Mapping the Body:

Anatomy Trains for Yoga Practitioners

A Yoga U Online Course

with

Tom Myers

Transcript, Session 2

Eva Norlyk Smith: Hello, everybody. This is Eva Norlyk Smith with Yoga U Online.

Welcome to the second and last session of our two-part online course with Tom

Myers on Mapping the Body: Anatomy Trains for Yoga Practitioners. In our last

session, Tom looked at the deep and superficial front line and the back line and how

they apply to forward bends and back bends. In this session, Tom will continue to

discuss the myofascial meridians of the Anatomy Trains, this time focusing on the

lateral and spiral lines and how they relate to the practice of yoga asana,

particularly side bends and twists. Tom, welcome. Were so happy to have you back

with us.

Tom Myers: Thanks, Eva. Im glad to be back. And welcome everybody out there.

As Eva said, we are moving into side bends and twists, which means well be

moving into the lateral and spiral and a little bit into the functional lines. Along the

way, I hope to pick up some of the questions that we already had and welcome the

rest of them.

We are exploring Hatha Yoga as an exploration of a shape, how youre shaped

matters, and thats what yoga is trying to explore. Thats the kind of body work that

Ive been doing, structural body work or structural integration for all these forty

years. Im not a yoga teacher, but Im friend of yoga and I think Im a fellow

explorer in that kind of thing of what do you change. Thats what I think that the

folks who started Hatha yoga way back when were thinking about is, Can you

change the man? Can you change the person by changing the shape? I really think

you can, and fascia is a part of that. We started to talk about the fascia in terms of

the myofascial pathways of that Anatomy Trains plus a map of looking how one

muscle connected to the other through the fascial fabric and that those were

common pathways for transmitting stability from one part of the skeleton to the

other, and strain from one part of the skeleton across to the other.

Our responses really come in the neurological system, but Im talking about the

response of the fascial system will determine. Somebody was asking a little bit

about a slump.. When you go into a slump, you change the standing length of

both the muscles and eventually the fascia that are in these things. The fascia

doesnt change overnight. Its a kind of slow St. Bernard dog, but it will come along.

We have mostly been thinking about this in terms of muscles, and certainly the

evidence is that the body does not think in terms of muscles, as tempting as

muscles are as a way to think. Its really an accident of how we came into the body

with the scalpel. Thats what I mean by the European mistake of four hundred and

seventy years ago.

So we took the scalpel and when you go into the body with the scalpel, the muscle

is an easy thing to pull out. You carve away everything around it and you see

theres the biceps. Well, what would the biceps do if it was the only muscle in the

body? Well, it would supinate the forearm. Thats whats shown here. Of course, it

would flex the elbow and do some kind of weak diagonal flexion of the shoulder.

So we clapped our hands and say, Thats it. We know what our biceps is, and we

walk away from it. The trouble is that never does a muscle ever work alone. Thats

number one. Number two, the brain doesnt think in terms of those individual

muscles. The body parses up that way with a knife, but the brain might be thinking

about the biceps as a hundred different small muscles within this fascial envelope

but it doesnt turn on a whole muscle, generally. It turns on all the neuromotor units

within that, or it may turn on a few, or it may turn on some, or it may turn on this

with this kind of movement and that one with that kind of movement. The body is

much more thinking in terms of smaller units than big muscles. So Im sorry to do

this for all the anatomy that youve learned, but knowing the hamstrings is not

really understanding all the connections that happen around, east and west, and up

and down, north and south, from the hamstrings. And that has so much to do with

how the hamstrings react to stretches, to exercise, to daily life (sitting and the rest

of it).

Ive made an entire career out of taking the scalpel and turning it sideways and

looking in terms of the connection among the muscles, instead of dividing the

muscle itself. So there is a trapezius and it was taken off of the body at the very far

left there. It was taken off to the head, and the upper line, going all the way down

with the little tail in the upper right, that was taken off the spine in the usual way.

And the edges (what looks like the wing there) are taken off by blunt dissection.

You just lift it up with your fingers. But then, when we got to the end of the

trapezius, instead of cutting that line between it and the deltoid (I hope you

recognize that triangle as the deltoid), instead, I slipped the scalpel underneath and

cut along the bone. We didnt have to cut the bone. We didnt have to cut the cling

wrap, the plastic wrap, the saran wrap around the bone. We were able to keep a

fascial plane, a fascial sheet, from the trapezius to the deltoid, to the lateral

intermuscular septum, to all those muscles that run along the back of your arm.

So if you put your hand on the side of your neck and ran your hand down your

opposite arm all the way to the backs of your fingers, youd be going along this line.

Its the top of the wing. And instead of thinking about a muscle going from here to

there in terms of attachments, you can think about this in terms of the tracks and

stations. So the muscles are the tracks and these places where its tacked down

onto the bones are stations, but not a place where the fascia stops, not a place

where the transmission stops, not a place where the movement stops.

So instead of thinking of the body in terms of six hundred muscles, I think better

and more yogic, if I may say so, to think of one muscle in six hundred fascial

pockets. In this specimen on the right, the myofascialature has been removed from

the skeleton. Thats actually the skeleton that was inside those muscles. But the

muscles had been taken off and then reassembled into the whole muscular organ.

You then see how the muscles and the fascia together (the so-called myofascia) are

pulling in on the skeleton and the skeleton is pushing out against it. We create that

general balance which we then modulate with the nervous system thats stuck in

that skull there and that comes out, all the muscles modulate the tension. But you

dont really stabilize your body by thinking about a muscle and then contracting it.

Its much more of a very, very tight interaction between the muscles, the fascia,

and the reporting that youre getting back to the nervous system.

I also mentioned thinking about the body as a tensegrity. Heres a model of a

tensegrity person done by Tom Flemons out in Salt Spring Island off Vancouver. He

just makes the most amazing models. So you can see how, if you were to take one

of these models into where the rubber bands are holding the sticks together, the

sticks arent stuck together except in a few places. This is, of course, just a very

simple model of something as complex as a human being, but it gives you the idea

of what it would be like to see the body where the sticks are floating in the rubber

bands. The sticks are floating in the balance of the rubber bands. And of course, Im

egotistical enough to think that the Anatomy Trains form those kinds of rubber

bands, those long strings of elastic material that go around the skeleton and hold it

in place. Thats just another way of thinking about the musculoskeletal system. Im

sort of going against muscles these days but you can take it back if you want, but

the individual muscle idea, I dont think will survive.

As we change our biomechanics A lot of the biomechanics that youve heard thats

been applied to yoga up until now has been Newtonian lever, fulcrum, if I bend

forward my sit bones are going up therefore Im stretching my hamstrings against

the back of my knee and what position should my knee be These are ways of

thinking about the body that its kind of like a Newtonian mechanics, kind of like a

car or a set of levers and fulcrums. The new biomechanics is going to think more

holistically in terms of springs and responses and different vectors I dont want to

go too far off into that.

Last time, we looked into the superficial back line. Heres a diagram and a dissection

of the superficial back line placed over a skeleton just so you know this isnt a

figment of my imagination. Its actually dissectible in the body. And one of the

questions I wanted to deal with is the superficial back line looks strangely like the

gall bladder meridian, doesnt it? I do know there are correspondences between the

Anatomy Trains lines and the acupuncture lines. I have to tell you I know very little

about the acupuncture lines per se and I didnt create the Anatomy Trains out of

looking at the oriental system, the Asian system, and recreating it in the myofascia.

