Spinal Health and Yoga.
Statistics say that most of us will suffer with back pain and/or restricted movement through the spine at some stage in our lives.
Most of us take this as normal especially with age. We do not need to experience pain in our spine and this is not a normal inevitable progression into older age.
For some people our first experience with Yoga is from taking advice from their Doctor or Physio to help with back pain. This is great and sure beats prescription drugs.
So why is Yoga so good and how does it help with both pain and spinal mobility?
The first point here is that Yoga is a slow controlled movement.
Engaging our deep postural muscle. With no explosive propelling large movements that use our Global larger muscles as the driving force.
This gives us a much more secure base or foundation to work with.
The slower movements also enable us to control our movement better so not to sprain or over stretch a muscle in full flight of movement.
The second point that differs Yoga from other forms of body movement is Meditation.
When we visulise and focus inwardly on the simple movement at hand we are actually firing up new neural pathways in our brain. Creating stronger association within our mysterious brain and elusive deep postural muscles. These two often end up with no awareness of the other resulting in bad movement patterns that inevitably result in long term reoccurring pain.
So working not only on the Muscles in the back but also the neural responses within the brain to help us with more fluid effortless movement.
Lets have a deeper look at the movement of the spine.
We can break the spine into segments of Movement.
The first segment being at the top 2 Cervical Vertebrae.
This area is where most of the Movement in the neck happens.
The Lower segment of the Cervical Spine is in comparison quite stable. This needs to be so for balance and strength.
The next Segment is the Thoracic Spine.
Most of our mobility comes from here. If you take a look at the shape of the vertebrae you can see the spinal process (The pointy bit) is much smaller creating more space for forward and backward movement as well as twisting movements.
Looking at the last segment The Lumbar spine. (The most stable of the segments) The Vertebrae are thicker and more enclosed to form better stability for the whole body.
So in short
Upper neck mobile.
Lower Neck Stable.
Thoracic Mobile.
Lumbar Stable.
When we get these segments working out of sink ie, lumbar Mobile and Thoracic stable. This causes pain and discomfort.
So working with Yoga both in the physical and the medative aspects and working through our poses with this information of this movement map in mind. We can help with the ease of the pose and also rehabilitation of back health and pain.
If you would like more information or a personal assessment please contact me via pm or at yogasol.com.au
