Meditative Shaking and Pulsing: Part 5, Spine, Neck, and Jaw

The following is an excerpt from my book Sunset Tai Chi: Simplified Tai Chi for Relaxation and Longevity. If you have not read the latest installment in this series, you can do so here.

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Spine

After doing the hip movements, move up into the spine. As a beginner, rather than trying to pulse and pump each vertebra separately, start by dividing the spine into three major sections.

Create and isolate a pulse and a pump in each one of the three pieces you created. In the beginning, try to feel the pulsing or pumping sensation through the first section you choose to work with, for example, the lumbar area. For better isolation, find different ways to tense and relax muscles around the spine in order to isolate the area that you are trying to pulse, shake, or pump. tensing and relaxing the different muscles can help you learn to isolate the ligaments in desired areas, especially the small areas between the vertebrae.

For example, let go of the abdominal muscles and pump and shake. You should have more control over where you isolate the sensation. Sometimes you can use your hands to hold the abdominal muscles. Now there is some tightness but it is external. Pulse and pump. You may find that you are better able to isolate the desired area.

Here are some more ways to improve your skill of isolating the pulsing, pumping, and shaking: Let the shoulders go forward or backward by letting the ribs open and close, by holding the air in the lungs, and by emptying them out. Next, pulse the thoracic spine (the mid back). Adjust your hips and shoulders until you can isolate that chunk of your spine; then move up to the cervical spine between the shoulders. 

Neck

You must be extra gentle and careful when pulsing the head. When pulsing the neck area, it is as if the head is connected by a spring to the spine. Pulse it in and out of the shoulders, and up and down, and have the head bob up and down with a gentle left and right, forward and backward movement as well. Shoulders and hips have a larger range of motion than the other joints, which allows for much more movements and sensations.

Do not rush when stretching the neck. It can take weeks of gently stretching to release tension that has built up for months or years.

The Jaw is Also a Joint

As you create the gentle pulse through the face, relax your jaw and let the jaw gently pulse. When you reach the jaw, you can close your eyes. At this point, if you have the tongue at the roof of your mouth, take it down and relax the tongue.

Soft Tissue

Sometimes, after finishing my three to five minute joint pulsing, I redirect the gentle pulsing into the rest of the soft tissue, especially the muscles and mostly the big groups of muscles: the chest, the abdominal muscles, the thighs. I especially enjoy this exercise because it is not easy to find a better massage than the one created by this meditation and pulsing. The gentle pumping creates a gentle vibration throughout the muscles and I am able to release lots of tension on my own.

Over the years, I have learned to direct this gentle pulse to the skin, into the fascia, into the muscles, and then within the muscle, near the skin, or closer to the bones. As you practice the meditative shaking, you will discover how to isolate the various layers of soft tissue and direct the pulse and the gentle movement to the layer that you desire to massage.

Next week, we will wrap up this series!

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Mind-Body Workout #10: Strengthening Your Roots

Welcome back mind-body students! We have had a lot of posts about research and special events on the blog lately! These are all great, and I am so happy to share the amazing work we are doing with all of you. However, I also like to have action on my blog too!

So let's dive into a great mind-body workout this week, and get back into the groove of our mind-body routine!

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Mind-Body Workout #10: Strengthening Your Roots

Let's begin with some stretching of the key muscles that support stability and balance. Stretching these muscles is not only important for flexibility and avoiding falls, but it is also a key part to releasing our skeleton from being a prisoner of the soft tissue. This improves blood flow, which allows oxygen to reach all of our cells more effectively, and energizes our whole mind-body system!

The first stretch will be the Flamingo Stretch for our hips. Our hips are the core of our body, and they are responsible for directing the strength that we generate from our legs. Having strong roots is not much help if you cannot use your hips correctly! Do the stretch to each side (each leg) for 2-3 minutes, using whatever support you need.

Next we will stretch our lower back out in each of its major directions using the Five Musketeers Stretch. Just like with the hips, the lower back is responsible for directing a lot of the strength of our root system (our legs). If your lower back is tight, you will not be able to properly strengthen your legs! Do this stretch like I show in the video, for about 1-2 minutes at each angle. Use blocks or books and pillows to properly support yourself so that you are doing 80% effort.

For our last stretch, we will be working on the tightest muscles in our body: our hamstrings! This technique is an old favorite I call "Vitamin H." While we do this stretch, we will also be focusing on performing "water breath." This will begin to really engage our mind and breath into the workout. This stretch you can hold for 3-4 minutes, but make sure you are doing 80% effort, just like before!

