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 Lotus foot in Mari BModerators: Moderators Jump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
| Yoga -> Ashtanga Yoga | Message format |
iandicker |
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| lewellen17 |
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| Nick |
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    Location: London, England | |||
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| iandicker |
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Ian, "Should my foot be rotated in lotus? Most pics of experienced yogis show that their feet are facing up. My foot points into my stomach most of the time." That's a tricky one to answer, because it depends on the individual-it's a case of nature and nurture. Naturally, your anatomy might not allow the foot to turn up, but by nurturing the movement, your foot should gravitate towards turning up. In any case, the reason the foot is turning up isn't because the foot is turning, it's more a case of the hip and knee joints externally rotating. These more experienced individuals have more external rotation, which is probably a result of their anatomy, which might have disposed them towards practicing yoga in the first place, and also through their training. In this posture, biceps femoris, which is one of the three hamstring muscles, becomes an external rotator of the hip and knee. It's origin is on the outside edge of the sitting bone, and its insertion is on the outside edge of the back of the tibia, just below the knee joint. So if it contracts, the two ends are brought closer together, and the angle of pull tends to produce external rotation. What you have in the leg is three joints, the hip, knee, and ankle, and the important thing with all postures, and indeed with all movement, is to locomote in such a way that the bones do not become long levers which succced i prising apart the knee and ankle, but instead mobilize the hip. So postures need to be done with greater stability in the knee and ankle, so that greater range of motion is trained in the hip joint. It's a fair bet that at the momment, your posture is being done in such a way that the opposite is true-this is almost the norm, so it's no wonder that many students get knee problems from incorrect lotus postion. If we continue with the idea of levers, if you put a spade in the ground, and pull on the handle to lift the earth, and the spade breaks, which it usually does just where the long lever inserts into the metal of the spade itself, you can see that to fix the problem, you need a spade with a much stronger connection between the wood and metal. In this analogy, you ankle and foot become this connection, and your femur and tibia become the wooden shaft of the handle. I suppose we could continue with the analogy and say that the rest of the body then becomes the earth that you are rtying to shift, and that we should probably learn to align the body so that the 'spade' doesn't break. Let's hope that your ankle is just sore from the damage you did to it in that class, and that if this is so, you should notice it disappearing over the next week or so. If it was me, I wouldn't practice this particular pose. But perhaps do a half lotus forward bend-the same goes for Mari D, but do half lotus with a twist. Learn to do these postures without foot supination taking place, only allowing the foot to point. At this juncture, I have to say that when I tell people to point their foot, they say they are, but what they are actually doing is supinating-when I get rid of inversion and adduction in the foot, the foot can then point much more, another few degrees at least-so they were pointing the foot as much as they were able, but their ability was reduced by the introduction of supination. You will see that the first series is full of postures which encourage supination, and the wise practicioner notices this and fights the movement, which is basically a collapse of good posture. Right from the word go, see how the soles of the feet tend to turn towards each other in paschimottanasana, then you have triangamukhapada, half lotus, janu sirsasana A and B, and so on. Someone up there is trying to tell us something  When someone turns their ankle, thepain that is felt is usually from damge to the ligaments on the side of the ankle which are supposed to stop the turn taking place, but they have failed to do so, and got damaged in the process. The muscles that were also supposed to prevent the turn are also often faulty. What happens then is that someting called a proprioceptive deficit occurs, where the central nervous system is given faulty information in a feedback mechanism from the snesory nerves in the anke, ligaments, and muscles. It's a bit like spinning around and getting dizzy-you can't balance because your central nervous system is being information that isn't true. So then the central nervous system directs our body in an inexpert manner-like having a satnav which is faulty, you don't end up going where you wanted to go. So we have to prevent this foot supination, otherwise the central nervous system will adapt to innacurate input, and then begin to give out innaccurate output-then you are on a vicious spiral, all the time thinking that you are getting better, until one day, that spade handle breaks. So even if it stops hurting, don't stop trying to point the foot-if you keep on bombarding the central nervous system with messages, it adapts-this is one of the reasons pain dissappears-your brain and spinal cord don't react to the input which is warning you to stop what you are doing. The nerve receptors themselves also switch off. You can see this in action by eliciting a knee jerk reflex by hitting the tendon below the kneecap with a hammer. If you do it repeatedly, you will see that the reflex damps down very quickly, and less movement occurs (try it on your kids ). The mechanisms that were designed to protect you no longer do so-the knee jerk response is actually a response which contracts the quadriceps in reaction to the sudden stretch on the tendon which occurs when you hit it. There's also an ankle jerk response, and it is said that this response is often absent or reduced in people with ankle injuries, or with diabetes, which often affects the nervous system. Just thought I would say all that to encourage you, not to put you off Nick | ||
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| iandicker |
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| Nick, As usual lots to read but all good stuff. I don't have problems with my knees anymore. I mostly keep my knee from flexing when going into lotus by keeping the joint closed and moving the bent leg as one unit. Nice spade analogy BTW.  Seems like my problem with my ankle is supination. Hopefully now I'm aware of the problem I can try to minimise it. I don't think it the problem started in any class I've been to though. Thanks, Ian | |||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | |||
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| iandicker |
