Healthy and Unhealthy Stretching Sensations

by Nina

Flames by Melina Meza

Ever hear someone else groaning in a yoga class? Or maybe that you? Yes, when you are stretching a tight area of your body, you can experience quite a bit of sensation. And while healthy stretches can provoke an intense feeling, it’s a good idea to pay attention to the type of sensation you’re experiencing because this may indicate you should back off the stretch.

As we discussed in previous posts (see What is Flexibility, Anyway?), stretching a muscle or muscle group and fascia is healthy and beneficial, but stretching a tendon or ligament can cause an injury, such as a tear, inflammation, tendonitis, or tendonosis. In addition, compressing a joint when you are stretching can pinch the tissues caught between the bones closing in toward each other, which cause pain and lead to inflammation. So it’s important to learn to tell the difference between the sensations of healthy stretch of a tight muscle versus the pain, pinching, or “smashed together” feelings that are warnings of potential injury. 

Healthy Sensations. You will feel generally feel healthy stretch of a muscle in the mid-portion of a muscle, farther away from the tendons and ligaments are located close to joints. A good place to become familiar with this type of sensation is the hamstring muscle at the backs of your thighs, which you stretch in Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) and Reclined Leg Stretch (Supta Padangusthasana). As most of you know, the intensity of the stretch sensation there can be quite strong, and yet it generally doesn’t mean you are injuring yourself. So when you experience this type of sensation, as long as the stretch is a moderate one, take a deep breath and try to relax into the stretch. 

Unhealthy Sensations. You will generally feel an unhealthy stretch of muscle, tendon, or ligaments closer to a joint, such as your hip, knee, shoulder or elbow joint. And the quality of feeling will be different than a healthy stretch, maybe burning, sharp, stabbing, throbbing, or tearing in quality. For example, with the hamstring muscles, if you feel a tender burning sensation up toward your buttocks, this could be an indication you are overstretching the attachments. In all cases, when you experience these types of sensations, you should immediately back off the stretch if possible to see if that helps. If not, come out of the pose entirely.

It is possible to feel this burning, sharp, stabbing, throbbing, or tearing sensation in the muscle body as a result of a sudden, intense, quick stretch, so that is why we always recommend moving slowly and with in control into your stretches. 

Joint Compression. Sometimes when you are stretching a muscle, the joint that is bending can become compressed. For example, when you deeply bend your knee joints, as in Child’s pose (Balasana), the tissues at the back of the knee joint can become pinched together. This is potentially dangerous because the compression could produce tissue damage and inflammation, or even could injure nerves or blood vessels, leading to acute or chronic pain and dysfunction.

In general what you’ll feel when a joint is compressed is either a sensation of muscles, skins, tendons, fascia, and/or bones being “smashed together” or a pinching sensation. For example, some of less flexible folks feel smashed together or pinching sensations in our front hip when doing Extended Side Angle pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana) with our hand on the floor. Both of these sensations indicate that you are overdoing it, and you should back off the stretch, possibly by adding a prop. If you can’t eliminate the joint compression, come out of the pose. 

Compression can also put pressure on blood vessels and nerves, so if you have an unusual pressure sensation in the joint or feel numbness and tingling downstream from the compressed area, that is an indication that you are overdoing it and should back off the stretch or come out of the pose.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

Protecting Your Joints

by Baxter

Today I’d like to review the idea of protecting your joints via your yoga practice. I will share with you why this is a good—maybe essential—idea, and then provide info about how and when to do it. 

Why Protect Your Joints

Our joints are the pivot points by which our myofascial system moves our bodies around. So healthy joints means healthy movement. I define a healthy joint as allowing for the full range of movement—whether it is weight bearing or not—that is smooth and pain-free. Learning to protect your joints while they are still healthy has a preventative benefit over time. After all, we have all heard by now that the protective surfaces of joints, coated with cartilage, are subject to wear and tear over time, especially if we do a lot of repetitive movements at certain joints (you runners out there perking up?). And of course, many joints (think ankles, knees, shoulders, and wrists) are subject to acute injuries that our yoga practice might also help prevent with good technique. Finally, if we have already developed joint issues, such as osteoarthritis or a joint injury, protecting the joints could allow for healing, reduced pain, and improved movement. 

