Stop Stretching: Intentional muscle activation with Yogi Aaron
“I know that every single moment, I have the capacity to create and to change the narrative and to create a new story. So I can't rewrite my story. Anytime…” Brian Berneman
Transcript
Ericka Thomas 0:02
Welcome back to the work in everyone. I'm your host Erica and my guest today is Yogi Aaron who is trailblazing a new path in the world of yoga. He's known for his unorthodox perspectives on stretching and flexibility, and how both can cause more harm than good. His teachings aim to help as many people as possible live a pain free lifestyle, so they can realize yoga is true intentions. And Yogi Aaron has a very long list of accomplishments including author and creator of the applied yoga anatomy and muscle activation system. A Yama which I'm looking forward to hearing so much more about. He created the online platform, the yogi club and he's a podcast hosts host himself. His podcast is called Stop Stretching, which we are going to discuss a little bit more in a moment. So let's welcome Yogi air into the work in and dive right in. Welcome yogi. Aaron. I'm so happy to speak with you today.
Yogi Aaron 1:14
Thanks, Ericka. appreciate being here. Thank you.
Ericka Thomas 1:17
Yeah, so we're gonna dive right in. And I want to talk a little bit about first year your podcast title which is stop stretching and I can relate to this because I'm often asking people that I know to stop working out and not because I don't want them to exercise anymore. But because most of the time the focus on exercise and work out is on this external change. Rather than making the interoceptive connections through intention and body awareness and breadth and curiosity that lead to the deeper lasting health and wellness and behavior change that most of us really want. You know the real purpose behind Exercise and Movement. And this is what I mean when I talk about the work in and that work in needs to have the same if not more attention sometimes then your typical work out. So what I'd like to start with today is if you could explain the idea that around this stop stretching because it's so ingrained in the fitness industry. And how is it that our typical stretching that most of us learned how to do how does that harm the body? Exactly what are we talking about here and why is this such a problem for people?
Yogi Aaron 2:53
So first of all, Erica, thank you so much for having me here and I always love talking about this stuff. So anytime anybody wants to chat with me about stop stretching or a Yama I always get very excited. i But you asked a very you asked a few different questions. So feel free to come back and ask me again if I if I missed a point how the whole idea of start stretching came about was, I think in the yoga world, that we're always like, very careful not to tell people exactly what to do. I don't really like doing it, but I just found that when I was suggesting to people like maybe you shouldn't stretch, it just kind of went over people's heads and people just didn't get it. They would go oh yeah, I can see the benefit of what you're teaching, but then they would immediately go and do all the postures I told them not to do now would inevitably disable them. And so I was sitting down with my creation team. And we were kind of like batted around ideas and then all of a sudden I just I said to one of my writers. I wish people would just stop stretching and she goes oh my god, that's the perfect title. Like just put it out there like what is it that you want people to do? And so on the path of becoming, I guess more whole or more stronger or the word I actually prefer to use is more stable in our body if if you only take one thing from this conversation, stop stretching. So that's kind of why I put it at the top of the list. I mean, yes, there's other things involved. But that the idea of what stretching does ultimately is is it disconnects or disrupts the connection between the brain and the muscle. So the brain is connected to the muscle. And it knows where this muscle is in space. Generally speaking. There's a neuro muscular connection and and that's a thing like a lot of people sometimes I think, kind of forget that I'm talking about this brain literally not metaphorically, not metaphysically, but a real brain to muscle connection. And one of the there's a few words for it, but one of them that maybe some people know is proprioception that there's a proprioception between the brain and the muscle. And when we stretch muscles, what happens is that proprioception is lost is terminated and that connection like so the brain doesn't know where the muscles are in space. Right now I'm sitting and I've got my hips in kind of a flexion. So my glutes are, you know, elongated right now, in a passive way. And we know that sitting for a long time has a negative effect on the glute muscles. Well, there's a few reasons for that, but one of the font I think one of the biggest reasons is because I am stretching my glutes for such an extended period of time that when I stand up, if my brain isn't able to reconnect to my glutes and tell them to engage properly, something else in the body is going to have to maintain that stability. So that's in the short answer. That's one of the reasons why we don't want to stretch but let me tell you what other reasons so it within the muscles, you have what's called these muscle spindles. And they're really tiny. I mean, you know, really, really tiny little muscle spindles but you have a lot of them and so they're constantly feeding information to the brain and one of those informations is like oh, we need to contract and the brain gets the message and then sends a message back and goes okay contract, but muscle spindles are also like Slinkys you know, as a child, we maybe we played with a slinky and we got it. We took it out of the box, and it was all coiled up and like children typically do they have a curiosity of like, what would happen if I stretch that slinky out and they get together with their friend and they stretch it out, and then they discover like the slinky doesn't go back into its coiled stay, and then they usually go to their parents and beg them to buy another one. But that muscle spindles are like those Slinkys and so if we keep stretching them over and over, they lose that ability to recoil on demand. It does, you know, it does it depending on a person's age, depending on a person's stress, or history of trauma. If they may not ever go back, I think with me, I was in a state where I had very specific muscles key muscles that just have lost their ability to contract. Properly. I've regained that to some degree, you know, through consistent practice and, and whatnot but but young person like a young person, like if you get a 20 year old in here and they stretch and they stretch and they stretch, their muscles are going to retract and go back to that contractible state very quickly. Whereas somebody who's 50 or 55, or 60, who's had a history of stress, trauma, and overuse, their muscles are not going to be able to retract very quickly. So that's why at the top of the list, I say just stop stretching, please, please.
