YOGA: Am I Doing it Right?

The word “energy” is thrown around everywhere we look. Typically we hear it in some form of marketing like ->do this and it will give you energy.

Have you ever questioned what energy actually means? When I ask people about it they usually describe it in terms of what a cup of coffee or Red Bull does to you - on edge, revved up, propped up, get s**t done energy, laser focused. This energy they describe has a buzzed kind of feeling, “I’m lit up!”.

In my 30 years of practicing yoga and movement arts I’ve come to experience energy quite differently.

I’ve discovered when I do a movement or breath practice properly the energy I experience is extremely calm, centered, present. It could be described as very neutral, not driven to do anything but not lethargic either. The body feels loose and lithe, capable of movement but in no need to go anywhere. Perception feels open and sensitive rather than locked in and scanning.
I would call the totality of it as Flow but I don’t have words to express how that is.

My point in sharing this is that I believe many people mistake what is actually the irritation of the nerves (known as a fight or flight response of the nervous system) as an increase in energy. Coffee does not give us energy, it masks the truth of fatigue and we think we have energy. The buzz we feel after a very strenuous workout or after we’ve stretched in sauna-like conditions is the body letting us know it just went through battle.

Real energy, in my experience, is very quiet internally, peaceful yet alive with potential.

Curious to know how you have experienced it :)

Therapy - as most people experience it at clinics or though various modalities - tries to impose a technique or protocol on a body presuming the technique or protocol should fix what’s wrong. But there is minimal consideration of the person receiving the treatment beyond the fact that they have pain.

Most people when they engage with a physical therapist or some sort of pain program attempt the movements or receive the therapy as though it has Fix-It power. But they have very little awareness of how their body is responding to the treatment beyond - is my pain gone?

Everything I do in my sessions with clients is -

1) Bring the therapy to the client. That means every exercise is situational and adjustable. I’ve had entire lessons for my clients that I thought would have been exactly what their body needed that day only to discover their body, their emotions, their curiosity called us in a completely different direction.

2) Bring the client to the therapy. In my experience, most people are disconnected from their bodies. My job is to help people understand how to listen to what they’re experiencing in a movement, in a stretch, when they’re worried about movement, when they’ve improved. If you can’t hear your body speak, how can we make the changes it’s asking us to make to heal the pain?

And if we can take the initiative and do the work and absorb what the reflections we’re receiving, the changes go way deeper than just a nagging back 😉

hippain onlineyoga backpain backpainrelief painrelief lowbackpain sciatica movementismedicine movementislife missionhillssd

(I read this quote and captured it but I cannot find who to attribute it to. It is a brilliant description of how therapy will be shifting)

I want to take a bold guess. Based on the trends am seeing, the future of bodywork and rehab will be a nervous system first approach. This is already catching like wild fire among many therapists so it’s safe to say the future may be heading in that direction.
Forget all the different techniques, manipulations and protocols that we have accumulated over the last few decades. The future is going to look different. Our schools of thought will converge under one unifying umbrella.
Instead of asking what technique can I try. The question will be how does the nervous system receive and respond to this.

Every intervention will need to pass through the nervous system first. We shall no longer debate which technique works the best - because techniques will only work if the nervous system allows them to.

There will be more listening, more development of interoception - ability to accurately listen to and interpret the language of your body. This is a skill anyone can learn. Even our patients.

Therapists will become guides, not performers of techniques. Patients will be taught how to listen to their own bodies.

The result? Fewer adverse reactions, faster, better outcomes. Instead of forcing a correction, the body will learn and adapt gently. Less will be more.

We shall rely less on expensive therapy tools, equipment and machines. Simple will be better.

Currently, the dominant model being practiced is biomechanical and symptom focused, that approach made sense 50 years ago as therapy evolved but today it falls very short in clinical outcomes. I don’t think we have properly interpolated the biopsychosocial model.

My practice is entirely nervous system first so I will be glad to meet you in the future.

Sly Stallone Gets it!! At 78 years old he knows the importance of feeling healthy. It’s the foundation of everything.

“It’s more than just about narcissism or ‘look at me, I wanna flaunt this and that,” he said.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that if you’re not feeling good and strong, like you’re competing, or if you’re reminding yourself of the way you used to be, it affects everything.”

“It’s not about living in a gym,” Stallone noted. “Just find something that gets the blood flowing through the body.”

“Exercise will affect your brain, your confidence, your optimism,” he said. “That’s why when people feel sick, they only have one dream—to feel better.”

“You need to be focused, laser focused, on a specific target,” he explained. “Can you imagine if I threw ten bullseyes and you started shooting at them? You wouldn’t hit one.”

“This all gets back to one thing: feeling good about your physical situation,” he said. “Because, man, once that starts to falter, it’ll feel like you don’t have breath.”

Maybe your back pain doesn’t actually need core strength to get better.
But maybe by doing core strengthening exercises with clarity and awareness you’re able to discover you flare open your left ribcage

Maybe you hadn’t known that you keep constant tension in your right low back as you perform the exercises.

These discoveries give you clues to observe in your daily life.

If we take the tension in your right low back for an example, you may learn that you’re always leaning to your left side at work.

This lean constantly stretches your right low back and strains the muscles, diminishing blood flow. The idea light goes on and you decide to adjust this habit.

In a few weeks your back starts to feel better.

So did you need core strengthening? Not really. You needed to be aware of your body.

This is what I help people learn to do in my TrueBalance program.

Exercise is just the fun part that builds strength and confidence. But it’s also the way in for us to start to understand our unique body as it goes through life.

It will tell you what it needs if you learn to listen 😎

First, where it can go right…

If you haven’t been moving much, adding reasonable movement into your life is a great place to start.

That said, things can go wrong in a number of places.

❌ The author of the post has no idea who you are or where you’re at with your pain.

❌ They don’t know what you’ve tried, what worked or what failed.

❌ They can’t watch you do the movements or exercises, so if you have habits or blind spots or avoidances you may completely miss the benefit of the exercise.

❌ There is a problem of reinforcement. If yet another technique doesn’t help you, it could have the adverse effect of adding to your perception that your might be unfixable.

✅ People who have been struggling with pain need more than quick fixes. The body develops protective strategies to work around the pain. These strategies can rewire how someone moves or interacts with their body and it can create walls around certain movements that are needed to make real change. This is how I work with my online and in-person clients. We work together to do exercises that are typically familiar to most people but we customize to work individually based on what we see moment by moment. Through this type of process people can reclaim the places hidden by pain so that the pain can be released.

I work with people one on one online or in person in San Diego California. I also have numerous movement and yoga classes that can be accessed online. If you have been looking for a pain relief program that actually takes YOU into account, reach out to me here or my website www.NathanBriner.com. My classes are also pinned at the top of my posts.