If I tell people I am a yoga teacher they often assume I teach “stretching”.
They’ll regularly say, “I need to stretch more”.
But even someone who may self describe as a classical yoga teacher would probably agree that asana practice is not simply about “stretching”.
Honestly, I probably consider myself more of a human movement teacher who directs from the playground of yoga asana.
Try explaining that to someone you’ve just met at your daughter’s wedding who asks what you do for work …. (cue blank look with a laugh track in the background).
As a well educated human movement teacher steeped both in scientific knowledge and years of experience, I understand that….
Human movement is a finely tuned dance of muscle contractions and other tissue actions managed by the nervous system to create joint actions that get certain tasks/actions done.
And that as we age, a focus on mobility is essential for continued health in the tissues that support and hold us together as we strive to bend our own aging curve and keep doing all the tasks/actions we need for daily living and exploring our world.
I have begun to concentrate more on mobility (and I’ll define that below, so read on….) in my private sessions and group classes because our ability to move as freely and confidently as possible in the aging process is so extremely important.
What is Stretching?
Stretching is about elongating muscle tissue by moving the origin(where the muscle begins) away from the insertion (where the muscle attaches/ends) or vice versa.
We might say it’s asking a muscle or a group of muscles to move passively through a range of motion.
Lying down hamstring stretch, supta padangusthasana, is an example of this.
We put the leg in a position where the hamstrings and calves are asked to lengthen in order for our knee to fully extend and the thigh to move more into a vertical line at the hip joint in order to make the shape of this yoga pose.
We’ve asked the hamstring where it begins at the sitz bone and ends on the lower leg bone just behind and below the knee to lengthen.
But then we don’t really ask it to move in and out of any activity, just stay in a passive elongation that sometimes, depending on the person and the nervous system response will adapt to elongation when asked to do it again.
Make sense?
So then why is mobility important and different from stretching?
Mobility
We might say that mobility is more about actively moving a joint (where two bones meet) through a full range of motion before that joint is restricted by surrounding tissues.
Moving actively requires lengthening some muscles, shortening other muscles, and using those actions to move a joint through all the possible actions it can perform – flexion/extension, adduction/abduction, and rotation.
Most of the joints in the body move in more than one plane of motion. They do more than simply flex or extend, for instance.
Think about your hip joint. Your hip (femoral head in the acetabulum of the pelvis) can flex, extend, laterally flex (side motion like triangle pose), adduct (leg moves to center of body), abduct (leg moves away from center of body), and rotate.
The hip joint is also affected by the mobility of the ankle and knee below and the spine and trunk above.
In order to increase the mobility of the hip joint, it needs to be put through a variety of ranges of motion and often in conjunction with the joints above and below.
Mobility, creating a fuller range of motion at a joint, is a marriage between strength and flexibility in all the ranges of motion that particular joint can move in.
Stretching muscle tissue is part of mobility training, but mobility work requires a dynamic action of lengthening against a moving resistance and then shortening and using more than one muscle.
Focusing on joint mobility is one of the secret sauces for performing at our best in any movement challenge/task, particularly if we wish to bend our own aging curve.
If you are hiking and have to step over a downed tree on the trail, you’ll need joint mobility.
If you want to lower a bag of groceries or pick that bag up from your car’s trunk, you’ll need joint mobility.
If you want to squat to a chair or the toilet without using upper body assistance, you’ll need joint mobility.
If you want to get down to the floor and back up again, you’ll need joint mobility.
So you can stop reading here with the understanding that mobility work is important for all of us aging beings and hope that your yoga/movement teacher is doing some of this in your group classes. It’s good information to have.
Or you can keep reading this wall of words and check out an example of mobility work compared to stretching.
Supta Padangusthasana as an Example
First of all, I love supta padangusthasana – hand to big toe pose to stretch the entire back of the leg. I am not here to make a judgment on this posture or any posture. If you love to stretch in this hamstring posture, then do it and enjoy it.
Earlier in this post I described how S.P. is a passive stretch activity – lie down, put the leg up in the air, lengthen your knee, use a strap over the foot, and be there allowing for any length to occur between the sitz bone and the back of the knee and the back of the knee to the heel.
It’s yummy for me, but not for everyone, and sometimes S.P. just never changes over years of yoga asana practice.
How might a mobility practice to open the back leg look different?
It might look like this, and this is just an example of many things I teach and put into sequences to help liberate the hip joint, especially for those with short or bound hamstrings (remember that the hamstring won’t lengthen without the nervous system’s permission, so sometimes we have to coax the nervous system into agreement to let the darn tissues lengthen and contract by using dynamic controlled movements in and out of a position)
One of the most common activities I use in class to help create mobility at the hip joint for back leg lengthening is this:
- Lying supine with one leg bent, the other leg out long against the floor – Slowly lift the long leg to whatever place it can rise vertically while maintaining a lengthened knee, then equally slowly lower it to the ground. Repeat the action for more than several repetitions.
- Work on controlling the leg up and down without defaulting to pelvic or back motion, without moving into neck extension with chin moving to ceiling… in other words look for the other movement strategies that sometimes show up in order to get that leg to raise up in full extension at the knee.
- This moves the hip joint (femur over pelvis) in and out of flexion and extension using what we call “motor control” (conscious control over movement quality).
- This moves the muscles of the front and back leg (and some of the inner and outer leg) in and out of a range of motion that often allows for a process of nervous system change that allows for more range of motion in this plane of movement.
- This exercise requires both lengthening and shortening (contraction) of tissues, so induces a marriage of activities that work on the joint surface of the femur and pelvis at the hip (and the knee since it is fully extended)
- Depending on what end of the continuum you tend to be on – this mobility practice requires dynamic action that can be of assistance for creating a stronger more controlled entry into flexible hamstring tissues and a controlled movement in and out of a “true” range of motion for hamstrings that feel a little less like coming to the party.
Dynamic mobility practices for hips, as well as other joints, can easily be sequenced into a yoga asana practice. They are a great strategy for “warming up” the tissues surrounding a joint and the messaging system between the tissues and the nervous system before actually moving into a passive or held stretch or posture.
I encourage you to investigate as a practitioner, but also as a yoga/movement teacher – think transitions into and out of postures, that’s a great place to begin to investigate mobility work.
Let me know what you think yogaburr@gmail.com
