Judith Lasater – Karen's New York Love Affair

Spinal exploration: a yoga myth and healthy discs

A while ago I mentioned attending a Judith Lasater workshop on the sacroiliac joint. I promised to tell you some of the interesting things I learned at the workshop, and now I’d like to do that. I’ve followed up what I learned in the workshop with additional research about the spine, to share with you how yoga can help you can nourish your spine and prevent back pain.

Judith’s focus was on the natural curves of the spine. When each of the curves is allowed to be in natural alignment, the spine becomes a very stable structure that supports our bowling-ball head and what’s known as the axial load—the downward weight of the body when we are vertical (sitting or standing). It might seem counter-intuitive, but it is the balance of the curves that creates the stability. The diagram to the left shows a side view of the curves of the spine. The person is facing to the right.

There are five sections or groupings of vertebrae in the spine, with the curves reversing direction from one section to the next, from anterior (frontwards at the neck) to posterior (upper back) to anterior (lower back) to posterior (butt), and finally anterior and posterior again in the sacrum and coccyx. The five vertebrae in the sacrum fuse together between the ages of 16-18 and 25-26. This fusing is one of the factors that causes us to lose flexibility with age. Also notice how the natural curve of the spine situates the sacrum at almost a 45-degree angle from vertical. The 3 to 5 coccygeal vertebrae form the coccyx, which usually fuses into a single bone, but not always. As you can see in the diagram, the coccyx forms an extension of the curve of the sacrum and it tilts backwards. The coccyx is commonly known as the tailbone.

Tailbone tucked, or let the lordosis sway?

Any of you who have been in a yoga class, whatever the style, have probably been told to keep your tailbone tucked in mountain pose. I know I’ve heard it a hundred times, and learned to instruct students to do this in multiple teacher training courses. But what does tucking the tailbone do to the natural curve of the spine? Tucking the tailbone means drawing the coccyx forward, which causes the lower back to flatten, and then causes flattening up the whole length of the spine. This movement totally abolishes the natural curve of the spine, messing with the stability and the load-bearing capability that the spine has with the natural curves.

Judith encourages her students to experiment with not tucking the tailbone. In fact, to fully allow the natural curve of the spine, you might need to slightly exaggerate the curve in your lower back, especially if you have worked for years to flatten the curve. It seems like a very radical idea, because most of us have been so indoctrinated to tuck the tailbone. Judith demonstrated on three different students how the natural curve of the spine means our butts and chest are sticking out. Too sexy for this party! Many of the students had been told they had lordosis (an exaggerated curve in the lower back) and that they needed to straighten it. The pain these women have suffered as a result is shocking. Some of us postulated that the reason we are taught to keep our tailbones tucked is to keep women down! My mom and sister didn’t agree with this theory when I shared it with them. Hmm, bummer.

Another theory occurred to me when Judith demonstrated on the single man in the class that his hip bones were much higher than a woman’s, and his pelvis was a rectangular shape rather than curved like a woman’s hips. I think most of the lineage of yoga teachers in India, dating back thousands of years, were men. Krishnamacharya, born in 1888 and teacher to many of the teachers who brought yoga to the west, including Indra Devi (often called the First Lady of Yoga), B. K. S. Iyengar, T. K. V. Desikachar, Gerard Blitz, and Jean Klein, traced his lineage of male yoga teachers back to the ninth century. That’s centuries of practicing and perfecting on the male body. Perhaps the instruction to tuck the tailbone makes sense for the male body in a way that doesn’t hold true for the female one with its radically different pelvic anatomy.

I would love to hear from any of you out there, male and female alike, about your thoughts on this. Personally, I have been experimenting with the non-tailbone-tucked, natural spinal curve in mountain pose and all the other poses that move from this standing position. I must say I have experienced less pain in my sacroiliac joint—the pain that motivated me to attend Judith’s workshop in the first place. So I think there might be something enlightening and world-view shattering (on a smallish scale) about this idea of letting the spine be in its natural curve. I invite those of you with a regular yoga practice to try it for yourselves and see what you think. I also introduced this idea in a class I taught recently for the Society for Technical Communication. I will explore this further in another posting.

The discs between the vertebrae

Another fact that Judith mentioned about the spine was that the discs between the vertebrae are avascular. This means they don’t receive a direct blood supply to bring them the vital water needed for hydration, food in the form of glucose, building material in the form of amino acids, and oxygen. I was curious about this, and decided to do a bit of research to find out how the discs do receive their nourishment.

I found what I was looking for at Chirogeek.com. The discs are situated between the vertebrae, and are composed of a high percentage of water in a closed hydraulic system that is able to withstand a great deal of pressure. A well-hydrated disc is even stronger than the vertebrae themselves. Interestingly, the compression on the discs when we are standing causes us to shrink in height. The height of the disc increases as much as 20% overnight when we are lying down and the discs have the opportunity to re-hydrate.

