Life might hurt sometimes, but it can just as easily heal.
Your ability to heal, and to do everything,
is all in how you do what you do.
Let’s talk about wrists to start. But leave them be for a moment, it’s sometimes best not to attack challenges head-on. First, connect your body and breath together as the same thing. Let each inhale lift you a little out of where you are, and put a little extra strength through your whole body. And let each exhale soften you a bit, and make it a little easier to be where you are, and move where you want to move.
For your wrists, getting stuck in poses like planks and side planks allows tension to come into your body and make a home in you – leading to aggravation and injury. By practicing breath-body connection instead, you’ll learn a way always to release tension, and restore the right conditions for healing – as well as the right conditions for performing at your own top level.
One more quick tip for wrists: avoid jumping forward and back. When you use the strength of one part of your body against resistance in another, you enter into a conflict with your self. And in conflict with your self, you always lose!
As an example, jumping forward from down dog to handstand or standing forward fold uses the strength of your legs to jump, and requires your wrists and shoulders to resist and absorb this sudden acceleration (remember the high school physics equation F=MA). Your wrists and shoulders are much weaker than your legs, so in this conflict, your wrists and shoulders will always lose.
Try instead to move always easily from wherever you are. Even when you’re approaching great challenge, move easily enough that you have a choice to go in any direction from right where you are – forward or back, left or right, up or down.
Move easily enough that you always feel
where you are, and choose where you want to go.
When you have this choice, you’re moving easily enough to pick what’s best and most efficient for your body in each moment. When you lose this choice – for example, by forcing your way through pushing and jumping – things don’t go so well. We get injured. Worse, our ability begins to fall far short of our potential.
This is true for more than your wrists. Your whole body and mind work this way. Many things work this way.
– by Mike
About Strala Yoga Training
Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the form vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine, to help people release stress, move easily through challenge, and live radiantly inspiring lives.
It begins with a mindset, that says our best way to get where we’re going is to feel good along the way. It also works miracles for whole health, helping us to find ease in our bodies and minds, and create the right conditions both for healing and optimal performance.
In our Strala Yoga Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.
Who’s What’s and When’s of Strala Yoga Training
