YOGA FOR BACK PAIN
With just a few moves, you can bring your legs, hips and spine into proper alignment, release tension and gain supportive strength. These asanas provide traction for your spinal muscles as you root through the hips and let a gentle pull or gravity make space between the spinal bones. You’ll walk taller and enjoy a body that’s no longer stopping you, but rather servingyou to live, move and play to the fullest.
Rodney Yee has appeared in many books, DVDs, and calendars. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
3 tips for back pain sufferers
1. Don’t overemphasize the ab work. A common misconception about healing back pain is that the back is weak and that you should just work the core more. Actually, when you only work the core muscles — as in a hundred crunches a day — you may just be shortening your front body to match the back one. This can further pull on the spine and cause more disc compression and too little (or too much) curvature. The six-pack might look good in magazines and Diet Coke commercials, but those bunchy, contracted muscles are actually not so hot for your back.
Optimally, you want to work into greater core strength and length in your abdominals, side waist, low and mid back, while keeping the abdominal muscles long and lean. To do this, your back muscles will have to release, and both your back and core will have to stretch as well as flex. We’ll do both simultaneously in each of these poses.
2. Breathe slowly and deeply through the nose for the duration of the practice. On your inhales, flare the ribs wide, and as you exhale, contract around your navel, still maintaining a long, natural spine.
3. For a longer yoga practice to strengthen and open up your back, try Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Back Care DVD or his yoga practice on the Mayo Clinic Wellness Solutions for Back Pain DVD by Gaiam.
The practice
Fists Forward Bend
Stand with feet hip-distance apart. Bend your knees and release your torso over your legs until your belly touches your thighs (or as close as you can get). Make two fists and place them in the opposite elbow creases. Relax your back, neck and head, and squeeze fists actively.
Fists and bent elbows together are a central nervous system trigger that causes your back muscles to open. You’ll feel it after just a few breaths!
Take 10-20 breaths here, releasing more tension from the back with every exhale.
Wall Plank
Stand in front of a wall at arm’s length. Reach forward from your shoulders and plant your palms on the wall, fingers wide, middle fingers pointing straight at the ceiling.
Firm your fingers into the wall and draw your navel back as you lengthen the tailbone towards the floor. Lift your ribs from the pelvis. You want to work with a natural lower back curve but an active belly.
Keep length in your spine as you begin to walk the legs back, folding at the waist, and walking your hands down the wall. Eventually you’ll come to an L-shape as seen here. If you can’t get there today without feeling pain or rounding in the lower back, bend your knees and maintain the proper spinal alignment.
As you lift the navel and lower ribs into the body, reach long through the tailbone and legs into the floor while reaching the spine, arms and head towards the wall.
Repeat for 10-20 breaths, then fold into Fists Forward Fold once again. Move to the next pose after a few breaths.
Downward-Facing Dog
If done properly, this tried-and true asana can be excellent for spinal traction and back health.
Move into the pose with feet hip-distance apart [did you know that’s only two fists-width or so?] and hands shoulder-distance apart. It’s important not to let your back arch too much, which pressurizes the shoulder joints and over-contracts the back muscles. Instead, think of lifting the navel and front ribs, providing a buoyancy in the shoulders and back. Carve the tailbone towards the heels and press back through the inner and outer legs equally. This provides a root, a backward grounding from which you can pull and grow your spine and head forward towards the space between your hands.
Even as you move the shoulders down the back and wrap your outer shoulder blades towards your armpits slightly, press long through the arms and fingers, providing a whole-body realignment and stretch.
Take 5-10 breaths here, then proceed to the next pose.
Pigeon
We should call this pose “Angel of Mercy” for what it can do to rescue your poor aching back. It’s genius at opening the lower body muscles like hamstrings, hip rotators and the iliopsoas muscles, all which can contribute to back pain, without putting too much torque on the already tight back muscles. This releases them by springing open the muscles beneath. It’s a must-do in my yoga sequencing.
From Downward-Facing Dog, bring your right knee behind the right wrist, foot either touching the left hip crease or slightly forward. Stretch the left leg out long behind you, knee and top of the foot facing the floor. Center your hips in space even if they don’t touch the floor. Press your palms into the floor or a yoga block, ground your legs into the mat, and allow your legs to stretch while you let your low back curve and lift up.
