Stop Stretching and Resolve Your Body Pain with Yogi Aaron - #122

Stop Stretching and Resolve Your Body Pain with Yogi Aaron

00:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, ME-CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, and long COVID so you can live the life of your dreams. So one of the things that a lot of the people in our community experience is body pain. So I'm really excited to speak today with Yogi Aaron, who's going to talk to us about a revolutionary way to do yoga.

00:27

by not stretching. And this is really exciting for me because I trained as a yoga teacher back in 2004 through the Kripalu Center in Western Massachusetts. And so all that I had learned and things that I've been teaching my patients and clients over the years has been about stretching. And so I'm really excited to learn from Yogi Aaron today. So let's learn a little bit about him. So he is a trailblazing yoga teacher who is leading a global rebellion against the harmful practice of stretching.

00:57

He pioneered the groundbreaking approach to yoga that shows people how to live pain-free by activating muscles through applied yoga anatomy plus muscle activation, which is AYAMA. Whether at his scenic Blue Osa yoga retreat in Costa Rica or through his online AYAMA certification program and the Yogi Club, Yogi Aaron is dedicated to teaching students worldwide to break free from pain.

01:26

and unlock their full potential and life purpose. Yogi Aaron, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me here. And I feel a little kindred to you because you did your initial training at Kripalu and that place holds a very special place in my heart. So it's kind of cool, little circles. Yes, I love that. So let's talk about Ayama. I mean,

01:54

Well, let's talk first about the traditional approach to yoga and about stretching. Why initially do people, why were the yogis and some of these other people recommending stretching in the first place? Well, I don't know that the yoga yogis, ancient yogis, the yoga tradition is telling people to stretch. This is something that we've kind of inferred.

02:23

Krishna Macharya, he was sort of the first, so for your listeners to understand, Krishna Macharya is like the grandfather of our tradition. He came around about 19, the early 20th century, 1920-ish, and he's what you would call the first real yoga influencer. He would go around.

02:52

and do yoga demonstrations. And of course they didn't have Instagram back then, let alone iPhones. So he did live demonstrations. And one of the ways to do that, and you know, humans don't change. You know, we need to be razzled and dazzled and to get hooked into something. So he would do these incredible beats with his body. He performed these incredible yogic miracles, lifting up cars.

03:21

He was known to do other things with his body that would just blow people's minds. And then of course he did a lot of these incredible asanas. And he did that as a way to kind of hook people in, to get people's attention, and then be able to teach them. And then his students, Batabi Joyce and Mr. Angar, took that and really, it's really those two people that kind of blew up.

03:50

this idea of what Asana is. And so they made the practice strictly about yoga postures. And so Mr. Iyengar's book, Light on Yoga, demonstrates all of these yoga postures, Patabi, you know, his 90 minute sequence. The real person though that I blame the biggest or the most is James Fonda. So, so, so.

04:17

I say that with a little tongue in cheek and also with a lot of love and adoration for her. But when she came out with the Jane Fonda workout series, she really, I think pigeonholed that yoga is for women who's in tights wearing leggings. And so I think for a lot of men, they have a lot of resistance to doing yoga, which is really funny to me because yoga traditionally has been more of a men's club.

04:47

than a women's club. Kersha Macharya's very first student, Indra Devi, she came along and she really had to like, beat him to a pulp to get him to teach her. And so she was his first female student and kind of broke that glass ceiling. And also probably one of his most devoted students. And that's a whole other conversation. But she kind of was like the first in

05:16

it that he actually taught. So I kind of blame Jane Fonda for flipping the script and making yoga about, you know, tights and tight leggings and like warmers. And I think from there, you know, when we look at when yoga became very popular, especially in the West, it became popular in sort of the local YMCA before that yoga was offered in these kind of

05:44

Mystic yoga studios where incense was always burning and there was different statues of gods and then all of a sudden we started seeing it coming into sort of local YMCAs and then other fitness clubs and so the fitness clubs really harness what yoga was about. We saw these fitness teachers kind of all of a sudden being told they have to teach a yoga class they've never

06:13

studied yoga, they don't know what it's about. And then they're kind of creating or inventing their sort of style of what yoga is and offering that to people. So I think like that's the trajectory of how we got to where we are in my opinion. So it sounds like you're talking about how asana, which is basically the postures and vinyasa, which is the movement through these postures became the focus instead of

06:41

all of the other, what are there eight, eight folds or eight steps in, in, in the eight limb path. Yeah. And you know, when the fitness instructors were told to start teaching it and same with Jane Fonda, it's presented as a stretch. We're going to do yoga to stretch. And so even I fell victim to this category because I felt like I needed to stretch when I was 18, 19, 20, I felt like my body was starting to tighten up.

