Lumbar Safety & Your Yoga Practice
When we hear someone say “core work” our minds naturally shift to a series of seated crunches involving our “6 pack” muscles. Yogis, let’s not forget about our good friend who we don’t see as often, our low back! As instructors, it’s important to remain aware of guiding a balanced practice. Whether we’re guiding or practicing core, be sure to build posterior as well as anterior core strength. As long as we’re strengthening all sides of our spine evenly, we are engaging in a healing practice.
In the medical setting, low back pain is a common occurrence for patients seeking treatment. I attribute the vast majority of cases to one thing: Sitting on our bums! Even most trauma cases are primarily caused by imbalances in our core muscles from sitting. In our hip flexors, we have a long muscle called the psoas that wraps around the front of our hip flexors from our low back (T12-L5) to the front of our femur. Its action: to flex our hip! That means when we’re seated, our psoas is contracted. When that long muscle becomes shortened and engaged, energy rushes directly to it. When I say “energy” I’m not only referring to your body’s Qi or prana, but also blood cells and emotional responses. Imagine every experience that you have in your work chair or car seat being sent directly to your psoas muscle for storage. It’s no wonder why we see so much tightness and stagnation around our hips!
When you have a muscle tighter than the rest, it will pull your body in the direction of that muscle’s action. In the case of a tight psoas, when someone experiences trauma, their body’s first instinct becomes hip flexion, ultimately compromising the disks in the lumbar spine. If the low back muscles are equally as strong as the psoas, then the lumbar spine becomes supported, drastically reducing the risk for injury. In most cases, safely practicing balanced strength building exercises will even reverse injuries to the low back. Yes light beings, that includes bulging disks and sciatica.
So we’ve established that our goal is to, strengthen all sides of our core evenly and safely. We’ve also established that our psoas needs a little extra love due to the extra stress that it sees. Now lets talk about how to find balance, heal & protect our low backs!
Namaste,
Kelly a Bailey
Practice:
Step 1: Core work.
Try locust pose for those low back muscles. 7 sets, 5 breaths each. So here you will lay in prone position, on your belly with your feel long behind you with your arms at your side, palms down. Basically just rest on your pelvis on the earth and use your low back muscles to lift everything else up toward the sky! Keep your spine long by leaving your gaze down & in front of you then squeezing your thighs together. Continue to roll your shoulders down your back opening through your heart chakra. Oh, & yogis, BREATHE! Between each set, rest or your belly for 5-10 breaths.
For anterior core work, make your way into plank pose. Palms under your shoulders, neck long, tail bone tucked, thoracic spine lifting toward the sky. Without compromising the length of your spine, draw one knee to your nose and hold for 5 breaths. Now switch. Do that 5 times on each side.
Step 2: Yin meditation (the juicy awesomeness).
To release and lengthen the psoas, find supported bridge, Setu Bandha Sarvangasana. First, set your timer somewhere between 3 to 8 minutes. Be gentle at first! Lay in supine position (on your back). Walk your heels to your bum and set your feet on the floor. Lift your hips to place a block or a few pillows under your sacrum. Play with the height of your prop to see what elevation works best for you. From here, turn your palms up, extend your legs out long in front of you & allow your body get heavy. For the next 5 breaths, consciously disengage any muscles that are still holding on. Move into stillness. Once your timer is up, rest in savasana for 3-5 minutes before standing.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Cristina Means Bearden with The Red Fly Studio