Ericka Thomas 8:46
Okay, we're gonna we're gonna dive into those things a little bit with some more clarity for people because I'm, I'm certain that we have some listeners that are freaking out right now. Right, but, but I do want to I have a follow up question because I want to I want to clarify the difference between stretching on purpose and, you know, having the muscle in an elongated state, just in your body position, like posture wise, because in your example of being seated, like when you're seated and your your glutes and the, you know, are elongated, yes, I can see that. How you know being in that position, body position for a long period of time may disconnect that muscle from the brain and affect stability. Absolutely. However, when I'm when I'm seated and I I can't speak for everyone but when I'm seated, I'm not feeling a stretch in my glutes necessarily right. So are you saying that every time you feel a stretch in a particular muscle then it is being cut off from that connection, that connection from the brain and and can lead to instability? Or is it that that active, you know, deep static cold stretching that for for, you know, 30 years ago that was like the prescription for for health and wellness in the body was to do that kind of stretching, but so can you can you kind of define that for us?
Yogi Aaron 10:43
Sure. So I'm kind of talking about a couple of different things all at once. Anytime. We start to passively you elongate muscles. The general rule of thumb is for longer than 1530 seconds then we start to possibly create an instability or a disconnect is a better word in the neuromuscular connection between the brain and the muscle. And, you know, definitely there's some things that we do that can cause stress in the body. And as you know, the stress result of stress is always inflammation and it's the inflammation that starts to disrupt that neuromuscular connection, if you will. So, so that's one that's another thing and so for example, like when i i drive I live on in a place in Costa Rica, and I go to San Jose a lot and it's five hours driving five, six hours driving, and I've had problems with herniated discs in my lower back. And so when I start off the drive it's fine. It's perfect, no problems, you know, my muscles are engaged. They're holding my spine, the joints of my spine in place properly. My hips are being held in place, but because I'm sitting for so long in this kind of, you know, flexed state if you will, that it does start to create a stress in my body, and my muscles lose their ability to contract properly. So I have to get out of the car after sometimes three hours, maybe four, and just do a quick little muscle hacks to engage my hip flexors and maybe a little bit of hip extensors. And then I can get back to the car and I don't have any more problems. As a side note, it actually has been getting a lot better. I actually drove last time I drove and I did I made it all the way without having any pain. So it does you can start to increase the tolerance level within your body. So that way when you do deal with stress from the outside, ie sitting down for long periods of time, that those muscles will not shut down right away. That when we're hit with like these, you know the forces of life and the force I'm talking about is sometimes just sitting for long periods of time or going shopping like grocery shopping or, you know, going through the things that we go through and day all of those things kind of start to have a stroke, create a stress and a neuromuscular level. With us if our neuromuscular system is weak, or weakened due to stress, trauma and over years, and when I say stress, by the way can also be emotional stress. That plays a huge role in it. It could be the stress for watching too much news on TV.
Ericka Thomas 13:46
Right, right. Yeah. We always talk we talk about here that physical, mental and emotional stress or stress ORS can affect the body and cannon do I should say cannon do affect the body they always affect the body. And yes, and it can show up not necessarily in as chronic pain but as you've mentioned, like tension or and and with my clients often things start off as tension in the body we just because we don't you know we might ignore something or people I find people are very good at dismissing uncomfortable sensations, whether those are physical sensations or emotional or mental sensations that come up in the body there. Were really good at dismissing those until we can't dismiss them anymore. And usually it's like this compounded tension in muscles Yes, but also the fascia and, and our joints that can really hold on to a lot of that stress. And, and so I'd like to touch it. I mean, you touched a little bit on on, on pain. And chronic pain can be both a symptom and a source of trauma in the body. And I I'd really love to hear your experience with chronic pain. And yoga and muscle activation technique. And just kind of an explanation of that journey towards healing. And then in that same vein, I'd like to know how you respond to teachers who say that maybe the goal isn't or shouldn't be to completely eliminate pain because of its protective nature. So so let's let's kind of take this little road down
Yogi Aaron 15:52
so feel free to jump in anytime. And see I'm long winded sometimes, but the I think one thing you just said is like really so important. I just wanted to come back to that because you teach people to listen to their pain. And that is like so important. And you hear yoga teachers use this expression a lot. Listen to your body, and I'm completely on board with that, by the way, but there's two problems one, a lot of yoga teachers will teach and fitness trainers and you know whatnot. You've seen this a lot is you need to work through the pain, you know and the pain is just part of your mind and and that is just like so wrong because pain is like the red engine you know the the engine light, the engine light indicator coin off in our body, like something is wrong. And from a muscle activation standpoint, or perspective or from any Yama perspective, the pain is telling us hey, there's something going on. There's inflammation here, and the body is responding in this way because it's not stable. There's an instability and then in the muscular system that needs to be addressed. And so that's that's one thing and I can come back to that in a moment. But the get so the other thing the other problem with just listening to our body is that a lot of people don't like sure they can listen to their body but they don't know how to interpret it. They don't they can hear it's like if I'm if I'm listening to somebody speaking Japanese, I mean, I don't speak barely any other languages, let alone Japanese so I can hear somebody speaking another language, but I don't know what they're saying. I have no idea until I learn. You know what that language is? So I think part of what I try to do anyways is teach people what is the language of your body? And how do we start to address it? My own. My own journey with pain started when I was 18 really started when I was 18. And I started doing yoga to you know, become more flexible, and I thought that flexibility would help me stay young and stay healthy. And like I think most people do, and I quickly injured myself. And the solution when I injured myself was I need to do more yoga. my hamstrings weren't open enough my lower back wasn't opening up I needed to open by hips. And it took me 25 years to figure out this wasn't necessarily a good day. You know, in during those 25 years, especially more in the beginning I was able to recover quickly. But as I started to progressively get older, it took longer and longer and longer to heal myself. And my recovery time just started slowing down a lot and I just assumed it was because I wasn't a good enough yogi or my alignment wasn't good enough. Or maybe the pain was just a part of my mind. And I needed to work through it or, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of like, you know, reasons that we come up with. And it wasn't until I got into a situation where I was in the surgeon's office and at that moment, I could barely walk you know it was it was a condition that had been progressing over a year. And it led me into the surgeon's office when he said that I might need a spinal fusion and that was like a big wake up call. I realized that in there that I had to make a change. And that's what took me into the MA T world the muscle activation technique world which is you know, not what I teach, but I studied that. And one of the the founding ideas is that the reason why we have pain in the body and it of course there's you know, there's nerve pain and there's, you know, people have arthritis and so I'm not speaking necessarily to all pain, of course but but when we have like back pain or knee pain or hip pain or you know a lot of people have pain in their glutes. You know, they always point to their glutes just sort of more posterior from their hip bone. And so that kind of pain when we have those kinds of pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, it's usually related to the muscular system not working properly. There's, there's a stress in the neuromuscular system, and we need to start putting ourselves back together again.
