Stair Mechanics – Walking Up

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In this short video Tiffany details some of the most important features of functional mechanics when climbing stairs. This includes some of the most common mistakes and how to correct them.

High Lunge for Hip Stabilization and Mobilization

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I’ve been really loving the short movement sequence shown in this video. It’s got a number of applications including stabilizing the hip joint, increasing range of motion in the hip, trunk stabilization and training for better throwing mechanics. I also find this sequence an ideal preparatory movement for classical standing asana in that it helps to awaken the movement patterns that really bring yogasana to life. Check it out!

DNS Warm Up

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This short video gives guided instructions for learning some DNS principles and using early developmental movements as a warm up for any movement practice you choose. I like to use this sequence as preparatory sequence before doing classical yoga postures, but it could also be done before a gym workout, a run, a bike ride or a hike.

We’re hoping to offer more video sessions like this and we’d love your feedback. Let us know what you think!

STRENGTH TRAIN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM – Health and the Autonomic N.S.

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Your autonomic nervous system is composed of two parts – the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.  The sympathetic is the body’s accelerator or stimulator, increasing muscle contraction, heart rate and blood flow.  The parasympathetic is the resting aspect of this system and promotes muscular relaxation, slowing of the heart rate and relaxation of blood vessel walls.

When the autonomic nervous system is in “good shape” it transitions easily between these component systems and their functions  at the appropriate times. This ability to transition from the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic N.S. and the “rest & digest” response of the parasympathetic is akin to a dimmer on a light switch that increases and intensifies the light when more light is needed to see and concentrate and then dials down the light, perhaps later that evening, for a romantic, candle light dinner.  Thus a well functioning autonomic N.S. gives us the ability to react quickly and forcefully to a dangerous situation at one moment, then relax and rest, maybe even take a quick nap and wake up refreshed a while later.

This aspect of our nervous system is called “autonomic” because its functions can operate without our having to think about them.  At the same time,  the autonomic  N.S. allows for a certain degree of conscious control. A great example of this is the role of the autonomic N.S. in respiration. We typically breathe without thinking about it,(thankfully) but we do have the ability to speed up or slow down our breathing at will and ideally with relative speed and ease. So despite the fact that many of our autonomic functions can occur unconsciously, we do have the ability to affect these functions consciously and therefore we can practice or “train” this part of our nervous system to perform its functions better.

A strong autonomic nervous system intelligently uses aspects of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic and is able to switch gears when needed without taxing the body.  We can consciously train our nervous system to seamlessly make this shift between stimulation and relaxation, and this will help keep our cardiovascular system strong and supple and facilitate muscle recovery. Thus “training” our autonomic N.S. not only improves the health of our nervous system but also the health of our muscles and cardiovascular system.

Most modern humans spend significant time  in situations and engaged in activities that stimulate the sympathetic nervous system to a mild degree.  This constant low-grade stimulation can become a habit, leading to missed cues that our body is neither resting nor fully engaged.  It’s as though we forget our light switch has a dimmer and leave the light on at the same brightness constantly, no matter the time of day or need for more or less light.

This “sympathetic overdrive” is also like a car running at idle, occasionally revving  the engine but never actually driving anywhere and never completely shutting off.  This can happen to all of us occasionally, and its not a big problem until it begins to manifest consistently when it will weaken our nervous system and its ability to shift from the sympathetic N.S. to the parasympathetic and it’s important functions.

Some signs of sympathetic overdrive include:

  • Digestive problems
  • Sleep problems
  • fatigue, exhaustion
  • shallow breathing
  • moodiness, anger, upset easily
  • high muscle tension
  • muscle pain
  • frequent colds or easily getting sick
  • metabolic disorders
  • high blood pressure
  • blood vessel problems

To train your nervous system to be adaptable and functioning optimally, here are some key steps:

1) Breathe diaphragmatically all the time

Diaphragmatic breathing is the easiest way to turn on the parasympathetic response. When you breathe well, your shoulders relax, your whole abdominal wall gently expands 360 degrees and there is a slight pause between the inhale and exhale.

Signs of breathing dysfunction include:

  • Spending your day sitting with a rounded back
  • Lifting your chest or shoulders up while inhaling
  • A chronically stiff and tight upper back
  • Breathing in and out of your mouth
  • Yawning or sighing frequently
  • A resting respiration rate higher than 12 breathes a minute

Your diaphragm is one of your largest back muscles.  In order to draw air into the deepest part of the lungs, it has to contract during inhalation. This contraction is a downward movement and in order for it to move down, the abdominal wall has to expand.  This is virtually impossible to do if you are slouching.  Conversely, correcting a slouch with a military style posture of arching the back and pulling the shoulder blades together will also restrict the movement of the diaphragm and interfere with breathing.

