Creating and Keeping a Happy Back

Your experience from the base of your neck to your armpits, down to your rump is what we commonly call “your back.” For many, this experience grows less pleasant with time. Whether you have a happy back you want to keep or a disgruntled back you want to restore, this class will walk you through practices you can apply for a lifetime of ease, energy and grace.

Lifestyle and movement routines to enjoy your back:

When our backs complain, we often blame “age,” sedentary lifestyles and responsibilities, heredity, and prior injury. While some combination of all these factors is often at play, there are lifestyle and movement meditated factors we can take control of to elevate and even enjoy our backs!

While time, many responsibilities, differences you are born with like scoliosis, and prior injuries aren’t under our control, creating strength and appropriate range of motion in each movement segment of your back are factors under our control. Additionally, factors like how many fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, and clean proteins versus how many modified molecules (processed food, alcohol, refined sugars) as well as hydration, sleep and rest, normal sitting position on couches, at tables and desks and in cars are incredibly modifiable and even enjoyable.

What You Get

• Six weekly 75-minute yoga practices from 4 -5:15 pm Thursdays, September 1st through October 6th.

• All classes recorded and kept in a Google Drive for you to access at your leisure throughout the class and after.

• Downloadable goal setter and tracker for recording how you’re feeling, what you’re doing, and progress toward goals.

• Weekly emails with suggested PYP (Personal Yoga Practice) and Circadian Living homework to enhance your experience.

• Classes will include Energetic, Yin, and Restorative asana, pranayama, and relaxation. Check-in before class. Discussion held in last 10 minutes.

• Additional equipment (your responsibility) required.

What Joints Create “Your Back”?

• Vertebral joints: 3 for each of 24 “movement segments:” spaces between vertebrae from axis (top) to sacrum, complete with 3 curves that balance one another dynamically

• Glenohumeral joint - shoulder blade to upper arm bone

• Scapulothoracic joint - shoulder blade to rib cage

• Acromioclavicular joint - collarbone to shoulder blade

• Sacroiliac Joints - two of those, where sacrum meets the ilium forming the whole, called the pelvis

• Hip joints - femur into ilium, or pelvis

• And joints further from center of mass like knees and elbows can have their effects as well.

How Many Muscles is That?

Too many to name here, and luckily you’ve got the idea. You will build useful strength and range of motion in core, back, hip and shoulder stabilizing muscles. Your core - especially the elevator-drawstring-zipper of True Core - is a major support to the 3 times 24 joints of just your spine, your hips, and all those joints of your shoulders. Adequate, balanced strength in the core - the anterior (in front of the spine) - muscles allows the muscles around the back of your spine, between your spine and rib cage, hips and arms, shoulder blades and everything they attach to, to both activate and relax at appropriate times.

Additionally, the soft tissue around and facilitating the space between these joints, muscles and the organs they enclose is called fascia, or the extracellular matrix (ECM). Fascia facilitates both nerves themselves and the neurotransmitters that shuttle between them. Particular timing, shapes, feeling, and even breathing of movements can help to “unstick” this matrix and create more movement potential between all surfaces.

Finally, breath, movement, and relaxation in postures and at rest soothe and balance your nervous system, allowing you to be less reactive to outside and irritating stimuli and more centered in your internal experience.