Did you know that increasing your overall body flexibility can increase
your overall health? One of my friends mentioned that she is trying to
"work on" her flexibility for some health reasons.
That inspired me to put together this article on what I have learned about
how to be flexible. As you can see from the photo, I have some street cred in
this -- I am very flexible, in both body and mind. It happens that I am
naturally/genetically that way, however, there are also some mind-body
connections that you might not have been aware of.
The first and
perhaps most important thing to understand is that force and flexibility are
opposites.
If you will come along with me to a virtual yoga class for a moment,
there are pretty much three virtues to good yoga:
• strength
• flexibility
• balance
We all have them in varying amounts, and it's silly to be jealous of
someone else for having more of one or the other than you do. You can change
your own body's virtues over time, if you really want to, but really, it's
better to simply accept the way you are and work with it.
If you want to be stronger, work at
it. Keep on pushing your muscles just to their edge with strength training
(such as warrior and tree and plank poses). Then give them adequate time and
nutrition to repair.
If you push too hard, you can injure yourself and throw yourself
backwards instead of forward. Slow and steady wins the strength race.
If you want to be flexible, accept
where you are. That sounds contradictory, doesn't it? But that's how it is. If
you try to force yourself to be more flexible, if you try to push your body
into stretchy bendy places where it doesn't want to be, all you end up with is
injuries.
I can tell you from experience, if you push your body into a bendy place
that it's not ready to go, you actually throw your flexibility backwards.
Rushing to get your face to the floor will result in muscle spasms that
actually prevent you moving further into a pose. However, in the same time
period, if you accept where your body is, and curiously let it ooze forward,
then you might find that your flexibility increases quite a lot.
Being warm also helps very much in this goal.
If you want to be balanced... well, generally, in a physical sense, the stronger and more flexible you
are, the better aligned your body is and the easier you will find it to balance
in various poses.
But there is also a strong emotional component to all of these. Balance, particularly, I find, depends strongly on
how balanced or unbalanced my home life is. If it's very unbalanced, then even
when I have been thin, flexible, and strong, my balance on the mat will be off.
Another thing that is very
interesting about three virtues is that how flexible, strong, and/or balanced
you are in yoga class tends to mirror how your emotional life is going at any
given time.
Flexibility is about your connective tissues or fascia, even more than it is about
your muscles, and the only way to open up your connective tissue is to stretch
and ease it open. See the inimitable https://www.anatomytrains.com/fascia/
to learn more about exactly what your fascia is and how it works.
Think of it a little like silly putty -- when you stretch it slow, it
can ooze open. This is the principle behind yin yoga -- slow, easy poses that
are held for a long time. The longer you ease into them, the longer your
tissues stretch.
When you try to bounce into a stretch, that is when you can get
injuries. Just like silly putty breaking, you can snap the elastic bands that
are your fascia.
So take it easy if you want to be
flexible. Relax. Accept.
It's the only way in.
There is a sneaky little shortcut I discovered to better balance and flexibility. When I lived a winter in
Flagstaff, Arizona, I was a member of the splendid Flagstaff Athletic Club. The
membership included 14 hours per week of really excellent, engaging child
care... lo and behold! I could finally work out while my son was having
fun too.
Second wonder (after the child care) was a change room that gave every
woman Cleopatra-style luxury: a huge blue-tiled hot tub, a steam room,
wonderful hot showers with delicious-smelling soap and shampoo. Sometimes I
would drop my son at the child care, maybe exercise, then have a hot tub before
yoga class.
Aha! I discovered that getting very warm and relaxed before
class made my balance substantially better. It's the same with your
flexibility. If you're warm, peaced-out, listening to groovin' music, and
relaxed, your tissues are more likely to stretch right out for you, like a
yawning cat.
If you try to stretch in a cold
place, in a hurry, and without thinking peacefully about it, you won't get very
far.
What you eat can also
affect your flexibility. I don't think that I can give you a one-size-fits-all
solution, because we all have different food sensitivities, but if you are
interested in using nutrition to improve your flexibility, experiment. Does
removing dairy, caffeine, wheat, soy, alcohol, and/or eggs improve how your
body feels? Only you can find out, by trying it.
Here's a sample article about the elimination diet idea: http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-12540/the-simple-elimination-diet-that-could-change-your-life-forever.html
Complementary muscle groups: another little trick to flexibility is that properly contracting
complementary muscles helps to stretch others. All of our muscles work in
systems, and being aware of how our alignment and anatomy functions together
can help us create better solutions to aches and pains we might develop along
the way.
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