Pstrwiz

As mentioned in the “Purpose of Yoga Poses” post, the practice of yoga poses is a tool for identifying and removing discomfort in your body. With any tool, it takes time to learn to use it well. Patience is key when starting out. Imagine your first time learning to drive a car. You have to learn the location of different controls — gas pedal, brake, gear shift, signal light, windshield wipers, etc. — their functions, and how to use them in conjunction. At this stage, your mind is occupied with developing an understanding of the tool. It won’t be able to pay full attention to the road. You will be moving forward very slowly. It’s the same with practicing yoga poses. When you haven’t moved your body in a variety of ranges, you lose neural connections to parts of your body. It will take time to rebuild mind-body connections to these parts. After that, you need to learn how to align the various body parts correctly to perform a yoga pose. If the alignment is off, your practice will be inef...

What will you learn if you just walk through a museum without stopping to read the stories behind the displays? Jumping from yoga pose to yoga pose without holding it is the same. You’ll only get to know your body on the surface. The body is like an onion - there are many layers of muscles and tissues. Without training, your awareness is only at the surface. When you learn to gain control of deeper layers of muscles, you can move through life in a coordinated manner that places less strain on the body. When you can uncover deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue imbalances, you can resolve them before they develop into painful conditions in the future. Your body will drive for longer, like a well-tuned car. Your breath is the tool that can help you accomplish this. A yoga pose positions your body to heighten awareness in specific areas of the body. It takes time holding the pose to explore the deeper layers. As you inhale, your breath expands through the body, acting like a senso...

You only need to water a plant once a week, then just watch it grow. Watering it more frequently will kill the plant instead. It’s the same with the body. Exercise is a stimulus for the body to grow. It takes your body time to absorb and adapt to the stimulus. The increased stress on the body from exercise triggers the body to adapt -    to become stronger, more flexible, or change physiologically. In order for growth to occur, the body needs to first recover from the stress. Just as you need to allow time for the plant to soak up water in the pot, it takes time for the body to absorb and adapt to the stress from the workout. If you stress the same body part again when the body has just recovered, then the body will not have time to grow. If you stress the body again before it even finished recovering, it will get weaker or stiffer from the accumulation of stress. So more is not always better. There is a level and frequency of stress that is optimal for growth. Every body’s co...

The biggest mistake for relieving pain from imbalanced posture is stretching the muscles that are in pain. In most cases, muscles in pain are already overstretched. Stretching them further will make the pain worse. What you should do is stretch the muscles on the opposite side. Let’s explore this through an analogy. Imagine your neck is a pillar, with ropes bolted on two sides. At the other end of the ropes are workers on the ground, holding on to the ropes to stabilize the pillar. Muscles, like workers holding on to the ropes, can only pull — they cannot push. Now imagine this pillar is falling towards the left side. Who’s going to have to work harder to prevent the pillar from falling? Yes, the workers on the right side will have to pull harder on the rope to prevent the pillar from toppling to the left. If this state is sustained for a long time without correction, the workers on the right side will start to complain. Your muscles complain in the same way — their language is pain. S...

You don’t need a lot of discipline to exercise if you can get this right.   In the “How To Build A Fire” post, we discussed adjusting your workload to your changing environment to make your routine sustainable. Going along with the fire analogy, the most vital element in the environment to sustain fire is air. A strong wind can bring fresh oxygen into the fire, allowing it to burn more zealously. You can add an abundance of wood into the fire without suffocating it. When there is no wind, the oxygen in the fire replenishes slowly, so you cannot add so much wood. For your body, that vital element is your energy. When you are low on energy, the natural tendency is to be lazy. It takes greater discipline to get up and exercise. You’ll want to skip a workout. Or you can still exercise but do less. The latter would be the better choice to sustain your fire. Conversely, when your energy level is high, your body naturally wants to expend that energy. You don’t need much discipline to get...

Yoga poses are tools for removing discomfort in the body. The body needs to be comfortable for the mind to be able to relax. In modern life, we go through a limited range of movements, and often only in one direction. We hunch forward working at a desk, but rarely bend the thoracic spine backwards. We use tools with our dominant arm, but rarely work with the other arm. This uni-directional way of living creates imbalances in the body. Imbalances create strain in muscles and connective tissues. Sustained strains over time accumulate into discomfort, pain, and eventually injury. The purpose of practicing yoga poses is to bring awareness to these imbalances. By placing your body in different postures, it heightens your awareness to specific parts of the body. As you hold the pose, your breath expands deep into the body, allowing your mind to feel for imbalances. Once you notice the imbalances, correcting them is simple. Just move in the opposite direction. The most important part is letti...

Building your exercise habit is like building a fire. If you add wood too fast, it will suffocate the fire. To start a fire, you create a spark to light the tinder. Add small twigs to grow the fire. Then you can add large pieces of wood to sustain it. Most people do the opposite when they start to exercise. They want to start with a Rocky style exercise routine because it is rousing. The first week is sustained by the excitement of starting something new. Then the body starts breaking down because it is not yet able to recover fast enough from the drastic increase in workload.  The body will be constantly sore and stiff.  When the body is not happy, the mind is not happy. Both will tell you to stop. The wood is added too fast, and the fire fades quickly. Instead, you should start small. The body does not need a lot of stimulus to grow. A small amount of challenge is a novel feeling that can actually be enjoyed. As your body grows, its ability to recover improves, and it will b...