Author Archives: Cecile Raynor

Oct29

Harmful Stretching versus Healthy Stretching Part 2

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

The 3 women above use their head, neck, and torso relationship for dynamic postural alignment

Dynamic postural alignment has been proven crucial for the best mind and body functioning. You can bend down further than these women without sacrificing your dynamic postural alignment. It is not about keeping a straight back at all cost, it is about hinging at the joints instead of using your neck or back as a hinge. This way, your spine can release into a beautiful smooth curve when needed.

How do you know if you are hinging with your neck or back? Hinging from a made up hinge (usually neck or back) results in straining with compression or over-extension. You are straining your neck when you collapse your head back and down creating a compression or when you stick your head forward. You are straining your back when you tighten your back muscles to send yourself upright or when you are stretching a single area in your back just because it feels good.

How you use your body in an integrated way is more important than producing an extreme version of any pose. No pain, no gain is a myth!

Spinal overstretch as well as neck or waist compression happen when you do not work with your innate body intelligence while performing a specific stretch or movement and it shows. Moreover, this kind of tension and distortion accumulates over time and eventually promotes injury on or off the yoga mat.

These are examples of how in an effort to reach your toes, you may bend from your upper back as if it was a hinge.

Joints in the body are the only appropriate hinges. Yet, these pictures are a common sight and it feels good and is gratifying to stretch hard but is it worth it? Their focus is on the goal at end (reaching their toes and stretching their back) instead of using the innate wisdom of their body which would simply release natural hinges (occipital joint, armpits, hip joint sockets, knees and ankles) and respect the dynamic alignment of the head, neck and torso.

Lack of flexibility or excess flexibility are both a problem as explained in the little cartoon video below. However, learning to use your body as a whole to release into a stretch will give you the best lengthening possible in your body and increasingly add to your flexibility level without leading to overstretching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeEIoGMldyc

H O L I S T I C S T R E T C H I N G T I P S

1) RELEASE INTO A STRETCH.

Allow all your joints to release, starting with the ones on each side of a muscle or muscle group you want to lengthen. As a result your muscles are able to easily lengthen naturally into a stretch that spreads all over your body no matter where you started. In the process, the skeletal alignment reorganizes itself instead of being distorted like in the pictures above! How does this happen?

By allowing a letting go of tension in your joints, you empower your postural mechanism to do its job. And your body intelligence knows how much release and what skeletal alignment is appropriate in that moment. No risk of overdoing, yet you get the best stretch ever. A holistic stretch is like riding a wave, only the wave is going through your whole body connecting you from head to toes!

The body is a web of connections, so unless you always include what happens in the whole body, focusing on one body part at a time is not very efficient although it feels good in the moment. Besides running the risk of overstretching and creating unnecessary muscular-skeletal problems, it also promotes an ongoing need to stretch the same muscles over and over because the benefits do not have enough staying power. The fact is that the whole body synergy, when not addressed, calls for that tension to come back.

2) STOP TIGHTENING YOUR BODY AND MIND.

Consider stretching your mind as a prerequisite to gaining a looser body on and off the mat. The mind and the body are the two sides of the same coin. This “I choose not to tighten” practice is an intention you carry over throughout the day. It affects both your body and mind, it helps you let go of attachment to things and thoughts.

As your mind relaxes, so do your joints and muscles which helps activate your postural mechanism in charge of your best balance and coordination. Tightening constricts your skeleton and the organs inside it all day long. Choosing to stop tightening allows it to expand back and up and out. It makes you feel lighter both in your body and in your mind.

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Alexander Technique teachers have been teaching this since the 19th century. If you want to learn to stretch in an integrated way and you are in the Boston area, come to my workshops and classes or call for a private session by calling 617 359 7841.

To inquire about my Workshops for Yoga Teachers, my Workshops for Yoga Students and my Alexander Technique Workshops or to register online, click on https://offthematyogablog.com/schedule/

Oct16

Harmful Stretching versus Healthy Stretching! Part 1

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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Notice how her upper back and shoulders are rounded which makes her compress the back of her neck as she is reaching for her foot? It may be the best she can do considering where she may be at with her posture but this is certainly enhancing her habitual postural pattern.

