FOUR SIMPLE STRETCHES

The best way to approach standing postures is to start simply, and the simplest standing stretches are those that do not require us to counteract gravity by tightening our lower extremities beyond what is needed to balance upright. This means that the torso is not bending backward, forward, or to the side.

We’ll start with the mountain pose.

THE MOUNTAIN POSE

The mountain pose is the basic beginning standing posture (fig. 4.15), from which all others are derived.

To begin, stand with the feet together and parallel, and the hands alongside the thighs with the forearms midway between supination and pronation (the thumbs toward the front). Create a firm base by pulling the hips tightly together in ashwini mudra and by keeping the thighs tight all around. The quadriceps femoris muscles keep the kneecaps lifted in front, the hamstring muscles keep tension on the ischial tuberosities and the base of the pelvis, and the adductor muscles keep the thighs squeezed together.

Keep the knees extended, but not hyper-extended beyond 180°. Find a relaxed and neutral position for the shoulders, neither thrown back artificially nor slumped forward. Just stand smartly erect. This is the mountain pose. It will keep the abdomen taut without any special effort and produce diaphragmatic breathing.

[Technical note: Most students do not have to be worried about hyperextension of the knees provided they keep some tension in the hamstrings. The few individuals who can hyperextend their knees beyond 180° should be watchful not to lock them, but to maintain a balancing tension all around their thighs—especially between their hamstrings and their quadriceps femoris muscles—which keeps their lower extremities on axis. It should also be mentioned that some instructors, perhaps a minority, suggest keeping the knees “soft” for the mountain posture, by which they mean keeping them ever so slightly bent. What’s most important is awareness. Do whatever you want but be attentive to the results.]

THE SIDE-TO-SIDE STRETCH

Next we’ll look at a simple side-to-side standing stretch (fig. 4.16). Stand with your feet a comfortable distance apart and tighten the muscles of the hips and thighs to make a solid pelvic base. Raise the arms to shoulder height. Now stretch the hands out to the side, palms down, with the five fingers together and pointing away from the body. Observe the sensations in the upper extremities. At first you may tend to clench the muscles, trying to force the hands out, but that’s too extreme. Just search out regions, especially around the shoulders, which, when relaxed, will allow the fingers more leeway for reaching.

You are still using muscular effort for the side stretch, but the muscles you are relaxing are now allowing others fuller sway. Gradually, delicate adjustments and readjustments will permit your fingertips to move further and further to the sides.

Figure 4.15. Mountain pose: the basic standing posture, from which all others are derived.

If you suspect that there is something mysterious about this, that some force other than your own muscular effort is drawing your fingertips out, a simple experiment will bring you back to reality. Stand in the same stretched posture and ask two people to pull your wrists gently from each side while you relax. As the stretch increases, the feeling is altogether different from the one in which you were making the effort yourself. Stretching once again in isolation will convince you that nothing but muscular effort is doing this work.

Like the mountain pose, the side-to-side stretch is excellent training for diaphragmatic breathing because the posture itself encourages it. The arm position holds the lower abdominal wall taut and the upper chest restricted, and this makes both abdominal and thoracic breathing inconvenient. You would have to make a contrived effort to allow the lower abdomen to relax and release for an abdominal inhalation, and you would have to make an unnatural effort to force the chest up and out for a thoracic inhalation. Students who tend to get confused when they try to breathe diaphragmatically in other positions learn to do it in this stretch in spite of their confusion. All the instructor has to do is point out what is happening.

Figure 4.16. Side-to-side stretch.

Right-left imbalances also become obvious in the side-to-side stretch. If students watch themselves in strategically placed mirrors, they will be acutely aware if one shoulder is higher than the other, if extension is limited more on one side than the other, or if there are restrictions around the scapula, often on one side. And with awareness begins the process of correction.

THE OVERHEAD STRETCH

Next try a simple overhead stretch (fig. 4.17). Stand this time with your heels and toes together, and with your base again firmly supported by contracted hip and thigh muscles. Bring the hands comfortably overhead with the fingers interlocked, the palms pressed together, and the elbows extended.

