avoiding collapse in the groin

one of the most disadvantageous developments in yoga classes is the cult of competitive prowess and lust for achievement. it encourages too rapid movement from the introductory configurations of the postures into the more extended, deeper and advanced scorings. with the rapid expansion of the teaching pool, instructors now habituate in a climate of self-consciousness. encouraged by trend, spiritual pride, and the appetence of the times, a misdirected focus on one's stage presence and choreographic charisma at the front of the class has arisen. this apparent inability to focus attention on what students are doing, to offer clear direction and leadership rather than participate and befriend, and a disinclination to engage students who need to pull back to less spectacular but more structurally sound interpretations, has become the norm. the net result is a negligent reinforcement of sloppy execution, and an indulged lack of mindfulness and distraction that leads to chronic overstrain where the body appears 'strong' and a lack of sensitive engagement in zones of laxity or proprioceptive amnesia.

a good example of this occurs in the warrior, or virabdrasana series. too many of us expand our lunge before having developed adequate leg strength. this, in turn, creates an irresistible gravitational droop that causes the torso to collapse its weight down into the groin/hip hammock. this creates compression strain on the front hip joint, exaggerates the lordosis of the lower back, destabilizes the subtle sacro-iliac complex, causes a protrusion of the abdominal cavity into space that in turn constricts full respiration and contributes to an emphasis on shallow and anxious upper-lung work. the general energy of collapse can also extend to include the feet on the mat, as the arches loose vibrant engagement. the feet tend to look for ease by resting in a slight supination that stresses the connective tissue and tendinous sock of the outer ankle.

far better to resist the call to greater glory and shorten and widen the stance. this allows us to avoid sinking deeply into the groin and hip sockets, to maintain pointed consciousness about not carrying the lunge position of the knee forward of the ankle, and permits us to work gently and persistently toward the better goal of taking a longer draught in the pose from this more secured and stable vantage. finally, awareness should never be lost of the beautiful ascending articulation in the spine and rib basket that arises from a balanced tip of the pelvic bowl and the full and deep respiratory refulgence of an upper body no longer collapsing into the groin, searching for a way to take the edge off of overworked, unprepared legs.

be kind, rewind

one of the core ideas that i'm hoping to develop and explore in my own practice is self-reliance. in particular, i'm keen to unravel this notion that human beings need to be acted on, or passively engaged in some effort where another person, thought more expert or adept, takes control and responsibility for the whatever therapeutic intervention, the act of healing itself, and management of outcome. i strikes me as true and beautiful that one of the precepts of the coming age will be a reversal of these dynamics. i suspect we're on the cusp of a great transformation of roles, wherein instead of being the agents of healing, care, and cure, physicians, therapists, healers of all kinds, will come to be viewed as mid-wives to a process that is initiated, governed, and directed in full self-responsibility by the person seeking transformation and growth.

this came to a head for me yesterday while in a bikram yoga class. the teacher was a bit of a jerk to be frank. shrouded in soft-speak and read-aloud quotations of sages while evidencing the lack of self-examination alongside abundant blind dogmatism so rank in the scene today. i've been on the slow return to a fuller practice after a couple years of repeated SI joint agonies that gifted periods of functional disability made more pronounced by spots of depression, apathy, lack of care for the body and avoidance of self-care. in addition to ingraining the holding pattern that attempts to prevent further injury to the lower back, but in fact causes secondary symptoms that are now just as painful, i've lost considerable core strength and must take care, as i resume mat work, to protect myself from injury. its been a long haul, getting to this more moderate and self-caring approach. like many yogis i would push myself in almost religious zeal for the practice, incur injury, get sidelined, and face again the cycle of falling away from dialogue with biological ground, taking up habits that disembody and promote further alienation from this thing of flesh that just hurt and complained.

in class yesterday i modified tuladandasana to protect my lower back. this came after first attempting the full posture with arms outstretched before me. feeling an instant strain easily distinguished from good burn, my core instability and developmental needs required that i bring the arms back, airplane style, in patience while i journey to get my full powers back. the teacher saw fit to single me out for this, asserting that i must be coming from a rival school and attempting to impose their modifications on bikram's methodology. no, i replied, i'm just modifying the asana to protect my lower back. she challenged me on this, suggesting that i was being lazy (!).... ironic to me since all my injuries have come from my surfeit over-zealousness and harsh pushing. normally i would get pissed off at this kind of ignorance in a teacher and let it sabotage my commitment to a paid program. not anymore. i'm feeling newly able and willing to face my old patterns of sabotage. in fact i understood i was at the threshold of reprogramming neurotic contents since they were now no longer ideas and attitudes bubbling up from within, but projected quanta now being encountered in the world 'out there.' knowing this helped me understand just how important it was to hold my ground and not let the old attitudes get injected back inside me at the behest of outside actors and peer pressure. so i politely held my ground and my modification and took the teacher aside post-class, spoke my truth to power and watched the old demon melt away to nothing.