Stretching feels good and can be helpful when done in a way that is appropriate for the body as a whole.
How do you stretch? Do you stay mostly focused on the muscles you are stretching? Do you find yourself rounding your back to stretch your tensed back muscles thinking it is a good thing to do because it feels good? Are you aware you may be compressing the back of your neck while you focus on a stretch?

You may be surprised to hear that muscles are not meant to be stretched in that way and that actually, this is a form of overstretching! It is easy to confuse the feeling good in the stretched muscles for something good to do. A bit like indulging in a meal that tastes good and is healthy even though it may not be best for your body. What matters for “Healthy Stretching” is not only what you do but how you do it and sometimes why you do it. Creating muscle strain and skeletal distortion while you exercise does not really serve you well despite all your good intentions. However, expanding your awareness by making helpful distinctions can resolve many problems by placing them in a bigger perspective.

Notice how her neck is nicely aligned with the rest of her spine so her head is still poised on top of her spine and above her sits bones. On the other end, his neck is jutting forward creating neck tension while he is trying to undo tension in other parts of his body.

Do you know how to access your inner teacher to make sure you are not creating excess body tension in one part of your body while you are undoing tension with your stretch in another?

Keeping an awareness of what is happening in your whole body whatever body part you are working with is essential to benefit from your stretches without creating more problems for yourself while you stretch. Your stretches are most efficient when you start by freeing your joints from excess tension with a thought of letting go of that tension. Neurons get fired at every thought and affect your whole body as they travel via your nervous system.

That is why when you have happy thoughts, it shows in your facial expression and in the way you carry yourself. Same applies with depressing thoughts. The fact is your postural mechanism is in charge of your balance and coordination. And it can guide you towards your most efficient stretches if you let it do its job by releasing into your stretches starting with your joints.

In the article below by Brooke Thomas called “S t r e t c h i n g d o e s n o t w o r k the w a y y o u t h i n k i t d o e s“, she shares the finding of Jules Mitchell’s thesis presenting a bio-mechanical view into stretching and yoga poses. Because Jules started her work from the perspective of a yoga teacher- with all the training that had told her that stretching leads to increased flexibility, she was surprised to discover that the research on stretching did not prove what she was taught to be true.

http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/stretching-doesnt-work-the-way-you-think-it-does

For this pose to be more holistic and therefore efficient, these women could choose to release their knees a bit more
which would help them release all the other joints, especially their hip joints sockets. As a result, their spine would lengthen effortlessly!

Jules Mitchell discovered that this popular stretching idea – if you stretch more and stretch harder, your tissue will change – was untrue. In reality, Brooke points out, “we are not lumps of clay that can be molded by persistently tugging on things”. We are functioning as an integrated whole from head to toes, mind, body and soul!

The best way to stretch is to let your postural mechanism do its job while you stretch. Only then do you benefit from “Healthy Stretching”! There are actually two complementary ways to practice “Healthy Stretching”. For more details about it, look for Part 2 of this article coming soon on this blog.

To inquire about my October and November Workshops for Yoga Teachers, Workshops for Yoga Students and my Alexander Technique Workshops or to register online, click on https://offthematyogablog.com/schedule/

Aug24

Core Strengthening, Stability & Low Back Pain

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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There is a lot of talk about “Core Strengthening” in the yoga world and in the fitness world in general. Only, there is also a lot of confusion about it? This blog is an attempt to clarify this notion of core using common sense and experience. You may think that the stronger your trunk muscles are the safer your back and the more stable you are. It is not totally untrue. Yet, the popular consensus seems to be that strengthening is all about making something tighter and more compact. So it brings about the following questions.

