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Home > Take It Further : Deepen Your Flexibility Throughout Your Practice

Take It Further : Deepen Your Flexibility Throughout Your Practice

By Caron Bosler - Caron has been teaching Pilates for over 15 years. She received her Yoga Teacher Training from Yoga Vida Gurukul. She is the author of 3 books on Pilates. For more information please go to www.cor-e-nergy.com

Take It Further : Deepen Your Flexibility Throughout Your Practice

Knowing how to develop a personal yoga practice can often seem as difficult as the asanas themselves. Sometimes flexibility in an asana can feel like a road block to further advancement. The mind wants to be in a place that the body doesn?t allow. As we move through the asanas, we are gently reminded not to have goals for ourselves, but to listen to the body and feel where it wants to be today, in the present moment. Being a goal ori-ented society, it is normal to want to push beyond the limitations of that moment. The mind/body dichotomy is often hard to center, and we find ourselves pushing to extremes by executing movements too quickly, or push too far, causing injuries unnecessarily. At any stage - whether you are really advanced or a complete beginner, knowing what is happening in the body physiologically can help you deepen your practice. Understanding the benefits of stretching and how muscles function can help enhance your awareness of what is happening physiologically when you move into an asana, so that you can deepen your postures and improve your practice with full awareness and understanding.

How a Muscle Works

Muscles are made up of bundles of muscle fibers. Each fiber contains both actin and myosin, which slide over each other to contract, or release to stretch. Imagine your fingers interlaced like a step ladder with the palms facing you and the fingers placed one on top of the next with the first 2 joints overlapped. This is a simple way to explain the actin and my-osin that make up a muscle fiber at rest. If you do a lot of strength training, the muscle builds up and shortens. This can be shown by sliding the fingers together so that the tips of each finger are touching your opposite hand so that no spaces can be seen. If you stretch a muscle, the actin and myosin slide away from each other. This can be shown by opening the fingers so that just the first joints of the fingers are crossed over each other. In a healthy muscle, the actin and myosin can slide easily across each other in either direction.

Benefits of Stretching

Stretching is the deliberate lengthening of muscles in order to increase muscle flexibility or range of motion in a joint. There are many obvious benefits to stretching. It im-proves circulation by increasing blood flow to the muscles. It promotes better posture by keeping muscles from getting tight and minimize aches and pains. It relieves stress by helping to relax tense muscles that accompany stress. It also may help prevent injury. It can also reduce muscle soreness if you stretch after an exercise session.

Decrease Soreness Through Stretching

Decreasing muscle soreness through stretching is actually an easy concept to un-derstand. Let?s pretend you have just done a lot of strength training through intense activ-ity or much repetition. The muscle fibers will appear bulky. (the fingers are together with no spaces in between) This is because the muscle has only been working in one direction, and has a build up of lactic acid - a natural by-product of cellular respiration. If the muscle is not stretched, it will ?forget? to go back to it?s natural state at rest. The lactic acid will stay in the muscle and cause soreness. Stretching helps to both reduce the lactic acid build up (soreness) and return the actin and myosin to their normal ?at rest? positions. (The fingers are placed one on top of the other with the first 2 joints overlapped.)

The Stretch Reflex

The stretch reflex is a mechanism of protection for the muscle. It is a defense mechanism against being over- stretched or injured. When a muscle begins to stretch, the muscle spindles record the change in length and how fast the stretch is taking place. This causes the stretch reflex to contract in equal measure to the length and timing of the stretch. This means, the more sudden the stretch, the quicker the contraction. The impor-tant point to remember is that your muscles can relax to allow you to stretch further or tighten and inhibit your progress.

One reason for holding a ?stretch? or ?asana? is that the muscle spindles gradually get used to the length you are stretching. (Habituation). It is possible to train the muscle spindles to reduce their signaling to allow for greater length in the muscle. This allows the muscle to relax more fully and allow for greater range of motion.

Let?s use pashchimottanasana as an example. This straight leg forward bend is an amazing stretch on the lower back and back of the legs (hamstrings). If you moved into the asana too quickly by bouncing into it, your muscles would seize up due to the stretch reflex. However, if you slowly exhaled and relaxed into the position, without holding tension and focusing on your breath and letting go, you would slowly feel your muscles elongate- allowing you to stretch further.

The Rules

The rules for stretching are the exact same as the ?rules? for holding an asana. Al-ways breathe fully and deeply. It takes time to lengthen a muscle safely. If it hurts, you have gone to far: back off to the point where you don?t feel any pain, then continue to hold. Don?t bounce - this can cause small tears that leave scar tissue as the muscle heals. This tightens the muscle further and prevents smooth functioning of the cells within the muscle.

The magic in Yoga lies in the body?s ability to stretch deeply and then relax fully. The stretching allows the body to be receptive and open to change. The shavasana, or relaxa-tion, gives the body an opportunity to realign and ingrain those changes. The yoga stretching combined with the deep relaxation allows the body reprogram itself back into its natural alignment.

Caron Bosler - http://www.cor-e-nergy.com