Yoga & Hiking: Complementary Practices for Health and Wellbeing

In my free time, I’ve been spending more time hiking and backpacking in the last couple of years. It doesn’t hurt that I live in this amazing state that has so many beautiful trails to travel and discover. It’s become an important part of my weekly routine and a great complement to my yoga practice. Throughout the pandemic, it’s also been an important point of connection to the natural world. Here are 5 reasons why hiking can be complementary to your yoga practice and an important component to your health and wellbeing.

Legs up the Sign Summer 2018 on Mt. Katahdin. My first 4K footer turned into a 5K footer. Whoops!

1. Cardio & Strengthening - In my classes I tend to focus on yoga not only as physical movement, but a wholistic practice that includes the mind, body and spirit. That’s not to say you won’t find some physically challenging classes. However, most yoga classes you’ll find don’t really qualify as cardiovascular exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) defines aerobic exercise as "any activity that uses large muscle groups, can be maintained continuously, and is rhythmic in nature." While it may seem like yoga would fit the bill here, especially the vinyasa style that I mostly teach and practice, a typical yoga class just isn’t going to raise your heart rate enough and sustain that elevated rate long enough to really qualify. Hiking on the other hand can do just that and if you’re carrying a pack with any weight in it (did you know one liter of water weighs 2.2 pounds?!) you’re definitely going to be keeping your heart rate up for a longer period of time. In addition to strengthening your heart, you’ll also be strengthening your legs and core. This has been incredibly good for me personally for managing my back pain. Balance this with a yoga practice and you’re on your way to a more well rounded fitness routine and a stronger body all around.

2. Time to disconnect from devices - Technology rules our lives more than ever these days and it’s influencing our health. It’s messing with our sleep patterns, causing physical issues like “text neck”, and may even be causing mental health issues in some people. While you’ll definitely see me using my cell phone to take pictures and occasionally navigate when I’m on the trail, being out of cell phone range for a even a little while can be an amazing way to refresh our tired minds. While your 75 minute yoga class can be a great small break (provided you actually turn the phone off), even a day hike can give us a greater opportunity to experience this relief from the everyday requirement of being connected to devices.

3. Mindfulness practice - When we aren’t able to respond to every text message right away we create a space and an opportunity to bring ourselves more to the present moment and practice mindfulness. There’s so much to discover out there if you’re paying attention! I can’t tell you how many times I nearly walked by something small like a red eft or a snail, but since I was actually in the moment outside I got to see the finer details. If I’m hiking with other people, we get to talk and interact (even if it’s between gasping breaths) in a way that is seemingly so rare these days. We might even help each other notice the small details we’d otherwise pass by. What a great way to take what we’re practicing on our yoga mats for 75 minutes off the mat and into our experiences with others for a longer period of time!

4. Letting go of watching the clock - Your yoga class is going to begin and end at a certain predictable time. 99.9% of the things we do in our daily lives are like this and we need that structure in our lives. However, every now and then, to be able to do something without a definite ending time, especially when it’s something we enjoy, can be *so* liberating. I’ll often go out on a hike and tell my husband if I’m not back by dark, that’s the time to worry. I purposely don’t put too definite an end on this time I’m spending with Mother Nature and myself. There is something really freeing and mentally restful about that. If it’s a great day and the weather is amazing and my body feels good I can go for hours. If the bugs are swarming and I forgot to bring enough food and my feet hurt I can go home. There’s a freedom there we don’t often get in our daily lives. It can help us tune back into a more natural rhythm and relieve stress in a way that’s hard to describe.

5. Change of scenery - We all live with a variety of stressors in our lives. Some of these are welcome and others might be more than we’d ever wish for. Sustaining ourselves physically and mentally over the long haul of life requires times to refresh, get a new perspective and look at the world differently. You’re probably going to have a yoga class that you go to on a regular basis at the same location with mostly the same people, but that class will be different in some way every time and that’s a really good micro break. Similarly, hiking can be a good micro break as well. Even if you walk the same path every day *something* will be different. Being able to notice that change and recognize it can relax your mind and relieve stress in a way similar to your yoga class

These are just a few of the benefits you might find by getting out on the trails this summer. I’m sure you’ll find even more reasons once you’re out there!

I’m considering guiding some outdoor experiences beyond the outdoor yoga classes in the late summer or early fall.

Interested? Leave a comment below!