How to Protect Your Joints

Supporting Your Joints. One technique you can employ in your yoga asana is to protect your joints by consciously firming the muscles that support the joint. This is beneficial for problem joints as well as for protecting healthy joints. 

Nina described technique in her post Why and How to Activate Your Muscles in Yoga Poses. She said that, for example, if you have knee arthritis, firming the muscles on all sides of your thighs in Extended Side Angle pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana) will help support your knees. And for people who are overly flexible and can bend easily into deep forward bends and backbends, consciously activating the muscles that are supporting you in the pose will prevent you from hanging from your joints, which can cause injury. For example, instead of passively dropping into a pose where you bend backward or forward from the hips, such as Camel pose (Ustrasana) and Standing Forward Bend, (Uttanasana), you can protect your hip joints by activating your upper thigh and lower buttock muscles. (For flexible folks this will actually mean focusing more on firming the muscles and not going as deep into a stretch as they can actually go.)

For joint safety, you want to emphasize strength and stability rather than promoting more flexibility. So practice as you would for increasing bone or muscle strength by firming the muscles that support your joints. For example, to protect your front knee in Warrior 2 pose, you might shorten the distance between your feet so you are not bending your front knee through such a deep range of motion, and then, when your knee is positioned over your ankle joint, focus on firming the muscles on all sides of the knee joint toward the bone. 

If you have healthy joints now, you can use this technique to support any joint that is weight bearing, such as the joints of the legs in standing poses or the joints of the arms in poses where you are supported by your arms, such as, Cat/Cow, Downward-Facing Dog pose, and Upward Facing Dog pose. Although this technique will be easier to turn on in poses that you hold for longer periods of time, with practice, you may be able to bring a bit of this feeling into even some dynamic work.

Making Space. In addition to this firming technique that Nina described, I also recommend the technique of “making space” in the joints for people who are having problems. For ankles, knees, hips, wrists and elbows, to make space in the joint, lift the bone immediately above the joint, relative to gravity. For example, if someone with knee pain from arthritis is working in standing poses, you would lift your thighbones (femurs) away from the lower leg bones as you are entering, holding, and exiting a pose. In inverted poses, this same person could move their shinbones up away from their thighbones (even though in non-weight bearing positions the knee might be symptom free).

This internal action of lifting one bone away from another creates a bit more space between the boney surfaces of the joint and can provide improved pain-free range of motion. I find it personally helpful with my left hip that may have some early arthritis changes and many of my students have adopted it for their affected joints.

The only potential downside to this technique is that the joints above and below the joint where you are creating more space will cinch down a bit, so you lose some space in those healthier, non-arthritic joints. So don’t use it for problem joints if it doesn’t provide you with relief. And don’t use it regularly for your healthy joints. 

Although this technique will be easier to turn on in poses that you hold for longer periods of time, with practice, you may be able to bring a bit of this feeling into even some dynamic work.

If you have joint problems now, see if this technique is helpful for you. You can use this technique alone or in combination with the muscular contraction technique if it works for you. Although we don’t recommend using the making space technique regularly for healthy joints, you could also experiment a bit it, just to have it in your bag of tricks should you need it down the road. 

Propping in Restorative Poses. One of the best features of restorative poses is that once you are set up, you get to relax your body and let the pose, props, and gravity do the work of stretching your body. This does not mean, however, that your joints are necessarily safe in all restorative poses. Although you do not want to use our two joint protection techniques in restorative poses—as it goes against their underlying principle of relaxing your muscles—you should still make sure that you are not noticing any compression sensation, pinching sensation, or pain at your joints. A classic example where this can happen is pain or pinching in the knees in Supported Childs pose. In such a case, add just enough additional lift for your body so that the pinching or pain goes away, even if that means feeling less of a stretch.

