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!

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

What is Off the Mat Yoga?
Off The Mat Yoga was created to help you get the best out of your yoga practice, to prevent injuries and to help you feel good in your movements on and off the yoga mat. It is also to guide you in using your yoga poses as a guide in your everyday movements whenever possible. Through basic yoga poses and other daily movements, you will be guided both verbally and with a gentle touch to trigger your own postural reflexes. They are responsible for your best postural balance and ease of movement and can help you perform your best yoga yet! Check the blog on postural reflexes for more info about what these reflexes are and what they can do for  you.

On The Mat Yoga and Off The Mat Yoga are the two sides of the same coin. The way you understand and perform movements in your everyday life affects how you understand and perform yoga poses and movements. The reverse is true as well, the benefits of your yoga practice can help you handle life movements differently. You may have focused on getting more flexible or strong. You may have focused on learning the proper form. You may have focused on practicing being in the present moment and all these benefits of yoga are why people do go to yoga classes. However, many people still get hurt doing yoga, including some teachers. Many shy away from yoga from fear of getting hurt. And this does not have to be so! Many of you may have already experience moments of yoga or daily movements where everything seems to work together effortlessly, only you don’t necessarily know how you got there and how to get back to it instantaneously. Learning how to trigger your postural reflexes is the way to get to that place of perfect integration.

Yoga injuries and other types of injuries often happen because you have not been told how to activate your postural reflexes. Even when your teacher says “do what is right for you”; you only know how to control the degree of tension you use. Instead you can learn to let your postural reflexes do their job of reorganizing your whole body so unnecessary tension can be released on demand instantaneously. Learning about postural reflexes activation outside of the yoga mat helps you develop greater awareness of your ways of being and moving when you are off the mat. This way, you won’t bring harmful unconscious habits of movement to your yoga mat and you’ll feel better more of the time!

The truth is that your yoga class is likely to be overcrowded and your teacher has neither the time nor the skill to help you in this way. She is there to teach you the form as best she can. There is often a discrepancy between what she asks you to do and how you interpret it in your body; besides, the fact is that she is not trained in this primitive understanding of the body functioning nor is it her responsibility to teach you how to use your body in cooperation with your postural reflexes on and off the mat.

Coming soon: Off The Mat Yoga & Smartphones?

What are postural reflexes? What do they do for you?
Postural reflexes are automatic movements that control the equilibrium required once you started walking and dealing with the gravity pull. They maintain your posture, balance and fluidity of movement effortlessly if there is no interference in the way.

What does that allow you to do while in your yoga class?
By activating your postural reflexes, it allows you to release through and expand into each pose in a way perfect to you in each moment. It also allows you to create modified versions of the poses you know not to attempt yet.

Don’t I do that when I try to be aware of my posture?
Not quite. There is posture and there is poise. Posture is something held, fixed and stopped in time that you can look at, like on a picture. However, poise is a sort of postural balance at work. And it is the job of the postural reflexes to maintain this postural balance as best as possible!

What is preventing my postural reflexes to do their job then?
Great question! Do you find yourself holding up into what you think is good posture and feel the urge to collapse in a flash if you let go of any holding?Did I hear you say “yes”? There is your answer; any amount of holding is preventing the postural muscles to do their job. No holding is necessary to be upright. We are so well designed in that way.

Have you ever thought that the unconscious way you handle movements in your everyday activities shows up in your yoga class? And could it be that although you do yourselves good when practicing yoga, yet you also strengthen unconscious habitual patterns that you take for granted everyday?

How can I learn not to do this holding and still be up?
Your golden key to all this is the ability to trigger your postural reflexes to stop overusing your muscles just to sit or stand upright! This way you can handle any activity or your daily yoga practice with confidence and know what is appropriate for you at any given moment. This way, you listen to yourselves rather than force your body to conform to a specific shape.

Coming soon “What is Off The Mat Yoga“?