Ericka Thomas 20:53
Yeah, it sounds like what you're talking about here is trying to tap into the body's natural ability to heal basically, giving it what it's asking for in a way that it can understand and activating those muscles in them in them and muscle function in the ways that it really wants to be. Right. I mean, sometimes, you know when you feel that little bit of tension in that your instant temptation is to just stretch that spot over and over again. But there's so much going on when we feel pain. There's there's one thing that I learned from my pain care aware studies is that pain is a very complex thing in the body. And what we might think is the cause of that sensation is not necessarily what the body thinks it is. And so we need to be open to a lot of different approaches. So with that muscle activation technique, I know that is not your, your, your teaching focus, but in your studies, can you just explain to our listeners what we mean when we say muscle activation technique.
Yogi Aaron 22:13
So I teach muscle activation practices, which is a little bit different than mA t when I studied muscle activation technique with Greg Roscoff. He's the creator and designer in still to this day is refining you know the system. ology is the system ology that starts to identify where there's muscle weakness, and, and then is able to go in and start turning those muscles back on. So it's just a diagnostic tool and by checking basically range of motion, you know, like if you for example, if I lift my right arm up towards the sky, and it only comes 45 degrees, but I lift my left arm up, and it comes up to 90 degrees. There's definitely an asymmetrical muscular imbalance going on. In the neuromuscular system, like my brain is connecting to the muscles on my right side, if you will. So what we start to learn is how to go in, identify the weakness and then turn the muscles back on and it's quite shocking to see how quickly you can help somebody regain mobility like for example that the hamstrings I love I love doing this little party trick or walk with my students and with with with people because you know, if you have tight hamstrings, what do you think, oh, I need I need to stretch my hamstrings but the hamstrings are tightening because the opposite muscle is not contracting is not shortening properly. So with the hamstrings, if you want longer hamstrings while you're answering to be able to lengthen properly we need to improve the quads ability to contract cited this woman on my table. Her name was Karen and Karen was from England. We had a big hoops working when I was working with her but you know she was only able to live like 70 degrees on the floor. You know so when she's lying on her back for her when life was left up only 70 degrees, you know, as opposed to 90 degrees completely directly up. And I had her I just worked on her thoughts. And I sit here and watch that. So I got one of her quads were up in the air for quads obviously. I got a rectus for Morris fired up and she was able to bring the leg up to 80 degrees and then I worked my teeth to the other three parts, the vastus muscles. And then she was able to bring her like not even to 90 degrees but 200 degrees and her eyeballs just popped out of her head because we never stretched the hamstring. So the hands hear when you're tightening up because as a reaction to the body not feeling stable, and the body doesn't feel stable because the slides are contrasting probably. So it sends out this kind of I call it an Amber Alert you know like when there's a nationwide Amber Alert. This brain sends out a message when it feels instability. It says contract and try that. So muscles that are tight are just reflecting instability in the body and which is why one other reason why we don't want to stretch those muscles too much. When I was working at MIT when I was studying to make tea very quickly, I realized that nobody in the MIT world was doing this in yoga and nobody was translating this into yoga. And I then decided that there that I needed to start finding a way to bring this into younger classes. So that we could start use not the MA T methodology but the principles of Ma T which is stop stretching and start are activating start. Finding ways to activate the muscles in a better way, but also then flipping the script in the way that we approach yoga postures because for example, like if I take my right arm out over my head and reach to the side, the yoga teacher always say, feel the stretch, see if you can stretch a little bit more. But what we really want to be doing is activating the muscles or feeling the muscles contracting into the side that we're bending into. Because those muscles if they're not contracting profitable, we don't have stability. And also they're not really going to allow the opposite site to to release.
Ericka Thomas 26:44
Yeah, that makes so so much sense. I know from my from my experience way back in the dark ages when I was in martial arts, and we would do we would do deep stretches partner stretches PNF stretches and things like that. Really my my, my taekwondo master who is very, very good about having us focus on that opposing muscle group in order to get that bigger range of motion because it doesn't do you any good to be able to kick up to the height of your opponent's head if you have no power there. Right. So that that was I think, ingrained in my brain from early on. But my question for you is maybe a little bit of technical and I'd like to break into this practical application of this and yoga in particular, in just a moment, but when your client Karen was moving through that bigger range of motion did she feel a stretch hamstring or not? Like when the quads are activated in appropriate ways. To give you better range of motion for the hamstring. Do you feel a stretch? Or?
