Wonderful article about my teacher

Felicia Marie Tomasko, RN wrote a terrific article in LA Yoga Magazine about Linda Lack my teacher.  It accurately describes the technique and my teacher.  Please click here to read.

Hamstrings

I cannot recommend this article more highly.   Having had a hamstring tear for over a year and bending my knees convinced that it would help, this makes complete and utter sense to me.  But note:  David Keil says keep the knees straight but don’t go as far into the forward bend.  So you are still being mindful and gentle. But in  the right way.

For more information on David Keil please visit his site.  He is an amazing teacher. http://www.yoganatomy.com/

Got sit bone pain?

I was in the DC area this month and saw a student that I knew from a previous workshop. At that time Patricia had recently “pulled a hamstring”. Her major symptom was pain at her sit bone (ischial tuberosity) when folding forward, secondary was that it would also hurt when sitting for long periods, especially in the car. I saw her just a couple of weeks ago and she still had the same pain.

Although not my regular advice, the most common way people are told to deal with this problem is to bend their knees in their forward bends. The idea is that by bending your knees you shorten the hamstrings. By shortening the hamstrings you reduce the amount of pull or tension placed on them. It sounds good in theory.

Here’s the problem with this theory. I refer to the hamstrings as two joint muscles. What this means is that changing the position at one of the two joints (hip or knee), changes the end of the muscles that will receive more force from the actual stretching of the muscle.

When you bend your knees and bend forward, more of the pressure created by the “stretch” to the hamstrings goes into the opposite end. In other words, if you bend your knees in a forward bend, you add more force to the end of the hamstrings that connect to the sit-bones.

Assuming that you’ve actually torn your hamstrings (of course a minor tear usually), and that you’ve torn the end of your hamstrings closest to your sit bones, do you think it would be wise to put more pressure on these same tissues? The answer is No, it wouldn’t.

The next question is; Well, what should we do then?

Although I can’t say that this will work in every situation for every individual, this has proven to work for a number of people in this situation. There are always exceptions.

Now, during this most recent interaction with Patricia, I took a moment to give a gentle squeeze to the area of her hamstrings just above the knee joint. (The opposite end from where she was feeling discomfort.) I could see in her face that these tissues were particularly tender and sore. That along with the symptom that she would actually get pain in her sit bone when she would sit in the car clued me in that this technique would probably work for her. The significance of the pain while sitting in the car is that the part of the hamstrings that gets the most pressure in a car seat is the bottom (distal) end of the hamstrings closest to the knee.

The technique I apply is extremely simple, and as I told this student, worth trying for two or three weeks and seeing what happens. Ah yeah, the technique… you’re waiting for it aren’t you? The answer is… Keep your knees straight. That’s it. When you forward bend, either standing or in seated postures, keep the leg extremely straight and don’t go as deeply into the forward bend as you normally do.

By keeping the knee straight, with quadriceps engaged, you keep the stretch in the hamstrings equal between both ends. In the situation mentioned above, the hamstrings had gotten to a place where their distal end near the knee got too tight. The tension in this end seems to lead to consistent tension in the hamstrings as a whole and particularly near the sit bones. That needed to be taken out by keeping the knee straight.

Patricia came to three days of practice with me 3 days in a row. She kept her knees extremely straight and guess what? Pain was reducing after just these few days.

I emailed her just before this past weekend to check-in and here’s what she had to say:

David, Significant improvement indeed! I am not bending the knees on the standing or seated poses (like you instructed me) and now I can bend forward with my torso a lot more without any pain in the moment or afterwards. I am now doing Kurmasana and Supta K (almost fully) without pain and on my own!! It is definitely healing, recovering the flexibility. I am really happy about this!!! Looking back, I think that I may have been stuck on a phase of “pain-avoidance” without doing anything to heal the hamstring for good, addressing the problem. Thank you so much for your help with my trouble-making hamstring. Look forward to keep leaning from you (and of course to my entry to the hall-of-fame through the newsletter).
Namaste

Patricia, Welcome to the hall-of-fame!

Om Shanti,

David

The Yellow Ball

Teaching yellow ball

Thank you to everyone who attended the upper and mid back seminar.  Click on “teaching yellow ball” to listen to Val Guin giving instruction on how to use the Yellow ball to open up the spine.

Conscious moving

conscious moving

click above to listen

What is The Thinking Body-The Feeling Mind®

My teacher Linda Lack PhD created The Thinking Body-The Feeling Mind®.  She was recently interviewed by Backstage Magazine. Below is an excerpt from the article where other techniques are also discussed.

Performer, Heal Thyself

Exploring movement systems to prevent and repair performing aches and pains

By Lisa Jo Sagolla

August 20, 2009

Strains, sprains, breaks, aches, and pains are all-too-familiar results of the extreme movement work required of many professional performers. If you’re a dancer, aerialist, cirque artist, stunt actor, or physical comedian you undoubtedly push your body through challenging and repetitive movement regimens that may lead to serious injuries or debilitating conditions. Yet we seem to have a basic human need to move, and in many cases, movement itself can be an impetus for healing. When performed in an informed fashion, certain forms of body movement can prevent physical injury. Various movement systems have been designed specifically to promote physical well-being, rather than to meet athletic demands or fulfill the needs of artistic expression. So what are some of these more therapeutic, healing, and preventative-care movement techniques?

The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind®

“I am in my mid-60s, and because of The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind, I am still performing onstage. As a matter of fact, last year I was nominated for one of our West Coast dance awards—it’s called the Lester Horton Award—for solo performance,” says Linda Lack, the inventor of The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind. Based on the principles of hatha yoga, movement therapy, and kinesiology, Lack’s technique serves to identify and correct an individual’s physical weaknesses or imbalances, helping to reduce pain, movement limitations, and chance of injury. The technique includes the practice of traditional yoga postures but blends them into a nonstop progression of movements that feels more like a dance class, incorporating modern dance–influenced floorwork and standing sequences that allow movement through space, extending beyond the perimeters of an exercise mat.

“The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind was created because I saw so many performers—dancers, actors, musicians—pushing themselves to the edge, to the point where they used up their natural resources and had to stop performing by their mid-30s,” says Lack. “The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind was conceived as a technique that creates sustainability for those pursuing professional careers in the performing arts.”

Lack teaches her body-mind integration technique in individual sessions and classes at Two-Snake Studios, in Los Angeles, and also travels the country lecturing on anatomy and training other instructors in how to teach her work. “My work has much kinship with Feldenkrais and Pilates, but neither of those practices go on to a developmental stage that actually teaches what we need in the performing-arts world: the ability to integrate and sustain challenging movement sequences. Feldenkrais and Pilates are wonderful for John Doe and Mary Doe and even professional dancers who have injuries, but they really just teach the basics of how to live inside your body and do a task. The teaching isn’t taken into very, very high-level movements, like the inversion postures used in yoga or the complex phrases you would do in an advanced ballet class. So The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind endeavors to go beyond that. It starts with the basics that Feldenkrais and everybody else does but then takes you on to the very heights and depths of your movement possibilities.”

For full article backstage magazine