This came out of my work in anatomy. Anatomy Trains came about from my

attempt to create a game to teach my students connected anatomy. Dr. Peter

Dorsher whos a TCM practitioner, wrote an article and I put that article in the back

of the second edition of the books. If you go there and see the correspondences,

the deep front arm line is very like the lung meridian, and the deep front line is the

kidney meridian. There are things that are different, though, as well see in a little

bit.

We looked also last time at the superficial front line, going up the front of the body.

We looked a little bit (although this could be the subject of a several webinars just

by itself) at the deep front line, what I call the core. I know people have different

definitions of core, but this continuous myofascia all the way from the inner ankle

up to the tongue and jaw, including the diaphragm and the pelvic floor (although

thats not in this specimen), would be what I would call the core. Because

essentially, if you put an apple core at the top of your head and took the core all

the way down to your ankle, that would be more or less what you would include.

Anyway, well have to go into that deeper at another time because we want to get

on to the subject of this one.

The thing that we were doing by looking at the plains of the fascia, of the back line

which in this case, just wanted to give you a sort of common posture that you see

all the time. In this case, this fellows superficial back line has been pulled up as

indicated by the arrow in the back. The superficial front line, as you can see, is

falling down. The front of his hips are down. The front of his legs are tight. The

chest is pulled down. If I kept his head in there, youd see his head pulled down

and forward and resultant that his deep front line is also collapsing down in the

middle in the front of his spine.

I was urging you to think and look in terms of you looking at your students. Whats

happened to the sheets of fascia, not what muscle is responsible for this? Does this

guy have a tight rectus abdominus pulling down on his chest? Actually, he doesnt.

He has a weak rectus abdominus and seems to have weakness in the back. If youre

looking at him as a yoga teacher, if Im looking at him as a body worker, Im seeing

the need for tone in some places and less tone in other places in order for him to

breathe, in order for him to get his ribcage on top of his pelvis, in order for him to

lengthen his lower ribs away from the back of the pelvis All three of these lines

would be engaged. Then we looked a little bit at the kinds of poses that stretch the

front and back lines. In other words, stretching the saggital plane, forward bends

and back bends.

Now we want to look at the lateral aspect of the body the sides and then the

things that go across. First, well look at the lateral line along the lateral aspect of

the body. I want to go a little bit more closely into the anatomy this time of the

lines. We didnt much last time.

Here, you see the lateral line depicted as a set of muscles on the skeleton and then

as a set of lines on the side of the body. Id like you to notice that it looks like the

letter Y in the leg. Im looking at the one on the right. I guess thats true of the one

on the left, too. It looks like a Y in the leg and then it goes crisscross, crisscross up

the ribs and then one final crisscross at the neck. Thats the way the myofascia gets

arrayed along the side of the body almost like an accordion or almost like lacing.

Lets go look at that anatomy a little bit closer. You dont see the lateral lines so

much when youre just looking at the body. If I looked at this, youd say, Well,

what about all those shoulder muscles? Then I would say the shoulder is overlaid

over the top of the lateral line. If you take your right hand up your left ribs, youll

collide with the shoulder muscles in the armpit. But the lateral line is going under

those muscles and reemerges in the neck. So youd almost have to take your

shoulder off and look at the fish body to see the shoulder with all its muscles, to see

the fish body underneath the lateral line. It weaves together. The lateral line

weaves together the shoulder and the hip on the same side. Were going to go to

the spiral line next and that will weave together the shoulder and the hip on the

opposite side. But the lateral line is right straight down the line. So the shoulder

kind of ties onto it there, connecting the shoulder and the hip, connecting the ribs

and the hip. In other words, it kind of laces up the front and the back lines that we

did before. You can almost see it like the laces in your sneakers, going up from the

hip to the shoulder.

If you take all those Xs together, all those lacings together, the external and the

internal oblique, if you just grabbed the side of your waist (or in my case, whats

left of the waist), youll feel the internal and external oblique. Youll be able to pluck

them with your fingers like a guitar string. You wont be able to get the next one

which are the intercostals because theyre between the ribs. You can stick your

fingers between your ribs, but youll just be able to feel the outside of those

muscles. Those muscles are active and walking and breathing in my opinion but in

any case, they all together. If you took them all together, theyre going to make a

line from the hip up to the neck.

So the lateral line will be active, obviously, when youre doing the side bends. If you

see a difference in the side bends, we looked a little bit at that last time in the body

reading part, youre going to see a lateral bend in the spine or a lateral bend in the

body where one shoulder is closer to the hip than the other. This line, this lateral

line going all the way up the side of the body in human movement, is much more

concerned with stability. This is the stability that you use, this outer line stability.

Youll get a lot more out of it when you put your legs in a wide pose, right. So if

youre doing a balancing pose, if you keep your legs and feet together. If youre

going to be on one foot, if youre going to do a big standing pose, you put your legs

in a wide stance. That allows you to use this outer stability system of your lateral

line.

If you watch somebody riding a horse for the first time or a kid riding a bike for the

first time, youll see theyre using this outer lateral stability system a lot. Once

youve been on the horse for a while, once youve been on the bike for a while, your

stability system goes into that deep front line that we looked at before that goes

down the inside of the leg, the inseam of the leg to the inner arch. I just say this

because people, when they first get into a yoga class, theyre going to be getting

their stability a lot from this outer line. Its only when they get familiar with the

poses that theyre going to be able to gain their stability from the inner line. So

theres a progression in how theyre going to do that.

Heres a dissection of the lateral line all the way from the outer edge of the arch, all

the way up to the ear. It goes from ankle to ear along the outside. Lets look at it a

little more closely. In the leg part here, it starts from the bottom of the foot.

Interestingly, it reaches to the inside of the foot. So if you put your finger at the

base of your big toe and slide up a couple of inches along that next bone that

comes up from your big toe, youll come to the attachment of peroneus longus or

fibularis longus. Im not going to go too heavy on the names tonight, but youll be

reaching down to the inside of your foot to touch on the big toe side. And thats

kind of the funny thing, that the lateral line starts on the medial side of the foot

where that big tendon comes in.

Then theres another little tendon running, peroneus brevis or fibularis brevis as its

now called, that attaches to the sticky-outie bit thats down from your little toe. So it

grabs to the base of your big toe. Actually, not the base, but the base of the next

bone up, the metatarsal, and to the base of the fifth metatarsal, which, if you slide

your fingers down the outside edge of your foot, youll come right to that sticky-

outie bone about halfway down the foot.

So those two muscles are starting from there. As you can see, they support what

the dancers would call the heel foot over the outside arch, the calcaneus, going

into the cuboid, going into the fourth and fifth metatarsals. Both of these muscles

come along the outside of that lateral arch. You can see them going behind the

malleolus, which is the sticky-outie bit at the ankle, and they have a retinaculum to

hold them down there, hopefully. Some people can way overstretch that

retinaculum if they get involved in an accident or something.