07:11

And I got into yoga to stretch. So I went to the gym to work out. And then I went to my yoga class to stretch. And so people have it in their mind, yoga equals stretching, um, and therefore to become more flexible. And so it's just been kind of like problematic. I remember I posted just recently something in my Facebook group. Um, something I think was that there is no evidence to suggest that

07:41

there's no scientific evidence to say that stretching improves muscle function. I was very careful in my wording. Um, you know, there's no evidence to say that it improves muscle function. If we look at what the function of muscles are, and then we add stretching to it, it does not improve, um, muscle function. And this person immediately responded and said, I thought yoga equals stretching, which was kind of funny cause that I hadn't said anything about that, but

08:09

I've seen this happen even with people in my orbit that kind of follow me that know what I'm doing It's a real mind bender for people to kind of wrap their head around yoga does not equal stretching or flexibility Interesting so in terms of the Can you take us through maybe the other limbs just so that people are kind of understand it in context? so Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

08:37

outlines the eight limb path. It's important for your listeners to understand that the eight limb path is sort of the prescribed practice to this dilemma that we call human suffering. We're all born into this world to achieve and manifest our life's purpose and Patanjali says right in the first three sutras, we have everything we need to do that.

09:03

when we are doing that, this is what you're experiencing. But by Sutra four, he says, we've kind of screwed it up and how this is how you unscrew it up, basically. And so we get into the eight limb path which comes into the practice part of the yoga Sutras. And so the first limb is Yama, which is sort of the restraints that we have in life. So we restrain from violence, we restrain from lying.

09:31

we were restrained from stealing. There's a few others in there. Then we get into the niyamas, which are kind of the attitudes that we hold dear to ourselves in life. So we bring those attitudes. We cultivate these attitudes. One of them is a love for God. Another one is a love of practice. Another one is like introspection. Learn to see yourself. Ask the question, who am I?

09:58

Then in the third limb is Asana.

10:05

And so we get into the practice of asana. And before I kind of go further, you have to remember Patanjali is giving us this prescription to help us get over ourselves, to help us eliminate suffering. Where does suffering exist? It exists in the human mind. It's not something that's outside of us. It's in our human mind. So the whole idea of asana is really about.

10:35

accessing that part of our mind and quieting what I sometimes call the committee. So he says, what is asana stiram sukham asana? And stira is like steady, still. You know, how many of your listeners have been to a yoga class recently where the teacher has said, okay, everybody, let's get really still. Let's get really steady. No, it's all about movement. And so

11:01

So the true word of stirra means still and then sukkha. Sukkha is kind of an interesting word. It basically means easy and soft, but it also means cultivating good space. And so the idea of good space is nothing is in your space, meaning nothing is in the space of your mind. So that's the formula for asana. And then he says by

11:29

perfecting asana, we can then practice pranayama, which I'm not going to get into a whole discussion about. And then from pranayama is, pranayama is basically like breath control. That's just a very kindergarten explanation of it, but just for your listeners right now. Then the next one is prathihara, which is sensory withdrawal. Then we, from sensory withdrawal, once our senses are inward, we can practice concentration.

11:58

I always tell my yoga teachers when I'm training them, forget everything except concentration, teach people how to concentrate, how to hold one idea in their mind for more than one second. That's the power of yoga, uh, is learning to concentrate, harness the power of the mind and focus it on one area. If you can do that, that will lead you into meditation.

12:25

Diana, and then the final one is Samadhi, which is… the simple translation is just bliss, or oneness with self.

12:35

Beautiful. So, and, and it seems like the, from what I recall, the asana or the postures, and you kind of alluded to this is basically in preparation for meditation. So it's, it's not supposed to be done like on its own. Yeah. But this, the, what Patanjali was wanting to address was a couple of things. He's saying that we, in order for us to meditate, we have to be still, and that we also need to

13:03

cultivate a sense of good space, meaning that our mind needs to become still. And we do that by then stilling the body. So the body is sort of a reflection of what's going on in the mind. The breath is a reflection of what's going on in the mind. So let's bring a sense of stillness to this. You know, the real translation of Asana, a lot of people translate it as posture, you know, trikonasana, triangle pose. The real translation of Asana is actually seat.