See our earlier blog post on diaphragmatic breathing for more on this subject.

2) Learn to relax the body

Our muscles are designed to do two things very well- contract and relax. Consciously relaxing our muscles helps them to contract more easily.  A muscle that forgets to relax is more prone to strain, pain and adds to overall discomfort in the body. Training your muscles to relax is just as important as doing your daily workout at the gym.

Some techniques that help include:

  • massage
  • yoga
  • tai chi / chi gung
  • biofeedback
  • meditation
  • warm baths.

Try giving yourself permission to relax and rest in small chunks throughout the day. Also, check out this video showing a great way of relaxing the psoas muscle. It will help you remember how to let go of tension in the body and the nervous system.

3) Learn to relax the mind

The workings of the mind distract us from being in our body and hence being able to perceive the habits that contribute to sympathetic over-stimulation. Habits like holding our breath, tensing parts of our bodies, straining our eyes and getting frustrated with little things often manifest as result of tension in the mind. Taking a few minutes every day to let the mind relax is renewing and refreshing to the body.

My favorite way to do this is to sit or lie down in a quiet area, scan through my body to note areas of tension, visualize the tension melting with the image of sunlight and then letting my mind be free. Letting the mind be free is as simple as giving permission for your thoughts be free of any particular focus.

4) Exercise on a regular basis with a large variety of challenges.

Your exercise should be varied and daily.  Each day should include walking, weight resistance, stretches and movements that challenge your balance and your movement skills.  The more muscles you use, the more blood flow you will have and this increased blood flow will feed nerves and removes waste products from all of your tissues. Stimulating the nerves meanwhile builds their resilience and adaptability.

*Personal Alignment Training is ideal for training the nervous system along with muscles, bones, joints and the C.V. system!

5) Get deep rest

How many times have you felt ready for bed at 8pm but for various reasons, ignore the signals?

Try this experiment once a week:

Forgo TV after dinner and read something relaxing, like a good book (not the news). Dim the lights in your home after the sun sets. Adjust the light so its just bright enough to read. Put away your phone and computer- you can check them in the in the morning. Notice when your body starts to send the signals it is ready for bed (not the mind!).

Place no significance on the time…

Just go to bed…

…and notice how much more rested you feel the next day!

If you have ever been camping you are likely familiar with this type of letting go.

6) Spend time in nature

Being outdoors is very soothing to the nervous system.  Exposure to the natural colors of blue and green have been shown to calm to our sensory nerves.

Try getting outdoors more on your lunch break.

Or instead of going to the gym, do a hike instead.  Exercising outdoors will engage the nervous system differently than an indoor workout with all of its distractions.

7) Be mindful of the quantity of stimulants you are consuming

Caffeine causes your blood vessels to restrict which can result in more muscular tension. Coffee and tea are delicious and enjoyable but consuming more than 1-2 cups a day or having caffeine after lunch can interfere with your body’s ability to relax and get a good night’s sleep. For anyone struggling with sleep issues, I recommend slowly reducing your intake to 1 cup a day and perhaps switching to tea most days as it contains less caffeine and delivers it more gradually.

A well functioning autonomic N.S. is essential to our long term health and quality of life. These “training” tips will help you build a stronger, more resilient nervous system that will serve you now and for years to come!

Adaptation and the Psoas

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When we’re faced with pain it’s easy to wonder, “why did this happen to me?” Seeking a cause for pain can be helpful, but only if we’re willing to consider the possibility that the pain is the result of how we’ve been using our body, or in many cases, not using it.

Human beings as a species have been successful on this planet largely due to our uncanny ability to adapt to our environment. Our bodies are extremely well adapted to the hunter gatherer lifestyle of our distant ancestors, for example, and like these ancestors we thrive on a wide variety of foods and the great number of human movements once required to collect them.

The breakneck pace of technology, however, has placed great demands on our ability to adapt to changes in diet and lifestyle. With very high calorie foods so easy to come by with so little physical effort, even relatively young people must all guard against diseases unheard of in the few hunter gatherer populations still remaining on this planet.

Perhaps the solution is getting more exercise, but this is highly debatable. The true purpose of exercise is to provide a substitute for the movement we’re not doing and the calories we’re not using in our increasingly technologically driven and sedentary modern lifestyle, but most of what we do for exercise these days reinforces the very lifestyle habits we’re already spending most of our days doing. Is sitting on a bike pedaling for an hour better than siting still in a chair? Maybe a bit, but it’s still sitting and can still contribute to many of the same health consequences.

