Mula – root lock, seals energy at the base of the spine

Uddiyana – abdominal lock, inner embrace, navel to spine

Jalandhara – throat lock, protects neck & sends energy to crown

MAHA Bandha – all three ON with awareness

For every inch of forward head position, your head weighs extra 10 pounds. This adds up over years in faster spinal column degeneration.

Fix it:

1. Crown into sky – upward energy though center

2. Ears over your shoulders/hips/knees/ankles – stack self, use the divinely engineered musculoskeletal skeletal system to your advantage

3. Perform below exercise for 7 breaths – INHALE: rest the back of your head in your clasped hands, look at the sky, lift your chest, spread your collarbones & elbows, fill the fullness of your inspiration. EXHALE: pull your chin toward chest, flexing neck only, draw your elbows close to each other, gentle overpressure with weight of clasped hands, gaze into your heart. Repeat for 7 spacious breaths.

It appears that my myofascial stiffness has increased—R knee has been sensitive to traditional kapotasana, garudasana & prone knee flexion machine (pigeon, eagle & ham curl). I feel the twisting inside irritates something within, a ligament or two, perhaps meniscus, perhaps cartilage surface irritation. Knee swells & takes about a week of consideration & loving attention to return to normal.

Here are a couple of examples of creating favorable healing conditions space within & around the joint:

Joined Equinox. Grateful to have a space to nourish self & experiment with movement. When my body is in motion, insights drop one after the other. Here are a few from yesterday’s workout:

1. Body is love, life & wisdom. The energy, the heartbeat & the breath are my main areas of concentration when i “work in”. Focusing on these three, clears my mind & opens my consciousness to inspiration. I create the conditions & the downloads flow. Frequently solutions to daily puzzles appear while i am involved with self within energy & body layers. Restful for the mind & inspiring for the soul.
2. Strongly preferring discovery over dogma & convention, i observed myself becoming a minimalist & a perfectionist. What does that look like at the gym? For example, the Squat. My training session was all about it. Cardiovascular warm up with a few 10-15s bursts of power, followed by mobility & body weight squats. For work sets i alternated light squats for 20x & moderate squats for 10x, changing order & throwing 1 min cardio intervals, Virabhadrasana 3 & Viparita Ardha Chandrasana. Resting as needed. After completing 3 work sets, i explored a deadlift machine grooving the hinge pattern & was even able to do some very difficult Bulgarians without even loading it. Concluded my session with working hollow position & active shoulders in hang, which decompressed my spine, plus more loosening playing with mobility stick, a few more asanas & core action. Deep focus on personal best within each gym session feeds intrinsic motivation indefinitely. This best may vary from day to day, be quantifiable or qualitative, but showing up consistently & constantly is the long-term health game. Use body as a vital sign.
3. Light. Medium. Heavy. Remixing these domains yields both performance & longevity. Within week, and/or within session manipulation of intensity & volume is an excellent way to avoid accommodation & overtraining. Working 10 moderate squats in conjunction with 20 light & fast squats was an excellent challenge. My squat felt complete. Moderate sets benefitted from the light sets adding speed to concentric phase & light squats felt no less challenging pushing the endurance of speed in squat pattern. Totally awesome, fortifying & satisfying.

Create space in left lumbosacral region via this sequence. Main points: 1. breath (5-10 ujai per posture) 2. use all of your bandhas 3. elongate & stabilize spine.

Complete on both sides, observe, compare, contrast. Mountain or down dog will go well between sides.