So you see those two muscles coming around the ankle and then going up the

outside edge of the leg. You can feel that on the outside edge of your leg. Its not

as far back as the soleus. The soleus and the gastrocnemius are softer. The

peroneal muscles that go right up the side are tougher. You can see that fascial

tendon coming down, right down the outside of the leg. So if you follow that up,

you can kind of strum it like a guitar string. As you move up, youll be going on

those two orange muscles on the outside, going up the outside of the leg. So its

sticking right to the fibula there. Theyre both stuck to the fibula. As you follow your

fingers up towards your knee, youll get to that little bone on the outside of the

knee. So thats the upper part of the fibula. So these fibularis muscles are going

right along the fibula. And if you go up to the head of the fibula, youre just below

the knee. And Im sorry, its called the iliotibial track but it also attaches to the

fibula, as well. So theres a spread of fascia, a smear of fascia down from the

iliotibial track which is that bluish thing that you see coming down the middle of the

outside of the leg there. And then, that crosses over on to that fibular head. You

have a very strong ligament underneath going across there, too.

If we came up the iliotibial band, youd get up to the hip. This is where it spreads

out into the Y. We just had to look at the deltoid of the shoulder a little bit ago, and

now, were looking at the deltoid of the hips. So if you put your hands on your

waist, as if you were about to reprimand your child, and you feel those muscles just

below the iliac crest there, these are the muscles that are forming the deltoid of the

hip the gluteus in the back, gluteus medius in the center, and tensor fasciae latae

in the front. All three of these muscles go into that big blue fascial sheet and that

big blue fascial sheet goes all the way down to your knee. Fom that top of the letter

Y which were seeing towards the bottom of this picture, you have the X, X, X, X, X,

X, X, X, with the obliques in the belly, the intercostals in the ribs just crossing back

and forth over each other, and then the sternocleidomastoid and the splenius

capitis. Im not going into this anatomy very much, but I just want you to see the

Xs that are going across.

So it does act like a Chinese finger puzzle or an accordion or Chinese finger puzzle

will be the closest. So that when I stretch away from those muscles that youre

looking at now when I stretch away from those ribs, those Xs are going to

become The legs of those Xs (all of them) will become more and more vertical

and then more and more tight. And they put a soft stop on your motion to the side.

Everybodys spine can go somewhat to the side. Some people dont go very much.

Sometimes theyre being held in the back muscles. Sometimes theyre being held in

these muscles out on the outer edge of those ribs. Well see that when we get to

the body reading part.

Up in the neck, the last X that you get should be the sternocleidomastoid and the

splenius. But what youre seeing here is the way so many people do it incorrectly,

which is they get the leading edge of the trapezius Like this fellow here with his

head forward posture, you see how far forward his ear is from his shoulder That

means he has to work very hard with both the upper part of his trapezius (and

anybodys whos had a massage knows how many trigger parts there are in the

upper part of the trapezius, that part that just curls over the side of the shoulder

there) and the levator scapulae (which if you got a massage again, you know how

much tension is right at the top of the apex of the scapulae). Everybody says, Oh, I

have stress, I take in my shoulders. But its not really so much the shoulders thats

the problem. Its the head being forward thats the problem.

Now, one of the best things you can do as a yoga teacher is to help people get their

head up on top of their body. Youre talking about somewhere between eight for a

child and twelve pounds (sometimes even more) for an adult head. And when you

put that forward of the line of gravity or the centerline of the body, youre putting

strain particularly on those two muscles but all the way down the back. You see

how far he has to hold his elbows back to get the head forward. Now, I dont know

whether the elbows came back first and the head came forward. I took this

photograph, and this guy was sufficiently belligerent, you can see that attitude in

his body.

Going on with the lateral line because I want to get into yoga, the lateral line is

equal on both sides. The front and the back line are on either side of the spine but

theyre not the same at all. The back muscles are not the same as your front

muscles. And on the lateral line, thats not true. The muscles are more or less the

same on both sides. The organs are a little bit different. But if youre talking about

the musculoskeletal system, youve got a more or less symmetrical set of muscles

on one side and the other, except very few people actually use it symmetrically, as

well see.

I just want to put another little piece of anatomy in here before we go on to the

posing part of this. And that is the connection from the quadratus lumborum up to

the neck. If we took the lateral line off, if we took all those muscles off (the

intercostals and the external obliques on the outside and those outer muscles on

the neck that I was talking about), if we took those away, we would see the inner,

real guy wires of the ribcage. And thats the scalenes on top. And if you strum the

side of your neck, you will feel real guitar strings on the side of your neck. Dont

strum too hard, too far down because in that little gap that you see between those

two guy wires at the top there, above the ribcage on the neck, that little gap is

where the nerves come out so that you can get brachial plexus pain if you press too

hard there. But its a good thing to feel just how tight those strings are. And they

should be tight. Theyre not supposed to be They certainly could be less tight than

they are in most people, but I dont think youll ever get them to be like the muscles

of the outer body.

And you can see that they are holding that ribcage up off the diaphragm that you

can see in the middle of the ribcage because in this picture, we can see into the

middle of the ribcage. Then you can see how the quadratus lumborum forms a root

for the diaphragm and a root for the ribcage to hold it down to the pelvis. Now we

dont want it to pull too far down into the pelvis, but we do want the diaphragm to

be rooted and the ribcage to be rooted so that breath can move in those two

directions from the middle of the diaphragm (that white little part of the

diaphragm in the middle) down to the hip via the quadratus lumborum, and then

above the lung from the scalenes up to the neck, you can draw the lungs apart

from each other and create a nice, easy breath.

Last thing about the lateral line is its interesting nature in the psychology. Just look

at the Sunday supplements and see how many of the fashion models are showing

you their clothes from the side. Because if you turn and face somebody, thats a

way of saying yes. If you turn your back to somebody, thats a way of saying no.

But the side of the body is a maybe. Interesting. I dont want to make too much of

it but its just an interesting psychological thing, the one that my teachers pointed

out to me and Ive been interested in ever since and it absolutely is true. Very few

clothes are modeled straight on or straight back.

Now, lets get into the lines and I actually was looking at this just before I came on

for the webinar and thinking about Id like to change the words at the bottom

because these are asanas that engage lateral line mobility and stability. I was

looking at these poses which are taken from my book. Im not at all vouching for

the accuracy of any of these poses, but you could see that once you start doing

these side bends, person A there is stretching their left lateral line, especially the

upper part, and contracting the right one, or at least its passively shortening, its

not actively contracting. And on the person B, you can really tell a lot about the

lateral lines in this pose (whose name, I dont know) because if theyre sagging

this guys sagging just a little bit in his hips thats a lack of strength in the

underlying lateral line and really nice the way it engages You know, if you do that

on both sides here, certainly engaging the lateral line in that stability fashion which,

in human movement is how its used more. We dont bob from side to side that

much when we walk. We want adaptability in that lateral line but we also want good

stability because we dont want our knees to pop out, or our hips to pop out, or our

ankles to pop out, or the ribs to move too much from side to side.