In her 2015 book Don’t Just Sit There, Katy Bowman speaks to this issue when she says “the sitting itself isn’t really the problem, it is the repetitive use of a single position than makes us literally become ill in a litany of ways.” She goes on to give several examples including that “muscles will adapt to repetitive positioning by changing their cellular makeup, which in turn leads to less joint range of motion.”

I find myself telling my clients and students constantly that muscles adapt to the position we put our bones in. For instance If I stand with my hip joints forward of my knees and ankles, my hamstrings and calve muscles will shorten, limiting my ability to bend forward from my hips and placing greater demands on muscles and joints in my lower back.

These “adaptive” changes manifest to a certain extent over a period of time, but in some cases this type of adaptation can be very quick, even instantaneous. In the hips forward misalignment described above, the affects on muscle length and range of motion can actually happen rather quickly. Standing with the hips pushed forward turns off the muscles in the posterior hip and lower back. This doesn’t take any time at all, it simply happens as a result of doing it.

This turning off of the hip muscles is also a kind of adaptation and I actually consider this good news for us modern humans. It demonstrates that our bodies have the ability to make some changes rather quickly and that these changes can just as easily be good for our health and function as bad.

My favorite example of soliciting a positive change in the body that can have huge benefits to our health and function is what happens in the Psoas Release. I use this posture as much as any I teach my students and clients because I’ve seen how effective it can be in retuning the psoas muscles to a more functional length. This is important as psoas that are too short have a huge impact on our health and function in a variety of ways.

The psoas muscles are rather large muscles that attaches to the inner, upper femur at one end and to a number of locations along the lumbar spine at the other. The psoas run through the pelvis but do not attach directly to it. The psoas do however have a big impact on the alignment of the pelvis as well as the alignment of the lumbar spine. One impact they can have on the pelvis is the very misalignment pattern described above – causing the hips (and the pelvis along with them) to sit forward of the knees and ankles and therefore shortened psoas can directly contribute to limited hip strength and limited hip range of motion.

Other possible effects of short psoas muscles are numerous. Here are a few more:

  • Compression of the lumbar discs
  • Excessive load on the sacroilliac joints
  • Increased risk of sciatica
  • Restriction of the diaphragm and disruption of healthy respiratory function
  • Inhibition of the pelvic floor tone
  • Increased risk of high blood pressure
  • Decreased circulation through the abdominal aorta
  • Impairment of the digestive system
  • Impairment of the urinary system
  • Impairment of the reproductive system
  • Ongoing activation of the sympathetic nervous system

Clearly there are a number of compelling reasons for have a longer, more functional psoas. So let’s look at the Psoas Release and learn a rather simple, gentle and effective way of bringing the psoas back to a more functional length. And did I mention that this pose can be very relaxing?

“3 Months Prone” posture

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You’ll see in this video my tendency to use the buttocks to stabilize my pelvis. This tendency should really be minimized or eliminated all together. Give it a try!

A Short Progression for doing Plank Posture

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A common mistake made doing plank pose is using the hip flexors to support the weight of pelvis. This is shown in the photo below.

If the hip flexors are active, they tend to tilt the pelvis forward (anteriorly), relative to the rib cage. This results in a mis-alignment between the pelvis and the rib cage and inhibits the deep abdominal and pelvic floor muscles, severely compromising pelvic and trunk stability and placing much more of the load on the shoulder girdle and lower back.

 

 

When the hip flexors are relaxed, it allows the pelvis to align with the rib cage in a way that allows the deep abdominal and pelvic floor muscles to respond to the weight of the pelvis and lower trunk. With the help of the quadriceps and toes, the total weight of the body is then distributed evenly between the feet, legs, pelvis, trunk and shoulder girdle.

 

The Best Breathing for Reducing Pain and Stress

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When working with our clients one of the first things we check is their breathing pattern. This is because the way a person breathes can have a big impact on their health, including the health and function of the musculo-skeletal system. Much of the impact of breathing on our health has to do with the role of our diaphragm.

The Diaphragm during Respiration

There are many ways to breathe but the most effective, efficient and relaxing way to breathe involves using our diaphragm. The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that spans the lower border of our rib cage. On inhalation, as the diaphragm contracts, it flattens and moves downward. This downward motion creates a vacum in the chest, helping to pull air into the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes it moves upward, back into its dome shape, and this upward motion helps us to exhale.

