to hike the shoulders in these lower arm positions.

But so what if you draw your shoulder blades down the back when they are overhead? What’s the big problem? Well, as your arms and shoulder blades swing up, the upper arm bone, the humerus, rolls slightly outwards, so as to have a better contact with the shoulder blade. If you then pull the “shoulder blades towards the pelvis”, the shoulder blades start to downwardly rotate, the arm bone pulls down with it, and the shoulder joint gets narrowed and pinched, meaning that the soft, non-bone structures can get pinched in an unhealthy way. I dislike demonstrating this “wrong” way of doing it for my students, because it quite literally pinches my gleno-humeral joint.

Having a clearer understanding of how the shoulder blades change positions on the rib cage will be very helpful to you as you try some of the shoulder openers we share with you because so many of them work more effectively if you encourage the upward rotation, protraction and elevation of the scapulae I have shared with you here today (see Featured Sequence: Opening Tight Shoulders and future posts about the individual poses). 


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Follow Baxter Bell, MD on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For upcoming workshops and retreats see Baxter's Workshops and for info on Baxter see baxterbell.com.  

All About Your Shoulders

by Nina

Your shoulder joint (glenohumeral joint) is a ball and socket joint. This joint attaches both to your ball of your arm bone (head of the humerus) and your shoulder blade (scapula). All three work together when you move your arms from the shoulders.

This structure provides the most range of movement of any joint in your body! Take a moment now to stand and see how many different positions you can take your arms in while moving from your shoulder joints, including overhead, behind your body, out to the sides, and across your body. Feel your arm, shoulder joint, and shoulder blades all moving together as you try those different position. Finally, take a minute to see how many yoga poses you can think of that take your arms into very interesting positions. Thank you, shoulders, for all the things you allow us to do, both in yoga and in everyday life! 

However, while the structure of your shoulders provides you with the ability to do take your arms into a huge variety of positions, it also makes the joint one of the most vulnerable in your body. So today I’m providing an overview of all the posts we have on the blog on the shoulders, including those on anatomy, special practices that stretch and/or strengthen the shoulders, and specific problems that can develop. As always, if you’re someone who is very flexible in your shoulder joints, focusing more on strengthening your shoulders rather than on stretching them further will help you keep the joints stable and protected. 

Anatomy 

In Which Way Should Your Shoulder Blades Go? Baxter describes the natural movement of the shoulder blades and how when you do yoga you can encourage that movement to find more opening in your shoulders. This is really worth reading because many yoga teachers get this wrong. 

Practices for the Shoulders 

In Featured Sequence: Opening Tight Shoulders Baxter provides a very simple, accessible sequence for those with tight shoulders.

In Featured Sequence: Standing Shoulder Stretches Baxter and I created a standing sequence that you can practice anywhere that helps improve shoulder flexibility. 

In Featured Sequence: Upper Body Flexibility Practice Baxter provides a full sequence for stretching the upper body, including lots of shoulder stretches.

In Building Upper Body Strength the Easy Way I share a sequence I designed for a friend who wanted to use yoga to strength her shoulders and arms. These are poses I myself practice on a regular basis. 

In Featured Sequence: Upper Body Strength Practice Baxter provides a full sequence for strengthening the entire upper body, including the shoulder joints. 

In Video of the Week: Dynamic Shoulder Sequence  Baxter demonstrates a sequence that will both stretch and strengthen your shoulders. 

In The Shoulders in Downward-Facing Dog Pose Baxter provides his recommendations for how to work with the shoulder blades in Downward-Facing Dog pose. 

In Living Proof: Increasing Shoulder Flexibility I describe which kinds of poses I used to improve my shoulder flexibility after suffering from frozen shoulder. 

Shoulder Problems 

In Friday Practical Pointers: Who Should Avoid Certain Movements of the Shoulders we provide information for which movements to avoid if you are having specific shoulder problems. 

In Arthritis of the Shoulder and Yoga Baxter describes how arthritis can develop in the shoulder joint and how to practice yoga if you develop it. 

In Yoga and Shoulder Joint Replacements Shari discusses what a shoulder joint replacement is and how you should return to yoga practice after having one. 