How can inner or outer armoring allow you to function with ease and flexibility? How can you be stable without flexibility? Who decided that the core needed to be muscularly strengthened? And how can you separate the core from the rest of your body and exercise it specifically when everything in the body is intertwined? Are there studies showing it increases stability and helps back pain sufferers? Listen to Peter O’Sullivan in his U Tube video published on Apr 4, 2013 where he discusses cognitive functional therapy and the myth of “core stability” in relation to chronic low back pain.

http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=D_uzTQTBMKI&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYezBG_NdLgs%26feature%3Dshare

In his paper “The Myth of Core Stability”, Professor Eyal Lederman from London also claims no studies actually shows the effectiveness of muscular core strengthening. In fact, we are told that studies have shown no such connection between muscular strengthening of the core and back pain or stability for that matter. Better daily use of the body and regular whole body exercising are the best tools to strengthen what needs strengthening. It is the best way to stay fit, to prevent back pain and create healing space when injured. And the Alexander Technique is the best tool I know to achieve this “Better Use of Ourselves” without relying on muscular control of individual body parts. It teaches you how to step out of the way so the wisdom of your body can do its job of strengthening, and balancing as you engage in any activity.

When you allow yourself to let go of muscular control while staying in a yoga pose for instance, you discover that the body takes over and goes the extra mile to accommodate your pose, only it knows how to do it efficiently. As a result, a new level of ease and flexibility comes about. All the while, you are still building the same amount of strength without building excess tension. This is where the ease of any good athlete comes from. Think about the strength and stability of skaters gliding, jumping or lifting each other gracefully on slippery ice as if it was the easiest thing in the world!

The psoas muscle system and the postural muscles happen to get stronger when they are free of excess tension. This way, they grow strong simply assisting your skeletal structure. The psoas muscle system, postural muscles and skeleton, in tune with the postural mechanism affect your body from head to toes, and dance intricately and fluidly together to keep you upright with no need for added muscular effort on your part. That is the beauty of your postural mechanism when you do not interfere with unnecessary tension.

The paradigm viewing the body as a mechanical object with parts to be trained, fixed or replaced is being challenged. Slowly but surely, it is being supplanted by an understanding of the body as a living organism where everything is connected and everything affects everything. An organism where each part is a mirror of the whole and the whole is more than all the parts put together. You are a coordination system in action at every breath. So how can addressing one part at a time work in the long run? At best, it may fix one problem at the expense of another. Do animals need to exercise their core specifically for it to be strong and flexible? It seems to happen naturally as they use their whole body to fend for themselves. House cats don’t even have to fend for themselves much, still they are amazingly strong and flexible because they always move their body as a well-functioning whole.

Therefore, especially when you exercise to compensate for your sedentary life style, include “Whole Body Awareness” even as you choose to work on one part of your body at a time! This way, you give your body a chance to develop the natural core strength and stability of the cat. With no notice, they can jump up or down a great distance with grace, precision and strength but their muscles remain supple and soft. How could they accomplish this if they had tight muscles? Why would it be different for you? Is it possible that you are confusing excess tension for strength? The fact is if you do not let your postural mechanism do its job, when you exercise, you are building strength and excess tension at the same time. That added tension can only decrease your stability. On the other end, look at these women below. Their strength also comes from using their body as a whole from a young age. This way, they never lose connection with its wisdom.

Learning to activate your postural muscles is one amazing key to connect to the intelligence and wisdom of your body. As you activate them, listen, notice, embrace and learn from the micro-managements made by your postural mechanism to keep you balanced, strong and stable.

Whatever your yoga style, and whether you are on or off the mat, you can use your body efficiently and prevent injury by listening to your inner teacher via your postural mechanism! My workshops and classes teach you to do just that. Click at the top of this blog-post to check them out and register. Also, you can sign up to follow this blog which is full of great info and helpful tips.