Other lines that can engage the lateral line as more of a stabilizing line, are any of

the poses that require balance because youll use that stability system of the lateral

line on the other side to keep your balance. Its fun, next time youre in Tree Pose

or a headstand, to pay attention not just to the front and back Now, youre doing

a lot of adjusting of the front and back when youre in these poses to keep your

balance. But whats usually keeping the balance pretty well so you dont pay as

much attention to it because its not requiring your attention, is the side to side

balance in these poses. So if you take some time to pay attention down from your

ears to your shoulders to your outer ribs to your outer hips to your outer knees to

your outer ankle, what we just traced anatomically the lateral line, then you begin

to feel what kind of role its playing in keeping you calm and keeping you steady.

Id like to go into what is for me a very complicated pose. I think it comes quite

early in yoga classes and yoga learning. But to my mind, as an anatomist, its a

very, very complex pose that involves a lot of things and a lot of lines in it. And lets

go look at that. Youll see a lot of different ways of doing this pose, and clearly, this

pose is asking where am I allowed to bend in the lateral line? It also, as we will see

because well have to come back to this pose, is a spiral line and a deep front line

pose at the same time, which is, for me, what makes it so complex.

But just looking at the lateral line on a couple of these people here, you can see

that where her hand is on her leg, if you trace that back, its not that her ribcage is

unwilling to bend, its that between her hip and the ribcage and between the hip

and the left femur, her left thigh bone, thats whats reluctant to allow her to come

down. What will be interesting when we look further is that her right hip has got to

change first before she will be able to get that length out of her left side. Lets just

see a few more of these. We can come back to some of these.

So heres somebody whos not having that problem. She achieves where shes going

with a bit more twist though, doesnt she? She has her hand on the floor and turned

backwards. Interestingly, I didnt know that that was part of triangle pose. But you

can see that her chest is turned more towards the floor. If we were to come back

here, the chest is not twisted so much. Here, the chest is twisted. And so, I would

see a limitation in the spiral line here. So well come back to this when we talk

about the spiral line but not, obviously, much trouble with letting the lateral line go.

In fact, the neck is turning back up again, the ribcage is so far down. But it would

be interesting. I would put my hands on this womans ribs and help her to turn her

breastbone towards the ceiling. I think thats where her pose would be going next.

But Im not yoga teacher. You can take all this with salt, anything that I say, and do

your own cuing. Im just trying to get the eyes going here.

This woman, however, the ribcage is turning fine even though the ribcage is not

facing towards the ceiling. Its not a problem in her ribcage. You can see a lot of

twists in her ribcage, but what you cant see further down is that her hips are not

able to turn so that shes not getting that lower lateral line. So between her right

ankle and her right hip, and you can see it in the knee as well, she cant let go of

that outer lateral line so the hip Instead of the chest being turned towards the

floor, the pubic bone is turned towards the floor and shes not really getting out

onto that lateral line. So instead of having her think about her eyes, or the positions

of her hands or anything like that, and loosen up on the ribcage but come down

into the pelvis would be what I would be telling this person. And if I were doing

hands-on work with her, I would be opening up that whole outside of the leg

between the iliac crest and the outer part of the ankle. So do you see the difference

between why this person cant face the ceiling with her chest, and why this person

cant face the ceiling with her chest. This one, its in the hips, and the other one, its

in the ability of the ribcage to turn itself.

Here, you got both. And by looking at us, she doesnt complete the pose in terms of

the neck. Maybe she didnt mean to. Im just using these photographs for what they

say. Please dont take this as judgmental. All these people are doing better than I

could do. But Im hoping just to tickle your eyes a little bit. If somebody came in

and this was the pose, Ill tell you this is the pose of somebody who grew a great

deal in one teenage year. Her limbs just sprouted out away from her and outgrew

her muscles, and yoga would be wonderful for her. I dont actually call this yoga,

what shes doing yet, but its a start. She really cant bend in the lateral line again,

between the ankle and the hip. So she gets a lot of bending through the waist but,

then not much through the upper part of the chest. Helping her regain the

proportion in her trunk would just really help. And its not an easy job. It takes

several months. Its probably more than we can talk about right now.

So we keep going and we see a winning smile and an outdoor setting. But we see

the limitation here in this womans right hip. This will get us into the deep front line.

I dont know what the condition of her lateral line is. Id have to see more

movement from her. But Ill tell you what is not happening is her right hip, the hip

that her hand is on the leg, is not settling back. Its held forward in the hip joint,

and without that ability to settle back in the hip joint, to settle down into that hip.

Whether shes free in her left lateral line or not doesnt matter because she cant get

there until that inside line of the leg. So where her thumb is on her leg, inner to that

would be the in-seam of the leg going from that right hip down to the right ankle.

And that inner deep front line is not allowing her to do this pose. She wont really

get into the pose, I dont think, until she gets that inner line of the leg done.

Id like to kind of summarize this with three photos here. This is a neophyte in

terms of the lines, doing a version of Trikonasana. What were seeing here is a

neophyte, a middling student, and a teacher all doing the same pose. So lets look

at this in terms of the lines. Heres this lateral line that you can see, this long bend

between his left ankle and his left ear. And you can see him having struggle with

that. When hes going to the right here, the right spiral line is being twisted. Do you

see why the looking up at the ceiling, which this guy isnt doing, is the completion of

that? The dotted lines are going behind his body all the way up to the back of his

neck. Well come back to the spiral line here in a minute, but you get the idea.

Theres a line spiraling around the body and this deep front line is the inner line of

the leg which is right near his thumb, too, same as the lady I was just talking about.

And this guys inside line, from his groin down to the inner arch is not really

allowing his hips to drop back, not really allowing him to use it. So what happens is

his lateral line, you see the thing here with his left side, is very long. And his right

side between the armpit and the hips is very short. So until he gets some of that

extension coming up through the core, spinal extension which well talk about when

we do the twists, he wont be able to progress so much in this.

Now this older gentleman has progressed on this, and he is looking more up

towards the ceiling. You can see that his lateral line is opening up somewhat, so

theres less disparateness between the right lateral line and the left lateral line in

the trunk. He is able to drop the hip back in the joint somewhat so that he can

make use of the deep front line. Therefore, his spiral line is looking more like its

getting towards the center and less stressed. But if we take this to his wife as it

happens, who is the yoga teacher at the studio that we took a photo. Again, Im

not in the position to argue with her or with you about the pose, but if I look at it in

terms of the lines, I see how much ease and length there is in the lateral line from

left ankle to left ear, how the spiral line is centered around the spine, and how the

right and left sides of the torso are so much closer to being the same as each other.

I hope this helps just a little bit just looking at the lines.

So well this into twists. Just putting the Triangle Pose up there one more time to

see how the spiral line acts as a twist. I dont know if you can see those green lines

on there, but thats the line thats being stretched. Thats the spiral line reaching

from the forward leg hip, around the upper ribs, around to the back side of the

head thats closer to the floor. So thats the line thats being stretched and the line

thats going (that line is not written on the picture there), but the line thats going

from As and Bs right hip, under the ribcage, and to the facial side of the head (the

side of the head thats facing up), that one is acting like a sling and is actually

holding him up. The spiral lines, when we get into these twists of which I think

Triangle Pose qualifies, then the one side of the spiral line is being stretched and

challenged. The other one is going to need to be able to contract to help support

the body and keep things balanced.

