Free your spine and the rest will follow

Backing up one step from En Vogue’s 1992 smash hit pop song, Free Your Mind (and the rest will follow), is the spine’s capacity to act as the stairway to our internal liberation! Dr Natesan Chandrasekaran (Dr NC, MD, Author and Leading Yoga Therapist) puts the spine’s role at the very centre of our spiritual progression in this sweet tome penned within the pages of his book ‘Principles and Practice of Yoga Therapy’:

Vertebra, you are the…
Axis to annamaya (physical body)
Centre to pranayama (conscious breath)
Mirror to manomaya (mind)
Guide to vijnanamaya (deeper mind)
Ladder to anandamayam (bliss)

I’m sure we can all think of someone in our life with strong back problems, experiencing chronic pain - it may even be ourselves. Often, problems in the spine - particularly over the long term - can begin to change personality. Injury in this area can propagate much fear due to the understanding of the spine as a physical and neural highway in the body but deeper than that, is that which can’t be measured by science but is understood in yoga.

Weaving across the spine are two of the three major channels (nadis) - ida and pingala - one transporting prana through the left nostril and the other through the right. Where these two nadis intercept along the spine exist what are known as cakras. Cumulative energy spots that contain certain potencies of ourselves. Through the centre of the spine is the main Nadi - susumna. In yoga it is said that this channel remains blocked at the base by ‘avidya’ which is any colouring of the mind that prevents us from seeing things as they really are. One of those colourings is fear. So you can see the strong issue with problems in the spine, not only generating fear around the bodies poor condition but deeper, increasing one of the very colourings (klesas) that block the life-force from flowing right up through the centre of the whole constitution.

In our physical practice we can adore the spine with movements in all five spinal directions that are appropriate for ourselves as Individuals: back arch, forward bend, axial twist, lateral movement and lateral twist. If we have any problem in the spine that is causing pain, we move in the direction away from the pain in order to find space ie if there is pain in the back arch, then forward folds may give us great relief, if there is pain in the forward fold, back arches may bring such a wonderful sensation of freedom. The most important aspects - as in all our areas of yoga - are that we are steady and at ease in our movements and all movements are with the breath.

This relationship between the breath and our movements in the physical practice of yoga, is distilled to it’s very essence in reference to the spine! For the breath initiates spinal movement, even before grosser movements have begun. Try exploring this for just a few moments right now, whilst you have a moment to be sitting still. With the eyes closed, sit tall, chin slightly down and begin to tune in more deeply to the breath. Feel the breath moving in your body and begin to refine that to feeling how the spine moves when you breathe. Pay good attention to both the in breath and the out breath independently. In what direction do you feel the movements of the spine and with which breath?

As we inhale, directing breath into the high belly, lungs begin to expand, rib cage expands, expanding with it all of the spaces between the vertebra that the ribs are attached to. There is a lift and a lengthening of the whole spine; the abdomen elongates, chest opens and we grow taller right up through the crown. At this most subtle level the inhale is setting in motion the back arch which can then be accentuated by grosser back arch movements of our practice.

What did you notice as you exhaled? Were you able to feel the shortening? The softening of the chest and the shoulders, lungs deflating, the spine softening back into its wonderful resting place? With this gentle contracting of the exhale, shortening of the abdomen, ribs returning to the starting position, the spine is moving into this ever-so-subtle movement that flows naturally into the grosser movement of the forward bend. The strength and the stability of the exhale movements accentuated by the contraction of the low abdomen in and up, that forms our good exhale technique in the asana practice. Take another moment if you can to sit and breathe and explore this again more deeply, with a good breath technique - exhale contracts the low belly in and up, inhale fill up the high belly.

The key to utilising this most effectively, to create the most efficient and deepest potential of our practice, is to allow the breath to begin, then the movement to begin, the movement to end and the breath to end behind it. Not only then does this set the spine in motion but creates the mediation component in our practice.

When we begin to experience this natural relationship between the breath and the spinal movement our practice can deepen far beyond our imaginings. Think of it a bit like pushing a heavy box from a stand still compared with the effortlessness of pushing a heavy box that is already in motion. This is the role of our breath in the physical practice of asana - to set in motion the spine (movement that is barely even visible to the eye) upon which the bigger movements can then germinate with the grace of a seedling pushing up toward the sky, moving naturally in its own fullest potential.