Jul17

3 Common Oversights by Yoga Lovers that keep their Muscles and Joints Strained Part #4

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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THIRD COMMON OVERSIGHT: OVERRIDING BODY-WISDOM

Confusing what is habitual for what is natural is a major reason why you end up overriding the wisdom of your body. As explained in the previous blogs, muscular overdoing can be a compensation for skeletal distortion and skeletal distortion can happen from muscular overdoing as well. Unfortunately, all this comes to feel natural simply because it is habitual. However, muscular overdoing and skeletal misuse are both coming from the most essential oversight of all: lack of expanded awareness due to a disconnect from our beginner’s mind.

The key is to realize that you can only focus your mind on what you are aware of.

When you are being mindful on the yoga mat, the broader your body awareness, the deeper rooted is your mindfulness which allows you to blossom up and out like a beautiful tree on-and-off the mat. Certainly you can already focus your mind on not pushing past your perceived healthy limits. But what about your unperceived healthy limits? That is why somatic education to expand your body awareness is crucial. It makes the difference between your holding a tree pose with excess tension and your releasing through it as you expand up and out into it. Totally different in the moment. Totally different over time in the quality of what you harvest from your practice.

Let’s use nutrition awareness as a metaphor for understanding how various levels of awareness can expand to work together. You know what you like and don’t like to put in your mouth. In this case, your focus is on what tastes good, a primitive pleasure even a baby can be aware of. That is one level of awareness to select what to eat. However, you can also include in your decision what is healthy for your body to eat. That brings your awareness to another level. Then again, you may care to include in your decision what is healthy and sustainable for all the humans on the planet. That takes your awareness yet to another level! So as you can see, you may be mindful on some level yet unaware of a broader type of awareness.

It is the same with body awareness: you may be mindful when practicing on the yoga mat but what are you mindful of? As substantial as it may seem, what if it is just the tip of the iceberg? Motivated by the good intention to develop strength of body and mind, with all your might you may be controlling your skeleton with your muscles to perform a specific pose. Maybe muscles and bones can work together as a team if you allow them to do so within the framework of the pose chosen by your mind! Try to develop an awareness of your skeleton as your primary support system instead of relying on muscular effort to stabilize the skeleton and see what happens. In this process, you are less likely to overlook the real needs of your body and its wisdom, which is to move efficiently with ease in an integrated way.

Watch or re-watch this easy to view 7 min video I had posted in my last blog about how the skeleton works as your primary support system!

How to not override the wisdom of your body?

Be aware of your whole body no matter what body part you are focusing on. Excess tension interferes with the optimal functioning of your postural mechanism. So release all excess tension into your support without sacrificing your skeletal height so you can feel lighter, stronger but still resilient and balanced in your pose. Try it now as you are sitting reading this blog on your computer or smartphone. This ease and lightness comes from your allowing your postural mechanism to do its job by stepping out of its way. Observe how it affects your body from head to toes as you expand in all directions like bread dough rising. Notice your postural alignment improve with no muscular effort which allows you to go deeper into your growing edge when on the mat. This way, you promote a quality in your movements that is organically sustainable on and off the yoga mat.

Known for his meticulous style, Yoga Guru Iyengar himself said: “By attending to the mental and spiritual side, a sincere student of yoga becomes like a smoothly flowing river …”. This fluidity is the gift you receive from your body wisdom when you let your postural mechanism work for you. It micro-manages your joints and muscles for you while taking you to that sweet balance spot quickly and easily. This gift is often overlooked by some yoga teachers and students alike when they focus on a myriad of details to the point they loose track of the big picture. They focus on the hundreds of little waves instead of embracing the entire ocean with its full depth, hidden riches and organic support system.

Awareness expands with combined education and experience. You have heard people say, “Life happens when you are not looking!” In the same vain, you could say “the risk of injury increases when your awareness still holds some blind spots”. It does not mean that you have to be on your best behavior 24/7. It is more about educating yourself to increase the depth of your awareness and then choose to be mindful as best you can.

Expand your body awareness by learning to let your postural mechanism do its job.
It will take you into an inner journey onto the smooth flowing river of your body wisdom.

PS: To learn how to let your postural mechanism work for you and avoid unnecessary tension, join one of my classes or workshops listed above!

