Curves Health Yoga

In nature, except for some coniferous trees, there are no straight lines. By two spiral arms of the galaxy in which we find ourselves, to the double helix of our DNA, as occurs for all curves. The spine of the human being is no exception to this rule. At the time of birth, this column presents a single convex curve to the rear, which decreases gradually to about the fifteenth month of age, when he becomes almost straight. 

Towards the three years begins to appear a slight lordosis (curvature of a convex front) in the lumbar region, which stabilizes in more or less final, as the resulting curves and cervical dorsal, to eight years. The evolution of the traces in this way, in a sense, that of the species. The transition from quadruped position to standing resulted in first and then straighten the inversion of the curve in the lumbar section. This process does not seem to have completed a level of the basin, which maintains some degree of anterior tilt, which must be compensated by the lumbar lordosis. Here's how to explain both the lumbar lordosis and resulting curves normal (dorsal kyphosis, cervical lordosis), which vary depending on the position of the pelvis from one individual to another. 

In adults, the vertebral column presents four curves: 

- Sacrum: a convex posterior hard because the vertebrae that form the sacred bone are welded together 

- Lumbar spine: a convex front 

- Dorsal: a convex posterior 

- Neck: a convex front 


As the muscles respond 

Balance and tension of muscles and ligaments of the trunk is organized according to the spinal curves. If we look at the areas where the muscles tend to be more "short", and tonic too inelastic, and where the muscle is usually little tonic and perhaps too "stretched", we can see that the first situation corresponds to areas of the concave curves (lumbar and cervical), and the second to the convex (dorsal and sacral). We can represent the relationship between muscles and column imagining a bow: the muscles are stretched the rope, ready to incoccare an arrow, which maintains the curvature of the arch, ie the column. From these observations we can draw useful insights applicable to our practice, for example in the creation of positions of extension (bending back) of the spine. 

From a muscle will be more sensible to try to "open" areas that are prone to closure, relaxing and stretching muscles generally short and retracted, and not seek the extension of facilities and too little tonic "stretched". From one point of view and vertebral joints, efforts to improve mobility in areas of extension to rear convexity (dorsal and sacral), while avoiding too much to ask zones lordosis (anterior convexity, especially lumbar), often already too mobile and curved in such positions. 

Analyzing such Ustrasana will be judicious in the position: 

- Urging the opening of the inguinal region while maintaining the pelvis in retroversion (wider coxo-femoral joints, stretching the hip flexor muscles: ileum-psoas and femoral quadriceps); 

- Urging the opening of the chest and shoulders (extension of the dorsal part of the column, pectoral muscle lengthening); 

- Avoid accentuating the arcuazione tract of the lumbar column (and especially buttocks kept upright abdominal tonic and shortened). 

As for the cervical region, the speech is a bit more complex: the best solution nell'arretrare first time in a neck and head together, keeping the neck stretch (thus facilitating the mobility of the back area and prevent compression of the cervical unpleasant) ; letting go of the head back at a later time. 


More effort more benefits 

Our actions, in practice as well as in everyday life, are determined by how we conceive mentally. If we think of Ustrasana as a movement, we inevitably tend to use the line of least resistance, bending, where the structures, often unbalanced in that direction, against less resistance in this case emphasizing the lumbar lordosis at the expense welfare of the spine. If we try to conceive, instead, as a movement forward, where the closed areas may open, the situation may be radically different. 

Choose the path of least resistance, as in practice in daily life, it can immediately simplify things. But lacking the ability to operate a real change in the patterns of physical and psychological stress, strengthening the already existing imbalances and depriving them of future possibilities of a better balance.