In Friday Q&A: Arm Strength and Upward Bow Pose Baxter answering a question about arthritis in the AC joint (part of the shoulder joint) and a possible tear in the supraspinatus muscle, addressing shoulder impingement and other shoulder problems. This particular post has quite a bit about anatomy in it. 

In Friday Q&A: Rotator Cuff Pain Baxter and Shari both answer a reader’s question about how to practice yoga while experiencing rotator cuff pain. 

Frozen Shoulder 

In Yoga and Menopause: Frozen Shoulders I discuss the condition of frozen shoulder and describe how to work with during freezing, thawing, and afterward based on my own experience. 

In Frozen Shoulder, Part 2 Baxter writes about his experience with frozen shoulder and new things he learned while he had it (some of which I’d know when I had it!) 

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

What is Modern Yoga?

by Nina

Taro Fields by Heidi Santschi of Heidi Santschi Garden Design

Lately I’ve been writing a lot about the original meaning of yoga (see Spiritual Ignorance and Finding Your Own Yoga), but as we all know yoga has been evolving in many ways since it was defined in ancient texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras. So what’s an easy way to explain to someone who thinks that yoga is an exercise or stretching system that it really is something a whole lot more than that?

This came up for me yesterday when I spent time with some cousins from out of town who were dying to talk with me about yoga. They were really excited about the yoga classes they had been taking, but as we talked I began to see that so far to them yoga was just one of several gym classes they’d been taking. (I had a suspicion that maybe it made them feel “good” in a way that spin or Pilates didn’t, but that’s not something they said to me.) 

At the end of our time together, I did say a few things to let them know that yoga really wasn’t about exercising. I said that yoga was a spiritual practice and that you could practice it by meditating and never doing any of the poses. And to challenge their thinking, I mentioned that Gandhi was the greatest yogi of the 20th century. But after I left them, I felt unsatisfied. I wished I had had some handy quote about what yoga was that I could have left them with. But I couldn’t think of what it should be. My usual favorite quotes, such as “yoga is equanimity” from the Bhagavad Gita, wouldn’t really reflect what modern yoga has become.

Then I started to wonder: how and when did I myself learn that yoga was something other than an exercise system? When I started practicing yoga in around 1981, I definitely thought it was an exercise class. In fact, some of us got together about organizing an in-house exercise class and work, and one of the guys said his wife, Rylin, could teach it, and so we decided to give her a go. He didn’t even mention the word “yoga.” But when Rylin came and taught us our first class, I not only loved it immediately but she let us know that first day that what we were doing was “yoga.” After that, what else did she tell us about yoga? To be honest, I cannot really remember. 

What I did remember this morning was that I bought my first yoga book a couple of years after that because I wanted to practice yoga at home. And the book I bought—quite possibly at Rylin’s suggestion—was Light on Yoga by BKS Iyengar. Surely reading that book, even if there was much I didn’t understand at the time, would have helped open my eyes to something about what the real meaning of yoga was!

So I decided this morning to look at the beginning of Light on Yoga and try to imagine myself back them reading about yoga for the first time. Even before opening the book, I noticed that it was an English edition, with the price in pounds, so I concluded that I bought it in 1984, the year it was printed, when I was living in Cambridge. And not only was the book old and well worn, as I have referred to it on and off since 1984, but the front cover fell off at some point.

Then I opened the book to the first page of the introduction and right away I saw that the second paragraph was this short definition of yoga:

“Yoga is a timeless pragmatic science evolved over thousands of years dealing with the physical, moral, mental and spiritual well-being of man as a whole.” —BKS Iyengar 

Wow, I thought, not only do I see how this book is what introduced me to a deeper understanding of what yoga was (though I still had a lot to learn after reading it—and in fact I’m still learning even now), but this was the very quote that I wished I had been able to share yesterday with my cousins!

What I liked so much about this definition of yoga is that it describes what my actual “modern” experience of yoga is as opposed to the kind of yoga that was practiced in ancient times. And how wonderful I found it by going back in time in my own yoga history to understand what it is like to be someone who started out by thinking that yoga was just an exercise system but who is very curious about the practice and wants to know more.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.