Jun23

3 Common Oversights by Yoga Lovers that keep their Muscles and Joints Strained. Part #3

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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SECOND COMMON OVERSIGHT: SKELETAL MISUSE

Let’s see how it happens and how you can remedy this oversight!

Here is what Yoga Guru IYENGAR himself had to say this month of May 2014 at age 96 to the question“So what exactly does yoga do?”: “Yoga generates a lot of energy in the body. Correct positions generate energy. If the asanas are done correctly, according to the body constitution, without putting any impediment in the flow of energy, it gives tremendous recovery.”

It is important to address skeletal misuse properly on-and-off the mat, because intending to not overdo on the mat cannot prevent all the overdoing happening on-or-off the mat when skeletal misuse is happening. And by addressing skeletal misuse, I am not talking about holding yourself upright. “Holding” is actually a big part of the problem. It interferes with flow and is neither sustainable, nor necessary thanks to your postural mechanism, which is designed to work for you. As you release all excess tension into your support, your postural reflexes are being triggered to do their job and in response, you can expand from the ground up and out, like a tree. When you do this, you become “Balance”.

My recent Survey Monkey for “Yoga Lovers and Injuries “ showed that many yoga lovers still suffer from chronic discomfort in the neck, shoulders, back, as well as knees and wrists, which puts them at risk of getting further injured on the yoga mat or in daily activities. At best, they can modify or avoid some poses. The fact is, once injured, sometimes, yoga lovers cannot do what they love so dearly because of how they used themselves on-and-off the yoga mat before getting injured.

Before reading more on skeletal misuse and solutions, check this video that says it so well!

As seen on this video, skeletal misuse actually comes from habitual patterns of movements you develop in everyday life such as the way you walk, the way you sit at your computer or the way you carry your backpack on your right shoulder for instance. As shown in my blog about working in the kitchen, it can get quite complex like the way you carry your young child on one hip while squeezing the phone between your shoulder and ear as you are stirring the dish simmering on the stove. These repeated ways of being take their toll on your postural alignment, which gets distorted progressively. At some point, you mistake what is habitual for what is natural. This corrupted postural sense becomes the basis for all your movements’ on-and-off the yoga mat. As a result, the muscles overdo to compensate for a lack of integration in your movements and yoga can enhance the issue instead of fixing it. Here is how this on and off the mat connection plays itself out.

Let’s say you catch yourself slouching in a daily situation and you decide to sit up or stand up instead, you may be arching your back in the process and pulling your shoulders back in an effort to feel taller and straighter. However, this being neither natural nor comfortable, you cannot sustain it for very long and most likely, seconds later you find yourself right back where you started. Sounds familiar?

As a result, when you are on the yoga mat and a pose requires proper postural alignment, you only know to arch your back to a lesser or bigger degree, yet you experience yourself to be aligned. Although proper alignment is part of good posture, there is more to good posture than proper postural alignment. Unless all excess tension is totally released, holding is happening and good posture is compromised. This is how skeletal misuse can make yoga harder than it is meant to be. Yoga has its challenges but creating unnecessary strain on your muscles and joints is not one of them not to mention it is counter-productive to your yoga practice! Yoga can help release tension or create more tension depending on the quality of your movements in general. This is why it is so essential to optimize the quality of your movements on and off the yoga mat.

Do you see the difference between these two chair pose demonstrations? Which one is more balanced because her weight is evenly spread through her feet? Which one is arching her back and overdoing with her legs to compensate for her lack of balance?

NEXT TIME YOU ARE IN A POSE, TRY THIS:

Using your beginner’s mind, as you picture the pose you have in mind and as you get into the chosen pose allow your muscles to let go of all excess tension into your support and refuse to strain. Allow small changes to happen on their own. Remain flexible as you stay in the pose while embracing your support. You will be guided instantly and every time to your sweet spot, the best way to handle the pose of the moment with no unnecessary tension. If you let it, your body wisdom can micro-manage your skeletal alignment as you release excess tension from muscles and joints. It is a fascinating experience.