Lets look at the spiral line here. You can see that it wraps around the body across

the belly with the external and internal obliques crossing from one side of the ribs to

the other. Then it wraps around back and includes the shoulder blade in what I call

the rhomboserratus muscle and goes up to the hips. So its a double helix or two

parallel lines crossing each other between the shoulder blades in the back (which

you know people have a lot of trouble) and across the belly in the front (where you

know people have a lot of trouble with tonus) and then we have a kind of jump

rope that goes down from the hip, under the arch, and back up to the hip again.

Lets take this in a little more detail. The first part of the spiral line, the first part

thats going from the twist, from your eyes starting to move into the twist from your

head starting to move into the twist, are these splenii, meaning bandage (thats

what splenii means, like splint). So its the bandage muscle that comes down from

your head to your spine and your back. You can keep going with that muscle over

on to the opposite side to pick up the rhomboid muscles on the other side. The

rhomboids are of course the ones that hold your scapula up and in. If you keep

going on that, you get on the serratus anterior muscle. In fact, I dont want to

overwhelm you with anatomy here. I just want you to see this sweep down from

the right side of the head to the left rib including the edge of the shoulder blade

into it. And of course, thered be an equal and opposite one going down the other

side, except the trouble is they rarely are equal and opposite because most people

have a rotation of one kind or another, a preference of one kind or another.

Here you see what I call the rhomboserratus muscle, because its really one muscle

and it joins here from the spine where the rhomboids attach, over to the serratus

anterior, around to the ribs. So that a little inset picture that shows you how these

two muscles are connected and are holding that edge of the edge of the shoulder

blade against the spine. This line curls around from the serratus anterior to the

external oblique to the internal oblique. Its just a really nice sweep of myofascia. It

crosses over the rectus abdominus in the middle. But its pulling from the right side

of the ribs to the left side of the hips. You can see how any simple twist is going to

twist this. Almost everybody is not quite balanced in this. It seems to be pretty

universal in humans that we have a preference of a rotation in our spines to one

side or the other, and that will give a preference on one set of these muscles to one

side or the other.

So you can see a preference here. Now, this guy is doing it. He was an acrobat, and

he was brought in for an anatomical photograph and he grabbed a bamboo pole

and kinda twisted himself. Just look at his belly, and youll see that the rectus

abdominus has been pulled over and that there is a line of strain from his left ribs

across to his right hip. And you say, Oh, thats the one thats contracting. And

actually, no, its not. Its the other side thats contracting. Thats the side thats

being stretched, as his ribcage turns to his left, away from his pelvis. Hes stretching

his right spiral line, the one thats going from the right hip to the left ribs (I know

these rights and lefts get confusing), but just sort of draw an X on his belly and

youll see that the one thats going from the upper right to the lower left (your

upper right to your lower left) is longer, and the one that would be going from his

right ribs down to his left ribs would be shorter. So you see a fundamental

imbalance in the spiral line there. Most people have this, not quite as evident as this

fellow. I chose this photograph for the evidence, but if you get used to seeing this,

youll be able to see it in people. Thats the upper spiral line.

And heres the lower spiral line. You see this kind of jump rope. It goes around from

the iliotibial band and the tensor fasciae latae on the bottom. Thats on the front of

the hip, actually. It starts from the tensor fasciae latae up at the top there, the

purple muscle going into the blue anterior part of the iliotibial tract or iliotibial band.

And then that crosses the knee on to the tibialis anterior (the muscle, if you put

your hand over your knee, the tips of your fingers would be resting on your shin

bone and right next to it, the tibialis anterior muscle), and that goes down to the

inside of your foot and under the arch to join with the peroneus longus or fibularis

longus that we talked about before. So this muscle is in both the lateral line and the

spiral line. And you see the sling under the arch here. So its this sling under the

arch that I want you to pay attention to, because the tibialis anterior, if you look at

it, is going to be pulling up on the inner arch, and peroneus longus pulling down on

the inner arch. So they have this reciprocal sling-like arrangement on the inner arch.

And therefore, the balance of your arches is going to be certainly dependent on the

condition of your plantar fascia, certainly dependent on the condition of the bones

of the foot, but also dependent on the balance of the tension coming down from the

muscles in your calf. And therefore, yoga is really, really valuable in maintaining the

arches because of the balanced tonus that is put through these sets of muscles.

So here you can see the sling from the back, in a cut away with the tibialis anterior

and the peroneus longus, making that sling under the arch and controlling inversion

and eversion of the foot, controlling pointing the palm of the foot towards the other

foot and pointing the palm of the foot, the plantar surface of the foot, away from

the other foot. That inversion and eversion is controlled in part, in the main really,

by this sling that goes under. So that sling, if we took it on the other side, if we kept

going around, wed see that peroneus longus, the muscle in purple towards the

bottom, going down. We talked about it before going behind the ankle and

supporting the lateral arch. And this time, on the spiral line, it takes the track of

going to the hamstring, the biceps femoris, the outside hamstring. And that

hamstring takes it right up to the ischium, and then the back muscles take the line,

continue the line up from the ischium all the way up to the skull. So you see this

spiral line. Again, this is what we call the right spiral line because it has to do with

the right hip and the right side of the head and the right arch. But its going to

sweep around the left shoulder, the left side of the ribs, and then back over to the

right. I do not expect you to understand it especially if youre a neophyte to

anatomy, to understand all the anatomical relationships here. Im urging you,

however, because if you see it, you can then look and see it in your students, as

well.

These back muscles are really complex and very, very strong and capable of making

a rotation themselves in the spine. And as I said earlier, most everybody does have

a rotation in the spine, a preference to one side or the other. And in those with

scoliosis, several have different parts of the spine.

I said this before but here it is again. Every time you do a rotation, rotational pose,

or even the rotations of running, youre taking one spiral line and shortening it and

taking the other one and lengthening it. So that reciprocal, back and forth, one

side lengthens the other side shortens is very much characteristic of our movement

that cycles back and forth like a watch spring.

And this is going to be, Im sorry, the only thing that well be doing on the shoulders

and arms. Obviously, they do a lot of rotation, as well, the poses that were talking

about here. But were not going to really explore the arms in this two-hour series.

We are going to, instead, pay attention to the spinal twists. Again, Im sorry that I

dont know all the names to this. I just want to speak as an anatomist to some of

these.

Some people were asking, I think, about scoliosis, and Ill be speaking about it

anyway. Everybody has a rotation. Ive been in this business for forty years. Ive

never seen anybody with a perfectly balanced spine in terms of right and left, who

doesnt have a little bit of a bend to one side or other somewhere in their spine, and

absolutely doesnt have a rotation.

Now, this person had a very serious spinal rotation. So at some point, a rotation

becomes serious enough so that you call it scoliosis. There are various ways of

going about fixing this, and unfortunately, your medical system has chosen the least

conservative and the most heroic when things get really bad. I really wish that more

yoga folks had access to children with scoliosis because its been my experience that

you can (with a bit of knowledge, a bit of patience, and a bit of empathy) can really

do a lot with childhood scoliosis. But we sometimes dont notice it, dont assess for

it, dont catch it until the child is well into the teenage years, sometimes you dont

see it until the teenage years because everybody grows so fast that that brings it

out.

