A couple of days ago I read an article in Wired about the Centre for Health and Human Performance (CHHP) and their newest work with high intensity interval training. CHHP is a London based clinic and research centre that has been working with some of the world’s top athletes. They use asymmetric loading of muscles varying between concentric action (shortening of muscles to bear effort typical for the “classical” fitness) and eccentric action (strengthening + lengthening) in order to decrease body fat while increasing muscle mass.

I find it interesting that newer research in fitness puts more accent on eccentric loading of muscles, typical for yoga. This is the action of keeping a sustained contraction of a muscle while “relaxing into the effort” of keeping the pose, so the muscle can steadily lengthen at the same time. And this is the very thing that makes (the physical part of) yoga so special and so much more than simply stretching or getting a good workout.

Doug Keller beautifully explains the concept of eccentric muscle work in yoga in his groundbreaking set of books Yoga As Therapy. Looking into the structure of muscles, they each consist of a bundle of fibers, encapsulated within fascial wraps. The fibers themselves are made of long protein cords organised in rows. Such structure allows the muscles to shorten without actually having to shorten themselves. It’s just the fibers gliding into each other, similarly to two old-school shaving brushes. If you push the brushes into each other the bristles won’t shorten or contract but just slide into one another, merging into one. This way we can understand how the muscle doesn’t actually loose it’s flexibility as it contracts, it can still lengthen and this is what happens during the eccentric contraction.

Intrestingly, this is a type of contraction that is common to different types of skeletal muscles that inherently work differently. According to one of the most widely accepted categorisations of muscles set fort by Vladimir Janda in 1970-es, the skeletal muscles are either: postural - that maintain the contraction / resistance to hold the bones in place, or phasic - that contract when needed in order to move the bones.

These two don’t just work differently, they are fuelled by a different substance too. The postural muslcles are fueled by oxygen and as such are slow to fatigue and can work continuously without us even thinking about them. This is how we are supposed to maintain out posture against the gravity without getting tired.

On the other hand, the phasic muscles are powered by blood sugar or glucose and need constant energy input to be able to work. They are generally the ones who do the “heavy lifting” and more powerful than the postural ones, but fatigue much quicker.

The postural and phasic muscles work together and balance each other’s work. As we move the phasic muscles get consciously activated to get us moving while the postural muscles support their action by providing resistance that keeps the body together and maintains our posture against gravity.

The phasic muscles tend to weaken through lack of use or overuse, due to bad postural habits for example - funnily enough, undoing some of our hard work of developing and strengthening we did as babies to be able to learn to walk. On the contrary, postural muscles have tendency to shorten and tighten over time, more or less depending on how we use the body. And these two phenomenons come in pairs for specific muscles - for example, weak abdominals come in pair with tight psoas. For this reason Keller is writing a lot about the need to address muscles in pairs. In order to strengthen weak muscles we need to release the tight postural muscles that balance them.

Eccentric muscle action allows us to do both at the same time - strengthening while lengthening and both phasic and postural muscles are able to work eccentrically, just with a little bit of practice. And eventually we can release the muscles lengthwise as we activate them, even the postural ones, which usually work without us worrying much about them.

Learning to consciously activate the postural muscles in yoga together with the phasic ones, allowing them to release and lengthen as we contract and lengthen the phasic muscles, the pose grows almost effortless. For example, with a bit of practice you can keep your hands up in the air as the spine lengthens, using almost no effort of the arms as the postural muscles along the spine keep the body in the pose and being able to “relax upwards”. And this is how yoga practice creates the feeling of length and spaciousness in the body.

Meditation is not just an Eastern esoteric practice. In one form or another and under different names it has been around for centuries in both East and West. It has been practised by monks, mystics and intellectuals alike - from St. Thomas Aquinas to Nikola Tesla and Sherlock Holmes who liked to simply sit down and “throw his brain out of action” before solving any difficult case.

