The Human Body is Baked From a Recipe of Integrated Ingredients
When I clean my house I start in one room and within 5 minutes I’m in another room doing something else. Eventually the house sort of gets clean. When I begin to write I start with a topic or concept, do some review and research, and then I’m off to the races with a plethora of thoughts and ideas that ultimately (and ponderously) lead me to some finish line.
I began writing a blog post on “Welcome to your Spine”, which morphed into a piece that is ALL OVER THE PLACE! So, this one article, which is not about your spine, has grown in scope and will arrive over the course of several newsletters and blog posts. Like most things in my life, including house cleaning, writing is not a linear process. But, really, is life either?,
This particular finish line is going to take a few laps around the race course to get it all out there. So, here’s part 1 of several more to come…..
One of the concepts I explored while getting my masters in kinesiology was the “joint-by-joint” approach, which posits that the body is set up as a stack of joints (foot, ankle, knee, hip, and on up…..). This approach is built around the idea that each of our joints functions in a certain way and moves in one or more of the three cardinal planes (look for article/blog post #2 “The Cardinal Planes and Human Movement” coming to your mailbox soon).
We gotta go back to the folk song, “Dem Bones” :
The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone, The foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone, The ankle bone’s connected to the leg bone, Now shake dem skeleton bones!
So, the human body is an integrated system made up of separate parts that really aren’t all that separate, which makes it really super important that we consider the whole kit and kaboodle. Kind of like when you bake something from a recipe – you have a list of all the ingredients (foot, ankle, knee, hip, pelvis, sacrum, lumbar, etc) and when they are combined you get a finished dish, which in this case is your body. Knowing how each of those ingredients plays into the finished dish allows us to consider how we might individually and uniquely, although we all have the same “ingredients”, move more optimally and happily in our bodies.
The way things stack up (get it?) goes a little like this, and remember that this is one of those times we have to consider the “in general” idea:
- The toes are more stable/stiffer joints
- The foot is a more mobile joint(s)
- The ankle is a more stable/stiffer joint
- The knee is a more mobile joint
- The hip is a more stable/stiffer joint
- The lumbar spine is a more mobile joint region
- The thoracic spine is a more stable/stiffer joint region
- The scapula as part of the shoulder complex is a more mobile joint region
- The glenohumeral joint is a more stable/stiffer region
- The lower and middle cervical spine is a more mobile joint region
- The upper cervical is a more stable/stiffer region
In general, the more mobile areas can use stabilizing actions and we can support the stiffer regions with mobilizing activities. Remember, “in general”, because the whole system has to be observed in stillness and in movement to better assess how all the ingredients are combining.
And, I want to clarify that when I say a joint area may benefit from being mobilized I am not always, or usually, relying on static stretching or even classical postures to achieve that mobility. Wait, am I still here? Did I get struck by lightning? Am I still allowed to teach yoga? Yep. I am sure I am still here and as I continue my education, question things that I have heard anecdotally for years, and back my own personal relationship with movement by evidence-based science, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that today’s yogi may need to be offered something very different than what we currently think of as the “classical” postures.
And here are some big statements that sometimes make me feel like I am floating in a teeny tiny boat in the big sea of teaching movement through the art of yoga posture practice (and I know I’m not alone because there are other yoga/movement teachers out there studying, questioning, and increasing their knowledge base about human movement)…..
- I don’t believe that every yoga pose serves everybody.
- I don’t believe that some of the typical cues used to teach yoga postures serve everyone.
- I do believe we should question everything and make sure it really works for our particular needs and bodies in the moment and doesn’t just follow some indoctrinated ideas.
- Stretching or creating mobility is not the answer to everything AND the way stretching is defined and presented in many yoga posture scenarios is not based in science.
- I also believe that if you never “achieve” (whatever the hell that means) a certain pose, you are still really awesome!
There, I said it and guess what? I am still here and didn’t get struck by lightning or sent to yoga hell for maybe having an alternative view of my beloved yoga posture practice.
The joint-by-joint approach is one of many different ways to look at human movement, assess where a dysfunction/weakness/tightness may reside, how it may affect/interact with other regions, and whether to use stabilizing or mobilizing actions for a more effective change in those relationships. We can use the joint-by-joint approach as one of many tools in our toolbelt. Ultimately, it’s preparing the ingredients for the most delicious end product, which in this case is living in a human body that has less discomfort and moves more optimally. (whether one can stand on their head, touch their toes, twist and get their hands to lock behind their back, or do a full backbend).
Just today a long time student and yoga teacher in my class noticed that she could do a modified shoulder stand bridge pose without neck pain (for the first time in a really really really long time). She was sure, and I trust her observations and understanding, that the deep mobilizing work we did on the psoas earlier in class allowed a chain reaction that positively affected her ability to bear weight in the shoulder region without creating pain in her neck.
Maybe the “problem” (I hate that word when it comes to the human body) isn’t really where we feel the pain or discomfort. That doesn’t mean this student doesn’t have discomfort in her neck, but perhaps lack of mobility in one of the main muscles working on the hip and pelvis, the psoas, is contributing significantly. And even though she can do a range of things where one might observe and say, “hey, that gal has open hips”, there are many muscles working on the hip region.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of figuring out what ingredient needs to be tweaked so that the finished dish tastes just that little bit richer and delicious.
Here’s to more exploration!