13:32

You know, it's, it's how are you sitting? And then of course we've, we've changed it to posture. So what he was really talking about was get your seat still so that the mind can become still, get it also cultivate a sense of good space within. And what that means basically is that you're, you're starting to calm your thoughts and

14:00

with those two kind of formulas in your mind that you can start to prepare, as you said, for meditation. I think that one thing I do want to add though, and this is... I think this is important because you're going to ask me, well, how does this tie into a yama eventually? And I think that one of the gifts of Krishna Macharya, besides him being the first yoga influencer,

14:29

is that he dedicated his whole life to understanding or realizing that the plague of human, the human mind, the plague of the human mind is unsteadiness. You know, and when the mind is unsteady, the result is confusion. A mind that is not steady is going to be confused. And I think that when we do start to get still and and

14:57

quiet within ourselves while cultivating good space, there's something profound that starts to happen. Yoga Sutras call it like this light of consciousness awakens within us. The intrinsic wisdom of the soul awakens. And so with Krishnamurti, what his goal was, was to teach people how to use postures as a way to get steady.

15:25

but also to strengthen their bodies, to have a body that's functioning in life, that can become stronger and become a vehicle for the soul. And if we look at sort of the average lifespan, and I think this is kind of an important thing to bring into the conversation, like the typical lifespan of Indians was very low, very, very, very low. A lot of people always kind of, you know,

15:54

yogis on this pedestal, oh, they live for a long time. Well, I don't know what you call a long time, maybe 30 years, 40 years, if you're lucky, that would be considered an old yogi, 40 years. And so part of his mission was to teach people the postures as a way to cultivate that steadiness, not just in mind, but also in body, improve breath function, improve the function of the body. And

16:24

make it more applicable or practical to life, you know, in general. And so I think that was one of the things that he really left in that science that he created is called vinyasa krama. And so we hear a lot of yoga teachers teaching vinyasa and they completely miss, misinterpret what vinyasa krama actually is supposed to be, which was

16:53

using this yoga practice to be able to wisely progress in our practice so that we could become more functional in life. And that's kind of the approach that I take. I use asana first and foremost as a way to get steady still and cultivate that good space within. But then also how do we start to use asana in a way

17:21

that actually improves body function so that we can become more functional in our life. So that if you're going out to the car, you're getting in your car, you drop your keys, you bend over to pick them up, you don't throw your back out. You know? That you're able to go grocery shopping without injuring your shoulders or putting a kink in your neck. So that's kind of where I come into this idea of

17:49

How do we bring it more functional into life?

17:54

So I'm really curious what a yoga class looks like that you teach. And I do wanna get into Ayama and how stretching harms the body and a number of these other things. But can you kind of just take us through what postures generally look like? If you know, is there a flow? Is there a speed or a slowness? I mean, we're talking about being still. We're talking about, you know,

18:23

Can you kind of just give us an idea about what that looks like? Sure. So I take kind of a couple of different approaches in the way that I teach Asana. The first and foremost is embracing, you know, this teaching of Patanjali, having people use Asana as a way to turn inward, not outward. The second of all, taking a very tantric approach to Asana. What does that mean? That means that you're

18:49

doing these postures as a way to awaken pranic energy, life force energy within us. And in sort of the tantric idea of it is that we're using energy as a way to capture the attention of mind. So where is that energy? It's inside of us. So the simple way of saying that is just learning to feel what's going on within us. We do a posture.

19:15

we get still and we're able to feel what's going on. And then the third way I teach postures is a way of actually improving muscle function. And I think kind of two ways to, two postures that I can kind of pull out of my head right now to explain that is one is Trikonasana. So triangle pose. So normally when a teacher is setting up triangle pose, they'll say, bring the arms out, you know, kind of tilt the body forward over.

19:44

front leg as much as you can and reach the hand for the floor or block. I don't teach it like that. Um, the goal of the teacher teaching it like that, like let's stretch it out. Is to stretch one side of the body in the Ayama philosophy. What we're looking to do is to actually strengthen the muscles that are moving the body. So the side that's lengthening is not really moving the body.

20:13

what's moving the body is the side that's shortening. So I would set it up differently, just very quickly, people can learn more if they want to, but I say cross the arms and then bend over that leg, but also focusing on feeling sort of the muscles that are working, which is the lateral, you know, the lateral obliques and the QL. So you're kind of crunching over to one side.

20:39

to start activate the muscles that are actually moving the bones of the body into that position. And then I might cue, sometimes I don't, it depends on the group I'm doing, but then I might say just spread the arms and without like focusing on reaching for a goal. So that's another big important distinction where my classes become very inclusive. There is no such thing as, okay, we're trying to get to this point.