The word meditation itself can mean different things for different people - focusing on the breath, mantra, a sound, an object or an area of the body, keeping the eyes closed or open. But what is it that all these different techniques have in common? It’s bringing together focus and relaxation (creating a sort of a “relaxed focus”). Being truly present, but not “eaten up” by the experience. Just watching.

We are so much used to reacting to whatever happens around us. But what if we just stop for a moment and listen instead - staying still as everything keeps moving and changing, around and within us alike? What if we simply step back, stop swimming in our thoughts and just stand on the river bank for a moment watching as the water flows by? Could this be a path to wisdom?

Photo credits: #3 Dao by Mitja Kobal

Do you know that the physical postures most of us think of when saying “yoga” today were initially just an introduction into meditation? According to Classical yoga, the asanas were intended only for making the body strong and steady enough to be able to spend longer time meditating. The breathing practices were similarly used to enhance health and reach deeper levels of focus. According to Patanjali, the compiler of Yoga Sutras somewhere around 400 CE, yoga itself is stilling the restless mind. Through a process of moral, physical and mental discipline we try to purify the mind so it can become like clear water that reflects universal wisdom.

The motives for meditating in the contemporary society are much different than in the times of Patanjali. Instead of searching for wisdom we are more after the therapeutic benefits of meditation. The modern meditator is looking for a way to fight stress and rest from the chronic information overload. And the good thing is that it actually works! Taking a step back and looking at our worries with detachment we suddenly feel like Alice in Wonderland, who realised that the Queen of Hearts and whole her army are just a stack of harmless playing cards.

There is a growing body of scientific research about benefits of different meditation techniques. One of the studies for example, shows that regular practice of simple mindfulness meditation can cause structural changes in grey matter of the brain, especially in the areas in charge for learning and memory processes, emotion regulation and the perception of self. If you want to find out more, there is a nice article I recently found on psychologytoday.com that explains in plain language what happens with the brain “on meditation”, check it out.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter what your motivation to start practising meditation is. The beautiful thing is that with time and patience your practice will grow out of any motive and become a purpose to itself, gently transforming you on its way in a calmer, more compassionate and more balanced person.

What if we add a quirky chocolate twist to a healthy green kale smoothie? Kale and chocolate? Sounds a bit unusual… But it turned out to be delicious!

Kale is such a versatile smoothie ingredient, with a taste that can beautifully blend into any fruit and on top of it, has more iron than beef and more calcium than milk. Just don’t forget removing stalks, because they taste quite bitter. So yes, this morning i tried to experiment combining kale with cacao, fresh pears and almonds and it worked brilliantly. Ended up with such a rich fruity taste!

If you would be up for trying this healthy chocolate breakfast drink here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 3 big leaves of kale ( i used curly cale, but i guess any other type would work just fine)
• 2 medium pears, peeled and cleaned of seeds
• 1 banana
• 1 handful of almonds
• 1 table spoon of chia seeds
• 1 table spoon of raw non-refined coconut oil
• 1 big glass of almond milk
• 2 table spoons of organic cacao powder
• A little bit of honey (optional)

Preparation:

Removing the stalks place the kale leaves in the blender, add almonds, chia seeds, a splash of almond milk and the coconut oil and blend them on the lowest speed until all is broken into small pieces. I add chia seeds in pretty much every smoothie for their high nutritional value, but you can skip them if you don’t have any.

Add the banana and the pears and blend them in, gradually increasing the speed.

Finally, add the cacao, stir it in and adding the remaining almond milk blend everything together on highest speed until smooth. If you want to have slightly crunchier texture (as I do) you can throw in some of the almonds now too and blend them shortly with the rest of the mixture.

The smoothie already has a very rich, fresh and slightly nutty flavour, but If you would like it sweeter, don’t feel guilty to blend in a little bit of honey. Pour it in glasses, decorate with a tiny piece of crumbled dark chocolate and enjoy your delicious healthy treat!