For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Flat Feet: Can Yoga Help?

by Ram

Walking Woman by Martiros Sarian

A year ago, an individual I will call Maria to protect her privacy sent me a mail asking if I could suggest a suitable Ayurvedic intervention program to correct her flat feet. Maria mentioned that she had been suffering from painful feet, including foot and leg discomfort and pain and inflammation on the bottom of the feet. When she approached a wellness practitioner, he suggested that she do something about her flat feet and strengthen her feet. At that time, I was not aware of any health concerns associated with flat feet. Additionally, Ayurveda did not discuss about flat feet in general. But in the yoga section of the Ayurvedic texts, I found some interesting information about flat feet. So, I browsed through other journals, books, and websites to understand more about this condition. Based on the knowledge I acquired, I wrote to the individual and suggested yoga therapy to help her with the condition. 

Flat feet are extremely common. In fact, flat feet start out at infancy. The structures (muscles, tendons, ligaments) that are responsible to create the arches in the feet are not fully formed at birth. As we grow and use our feet for locomotion, these structures mature and fully develop, and the arches begin to appear. The arches provide optimal support to the foot during movement, help to distribute body weight across the feet and legs, and stabilize the foot on a variety of surfaces. However, in some individuals these structures develop poorly, resulting in a low arch or no arch. Having a fairly low arch or no arch at all can result in the entire soles of the feet touching the ground. Flat feet may also be associated with overpronation, a condition where the ankle bone leans inward more toward the center line resulting in the foot rolling to the inner side during standing and walking. Overpronation puts a lot of strain on the big and second toes and creates instability in the foot. The excessive rotation of the foot leads to more rotation of the lower tibia and stress on the ligaments and tendons of the foot, resulting in shin splints and knee pain. An increased risk of injury and heel pain may also arise from overpronation. 

Flat feet are common and many people with flat feet normally will not experience any symptoms. If the foot flattens out when you stand and is not painful, treatment is not required. However, if the flat feet are rigid and not flexible, this can be painful and also result in imbalance from prolonged foot and leg discomfort. If this persists, it can lead to other problems, including pain (especially in the lower back), inflammation on the bottom of the feet, tendonitis, or bone spurs. Generally, rigid flat feet are also linked with less movement, sedentary lifestyle, and increased body weight. Clinicians and qualified healthcare practitioners can diagnose the condition by examining the feet and observing the client when they stand and walk. The health care professional may suggest motion control shoes, insoles, ankle brace, or orthotics to stabilize the foot and correct the motion in overpronation. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) recommends various exercises to improve strength and flexibility in the feet and ankles. My publication search revealed one scientific study that focused on certain foot-specific exercises and barefoot weight bearing to achieve sufficient changes in foot function. This study confirmed that proper training methods specific to the foot, heel, and calf muscles will alleviate foot problems in participants with flat feet.

Yoga with its repertoire of asanas that strengthen the calf muscles, heel, or the arch area may improve foot structure and function in people with flat feet. Alternatively, in some cases it may even strengthen the feet by increasing the foot arch. Even though I did not find any specific article on yoga asanas and flat feet, based on research and anecdotal experiences, I suggested the following asanas to Maria:

1. Sun Salutations with emphasis on Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana), Powerful pose (Utkatasana) and Plank poses (high plank=Kumbhakasana and low plank=Chaturanga Dandasana) to release the tightness in the heels and strengthen the ligaments and tendons in the feet.
2. Warrior 1 (Virabhadrasana 1), Intense Side Stretch pose (Parsvottansana), Triangle pose (Uthitha Trikonasana) and Bound Angle pose (Baddhakonasana). These asanas were suggested to strengthen and stabilize the muscles of the feet and knees, to stretch the calf muscles, and to create an inner arch lift.
3. For standing poses I suggested that she keeps the ball of the foot on the floor but lift all the toes up to strengthen the tendons and ligaments. 
4. I also suggested simple squats and squatting yoga postures, such as Garland pose (Malasana, and sitting poses that stretch the top of the foot and strengthen the arches, such as Hero pose (Virasana).

