Session 3: Conditioning

+ Introduction

The human body operates on its own rules, and many of them are outside of your conscious control.

Kind of freeing, isn’t it? Knowing that your hair is growing right now, that you’re doing it, but you don’t have to think about it?

All of these things going, your heart beating, digestion, your breathing, all of it keeping you running, and you don’t have to think about any of it?

However marvelous your body is, and it is, make no mistake about it, at this stage you most likely have a lot of conditioning that you’re working with.

If you have something like a herniated disc, the muscles around that area will be incredibly tight. We suffer far more in our imagination that in reality. Like a child, imagining snakes under the bed and a dragon in the closet, the fear and anticipation of pain evaporates when it is seen for what it is: when you pull your head out from the covers, you see the dragon is just a coat, and the snakes are socks.

Think of the body like an overprotective mother: it’s doing the best it can, and sometimes it’s important that boundaries are set. Your body cares about you so much that it simply doesn’t want you to be in pain, so you learn to associate pain and lack of pain through continued experience with certain movements.

So that’s what we’re looking at doing in the coming lessons: discovering first where the existing boundaries already are, and discovering where they can be expanded. I’m excited at your willingness explore the limits of your being, and wish you the best in the lessons to come.

+ Exercise: Spinal Scan

Take a deep breath, clear your mind of thoughts as best you can, find that central, guiding presence that exists independent of your worries and concerns, and do a quick body scan now.

Bring the focus of your attention to the spine as a whole, and feel free to move around a little to get a good sense of what these often-ignored, deeper parts of your body, feel like.

Maybe you have a certain location that you’re interested in today; don’t ignore the rest. The entire spine is what we’re after, not just isolating one spot. The spine is an integral unit, just like you and your being, and so you want to care for all of it, not just the squeakiest hinge on the fence.

You may have noticed during the asana sequences as you held a posture that little twitches, jerks, or contractions come up as you attempt the pose. This is natural, and expected, and means that you are engaging directly with your body-mind system as you release small amounts of conditioning your body has stored.

In essence, you have already been rewiring your central nervous system! Congratulations!

Directing your awareness to different parts of the body is essential to understanding the relationships ongoing in your bodymind.

To best make use of this often-over-looked capability, a surface level knowledge of anatomy is called for.

+ Components of the Spine

With practice at bodily awareness, a good body scan can quickly bring to your attention not just things that are ‘wrong’ with your body, but things that are right, too. Take a deep breath, clear your mind of thoughts as best you can, find that central, guiding presence that exists independent of your worries and concerns, and do a quick body scan now. Maybe you have a certain location that you’re interested in today; don’t ignore the rest. The health of the entire spine is what we’re after, not just isolating one spot. The spine is an integral unit, just like you and your being, and so you want to care for all of it, not just the squeakiest hinge.

+ Exercise: Spinal Segment Scan

As the components of each section of the spine are brought up and as you read through the text, direct the focus of your attention to each relevant location. Identify what each location feels like and assess each location’s current state.

The first and in many ways most at-risk section of your spine is a group of five vertebrae, called the Lumbar Vertebrae. This tends to blow out most with ruptured and herniated discs, any one of which can be paralyzing in their intensity, until you learn how to move around and with the injury, rather than against it.

The second part is the Thoracic Vertebrae, which is the focal point for most postural issues we see in the modern day. Between undeveloped back muscles, forward head tilts, and rolled forward shoulders that do not track, some of which you may notice at play within your physical body, many of the consequences of modern living are on full display in the mid-back.

For example, the muscles that support the head as it leans forward connect with thoracic vertebrae, and because of social conditioning, most of us have to keep our tummies tucked in and breath inefficiently through a ribcage restrained by an inflexible and overly-activated/tense thoracic cavity, reducing the amount of available oxygen drastically. Such issues are endemic and easily addressed.

The third and final part is the Cervical Vertebrae, which tracks whenever you turn your head. Most neck problems will be in the form of a pinched nerve, and are a result of muscular tension or physical trauma held / carried elsewhere in the body.