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Leave No Trace is a Form of Ahimsa

One of the good things, in my mind, to come out of the pandemic is the number of people that are reconnecting to public lands and outdoor spaces. Given the extra hours all of us have been spending in front of screens to find safe forms of connection to others, to learn, to take a yoga class and so much more, time away from screens in the three dimensional world is all the more important. But if you’re going back into nature for the first time in awhile (or the first time), you may not understand the impacts of your presence. In this post I’ll give you a few ideas and some information that might help you draw your awareness practices from yoga out into your interaction with the outdoor world so that you can see the connection between Ahimsa and Leave No Trace and make your interactions with nature less negatively and more positively impactful.

Yoga is, in so many ways a practice of awareness. One of the most important points of awareness we can have, especially these days, is our impact on our natural world and outdoor spaces. Yoga philosophy goes beyond the physical postures and addresses our mental and emotional interactions with ourselves and others. Many people often describe these principles as the ethical principles of yoga because they guide our interactions and are a code of conduct. Ahimsa is a foundational tenant of yoga philosophy that asks us to do no harm to the best of our ability. That includes our thoughts, words, deeds and actions. Without awareness, none of that is possible.

Leave No Trace principles explain how we can bring more awareness to and minimize our impacts on nature, whether we’re spending time in the “backcountry” or the “front country”. Practicing these principles keeps our wild spaces wild, leaves things for others to experience as we got to experience them and may even encourage us to leave those spaces BETTER than when we arrived. They are also an ethical code in that they guide our interactions and conduct, specifically with the natural world in this case. Many of them may seem obvious when you look at them, but as with yoga, when you dive deeper into the details and can be truthful with yourself, you’ll find that there may have been things you missed along the way. The seven principles are:

1. Plan ahead and Prepare.

2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

3. Dispose of Waste Properly

4. Leave What You Find

5. Minimize Campfire Impacts

6. Respect Wildlife

7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors

(© 1999 by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics: www.LNT.org)

So in my mind, Leave No Trace is a form of Ahimsa. Both give us ethical guidance on how to interact with our world outside of ourselves. Both ask us to be kind and consider others whether that’s other people that we’re sharing the environment with or the plants, animals, etc. we may encounter when we’re outside. Both ask us to bring greater awareness to the impact of our actions from a perspective outside of ourselves and our immediate needs. And both ask us to recognize that when we are aware of our actions through thought, word and deed we can have great positive impact on our world.

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To inspire you to learn more about and put LNT into practice, here are some ideas, experiences, information and thoughts that I’ve been sharing recently on my social media channels. In preparing each of these, I certainly learned a few things along the way! I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from my outdoor adventures too!

Plan Ahead and Prepare

I had a conversation with my Dad on my way home from a recent hike where he was surprised to find out I had a complete change of clothing in my pack. I was hiking Mount Jackson, a 4000 footer here in NH and a place like many in the White Mountains where conditions can change on a dime and one false step might mean waiting for search and rescue. When I told my Dad I packed to stay overnight if I had to, he suddenly understood. While you might not be climbing mountains, even when you go out to the local park, a sudden change in weather, a wrong turn or an accident may have an impact on not just yourself, but that park you’re enjoying. So be sure to plan ahead and consider what you might need if you had to be out there longer than expected.⁠⁠

Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

It’s what we all affectionately refer to as Mud Season here in New England and it’s a time when we may be having impacts on our local trails more than we might think. Some places in NH and VT actually “close” trails this time of year because most of us don’t really want to walk through that big puddle of muck that’s right in the middle of our path. But when we walk off the designated path we may be trampling plants that will never grow back and “blazing a trail” for the person behind us that was never meant to be there. With so many people trying to get outside these days due to the pandemic we’re seeing this impact on a lot of places. So the next time you come up to a mud puddle in the trail, knowing that you already planned ahead for it, channel your inner child and just jump right in!⁠

Dispose of Waste Properly

I know many of my students are dog owners and lovers (and you know I love dogs too), so I thought a reminder about dog poop in the outdoors might be helpful for y’all. Leave No Trace Center had some very interesting facts about why this is so important in a recent instagram post. We all know it’s unsightly, but there are far worse impacts.⁠
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The high nutrient value in dog food when left behind in dog poop and leached into streams from run off can cause algae blooms. Dog poop can have all sorts of bacteria and disease vectors that find their way into waterways in the same way. Thousands of POUNDS of poop get left behind in parks every year all across the country. No one’s saying you’ll always be perfect, but if you do plan ahead to pick up fido’s droppings you’ll be doing Mother Nature a solid (sorry, had to get a poop joke in there somehow! 😂💩)⁠
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Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJZMBzijsM9/⁠

And please, please don’t leave that poop bag behind and think you’ll get back to it later. Things happen! Take it with you now!