Intra-abdominal Pressure and the Stabilizing Role of the Diaphragm

The downward motion of the diaphragm also creates pressure in the abdomen. This pressure is called “intra-abdominal pressure” and is important for facilitating a stabilizing response in the muscles of our abdomen, low back and pelvis. This highlights the dual role of the diaphragm. Under optimal circumstances it acts as a facilitator of both respiration and muscle-skeletal stabilization.

Often people are taught diaphragmatic breathing by lying down and breathing into the belly, inflating it toward the ceiling. Although this may be a good way to get started, it is an approach which focuses only on the respiratory role of the diaphragm and fails to address its crucial role in stabilizing the trunk and pelvis.

Experiencing Diaphragmatic Breathing and Intra-abdominal Pressure

For the diaphragm to perform optimally in both of it’s roles it is essential that its downward motion be symetrical and that the pressure it creates in the abdomen be distributed evenly. To experience this even distribution of intra-abdominal pressure for yourself, place your hands around the abdomen just below the lower ribs, making contact with the front, sides and back of your body. Your diaphragm sits just above where your hands are touching. Now inhale and feel how the pressure created in your abdomen is pushing gently into your hands.

True diaphragmatic breathing creates intra-abdominal pressure that expands outward into the full circumference of the abdomen. When you breathe in with your hands wrapped around your abdomen, check and see if you feel the pressure moving in all directions. If you feel most or all of the pressure pushing into your belly, then on subsequent breaths try to gently, but consciously, redistribute the pressure into every place your hands are touching, especially into the sides of your waist and into the back.

Another technique for improving diaphragmatic breathing and intra-abdominal pressure involves tying a theraband or a stretchy cloth around your lower ribs and feeling your inhale touch the whole circumference of the lower ribcage.  Here you can feel the intercostal muscles between your ribs move. The intercostals assist the diaphragm in playing both its roles and are an important source of load and mobilization of the rib cage, helping to keep these bones healthy and mobile.

Intra-abdominal Pressure and the Pelvic Floor

As I mentioned earlier, when we are truly breathing diaphragmatically the downward motion of the diaphragm will be symetrical and create an even distribution of pressure in the abdominal cavity. But it doesn’t stop there! In fact one important benefit of diaphragmatic breathing is its affect on the pelvic floor. This is because true diaphragmatic breathing and optimal intra-abdominal pressure will move directly downward toward the pelvic floor, loading the pelvic floor muscles and soliciting a response from those muscles that maintains their strength and responsiveness.

To sense the intra-abdominal pressure in your pelvis,  place your hands on the front of your belly below your umbilicus (belly button) and above your pubic bone and take a breath. You should feel a gentle pressure increase here. You may also begin to sense a gentle pressure in the floor of your pelvis.

Other Benefits of Diaphragmatic Breathing

Another reason the direction our diaphragm moves is so important is that it helps pull air into the lowest lobes of your lungs. Since the lungs are narrow at the top and wider at the bottom, blood flow into the lower lobes is greater than into the upper lobes and therefore breathing diaphragmatically will allow for more oxygen transfer into the blood. With a big chest breath we are actually taking in less oxygen than if we simply take a small but healthy diaphragmatic breath!

Diaphragmatic breathing also has benefits to our nervous system. The para-sympathic nervous system (rest and digest) is activated by relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing while the sympathetic (fight or flight) is activated by chest breathing. Again, for healthy breathing that big chest breath is not always what we want. It is actually preparing our body to ramp up, promoting a stress response rather than alleviating it.

Diaphragmatic breathing can also help alleviate back pain and reduce back tension. When breathing diaphragmatically, the intra-abdominal pressure solicits a response in the abdominal and lower trunk muscles that gently unloads the spinal joints and strengthens the abodminal muscles. These muscles get a gentle massage and workout just by breathing correctly!

Breathing through Your Nose is Essential

Finally, to get the most out of diaphragmatic breathing it is essential to breathe in and out of your nose. Mouth breathing is shallow and will promote lifting the chest up in lieu of the diaphragm moving down. Since ALL of the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing hinge on the symetrical downward movement of the diaphragm and the even distribution of intra-abdominal pressure then breathing through the nose is key in reaping these benefits.

For guided instruction on the basics of diaphragmatic breathing, check out this video.

Exercising For Health vs. Fitness

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I think we can all agree that exercise is a good thing, regardless of how motivated we may or may not be to do it. The questions that remains are whether a particular activity can be called “exercise” and whether one type of exercise is better than another. Sports are a great example of this. I love basketball! I don’t play it anymore but I find it really fun to watch and can appreciate that it’s even more fun to play. Is playing basketball exercise? If so, is it good exercise? This depends on what you mean by good exercise.