I dont want to blame anybody with this but it would be much better if we assessed

the kids for this at six and seven where its almost always evident if its going to be

a teenage scoliosis. And if you see that, you can do things like yoga, like specific PT

exercises to correct this problem before it becomes one that requires a heroic

intervention to stop it. Those for whom there are various conditions that make

scoliosis, some of them are not reparable in those kinds of ways. For those people,

the operation is a lifesaver because if your spine is collapsing it will affect all kinds

of things like your nerves and your organs. I mean, how did this person get to

adulthood? Imagine the heart and the lungs inside of the spine. Its a tragedy when

this kind of thing happens. But I only put the picture up there because everybody

has a bit of a rotation of one kind or another. So learning to be able to recognize

those rotations, some of which you can do from the front of the class, some of

which youre going to have to go and stand over your student because when youre

looking down at the spine from the top, then you can see the twist much, much

more easily than you can if youre standing in the front of the class. You can see

differences in twists. You can see aberrations, if you want to call them that, in the

compensations in the twists, and that can be really helpful in getting them out.

This is the kind of twist, I think a yoga teacher would argue, my yoga teacher would

argue with me, about getting her right sits bone down. But I did choose this

because she really keeps her spine centered over herself as she goes up into that

twist. The two things that I would love to say about twists in terms of anatomy is

stay centered (well be looking at a few people who arent so centered) and twist

into length. When you take a dish towel and you got it full of water and you start to

wring it out, the way you wring it out is to twist it. And if you twist it several times,

youll feel it gets shorter. Take any piece of cloth and twist it and it will get shorter.

So the tendency of our body when we use these spiral lines and the inner muscles

to make a twist, is that we can twist and compress as we make that twist, or we

can use the countervailing muscles properly, and if we do so, then youre using both

sides as you twist, and you twist into length. Twisting into length is a great thing for

the spine. Twisting into compression, not so good. So keep your spine centered

over its base of support, and so on the pose, of course, what the base of support is

when youre doing the twist, and twist into length, so the spine gets longer, the

head gets farther away from the bum as you go into the twist.

Lovely smile but an off-center spinal twist. I would question whether shes doing as

much in this pose as she could. How would you cue that? Would you push off her

right hand? But if she does that, she wont activate the muscles that she really

needs to. The tight muscles are in the deep part of the bum, in the deep lateral

rotators. So she needs to strengthen the psoas and the hip flexors and the belly

muscles to get up on top of the pelvis for that pose to work harder for her. Doing

the twist when youre off-center has decidedly less value. If you look at the folds in

her shirt, thats probably indicating a round back, a round T11 or T12. Shes really

collapsing and not having that part of the spine supported by her musculature.

If shes doing that, shes cruising for a spinal injury. Ive been doing this for forty

years. Let me gently wag my fingers at you. I have sent my daughter to college on

yoga injuries from people going into classes and working too hard or working not

with proper biomechanics and the proper positions. Im not coming after you. Yoga

does a whole lot of good. But the better informed yoga teachers are of the positions

that their students could get them into that could get them in trouble, the better off

it will be. And its a highly individual thing. All kinds of sports have injuries, but the

more we can do to keep those injuries down, the better.

So here is another gentleman. As with the black and white pictures of the neophyte,

the middling student, and the teacher that we looked at a while ago; you can see

that in this twist, he is so substantially shortening his left lateral line and elongating

the right one because his spine is going off-center. Its not staying over his base of

support. So hes working harder than he should. He is probably over-stretching

some stuff and under-stretching some others, and were I his teacher (which Im

not), I would urge him to get up on top of his sits bones even if his twist was only a

few degrees. You know, hes trying to get around so that he can look around behind

and get his hand around behind himself and grasp that knee or whatever the next

piece is of the pose. But hes not, in my opinion, doing the pose. So that reaching

around of the hand is all sort of, what the Alexander people call end-gaining, trying

to get too hard to the end and not paying enough attention to the process along the

way. Am I straying out of my anatomical realm? Probably.

So heres a woman with a similar problem, the inability to twist right around the

lower ribs where all those folds are under the bra line from the fifth rib on down.

Even though theres folds in the clothes, there arent folds in her at that stage so

that shes finding it hard to do the pose and therefore one of her lateral lines is

really short and the other one really long. Its worthwhile to look at your students

from the front and the back to see whether the twist is being done the same way in

both sides. Because if we were to watch this woman do the twist on the other side,

she might twist much more easily in those ribs to the other way. People dont do

the twists the same way right and left. This is something to really look at. Maybe

pick one student each week or something like that where you really look carefully at

how theyre doing it.

The second thing, and I dont have any pictures of these yoga poses from above,

but if you go and stand right behind your client, you can do something like put your

hands on their shoulders gently so they dont feel that youre looming over them,

and look straight down their spine. If you were standing right above that red

bandana and you were looking down her spine, you would be able to see where its

twisting and where it isnt and where the bend is happening in that spine. I really,

really urge you to look from above because its so revealing in terms of whats

happening in the rotation.

If youre asking me, What am I looking for? I would say, Well, look down fifty

backs and then ask me again. It really is not so much that, Oh, if this, then this,

or, Im looking for this so then I know this. It is much more if you look at fifty

backs, the fifty-first back, youll be much more informed, because youll have looked

at so many others. So many of these things, it matters less what you do, and it

matters that you do it consistently with lots of students in a row.

I know a lot of yoga teachers have this already. You pay attention to feet for six

months and youre really focused on feet and everybody getting the right foot

position. And then you get focused on the pelvic position or pelvic neutral or

shoulder mobility or. Its really good to have those enthusiasms. I guess I want to

say that the spine is one thats really worthwhile looking at, and looking straight

down it is a good idea.

In this woman, the superficial front line is pulled down, and were she able to

release that front line a bit, its particularly in the upper abdominals that shes short

so its pulling her head forward, its making her shoulders work harder than they

need to, shes not quite up on top of her hips. So in this case, though, I would really

concentrate on back bends. Back bends particularly maybe just even over a bolster,

something really simple to help her get the breathing into her lower ribs, get those

lower ribs moving, get that superficial front line to arise a little bit. That will release

her head. It will release her shoulders and will probably, although she may have to

do some further work in the deep lateral rotators, probably help to get her up on

top of her pelvis, as well.

The other thing that happens, and I dont know if this one is doing this deliberately

in the pose, but getting pulled down in the superficial back line. This woman is

pulled down in the back line. The back of her head is pulled down into her neck,

and the ribs are pulled down into the pelvis along the back. I would work with this

woman in forward bends before I would really want to see her doing more twists or

straining herself in the twists, at least until the back line lets go, she wont be

having so much fun in the pose.

If you can get those twists evened out, you can turn your rotation into something

that is really, really healthy for the body, really lengthening, and really brings the

whole spine into release in your inner sense thing .

Alright, Im sorry, everyone. I went over a little bit. Im still happy to answer a few

questions. Ill turn it over to Eva.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Thank you, Tom. That was wonderful. Very enlightening. And

as you can imagine, we have a ton of questions and all very, very interesting and

good questions. So I will dive straight in.