Leave What You Find

I’m particularly guilty of this one, but we’ve all done it. You pick up that one cool rock you found on the trail and take it home with you as a souvenir of your time outside. Now imagine that the person after you does that. And the next one. And the next one. If not a rock, maybe a flower. Or an acorn. It seems like such a little thing. How could it possibly be that big a deal? One of my favorite little quotes is shown here. We can choose to do small things for the greater good or the opposite. Which will you choose next time you’re outside enjoying our amazing outdoor spaces?⁠⁠⁠⁠

Respect Wildlife

“A fed bear is a dead bear.” 😢⁠

⁠This is a sad but true saying I’ve heard a lot in the hiking community. We all know to bring in the bird feeders in the spring because Yogi (see what I did there 😉) is looking for his free lunch. But if you head out to a state park or other campsite in the warmer months it’s really something to think about there too. Most campsites in parks (not backcountry) have wash sinks and dumpsters just for this reason - to control food and waste smells to certain areas. And while it may not seem like a big deal to wash out a pot or plate and toss the dishwater into the woods or to leave the ketchup on the picnic table overnight, the food smells can attract all sorts of animals and make the next person’s experience a little “hairy-er”. Some estimates say that a bear’s sense of smell is 7 times better than a blood hound!! Let’s let Yogi find his own lunch, shall we?⁠

(Picture is the closest encounter I’ve ever had with the biggest bear I’ve ever seen in GSMNP in 2019! Video will be posted to social media on 4.24.21 if you’d like to see the bear in action!)⁠

I hope this post as inspired you to learn more about practicing Ahimsa in the great outdoors! Please visit https://lnt.org to learn more about the 7 principles and how you can practice them when you’re outside.

If you’re ready to take your yoga practice outside my Outdoor Yoga Class offerings begin May 2, 2021! To learn more and sign up

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5 Things to Know to Help Keep Your Spine Healthy in Your Yoga Practice

One of the most important and fascinating structures in the human body is the spine. Not only does this boney structure provide protection for the information super highway of your body, the spinal cord and nerves, but it also allows for so much of the movement we all enjoy in our daily lives. Without the incredible nuance of this structure, simple things like walking or turning your head to look at something would be impossible. We might not think about it much unless something goes wrong, but knowing our spine and understanding its structure can be so helpful and informative to our physical practice of yoga. Here are 5 things you should know about your spine as a yoga practitioner that can help keep it healthy in your yoga practice.

Some quick definitions

A single bone in the spine is called a vertebrae. It has some specific structures. The big part where the spinal discs you’re probably familiar with sit between vertebrae is called the Vertebral Body. The bone you can feel if you press on your spine with your hands from the back is called the Spinous Process. There are bones that go out to the sides called the Transverse Process. The Foramen is maybe the most important part because that’s where your spinal cord threads through.

The spine is often referenced in regions. The top region from the base of your skull to the base of your neck (if you place a hand on the back of your neck and tip your head forward a bit, the bone you feel sticking out is the bottom of this region) is called the Cervical Spine. The region from there down through your ribs is called the Thoracic Spine (the ribs actually attach to the vertebrae in this area which has all sorts of implications for movement). Then from there down to just above the sacrum is called the Lumbar Spine and finally there is the Sacrum. The individual vertebrae are numbered in each region from the top down. So that one you can feel at the base of your neck is often referred to as the C7 or 7th Cervical Vertebrae. There are 7 vertebrae in the Cervical region, 12 in the Thoracic region and 5 in the Lumbar Region.

Interesting fact - the points were there is a transition from one region to another are where the curvature of the spine changes direction and are often the places where disc injuries occur. The discs that are injured are often labeled including the letter of the region and the number of the vertebrae. For example, a frequent place where these issues occur is the disc at L5/S1 which is between the 5th Lumbar Vertebrae and the top of the Sacrum (just to be clear, you only have one Sacrum). I know this one from personal experience. 😣

Thing to know #1: The discs of your spine don’t have their own blood supply.

