2019 June News and Updates

Happy June! A couple of notes for this month:

• No class Monday, June 3 2019.
• Saturday 8AM class is available for you to practice.

You are encouraged to always check with me if you find yourself wanting to attend a class at the last minute! Please text 206-498-7648 or email [email protected]​.

​

I went to a physical therapist. As many of you know, the chest/shoulder tightness and pain has been getting progressively worse, in spite of my consistent effort to strengthen the upper body. The therapist asked me “Do you do stretches”? No, I don’t. He directed me through a simple resisted cross body arm raise. “Keep your shoulder down”, he repeated over and over. I thought I was!! Nope-watching myself in the mirror, there it went, top of the shoulder hiking up while I pulled the band. “Do these stretches for at least 90 seconds each.” Funny- my trainer keeps showing me stretches AND the Anatomy Trains course I am taking just emphasizes how important stretching is for healthy fascia. “How come you’re not doing big back bends anymore?”, my yoga mentor asks me.

I seem to be getting it from all sides. Hmmm.

The next morning, I go to the therapist’s notes. “Shoulder Abduction Strength. Lower Trapezius Strength”. I go to my Muscle In Motion app and start looking up the movements the therapist prescribed to see what is supposed to be moving the arm. Oh-that’s why (yes, I am a “Why” person, too). Then I start looking up Lower Trap and arm abduction strengthening. There’s a lot of ways to strengthen the lower traps. I’ve been doing most of them. BUT I’ve been doing them without using the lower trapezius, never knowing. It took someone watching the body move to see for me what I could not yet sense through proprioception.

Quantity: 72-96 repetitions. Let’s be honest, we go to class for 60 to 90 minutes. Within that time frame, do we do that many repetitions of a muscle movement? No. During class we take a brief tour- maybe through the upper/ lower, front/back body, or perhaps we focus on one principle of engagement with the body in different shapes and orientations. But do we do, for example, 72-96 locust pose back extensions? How about 72-96 upper body pushing movements, otherwise known as planks?

Consistency: do you do it only when the yoga teacher looks at you on your mat and verbalizes the queue to you? One hour of effort in class is insufficient to undo 111 waking hours of not taking action. Do it when you stand in line, when you sit down and stand back up, when you walk down the stairs.

Quality: You’ve been doing the work, lots of it, daily, but things aren’t changing for the better. Maybe they are getting worse. Get one on one with someone who knows about bodies and movement. Chances are they are going to spot some piece the puzzle you are unable to find that is halting progress. If you’ve exhausted that person’s resources, move along the spectrum of movement specialists. Yoga teachers know some stuff, trainers know some stuff, physical therapists know some stuff, Pilates, Feldenkrais- these are only the tip of the iceberg.

Time: 5-8 weeks of the above will create muscular change. However, those muscles are held by fascia. Fascia needs 6 to 24 months to change. That means that during those first 6 to 24 months, it’s going to be hard to stay with the commitment of quantity, consistency and quality because we are easily distracted. Hey, look at that bright shiny thing over there! It means the good old “If you don’t use it, you lose it”.  Stop stretching, stop jumping, stop pushing, pulling, lifting, aerobic breathing, slow deep breathing, singing, speaking a second language, playing an instrument. You name it.

I took my flexibility for granted, never crediting the perpetuation of it to yoga practice. However, when I sought the gym to gain strength I couldn’t access in yoga, little by little one was exchanged for the other. The deep stretches and big back bends were exchanged with daily strength training. I went from all of one to all of another, in a way.

I have a renewed appreciation for the yoga practice, a new understanding of how it works with the body. I am putting the stretching back in my rotation so that I am not jettisoning one for the other. I am working to do it in quantity, consistently with quality. Stretching is fascial movement. It will take 6 to 24 months of time for the fascia to remodel.

I've got nothing to lose for rebalancing my practice except the pain.

Kirsten Hopperstad