The discs contain sponge-like molecules that hold 500 times their weight in water! The health of the cells within the discs affects their capacity for holding this water, which is what gives the discs a very high hydrostatic pressure and therefore their incredible strength to support the axial load of being upright. From the time we begin to spend most of our time upright, at about age two, until about age 10, there is a diminishment in the nutrient-providing capillary beds that supply the discs and take away the waste products of cell activity. It seems that the pressure of standing causes this diminishment. Therefore, after the age of 10, the supply of nutrients to the discs occurs through diffusion from tiny capillary beds in the subchondral bone above the end-plates of the vertebrae, and through diffusion from capillaries in the outer layers of the anulus, or outer edge, of the discs.

This diagram from Chirogeek.com illustrates the process of diffusion. The pink balls are nutrients. The mauve plates are the subchondral bones containing capillary beds. As shown here, the capillaries don’t go directly into the disc from the top and bottom after the age of 10, though there are still some capillaries that enter the outer edges of the disc.

It seems a miracle that this diffusion can occur. The better hydrated the discs, the more easily that nutrients can diffuse into them. It is easier to travel through water than through dense matter. And this is where yoga can help to improve nutrition to the discs. The movements of yoga in flexing, extending, and twisting the spine cause gentle pressure on the discs. Imagine squeezing a sponge and then putting it in a bowl of water. When you release the squeeze, the sponge soaks up the water. This is what happens to the discs when they are gently squeezed and released through the movements of yoga. The release creates a bit of a vacuum, into which water-bearing nutrients can flow. Obviously, staying well hydrated is important too.

It is often said that a flexible spine is a healthy spine, and a healthy spine is what keeps us young. With the understanding of the physiology of the discs, it is easy to see how doing yoga, drinking enough water, and getting enough sleep (which gives the discs time to re-hydrate in a non-weight-bearing position) all contribute to keeping us healthy and pain-free. Dried out discs don’t receive as much nourishment. This can lead to chronic lower back pain and possible disc degeneration—conditions that often occur as we age.

I am grateful to Judith Lasater for pointing me in the direction of better understanding why yoga is so beneficial for a healthy spine.

As a common-sense caution, yoga might not be appropriate if you already have a problem with your spine or discs. Seek professional advice if this is the case for you, before beginning to add yoga to your life.

P.S. If you’d like to read about the sacroiliac joint and how to prevent pain there, here is an excellent article by Judith Lasater.

Touchiness – in more ways than one

To touch or not to touch

I recently had the great good fortune to attend a Judith Hanson Lasater workshop on the sacroiliac joint. Judith is a world-renowned yoga teacher and author of numerous books, including one of my faves, Yoga Abs: Moving from Your Core. I was surprised to arrive at the training site and discover more than 50 teacher-students in the room. I shouldn’t have been surprised, as Judith is a wonderful teacher and obviously many of the yoga teachers and serious yoga students in Vancouver would want to come to learn from her.

I learned some fascinating information about our natural spinal alignment and how that impacts the most basic poses such as Mountain pose. I will write about that later. What I would like to discuss today is the respect with which Judith created a safe space for her students. Although we were all experienced yoga practitioners, and many of us were teachers, Judith did not make any assumptions about touching each other. She created a ground rule about asking for permission to touch, and she followed this rule herself every time she demonstrated a principle of alignment or subtle adjustment on a student. Similarly, she coached us to ask for permission to touch our partner when we worked in pairs. It seems very obvious to me that this is a foundation for creating safety in a classroom. I was very happy to see that one of the foremost teachers in the North American yoga community promotes this basic courtesy.

In several recent Yoga Outreach trainings that I attended, including their foundational teacher training and a course on teaching trauma-sensitive yoga, the YO teachers explained that when working with students in the populations that Yoga Outreach teaches, touch is rarely appropriate. Many of the students in Yoga Outreach classes in prisons, mental health facilities, women’s shelters, addiction treatment centres, and so on, have experienced physical trauma in their lives, such as physical or sexual abuse. When someone’s boundaries have been trespassed in this way, it can be difficult to say no to touch, even when gently asked by a caring yoga teacher. This is one of the reasons that touch is not advised. Another reason is that any kind of touch can inadvertently re-traumatize a student. Even a word or tone of voice can be re-traumatizing to someone who has experienced abuse or other forms of trauma.

Even in a mainstream yoga class, it is usual, though not universal, for teachers to request permission to touch before they make an adjustment. Often they will make a statement at the beginning of class about the possibility of touching, and ask students to indicate if they are not comfortable with this.

I must be like one of those people who are allergic to cats, whom the cats love to come and rub up against. I don’t feel comfortable receiving physical adjustments in a yoga class. If the teacher is moving around the classroom and making adjustments it makes me feel wary and on edge. I like the teacher to stay at the front of the room where I can keep an eye or her or him! Even if the teacher is someone I know well and have had many classes with, I still feel uncomfortable about being touched. I am very sensitive both physically and energetically, and others’ touch leaves an imprint that I continue to feel long after the touch has occurred. I don’t like it.