Most people know about the little shock absorbers between each vertebrae of your spine that we refer to as discs as they tend to be the most vilified part of the spine. When they fail by bulging or herniating, they can cause a lot of problems and a whole lot of pain. Disc issues are one of the most common spinal injuries. They can be caused by sudden trauma like a slip and fall or sometimes genetic structural variations may contribute to eventual wear and tear. Lifestyle choices may also be a contributing factor to disc health.

The odd thing about the spinal discs is that unlike so many other parts of your body including your bones, the discs have none of their own blood supply. Instead, they’re like little sponges that soak up water and nutrients from the near surround. When the body and the tissues around the discs move in a variety of ways rather than staying stagnant, the discs have a greater chance of picking up the water and other nutrients they need to stay healthy.

What does this mean for your yoga practice?

It means keep doing yoga! It’s probably obvious, but like many other forms of movement, the compression of tissues, stretching and strengthening that a yoga practice provides may contribute to keeping the spinal discs healthy over time. Those little sponges need to be moved around to get what they need from neighboring tissues. A well-rounded yoga practice will generally move your spine through all 7 directions of movement (flexion, extension, side bending in both directions, twisting in both directions and axial extension) which could be helpful in keeping all those little shock absorbers doing what they do for a long time.

Thing to know #2: Your range of motion in backbends, in part, is determined by the structure and angle of your individual vertebrae.

Remember the Spinous Process and Transverse Process on the vertebrae I pointed out above? In each region of the spine, those structures tend to extend backward at a differing angle from top to bottom of the spine. In the Thoracic Spine in particular, they tend to come out from the Vertebral Body and angle downward at a much sharper angle than in other parts of the spine. This means that in this region in particular, when you’re doing a backbend these bones are much more likely to come very close together.

What does this mean for your yoga practice?

You probably know this from other areas of your yoga practice, but when bone runs into bone, no matter what we do, range of motion will not improve. It doesn’t matter how much you stretch or how much you practice, you simply can’t improve range of motion if “stuff” is running into “other stuff”. It’s an interesting feeling in the body, and one we get more familiar with as we practice. And while there can be many limiting factors in backbends, if you are flexible and you do work with deeper backbends, that feeling of bones running into each other in your spine is certainly something to bring your awareness to. For people with osteoporosis or osteopenia, backbends may be something to avoid in your practice because these small structures may actually fracture if they get too close under the pressure of a backbend. Definitely talk to your doctor if that’s a concern for you.

Thing to know #3: The size, structure and ability to twist of your vertebrae changes from the top to the bottom of your spine.

Twisting is a common action in a yoga practice that can have so many benefits including release of tension in the spinal muscles themselves and improvements to digestion when practiced regularly. But did you know that as you move from the top of your spine to the bottom your ability to turn decreases? If you look at the vertebrae or the bones of the spine carefully, you’ll see that they increase in size from top to bottom. If you think about it, this makes sense for our daily actions. You’ll more often need to turn your head quickly to assess outside stimulus than your low back. The degree of twist goes from about 70 degrees in the Cervical spine to only about 5 degrees in the Lumbar spine.

What does this mean for your yoga practice?

When working with twisting, like all actions in yoga, we should seek to find an equanimous state. That means that when you’re in a twist, it should FEEL equally distributed throughout the length of the spine, even if that isn’t what is happening anatomically. In practice this means that the majority of the movement of your twist is going to come from the upper parts of the spine rather than the lower. To force the spine to do otherwise is going against its inherent structure. In other words, if you are feeling strong sensations in any one area of the spine, you are likely placing too much torque into a part of the body that structurally is unable to do what you’re asking. Over time that could cause injury. You might notice this happening particularly in twists where you use your arms for leverage. That isn’t a bad thing to do, but it should be done with care.

Thing to know #4: Your sacrum is part of your spine.

People often think that the spine ends with the lumbar vertebrae but that simply isn’t true. The sacrum is actually the base of the spine. While the spinal cord tapers to an end in the lumbar vertebrae, the spinal nerves continue on into the sacrum and extend outward from it in various places. In fact, the frequently admonished sciatic nerve has some of its roots in the sacrum.

What does this mean for your yoga practice?

When considering movement we should think about the sacrum as part of the spine, not separate from it. More on this below.

Thing to know #5: There are joints in your spine just like in the rest of your body.