And just as over-stretching can cause joint problems an active pose, it can do so also in restorative poses, leading to potential strain on the joints. Therefore, if you notice pain in your joints after practicing restorative poses with less support, we recommend that you add in more support, aiming for a lighter feeling of stretch. 

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

Why and How to Activate Your Muscles in Yoga Poses

by Nina 

Bicep Muscle

Tricep Muscle

For some time now we’ve been suggesting that you add “isometric muscle contraction” to your poses to enhance both strength building and stretching. I, myself, have been experimenting with it quite a bit in my practice, and have noticed some dramatic results. But since we’ve never really explained much about what we meant by that or how to put it into practice, I’ve decided that today I’m going to go into detail about both the benefits of this technique and the best ways to practice it so you, too, can give it a try. 

Why Do It 

Stretching. When you are stretching a particular muscle, consciously activating the agonist muscle (the opposite muscle to the one you’re stretching) will cause the muscle you are stretching to release (though reciprocal inhibition). For example, if you are stretching the your back thigh muscles (hamstrings), activating your front thigh muscles (quadriceps) will release your back thigh muscles, allowing you to increase the hamstring stretch. 

Bone Strengthening. Although a weight-bearing pose on its own will strengthen bones, if you consciously contract the muscles holding you up by firming them toward the bones, you will enhance the bone strengthening effects of the pose. For example, if you’re standing in Tree pose (Vrksasana), firming your leg muscles will enhance bone building in the standing leg. 

Muscle Strengthening. As you work in strength building poses, you can strengthen more than just the obviously active muscles by consciously contracting other muscles as you work in the pose. For example, as you hold you arms out to the sides in Warrior 2 (Virabradrasana 2), you can activate your triceps as well as your biceps to increase all-around arm strength. 

Joint Safety. For people with joint problems, such as arthritis, consciously firming the muscles that support a joint will help protect the joint from strain or wear and tear. For example, if you have knee arthritis, firming the muscles on all sides of your thighs in Extended Side Angle pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana) will help support your knees. And for people who are overly flexible and can bend easily into deep forward bends and backbends, consciously activating the muscles that are supporting you in the pose will prevent you from hanging from your joints, which can cause injury. For example, instead of passively dropping into pose where you bend backward or forward from the hips, such as Camel pose (Ustrasana) and Standing Forward Bend, (Uttanasana) you can protect your hip joints by activating your upper thigh and lower buttock muscles. 

How to Do It 

To achieve the benefits I’ve described, you should contract your muscles gently rather than strongly. Strongly contracting a muscle shortens the muscle, which seems to prevent you from moving as freely in the pose. On the other hand, gently firming a muscle toward the bone provides muscular support without interfering with movement. If you’re not used to working this way, it may take some practice. Take it in two steps (thank you, Donald!): 

1. Consciously relax the muscle, allowing it to lengthen. 
2. Gently firm the muscle toward the bone. 

Stretching. When you are stretching a particular muscle, bring your awareness to the agonist muscle (it is already contracting), which is the opposite muscle to the one you are stretching. Gently relax and then firm the agonist muscle toward the bone, and feel whether the opposite muscle stretches a bit more. For example, if you are stretching your tricep muscles (underarm muscles) with arms overhead, try gently firming your biceps toward to the bone. (I realize that which muscle is the “opposite” to the one you are stretching is not always obvious but that is an anatomy lesson for another day.)

Another technique I just learned about is that if you are targeting a particular muscle, you can contract the muscle you want to stretch BEFORE you go into the pose. For example, if you want to stretch tight hamstring muscles, you could practice Locust pose (Salabasana) to contract the muscles just before practicing Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana).