So you would think I would have learned by now that for some reason my discomfort with touch seems to call out like a beacon for teachers to come and touch me! Yes, I finally have learned that this is likely to occur, and I’ve thought of a strategy to deal with it. But the learning didn’t come easy.

In January I attended a class at a location I was thinking of teaching at. I was there to participate as a student while getting a feel for the location, which was in the Downtown Eastside in the back room of an organization that offers yoga classes to DTES residents as an adjunct to health services that they provide. I’d never been there before, and I’d never met the yoga teacher. I have to admit I wasn’t 100% comfortable with this scene. Being in the DTES is a bit challenging for me, and attending a class with DTES residents was scary. Although I must say, the women who attended the class seemed like ordinary, high-functioning individuals and not at all different from students in other classes I’ve attended, except that they were a bit older than the average student in a yoga studio.

Nonetheless, I felt a bit on the hyper-vigilant side as students came in. The teacher turned off the light in the room, so there was only dim light coming down a hallway from the front room. This made me feel uncomfortable, but it seemed to be what the other students were used to. The teacher began the class late, and did not remark on this with an apology, but perhaps not being too vigilant about time was intended to make students who were late feel okay about attending. This was another difference from what I’m accustomed to, because usually being punctual about time is a way of respecting students’ schedules and setting clear boundaries for the class. I didn’t mind it beginning late, but the teacher also ended the class quite late, and to me that is disrepectful of the students’ time.

I don’t know, I suppose all these things were the conventions the teacher had established after founding the class there and teaching it for 3 years. But to me it was as if I had entered some weird Twilight Zone where all expectations are blown away. I was doing my best to deal with the norms of the class, and when the teacher began teaching, I was very impressed with her skill as a teacher. She had prepared a lesson about cleansing out the digestive system after over-indulging on the holidays, and had a second theme about protecting the joints when extending limbs. Wow! I was impressed.

So I was participating in the class, and exploring the subtleties of inner perception that the teacher drew my attention to. I was really getting a lot out of the class, and it seemed like the other students were too. Then we were all in child’s pose, and the teacher began moving around the room. Uh-oh. I noticed she was approaching various students, but couldn’t really see what was going on since my face was on the mat. And, in case you are not familiar with child’s pose, my ass was in the air. It is a very vulnerable pose. In the trauma-sensitive training they advised to use extreme caution about putting students into this pose, because it can trigger trauma. Think about it! Yet here the teacher was, going around the room and approaching students from the rear while they were in this extremely vulnerable pose.

Still, I didn’t dream that she was going to touch me. We had never met before. I had not granted her permission to touch me. She hadn’t said anything about touch at the beginning of the class. I felt uneasy as I sensed her approaching my mat. Then she did it–she bent over and placed her hands on my kidneys–one on either side of my waist. I turned towards her to say don’t do that, and she removed her hands and moved away before I had the chance to say anything. But the imprint of her hands remained for the rest of the class. I felt violated, and this incident did retraumatize me.

At the time, I was trying to cope, and mindful of the fact that I was supposed to be teaching there soon. I felt I had to get along with the teacher, and go along with what was happening. Big mistake. I over-rode my own instincts in order to be nice and go along, instead of shifting out of the pose and looking after myself. I wanted to deal with this maturely!

At the end of the class I waited for an opportunity to speak privately with the teacher. After complimenting her on the class, I explained to her that I hadn’t wanted her to touch me and that in trauma-sensitive yoga trainings that I have attended they teach that touching students is not appropriate. She did not apologize for touching me or express any concern about how her touch had impacted me. I guess this was new information to her and she didn’t understand how what was obviously a good intention could leave a bad impression.

Unfortunately for me, I learned the hard way that I have to set clear and definite boundaries even if there is no easy opportunity to do so. From now on, if I ever attend a yoga class again, I will be sure to speak to the teacher before the class begins to make it clear I don’t want to be touched. Yoga is supposed to be healing, not harmful, yet this incident was very distressing to me. I later experienced a panic attack when I was out for a run and remembering the class, and I ended up having to go to a trauma therapist to de-activate the triggered event of being held around the waist and physically beaten.

I have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s new novel, The Novice. He writes about a woman who responded to extreme injustice and physical violence with equanimity and magnanimity towards her aggressors. Clearly, I have a long way to go towards healing and being a spiritually enlightened being. Even now, I feel resentful towards the yoga teacher, and even towards my trauma therapist, who was supposed to have helped me deal with this trauma already! Although I am sure the yoga teacher meant no harm, I am still angry. And underneath the anger, I am hurt that she did not care how I felt, or admit she had done anything wrong. As always with events that impact us strongly, there is still more for me to understand about what happened that day.