There are other asanas that may also help in releasing the tension in the tendons, strengthen the muscles, and stimulate the arches of the feet to appear. But I did not wish to see Maria rushing into a long series of postures and hurting herself more in the process. Fortunately, Maria judiciously did all the asanas that I had suggested, holding each pose for about 15 seconds, repeating the poses at least 3 times. As she practiced, she went to edge in some of the poses but was mindful at the same time. Four months into the practice, Maria noticed that the radiating pain had subsided! Her energy was back, the stiffness in the ankle and heel had eased, and she did not have any problems while standing behind the cash counter at her work place. She described her life to be normal and productive devoid of any physical pains. It is now eight months since Maria incorporated those asanas in her daily lifestyle. A week ago, she had one more interesting piece of information to share: she noticed a slight arch in both feet. Maria was thrilled and promised that yoga would now be a part and parcel of her daily lifestyle. I, too, was amazed. This is one anecdotal example is encouraging enough to warrant a full-scale scientific study. But for those of us who are already on the yoga path, we don’t need a research study to prove the benefits, we are already experiencing them! 

For additional foot-related information, check the following on this blog.

In All About Your Feet, Baxter provides an overview of all the information we have on the blog about the feet.

In Video of the Week: Anatomy of the Feet Baxter provides an introduction to the anatomy of the feet, including basic structures, landmarks, and functions.

In Video of the Week: Anatomy of the Toes Baxter discusses how the toes move, their functions, and some common toe problems.

In Friday Q&A: Flat Feet Baxter discusses flat feet.

In Friday Q&A: Morton's Neuroma Baxter discusses a condition of the ball of the foot and how yoga helps to heal it. 

In Friday Q&A: Feet and Comments Shari and Baxter suggest ways to practice yoga if you wear orthotics in your shoes.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

Video of the Week: Brahma Mudra

This version of Brahma mudra is a practice that includes both sound and movements of your head and neck. Practicing this mudra has practical benefits for the health of your upper back, neck, and head, and can also be grounding. The yoga tradition credits this mudra with other benefits as well, which can read about in my post Brahma Mudra for Neck Health. 

You can practice this mudra for 3, 6, 9, or 12 rounds. I recommend you start out with 3 and gradually work up to the number of repetitions that feels right to you.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

Follow Baxter Bell, MD on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For upcoming workshops and retreats see Baxter's Workshops and for info on Baxter see baxterbell.com.  

Friday Q&A: Can You Straighten Your Spine?

Q: I have a question regarding the spine. In my yoga class, the teacher often tells us to "keep a tall spine" or "Keep your spine straight". I can understand the former but the latter phrase is confusing. Last week I asked her what she meant by keeping the spine straight? I added that keeping a spine “straight” is a misnomer, since the spine is curved naturally. Maybe she meant raising ourselves from the hips instead of slumping. 

A: Not a class goes by where I don’t encourage my students to create what I call the “inner lift,” which I’ll clarify shortly, especially when doing sitting and standing asana. To me, this inner action of upward lengthening of the spine is of prime importance, for both sitting and standing postures to be healthy and as preparation to move the spine into the other movements it is capable of doing in the myriad of yoga poses we practice. To unpack this, we’ll look at the following: 

• the anatomy of the spine 
• my prime directive 
• axial extension of the spine 
• the way yoga teachers give cues about the spine 

Anatomy of the Spine 

In a nutshell, when you look at a skeleton from the front, the spine indeed appears quite straight, unless there is some side-to-side curvature as in those individuals with scoliosis. 

However, when you view the spinal bones from the side, it is readily apparent that there are natural forward and backward curves to the spine, with the sacrum curving backward, the lower back area (lumbar vertebrae) curving forward, the rib cage portion (thoracic spine) ideally curving just a bit backward, and the neck (cervical vertebrae) curving forward. Rrom person to person these curves can be exaggerated or more subtle, depending on a lot of factors we won’t get into here. 

For further information about the anatomy of the spine and its movements, I strongly recommend reading Shari’s post All About the Spine. 

My Prime Directive 

My students are used to hearing me talk about the prime directive in regards to the spine. Yes, I borrowed this from Star Trek, but in this setting, it doesn’t not refer to space, the final frontier. Instead, it refers to the inner action of creating an even lift from the base of the body—either the tailbone or the sitting bones—up through the whole length of the spine to the crown of the head. This is technically known as axial extension” but I call it the “inner lift” to better communicate the concept. And it’s my prime directive because from my perspective it is the essential underlying action of the spine for both sitting and standing, as well as preparation for all other movements of the spine. 

What Happens When We Encourage the Spine into Inner Lift/Axial Extension? 