The definition of a joint in anatomy is “The area where two bones are attached for the purpose of permitting body parts to move.” We don’t often think about it, but the human spine with all its vertebrae and the sacrum therefore has quite a few joints! If we look at the back of the vertebrae again, you’ll see the Facets labeled. These structures create Facet Joints with the vertebrae above and below them to help the vertebrae work together to create movement (this is a simplification for the purposes of this post). Multiply that times all the vertebrae in the spine and you’ve got quite a few joints! Two other key joints are the Sacroiliac joints (often referred to as SI joints) where the sacrum meets the pelvis (or the part of the pelvis called the ilium).

What does this mean for your yoga practice?

Again, keep doing your yoga practice! In general, part of the great benefit of a yoga practice is that it addresses joint movement. Moving joints tend to be healthy joints, so when practicing yoga we should give ourselves an opportunity to move through all 7 spinal movements regularly to keep our spinal joints healthy.

The exception to that is when considering the SI joint, which doesn’t fit well into the general definition of a joint I gave you above. This joint in particular is one that we DON’T want to encourage range of motion in, which anyone that’s ever experienced an SI joint issue can tell you with utmost certainty! If you study the anatomy of the area, there are many strong connective tissues crossing the SI joints to discourage movement. Therefore, particularly in twisting postures, since the sacrum sits into the pelvis, the pelvis and spine should be allowed to move TOGETHER to take undue force out of this often vulnerable area. SI joint issues are more often experienced in women, particularly those that have had children. If you fall into that category, it may serve you well to pay particular attention to this ideal of spinal movement.

In my vinyasa classes all this month we’ll be exploring the 7 movements of the spine while highlighting healthy twisting. Join me for the Livestream or On Demand via Patreon to get to bring the principles outlined here into your own practice!

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Yes AND Thinking: Reflections on the Coronavirus Pandemic One Year Later

The transition between winter and spring can be a deep time of transformation for the earth and for our own bodies and minds. I have a feeling that for many of us, this year this transition will reveal a lot of collective grief, and hopefully, some deep healing. 

In fact, today marks the one year anniversary of the last public class I taught in the space in Milford. The memory of what transpired that day that prompted me to (what I thought was temporarily) close the studio doors in the interest of safety for everyone is still incredibly vivid in my memory. The governor’s announcements that afternoon, the small number of students that dared to show up that evening, my own fear and so many other factors. 

What followed was a year of challenges and changes that no one could have imagined. I don't think it's being dramatic to say that our lives have been forever changed by what the pandemic brought to us and through us. 

And I don’t think that is all necessarily negative. 

The losses are unimaginable. If you have lost someone to this horrible virus I send you my deepest sympathies. There’s nothing that can be said to ease that pain and there’s no way to make sense of why that had to be. 

In quiet conversations over zoom or the phone with others I also find myself and others saying that the way things were wasn’t really working. That things like being unable to see family, being unable to travel, being witness to the incredible suffering of the moment, job loss and job transformation amongst many other things have been incredibly clarifying. Would we have chosen it to go this way? Definitely not. But here we are. We are changed. Some things for the better.

As I look back, If I had to say what the biggest lesson I learned in this time was, and it’s really a fairly recent understanding, it would be simply this: Some things are not within my control. 

No duh Jessica, I hear you say.  

But hear me out - perhaps its my personality, but I have always believed that with hard work, dedication and the right tools, I could change whatever it was that needed changing. My health, my marriage, my financial situation, my environment, my teaching - anything. And in the last year I have definitely taken steps and worked hard to change all those things for the better. I’ve made conscious choices to make important improvements for myself whether it was getting out for daily walks with my husband during the month he was furloughed, taking a reading class, choosing to finish my 500 hour teacher training online, making a concerted effort to pay off personal debt, showing up consistently to teach online classes throughout it all when it would have been so easy to just quit and retreat into my own little world of fear and so many other small and large choices along the way. 

It was absolutely worth the effort. 

AND there is still a pandemic. 

I can teach the best yoga class ever (whatever that means! 😂) AND some people will still not come. I can’t change that.

I can do everything within my power to stay healthy and well AND I will still age and I will eventually die. I can’t change that.

I can pay off my car and do regular maintenance all by the book AND a hurricane might come along and drop a tree on my car. I can’t change that.