One question thats come in relates to, How does one differentiate between

tightness of fascia, etc., and compression due to anatomical structure? I think that

she is referring to Paul Grilleys work that says that the shape and the positioning of

the bones can be the limiting factor versus a body that needs to open up through

the lines of fascia.

Tom Myers: You really have three layers here, and theyre all structural. When you

say structural, what you then explained was the skeletal or articular. But your fascia

is part of your structure so when you reach a fascial limitation, you reach the

structural limitation, but not necessarily a skeletal one. And the middle layer is

ligaments. So lets just take Warrior I, a lunge kind of pose, where your pelvis is

faced forward and your leg is behind you and youre going down towards a lunge

type of position. When you first do that, youll probably get a lot of progress in your

early lessons, in your early classes. And then youll reach a point where you wont

be getting so much. At that point, you are much closer to having to stretch the

ligaments. Youve gotten some stretch out of the belly of the muscle. But now the

ligament, which is a much tougher structure, much more closely-knit fascial

structure than the muscle, and it will take more time for it to open up but it will

open up. I chose that lunge in the hip because you dont usually have, unless youre

talking about somebody whos very old or very arthritic or something who has spurs

on the joints, but for most young people, the hip is not limited by the structure of

the bone but by the ligament. Grilleys work on the acromion of the shoulder is

really good. There are some people who simply cannot, without damage, put their

hands together over their head and have the shoulder be connected to the back

because of the shape of the shoulder. On the other hand, there are a lot of people

who really are not structurally unable to do it, but are being fascially held or held in

the ligaments.

So the way that you can tell the difference between those (which was the original

question), is what we call in the body work field as end feel. Now, if youre

allowed to touch your clients, if somebodys saying, Oh, I really feel as if this

movement is just stopping and I cant do it, or, I feel like I shouldnt do it, or,

its hurting to do it If you take them and you move them towards the end-range

nice and slow, no damage. And when you get to that end-range, just test it a little

bit by passively stretching them into this. Youll get the end feel of the motion. And

the end feel of fascia has a more elastic feel and a myofascia (which is the muscle

and the fascia together) will have a softer end feel. Ligamentous will have a little

more of a clunky stop end feel. But bones will have a definite stop, like a door

closing, you know, coming into the door jamb. If you are reaching that kind of

thing, that is a structural limitation, and thats better to let it be the way it is.

In a very young (and Im talking about under twenty-two when the ischial plates,

before the bones have grown their full length), those people you can actually even

think about changing the shape of the bone by the work that youre doing but you

still want to be very gentle. And it takes time to reform the bones. Realize it takes

eight weeks to reform a bone thats been broken, so youre talking about many

weeks or months to allow the bone to change. But thats a process that works best

in the very young, and works less good in the less young, and in my age, I wouldnt

count on my bones changing at all because theyve lost some of the elasticity they

had when they were younger. I hope that answers the question.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Yes. Wonderful. We have a whole lot of questions pertaining to

how to work to reshape fascia. So Ill dive straight into those. Shirley is asking, For

someone with a lot of restrictions on the lateral line as we saw on the various

Triangle Poses especially around the hip, what is the best way to start creating

length rather than doing the postures incorrectly as we saw in the examples?

Tom Myers: Well, Im going to step outside of the realm of the yoga teacher

because you guys would know internally what that would be in terms of the specific

asanas. But for myself, I would say that putting a heavy stretch on the AB ductors.

If you put your hands on your waist and you go just below the bone of your hip,

thats where the abductors are. And if you go a little further down, youll feel the

trochanter of the femur sticking out to the side there. The abductors are in that

short little space. The iliotibial track is a fascial sheet that you can feel all the way

down the outside of your leg to your knee. But its those little muscles up at the top

of that, right by your hip. And putting a heavy stretch on those doesnt really

encourage them to lengthen. They tend to really, really grab in that. So I think (am

I gonna be killed for this?) that something like belly dance or hula or some African

dance where you move the hips separately from the femurs is a better preparation

for them opening that side of the hip in a Triangle Pose or any of those side-

bending poses than is just doing the Triangle Pose. Or dont go fully into the pose.

Dont take your upper body as far into the pose. Go ahead and let your hand rest on

your thigh or your knee, somewhere where its very easy. And then, do some

motion with the hips, taking them to the left and to the right, you know, sideways

and rotation and mobilize those muscles before you then land a heavy weight

because your upper body is enough of a heavy weight to excite the muscles on the

outside of the leg to clamp down. And when they clamp down, they dont let go

easily. So I think a different kind of movement is a good preparation. I hope I

havent offended anybody by saying so.

Eva Norlyk Smith: I think one thing we have noticed in our practice is that if you

stretch the fascia in many different directions by doing small micro-movements, you

can get a lot more motion than if you just stretched the fascia in one plane. It just

grips if you stretch in one plane but if you do a little micro-movement and get sort

of a holistic sheer effect on the fascia, it will move a lot more.

Tom Myers: This does count to the question of obsession. Some people get into

sports or yoga and they get obsessional about it and end up going too far. You

know, wanting to look as good as they can in the pose, going as far into the pose

as they can. And for my own self when I do yoga, I am the worst person in the

class because I want to leave myself room for those micro-movements. I dont want

to go that far into the pose that I cant any longer adjust myself and move in the

pose. So yeah, my Triangle Pose, my hand is on my thigh or on my knee or

something because Im then able to move back and forth. And then once that I feel

that Ive really got the motion going, then I will dive more into the stretch.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Gayle is asking, What is the most neurologically appropriate

way and duration (seconds or minutes) to stretch fascia?

Tom Myers: That relates to the neurology of the muscle, and there are arguments

for all the different kinds of yoga. All of them work in a different way but they all

work physiologically as far as Im concerned. When you go into Iyengar Yoga or I

guess whats now being called Hatha Yoga, held yoga, where youre holding the

pose for a goodly amount of time, (and I think the muscles we were just discussing

on the outside of the hip are the exceptions to these) but most muscles, when you

put a stretch on them, especially if that stretch arises quickly, the first thing that

theyre going to do is to contract that muscle. The muscle spindles are stretched,

they respond by clamping down on that muscle. And the amount of time that that

muscle is clamping down is the time in which the fascia is not being stretched. So

you have this period of time between the time you go into the stretch and the time

that the muscles let go in the stretch. Of course, they dont completely let go, but

they relax with myotatic reflex, the stretch reflex that they have of contracting.

They let it go.

Somebody whos just beginning, that might take forty-five seconds, a minute, a

minute and a half. It really depends on the person. And theres this Aah and they

let go into the pose. And what that is, is the stretch reflex letting go, and at that

point, you really start stretching the fascia. You were putting some stretch on the

fascia before, but mostly it was being taken up by the contraction of the muscle.

When the muscle relaxes, then you start putting the fascia into a stretch. And its

not a stretch of an elastic band. Its the stretch of a plastic bag. So if I have a

carrier bag here and I put that stretch on, then the fascia begins to plastically

stretch to get longer. Its different in different parts of the body and its different

with different people. You know, somebody whos been doing yoga for a long time,

a yoga adept, can come in, go into the pose, and achieve that relaxation within

seconds. The pose is starting to do them more good in terms of the fascia as soon

as they have that relaxation. As you get more into it, you get the tone of the fascia

and the muscle to be even. Thats even better in terms of stability and balance. But

theres no particular amount of time.