For our first of three strengthening exercises, we will be moving Up and Down Like the Moon and the Sun. Remember to do the two sets, legs apart and legs together. Up to 15 (in each set!) is beginner level, 15-30 repetitions is intermediate, and 30-50 repetitions is the advanced level of leg strength. Do the amount that you are able to with 80% effort. 

From working our quadriceps and other thigh muscles, we are moving down to the calves! This exercise has you go up onto your toes, and then roll back onto your heals. It works your calf muscles as well as massages the bottom of your feet. The feet are so important for generating the strength and force from the ground that everyone needs. Whether you are a martial artists who wants to throw a powerful kick, or just a person who needs to run up and down a flight of stairs, strong and flexible feet are so important. Do this 20-30 times, and be sure to pay attention to your breathing like I mention in the video.

Finally, we are going to practice moving up and down from the floor safely. This may seem like it contradicts what our workout is about. Why would we practice this if the goal is to have strong roots and not to fall over? The answer is pretty simple! Everyone falls over sometime. When you practice this movement, not only are you getting a good workout in for your whole body (especially your legs), but you will also be teaching your body how to react when it loses balance: bend the knees, move down low in a straight down way so your body can "collapse" instead of "fall". Do this 10 times to each side, practicing getting down and up from one side and then the other.

And that's all for this week! I hope you enjoy the workout!

And as always, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Correct Alignment in the Standing Posture

Welcome back, mind-body students!

This week, we continue our discussion of achieving correct alignment with a video about upper body alignment while standing.

I call this technique "Crane Flies." As I show in the video, you can practice this standing against the wall first in order to get a good feel for what the correct alignment of the spine and neck is. Then, when you feel like you have the posture committed to memory, you can step away from the wall and practice while free-standing.

Remember to touch the wall with your heels, sacrum, shoulder blades, and back of the head. Your lumbar spine (lower back above your hips) should not be touching the wall. You should be able to pass your hand between your lower back and the wall.

The great thing about this exercise is that you can feel, as you do the movement, which parts of your back are tightest. That way you can determine what to stretch next to release your skeleton from being a prisoner of soft tissue.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Isolating the Joints with Flexibility and Strength Essential for Health, Martial Arts, and Various Sports

Isolating the joints is a great eastern way to warm up, starting from the energetic system!

(Speaking of sports and warming up: checkout the links in this blog to my martial arts tips for sport on YouTube!)

In my class at Dana Farber and in my research class at Tufts Medical Center, I use isolating the joints as the first warm up to ignite and start-up the energetic system. Then, I continue with a three to five minute walk to also gain the benefits of the typical “western” style exercise warm up. This walk gets the heart pumping faster which then increases blood flow to the muscles and the rest of the body. I find that doing the best of both worlds for a warm up before any physical activity is the best.

Since warming up before any physical activity is a must, make sure that when you are about to take a walk, ride a bike, hike, swim, run, or do any kind of physical activity, spend three to five minutes isolating the joint first. Spend about ten seconds on each one. Then run in place or walk for three to five minutes and that should be a great warm-up for whatever activity you are about to do.

Of course, then spending five to ten minutes for some stretches, before and after, is very important as well. Once you have done that, then you are really ready!

Isolating the joints has two outcomes that you can focus on: one is better health, while the other is better martial arts.

For health, isolating the joints leads to better flow. It is like a gentle massage to both the joints and to the soft tissues around the joints. You can think of the gentle movements of the joints like “oiling the joints,” and at the same time reigniting and charging the energetic system. The gentle movements of the ligaments stimulate the energetic system.

Remember, when it comes to health purposes, move the joints with 40% to 60% effort. Move gently, like your hands are in warm water. You will get better, with time and practice, on both isolation of the joints as well as with the movement. Practice makes perfect!

You will also find that moving the joints gently helps tremendously with Arthritis and other chronic pains around the joint areas, and elsewhere. Many of my students were able to reduce inflammation in the joint or in the tendons around the joints with the gentle joint movements.

Also, over time, breathing deep and emptying the mind while practicing the joint will allow you to experience a nice form of moving meditation.

Many times, when doing the movements correctly, I experience a nice warm feeling in the joint area which then spreads into the rest of the body.

For martial arts, and for various sports, moving the joints is done slowly at first, for correct isolation. Over time, the speed increases to improve performance.

The hands joints are important for both individuals that are interested in martial arts, and for those interested in improving their performance in sports activities. In martial arts, the hands are used for blocking, grabbing, and striking.