Observe and learn from your own body wisdom guidance, your very best teacher!

Good luck practicing releasing all excess muscular tension while keeping your skeletal height and width.
Let the innate wisdom of your body guide you and say good bye to the unnecessary straining in your yoga practice!

Part 4 coming soon!

Jun3

3 Common Oversights by Yoga Lovers that keep their Muscles and Joints Strained Part # 2

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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Elegant Pigeon Pose

Ironically, the 3 common oversights I am addressing here can happen precisely as you are trying very hard to be conscientious about exercising and building healthy habits. The root problem of all oversights comes from starting the building process without clearing the harmful habits you have developed over time.

As a result, you spend time, energy and money yet the results don’t show up or don’t have staying power and naturally confusion or discouragement can follow.

Did this ever happen to you?

It is like building a beautiful house on bad foundations. Sooner or later, trouble starts showing up. The work offered at Off-The-Mat-Yoga is addressing the foundation of all movements precisely to avoid unnecessary trouble to show up for you on or off the mat!
With a good foundation, you end up with Simple, Integrated and Elegant Movements and Poses!

Integrated Down Dog

FIRST COMMON OVERSIGHT: MUSCULAR-OVERDOING

Muscular-overdoing is not always pure oversight.

Sometimes you choose to overdo because you think of it as pushing your limits to be strong. And it does show strength of character and will power. However, in doing so, you overlook the input of your innate body wisdom. You know how inefficient it is to talk and listen to someone at the same time, right? So when you focus on doing the pose the way you think it ought to be, you are listening to your mind and you miss out on hearing the whispering guidance of your body wisdom . And if you are not listening to the innate wisdom of your body, at the service of what part of you, are you placing your will power?

Your postural mechanism is designed to function so you can move with the appropriate amount of tension for each movement during every activity. Yoga is no exception. You can assess how in tune you are with your body wisdom by how fluid and light your movements are or how easily you find your sweet spot when on the mat.

As a yoga practitioner, if you do not know how to let your postural mechanism work for you, you are putting a lot of unnecessary stress on your body. While you are working on building up strength and balance, you are also actively building unnecessary muscle tension.

Using props, working with a Thai Yoga therapist or an Alexander Technique teacher can help you progressively expand your motion range without sacrificing your skeletal alignment and without interfering with the optimum functioning of your postural mechanism.

Overstretching is also a form of muscular overdoing or excess tension. In fact, did you know that too much tensing or stretching actually weakens your muscles natural tone and interferes with the efficiency of your postural mechanism? It is one way that gets you in trouble on-or-off the mat. It is also placing your will power at the service of your human limited mind or ego mind. It is using blind will!

Working on expanding your growing edge however, is not overdoing, when done in harmony with the innate wisdom of your body. Then, it is placing your will power at the service of wisdom. It is using wise will!

This being said, some of you may not want to overdo, still you find yourself straining into a pose. Due to daily movement habits, you may not even realize you are straining, yet later on your body hurts or feels tight. This type of overdoing on the mat can be caused by unconscious or semi-conscious skeletal misuse carried over from how you handle your body off the mat.

How do you develop such skeletal habits, and how can you improve skeletal alignment without using muscular effort?

This will be the topic of my next blog on Skeletal Misuse & Solutions!

May28

3 Common Oversights by Yoga Lovers that keep their Muscles and Joints Strained Part #1

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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Prayer-Twist-Yoga-Pose when all is in balance!

* Do you still feel your muscles and joints complaining
even though you do yoga to stretch, strengthen, balance and relax?

* Do you find yourself micro-adjusting muscles and joints in search for balance,
never being sure if or when you will find your sweet spot?

* Do you want to know how to safely expand your growing edge?

* Would you like to enjoy the benefits of yoga without the strain?

* Would you like to improve your posture without holding yourself up ?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you will enjoy and benefit from reading this blog series!