Yogi Aaron 28:20
No, that was one of the things that really shocked her was not only did a range of motion improved, but she didn't feel that pull a sensation in the hamstring. And, you know, again, you know muscle tightness is the body's own protective mechanism. It the body senses and stipulations and tight. The body senses stability. It actually then sends a message Okay guys, you can relax first people. And so the answer is no. Generally most people, some people might feel a little bit of like tension. You know, as you come to your end range of motion sometimes there's a little bit of tension, if you will. But generally No, I like myself. I've made many videos on this little hack and showing like different things. I have to tell you, even I still get amazed because when I'm demonstrating this, you know, I can bring my life, you know, 280 degrees and my hamstring is polling. And then it goes through the different techniques to activate my quads, and then all of a sudden there's like no more tension on the hamstring and I have full range of motion. And not only do I have more range of motion, but I have stability in that range of motion. Your question about the, or your observation about what your taekwondo master was saying, about kicking the leg up, you have to have that force output. If you spend all the time just stretching those muscles, those muscles, you know, lose that kind of force output. Power, because you've started to open up a range of motion. You've opened up a deep, you know, flexibility, without any accountability. There's no accountability, meaning, like the muscles are not able to move that way unless you move your light to that, you know, range of motion passively. So there's even some dance teachers now that are telling their students like, I don't want you guys stretching, you shouldn't be stretching. I need you to be strong and stable in these end range of motion. So that way, you don't injure yourself. And that you can actually do it through proper muscle engagement.
Ericka Thomas 31:52
Yeah, that that really makes a lot of a lot of sense when it's explained that way for sure. So, I'd like to go back a little bit into how we apply some of this to a yoga practice. Personally, I don't know that I have ever thought of my yoga practice as stretching. I know a lot of people do though. I know a lot of people who have said to me on more than one occasion that they are non flexible enough to do yoga, and my ice I still have my favorite meme. And I always tell them it's like saying you're too dirty to take a bath but but you know, that's the typical view of yoga is that it's for stretching. And I know that we have so many different styles of yoga and in my opinion, most of them the purpose is not stretching. Certainly not the highest purpose even in the West. That's what people take out of, you know, looking at our yoga practice, right? Oh, that would be it feel like a great stretch pigeon or whatever, all of our hip openers. and such. When I practice Ashtanga that does not feel like stretching. To me. That feels like a lot of work. Honestly, it's not stretching. But certainly there are postures where you could feel a stretch. And you could also build strength. That's one of the things that I love about about my yoga practice is you can you can choose or you can have it all right, if you're, if you're in the moment and you're paying attention to that muscle connection. You can get both and so let's stay with that hamstring. Example a little bit and when we were talking about that, I just you know, the posts that popped into my mind was a triangle or maybe pyramid, that front leg of the body, right the front leg in those postures when we hip hinge forward. For example, in in pyramid when we hit pinch forward with neutral spine and sink into that that hamstring flexibility. You know what, what I'm thinking is Okay, so now as an instructor, the cueing should be less around focusing on that sensation in the back, like, Let's cue more around the strength in the front of the leg that quadricep contraction and turning it more into an isometric balance Am I on the right track here?
Yogi Aaron 35:04
No, definitely. So I I mean, you just said a lot of things. Like so. I think that you're one of the rarities in kind of people like you're sort of like a world of people who are not so focused on stretching and flexibility. And part of what I you know, my podcast especially about is like flipping a script on stretching and flexibility in terms of yoga. And I am so hesitant to use the word stretch or to use the word flexibility like we were talking about earlier, like this idea of antagonists and agonists. So, if my quads are engaged, you know, my hamstrings are elongated and so some people choose to use the word stretch isn't stretching or is it just rely on that DD? I think I would actually say biomechanically, I would argue that it's not stretching. It is, you know, elongated. It's in a relaxed state and in that relaxed state, it can move safely through different ranges of motion because the quads are doing their job properly. But since people even doctors would use the word, cat, I'm like, so hesitant about using the word stretch. Also, just because I find like people, like even just English, you can have it all and I want to say why you need to stretch Why is it so important? To have that stretching sensation? Like what is it actually isn't feeding your soul? Is it making you happier like, what what are the rights were at the core is so important to you? When I say you I don't mean like you individually. I mean, like the big you about, but both stretching. So I would say and you're hitting the nail right on the head like to some degree is like you would want to definitely impure mid pose engage the quads. For me personally, like I love teaching pyramid I do it a lot. But I cute a little different way and IQ in the way. Like I do with a water standing or cold somebody will likely have somebody had their hands at their hips, not allow the person to bring your hands to the leg or to the floor to props. So that's the first thing you do it with the hands and the hip. So that way you're you're taking out the ability to kind of drop into into gravity, if you will. Because anytime you drop into gravity, you're going to start to passively stretch a lot. So and then you're not going to be an engagement. The second thing I would do is how to really be engaged in their core and try to lift the pubic bone to to work with the abdominal muscles insert to start creating that for engagement. And then the second third thing and I address like all forward bends with this kind of idea that forward bends are really extension opportunity. So we want to keep the spine in extension. The I just asked for it just made kind of like a question. Why do you need to stretch and so yoga you know, one of the things in yoga that we come into four times to create kind of a calming effect in the body we do back bends to create a energetic effect. We do lateral poses, side bending poses. To create a energetic effect we did twist to kind of start to stir up, you know, that inner energy that inner pranic feel. And when we come forwards, you know if you get somebody into a seated portico, let's actually take care of it posts. So one of the cues that when I say a pyramid is just come forward, place 1520 30 degrees. Sometimes I'll specifically say to people don't come more than 30 degrees as well and keep your spine erect. That like coming forward and creating a flexion in the body. emits or generates that kind of rounding. Stabilizing in the Sanskrit word is long enough, like calming effect that parasympathetic effect, if you will, it it creates the point I'm trying to get to is that it creates the same energetic know that there is no difference between somebody coming only 10 degrees and then somebody actually bringing a forehead down to up their shin. There is no difference energetically and there is no difference and now people are gonna get the same thing. So if your goal in yoga is to access, like body actually don't need to move that much in order to start shifting our pranic energy and creating like that. So a lot of times axioms in a Yama lessons for only go to 30% and work on keeping as you just so beautifully said engaging with quads or so that there's a sense of activation. Don't worry about what's going on the back body. Just work on by going in last and really keeping that engagement happening in the front body.
