Remember that real exertion is essential to stretching successfully. Especially at the beginning, you must work hard enough to make your body vibrate at least a little. Some people shake like crazy. That’s a good sign—it means that you’re maximizing the intensity of your muscle contraction, which is necessary for adequate spinal decompression. As you get stronger and your body comes to understand what it’s doing, you won’t vibrate as much, which indicates that your body is accepting the posture. This learning process occurs for every stretch. If you slack off for a while, the vibration will return until you’re up to speed again.
Another caution: once you’ve become used to the
stretches, it’s easy to slip into a halfhearted way of doing them. For example,
if you’re extending your arm, remember that you’re not just casually holding it
out there. You’re pushing as hard as you possibly can, as though you need to
save yourself by keeping a heavy weight from crushing you. This goes for extending
the legs, head—everything. You need this powerful exertion to activate
Sherrington’s law. If you do the stretch only halfheartedly, you won’t create
the separation between vertebrae that you’re aiming for.
First try it sitting upright. Begin by tucking your chin
into the bottom of your neck, as though you’re making a double chin. The goal
is to move your chin toward the notch at the bottom of your neck. It won’t
actually reach that notch, because you don’t want your head to tilt forward.
Instead, move your head slightly backward until the back of your neck flattens
out. The challenge is to keep your head in a straight line with your spine
while tucking your chin directly into your neck. This is what elongates the
back of the neck, which is the goal of the head position.
Once your chin is tucked, imagine the top of your head
moving away from your shoulders.
It helps to think of your spine and skull as one unit,
with the skull a natural extension of the spine. Imagine a hook on top of your
head and someone pulling your head toward the ceiling.
People tend to drop their jaw by opening their mouth, instead
of tucking their chin in. This is incorrect. Keep your lips together, but don’t
clench your jaw. Remember that all you’re doing is pressing your head back.
Now lie on your back and try the head position again,
bringing your chin toward the notch at the bottom of your neck. To do this,
your head has to come up off the floor. Focus on keeping your spine in a
straight line from the top of your head to your sacrum (the triangular bone at the bottom of
your spine), and you will find the distance between your head and the floor
that’s right for your body.
0 ความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น