Then if you went the other way, the Ashtanga idea, continuous movement is really

good for stimulating the nervous system, the kinesthetic system, the system that

tells you where you are, the part of your nervous system that tells you where you

are, the part of your nervous system that extends down into your body. Of course,

youre building balance, and of course, in more athletic forms, youre building

muscular strength and balance strength. So theres arguments for every kind of

yoga in my opinion. But if youre talking about how long to hold the pose, well, how

long until you relax is what I would ask.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Great. Theres a trick question for you. Debbie was asking, In

your experience, does fascial change occur more rapidly and effectively via yoga or

body work?

Tom Myers: I think that each has strengths. I think the people are going to body

work for things that they might better take to in yoga. When youre talking about

therapeutic yoga or privates or that kind of thing, then youre using yoga to do

much the same kind of thing. Ida Rolf started out doing exactly that, doing a kind of

yoga therapy, and over the years, she modified it by her studies on osteopathy and

Alexander and other things came into it, and it developed into a manipulative form.

But it started out to try to give the yogic experience to people.

In my experience, I refer out to yoga teachers a lot because there are things that

yoga will do that, even if I could do it in my practice, it would take me a long time

and it would charge the person a lot of money in the course of doing it. On the

other hand, if there are things that are beyond the scope of the yoga practitioner,

then you need to refer back to somebody and I think body workers are great people

to refer to in terms of getting something specific (getting that rib to go back in,

getting that side to open and breathe). You can reach places with your hands that

you cant reach with yoga. Ive had arguments about that with yoga teachers, but I

really do think its true. You can reach things with your hands that you cant reach

with yoga. You can do a lot of things with yoga, a lot more inexpensively as well,

that you cant do with body work.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Great. Last two questions here. Tammy is asking, How else

can yoga get to issues with the hamstrings by focusing on not just the hamstrings

but on the whole back line?

Tom Myers: Thats where I would urge you to look at the whole back line. Because

were short of time here, let me just pick two places. The hamstrings are on the

superficial back line so that goes all the way from the plantar fascia all the way

around to the top of the eye. People have such trouble with the hamstrings and

sometimes its the hamstrings and sometimes its actually the sciatic nerve thats

being stretched that goes through the hamstrings. So be easy on those hamstrings.

If I have hamstrings that are being very stubborn on me, I usually go somewhere

else rather than hammering on the poor old hamstring. Two places that you can go

one is the plantar fascia, the old trick of taking a golf ball or tennis ball depending

on the state of the persons foot, or one of the Yamuna balls or any of those small

things, and going under the foot and very slowly, not going vigorously backward

and forward on the foot but slowly going into one point after another between the

front of the heel and the base of the toes. If you do that for a few minutes and then

have them do a forward bend again, youll see that one side is going down

significantly more than the others. So you can affect the hamstrings via the plantar

fascia.

You can affect the hamstrings via right under the skull. If you put your thumbs

behind your skull and sort of wiggle your thumbs down under your skull so youre in

the muscles of your neck kind of coming up against the bottom of your skull with

your thumbs, if you now wiggle your eyes around, you will feel that those muscles

change tone. Those muscles are hard-wired to your eyes above and theyre hard-

wired to your spine below. And theyre just the control center of the superficial back

line. I sometimes find I get more help from the hamstrings by doing a suboccipital

release than I do from doing work on the hamstrings. So those are the two places

that I would look elsewhere to get some help for the hamstrings.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Fascinating. Okay, last question. Tammy again says, Weve

had our bodies our whole lives yet we dont know them. So if your keen eye sees a

shortened waist, how can a person become more aware of these patterns in their

own bodies through a yoga practice? So how can we help students become more

aware of their own patterns and work with them?

Tom Myers: Thats the question, isnt it? I think its really, really, really helpful to

be able to give people cuing with your hand. Now I dont know how that sits with

the yoga teachers being able to touch or scope of practice issues. But if you want

somebodys ribcage to come away from their hips, there are two things that could

be in the way, right. They could have some organic problem that would be making

that very difficult, or they could be so old that trying to make that happen, you

should just try to get more movement between the ribs and the hips. But if youre

talking of somebody whos fifty to sixty or older. Im hedging because people are

different biologically just in their chronological age. Im sixty-three in chronological

age but I dont feel that. I know a lot of people my age who are a lot less mobile

than I am, maybe because they grew up and I never did.

If you want to get that ribcage to go away from the pelvis, you put your hands on

the ribs. If you do that standing, you hold the ribs and they move the pelvis away

from the ribs. By doing something unusual like that instead of trying to lift the ribs

off the pelvis, drop the pelvis away from the ribs. That change of idea can be really

helpful to someone in getting back the kinesthesia because those things have to

stretch out. You can do those in the asanas. But if people dont know about

something, they cant stretch it. If they cant feel it, they cant strengthen it. If they

cant feel it, they cant stretch it. The trouble is that we often feel the stretch and

we go, Oh, boy. I really feel the stretch in my low back. Well, its actually the low

back, thats where youre feeling the stretch because someplace else is not

stretching.

Thats why you need a yoga teacher. Thats why you need a body worker. Thats

why you need somebody come in from the outside, because were all blind to what

were blind to. And thats true in kinesthesia and in your body, as well. So the

asanas help bring kinesthesia back to people to their sense of space, their sense of

their body. But if they are persistently not doing something like taking the ribcage

away from the pelvis, then putting your hands on there can really help, calling their

verbal attention to it can help. But its nothing like the hands, because you can give

the experience by say, It would feel like this if your ribcage moved away from your

pelvis. It would feel like this if your pelvis moved away from your ribcage. And

maybe they can then translate that on to the mat.

But were living in a society thats full of sensory-motor amnesia. Were in a society

where people are rapidly forgetting their bodies. I really feel badly about that when

I see that happening in children, but its happening to children all over the place.

Its happening in the electronic world. People really need to get back into their

bodies and I think both hands and yoga are really good tools to do exactly that.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Well, Tom, thank you so much. I just, for the record, I want to

say should you choose so, I think you would have a great career as a yoga teacher,

as well.

Tom Myers: Well, if yoga means union, Ill go for that. But in terms of my

knowledge of the asanas and how they proceed, I just stand in awe of the yoga

teachers that I see and have worked with over the years who construct classes of

great intricacy and, you know, real delicacy. Its fun to watch.

Eva Norlyk Smith: There are some very talented people out there. Tom, thank

you again. This was a wonderful presentation, and thanks for sharing all your

visionary insights. Its wonderful to get this new perspective and just kind of hear

you formulate what I think a lot of people intuitively sense in their own practice. So

thanks again, and we hope to welcome you back to many more courses on Yoga U.

Tom Myers: Well, if people have ideas of what they would like us to do from here,

they should send them in.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Yes, everyone, submit any suggestions. So everyone, thank

you so much for joining us. We look forward to catching you on the next course on

Yoga U. And Tom, again, thank you so much for sharing all your rich knowledge.

Tom Myers: Youre welcome. Good night.

Eva Norlyk Smith: Good night, everyone. Take care.