Ericka Thomas 41:03
There's so many layers in a yoga practice for people. And I think first especially for beginners I feel like especially when they're coming to to the mat with a lot of preconceived ideas about what fitness is their body, whatever, whatever tiny pieces that they're carrying with them and how they're going to address that. I think for one of the beautiful things about what you're teaching through a Yama and what we as Yogi said, is at its very basic level is really a deeper awareness and of what is happening in the body and to be able to approach that awareness in you know, the way I think it is like approaching it as in a friendly way. So many times people step on the mat and it's very adversarial with the body. Like you're gonna make it what we want it to be we're going to enter into this posture, we're gonna force it to be in a certain place. That's what makes a good yogi. Or that's what makes that's what is gonna make us flexible or flexible. It's just an interesting process right from the first time you step onto the mat, to you know, what happens after five years 10 years 1520 years right? In your mind own personal journey through yoga was it you know, from pretty hardcore I came from a hardcore place like I wasn't going to it didn't feel like it was anything unless I was doing the hardest thing right, the fullest expression of the pose and, and the biggest bind and tie yourself into a knot do as much as you possibly could. All the time and I'll never forget it was I think it was like last year a year and a half goes in a yoga training with a bunch of other senior Yogi's and Yoginis and almost every single must have been like 20 people on this call. Almost every single one of them was like I can no longer do any kind of shoulder bind anymore. Like their shoulders were shot their hips are shot, their knees are shot. And so I think for a lot of people from the beginning to you know, all the way up to senior instructors, it's really important to understand that we need to take better care. And so one of the things is going to be hard for people to wrap their heads around this idea of stop stretching because it's so deeply ingrained in this idea of of mobility, right? If we if we don't do this, then what are we actually doing? And then you can kind of trip into this this space of like this topic of performative yoga, right? If I'm not with the Instagram yogini like, Am I really practicing yoga like if I don't get it on any of those things? So I really am impressed with your description of you know how this integration with MIT works. And I think it could be it could really elevate things for a lot of instructors.
Yogi Aaron 45:02
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that you were talking about is, like, yoga teachers come in and say we have to work on this pose. And I mean, I've watched him so many classes where the teacher will rattle off some pretzel posture. Today, we have to work on this pose. And I think I didn't have the wisdom at the time to ask this question. But now more than ever, I keep saying why you know, and I had one of my students I interviewed for my podcast, she's she's actually hit uh, her name is Jessica. And she says like, oh, I look at Instagram and I want to be able to do the splits per Pele. She actually sads like, I want to do the splits because it looks nice. She actually said, what you're not supposed to say out loud. That's, that's at the end of the day. Like as yoga teachers we just don't admit that enough. That really, it's it's ego based. I often tell my students teach my student teachers when I do teacher trainings, the line between asanas, yoga, postures imprisoning us and set or setting us free because razor thin. And I would make the argument. This is kind of going a little off topic, but I would make the argument that for most people in the yoga world, when I say gross, I mean like 99% I would make a very good argument that it's actually awesome is in prison. It's locking us into our body into an idea of what our bodies should be. And, you know, at the basic level, yoga teaches us that everything is impermanent in life. So you just were talking about all these people that could do these baits, you know, and they look fabulous. I bet we could take amazing pictures of them. And and I've got pictures to me doing these amazing finds. And and they can't do anymore because they're by everything is changing. And it just kind of then begs the question, in my mind, at least. What Why was I so invested in putting my body into a pretzel when I could have been putting my energy into other things. That either a word more in alignment with my purpose or be that we're going to actually serve my body in the long run, so I didn't have to deal with debilitating pain and end up in the surgeon's office. But one of my best friends is a senior yoga teacher. And it's really funny. We got into a whole argument one day about structuring she's like, she supports me but then also kind of battles with me you know, it's like that I want to support you because you're my friend. But and I know what you're doing is intelligent, but I'm really having a hard time with this. We got into a bit of a discussion one day, and the irony of it was that she's had a hip replacement, a knee surgery and shoulder surgery, and she's actually gonna go in and have some other procedure done. And it's kind of funny to me that like, like, it's I don't know how much more it's gonna take for people to wake up but there's been numerous senior yoga teachers who have had hip replacements and knee replacements and, and the diff there's a disconnect between maybe the stretching stuff actually wasn't working, but I think that would be too threatening. It's very threatening when when we have to challenge our belief system because it threatens our image of ourselves and who we think we are in the world. And that's something that I've had to wrestle with. I've had to not anymore but I had to wrestle with it's like, if I'm teaching, if I'm not teaching stretching, then what am I teaching what I'm teaching yoga asana, like, it took me a long time to be able to come to that place, it was not an easy transition. So as much as I'm kind of like on end, like we have to flip the script and teachers need to stop teaching stretching, I'm also very, very empathetic towards the process that it takes people to, you know, kind of their own
Ericka Thomas 49:46