When you create an inner lift/axial extension, your body engages the muscles around your spine and, in doing so, creates more space between the bones of the spine. This, in turn, allows the cushiony disks between the spinal bones to plump up and creates more space for the nerves leaving the spinal column. When my students create their inner lift, I observe in many of them that the lower back (lumbar curve) seems to become more prominent, along with a forward tip of pelvis. The two other curves (thoracic and cervical curves) become less prominent. As I noted in a previous post, Leslie Kaminoff (a well-known teacher of anatomy in the yoga world), says that this action does create a longer spine, even as it slightly diminishes the amount of natural arch in each region of the spine. That is, it straightens the spine a bit, but not entirely. So, although I don’t use the words “straighten your spine,” it is not entirely off base to suggest this. 

How Yoga Teachers Give Cues About the Spine 

Because the cue “Keep your spine straight” confused our reader confused, I thought it might be good to take a look at some alternative ways of giving the instruction to create the axial extension. Although I always say, “create an inner lift,” I was curious how other colleagues cue their students. So I asked two. 

My wife, Melina Meza, a long-time yoga teacher, has several different ways she encourages inner lift/axial extension: 

1. Feel yourself sitting between the earth and sky, with a long and spacious spine. Make micro-adjustments in your pelvis to support the lengthening of your lumbar spine, thoracic spine, and cervical spine without uprooting your sitting bones. 
2. Tune into your spine. Allow the tailbone area to descend down into the earth while encouraging more length in all the natural curves of your spine. 
3. Imagine your spine is like an antenna. Gradually stretch the antenna like you do when searching for better reception above. 
4. As you sit between the earth and the sky, imagine a little string at the top of your head gently pulling your crown towards the sky.
5. Walk your attention up the length of your spine, enlivening the muscles along the way that may be helpful in keeping you vertical.

I also asked one of the teachers who trained me, Richard Rosen. Here is Richard’s quite detailed description, which would involve a longer time in Mountain pose to convey: 

“Start from the base of the big toes, draw back along the medial arch then turn round the inner ankle, thereby activating the inner arches (or more properly vaults, which when joined together create a dome, the lift of which Dona Holleman calls pada bandha). The line of imaginary energy then rises along the inner thighs to the inner groins, creating a lift of the perineum, a kind of precursor to mula bandha. These two lines then feed into the imaginary front spine, not along the vertebral bodies, but a line that passes through the core of the torso visualized as a cylinder, in other words from the middle of the perineum to the fontanelle (of the skull), which in yoga is called the Brahma randhra, the aperture of Brahma. Here the line passes out and rises to the “end of 12” (dvadashanta), that is, 12 finger widths above the crown. Here the imaginary energy “blooms” and cascades down around the body and back into the earth, from where it is drawn back up again from the big toe bases. This energetic core of the body then is at the center of a torus. Another way of looking at the downward flow is to send it just down the back spine, through the coccyx, which lengthens earthward and burrows into the center of the planet 3900 miles away.” 

For the yoga teachers out there, how do you describe creating the inner lift? 

Want to learn more about the spine and spinal movement? Read Shari’s post All About the Spine: Anatomy and Movements. 

For more about inner lift/axial extension, see Arthritis of the Spine.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

Follow Baxter Bell, MD on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For upcoming workshops and retreats see Baxter's Workshops and for info on Baxter see baxterbell.com.  

Foundation and Extension in Your Yoga Poses

by Nina

"Watch your base; be attentive to the portion nearest the floor." — BKS Iyengar

Because Baxter will be discussing axial extension of the spine (aka creating your inner lift) tomorrow, I thought I’d share some ideas today about the other half of the equation: foundation. I learned about the relationship between foundation and extension from Mary Lou Weprin, one of the Berkeley Yoga Room teachers who trained me to be a yoga teacher. The idea was a basic one: without a solid foundation in your yoga pose, you have a difficult time being able to achieve lift or length. A good foundation, on the other hand, provides the same thing for your body that it does for a building, the support you need to go up and out. 

"If the foundation is firm, the building can withstand anything." —BKS Iyengar

This is simple but powerful concept in one that I’ve found extremely helpful in my personal practice, even all these years later.  Mary Lou defined foundation as follows:

"The foundation of a pose is that part of the body nearest the floor which supports and balances the rest of the pose. Working in relationship with the gravity line, foundation is that which helps give the pose stability."

