Yoga is a wonderful discipline where the mind and body interact together to take the practitioner to different levels of self-awareness. One aspect not well understood is that Yoga is not only about stretching but also about strengthening, conditioning, proper breathing and balance. The demands of a 60 to 90-minute yoga class can leave the practitioner feeling sore, tight and tired.
How can LYMBR help to improve your yoga practice?
I’ve been practicing yoga for almost ten years and have been an instructor for half that time. Even though I’ve always been very flexible, there were always postures that were more challenging to me after years of practice. The work we do at LYMBR has helped me to understand better where my restrictions are and how to address them properly. Not only do I have a better understanding of how the postures work in my body, but also how to properly stretch those restricted areas and how to strengthen unstable areas so my body is more balanced. It is very important to understand that for every tight muscle in your body there’s another muscle somewhere else (antagonist muscle) that is not working properly.
Isolation is key when it comes to LYMBR stretches. When a yoga pose is done, there are multiple muscles being stretched. Let’s take a forward bend for example: calves, back of the thighs, hips, and lower back are under elongation forces, so it can be very difficult to decipher where the restrictions are happening along the connective chains.
It is very common for yoga practitioners to be unable to fully extend the knees when doing a forward bend. Usually this is blamed on the distal hamstrings, but the calves are also responsible for lack of full range of motion in the knee. Another very common issue when dealing with forward bends is back discomfort, which is usually related to proximal hamstring tightness.
The more complex the muscle, the more stretches we must perform.
The stretches we do at LYMBR are very targeted and very specific. The more complex the muscle, the more stretches we must perform in that muscle to make sure we cover all the different aspects of those tissues: origin, insertion and diverse fiber orientations.
Let’s take the hamstrings for example: this group consists of three muscles (semitendinosus, semimembranosus and biceps femoris); with the work we do in our studios we target each one of them individually. By isolating the muscles in that way, we undo the restrictions from the areas that otherwise are inaccessible through regular stretches. The hamstrings are not only responsible for hip extension and knee flexion, but key in knee rotation, thus the health of all three hamstring muscles are key for proper knee stability when performing a warrior pose and hip mobility when doing a downward dog.
Whether you want to get your body ready to start practicing yoga, or you are a seasoned practitioner who wants to take the practice to the next level, targeted personalized stretching will help you reach your goals.
Written by Adrian Garcia. Adrian is a Manager and Stretch Therapist in our Newton Studio, as well as one of our Therapist Trainers and a Yoga Instructor.