right well, it is it is a challenge, right? When we're trying to change the way we communicate what we're asking students to do or not do, and this is this is what I'm hearing you say basically, right? So it's not that students should never feel a stretch in a muscle. I don't think I mean, I think it would be that would be a critical thing, right? i If I I could never say to my classes or to a student, and I can never tell them what to feel perfect. In general, teachers should never tell them what, what you should never tell your student what to feel. Because if they don't feel that then, you know, then there's this whole you know, unless they doing it wrong, right. So if we can so like a lot of this is is around our language, right? How are we going displaying this different way of practicing yoga, or moving in general or taking care of our body in a way that sort of removes that word stretch or stretching because then when you when you hear the word stretch, or you need to stretch or you need to add stretching into your your your routine that leads to this purpose of flexibility, which you mentioned earlier, right? Like, this is what brought you to yoga because the idea is that we are if we are more flexible than we're supposedly with more flexibility, we are less likely to be injured. Well, that obviously is not true. We've already touched on that, you know, I mean, very flexible people are tend to have less stability in joints in general. And people who are hyper flexible, they really have to be careful, right? We even even in for things like prenatal yoga, we're very careful with those prenatal moms because their bodies shift in and the fat relax and hormone makes them hyper flexible, but no stability there. Right so we've seen examples all over the place where too much flexibility is not. Not great, but we do want mobility. And, and so if we can maybe focus more on changing the intention behind our postures, the choice of postures, right. So how is this sequence of postures going to improve mobility and practical ways for people, functional ways, but that requires a big shift in the way we think and the way we think, which is purchase always changing words are always difficult. But it has to start somewhere. I like the shift in in in thought here about how we are how we are looking at the muscles and it is really important. I think it's really important for instructors, no matter what your format is to really understand how muscle functions. And, and, and so, like whether you're teaching yoga or kickboxing, or whatever it is. You know that you should have a good handle on that when you're when you're planning your classes, I believe.
Yogi Aaron 53:32
Yeah. So one thing I wanted to come back to circle back to was the way you know what we're communicating to our students in class. I would just say teach your students what you want them to do. And let them experience what they're going to experience. But so for example, like Okay, so, one of the number one poses i never teach anymore is child's pose you should never do and, and then the second pose would be the opposite of Child's Pose, which is like bringing your knees to your chest. Okay. So, typically teachers will say, Bring your knees to your chest, wrap your knees, pull them closer to you. You can teach in exactly the same way, but then how the student leads or arms out to the sides, you know, so therefore the post no longer is passive. It's actually very active. It's a great post to do because as you're pulling the needle to the chest, and your arms are up to the sides, now there's accountability in that movement. By accountability, I like the trunk flexors and the hip flexors are the muscles that are holding the knees and if I was to grab my beans and pull them in, now I'm bypassing those those trunks like searching for flexors, and I'm also overstretching the glutes and my lower back muscles. Now I have more system muscles and find if you want to throw the Trump rotators in there. You have four systems of muscles that are no longer contracting and contracting properly. That's why it's the number one cause to avoid because there's just so much so many muscle groups that just lose their ability to contract properly.
Ericka Thomas 55:30
Let me see excuse me for interrupting. I just want to I just want to tease something out there for for people. When you say that they that these these stretches are losing the muscles are losing their ability to contract properly. Is that for forever for how long? Does that happen?
Yogi Aaron 55:55
It goes back to something I was actually saying earlier. It just depends on how much how old the person is. Like if you put a 16 year old there was wonderful 16 year old bodies. And you did that and then you did you you applied force afterwards. Chances are they're going to bounce light back very quickly. But there was you know there has been studies there is science around there's been numerous studies and there's more that are coming out where there's one I can't remember his name off the top my head but it was through Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. And they did a study and they found that athletes who stretched lost muscle function like what had a loss of muscle function loss, that muscle loss their ability to contract properly for 30 minutes afterwards. And so you have to kind of think in the back of your mind like, Okay, who were these athletes that they were doing was probably athlete people from the age of, I'm just guessing, I don't know for sure. But when they say athletes, you have to think like 18 to 22 years old. So now we put somebody who's 40 there, or me in my case. I mean, you keep repeating hugging your knees into your chest every day you do it. And you probably do it several times and in the span of a 90 minute practice or 60 minute practice. You're repeatedly applying a stress in your body. I don't know if those muscles are ever going to bounce back unless you've had some sort of muscle activation. So it really could create this instability. You were talking about like how to start also queuing postures and, and like a pose like Triangle Pose, you know. Again, it just comes into like languaging and so the way I set up a triangle pose now, which isn't necessarily the right way, it's just the way I found that really works is just having a person cross their arms, have a leg out, and then IQ in a way where I'm actually telling the person when they're bending into the side to bring them or that they're the side that they're coming into. So if I'm coming into a tree Kuno trick in Austin on my left side, I would queue it like bring your left shoulder towards your left hip bone. And now you're really engaging the lateral obliques. They're shortening and then I actually no, never Q I hardly ever Q bringing the lower arm down because as soon as I do that, then people are gonna start bringing the arm towards the floor and they start dropping into range of motion when there's no accountability all these people that are kind of like working with yoga props and they bring their arms out, they stick their head out, they bring your hand down, and they let their hand rest on the yoga prop. After 30 seconds they can barely come out of it because none of the muscles in their trunk are working they aren't able to engage in so sometimes people have to lower bring the hand to the lag bend their knee and slowly just pushing themselves up because none of the muscles have any force output to be able to contract to lift them out of the shell so
Ericka Thomas 1:00:11
So how would you Okay, so yes, I have been there. I've been there totally been there. A couple of things, a couple things. I want to touch on yin yoga, because the focus in Yin is not on the muscle per se but on the connective tissue, joints, connective tissue fascia, and the whole thing in three to five minutes, sometimes some people go longer. Sowe've been talking a lot about the muscle itself. Right? But what how do you kind of square that with practices like Yin where the focus the intention is on the connective tissue? Is there a difference there? And if so, what is that difference? Or do we need to just avoid practices like that?