What is good exercise?

If a client of mine asks me my opinion about an activity they engage in from the standpoint of it being good or bad, I always ask first what is the primary reason they are doing that activity. Recently I had been working with a client who had been running for exercise in the past but had stopped because it was impacting his health in negative ways. After a few sessions he was feeling much better and he asked me if I thought he should go back to running. I asked him “do you like running?” His answer was an unqualified “No”. I then told him that I would not recommend he start running again.

Now I know an awful lot of people LOVE to run and to anyone who loves to run I would say this – if you love it and it’s not impacting your health in ways that are interferring with other important activities or responsibilities in your life then absolutely you should run. But if you don’t love it, then I really don’t recommend it as I belive it puts too much stress on the body in a variety of ways to really be healthful. Frankly I don’t think running is “good exercise.” And I would say the same thing about a lot of what serves as exercise in the fitness realm these days.

Why are we exercising?

This brings up an important point. We don’t always exercise for health reasons. Or, we place our psychological health ahead of our physical health, if those can really be separated. By this I mean many people enjoy and hugely benefit from the satisfaction that an intense, demanding workout brings. It’s reinforcing to work hard and feel like we’ve accomplished something physically challenging. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing this.

But if I am running a lot and I’m having joint pain that is affecting my ability to move in other ways and this pain is getting worse and I am experiencing some level of debilitation as a result or I see debilitation looming on the horizon then I need to reasses whether running is really the form of exercise I ought to be doing and start considering other options.

What is fitness?

Exercise done for reasons OTHER than promoting health I would generally categorize as a fitness activity. Fitness activities are a type of training used to become proficient at or “fit for” that same activity or a related one. If I want to be good at basketball then I should practice things that will improve my game and make me more “fit” as a basketball player. Will those same activities make me a healthy person? In some ways maybe, but in many ways clearly not. Just look at the athetes who play basketball professionally for a long time. They are frequently hobbled. Kobe Bryant and his knees come to mind.

Movement and Exercise

On the most fundamental level human beings thrive on movement. The better we move and the greater variety of movements we’re able to execute the greater potential we have for health and longevity. Movement is not sexy, but it is essential. Elderly people who fall down and break their hip often decline very quickly, even if they were functioning pretty well beforehand. Once our movement becomes very limited then our health immediately suffers. If you’ve ever suffered a serious injury that severly curtails your activity you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Exercising for health

Exercise that is done for health reasons is also a type of fitness activity in that it makes us more “fit” for fullfilling our human needs. On the most basic level our human needs consist of eating, sleeping and procreation with most of the fitness requirements related to eating in the form of food gathering and preparation. To eat a varied diet, our hunter gatherer ancestors needed to move and move in a lot of different ways from squatting to digging to climbing to chopping to grinding.

The what and why of exercise

Now that we have outsourced so much of the movement in our diet we don’t even think about all of the work that went into bringing our farro, arugula, beet and goat cheese salad to the table. The substiute for all of the digging, fertilizing, harvesting, picking, feeding, milking, processing, packaging and shipping that went into our salad has become exercise. Therefore if we wish to replace these outsourced movements with exercise, that exercise should have a significant variety of postures and movements. A single activity with a repetitive and limited movement profile like running won’t provide the variety of movements that will make us “fit” for the variety of human activities that keep us healthy. Again if you love running (or some other limited movement profile fitness activity) do it, but see if for what it is and what it isn’t. It IS going to make you very fit for running but it ISN’T going to make you fit for meeting your human needs.

Haven’t we adapted to modern life?

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that as our lifestyles have changed our needs have changed with them. Haven’t we as human beings adapted to the more sedentary lifestyle we now lead? Certainly we have. After all our bodies and our minds are extremely efficient in adapting to change. I can train myself to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and have lunch delivered to my office. But is that what I want to be fit for? Sitting and eating takeout? Are those adaptations manifesting health?

Our bodies and minds adapt to the input they are given and therefore it’s the things we do most often that have the biggest impact on our health and function. It is this fact that we need to consider when making choices about exercise because ultimately it won’t be the 1 hour per day of exercise that has the greatest impact on our health but rather what we’re doing for the other 23 hours. How does the activity we’re spending an hour doing affect us during the rest of our day? Is our 1 hour of exercise making us more fit for enjoying a high quality of life? Or are we simply making ourselves fit for a single activity that may or may not be good for us in the long run?

Introducing DNS (video #3)

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