To understand this, try this experiment in Mountain pose: 

1. Let your legs relax and keep the touch of your foot as light as possible on the floor. Now, without activating your legs, raise your arms overhead and try to lengthen your spine up, all the way through the crown of your head. Notice how you feel and release your arms. 

2. Now, activate your leg muscles and press the four corners of your feet firmly into the floor. From that solid foundation, raise your arms overhead and lengthen your spine up, all the way through the crown of your head. Do you feel the difference? 

You can also do the experiment by lying on the floor with your feet on the wall.

This same technique works in all active yoga poses; before you lengthen up or out, you need to strengthen your foundation to provide the support for your lift. This is basically what yoga teachers are getting at when they talk about the importance of grounding your feet in standing poses or your sitting bones in seated pose. 

In any pose, start by identifying what part or parts of your body is touching the floor and then consider what you want to lift away from. That’s your foundation! Sometimes it’s obvious, such as in the standing poses, but other times maybe not. In Handstand and other arm balances, it’s your hands. In Downward-Facing Dog pose, it’s both your feet and hands. In Side Plank pose, it’s one hand and the side of one foot. In Marichyasana 3, because you want to lengthen your spine up before twisting, it’s your sitting bones plus the foot that is on the floor (at least that is my experience). In Locust pose and Bow pose, it’s your hip points. I hope that gives you the general idea; just taking the time to identify your foundation in new poses can be an interesting exploration. 

After that, before lifting up or out, try establishing a solid foundation by activating pressing the body parts in question evenly toward the floor. Pay attention to every part of your foundation, for example, don’t forget about that foot in Marichyasana 3! If there’s a body part you tend to neglect, such as that foot, focus there especially. Then, from the strength of your foundation, lift, extend, or lengthen. I think you may find some surprising positive results!

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Happy Anniversary! Seven Years of Yoga for Healthy Aging

by Nina

By Wayne Thiebaud*

Today’s our seventh anniversary! And when this time of year comes around, I can’t help but reflect on everything that happened here during the year. So here’s the basic scoop.

Posts. We now have 1,712 published posts on the blog, covering a wide range of topics, including theories about and information on aging, asana practice, sequences, and individual poses, pranayama and meditation, and stress management, brain health, cardiovascular health, medical conditions, yoga philosophy, and mindfulness. There’s information in my post Friday Q&A: How Old is Your Blog? about other topics we’ve covered and about how to explore our archives because if you have questions, we might very well have the answers. But in general if you are interested in reading earlier posts, you should know there are three different ways you can search the blog for particular topics (or authors). See How to Search for instructions. If you have any unanswered questions after all that, you can email Baxter at baxterbell at mac dot com.

Staff. We added two new regular contributors, Jivana Heyman (Jivana Heyman Joins Yoga for Healthy Aging) and Victor Dubin (see Victor Dubin Joins Yoga for Healthy Aging). I’m so happy I met you and so grateful you decided to become contributors.

By the way, our blog is strictly non-profit, so this means that Jivana and Victor, as well as the rest of our ongoing staff (Baxter, Ram, Beth, Jill. and me, your Editor-in-Chief) are doing this work out of love. I’m so grateful to be working with such an extraordinary group of people! I'm also grateful for our guest contributors, who this year included Erin Collins, Eve Johnson, and Lynne Glickman. If you think you’d like to write an article for us, send a short pitch about the topic you’d like to address to me at nina at wanderingmind dot com along with a brief biography of yourself that includes info about your yoga experience and training.

Our Book. Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being was published on December 12, 2017! If you want to read a review of it, my personal favorite is the one Charlotte Bell did for YogaU Online. Here is her conclusion:

“Yoga for Healthy Aging is highly informative, compassionate and a joy to read. It is the most comprehensive text I’ve yet read about this process we’re all navigating and how our yoga practice can grow with us as we age. Yoga for Healthy Aging is a book that you can turn to for knowledge and inspiration for the rest of your life.”