The source of the pain is often not where the pain is felt. The physical postures experienced in this series will allow you to understand this relationship and then dive deeper into engaging with and addressing the trauma directly.

There are also the Sacram and the Coccyx sections of the spine, which are important enough in their own way, however our focus will be on the Lumbar, Thoracic, and Cervical sections, because these are the ones that we can work with most accessibly.

There are ligaments extending along the entire group, and between each, there is a little sac of fluid called the Intervertebral Disc. This disc provides a level of flexibility that bone on its own is incapable. It also serves as a bit of a weak spot, if the musculature that supports it is stressed in the wrong way or cannot provide the necessary support, as is the case when someone lands too hard after jumping and ruptures a disc.

Luckily for us, all of these issues are easily addressed with only a few simple movements, done with intent practice for a relatively little period of time. So let’s get to it!

The first and in many ways most at-risk section is a group of five vertebrae, called the Lumbar Vertebrae. This tends to blow out most with ruptured and herniated discs, any one of which can be paralyzing in their intensity, until you learn how to move around and with the injury, rather than against it.

The second part is the Thoracic Vertebrae

The third and final part is the Cervical Vertebrae. There is also the Sacram and the Coccyx, which are important enough in their own way, however our focus will be on the Lumbar, Thoracic, and Cervical sections.

There are ligaments extending along the entire group, and between each, there is a little sac of fluid called the Intervertebral Disc.

+ The Sequence

In Session 2: Awareness, you learned about the enhanced body scan. While performing the asana sequences from here on out, take a few minutes of silence before your practice and really drop in to your body. Do a brief body scan and stabilize your breathing.

Focus your attention on the sensations of the breath at the nose, and let everything else fade into the periphery. Don’t ignore it entirely, but strongly intend to redirect the focus of your attention to the breath whenever distractions come up.

In this way, you prepare yourself for the asana practice. Throughout the practice, apply the enhanced body scan techniques to the locations of tension, continue to breathe, and notice the sensations of the breath at those locations. Intend to release them, but don’t shout at yourself, internally: ‘release!’ like you’re commanding an army. Just notice the breathing, and breathe through any locations of tension.

As you transition through the postures, different locations of tension will be made available to you. You will always have more to look at: don’t get caught up on any one single location.

Safety Tip: if you have a ruptured disc or similar injury, a forward bend done without respect for the injury may exacerbate your injury. This is happening because the habitual movement that has long-since been a part of your physical body’s makeup is forcing your spine to bend in a way that ‘squishes’ the gel sac between your vertebrae in a way that might really hurt and injure you even further. In the case of the ruptured disc and forward bends, consider that you may have, for example, been trying to reach the ground by stretching your back, when in fact, your hips and hamstrings are really, really tight, and are restricting the movement of your lower spine.

When one door closes, another opens, and you will quickly come to understand that there is always another way to move. Physical postures done in exploration of possibility reveal many, many open doors.

I respect the level of maturity that brings you to this series, and expect that you will display the same level of maturity in assessing the current limits of your capabilities. Understand that all conditioning can and will be transcended; either now, soon, or eventually. Even the idea of conditioning as such will not be something to identify with, eventually.

Do what you can, take it slow, and do not hold yourself back from experiencing the full possibility of your unique self.

+ Homework

Get a piece of paper or a notebook, and take notes on the nature of your injury. When exploring the movements described above, where do you feel pain? Describe it, using any words that come to mind. Burning, shooting, dull, aching, tight, sore, and other words. Draw a vertical line to represent your spine, and connect the words to where on the line you feel that particular sensation.

If you don’t feel pain, and instead a lingering tightness or tension, do the same thing! If you are afraid of doing a certain movement, how close can you get before the fear sets in? Observe that fear. Is it a fear of pain? Stay in that position for a minute, maybe two, and continue to breathe.

You might begin to notice small tremors, which are either fascial tissue releasing tension, or something else. When you perform these stretches, do you feel a localized tension, or is it global?

Take note as much as you feel comfortable, and whenever you feel called to do so. Move at your own pace, and don’t rush anything. You have all the time in the world.