What I CAN change is my attitude. What I can change is my death grip of thinking I have total control. Because I don’t. That realization has actually been a relief. I can continue to do the “right” things and know that it’s still worth the effort because I WILL change the things worth changing AND I can recognize that some things are not within my grasp. I can release myself from that heavy sense of responsibility that isn’t accurate at all.

As the Yoga Sutra says, we only see the world through our own lens of experience. Maybe your experience is different than mine. But I’m really glad to have come through this to this point (because as much as I would like it to be, it isn’t over) with a sense that I can drop the burdens that aren’t mine. That I can create change and do so much good and that some things just aren’t within my ability to change and that’s actually really ok. I can really engage in what I call Yes And Thinking and recognize that there is a yin and a yang, an up and down, a yes and a no and all of it is just as it should be.

AND I still can not wait to hug my parents again.

What’s your biggest takeaway from the last year?

I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment below or contact me privately here.

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The True Depth of Your Core and How Yoga Can Help Develop Core Strength

I hear it all the time “I really need to work on my core strength”. People say this for many reasons: back pain, a few extra pounds, balance, poor posture, a general sense of dissatisfaction. Most of the time when saying this they’re referring to the front side of the abdomen. And let’s face it, it’s the part we can see so it’s the part we pay attention to the most! But what if I told you that your actual core was not just your abs AND, maybe even more importantly, your core was actually something to think about in 2 different depths in your body? Here’s a simple introduction to two possible ways to think about the true depth of your core and how yoga can help develop core strength.

Let me preface everything I say here with the following: your body is an incredibly complex system and no one system can be separated out entirely from the rest in practical application. This is also true for your muscles. We can take individual muscles or groups of muscles into consideration as a model to start to understand our bodies better, but just know that the interrelationships between individuals and groups within the whole is complex and beyond the scope of a single blog post. What I give you below is a model for how to think about and work with this one system within the body that we know as our core.

Deep Core

As I mentioned above, I really think about the core in two different ways. The first way is what I would refer to as the Deep Core. In anatomical language, what is superficial is closer to the surface (in other words, just under your skin) and what is deep is, well, DEEP! So this first way to think about core involves some things that you can’t necessarily touch with your hands.

The first of those is your SPINE. In discussions of Core, this is often overlooked, but if we consider the core to be at the center of our body, we have to first consider the bony structure that is not only at center, but is an attachment point for many muscles that we might think of as Deep Core muscles. It’s also worth noting that most of us, because you can feel your spine through the back side of the body (just put your hand on the back of the base of your neck. That bony bump that sticks out is actually your C7 vertebra), don’t have a good understanding of just how deep the spine goes into the abdomen. I can’t give you definite measurements, but trust me, it’s pretty deep!

Now we get to the muscles of core and here is where, in my mind, I start to make some distinctions. Generally speaking, the muscles that run along and attach to the spine are muscles that mostly create spinal (or deep core) stability. Key among these is the psoas. This large muscle is often thought of as a hip flexor, but in reality, it’s PRIMARY function is to create stability and absorb shock in the spine. While it does serve a small part in hip flexion (remember, complex system) we can see that the bulk of the muscle is much more focused on the spine, simply by looking at how many more muscle fibers are near or attaching to the spine versus the hip joint.

There are many other deep muscles that stabilize the spine include the amazing network of interspinal muscles and the erectors. Rather than getting bogged down with names and details, simply understand that there is the deep level to core that is centered near and surrounds the spine.

Superficial Core

There is this second level of core as I think of it. This is the one that most of us think of that includes the abs. However, a key concept here is, just as in the deep core, it’s not just the front! Generally speaking, the Superficial core is a full circumference network of muscles around the abdomen that mostly create movement. This includes your abs on the front but also includes your obliques (the sides of the cylinder), your lats (the back) and other layers of muscle. These muscles are fairly large and while they do contribute to stability, they can mostly be thought of as being responsible for movement such as flexing your spine, extending your spine, twisting and side bending. Therefore, to focus on only one set of these muscles is to loose sight of the full picture of what constitutes core.

So we have a Deep Core network of muscles that is close to the spine and generally creates stability, we have a Superficial Core network of muscles that is closer to the surface and generally creates movement. This basically describes a cylinder that has a center within it. Something like this:

So what about the top and bottom?

In my mind, the top and bottom are shared between these two levels (Deep and Superficial) because they cover both. The bottom is the network of muscles that make up the pelvic floor. The top is your breathing diaphragm. If you’ve never seen it before, it looks something like this:

The umbrella like shape of this muscle puts a lid on our cylinder, connects to the spine but also connects in close proximity to those Superficial Core muscles around the outside. The pelvic floor works similarly. These structures create stability but are also key in movement throughout this complex system.

