Tension | Compression
Even if not specifically as a Yin yoga posture, a basic forward fold is a shape I’ve been doing for years and years. You have, too. It’s a simple, rather elemental shape within general human experience, and a combination of hip and spinal flexion. That is, you stand and bend over to touch your toes.
If you succeed in touching your toes, you’re considered relatively flexible. If you don’t you’re considered stiff. The remedy for the latter condition, the usual Rx is “stretching.”
That’s because, usually, any limitation of range within a forward fold is thought to originate in the soft tissues — short muscles, in particular — and, it’s this tightness that prevents the full aesthetic expression of the posture. Full expression being chest lying across thighs, head to knees. And, for some, indeed, that is their experience. But, for others, myself included, while improvements in range can be made, that iconic jack-kinfe iteration of a forward fold can never happen.
Blasphemy! Didn’t the ancient yogic sages’ admonish us to work on asanas until we succeeded? Doesn’t enlightenment wait for that mastery? Aren’t we real yogis?
Keep reading.
Hard and Soft Boundaries
You see, an individual’s skeletal structure determines their completed posture, not so much the soft tissues. Yes, soft tissues can be a limiter. In fact, over the years of recording streaming classes, and varying iterations of my Yin yoga postures, I have documented ranges of greater and lesser forward flexion. My bones certainly hadn’t changed, but my pliability had. Sure, the soft tissues are significant to some degree, but they aren’t the final arbiter of flexibility, nor range of motion.
There are a number of reasons for experiencing tight tissues — and by the way, it’s not so much muscle that’s the issue. Muscle (Yang tissue) contracts and relaxes. That’s it. But the fascia, the much less dynamic (Yin) tissue enveloping the muscles, is the concern. What’s more, soft tissue compliance might not be a wholly fibrous matter either. The ground substance, our internal ocean, the viscous goo filling the extracellular matrix, provides — among myriad other functions — the lubricity that allows the collagenous fibers to more easily slide past each other. As it happens, the fibers and the ground substance both are affected by mechanical, chemical, and emotional states, and soft tissue tension varies day-to-day, even throughout the day. The bones, however, don’t.
At best I am only moderately flexible. As such, Yoga for me was always difficult, and still is, even in the most rudimentary postures. I write about this in my books, A Righteous Stretch and Fitness Straight Up. But, in short, through my long fitness journey as a practitioner and as a coach, I’d come to understand various athletic and physical realities: unlimited potentials and absolute limiters. While physiology maxes out relatively quickly, skill and technique continue toward perfection. Soft tissues will lengthen only to the extent provided by the full flexion, extension, or rotation of joint action. The limiter is the bony articulation. (Going beyond results in injury and destabilization.)
By applying such insight to training, improving sports performance and better managing the rigors of daily life became easier and more predictable.
Ultimately, and insofar as range of motion and flexibility — in general, and particularly when practicing Yin yoga postures —, soft tissues certainly factor in, but it’s the shapes of the bones that determine the full range of motion. As far as yogic asanas go, when you reach bony compression, that posture is complete.
As for my own forward fold:
- First, my knees do not fully extend, or, more precisely, their full extension is quite visually bent. They cannot, without serious damage, “straighten” further. The shape of the bones equals a hard boundary.
- As well, my hip joints’ themselves prevent that aforementioned jack-knife hip fold. The neck of the femur effectively runs into the rim of the hip socket well before the aesthetic expression of the posture is complete. Once again, the shape of the bones equals a hard boundary. That said, spinal flexion makes up the difference to some extent, and happily, I can touch my toes.
Stretch
| streCH | verb [no object] 1 (of something soft or elastic) be made or be capable of being made longer or wider without tearing or breaking … 2 straighten or extend one’s body or a part of one’s body to its full length …
— New Oxford American Dictionary
The general belief in “stretching” ignores the hard boundaries. Like they don’t exist, or they don’t matter. Rather, it’s tight hamstrings that are the culprit. (That is, tight muscles are the ultimate limiter.)
But, again over decades, by using static and dynamic stretching, on my own and assisted, I have never gone appreciably farther into this posture than what’s seen here in the accompanying picture.
By the way, I’ve come at this several ways over thirty-some years. In the early 1990s, I used Auto Stretching and Proprioceptive Neuro-muscular Facilitation (PNF). Both are types of active stretching. Got some Hellerwork before the turn of the Millennium. Then, in the early 2000s I used physical-therapist-applied mechanical stretching, myo-fascial release, and pressure point / Chinese meridian treatments. All were remarkably uncomfortable. Add to that regular Bikram yoga, and for a year, daily Hatha yoga. At once enjoyable and frustrating. I never progressed beyond what I would find are the bony limiters in my knees and hips in a forward fold. Then, it was disappointing, and especially in yoga classes I certainly felt less-than.
