Bend the inflexible: how to do yoga if you don’t have the stretch?

Starting to practice yoga, many people face such a problem: to take the desired asanas does not allow the level of stretching. And for some people the first failure even becomes a reason to give up practicing. Georgy Gorgiladze, yoga therapist and speaker of the SN PRO EXPO FORUM festival, tells how to approach yoga if you lack flexibility and how to develop it as quickly as possible.

What kind of yoga is yoga?

In yoga, in addition to active physical practice (hatha yoga), you can choose to practice breathing practices (pranayama) or meditation. In any case, such classes will belong to yoga. However, the internal “split” between yogis practicing only meditation and yogis developing the physical body occurred back in the 19th century.

In the 1890s, Swami Vivekananda, an Indian philosopher of yoga and Vedanta, a preacher of raja yoga (“royal yoga” in which the main tool is meditation), opposed the practice of hatha yoga: “We have nothing to do with it here, because its practices are very difficult, cannot be mastered in a day and do not lead to spiritual growth…”. According to him, the main objective and result of hatha yoga is to make people long-lived and endow them with perfect health – an inferior goal for the seeker of spiritual knowledge.

Since then, the followers of yoga have conventionally divided into two main camps – those who extolled hatha yoga and those who extolled non-physical (meditative) yoga. Notably, those practicing only meditation tended to get sick more often and live shorter lives than their opponents who practiced hatha yoga.

Working on one’s physical body and developing flexibility is closely linked to better health and longevity. Therefore, meditation alone is not enough.

Is it possible to be naturally flexible?

The next important point to consider is that all people are born flexible, but without proper practice this ability deteriorates with age. However, if you pay attention to it throughout your life, you can not only remain flexible, but also prolong the vitality of the brain, internal organs, cardiovascular, lymphatic and nervous systems. Of course, the earlier a person starts practicing, the better – it will improve health and increase longevity.

In ancient times, a person was very mobile, daily performed many actions to maintain the flexibility of the body. But today we began to move less, to be in a sitting position more, because of which some muscles lose tone and atrophy, and the other, on the contrary, comes to hypertonus from constant static load and stress.

Gradually a feeling of tightness and rigidity is formed in the body, muscles harden, thus “compressing” blood vessels and nerve receptors, which causes the brain to receive many pain signals. In response, the nervous system redistributes the load to internal organs and other muscles, and this can provoke diseases.

What is the reason for flexibility?

The most effective way to maintain flexibility is stretching, which also allows the skin and muscles to retain their youthfulness and elasticity.

Let’s consider the mechanism of stretching in more detail. The fact is that the ability to stretch is limited not only by muscles, but also by connective tissue – fascia, tendons and ligaments.

Fascia is a thin tissue that envelops absolutely all muscles and consists of collagen, an elastic substance with a water content of about 70%. The fascia contains 10 times more nerve endings than the muscles. Also, the less mobile you are and the more time you spend in the same position, the stiffer the fascia becomes, compressing the muscles and limiting their elasticity and ability to stretch.

Tendons are the dense connective tissue by which muscles attach to bones and help transmit muscular forces. Tendons are also made up of collagen. Unlike the thin fascia that envelops all the muscles of the body and forms a single system, tendons are denser and are located locally. Although they are very strong, they are very sensitive to stretching. Stretching a tendon by 4% can either tear it or permanently lengthen it without the ability to return it to its original position. So be careful not to make sudden painful stretching movements.

Ligaments are dense connective tissue that bind bones or internal organs. Unlike tendons, ligaments are more elastic and have greater flexibility, but low strength. Ligaments connect bones in joint bags, providing stability to joints. While they are not connected to muscles, they play an important role in developing flexibility. Also be careful to perform stretching without sudden movements.

How to develop flexibility?

Try performing one of the most common yoga poses, pashchimottanasana. In a sitting position, bend your body forward with your palms around your feet and stay in this position for a few seconds, trying to straighten your legs. You will immediately feel tension in the muscles of your legs and along your spine. If you can hold the pose for 100 seconds, the fascia, muscles, tendons and ligaments will remember this position and stretch a little easier in the future.

Exhale

As you inhale, the body involuntarily tenses, making the stretch more difficult. Exhaling with simultaneous retraction of the abdomen, on the one hand, allows for a deeper tilt of the body forward, on the other hand, relaxes the muscles and nervous system, reducing pain and better stretching the muscles.

Reciprocal inhibition

This method of stretching has been used in yoga since ancient times and is based on the use of nerve circuits. It is called mutual (reciprocal) inhibition. By contracting and tensing one muscle, we cause stretching of the opposite muscles – antagonists. For example, if you tense the quadriceps muscle of the thigh (quadriceps), you thereby relax the posterior muscles of the thigh (biceps), improving the stretch of the leg muscles.

Nerve-muscle spindles and smooth stretching

The nervous system is the main limiter of flexibility. All muscles contain neuromuscular spindles (NMV), special sensors that monitor sudden and severe lengthening (stretching) of muscles. In the case of sudden or prolonged neuromuscular spindles immediately send a signal to the brain, activating a reverse contraction of the muscle – this is the body’s defense mechanism. Therefore, when stretching, never use sudden movements – this can provoke a reflexive contraction of the muscle, resulting in injury.

Slow and smooth stretching allows the neuromuscular spindles to gradually become accustomed to the stretch, reducing the likelihood of a nervous system backlash.

Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation or tricking the nervous system

This is another way to maximize flexibility as quickly as possible. We deceive the nervous system by certain actions: not fully stretching the muscles, we hold tension in them for 10 seconds and then relax them, and so on several times, gradually stretching them more and more. In this case, the nervous system believes that there is no danger and does not react.

Self-hypnosis

Stretching muscles and smiling, saying to yourself how pleasant it feels, feeling the movement of energy through the cells of the body, imagining bright and warm moments of life, feeling satisfaction and leisurely, we calm the nervous system and convince it of safety.

The main thing when stretching is to never perform mindless mechanical actions.

Regularity

Of course, it is impossible to develop flexibility in one hour or even one day. But if you do yoga at least three times a week or stretch every day, control your breathing, concentrate on sensations, listening to your body, relax it as much as possible, freeing your mind from extraneous thoughts, and positively adjust yourself, you will gain the desired flexibility as quickly as possible.