Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A blog post all about my spine

It doesn't matter what style of yoga you practice; a major body part you work on is your spine. From gentle cat-cow warm ups, to downward/upward facing dog, to sun and moon salutations, to headstands and shoulder stands,  to crazy leg behind the head poses, most yoga poses move the spine in all sorts of directions, in much greater depths than most sports and activities ever require. There are apparently 5 major ways to move your spine: flexion, extension, axial rotation (twists), lateral flexsion (side bends), and axial extension (lengthening). Before I started yoga I thought I had a limber body. Now I feel like I'm finally using my spine the way its intended - built to be curved in so many ways, as long as the muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments etc coordinate with the vertebrae.

When I started yoga I came to heal my spine. My lower back was hurting me, and when I first started Ashtanga it felt worse. I couldn't tell if I was doing the poses wrong or if my lower back was just weak. I asked the teacher and he said my poses looked okay and he didn't see anything wrong with what I was doing. Primary series was supposed to be therapeutic right? So I tried to suck in my belly button more whenever I felt discomfort in the lumbar spine, hoping the sensation would go away soon. Either that or I would have to quit yoga and switch to some other activity. Thankfully, after 6 months the lower back weirdness went away. So it was indeed a weakness and the primary series helped strengthen my spine in a major way.

Then there was my neck. Ever since I started yoga, I noticed I had a neck ache. I went to see a massage therapist which helped make it better. However after a month the achy-ness came back. I learned it was probably due to the turtle haunch position that I have been assuming in front of my computer screen for the past 10 years. I went to see a chiropractor, which tried to fix my imbalance in terms of left twist vs. right twist, but I felt it was such a money scam because he only worked on me for about 20 minutes at a time and charged me $40 per session, and asked me to go back for 8 more sessions. My yoga teachers adjusted me more than the chiropractor during a 75 minute yoga class, and I pay way less for a class. I tried to lengthen my neck whenever I notice my turtle shrug, but the discomfort persisted. Then I noticed headstands made my neck uncomfortable so I had to stop practicing that at home. I still did it in class but usually only for like 5 breaths and often with the teacher supporting my legs. I notice my neck felt worse when I tried to assume thumb drishti in trikonasana and utthita parsvokonasana, so I stopped looking up in those poses and just focused on lengthening my cervical spine.

Recently, my teacher has been coming by, putting fingers on my back and telling me to engage my lats and pull my back muscles down the spine. Hmm, I can't seem to engage my lats at all. I consciously pull them down for a few breaths, then the next time I check my shoulders are up to my ears again. Sigh. That must be the reason why my neck hurts.

I am just noticing recently that I don't use enough of my back strength in matsyasana. When I engage my back more, uttana padasana suddenly feels a lot harder (I've been arching my back and not engaging back muscles in these 2 poses all this time). So suddenly I am feeling a new sense of strength building in my spine. My headstands are feeling better in the neck, and in setu bandhasana, I am finally taking my elbows off the floor and crossing my arms over my chest. It feels pretty creepy but I can feel strength building in my neck as well. I am really hoping this period of neck strengthening will get rid of the neck discomfort once and for all.

Backbends: now that I am starting to attempt drop backs, I am feeling weirdness in my lower back return. Actually, a few posts back I complained about lumbar spine weirdness in urdhva dhanurasana. So it went away for awhile and I thought I was done with low back strengthening, but I guess I'm not done. I look at my own wheel pose in the mirror and it has such a mild arch, despite how intense it feels. And then I look at pictures of yogis grabbing their ankles in their wheel poses, and I wonder exactly what needs to stretch to get to that point. Kino's article and video suggests that we hang over upside down without touching the mat for a few breaths; I'm sorry but I don't have enough strength to hold it half way. I am either upright with a little back bend or I'm all the way down. There's no in between. Does it mean my back is just too weak?

So many people I've seen come to yoga with a haunch in the shoulder/upper back area. When I look at the pictures of long term ashtanga practitioners, they all seem to have a straight back, and when they bend either forwards or backwards, they bend right at the waist, instead of rounding at the thoracic spine. I don't know if this is the case, but has all these forward bends where the teacher has been helping me flatten my spine on my legs resulted in shifting of imbalances to the upper (neck) and lower (lumbar) part of the spine instead?

One thing's for sure: I definitely need more back strengthening and continue to engage my trapezius and lats to keep my shoulder blades down the back. The fascia and the connective tissue stuff I have no control over; they'll just have to keep restructuring on their own. I wonder if non-Ashtanga yoga styles also re-work the spine in the same way, since most yoga styles I know don't emphasize forward bends.

10 comments:

  1. Wow Y, What a great post! It completely describes the therapeutic journey of the primary series. Most verbal accounts of how lower back, neck & shoulder pain travel through our bodies as the inbalance leaves/disappears are very similar to what you recount here. Except for the knees. Most people (me included) have a story about how they thought they were going to have to quit because of the knees and then one day they stopped being sore.

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  2. Thanks sereneflavor. Actually I did wonder whether or not lotus and half lotus poses were damaging to the knees. They felt sore, then the soreness were gone, and now they feel a little funny again. I didn't actually get any reassurance from the teacher. He kind of just pointed out there are many people in the world practicing Ashtanga daily, as if that's proof of how safe this activity is. I'm posting to let the newbies know that strange stuff happens to your body as you keep practicing Ashtanga.

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  3. Nice post! I also came to yoga with a troubled back and have had various difficulties with backbends. One thing I've slowly gleaned from various teachers is the joy of allowing space to open up in the shoulders and upper back when performing these back(ward )bending postures. For a long time I wasn't making use of this potential and it made a difference when I began to learn how to access it.

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  4. Hi John, thanks for your comment. Tight/injured shoulders and upper back do indeed make backbends more challenging. For me personally I feel the most tightness in my legs actually, which is quite interesting (I don't hear many other yogis complaining about tight quads in backbends). So, for most people, open up space in shoulders and upper back. For me, strengthen the whole spine and stretch the quads more often.

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  5. Oh, that's interesting. I get discomfort in my knees sometimes when practicing backbends. Perhaps that is quad related also?

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  6. @John, it could be quad flexibility imbalance. More quad stretches for you too! :) How open are your hips? If your hips are tight that may affect the knees also. Try to direct your attention to the spot where discomfort happens during a pose, and try to differentiate between discomfort and joint-damaging pain. Apparently the remedy for discomfort is to keep practicing Ashtanga (hopefully with a good, mindful teacher) until your joints re-align themselves and all your connective tissues restructure themselves. Don't force poses to happen when your body isn't ready for them. Hope this helps.

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  7. thank you for your post. i started only few months back with ashtanga and also went through some weird pain, stiffness etc and got very worried about. this is why i like the cybershala as you get to learn that it is not only you and certain aspect of pain is normal while body is restructuring. much appreciated ~ ivana

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  8. Hi Ivana, glad to share my experience with the cybershala! If the pain gets worse then you should discuss with your teacher about it. My discomforts with a body part is usually there for a period of time, but they usually never intensify.

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  9. Yoga offers a host of health benefits, including stress relief and brainy clarity, but many humans don’t anticipate it’s for them. Some anticipate yoga is too slow, others too rigorous; you ability affliction added for the concrete exercise but not the meditation, or you might think yoga practice is too Westernised.

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  10. @alvispetter, tell me about it. I tried so hard but only managed to successfully convince 1 out of like 20 friends in trying out yoga and doing it regularly.

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