blind obedience to instruction is one of the reasons a whole subspeciality exists in the healing arts and in structural yoga therapy in particular for the address of injured yoga students. and while biomechanics and structural anatomy are often presented as master classes and complex subjects (and in a way they are), there are some common sense generalities that are never really shared that can empower students to make informed choices. even in the absence of biomechanic sense, there is our native intuition. reconnecting with that sixth sense is far more critical than studying biomechanics, for even the most expert anatomist will face idiosyncrasies in case studies and clients. yes there are maps and they are good to know, but even more important is respect for the living geography that often bucks expectations, convention and rules.

simply, knowledge is always by definition incomplete and on-going. complexly, our sixth sense, our native intuition, exists beyond the grid of factual limits to encompass the very seat of wisdom itself. therefore, far better to attune to this radio channel, a free source of biognosis, a university of molecules ever awaiting our questions and ability to sustain a silent theater wherein an answer can be offered and heard. how many times have we experienced alarm bells going off before embarking on some course, only to override or ignore it and find ourselves paying a consequence. gentle self-respect is key.

one man's garbage is another man's treasure

given the rapid expansion of commercial yoga venues, it goes without saying the marketplace's been flooded with novice instructors whose expertise may be limited to a gym-class-style talking thru of asana, sometimes poorly thought out in terms of flow and overall strategy, and absent key alignment cues. as disappointing as this is for the yoga consumer, its in many ways a far more forgivable offense than the hubris of adopting the posture of wise guruji in front of the crowds. if you look at the situation in context through history, you'll see the more wise and all-seeing your role, the more likely, in the long view and with the right situational stress, that you'll armour/resist the world when it delivers its inconvenient reversals.

when you're expert, there's no room to be wrong or in doubt. that's the trouble with a stance of power toward anything, but particularly information. power needs to be right most of the time to maintain its internal pecking orders. add to this that we know from history that power will twist information and circumstance to suit its need to be right or to live out a plan of action it thinks best. domination, even dressed up in a hari krishna kill-em-with-kindness patina, is still a violence done to free people.

the role play of power only ever creates temporary stability, as sustainable growth, learning or change don't tend to occur autocratically. growth, learning and change happen in crisis, which is, by definition, an encounter... the need to be right always walks hand in hand with the need for crisis. think nationstates (need to be right) and war (crisis) as a most obvious example...

still.

in zen they speak of beginner's mind. it's the opposite of expert.

working in your underdeveloped functions

the Viking body – high myofibroblast counts in the tissue, high stability, low mobility – vs the acrobat – low MFB counts, high mobility, problematic stability – as two different body types – don’t send the Viking to yoga class, don’t assign the acrobat heavy weights. [Thomas Myers]

SNAPSHOT seeing things at the systems level where patterns also stand in for emotional quanta, instinctive intelligence... i myself prefer those analyses that lead to possibility, instead of those that limit and constrain. which is why in the case of the viking and the acrobat i would venture that yoga is the very thing the viking should be doing, only with the caveat that it be done excruciatingly _slowly_. this is exactly the sort of student that needs a very prolonged training path. vikings need time to work their shit out. for the teacher, refraining vikings from risktaking by insisting on a certain training incline is the most humane thing you can do. vikings are the impatient bullies, and most often this is constructive and called-for in their lives, but yoga teaches us how to be in our own opposite and still be at ease. therefore yoga is the very thing the viking needs to do... exactly because he's not built for it.

the acrobat would benefit to explore their mass-making, stabilizing, power-producing potential through gravity training, but not of the barbell variety. barbells are never a good idea when proprioception is asymmetrically developed into high areas of specialization and whopping zones of amnesia. a good practice is one that uses ones own body architecture as the counterweight or lever in training. yoga, tai chi, pilates, swimming. anything that challenges the perceptive center of gravity and doesn't let the acrobat work exclusively from the level of their laxity in joint to bone relationships.