Draw your navel and pelvic floor muscles in and send your heart to the sky. To deepen this pose, move your front knee wider and back and creep the back leg longer.
Take 5-10 breaths here, then fold forward, forearms on a block or the floor for a full-body stretch to counterpose. Return to Downward-Facing Dog, then repeat on the other side.
Back Traction Pose
After your last Pigeon, swing your back leg around and come onto your back, knees bent, feet under knees as if to prepare for a Bridge Pose. Grab your yoga block or if you don’t have one, a firmly-rolled yoga mat will do.
Lift your hips, and place the block in the center of your hips (not low back). The block should be the skinny way, in the same direction as your spine, not wide across the hips like your pants line.
Place your hips on the block and gently walk your feet wide. Knock your knees in towards one another for one minute to stretch across the sacrum, and then walk feet and knees together. Lift your knees over your hips until you can relax them but still stay suspended in the air.
This pose will release your iliopsoas muscles even as it detoxes you and provides traction for the low back spine. After about 30 seconds or so, scoot your head further from the shoulders and rest for another 30 seconds. Return to the first variation, feet wide on the floor, knees closer, for a few breaths.
To release, walk the feet under the knees at hip distance. Engage your navel, lift your hips off the block and remove it to the side. Roll slowly down the spine inch by inch and enjoy your new spacious lower back curve and sacrum!
Child’s Pose
Roll over and take Child’s Pose for one minute or more. Try knees wide, big toes closer, but end with knees together for a neutral spinal stretch. If your head doesn’t touch the floor, place a yoga block or fists under your forehead so you can relax completely.
Breathe slowly into your back body, expanding more nourishing energy and space on the inhale, and on the exhales, let ever more tension dissolve.
I suggest that you learn SUN SALUTATIONS and do at least 3 reps every morning. Try these poses and let us know how you are feeling. Here’s to a healthy back!
S~
PURE EXISTENCE and THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The blind pushing on of existence, which wanted to recognize itself without being aware of this desire, proved successful when it created human consciousness and thereby obtained its own eye with which to examine itself.
Human existence has succeeded in becoming conscious of its own beauty. To this extent it has raised itself to a higher level than can be found in the animal world or in the plant and mineral worlds. This level is rising continuously, and new beauty is now consciously created.
However, as consciousness develops, its problems also become complicated. Not only beauty, but also diseases that have no parallel in the animal kingdom make their appearance in human life : neuroses, schizophrenia, murder, rage, despair. But existence will never collapse, no matter how deplorable the state of the world may become. Existence only exists. It is impossible for it to be otherwise. Life is for life’s sake, art is for art’s sake, love for love’s sake.
Each of us has his own world of individual ego set against the environmental world. However, those who have a deep understanding of True Existence hold existence embodied in themselves and maintain themselves apart from the world of opposition and bring about its ultimate collapse while those who remain confined in the world of opposition discriminate between themselves and others, and between themselves and the world, in every thought and action.
When Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” he meant that we must see as a child sees by emptying our minds of all preconceived notions. This does not mean that you are ignorant and that you should allow anyone to cause you harm. That would not bring peace to you or them. You would not want to cause harm to others by allowing them to do harm. Be steadfast with inner strength, compassion and integrity.
The Kingdom of God is available to you, right now. You may choose to condemn others thereby condemning yourself to
living in hell or you may choose to set others free and enjoy heaven here on earth.
Remember, it is your choice.
S~
EXISTENCE EXISTS FOR ITSELF
Existence does not exist for others…it is of itself, for itself, by itself.
In the lonely retreat,
Among the alpine rocks,
Caressed by the whispering breeze,
The wild pink makes merry by herself.
The beauty of nature is the manifestation of existence itself. It is beautiful simply because it is beautiful. To say that color is waves of light and nothing more is pointless. Existence produces its own beauty for itself and appreciates it by itself.
S~
POWER OF CRYSTALS
My Blog Partner, Shar, has studied crystals.
I’m sure she’ll have some insight into Dr. DeSalvo’s theory. Stormy
Biophysicist with an interest in the ancient worlds, Dr. John DeSalvo, discussed his research into the power of crystals as well as their mystical counterpart, crystal skulls, and talked about the unusual properties associated with them. He theorized that crystal skulls evoke fascination because they are a combination of the beauty of crystal and the symbolism of death. “You put them together and they’re hard to resist,” he mused. Beyond that, he said that skulls have been carved using quartz crystal since antiquity and surmised that “whoever carved these structures realized there was something special about quartz.”