While the lower body joints are essential for both martial arts and sport activities, in martial arts, the legs are used for kicking and taking down your opponent.

Over time, you will develop both strength and speed in the joints, which will upgrade both your martial arts and sports abilities.

If flexibility is important, both leg and upper body strength are essential.

Use this exercise to improve both leg strength and speed.

Remember the art of 40%, 60%, and 80% movements too! Each one has different purposes and goals.

That’s all for this week! Come back next week for another video about isolating the joints while doing Tai Chi and Qi Gong!

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Freeing the Skeleton with the Body Markers: Complete Series

Happy Holidays mind-body students! This will be the final blog of 2017 (can you believe it?) and then we will take our winter break until late January. I hope everyone has learned a lot and benefited from all the content on the blog this year. We always do our best to pick exercises and blog topics that are as relevant as possible to the needs my students have.

Also, a big 'thank you' to all of our new blog readers! December saw a big increase in new subscribers, so I'd like to welcome all our new mind-body students!

This week, we are completing and compiling the blog series on Freeing the Skeleton with the Body Markers. To refresh everyone's memory, here is the introduction I wrote to the first installment of this series:

“The 12 Body Markers are a system that I have used for years to help teach my students both online and in my classes. They are designed to measure a person’s range of motion through all of their joints, using a scale of 1 (least flexible) to 10 (most flexible). In western health an wellness traditions, everyone seems to be able to measure strength, but very few people have a good grasp of flexibility. Even professional athletes often don’t know what the proper range of motion for each of their joints are. Many people are even unsure about what their personal level of flexibility is: usually under or over estimating it until they test it out.

To help address these issues, my wife (Ilana Rosenberg) and I are putting a book together that will feature an extensive guide to the 12 Body Markers to help everyone from average Joe to professional athletes avoid injury, recover from injury more effectively, and recuperate from training faster.

We’ve covered some of these Body Markers in the past on varies blog posts and our mini Office Exercise series. For this blog series, we will be focusing on the 9 Body Markers that measure a person’s flexibility, starting this week from the ground and moving up!”

— Rami's Blog, November 10th, 2017

From there, we covered the 9 Body Markers, moving from the ground up. First we did stationary stretches, and then we did moving exercises. Today, we will do a quick review of all of these steps, so you can easily move from one to the next.

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Freeing the Skeleton with the Body Markers: Complete Series

Part 1: Starting from the Ground

We began the first week's post with an ankle stretch. This is a key stretch for improving your walking posture, your balance, and your ability to recover from foot pain. If you don't have the special foot rollers that I do, you can simply use the first step at the bottom of a set of stairs to do the stretch.

We moved on to the quad stretches, either the heron or the "seiza" sitting position. This stretch can release a lot of tension you might not know you have, especially those of us who stand all day for our job.

Lastly, we covered the hamstring stretches. Hamstrings are notoriously the tightest muscle in the modern body, not least of all because we spend much of our day sitting, and very few people do forward folds as much as they should. But not to worry! Now is your chance to start! Loosen up the soft tissue in your hamstrings!

Part 2: Abdomen and Back

In week two we were moving on up to the body with more stationary stretches for the abdomen and back. We did the groin stretch, both using a chair and using a machine. This stretch is key for athletes and "weekend warriors" to avoid injury during their athletic activities. How many times do you sports fans hear about a professional athlete being benched due to a groin injury? They are not fun to have, and they can take a while to heal because the area is where a lot of soft tissue and bone structure connect. Don't hurt your groin, do this stretch!

Next was freeing the hips with the classic hip extension posture against the wall, or free-standing if you want to work on your balance at the same time. Remember: your skeleton is designed for your knees to get right up beneath your collar bone in this position. If you can't get your leg that far up, you have soft tissue tension that needs to be worked on!

To close out week two, I showed you guys the chair twist (which you can easily do in the office), and the "five musketeers" for releasing the stress in your lower back. As the weather gets colder and more snow begins to fall (for my New England readers), keeping your lower back free and healthy is even more important. One wrong move with the snow shovel when your back is tight and you could be in bed for the next three days. Nobody wants that, so be sure to pay attention to your lower back and work toward that 10/10 flexibility.

Part 3: Arms and Shoulder Girdle

In week three, we reached the top of our body with static stretches, starting with the shoulders. The shoulders are a very complex joint, able to move in a huge number of different directions. To free all the tension that occurs because of that complexity, i showed you a set of four stretching postures, using a belt or rope if necessary, to release shoulder stress from every direction.