Yogi Aaron 1:01:19
We're trying to decide how much I want to offend people. What do I want to say so I'm just gonna say this, that when we stress, there's there's no accountability and yen from an A Yama perspective, is the last thing you want to be doing with your body. I know that the philosophy of in is to quote unquote, open up or to access this connective tissue which is supposedly really tight. I don't know that I agree with that statement. And I would challenge quite frankly, the science behind it. I'm getting more and more bold in some of my positions about these things. Because, you know, the way that that Paul Grilley explains it, it comes across very scientific, but I questioned the science behind it. So much of our connective tissue is kind of like you know, they're, it's, it's connected tissue is kind of like almost like a rubber band. And if you stretch it over stretch, a rubber band loses its elasticity. And as we get older, what do we want? We want to try and maintain that elasticity. And we need to maintain the stability of the joints. And so anytime we start holding yoga postures for long periods of time, we lose stability in the joints, what's holding the joints together, and you know, so many people are so obsessed like with the hips, for example, and doing pitching post, another posits my third posts to avoid pitching posts. But, but you will we people are so obsessed in the yoga world, especially with opening the hips, and it's actually starting to infect the fitness world now. Now you're starting to hear a fitness Teacher's Guide. We need those hips open so we could do squats. No, we don't need the hips open. I mean, if you think about it biomechanically and open infants meanings, that I'm dislocated my hip and I don't want to dislocate right hip students. That's not how I want them walking through life. So let's actually I want to actually close the hips. I want to close the area around the knees. I want to close the area around the shoulders, so that the shoulder joint is stable and can go through ranges of motion. Quick story I was leading a yoga teacher freedom was one of my very first Loadsa I was so stressed out that entire four weeks and I was leaving for vacation right afterwards and I was leaving my yoga retreat center. So I was really stressed a day before the retreat or the before the teacher training and then I went in and just demonstrated poverty to buck Vikasa twisting Psycrow pose and I just kind of like went into it in that stressed out, you know, state and afterwards it came out of it there was like, something doesn't feel right. And then I just literally just suck it up. You know? Next morning, I need my shower, and I reach up for my shampoo bottle. It was about a half a foot above my head. I reach up and grab that shampoo bottle. My whole neck seized up on me just from going through a range of motion, because I didn't have any accountability in those muscles. None of those muscles were working, body senses instability and a range of motion. Next seizes up as a protective mechanism in my body so when I talk about accountability, it's like there's accountability that I'm actually using muscles properly, rather than trying to force a range of motion. Like if I bring my hand behind my head and I I take my other hand to the elbow to try to push that hand down to try and maybe get into a pose like cow face or or or Eagle Pose. That that's not really how we want to be going because the next morning when you're in the shower, you reach for your skin that provides too much stress. For your soldiers to be able to hold on.
Ericka Thomas 1:05:44
Right so what about the the let's talk about that energetic connection that we're all working towards after the physical part of our yoga practice, right. One of the things that that people bring up in yen is that it's, it's supposed to be more of an energetic practice, right? It's not necessarily supposed to be this, you know, active work. Kind of thing. That is another layer, right? Whether people go for that or not. It's, you know, doesn't really matter. But that's one of the things people talk about is this energetic practice. Same thing with pretty much any other type of yoga. Including, I would say, like restorative yoga postures because now we're in those postures even though we're supported. Were in those postures for 10 minutes, longer than 10 minutes, you know? So what how do we how do we get that balance that we're looking for with the energetic and, and that physical?