Strength Building. If you are practicing a strength-building pose, rather than contracting only the most obviously active muscle, firm all the surrounding muscles around the bone as well. For example, in Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana), firm all your arm muscles and shoulder muscles toward the bone. When you want to strengthen your hip area, in a standing pose, for example, you can slowly engage the muscles all around your hip joints, ensuring that this action does not pull you out of good alignment. 

Joint Safety. For joint safety, you want to emphasize strength and stability rather than promoting more flexibility. So practice as you would for increasing bone or muscle strength by firming the muscles that support your joints. For example, to protect your front knee in Warrior 2 pose, you might shorten the distance between your feet so you are not bending your front knee through such a deep range of motion, and then, when your knee is positioned over your ankle joint, focus on firming the muscles on all sides of the knee joint toward the bone. 

If you decide to experiment with any of these techniques, either in your home practice or in a class you're teaching, please let me know how it goes!

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook ° Join this site with Google Friend Connect

Read More

Friday Q&A: Aging Muscles, Bones and Joints

Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Q: You all have been writing a lot about muscles and bones lately. I was wondering, how exactly does aging affect our musculo-skeletal system? And how can we influence the aging process with yoga and our lifestyle choices?

A: The process of aging affects our musculo-skeletal system in several particular ways. As I have written about previously, as muscles age, especially after about the age of 50, we start to lose muscle mass in a process called sarcopenia (see Strength and Aging). Sarcopenia is considered a normal part of the aging process, one that can lead to visibly smaller skeletal muscles—the ones that move our body and limbs around—which are then also going to be weaker. It is usually a slow, gradual process, but unchecked could lead to a point in a person’s life when the weakness could negatively impact his or her daily activities. According to an article Aging changes in the bones – muscles – joints from the National Institutes of Health: 

“Changes in the muscle tissue, combined with normal aging changes in the nervous system, cause muscles to have less tone and ability to contract. Muscles may become rigid with age and may lose tone, even with regular exercise.”

The body’s soft tissues tend to mostly made of water, and as we age, we also gradually experience a decrease in the amount of water in the muscles and the connective tissues (fascia and tensions) that surround the muscles and attach them to the bones, as well as the ligaments that connect bones to bones. As these changes occur, these structures become more brittle, less resilient and more likely to suffer injury, such as, strains and sprains. And because these structures don’t have a very good blood supply to start with, repair and recovery is typically slow, and slower as we get older. Other important soft tissue structures, such as the intervertebral discs between the vertebrae bones of the spine, and cushions, such as the meniscus in the knees and the labrum in the hip and shoulder joints, also suffer the same changes and the same potential for injury and degeneration. 

The skeleton, which is made up of over 200 bones, also undergoes changes as we age. Most commonly, the joint surfaces between the mobile joints can suffer wear and tear over a lifetime of use. The connective tissue barrier known as cartilage that coats the ends of each bone to make it slippery and cushioned can gradually thin out and leave the underlying bone exposed and sensitive to inflammation. This is commonly referred to as osteoarthritis (see Yoga for Osteoarthritis), an extremely common aging-related problem that can actually start at about any age, especially in those who use their bodies intensely for sports and work activities. 

Finally, the bones can begin to thin and lose density as we age, making them more vulnerable to fractures, which can then be slower to heal due to the abnormally thin bones. Thinning of the bones (osteoporosis) is extremely common in women over 65, with up to 50% developing it, and surprisingly common in men as well over 65, at 25% incidence. The bones of the thoracic spine (your mid spine) are at greatest risk for fracture, followed by the wrist bones and the femur bone (thigh bone) of the hip joint. Fractures from osteoporosis can lead to ongoing chronic pain, physical disability and, particularly with hip fractures, premature death. 

These factors and others, such the connection between the muscles and the neurologic system, can also lead to changes in posture and balance, which can also increase the chances of injury over time. An increase in general stiffness and pain can also arise with combinations of the above changes. 