Stretch up and slowly pull the arms to the rear, lifting the knuckles toward the ceiling. You can feel some muscles pulling the arms backward, and others resisting. Now you have to watch the elbows. It is easy to keep them extended in the first position, but as the arms are pulled back, one of them may begin to reveal weakness or restriction in its range of movement, or one forearm may show weakness that permits the interlocked hands to angle slightly off toward the weaker side. Take care to keep the posture as symmetrical as possible.

Figure 4.17. Overhead stretch, a simple and superb posture for learning to use the distal portions of the extremities to access proximal parts of the extremities and the core of the body.

As you lift with more focused attention, you will feel the effects of this stretch first in the shoulders, then in the chest, abdomen, back, and finally the pelvis. As in the side-to-side stretch, the posture requires selective relaxation. Many students find this difficult and will keep all their muscles clenched, but any excess tension in the neck, shoulders, or back will make it difficult to feel the effects all the way down to the pelvis. If you only feel the posture affecting the upper extremities, you need to make more conscious efforts to relax selectively.

In the overhead stretch the extensors of the upper extremities will all be in a state of moderate tension and the flexor muscles will be in a state of relaxed readiness, simply countering the extensors.

The posture’s effectiveness will depend on how naturally this takes place. If the extensor muscles in the arm and shoulder are noticeably limited by their antagonists, you may not be able to straighten your forearms at the elbow joint. Or even if the forearms can be fully extended you may not be able to pull the arms backward. And if you feel pain in the arms and shoulders, you will not be able to direct much energy and attention to the trunk. But if you practice this stretch regularly, you will gradually notice that your efforts are affecting the central part of the body as well as the extremities.

The overhead stretch is also one of the best postures for learning how to work from distal to proximal because the proximal parts of the body are affected so clearly by each successively more distal segment. As with the side-to-side stretch and the mountain pose, the overhead stretch encourages diaphragmatic breathing. It doesn’t restrict abdominal breathing as much as the side-to-side stretch (at least not unless you bend backward in addition to stretching up), but it restricts thoracic breathing even more.

THE STANDING TWIST

The last and most complicated of these simple stretches, and the only one that is asymmetrical, is the

simple standing twist. First, to understand the dynamics of the pose, try it while holding as little tension in the hips and thighs as possible. We’ll call this a relaxed standing twist. With the medial borders of the feet about twelve inches apart, twist to the right, leading with the hips, with the arms hanging. As you twist, the opposite hip projects backward and you dip forward almost imperceptibly, as though you were planning a twisted forward bend from the hips. This may not feel natural: in fact, it shouldn’t, because the healthy norm is to hold some tension in the hips and thighs when you twist. But this relaxed standing twist is a concentration exercise in doing just the opposite. In this manner you can get a feel for what not to do. Paradoxically, students who are not very body-oriented can do this exercise with little or no prompting, in contrast to the athlete or hatha yogi who finds it odd to relax and allow the opposite hip to move posteriorly.

Now twist again, but this time first plant the feet, hold the knees extended, and tense the gluteal muscles on the side opposite the direction of the twist. When you twist to the right and contract the left gluteus maximus, at least three things are noticeable: the left thigh becomes more extended, the left side of the hip is pulled down, and the torso straightens up. Now tense the quadriceps femoris muscles on the front of the thighs, paying special attention to the side toward which you are twisting. This complements the action of the opposite gluteus maximus. Last, tense the adductors on the medial sides of the thighs. The entire pelvis is now strongly supported by muscular activity (fig. 4.18). This is the correct feeling for a standing twist; it comes naturally to those who are in good musculoskeletal health but it feels artificial to those who are not.

Figure 4.18. Standing twist. In this and all other asymmetrical stretches, the text descriptions refer to what is seen in (and felt by) the model since that is ordinarily a student’s frame of reference in a class. All such postures should be done in both directions.