Yogi Aaron 1:06:59
Okay, so with so my background is in total healthy yoga, and then I feel like I maintain the integrity of that tradition in all what I'm doing. And I was just talking earlier about like, when we come into for events, there's a parasympathetic calm, a stabilizing grounding. When we go into back beds, there's an energizing component you know, this sense of, of expanding our capacity. And so, anytime we move the body and one of the directions, it's going to leave, it's going to have a shift at the product level. There's that's undeniable and normally we can agree like everybody has that same experience, we feel that whether it's a biomechanical response or whether it's like you know, we get the woowoo the chronic response, what we know in the mind in the qualities of mind is prana and monitor or clocks or cinta sorry, Corrado, chapter five, energy. And we know that if we shift our energy, our thoughts are also going to show so whenever I'm sequencing classes, it's one of my number my own personal number one rules and what I tried to teach other teachers to do is to mindfully begin shifting energy within students. We can do that with breath. We can do it in posture, we can do it in mantra chanting, and we can do it through creative visualization. And I'm probably missing a couple but those are the those are the key ones. And if we can start to shift that, then we can start to shift people's minds and and we can start shifting that person's momentum, hopefully a positive way. Because if their momentum shifts like, you can look at people they've never done yoga before. They're leading a healthy lifestyle. Maybe they're overweight, maybe they smoke, maybe they're in a toxic relationship. They start doing yoga. All of a sudden these things just start shifting for them. And how do you explain that? Well, from a yogic perspective, it's very simple. We explain it because their energy has shifted, and if their energy shifts, the whole life momentum starts to shift. By the way, one of the other ingredients I forgot to mention was relaxation. That's probably the most important one relaxation techniques. So if we can shift people's momentums that's like, that's where the goal is, is like, but I would just add, let's do it and leave them stable. You know, like, we don't need to stretch for long periods of time. To do that. Now I'm a huge I'm also a huge fan of holding poses for a long time. When I say one time, I mean, there's one pause I put students into for seven minutes. So it's kind of a little complicated when we started having the discussion of passive active what I would say and also too, I'm a huge fan of restorative yoga. But one of my teachers in restorative yoga, her name is Judith Laster. And she's sort of the queen bee of restorative yoga. She was the creator really of restorative yoga like 35 years ago or something and so I actually done training with her. And it was a huge shift for me because one of the things that I got from her, a lot of people will teach restorative yoga and there's the way that a lot of us have been learned it there's always some stress in the body. Like I'm feeling my hamstring stretching. When we're doing restorative yoga. We should not feel any stretching anywhere. And all we're doing in restorative yoga is supporting the body in one of the four directions of movement twists, laterals, forward bends or back bends in so a forward bend could just even be simply just having your like straight out your spine straight up. And there's a chair in front of you and I'm just resting my, my elbows on the chair. So now I'm doing a forward fold in in sort of a relaxed state. And there's no doubt that that, you know, we've been talking about the neuromuscular system and the stress that's placed on it. I actually think that and believe in a film through teaching and practicing that restorative yoga if dunwell and correctly, can actually have a very healing effects on the neuromuscular system, provided that we're not in not causing more stress and we feel that stress, you know, if there's pain in the joints or if there's muscles pulling, then we need to start adjusting so that we can start to allow our body in that position in that very gentle position to go into that rest and digest state.
Ericka Thomas 1:12:14
Yeah, yeah, I love I love restorative yoga. I don't get a chance to do it very often, but it is a good thing. It is a very good thing. Well, Aaron, you have shifted a lot of things for me today and probably for our listeners as well. I want to thank you so much for joining me on the work and I always finish my interviews with the last question which is, what is your own personal work in these days?
Yogi Aaron 1:12:46
So I have two, maybe three or four but well the first one is every morning I wake up and I have my morning coffee ritual. And I I just It grounds me into the day in a very unique way. I have a whole coffee ritual. Boiling the water, putting my coffee into the French press saying a couple of mantras, I do it and then I actually make a whole coffee routine. I made bulletproof coffee and put a little bit of cinnamon Cardamom into it with some coconut oil, cold pressed coconut oil. So that's one of my rituals to kind of tune in. And it's like such a sacred moment for me. It's kind of like, just okay, we're we are now beginning the day and the second thing I do is every day I like to ask myself what am I living my life purpose am am I living my purpose in my life in this moment, and if not, what can I do in this moment to tap into that for us and or to make an adjustment? So those are just a couple of ways that I tune in every day.
Ericka Thomas 1:14:13
That's awesome. Yeah, that coffee sounds delish. A little bit of money. Yeah. All right. So Aaron, tell us if we wanted to get in touch with you. If we wanted to work with you more or learn a little bit more about AYAMA or read your book. Where can we find you?
Yogi Aaron 1:14:39
You go to Yogiaaron.com Or go to Amazon and you can search Scott stretching. One of the things on my website, if they go to my website is that there's a seven day pain free series that people can do. And it's golden. I've been getting a stream of emails actually the last couple of weeks and I'm not being glib. I'm being very sincere. I feel like a dam is starting to break and people are starting to use this. And it's just been very touching to see like people using these things and telling me like I've been stretching for years to become pain free. But it's actually been making it worse. And I've been doing this series, and it's really changed my body in very profound ways. So those are a couple of the offerings that people can tap into.
Ericka Thomas 1:15:32
And they will be able to find all of those links I'll put them all in the show notes. So it'll be very simple for people to find easy copy, click, all of that good stuff. So Yogi Aaron, again, I want to thank you. It's been a great conversation. I appreciate your time and thank you so much for coming out in the work in.
Yogi Aaron 1:15:55
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with you. It's so nice to talk with somebody who has a fellow colleague and doing the good work. Appreciate it.
Ericka Thomas 1:16:04
Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the work and be sure to head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin for all of the show notes and if you like what you hear here on the podcast, and you are an independent coaching creator or entrepreneur who's looking for actionable authentic accountability for just someone to bounce some ideas off for a little focus and direction business. Head over to savagegracecoaching.com where you will find our newest clarity coaching package. What is clarity coaching? Well, some of the things that we cover are how to optimize social media marketing, where to focus your continuing education investment, how to curate your certification collection to set yourself apart, how to scale your solo partnership and of course how to create professional boundaries to burn up proof your career. Now if any of that is on your to do list this year, savage Grace coaching can help. So head over to the website and apply at savageGracecoaching.com/clarity and I'll see you there
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