21:07

If you're folding forward over your legs, oftentimes this is another way I'll cube postures. If you're folding forward, doing a seated forward fold, for example, I'll say bring your hands behind your back and then fold forward. So now you're taking out any possibility of using your hands to pull yourself forward. You're using a strap. What's driving you in that pose is now your

21:35

abdominal muscles, all of your trunk flexor muscles. So those are the muscles that are starting to move you. And I also often cue people just to close their eyes when they're doing these poses. So it takes them out of this idea of like, oh, I should get somewhere. And instead it starts to tune them into feeling what's going on in their body. So you asked me earlier, like, what does a class look like? That's sort of the way that I set up yoga postures.

22:06

I wouldn't say that I teach a flow per se. Sometimes I'll throw in, you know, like a traditional thing is like, you know, come to standing, you know, inhale the arms up, exhale, fold forward, and then take the feet back down dog and then lunge the right foot forward. Sometimes I'll do that. Sometimes I won't. I generally don't teach sun salutations anymore. I just don't really find them useful to teach.

22:33

Um, that's probably one of the big distinctions and I definitely stay away from Chaturanga Dandasana. I just, too many people are dealing with wrist and shoulder issues. It's just not worth it to me to injure people even more so. Yeah. I found that over the years with my own practice where it has to keep evolving because if I have an injured wrist or ankle or, you know, something that's, that's happening as I'm getting older.

23:01

I have to do more and more modifications. Yes. Yeah. And that's the interesting thing is I think that kind of we don't address skillfully in the yoga world. We keep injuring ourselves and then we keep modifying. And in another word for modifying is sort of compensation. We keep compensating. And from a neuromuscular standpoint, anytime we start compensating, we actually

23:29

promote more weakness. We don't actually ever address the weakness, uh, neuro from a neuro muscular standpoint head on. Um, so one of the things that we should be doing instead of like, you know, uh, compensating, um, is actually addressing, why are the shoulders weak? You know, and well, what are the muscles supporting the shoulders? How do we get those muscles start, you know, turning on?

23:58

One of the most important muscles, well, not the most, but one of the most is the triceps, not triceps, trapezius muscle. And so a lot of what we're doing in, especially poses like chaturangas, we're stressing the trapezius muscle out. When we stress a muscle, it turns off, it no longer is able to contract and contract on demand, which means now we've lost stability in that joint. And

24:26

So a lot of the approach that I take is creating not only 100% accountability. So when the person is going through a range of motion that there's complete muscle engagement there, but also how do we start to even more improve the muscles that are surrounding those joints? How do we start to get those muscles? One of the words I use is get the muscles fired up, get them activated.

24:54

so that they are able to contract and contract on demand and kind of tie it back to Patanjali's Sutra, you know, stirra and sukham. Stirra translates as still, but it also translates as steady. And so I kind of feel like as yoga teachers, our responsibility is to get our students steady, not just in mind, but also in body, so that they leave stronger than when they came in.

25:22

What a novel concept. Hello. Yeah, I used to do power yoga or ashtanga and I injured myself too many times. I wasn't able to attend those classes anymore. Yeah, I remember when I used to have a, I used to be a bigger stanga person. So that's why I can.

25:47

talk about Patabi and make comments. And I was a very diehard, one of those Ashtanga people that everything else is bold and that this was the only path. And that was in my twenties when you're young and think you know everything. And I really hurt my shoulder and the solution from the teacher, I remember them saying this,

26:16

we just need to open the shoulder more. And by opening it, they mean like stretch it out more. And that did not solve the problem at all. It actually made it a thousand times worse where I ended up waking up in the middle of the night with, you know, searing pain in my scapula. It was like somebody was driving a knife into my scapula. And so that was sort of my first awakening to maybe...

26:46

I need to change the way I think about yoga postures. We get humbled in our practice many times. Indeed. So you've touched on this a little bit, but is there anything else that you want to talk about in terms of how stretching harms the body? You've talked about kind of like what it does to the joints and you talked about the trapezius and...

27:12

and how it compromises things there. Is there anything else you want to add around why stretching harms the body? Well, I mean, there is science behind it and you can go and read about it. It's not like a novel concept. When, I mean, there's a few ways of explaining it. Like, you know, think about the muscle spindles within the muscles, like a slinky, you know, you get a slinky as a child.

27:39

Uh, for Christmas, it comes out of the box. It works perfectly. But as children typically do, they like literally stretch it out. And so when you stretch out that slinky, um, it probably will never come back to its coiled state again, uh, muscle spindles, especially when we're younger, we can have the luxury of stretching them and they typically will coil up.

28:07

rather quickly, but as we get older, and when I say older, by the way, I mean like 28, 29, 30. So I'm not saying like 70, I'm saying, it happens very quickly. We lose that ability to bounce back sort of around after the age of 24, 25, depending on what study you wanna refer to, but that those muscle spindles don't coil back up. And so we want those muscle spindles in their coiled state,

28:35

And those muscle spindles are also talking to our nervous system. They're sending feedback all the time. And the, the word for that is gamma motor neuron co-activation. So the, the muscles are talking to the nervous system. When we stretch a muscle, we stop or inhibit that gamma motor neuron co-activation. And when you hear some people actually talking about the science of stretching, I was horrified.

29:05

Sometimes when I listen to people talk, they actually talk about this gamma motor neuron coactivation inhibition as a good thing because it can make you more flexible. But the problem is, is if your muscles aren't talking to your nervous system, there's no feedback loop, then how do you expect your nervous system to...

29:28

or your muscles to be able to support the joints of your body, meaning that they lose their ability to contract and contract on demand. So whenever we stretch, we start to compromise that neurofeedback loop. And we then start to create neuromuscular weakness, meaning that communication system has become compromised. So from what we wanna do is improve that

29:57

that communication system. And so that's why stretching in a nutshell, in a very small nutshell, isn't good for you, because it does compromise it. Now, I know a lot of people make the argument that the muscles lose their force output, but it will regain strength. And the question that I always ask is, well, how long does it take before the muscles gain strength?

30:25

And why would you want to debilitate the muscles in the first place? Like our first line in yoga in the, in the Ayamas is do no harm, ahimsa, nonviolence. So when, when our muscles are tightening up, and this is a question that no yoga teacher is able to answer almost. I've never heard a yoga teacher give an intelligent answer to this question. Why do we have muscle tightness in the first place?

30:53

Well, the simple answer is it's a protective mechanism. You know, the body tightens up as a protective mechanism. It's trying to stabilize itself. So for myself, I've had tight hamstrings most of my life until I started practicing this stuff and I didn't understand that my hamstrings were tightening because nothing else was working. My back muscles were shutting down. My hip flexors didn't work. My quads didn't work. So.

31:20

In order for my body to have stability, you know, the nervous system sends out an SOS message, tighten up, tighten up, tighten up. So tight muscles is a protective mechanism. And what I find really fascinating in the yoga world is, and you've done Kripalu, I mean, they're really big into this idea of do no harm, honor your body, listen to your body, respect the body. And I find it fascinating stretching is the...

31:49

antithesis of this. We're violating our body's own protective mechanism. Instead of asking, you know, the question, how do we deal with these tight muscles? How do I loosen them up? We really should be asking, why are the muscles tight in the first place? What is the source of the instability? So for people that have tight hamstrings, you know, the simple answer, and this is a very simplistic answer, but a good one, is get the hip flexors activated.

32:17

And it's fascinating. As soon as you activate people's hip flexors, range of motion intensifies and increases dramatically when you get the hip flexors working because all of a sudden the body senses stability. It goes, oh, when the leg is coming up, I have these muscles to work with. Before, when you brought the body, the leg up, the leg could

32:46

none of the muscles actually working that was bringing the leg up in the first place. So when we get the muscles working, we not only get rid of muscle tightness, but we have range of motion to the degree that we're stable in that range of motion, as opposed to just grabbing a strap and pulling our leg to a place that exceeds our range of motion, we don't have any strength there.

33:14

So you've mentioned the word activation quite a bit. And so that's probably a nice lead in to, you know, what is the solution, which sounds like it's the Ayama. It's the supplied yoga anatomy plus muscle activation. Yeah, sure. So when I got into studying muscle activation, which is the lane that I kind of drive in, I learned it from more of a practitioner client approach. So,

33:41

I can go in, I can test muscles to see if they're strong or they're weak, and then I can activate them and start turning those muscles on. When I started asking the question, how do I bring this into yoga? How do I bring this into a more dynamic setting? The answer is isometrics. And so basically what we're looking to do is isometrically shorten a muscle for a certain period of time.

34:08

Um, and then repeat it so many times. So the magic number is six, six sets. So engage a muscle or, or shorten the muscle isometrically for six seconds and repeat it six times. So there's a lot of yoga postures where we actually are doing isometrics. Two of them, three of them that come to my mind, one of them is plank pose. So if you do plank correctly, you can really isometrically start to engage your core muscles.

34:38

which is really great, activates your TVA, your transverse abdominis, and a few others. Another one is bridge pose, setubandhasana. So coming up into bridge, when you're lying on your back, your knees are bent, your feet are on the floor, you lift your hips up as high as you can, you're now engaging your hip extensor muscles. And so another one is, like I often call it Superman or Locust pose, you lie on your stomach,

35:08

and your arms are by your sides, and then you lift your chest and your legs off the ground. And so, by the way, those are three things that if your listeners start doing now, they can dramatically improve a lot of issues in their lives. So that was a freebie. But if you come up into Superman, often people ask me like, if you just had one pose to do every day, what would it be? It would be Superman. Because the biggest area that we

35:38

suffer in age is our spine. And so the muscles around our spine just are not working properly. They're either not firing properly and or they're just not strong. And so that is one of the best ways to start activating those muscles and getting them stronger. So six seconds, six times. Six seconds, six times. Okay. So that was a plank, that was bridge, and that was Superman or Lucas. Yes. Yes. Yes. Brilliant.

36:07

Yeah. Such an, so interesting. And so that's, so that's the activation. So how does, how does pain, um, play into this? Sure. So why, like, let's just use back pain cause that's like the number one affliction with people. So we have a bunch of joints in the back, you know, the, we call our spine. And one of the things that I think is important in this conversation,

36:37

when we're talking about why shouldn't you stretch, one of the very simplistic reasons is, well, what are we stretching? Muscles, ligaments, okay. What do muscles do? What are muscles supposed to do? Well, muscles primarily have two jobs, move bones and stabilize joints. And how do muscles do that? They do that by contracting. And a healthy muscle function is a muscle

37:07

contract on demand. So when I, you just lifted your arm to take a sip of water, you can reach your arm up, you know, as you're doing that range of motion, you're in your, maybe you're grabbing something. Um, all the muscles that are moving the shoulder should be immediately firing to contract and contract on demand to stabilize that arm joint. And so coming back to the spine, we have all of these muscles that are supposed to

37:36

stabilize the spine to hold it in place and also to move it through different ranges of motion. When those muscles aren't working properly, there becomes stress at the joints. The joint becomes stressed out. What is the result of stress? Inflammation. And so it's the inflammation that is causing the pain. And what I often find like

38:05

95% of the time and sometimes more is as soon as we get the muscles working, that whole inflammation pain cycle, stress inflammation pain cycle stops because the joint is now supported. And when I say stop, oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes it will be immediate. Like people will be like, I don't feel like that pain anymore yet because the muscles

38:34

or stabilizing joints in the body. And when the body feels that stability, that inflammatory process oftentimes will stop or decrease dramatically. So it seems like the, I mean, the muscle activation is most important as part of this process. And you're kind of using yoga as like a vehicle to do the muscle activation. As a yoga teacher and recognizing that A stretching

39:04

killing me, literally. I ended up in the hospital with an orthopedic surgeon telling me that he wanted to do a spinal fusion in my lower back. Hasn't happened yet, knock on wood, because of this stuff. But it's, so that as a yoga teacher, I started asking the question, if I'm not teaching stretching, and I want to incorporate.

39:30

this technology into postures and still embody the qualities of yoga. You know, there's a few things I had to reconcile. One stretching does not equal yoga. I mean, literally there's no mention of stretching or flexibility in any of the yoga sutras, any of the yoga scriptures, the Upanishads, the Gita, there's no mention of stretching or flexibility. So, um, so there, that was the thing I had to reconcile.

40:00

And then bringing into this, as you said, the muscle activation into postures. So in my mind, it's flipping the script in how we're doing postures. So for example, in a seated forward fold, instead of saying to students, reach forward, grab your feet, pull yourself forward, or use a strap, bring your hands behind your back. Instead of teaching standing forward bends, fold forward, touch the floor.

40:30

Oh, good Maria. You've got your hands now behind your feet. What a great yogini you are. I will cue it to like leave the hands behind. Sorry to anybody named Maria. I didn't mean you. Bring the hands behind the back. Do anybody had taken offense? And keep the hands behind the back or on the hips. Now, instead of coming forward all the way, come forward 20 degrees and keep your core muscles really engaged. Inhale back up.

41:00

Exhale, come forward 20 degrees. Inhale, come up. Exhale, now come forward maybe 30 degrees. Usually I don't cue it more than 30 to 45. It depends on who I'm teaching. But it's just the way that we start to set up poses, it's different than, okay, let's just try and touch the floor. Cause that doesn't really serve, a, the body or anybody in the room as they're watching Maria, you know, be able to kiss the floor.

41:29

Stiff Biff is in the corner jealous and has, you know, now he's got more issues going on. So that's what I say by teaching a class that's more inclusive, but also more engaging. Like if you're standing and you're doing forward flexion to 20 degrees and actually staying there for a breath, that's really demanding. Where is it demanding? It's really demanding on your core muscles, especially if you're engaging them properly.

41:59

So it's just kind of flipping the script. There's a lot of yoga postures that you can still teach normally, like warriors, the warrior poses, they're really great. Some of the lunges I don't teach, some of them I do. Definitely most of the back bends are fantastic, you know, if you teach them properly. So it's, yeah, I would just say it's like a regular yoga class. It's just, I'm flipping the script in...

42:28

approach, I'm understanding that I'm no longer trying to lengthen muscles, I'm more interested in actually shortening muscles because the shortening muscles are the ones that are driving the movement. Does that make sense? It does. And you were talking about isometrics and you're talking about shortening muscles. Can you give our audience a little bit more of a concrete example so they understand what those words mean?

42:53

the difference between shortening or contracting. I use, sometimes use those words interchangeably. So a better word to use would be contracting. We want to get the muscles to contract because you can shorten a muscle passively. And that's a whole other conversation, but the better word to use is to contract. We want to get the muscles to be able to contract and contract on demand. When it can do that, that's a sign that it is

43:21

neuromuscularly connected and it's working and it's working optimally. And contracting a muscle is like you said shortening it, right? Yes. And stretching is kind of like the opposite, is that correct? Yes. Yes. So when you're going to ask a question, I'm sorry. No, no, no. Okay. So when, you know, one of the reasons why, like we used the hamstring example earlier,

43:50

Hamstrings are tightening up because the hip flexors aren't contracting properly. They're not being used. They're not, they're not neuromuscularly connected. So once we get the hip flexors working, the hamstrings let go. And this is like something that kind of blows my mind a little bit that we've forgotten this piece of science that muscles work in pairs. There's an agonist and antagonist stick relationship, meaning when one muscle shortens,

44:18

So if I'm shortening my big bulging bicep here, I don't have big bulging biceps. And then what happens in response so that I can bring my hand, my wrist towards my shoulder, as the bicep contracts, the tricep is relaxing. A lot of doctors even and movement specialists will use this word stretching and it's an inaccurate word.

44:47

Because stretching denotes that there's some sort of outside force pulling at it. We stretch a rubber band. We stretch a band, you know. We pull it apart. It's a better word to use is just relax. You know, when my bicep contracts, the tricep relaxes or lengthens. You know, it just lengthens automatically. If it's tight...

45:13

it's a good sign that the opposite muscle isn't shortening properly. So in the case of tight hamstrings, your hamstrings are tight. It's a good sign that your hip flexors are not working properly. And again, it comes back to, well, they're tightening up as a protective mechanism. So how do you activate the hip flexors? So there's a couple of easy hacks to activate the hip flexors.

45:40

You know, if you want to break each of the hip flexors down, we have the major ones, which is psoas major, iliacus, rectus femoris, TFL. You can break those down and start doing individual muscle activations for them. One of my favorites, there's a few that I have that are sort of more general. And I try to incorporate a combination of individual and general into my classes, because I think it's good to use a lot of muscles at once.

46:10

And sometimes it's nice to break down a muscle, but a good general hack is going to blow your mind. It's so in yoga, there's this post called souped up pattern. Gustas and it's, it's when you're lying on your back supine, uh, you bring the leg up and most people will take a strap to that foot. So you're lying on your back. You bring one leg up, bring a strap around the foot and pull it towards you.

46:38

Do the same thing, but no strap. So just simply bring the leg up as much as you can and just hold it there for six seconds and then slowly lower the leg back down. And then just repeat that six times. Slowly bring the leg up as high as you can. Stay there for six seconds and then very slowly start to bring the leg down. And as you...

47:05

The key, one of the keys to that formula is slow movement. So slow movement is what helps to start building this neuromuscular connection. Uh, it actually starts to strengthen all of the slow twitch muscle fibers too, which are the part of the muscle that is able to contract and contract on demand. So that's one way to start doing it. Cause as you're bringing the leg up, what are you using? All of your hip flexors, a little bit of trunk flexion too, and they're contracting.

47:33

A little sort of pro tip for you, Evan, if you're doing that is on the leg that's coming up, bring your hand to that thigh and make sure that your thigh muscles are completely engaged the entire time. Once you've kind of come up to that furthest point with about two or 3% effort, push the thigh or the leg into the hand and that will get it to engage a little bit more.

48:02

and then just do that six seconds, six times. Nice, and so by when you're saying engaged and activated, that's shortening, that's contracting. Yeah, so that the thigh, cause you're gonna notice, you're gonna come up to a certain point and those thighs are not engaged anymore. You've kind of bypassed their ability to contract and contract on demand. So keep the, only raise it up so far to the point where that muscle is staying contracted.

48:33

So there are a lot of elderly people who have kyphosis, they're like bent over and a lot of that comes from the contraction of those hip flexors. So how do you navigate that since that's kind of a natural tendency for humans to kind of contract over and yet we're talking about contracting hip flexors? So this is a good question to ask. Are those muscles contracting?