Before revealing those 3 common oversights that may keep your muscles and joints strained unnecessarily, I want you to experience what happens when in your daily life and on the yoga mat, you plug into your beginner’s mind. It is helpful because your daily mind guided by habits tends to be attached to the way you do things, the way you think or talk and that is limiting.

If I say to you “Less muscular efforts allows for more strength“, observe how your habitual way of thinking receives this, observe if and how you want to react, yet choose not to and see what comes out of this choice. Stay in a spirit of discovery: “Let’s see what happens if I don’t try so hard…can I really get stronger?” and maybe you’ll discover that indeed you can get stronger and even gain flexible strength as it were. Mainly this blog is designed to inspire you and open doors to safely go further than ever into your growing edge! As a yoga lover, I know how much you love growing past your limits and I do too!

Sometimes, there is a blind spot in our awareness and we do not realize it till it is pointed out to us. Ignoring it holds a danger factor just as ignoring the blind spot while driving a car would. Keeping a beginner’s mind opens our gate of perception wider. Understanding and experiencing become deeper and more accurate!

As a yoga lover, you already have some level of mind and body awareness. However, there are many levels of awareness to open up to as you live, learn, and mature in your life journey. Studying Yoga from learning Asanas to developing Spiritual Depth which is the purpose of Yoga is one such journey. Learning to practice yoga based on the natural movements of the body and its postural mechanism is one dimension of this same journey. It allows you to move safely on-or-off the yoga mat, thus preventing injuries.

Natural movements based on the innate wisdom of your postural mechanism is a sound foundation and a perfect tool to progressively merge the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual at every step of the way on your life journey. It is a mind and body relationship that improves the quality of your life by improving the quality of your movements, the mind and the body being the two sides of the same coin really. And it is what Off-The-Mat- Yoga blogs, classes and workshops are here to assist you with!

Food for thought till next blog: Muscular Overdoing & Will Power.
When do you use Blind Will and when do you use Wise Will?

In the meantime, make a point to explore with your beginner’s mind between now and the next blog and I’d love it if you would share your experience on this blog!

Apr8

Off The Mat Yoga in the Kitchen

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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Recently, a few people asked my advice to better handle themselves in the kitchen and avoid creating tension while cooking and eating. So here I am with some pointers to help you stay centered while eating and mostly to help all those kitchen chefs out there!

Look at the bottom of this page for two easy yoga poses I recommend you to practice before you start cooking even if you don’t have a regular yoga practice. It will remind you how to use yourself in the kitchen!

To write this blog, I went online to get some pictures of common mistakes done by people when in their kitchen.
Here is what I found. Does this look familiar?

On these pictures, you can notice the neck part of the spine craning forward from the upper back. You can also notice the mother bending her neck sideways to squish the phone between her shoulder and ear while doing three things at once as it is often the case with parents of young children.

Repeating these motions daily takes its toll on your body and then they become the basis for how you move in other activities. The head is quite heavy and when the neck is craned the way you see on the picture on the right or bent to the side as in the picture on the left, it creates tension in the neck and imbalances. Eventually it brings the shoulders rolling forward as well as you can see in the picture in the center. Only it happens progressively and then you find it feels totally natural. It is so easy to confuse what is natural with what is habitual and promote injury without being aware we are doing it!

HOW COULD YOU DO THE SAME ACTIVITIES IN A LESS HARMFUL WAY?

1) Allowing your head to rest at the top of the spine would be a good start.

2) Allowing your knees and hip joints to release away from each other ever so slightly so as to lean forward from those hinges instead of letting the neck do their job. Sitting at a kitchen table could be better when possible.

3) Feel the support under your feet and let the whole body chop these vegetables not just your arms and wrists, the more you release through your support, the stronger you actually are to get thru the tough vegetables.

4) Using your speakerphone or some headphones is a must if you are on the phone while cooking or if you spend much time on the phone. It allows you to keep your head on top of your spine more easily.

5) If you are a mother, beware of the Mother’s Hip Syndrome. Avoid carrying your children favoring one hip over the other. It will progressively distort and corrupt your postural sense and it will become the basis for all your movements! This syndrome started a trend that got me into serious trouble much later and it took a while before I got over it!

