THE GREAT PIGEON CHALLENGE

🐦THE GREAT PIGEON CHALLENGE🐦 With all the time that we are going to spend isolated and sitting during the quarentine of COVID 19, the Pigeon against the wall Yoga pose (also known as the Screaming Pigeon) is very importante to practice. At a physical level this postura stretches the anterior part of the body, freeing up the lumbar area, relaxing internal organs as well as working directly with the ilia-psoas, the muscle of the soul.  The ilia psoas is directly connected with the head of the femur bone. Due to its connection with the leg, it is the first muscle that is activated in the survival instinct of FIGHT and FLIGHT. For this reason, when there is stress and fear, this muscle tenses up automatically causing problems in the lumbar region, digestion as well as kidney problems. In fact, in Chinese medicine, pain located in the lumbar region is associated with the functioning of the kidneys which is connected with the emotion of fear.  Therefore, with everything that is occurring with COVID 19 at a health, social and economic level, I am sure that everyone has a bit of stress and fear that they need to leg go of! To release and prevent problems at both a physical and psychological level, I invite everyone to practice this pose EVERY DAY, integrating it into your daily practice.  PRACTICE STEPS: 👉Do this pose with a lot of COMPASSION. With  AHIMSA -WITHOUT VIOLENCE. It can be very intense at first.  👉👉 Make sure that you have the back knee stuck to the wall so you do not put pressure over the knee cap. ALWAYS keep the coccyx moving forward, lengthening the sacrum, dropping down the sit bone to free up the front groin and keep the sacrum aligned. Make sure that the neck, jaw and shoulders are relaxed. Following these directions you should experiment NO pain in the lumbar region. Use a mirror to help you observer bone alignment.   👉👉👉 Star with you hands on the ground and bit by bit start to come up, bringing the sacrum closer to the wall, NOT YOUR HEAD. The base of the spine needs to lead the pose, not the skull. ALWAYS respect the instructions given above. ( You can see a great example of the process above…thank you the Karmuka Yoga students Jorge y Maria Del Mar for the photo!)  👉👉👉👉Try and maintain the pose one minute each side. Entering bit by bit, playing with, never forcing, the stretch…and you will see, one day your sacrum will touch the wall!  When we return to having classes in person, I will see who accepted the challenge and who did not because… 🌀THE BODY NEVER LIES! 🌀 If you would like to have access to the weekly new videos and community of Karmuka Yoga where you can practice according to your schedule, share your ideas and receive answers to all of your questions during the COVID 19 querentine, contact us here to join up with the Karmuka Yoga Sangha!

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The fountain of youth: Your pelvis & spine

´To stay young, keep your legs open ´-Yamuna Zake These were the words repeated by Yamuna Zake during one of the many training sessions in New York. Everyone laughed of course but despite the obvious double entourage insinuated in this phrase, from a mechanical and energetic standpoint behind this tongue and check comment resides an insightful and wise observation. You are only as old as your spine As one ages, thanks to gravity and bad posture habits, our pelvis begins to close in on itself which results in a curved spine. You see our pelvis is not just one big block of un-moving bone. It is actually composed of two different parts that come together in various points, namely at the pubic bone and the sacrum. The pubic bone is often an ignored piece of anatomy. When I get clients to figure out where it is and place a bit of pressure on it with a Yamuna ball, there is usually a shocked look of ´what the hell is that?!¨ and ´ooooooh that is weird!!´. These are of course normal reactions when dealing with an ignored body part. The body, like any good friend or lover, wants to be acknowledged and taken care of in all of her glory. Unfortunately, often only certain parts are paid attention to, and in relation to our bodies, these are usually the belly, in an effort to get abs of steel, the chest to get those bulging pecs (or breasts) and/or of course  the perfect beach bum. This pigeon holed focus on the appearance of body parts creates a great imbalance in the overall functioning of the body and our levels of mobility and vitality. Imbalances in the body create difficulties in movement and energy flow. This eventually manifests as chronic fatigue and chronic pain found in the neck, hip, back, knees…etc. This is why Yoga is so healing. It focuses on WHOLE body movement and not just pieces or parts and essentially the fulcrum of that movement and awareness that makes life so enjoyable rests on, in and around the pelvis. This is why the majority of Yoga poses focus on movement around the pelvis. The seat of kundalini energy (life force energy) resides here, resting at the base of the spine around the coccyx and sacrum at the back of the pelvis. Furthermore,the Liver, Gall Bladder, Kidney, Urinary Bladder, Spleen, and Stomach meridians run right along and through the pubic bone,  iliac crest and sit bone down to the down to the big toe. Then there is the famous ilias psoas which runs right through the cup of the pelvis and connects the femur and lumbar spine. This is often called the muscle of soul and when a threat is perceived and a flight reaction instigated, this is one of the first muscles to activate. This is also one reason why runners and other athletes can suffer from lower backpain as well as stressed out office workers (due to stress and long hours of sitting poorly). In addition to posterior and anterior parts of the pelvis there are also the internal (abductors/pubic to knee) and external connections (IT band/hip to knee) of the pelvis which if blocked up can create hip, feet and knee issues as well as energetically being connected with issues of digestion, gynecological problems,  anxiety and fear. The Pelvis and your Breath There is also a direct connection with hip mobility and shoulder mobility. I remember a few years back when I was working around the hip with a swimmer who was having  chronic neck and shoulder issues. We got in with a ball and started to work with a few Yoga poses to open up the space around the internal and external insertion points of the femur head. After we were done, he sat up and just looked at me shocked and couldn´t believe that the pain in his left shoulder had totally disappeared without me touching it. An open pelvis with moveable connecting parts is not only essential for freedom of movement, but also for freedom of breath. It is yet another reason that 60-70% of all Yoga poses center around opening and aligning the pelvis. Obviously hip flexibility is important to sit in any cross legged meditative pose, but there is so much more involved than just achieving a comfortable sitting position. When the pelvis is open and the sit bones correctly aligned and firmly sitting on the ground (not tucked forward or put off to one side or the other) than the spine automatically straightens and lengthens up through the top of the skull which then has the effect of lifting and opening the rib cage, which then of course, creates more space for the breath and allows for all the benefits that deep breathing provides such as – slower heart rate, balanced blood pressure, relaxed nervous system and consequently the ability to think and act with the pre-frontal cortex in charge rather than with instinctive fear reactions. Fountain of Youth: From the inside out The mechanics of Yoga is not about getting you the perfect body, it is about getting you INTO your body. This of course takes more than just standing on one´s head while watching the daily news. Without awareness, breath and time, Yoga becomes nothing more than a simple practice in gymnastics and can often lead to injury. This is why in Karmuka Yoga every pose is done with awareness, time and silence. Staying in a supported pose for an extended period of time, especially around the pelvic zone, not only allows one to get into the deep connective tissue and fascia surrounding various joints (eg. the hip joint) and muscle groups, but it also gives the practitioner the chance to observe whatever other things, be it physical, mental, emotional and/or spiritual blocks that might bubble up to the surface while in the pose. Taking time to get to know and breathe into all the many points connected to and through the

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