49:01

Or are those muscles in a tightened state? And then the follow-up question is, why are they in a tightened state? So if our hip flexors are tightening up and we can go on Google or YouTube, and YouTube like, why are my hip flexors tightened? You're gonna constantly see the same answer because we're sitting. That's not necessarily true. And that would take another 15 minutes to explain why. But...

49:29

The short answer is they're tightening up. They're not overly contracting. They're in a tightened state, which I guess is kind of like an overly contracted state, but they're in a tonic tightened state. And so they're tightening up because none of our back muscles are working. What are the opposite muscles are our, uh, hip extensors and our back muscles are our trunk extensors.

49:57

So a great way, especially for your clients, I love sharing tips on kyphosis. And I have like a ton of videos on this because it's all about getting these back muscles strong. And a simple way to do that is like, bring your arms out to the sides, turn the palms forward, and then slowly rotate externally, rotating the palms open, externally rotating the bicep. Now sitting straight,

50:27

or sitting a rec, just kind of squeeze the arms back and you're gonna start to feel mid trap starting to engage. Do that six seconds, six times. That's a great one. Another great one is just bring your arms into a cactus pose again, and then just kind of take your hands and your elbows back. And again, you're gonna start to feel a little bit of lower trap, definitely mid trap, starting to engage. And now we'll start to...

50:55

turn those muscles on. That's a really simple, easy, accessible thing for people that are elderly to start doing. And I would actually argue that if you do it enough, you could start to turn back your muscular clock. Because once you start getting those muscles working, what do muscles do? They hold bones, they stabilize joints, hold bones into place, right?

51:24

So you could start to change your posture quite dramatically, getting those back muscles working. Brilliant. Well, I have really enjoyed this conversation. My mind is a little bit blown right now, and I'm really excited to try some of these things out. You know, I've had back pain for a number of years and the way that I treat it is by stretching is by touching my toes. And at night, before I go to bed, I do a plow pose.

51:49

So, you know, that, and that feels good. And that's always been very helpful, but I'm really excited about trying to do it in this different way. Cause I also know that my hip flexors are weak. Yeah. And so I'm excited to try this out. So for people who are listening to this and they're excited about trying it out, how can they do that? Yeah, sure. So I, you know, I would like to offer, people just get onto my seven day pain free series. It's for free.

52:17

I told you before we started talking, my number one goal is to get people out of pain. And it breaks my heart to see people in pain. They don't have to be in pain. You don't have to go to bed with back pain every night. I'm not saying that you're choosing to go to bed with back pain, but there are options. And once you know the options, then you have choice. So it's interesting. I could go on about back pain, but anyways, one of the big culprits

52:46

we were just talking about is the hip flexors. So as major, which stable, literally its job is to stabilize the lordotic curve in the lumbar spine. So that's definitely a muscle that you wanna get activated and get those hip flexors activated, but people can access the seven day series. Hopefully I'll put the link in the show notes. They can also go to my website, yogiarin.com or the yogi club and

53:13

There's it's all over the place. I really promote this series a lot. It's one of the biggest tools that I found that's at least started people on the right track of understanding their body and how to get some of the key muscles turning on, AKA like the psoas, some of the back muscles, some of the trunk flexors. How do we start to turn those muscles on so that we are getting the proper support, the neuromuscular support.

53:41

in our body that we should be getting. And we'll drop the links to that. And then also you have a free gift, the How to Live Pain Free

53:52

What is that? Well, the free gift is the seven days to becoming pain-free. Yeah, yeah. Takes about seven days, seven to ten. So... Excellent. Well, we will drop that in there along with the link to your website. And I just can't tell you how much I appreciate the work that you're doing, you know, having that mission for pain-free people is right up with my mission for...

54:21

helping people resolve their fatigue and the world will be a better place without fatigue and without pain for sure. Well, I mean, a little bit of pain needs to teach us, right? We need a little bit of that suffering in order to learn, but not the pain that so many people are experiencing today. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Evan. Appreciate you having me on. Thanks so much for being on today. So if you have chronic fatigue, long COVID or mass cell activation syndrome, and you're looking for help,

54:50

Check us out at energy MD method.com. We have a program for almost every single budget and we're here to help.

54:59

I hope you learned something on today's podcast. If you did, please share it with your friends and family and leave us a 5-star review on iTunes. It's really helpful for getting this information out to more people who desperately need it. Sharing all the experts I know and love.

55:17

and the powerful tips I have is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Thanks for being part of my community. Just a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. It is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Thanks for listening and have an amazing day.