6) Sitting at the table is the same as sitting at a computer (see my blog on that topic), you want to hinge forward towards your plate from your sits bones instead of letting your neck crane forward. The more you need to get close to your food or table top for any reason, the more you need to keep your chair back so you have room to lean forward from the contact with the chair keeping your back relaxed. Try it and see how much easier it is on your neck!:)

7) Last but not least, observe how you reach for something in your cabinet shelving. The higher you reach, the more you need to remember to release all the joints between your hand and feet….it will give you access to your maximum length without hurting any part of you in the process!

All these recommendations help you to sit, stand and move in a more integrated fashion that promotes increased health and well-being!

If you are also interested in learning about Integrated Nutrition, a perfect adjunct to what is presented on this blog, check Paul Pitchford book “Healing with Whole Foods”

http://justgreatfoods.com/paul-pitchford which you can find new or used by clicking on this link: http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Pitchford/e/B000APSJYE

Best yoga poses to practice before starting your kitchen work:
Utkatasana or Chair Pose & Garudasana or Eagle Pose
Keep this nice alignment which allows the back of the neck to be relaxed
while your head and your tail bone release away from each other! Enjoy!

Mar11

Yoga Lovers and Injuries

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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Hi Yoga Lovers!

Whether you are an experienced yoga practitioner or you just started,
I created the Survey Monkey below to better understand the concerns of Yoga Lovers regarding Injuries.If you are a yoga lover, whether you are practicing at this point in time or not, please take the couple minutes it takes to fill out this survey, it is completely anonymous.
There are 10 questions and they are all multiple choices answers to make it really easy on you!

Thank you for helping me help you!:)

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/78SCBVZ

Yoga Lovers & Injuries Survey

Mar3

Off The Mat Yoga and The Spine beyond The Spine as we know it!

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Cecile Raynor

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Do you know anything about the Spine beyond its physical characteristics?
Am inspired to share some information that is not necessarily common knowledge about the spine although thousands of years old.

Who knew about the Spine thousands of years ago?
The ancient yogis of India believed that while we are growing in our mother’s belly, life force comes from Cosmic Energy via the Medulla Oblongata at the base of the skull and it flows up and down the spine till the end of our life on earth. They also believed that when we think and act in a naturally positive way, the Kundalini energy goes up the spine towards Higher Cosmic Consciousness where it came from. Of course, the Kundalini energy can stagnate or go down mirroring our life energy.

So the spine is not just a functional part of the human body?
That’s right! These yogis actually see it as a representation within us of the entire cosmos as chakras and that the more free flowing the energy is in the spine, the easier it is for our Kundalini energy to rise back upwardly to our source. This is one crucial reason why alignment is so very important in all forms of yoga practice. Kryia yoga especially promotes the Kundalini energy to go up. There are many ways to do Kryia Yoga. Some do it with rigorous breathing and body movements, while others use mental directions made available to those initiated who believe this way to be more efficient and powerful. Both physical and mental ways of energizing our Kundalini energy can be combined of course. The important part here is that the spine is the container for the Kundalini energy which is connected to our state of awakening to Higher Consciousness.

How can we nurture this Kundalini flow up the Spine?
You can develop mindfulness around how you care for your body and your mind. You can learn to release straight into your support by letting the muscles around your skeleton be relaxed without loosing your skeletal height. Avoid muscular efforts with your back in the process. This way, you let the skeleton lengthen up and out from that support and the spine can expand into its full space. With these thoughts in mind, you can practice Yoga & Meditation, Tai Chi & Chi Gong and although you can get immediate results, deep changes happen in time. You can read books and listen to spiritual teachers that help with self understanding, with understanding of the world, and your place in it on a wide scale. At some point, it is good to choose a path and follow it as you would choose a road and stick to it if you were lost in a forest. Just remember that whatever you choose, it is not what you do that matters as much as how you do it and why.

For more info about “Kundalini”, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini