If you haven't seen already, I am teaching a training workshop called Spring Cleaning The Spine at Leith Yoga, Edinburgh on the 5th - 6th March.
I thought it would be a good idea to write a blog post about the workshop and its importance
The spine is the headquarters of the nervous system. This is the place where we are one step ahead of our senses as we navigate the world around us. This is the store house of so many of our programs.
Why is spring cleaning your important?
Well seeing as this is part of the central place of movement, after periods of time, the human body conditions itself to move in particular ways. By manually working the spine through yoga type movements, it is easy to inter-segmentally provide our spines what we personally need.
The benefits of this include improving overall mobility, re-setting the skeletal-nervous system relationship which means we get to train the core muscles around the spine to work to our advantage.
One of my mentors taught me that multifidus, one of the closest groups of the muscles to the spine, loses power when we experience symptoms such as back pain. That power is not restored until we take the time to optimise the inter-segmental sponges of the spine. If we avoid conditioning the multifidus, we are likely to learn to compensate by using other muscles to support the spine. This isn’t effective as the spinal stabilisers are not doing their job, and something else is.
We all know what happens when someone who doesn’t fit the job gets the job right?
On a psycho-emotional level, the spine houses a lot of our core tensions. The tensions that have been kept inside that we may have forgotten about or the type of tension that develops at the pre-language & pre-emotional stage.
If you have ever felt suddenly invigorated and empowered after back bends, this could be why.
For practitioners who are more interested in the practise of yoga for self-actualising (awakening), this type of practise is useful for deepening the relationships with the deeper internal channels such as kundalini.
Kundalini awakening is a process, it isn’t something that can be guaranteed in a workshop! It takes a lot of time. How much time depends on our attachments to our own karmic afflictions. Basically the easier we can process and let go, the more space becomes available within these spaces.
Imagine the additional freedom of movement in the physical and emotional body. Now that’s lightness and worth spring cleaning the spine for!
Self-Bodywork
During the pandemic I had to re-think the way that I work. As someone who’s primary language of love and method of navigating the world is through the medium of touch, the various lock downs really did fuck with my head, what I was reading from others and communicating back was at times, questionable!
My way around this was to touch together.
During my classes I tried to add as much self-bodywork as possible. To increase the teachings around self-care, to empower my community to confidently teach these techniques to their students and there is a different essence that fills the environment when we include touch, even if it is to ourselves.
I have started to teach a lot more self-bodywork because not only does the practitioner get to learn through the medium of increasing their self-care skills, but it’s also an easier way to learn.
Think about it, when I’m asking you to touch a particular acupressure point or muscular structure, there is going to be an internal response. That response can be easier to locate when we are doing the work to ourselves.
I have grown to prefer this way of teaching the preliminary steps to bodywork because we all get to learn in our spaces together before we meet together and work on each other.
That’s not to say self-bodywork can replace the skills and care from trained touch, but it’s a way to navigate and reclaim our powers of self-care, self-healing & personal growth during a time when so much weirdness surrounds the idea of touch.
My final reason for loving self-bodywork is that it makes me feel good about myself. When I feel good in my body I want to be in here. When I want to be in here so much potential takes place.
I would love to share the access to that potential with you. If you are interested in attending this training click here. If you are reading this after this particular training has past, keep an eye on my schedule for the next one!
Speak Soon, Jambo.