Next was a new technique I call "Three Postures for the Neck" that helps target one of the most tight areas in the upper body: the neck. With so many people looking down and computers and phones all day, it's no wonder our neck gets tight. Tight necks leads to headaches, walking issues, bad sleep, and a million other potential problems. Definitely do not forget to stretch the neck.

Finally, we did an oldy but a goody: the wrist stretch using the wall. This helps relieve tension in the firearms and hands, and is particularly good for relieving carpal tunnel symptoms, or avoiding them completely.

Part 4: Back to the Ground, in Motion

In week four, we returned to the lower body to learn several moving techniques that can be even better than static stretches at relieving certain tension. First up was leg rotations, which focuses on the knee and ankle joints. Use a chair for this exercise if there is any worry of losing your balance.

Then, we did another new exercise I call "kick backs" which help to release tension in the quads. First we start with small kick backs, bringing the heel up about halfway, and eventually we move on to kicking all the way back and touching the heel to the butt.

Lastly, we did a very advanced movement called the "windmill" to release hamstring stress. This one is not for the feint of heart! If you are not up to the task, don't worry! In the next installment, we showed a movement that can accomplish the same thing with much less effort.

Part 5: Moving the Core

We kicked this week of movements off with a new technique called "Swinging Leg." The side-to-side variation helps you get the best groin stretch, but the forward and backward technique can also release tension in the hamstrings (particularly the forward part of the swing). Don't forget to use a stick or wall to stabilize yourself while doing this. Being stable actually helps you get a better stretch while doing this movement.

Next was a fan-favorite: the Tai Chi Walk! This is a great whole-body movement, and even works the core and the back. But for our purposes in this series, the goal is to gently move the hips to release that soft tissue in the hips. Notice how you do a modified hip extension stretch at the top of every step!

To finish up week five, we did the Tai Chi move "grind." Grind looks like an arm movement, but experienced Tai Chi students will tell you it is all in the core, particularly the lower back. Make sure your belly button moves from side to side while you do the motion. If the naval stays in the same spot the whole time, you are doing an arm movement, not a back movement!

Part 6: Moving the Upper Body

Finally, we completed the series in week six with three upper body movements. We targeted the shoulders first, with my new "Swinging Arms" exercise, which you can do sitting or standing.

Then we moved our head like a pigeon does to gently massage the neck. Throw in some deep breathing here and relax the face too! A tight neck and face feed off of each other. If you can relax both at the same time, you will get the best results.

And to end our exercise routine, we revisited the "40% effort movements" I created for people suffering with arthritis in the arms and hands. These motions are a great way to release all kinds of tension in the elbows, forearms, hands, and even fingers.

And that is it! Talk about freeing the skeleton! I don't think there is a single bone we didn't touch by the end of our techniques.

It's been another great year, and I hope you all keep an eye out for the first blog post of 2018 next month. I'm excited to see what mind-body adventures the new year will bring!

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

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Happy Holidays!

Freeing the Skeleton by Moving the Upper Body

Just one more week! One more week before we take our holiday break for the year. We've gone over how these body marker movements can release your skeleton from unneeded stress in the last two blogs here and here. We began with the lower body, then moved up to the core. All that is left is to gently move the upper body and we will have gotten to everything!

Moving Technique to Compliment Body Marker #7: Swinging Arm Rotations

This is a great movement to help you loosen up the entire shoulder girdle and upper body, but I'm still going to include two more movements you can do in addition to this to really release your soft tissue tension. A note on this exercise: sitting or standing is fine. Standing is not the "next level" of this exercise, because it has nothing to do with the legs. As always, I encourage you to stand if you can.

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Moving Technique to Compliment Body Marker #8: Move your Head Like a Pigeon

This exercise also uses circular rotation to help you loosen up your soft tissue, but maybe not in the way you expect! The circles you do during this exercise are forward and backward, not left and right. Don't forget to relax your face and shoulders here! We don't need to add more tension while we're trying to get rid of it!

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Moving Technique to Compliment Body Marker #9: 40% Effort Movements

I invented and tested these movements over the years with the help of my students who have arthritis in their arms and wrists. Pay close attention to the wrist movement that I do later on in the video. But don't skip the other movements! The finger movement especially can help to loosen the soft tissue in the forearms and relieve wrist tension.

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That's all for this week! Next week we deliver the full "Freeing the Skeleton" guide, and then we're off for the holidays.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!