DeSalvo detailed how his study of crystal skulls is a twofold method of research using both scientific tests as well as psychometry. He explained that, since his crystal skull is as small as a baseball, it allows for the object to fit entirely inside a scanning electron microscope, unlike larger skulls that have been studied. As such, he said, his crystal skull has been subjected to the most scientific testing of any such object in history. Based on the testing of the skull, it was shown that “no modern tools or techniques” could have created it and it was highly oxidized which suggests it was buried or underwater a long period of time. When the psychics examined the skull, DeSalvo revealed, they felt a strange or “alien” energy coming from the object and that “most of them think its some kind of transmitter and receiver.” More information on DeSalvo’s scientific research into crystal skulls can be found here.
Regarding supernatural elements associated with crystals and crystal skulls, DeSalvo said that they have been reported to “store information,” transmit energy, and act as an amplifier for the subconscious. Beyond the alleged supernatural attributes, he noted that quartz crystal has two unique scientific properties, a piezoelectric effect as well as a stable oscillation when exposed to an electric charge. In light of all of these anomalies, De Salvo put forward his hypothesis that there is a “space time crystal matrix which gives quartz its paranormal properties.” To that end, he proposed that it is extending into alternative dimensions and that “most of the substance of crystal exists in other paranormal realms.” While DeSalvo was skeptical of the alleged healing power of crystals, he suggested that the ancients may have known how to harness it, but that knowledge has yet to develop in modern times.
Dr. John DeSalo
coasttocoastam.com
GUARDIAN ANGEL
An Angel dwelt with us today as we bent our heads to pray.
He hovered low and spread his wings and in his face I saw all things.
His wings wrapped round our little flock, his body muscled, hard as rock.
He looked so fierce, bright and strong, I knew that he would fight all wrong.
If the threat is large or small, he is there to handle all.
He floats upon our thoughts of love, he hears our words from up above.
He loves our music and our fun and for brief moments we are one.
He is here to guide the way through coming storms and darker days.
God assigned him just for us because we stayed in faith and trust.
By Jane Johnson
THE OLD HOMESTEAD
You see them on the roadside sheltered amid a ring of Oak trees, abandoned and forlorn. Echoes of forgotten laughter and tears float on the wind.
Lilac bu
shes in wild profusion, planted at the beginning, bloom, not knowing that the dream has changed and life has moved on. Like a fingerprint on the land, like an empty glass on a table after a party.
Yellow Daffodils nodding in the sun form an outline where the house once stood. I watch as a women in an apron and cap hangs her wash in the fresh Spring breeze. She knows I’m watching from afar and for a brief moment her dream still lives.
By Jane Johnson
WALKING WITH MY FATHER
I walk t
hrough a forest of towering Cotton Wood trees. Their ghostly bare arms stretched to the sky.
As before, my Father walks beside me. A Hawthorne Tree blooms pink amidst a wall of gray. Leaves crackle and dance under our feet.
A red winged black bird’s call echoes through the woods, then all is still.
By Jane Johnson
Sound Healing
Here’s an excerpt from my website on sound healing that I wanted to share. Hope you enjoy.
Sound Healing
Science tells us that everything in the universe vibrates and creates sound… which means everything in the universe has a ‘voice’. Sound travels through air, water and space. It also resonates through our entire body, all of our organs, down to the tiniest cell.
Healing Yourself with Vibrations - C. Freeman El
In this exclusive and profound lecture given by elder C. Freeman El we explore the nature of vibration how it works and how to apply the laws of vibration with affirmation, mantra and meditation to expand consciousness, heal oneself, manifest things faster, and raise energy to house more spirit in our bodies so that we may begin activating the physical centers to prepare our bodies on our path to godhood or unification with god through the acquisition of cosmic consciousness.
An Offering of Light Words From Hafiz
GOD POURS LIGHT
God pours light into every cup, quenching darkness.
The proudly pious stuff their cups with parchment and critique the taste of ink
while God pours light
and the trees lift their limbs without worry of redemption, every blossom a chalice.
Hafiz, seduce those withered souls with words that wet their parched lips
as light pours like rain into every empty cup set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.
