I loved this meme when it made the rounds in 2020.
We live in a culture where leaders often cannot admit when they were wrong, won’t apologize for missteps, and need to appear tough all the time.
Especially the last 4 years.
If you teach yoga, you know firsthand how common it is to change your mind about how you’ve been practicing or teaching alignment!
This could happen while you’re on your mat and you have an epiphany.
Or more likely after you’ve read an anatomy book or taken a training with an experienced teacher.
In the spirit of changing minds, I want to share a revelation I had after reading Judith Lasater’s new book, Yoga Myths and practicing with her online.
For as long as I can remember, I was taught (and have practiced twists) by anchoring and stabilizing my pelvis, and then twisting my spine in the opposite direction.
I wasn’t brutal about it - I definitely let my sacrum and pelvis move a little into the twist - but I was taught that to really “ring out” and juice up my organs and spine, that I’d get more mileage if I resisted the ilium forward on the side toward which I was twisting, and then used my hand to help create a more powerful twist.
Maybe you learned it this way too?
As an example, try sitting in Easy Sitting Pose (sukhasana) with your right hand behind you and your left hand on your right knee, twisting to your right....Up until a few months ago, I would have told you to initiate the twist from your lower back waistline on the left and then to organically extend your right ilium (and femur) forward in opposition to your trunk turning to the right.
Try that out right now and see how it feels.
Is it kind of torque-y in your sacrum and low back?
Now do it again, but instead of pushing your right ilium forward and using your right fingertips to crank you into the twist against your right ilium’s forward movement, make the initiating anchor in this twist your left ilium and leg. Allow your left hip to lead the way into the twist while moving your pubic bone down. Then turn your organs to the right. Notice how you barely have to try and twist when you move from the left!
When I tried it this way, I immediately felt a freedom in my sacrum and lower back + an opening in my breath, because now my sacrum was not being pulled into the twist and separating my ilium from the sacroiliac joint.
Anatomically, when you twist this way, the acetabulum/pelvis is able to move over the femur head and the vertebral column receives the twist, vs. “creating” the twist yourself and using your arm on the floor “as a weapon against an anchored pelvis” (as Judith phrased it).
“Think of the pelvis as the first vertebra,” she says.
You probably want to try it on your left side. Go’head!
How was that? Leave me a comment!