Healthy Connections – Keeping Joints Pain-Free

Flow Yoga

by Jennifer Lynn

Our joints are places in the body where two parts come together in a way that creates mobility, more freedom and possibility. Relationships in life are meant to do the same; bring two parts together to create a third life-enhancing energy. However, if the nature of the parts are not understood and honored, the relationship will not be effective and can often become damaging. By understanding the nature of our joints we can honor them with conscious movement and continue enjoying the freedom they are designed to give us. When we create healthy connections in our bodies and feel the goodness of that, we will naturally begin to do the same in our relationships with others.

Let’s deepen our understanding of our joints. Joints are designed for mobility, not stability. Our muscles are meant to keep us stable, not joints. Yet, often we “dump into” our joints. Over time this will compress our joints and weaken our muscles. Not a healthy combination. This is what causes joints to fall out of alignment and get locked in misaligned positions causing uneven wear, degeneration and pain. With yoga we can reverse these unconscious patterns. First we must understand the “home position” or optimal alignment of our joints. From there we see which muscles need to be stretched and which need to be strengthened in order to support the joint in that home position. Finally we learn to move without uprooting our joints from their optimal alignment. Keeping joints rooted in optimal alignment allows the articular surfaces to glide evenly. Keeping joints hugged with muscles allows us to reach without unplugging and, in fact, allows us to decompress the joints. Think about it. If one group of muscles is rooting your upper arm bone into the shoulder girdle while another group reaches your forearm and hand away from the shoulder, you are creating space in the joint capsule. Again, this triple action of aligning joints, hugging into the alignment then lifting up out of the joint creates healthy connections. Let’s apply this to the major joints of the body; the shoulders and hips.

The shoulder joint is the intersection of three bones; the upper arm bone, the shoulder blade and the collar bone. The head of the upper arm bone is ball-shaped. On the outer edge of the shoulder blade there is a bowl-shaped depression meant to hold the head of the upper arm bone. In optimal alignment, the head of the upper arm bone stays snuggled against this depression and glides evenly across it. However, most of us allow our shoulder heads to slump forward. Not only does this move the head of the upper arm bone away from its home position, it also pulls the shoulder blades off the upper back causing the upper spine to round. You’ve seen this slumped posture in many people and perhaps in yourself as well. It can become habitual and our muscles lock into misalignment causing our joints to move in a damaging way. Each of us is responsible for recognizing our unconscious habits and empowering ourselves to wake up and heal. Again the metaphor is clear; when we dump into relationships/joints and expect them to keep us stable we give away our power and freedom and we can cause damage. Let’s get clear on how not to do that in the shoulders.

Again the shoulder joint is the three-way intersection of the head of the upper arm bone with the shoulder blade and the collar bone. When one of those bones move, the others move too. This is good news. It means with awareness of the shoulder head (head of the upper arm bone) we can align the whole kit-n-caboodle. In order to get big movement in the shoulders, we need slack. If the upper arm bones are pulling down away from the ears we tighten the tendons around the shoulder. Do that now and feel what I mean. Pull your upper arm bones down hard and feel what is happening across the top of your shoulders. Keep pulling them down and try to move them back behind you. You can’t get much movement and it feels like crap, right? Okay, now, sit tall and inhale, lift your armpits (like a gentle shrug). Keep the armpits floating and move the head of your upper arm bones back and your upper chest forward. Do it again, exaggerating the movements. Can you feel how free your neck gets? Aligning the shoulders will free your neck and help you lengthen your spine. So aligning your shoulders this way should be a habit you get into in your postures and throughout your day. Use the mantra “Inhale float the armpits, exhale, arm bones back, heart forward”. Try this in different arm positions. With the arms over head, you will be drawing the armpits back away from your field of vision and moving your heart towards it.

When your shoulders are optimally aligned, your shoulder blades will be on your upper back. Let your awareness go to the bottom tips of the shoulder blades and draw them close to your spine. Feel the muscles that make that happen. You want to flex those often, get them strong. They are essential to keeping the shoulders rooted in optimal alignment as you move. Now try this: keeping your shoulder blade tips “pinned” to your spine, lift your arms. Can you feel how you have to struggle to get your arms up without uprooting? That’s a good thing. We are so used to uprooting the shoulders to lift the arms or reach with the hands that it feels very odd when we say “no” to uprooting. But we must be adamant about keeping the healthy connection as we move. If we practice this enough we integrate it and it becomes the natural way we move.

So your homework for healthy connection in the shoulders is to move through your day keeping your shoulder blades on your upper back; the bottom tips narrowed into the spine and the top edges broad. Okay, you won’t be able to do this every minute of the day, but do your best and notice the unconscious habits that pull you out of healthy connection and be willing to balance them. Let’s move onto the hips.

Your hip joint is where the ball-shaped head of your thigh bone tucks into a socket in your pelvis. If the ball at the top of your thighbone is snuggled deep into the socket, the joined surfaces roll evenly across each other. This is a healthy connection. However, if the ball is pushed forward, pressure is concentrated at the front of the ball and the front edge of the socket and they wear down quickly creating joint degeneration. Our habit of dumping into our hip joints not only pushes the head of the thighbone forward it also compresses the joint. Dumping into the hip joint means we shove our groins forward. You might notice your tendency to do this when you stand facing a counter or when you are holding a child or bag of groceries. Not only does this habit compromise the hip joint, it also compresses the low back. Now there is motivation for creating healthy connections in the hip joints. Let’s explore how to do that.

In order to seat the hip sockets, we move the head of the thighbones back (toward the hamstrings). This will soften the groins and make you feel like you are sticking your butt out. That’s okay. We’ll balance that by tucking the tip of the tailbone under to draw the pit of the abdomen up and back. Hook the tailbone down without shoving the groins forward. This dynamic dual action keeps the hips integrated and creates a lifting feeling through the low belly. Learning to keep the thighbones back and the tailbone hooking forward, you will stop the habit of dumping into the hips and empower your core to keep your stable and centered.

In addition to saving the joints themselves, aligning the hips and shoulders will greatly benefit the spine. When the hips are properly seated, we have a strong lumbar curve. When the shoulder blades are on the upper back, our thoracic spine (the part that is attached to our ribs) is deep in our bodies and can help with extension. Aligning the hips and shoulders will improve your posture and give you a light and floating feeling as you move.

With awareness and practice we can integrate these healthy habits into our postures and the way we move through the world.  May the healthy connections in our bodies inspire us to make healthy connections with each other and our beautiful planet.

Jennifer Lynn teaches Wisdom Flow Yoga on Maui.  info@YogawithJenniferLynn.com

This entry was written by jlynn, posted on November 13, 2009 at 12:28 am, filed under Fitness, Life is Fitness, Santa Barbara, Yoga and tagged , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.