What It All Means

With this understanding that there are two main layers to our core as well as a top and bottom, we now see that the things we might always think of when it comes to core work, namely sit ups, really are addressing only one thing - the superficial muscles on the front side of the abdomen. Now also try to imagine that this was the ONLY thing you focused on when trying to strengthen your core. It becomes obvious right away that this would create an unhealthy and unhelpful imbalance. We need to work all these structures to bring a balance of strength and flexibility to the entire system in order to be well, similar to any other point of focus in the body.

How Yoga Can Help

While a vinyasa yoga practice can’t necessarily address the full picture of core strength, there’s a lot that we CAN do to holistically address the deep and superficial core in our sequencing as teachers and in our practice as students. Here are some ideas:

• Rooting down through the feet in standing postures - this kind of engagement, especially before transitioning from close to the earth into a standing posture (think moving from low lunge to Warrior 2) can activate those stabilizing muscles of the deep core including the psoas. There is a complex network of muscular connections between the psoas and your feet (see the work of Tom Myers if you’re interested in learning more). When you engage in this way you’re helping to support the spine through transitional movements and creating that deep core stability those deep core structures are there to do. (For more about the benefits of rooting down in standing postures, see this blog post.)

• Lifting high enough in Ardha Uttanasana (half way lift) - it’s a posture most people hardly give a second thought to in their practice, but actually lifting up in this posture can help to work the back body muscles and create more strength. Even better, think about that support coming from the front and the back. More on that here.

• Create twisting actions without leverage - many yoga practitioners use their arms to help create leverage for deeper twists. This isn’t wrong. However, if you want to build core strength, especially in the muscles of the core that create rotation, consider doing your twist WITHOUT the arms involved. You won’t go as deep, but you’ll certainly create more strength in these important side body muscles.

• Incorporate more locust poses into your vinyasa - resisting gravity is a key way to build strength in a yoga practice and there’s almost no better pose to embody that than locust. When working with this posture, be sure to do your best to not just bend the knees when you lift the legs. See that the lift is actually coming from the use of your back body muscles like glutes (they’re part of your core!) and hamstrings.

• Use the breath in coordination with movement - This is especially useful in movements that create a lot of force or load in the body. One of my personal favorites as a person with back injuries is to EXHALE on the way up to standing from a standing forward fold.

Want to experience this and more for yourself with some guidance? Then join my Livestream or On Demand classes all this month where we’ll incorporate many of these movements into a vinyasa flow to help strengthen ALL parts of your core together!

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Why You Can’t Stretch Your Way Out Of Pain

Acknowledging bias in our lives is always a good first step toward healing. Yoga teachers and practitioners have long held the belief that if something didn’t feel good in our bodies we could stretch our way out of the problem. I certainly thought that way for many years, particularly around my own back pain. Yet no matter how much I stretched, it didn’t ever seem to get better. I inadvertently realized the error of my ways when I started getting into hiking and began to develop more strength in my legs, hips and core as a result of scaling mountains with a backpack regularly. My back pain started to get better over time and I started to wonder if my hiking had something to do with it. I finally started to put two and two together when I started approaching my yoga practice in a way that incorporated strengthening actions along with the stretching I knew and loved. When I began to understand that the way I had approached yoga in the past had an inherent bias toward stretching and range of motion, and I began to balance that with strengthening actions within the practice, my body responded with less pain and more range. If you’re struggling with pain in certain areas of your body and stretching doesn’t seem to be changing it, here are some things to consider to bring balance to your body and your yoga practice.

Imagine that your muscles are like rubber bands for a moment. Let’s take your arm as an example. Your biceps and your triceps are on opposite sides of your upper arm. When your biceps contracts, your triceps has to lengthen. That’s a really good thing or you wouldn’t be able to bend your elbow! That muscle needs the ability to lengthen (aka stretch). But consider what would happen if your biceps didn’t have the ability to strongly contract. Imagine it was like a rubber band that had lost its spring. You still wouldn't be able to bend your elbow because it wouldn't have the strength to contract enough to create the movement. We might think of this as the muscle being “too long”.