But, around 2006 I was introduced to Yin yoga, and my appreciation for “stretching” changed. Hell, my appreciation for nearly everything was renewed — weight lifting, skiing, surfing, cycling, running, swimming, martial arts, etc.
Puzzle Pieces
Not until Yin yoga postures were detailed and illuminated in terms of bone-to-bone compression did my personal experience and my observations of others come together. Paul Grilley, Yin yoga pioneer, demonstrated with a number of tremendously divergent, but otherwise normal, human skeletal examples the deep (Yin) reality. Grilley’s startling display of pelvises, their mating thigh bones, and spinal columns revealed in no uncertain terms precisely what’s actually taking place when stretching. And what wasn’t.
The thigh bones’ relationship with the hip bone is a complicated affair. It includes depth and orientation of the hip socket, length and angle of the femoral neck, and version (twist) of the femur shaft. The differences in the bones’ appearance revealed their owners’ physical potential in a yoga class. What postures were and were not available to these individuals, and precisely why, was astonishing — especially in context of typical Hatha cueing: “stretch, lengthen, melt … you’ll get there eventually.” I began to realize a more complete picture of what I had been seeing in Yin yogis’ postures and in other athletes’ movements. Hard limiters that had universally been overlooked in favor of soft tissues, and errantly treated as tight muscles, could not possibly respond to the conventional direction. Stretching, generally of muscles, it turned out, was misguided.
Again, this put into perspective several observations with regard to sporting experiences that related to usable range of motion and flexibility. And, happily, this understanding allowed me to better avoid injury, improve athletic performance, and to manage expectations for myself, and my fitness clients.
Now, back to the forward fold, and any other postures, too. The range of motion we enjoy — or lament — hinges on tension and compression, in context of skeletal structure. Knowing what’s what is essential.
Something Simple
If there are tensile limiters, say, in this forward fold — felt, by the way, as a pulling sensation in the backs of the legs — then there is further range available. Yoga is your Huckleberry. If, however, an achey feeling is felt deep in the front of the joint (a sensation like strongly extending your elbow) then bony compression has been reached. Hard stop! The posture is complete, no matter how it looks.
Short of bony compression there are other sorts, and it’s important to distinguish. The upper body abutting the thighs or the floor, for instance, is also a hard boundary. Without props, or some other modification, that’s as far as the postural depth goes. (Exceptions can be, for instance, a mid-section that either contracts or expands, anyway, increasing or decreasing range.)
So, bony compression is the hard boundary, the absolute endpoint of the safe range of motion for any particular joint in a Yin yoga posture, or otherwise. The soft tissue limiters, which vary day to day — even, sometimes, minute to minute — are moveable boundaries that can be pushed back and worked through.
Either way, on any given day, whatever your endpoint is in whatever posture just observe. And as you’re observing now maybe you understand better whether or not you can go deeper into that shape, or whether you’ve reached your legitimate limit.
Ultimate Reality
So, at bony compression, the posture is complete no matter how it looks. That fact is remarkably hard for many to grasp, perhaps even most, but it is the case. Those who’ve been conditioned to believe that by doing any posture long enough they’ll eventually achieve the full aesthetic expression of that shape may be frustrated. Or not. Maybe their skeletal architecture does allow for yoga-magazine-cover-model flexibility at some point. In any event, you’ll know by feel.
Takeaway
All that said, going as deeply into whatever posture, and staying there for however long — minutes, as the protocol with Yin yoga postures — certainly results in myriad athletic and yogic benefits. It’s not stretching, per se, but stimulation of the fascia, ligaments, joint capsules, and joints themselves that is the point. And enlightenment? Perhaps, in one form or another.
In my case, far short of spiritual awakening, and relegated to an open clamshell of a forward fold, my Yin yoga postures still deliver a righteous stretch!
Stretch
| streCH | 4 make great demands on the capacity or resources of … cause (someone) to make maximum use of their talents or abilities: it’s too easy—it doesn’t stretch me.
— New Oxford American Dictionary
Fold, & Fold Again
Explore your postural limits in this class beginning with a series of four forward folds, and balanced by subsequent back bends, On Demand. Scroll down to Lunation 1252, then across to video 03.22.24 | Lake.
Here the sequence:
- Caterpillar
- Dragonfly
- Butterfly
- Deep Squat
- Saddle
- Sphinx
- Seal
- Supported Back Extension
- Pentacle