This entry was posted on Feb 6, 2023 by Charlotte Bell.
The yoga world is filled with flexible individuals. I’m certainly one of them. Once I first began practising asana in 1982, it was thrilling to be concerned in a bodily endeavor the place I might truly excel. Whereas I used to be a good sprinter and lengthy jumper in highschool, I didn’t do nicely in aggressive group sports activities. My stamina has at all times been lower than optimum. However my hypermobile physique might do spectacular yoga tips virtually from the start. I loved the eye I acquired for being the bendiest individual in school. It wasn’t till a long time later that I spotted that as an alternative of regularly pushing my bendiness, I truly wanted to stability hypermobility with energy.
After all, yoga is by no means about what your physique can or can’t do. There’s much more to it, for instance, the lifelong observe of the Eight Limbs of Yoga. Yoga is a lot greater than an train routine. It’s a set of practices which have the potential to remodel our lives. The bodily observe is the “gateway drug” to the remainder of the system, if we select to discover it.
Bodily asana is the place most of us enter the observe. And it’s the place yoga begins and ends for a big proportion of practitioners. As a result of so most of the “fancy” poses require hypermobile joints, there’s an entire lot of emphasis on changing into ever extra versatile. However excessive hypermobility will not be stability, in the identical method that excessive stiffness will not be stability.
The Downside with Hypermobility
I just lately started studying a brand new ebook titled Yoga for Flexible Individuals: Optimizing the Advantages of Yoga for Hypermobility by Libby Hinsley, PT, DPT, C-IAYT. I’m solely about midway via the ebook, however I’ve already realized rather a lot. A few of what I’ve realized confirms hypermobility as a contributor to lifelong bodily challenges I’ve skilled. These embody tiring simply throughout train, labral tears, sprains and strains, complications and sleep challenges.
In keeping with Hinsley’s ebook, there are different challenges as nicely that, fortunately, I’ve not skilled—not less than to my data. These embody pelvic ground and gynecological challenges, dysautonomia, muscle pressure, impaired proprioception, altered interoception, digestive issues, and psychological well being and neurodevelopmental variations.
Connective Tissue and Hypermobility
Connective tissue exists all over the place within the physique. In hypermobility issues, that tissue is usually lax. Probably the most seen signal of lax connective tissue in flexible individuals happens within the ligaments, the tissues that join bone to bone on the joint websites. The primary perform of ligaments is to restrict the motion in our joints. Hinsley writes: “Floppy connective tissue can’t transmit drive throughout joints as successfully, resulting in motion inefficiency and muscle fatigue.” This, she says, could cause flexible individuals to tire simply throughout train.
I don’t really feel certified to get into the weeds right here about connective tissue building and properties. However I’ll say that Hinsley offers a wonderful rationalization of connective tissue and the issues with laxity. As an alternative of making an attempt to recreate her detailed rationalization, I urge you to purchase the ebook. Even when you’re not hypermobile your self, when you educate yoga, you’ll encounter flexible college students. Versatile individuals are typically interested in yoga, as a result of so a lot of its asanas spotlight flexibility. It’s vital that you just perceive flexible individuals’s distinctive points in order that you know the way to assist them observe in a wholesome method.
The way to Stability Hypermobility with Energy
Years in the past in a single workshop I attended with Donna Farhi, she urged hypermobile practitioners to observe inside their most edge. For instance, in Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), she urged us to keep away from inserting our palms on the bottom, despite the fact that our our bodies might simply go there. As an alternative, she advised that we place our hand on a block in its tallest setting, or on our shin. Then she cued us to activate our legs in order that we weren’t leaning onto our backside hand.
This instruction utterly modified the pose for me. Once I positioned my hand on the ground, as I had at all times achieved for years, I might really feel my legs shedding energy and disengaging. Lifting up increased within the pose allowed my legs to help me, which, in spite of everything, is what they’re imagined to do in standing poses.
Hinsley explains that our skill to manage motion, and to maintain our joints aligned, declines at our finish ranges. Muscle groups are strongest of their mid-ranges, after they’re neither at their shortest or longest. That’s why lifting increased in Triangle Pose feels a lot stronger. I started practising all my different poses this fashion, going to about 80 p.c of my finish vary. After observe, my physique feels rather more cohesive and secure than it does once I’ve pushed my flexibility. My nervous system additionally feels energized and calm.
Sluggish and Small: The Key to Stability Hypermobility
Hinsley suggests slower and smaller actions to stability hypermobility in yoga observe. Much like Donna Farhi, she means that as an alternative of going on to their finish ranges—a behavior most flexible individuals have cultivated—that hypermobile individuals transfer slowly into every asana. It’s particularly widespread for versatile individuals to go proper as much as their finish vary after they’re shifting via a fast-paced Vinyasa. As an alternative, she suggests shifting slowly and mindfully into every pose in order that we are able to understand the place the place we first start feeling a stretch. Then we pause and breathe into the pose on this place of extra delicate sensation.
In my expertise, this fashion of practising has advantages past merely defending our joints. It helps us change into extra delicate to delicate sensation, and subsequently, higher capable of take care of our our bodies and minds. There actually is loads of sensation to be conscious of if we keep nicely inside our finish vary of movement. Tuning into delicate sensation unifies our our bodies and minds.
The Problem—and Profit—of Balancing Hypermobility
This recommendation generally is a tall order for a lot of flexible practitioners. I resisted Donna’s recommendation for years when she advised I curb my enthusiasm for fancy poses and focus as an alternative on stability. In most quarters of the yoga world, hypermobile practitioners are lauded for his or her pretzel-like prowess. Hypermobile Instagram yoga stars garner hundreds of likes. The flexibility to do issues that few others can try, by advantage of our distinctive genetics, turns into part of our identification. That’s not simple to half with. Generally it takes continual ache or repeated accidents to encourage flexible individuals to decelerate and observe with care.
It’s useful to keep in mind that asana observe is supposed to advertise stability—within the bodily construction, the nervous system and finally, within the thoughts and coronary heart. After we observe asana with an eye fixed towards balancing mobility and stability, we are able to domesticate stability in all elements of ourselves.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third ebook is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.