Thank You. I'll end by saying that as always we're grateful for and appreciate all our readers, and we love hearing from you. This year, you can help me celebrate our anniversary by donating to Accessible Yoga. But if you want to celebrate our traditional way by listening to our "theme song," here's the video "Float" by Flogging Molly (the video is quite beautiful). I still think that the chorus for this song, “Ah but don't, don't sink the boat/That you built, you built to keep afloat,” is perfect. 



Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Help Me Celebrate!

by Nina

Tomorrow is the 7th anniversary of the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog. Whoa, it's actually hard for me to believe it. When I started the blog seven years ago with Brad and Baxter, I had no idea what it would end up being or how long it would endure. And recently I confess I've been feeling a bit burned out. But, you know what would cheer me up a bit?

This year, instead of the usual flowers and chocolates, I'm asking you to donate money to one of my favorite non-profit yoga organizations on my behalf: Accessible Yoga. Their mission is to bring yoga to people who don't have access or have been underserved, such as people with disabilities, chronic illness, seniors, children with special needs, and anyone who doesn't feel comfortable in a regular yoga class. I've actually been donating quite a bit of my time to them lately. (See if you can find me.) Donations are tax deductible! 

DONATE NOW

Thank you so much,

Nina

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.


For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.

Video of the Week: Reclined Lunge Pose

This reclined (upside down) version of Lunge pose is a great warm up for the classic version and is also good alternative for the classic pose if you are unable stand or take a hands and knees position. You will get into the pose from Happy Baby pose (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Oke... for options). If you have any issues with your hips or lower back, you should watch the video through once before deciding if it is right for you to try.



Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

Follow Baxter Bell, MD on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For upcoming workshops and retreats see Baxter's Workshops and for info on Baxter see baxterbell.com.  

Restoring Lost Strength

by Nina

Old Man in Warnemunde  by Edvard Munch

— “no matter how old or out of shape you are, you can restore much of the strength you already lost”—Jane Brody, New York Times

I recently read a New York Times article Preventing Muscle Loss Among the Elderly thinking that I might learn something new about age-related muscle loss, a topic we have addressed frequently in the past. It turns out I was a bit disappointed. It even looks like I could teach Jane Brody a thing or two, as she conflated age-related skeletal muscle atrophy with sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is the stage that some people reach as they are aging when they have an amount of skeletal muscle mass that is significantly lower than the average muscle mass of the general population. Just because Brody has less strength than she used to doesn’t mean she has sarcopenia (and since she exercises very regularly, I’d be surprised if she did). For information on the difference between age-related skeletal muscle atrophy and sarcopenia, see Age-Related Muscle Loss and Sarcopenia, in which I interviewed Dr. Chris Adans, an expert on sarcopenia about both muscle and bone strength.

However, I did notice that Brody provided a link to an older study about restoring strength in very elderly that you might want to know about. In this study, High-Intensity Strength Training in Nonagenarians Effects on Skeletal Muscle, researchers worked with ten volunteers who aged 90 and over and who were frail and living in institutions. They started by measuring leg strength and walking time and found that “quadriceps strength was correlated negatively with walking time.” So, the less quadriceps strength the volunteers had, the slower they walked when they were given a tandem gait test, which is toe-to-heel walking, as in walking the line. They then had the volunteers undergo eight weeks of high-intensity resistance training. For the nine who made it through the eight-week program, strength gains on average more than doubled. And the mean walking speed, tested again through tandem gait, improved 48 percent.

Isn’t that inspiring? Clearly it is never too late to work on strength building. And becoming weak with old age is not a given as if you work on strength building now. Even though the study I discussed here used high-intensity strength training to help the test subjects restore their strength, the sarcopenia expert I myself interviewed did include yoga as a type of resistance exercise that would help prevent skeletal muscle atrophy. Here’s Dr. Chris Adams advice:

“At this point, the recommendations are pretty general and would consist of: 1) maintaining a healthy diet, 2) resistance exercise, such as yoga or weight lifting, assuming there is no medical contraindication to exercise, and 3) avoiding preventable or treatable risk factors for other conditions that cause skeletal muscle atrophy, such as smoking, alcoholism, hypertension, obesity, high LDL cholesterol, etc.”

For more on practicing yoga for strength, see Yoga Asanas: Endurance Training or Resistance Training? and Techniques for Strength Building.


Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

For information about Nina's upcoming book signings and other activities, see Nina's Workshops, Book Signings, and Books.