On a brighter note, it has been noted in aging athletes, specifically long distance runners and cyclists, who maintain good cardio-vascular and respiratory function may see improved endurance in their sports compared to when they were younger! Here is a case where long term participation in physical activity pays off in improved function, not decline. This speaks directly to what we can do with regards to our lifestyle choices that can positively influence these changes of aging: stay active!  Regular exercise, modified to accommodate body changes such as arthritic joints or thinning bones, can help to slow, stall and even reverse many of these conditions. And for our purposes here, yoga can be an ideal standalone practice for some conditions, such as sarcopenia, and great in combination with other health practices for others, such as with osteoporosis or arthritis (which might also require medications and mineral supplements, for example). Eating a healthy diet and drinking adequate amounts of water to fuel and hydrate the body, and by extension these parts of the musculo-skeletal system, is another wise choice. 

For further information, check out these posts from our archives:

• Yoga for Strength: An Overview 
• Yoga and Flexibility: An Overview
• Healthy Bones for Men and Women Alike
• What is Osteopenia? How Can Yoga Help?
• Yoga for Osteoarthritis

—Baxter

Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook 

Read More

Delaying Joint Replacement

by Nina

Did any of you read Jane Brody’s latest article on arthritis Relief for Joints Besieged by Arthritis in the New York Times last week? Well, I did. And as someone who had an orthopedist say to me, “You are heading for a joint replacement. It could be months or it could be years, but there is nothing you can do about it,” I was very struck by her discussion of joint replacement, especially the following quote:

 “People with osteoarthritis are relying more and more heavily on surgery,” Dr. David T. Felson, a rheumatologist and epidemiologist at Boston University School of Medicine, told me. “The rate of knee replacement is just skyrocketing, out of proportion to increases in arthritic changes seen on X-rays, and replacement surgery is contributing greatly to the rising costs of Medicare..”

She also quoted Dr. Felson saying that although hip replacement is “dynamite,” knee replacement may be far less helpful. “For 10 to 30 percent of patients, the improvement never comes.” Brody goes on to recommend to people, the same way we at Yoga for Healthy Aging do, that people try to postpone joint replacement if possible and states, ever so clearly and concisely, the reasons why:  

Artificial joints usually last 10 to 15 years. Delaying surgery is helpful because the earlier in life a joint is replaced, the more likely a subsequent replacement will be needed. And both devices and surgical techniques are constantly being improved; by delaying a joint replacement, you may end up with a simpler operation or more durable device.

Snails and a Bee on the Same Flower by Michele Macartney-Filgate

That’s it in a nutshell! So how exactly can you delay surgery if you’re having pain in your joints? Why yoga, of course. Although Brody doesn’t specifically recommend yoga, she does quote Dr. Felson again when talking about the importance of exercise for arthritic joints:

“The severity of pain is directly correlated with the degree of muscle weakness."

Well, that’s pretty clear, isn’t it? In fact, I’ve never seen it put that bluntly before. And the yoga standing poses, because they are weight bearing, are excellent for building strength in your knees and hips. For your knees, the poses where one or both bent knees are particularly beneficial (Warrior 1 and 2, Extended Side Angle pose, Powerful Pose, and so on). Although we have not yet addressed arthritis of the hip (note to self: good idea for future topic), most, if not all, of the standing poses would be beneficial for your hips. For arthritis of the shoulder joint, yoga provides a number of simple poses where you bear weight on your arms, including Downward and Upward-Facing Dog, Upward Plank pose (Purvottansana), and Side Plank pose (Vasithasana), so don’t think that if you can’t do Handstand yet, you can’t work on your arm strength (note to self: another good idea for future topic).  

Sometimes being slow is a good thing. 

P.S. Thank you Michele for this perfect photograph (isn't it amazing everyone?) as well as the rest of the other ones you've shared with us in the past and plan to share in the future. I can't wait for the next batch!

Read More