Now imagine it the other way, which is what we often seem to notice the most in our bodies, especially if we’re dedicated yoga practitioners. Imagine you are trying to bend your elbow and your biceps is contracting, but your triceps is SO strong it can’t lengthen to allow the movement to happen. Now we have a situation where the muscle is “too short” or the sensation we often label as “tight”. Thinking about these two opposites starts to allow us to understand why this balance is important.

Another way to think about this - imagine a suspension bridge like the Golden Gate in San Francisco. The cables have to have just the right amount of length and strength to allow the structure to be stable while also allowing for movement. You probably don’t (want to!) think about it when you’re driving over such a bridge, but there are constant small movements due to weight of vehicles, wind speeds, temperature changes, (god forbid) seismic activity and other factors. Our muscles are similar in our bodies, giving stability to our underlying structure but also allowing for movement.

But with the human body there is one more curveball that we also have to consider. Muscles can be tight without actually being strong and they can be long and still be tight. To understand this, consider the person that spends hours a day hunched over a laptop. They might look something like this most of the day:

The body and the muscles are being held in a certain position for extended periods of time. Over time the muscles on the front side of the are being held in a shortened position. They aren’t actually being asked to contract and so they tend to become weak, but they stay shortened and therefore may be perceived as tight. On the other side, the muscles are constantly being stretched, or held in a lengthened position. They can’t possibly contract for many hours a day to counteract the position in which they’re being held, so they are long but are very weak from being over stretched which may be perceived as tightness. These positions of holding when repeated over time tend to bring about this chronic state that may be experienced as painful. An imbalance forms that won’t be helped by simply stretching, particularly for the muscles that are already too long.

These examples are a simplification and a model for a VERY complex system, but hopefully you get the general idea here. Constant stretching of muscles isn’t good, constant contraction of muscles isn’t good. We need muscles that can contract well and lengthen well. We need balance between the two. Without those two things in balance, we may experience pain.

Yoga does mean union after all so is it any surprise that creating balance between length and strength should really be our goal?

So what does this mean for our yoga practice?

The bias of yoga asana, at least the way that its been taught historically, is toward creating length and range of motion. Again, these are good things to have, but yoga can also help us build strength if we approach it a little differently. One way to do this is to engage a muscle at its end range of motion.

For example, let’s take pigeon pose. We might typically think of this posture as a hip opener (aka stretcher), particularly because of the way it may create a sensation of stretch in the hip flexors of the back leg and the rotational muscles of the hips in the front leg. For many people, finding their way into this posture brings them to that end range or maximum range of motion for several muscles. That’s not a bad thing. But now, once at that end range we can ENGAGE and create strength over time by pressing the back leg down and forward and the front leg (shin) down and backward. The legs won't actually move from the shape you’ve put them into, but the muscles will contract and create strength by doing so over time.

The overall effect is that the muscles will, over time be able to move through a full range of motion while also maintaining their strength. That brings us to our ideal state. (In a perfect world anyway. Again this is a complex system.)

Notice that I keep using the words “over time” here. This is not an instantaneous change. It takes constant attention and constant practice.

One last quick note about those long and tight muscles - when we start to address this imbalance it can be challenging. In the example above of our laptop user, if she decides she wants to start to strengthen that back side of the body that is overly long, weak and tight, she may run into one big obstacle, a sometimes painful cramp. 😣 This shows up all the time in the hamstrings for many yoga practitioners in postures and actions like this:

I’m hugging the heel of the back foot toward my buttocks without using my hand or a strap to do so. That asks the hamstrings to contract strongly and that’s often where the cramp happens. If that happens to you don’t give up! Go a little easier the next time around and increase the demand on the muscle(s) that are cramping over time. They’re basically telling you (rather loudly) that they don’t have the strength to do what you’re asking them to do just yet. It’s really something you have to build up to and takes a bit of patience.

I hope this starts to give you some ideas about how to bring more balance between stretching and strengthening into your yoga practice. Strength training outside of yoga certainly isn’t a bad idea for most bodies, but we CAN create more strength and stop worshiping at the altar of range of motion in our yoga practice if we simply bring more balance to our actions. A pain free, healthy and balanced body should always be our goal and bringing a greater focus on strength into our yoga practice can help us get there.

If you’d like to learn more about putting these ideas into practice, we’ll be working with the concepts here throughout the month of February in my Livestream and On Demand vinyasa classes as we always do. This month we’ll be specifically addressing the muscles surrounding the hip joint.

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