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| Nick, Thanks again. I do appreciate your help and the spirit with which it is offered but I really don't have problems with my knees now, apart from them creaking when I go upstairs, though all this talk might make me think they're getting worse by suggestion.  (The old problem BTW was hyperextending them in a mistaken attempt to get deeper into a leg stretch) What I have problems with I now realise is supination of my right foot and to a lesser extent the left. I didn't realise how much I was doing it until I did my practice after reading your post. I noticed it most (apart from mari b) in janu a and b. I'm not sure exactly how to place my foot in either of these poses. The books I have don't seem to be consistent at all. In A I seemed to run out of space when I point my foot and in B I can't work out whether to point the foot or flex it. Any advice? | |||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Ian, Ok, I was just checking that the knee wasn't hurting in Mari B I'm sure there's a title of a song in there somewhere You are right about those books being inconsistent! I think one of the factors is that in Janu B, for example, if you fully point the foot, you then stretch to stretch the ankle joint, and also, as you turn the foot, you're centre of gravity rises, so it's harder to balance-also, the back of your straight leg is further from the floor, and so people think it shows their not as advanced as those who can get the back of the calf on the floor-similiar to the splits. You can basically use exactly the same mechanism as we used in lotus to remove the supination-use the hip muscles to turn the right leg clockwise. When the foot is fully pointed, this is often a good individual guide to exactly where your knee should be placed. I find instructions like 'take your legs 90 degrees apart' laughable-talk about producing clones rather than celebrating a person's uniqueness. So use that biceps femoris, and a few others besides! I don't get what you mean by running out of space in Janu sirsasana A. But in Janu A, the effect of the rotation should turn the front of the thigh towards the wall behind you-the right hip is externally rotating (clockwise), and in Janu B, the right hip internally rotates, so that the front of the thigh faces the ceiling. Notice that in both instances, you are aligning the knee and ankle joints, so this follows the rules of rehab-otherwise the pose itself is impacting negatively on both joints. In my opinion, there should be little or no body weight on the right heel in janu B, which I believe goes contrary to the teachings. There are several reasons I do this, but surely, if you are pulling with arms, then the pelvis will lift-you are like a climber with your hands above your head. This should happen in all postures to some extent-if we sit on our bums, then we have perhaps lost the use of one of the most important core muscles in protecting the low back and SI joints-not always, but in my opinion, nearly. So in postures like janu B, where the opportunity presents itself to lift, then take it-this should communicate into eventually helping the lift back and lift forwards of the vinyasa-you are learning to use the core muscles as a kind of active sling which pull the pelvis away from the floor. Nick | ||
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| iandicker |
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Ian, Yes, sounds like your knee have to be furth apart in Janu A. Either that, or you can flex the foot, and bring the knees closer tohether, but again, not letting the accessory movments of inversion and adduction taking place-two different postures, really, with different effects-the key is to not let the foot turn. Take a look at this image: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.gyneflex.com/archive/pelvic_floor_muscles.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.health-question.net/General_Health_Care/Injuries/pelvic_mustle_lateral_view__112487.html&h=134&w=129&sz=122&tbnid=uD9qLAznTa8J:&tbnh=134&tbnw=129&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&cd=3 Letting body weight rest on the heel will effectively lengthen these muscles. If you then use the sensation to contract these muscles, then less weight will be borne on the heel. If you let more weight come onto the heel, then these muscles will lenghten further-so like you say, it's a question of degree. So I use the pressure of the heel as an instruction for the pelvic floor to contract, whereas, again, like you say, the general instruction is let weight rest on the heel. If the weight is allowed to be borne on the heel, I believe there is a tendency for one or several of the following things to take place: 1) Sacro-iliac joint shear forces open up the joint. 2) Improper plevic tilt which negatively affects spinal position and potential for spinal health benefits. 3) Excessive rotation and compression of the knee joint. 4) Greater capacity for allowing the knee of the straight leg to hyper-extend. 5) Greater weight on the foot, encouraging supination. Interestingly, if the pose is done in the way described, more pressure is felt on the back of the heel of the straight leg-the base of support then stretches from that heel to the opposite foot, rather than the base of support basically being from the knee of the bent leg to the bent leg foot. As the weight is then shared more evenly between the two legs, when you stretch the spine, by reaching for the foot, it will tend to stay in a straight line, without sidebending and rotating-by putting more weight on the bent leg, the reverse is true. So putting weight on the heel does not activate moola bandha-let's just regard moola bandha as a muscle, rather than as an "energy centre." If anything, putting weight on the heel encourages the muscle to turn off-it's stretching, and less tone in the muscle will alllow it to stretch further. If you look up pelvic floor rehabilation, you will find that most exercises are designed to tighten the pelvic floor-there aren't too many people with pelvic floors that are too tight, and need relaxing, but there are plenty of people who would benefit from a tighter pelvic floor. Best use savasana at the end to achieve relaxation of the pelvic floor and all other skeletal muscles. So you can see there's a spectrum, but I think that if you, use postures in order to bolster the action of the pelvic floor, rather than relaxing them, you will find that the entire body adjusts itself, and that the benfits of yoga are greatly enhanced. This is entirely natural-the pelvic floor naturally tightens in response to increased load-whether that load is increased body weight, poor spinal position, good spinal position, deep breathing, sneezing, etc. The pelvic floor has three function-sexual, supportive and sphinteric-in yoga we challenge the last two functions, unless you get really lucky So relaxing the pelvic floor is going to adversely affect all three functions, for most people. Nick | ||
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