Last night I had the pleasure of attending a show at my tiny town's sh*tty
music venue. WAIT! did that yogi just dis her town's music hot spot? No, I did
not. See the venue is a barn, a barn that was kind of falling down till some
very groovy folks but a little money and a lot of time and sweat equity into it
and then invited some groovy musician folks out to the middle of nowhere and
asked them to play music in it. I can only guess the name was something of a
running joke that stuck but check it out, Sh*tty Barn.
Ok shameless Community plug over, on to the blog, so I was at the Sh*tty Barn, listening
to the singer ramble on aimlessly, and quite frankly adorably, about how he
didn't have anything to ramble aimlessly about. So he told us about his shoes
and how when I was walking his dog 4 years ago he thought they were the most
comfortable shoes in the world but today, 4 years later while walking his dog
before the show all he could think about was "these are the most
uncomfortable shoes in the world!" And we the audience giggled because
like I said this guy was adorable, I think I even heard the term "man
crush" a time or two.
Not that shoes automatically get me to thinking about yoga but this morning I
was driving through the hills I was thinking about my own 6 year old boots and
how they are kind of wearing out but I keep wearing them and that's when I
thought about yoga. I remembered a teacher of mine saying that we live our day
to day lives in the "illusion of comfort." He was teaching us some
anatomy and what he meant was that instead of using our muscles to hold up our
bodies we arrange ourselves so that we stack our joins on top of each other and
"sit" in them, or we over extend out joints and rely on our
connective tissue to do the work. This is bad for a few reasons:
1. When we "sit" in our joints the connective tissue (ligaments and
tendons) is slack which over time will lead to the tightening of that tissue
causing limited range of motion and flexibility. It can also put pressure on
the fluid filled sacks (bursa) in our joints that help keep the joint lubricated so
that it moves easily and also keeps the bones from grinding on one another.
When we put pressure on these sacs the fluid can start to inflame or worse seep
out of the membranes.
2. When we "align" ourselves with our hips popped forward or to
one side, or hyperextend our knees what we are doing is stretching our
connective tissue to its max, creating a sort of tendonous "hammock"
for our bodies to rest in. This is bad because while the one side is over
stretched the opposite side is retracting, this over time creates major
imbalances in our bodies. In massage school we call is compensatory damage,
where one side over works to correct the injured side.
So why is this an illusion of comfort? Because there's no work involved, it
feels good because we are making little to no effort to hold ourselves up
right. But, over time we develop aches, pains and possible injuries because
we've relied on parts of our bodies to do the work of the muscles. That's why
so many people in a yoga class discover they can easily go into a pose on one
side of the body and find terrible discomfort and limitations on the other
side. Which is also why yoga is so good for us, it helps us find and correct
these imbalances but it also teaches us to be aware of how our bodies get like
that.
Once you are steeped in your asana practice you begin to notice your posture
when do everyday things like; filling out your back deposit, or doing the
dishes, or leaning against a wall listening to a great singer/songwriter
perform in barn in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin. But not only do you
notice you start to alter your faux comfort into a little effort that soon
becomes effortless; you stop rounding your shoulders down at the desk, you pull
your hips off the rim of the sink and when you look down and realize your shoes
are hurting your feet you throw them out and get new ones!
Maybe I could get Dietrich Gosser to write a song about that...
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