I’ve been really enjoying teaching pregnancy yoga during my own pregnancy – sharing the practice with my lovely group of mums-to-be, going together through all the ups and downs of this fragile and powerful period of our lives and being inspired by each other. However, it gets a bit inconvenient when you become the most pregnant of all the students. Running around and trying to help everyone out with slight modifications of postures becomes quite a challenge. So, entering my 39th week, I’ve decided to start the maternity leave and resume teaching in November.

The last class for this season was dedicated to a theme I wanted to focus on for quite some time - Warrior Mum.

I love the warrior poses, with their strong grounded feet, the open heart and arms expanding powerfully up or to the sides. According to yoga every physical posture (asana) cultivates a certain attitude if performed regularly and with dedication, so flexibility of the body becomes flexibility of the mind. The warrior poses in this sense cultivate courage and open-heartedness, floating over the strong feet with wide open arms and giving hands. A beautiful metaphor for motherhood!

Recently I came upon an interesting TED talk by Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist from Harvard who doesn’t have to do anything with yoga, but thinks that bodily postures we regularly assume shape the way we feel about ourselves and others. So, the poses of power, as she calls them, with legs comfortably apart and chest proudly forward, not only leave that impression on others, but can also boost our confidence and encourage us to develop such qualities in ourselves. Classical warrior would be a great example of a power pose in this sense.

The physical part of the class was focussed on energising flowing sequences based on and around the warrior poses. We started gradually preparing the body through loosening the spine, opening the hips and chest and strengthening the legs for a firmer grip in these powerful standing poses. I also found it useful to finish the class with more restorative poses releasing the tension in the lower back and hips.

Here are the little stick-men I drew planning this class:

Did you know that in many parts of the world they have special dances for pregnancy and birth, celebrating fertility, roundness and ripeness of the female body in pregnancy? This is how the oriental belly dance was “invented”. It was a dance of pregnancy, dedicated to the moon as the feminine element. Heavily pregnant women would get together with their female cousins and just dance. Men would not even be allowed in there, it was a “women’s thing”. The soft circular and spiral movements of the belly and the whole body were used to keep the woman healthy and strong and get the baby in the optimal position for birth. They would give birth dancing, gently nudging the baby down the birth canal in soft round motions.

Photo credits: Contrapposto

Inspired by the lovely lady at my recent Active Birth workshop who told me about the secret of belly dancing, I prepared a pregnancy yoga class based on oriental belly dance. The moves of belly dance are perfect for releasing tension in the hips, opening and energising the pelvic area and strengthening deep abdominal muscles. It was quite fun to let the hips roll experimenting with plenty of gentle round movements and I’m sure the little ones loved it too.

Researching and planning the class I’ve found out that there is already a couple of teachers, though mostly in the US and Australia who try to bring together yoga and belly dance. An interesting example is Australian based Lebanese-Palestinian Maha Al Musa, a dancer, doula, writer and human rights activist, who gave birth to her last child at the age of 46 in her own home - belly dancing :) Here is one of her videos explaining the basic circular movement in belly dance.

Another lady who really knows how to spin her hips in the right way is Las Vegas based Amira, a belly dancer who released a DVD called Belly Dance and Yoga for Pregnancy. The yoga part is very very basic and transitions between the poses sometimes quite rough, but the belly dancing part is awesome! It took me a while to decipher some of the hip loops. Later I realised that it’s better to just let the hips get the movement before the mind.

Belly dance is not really an easy thing. In order to master it you need to learn how to move each segment of your body separately. I found it crazy how, for example, they can dance with the chest only while keeping the rest of the body still. So, only the part from the diaphragm to the neck moves, while the shoulders stay where they are. Or maybe moving just one hip in very tight circles… Huh, I guess these things are a bit out of reach for most of us in the West, used to use our hips in a bit…hm… more politically correct way.

Anyway, here are some of the little drawings I made during my research for the class, trying to understand the loops of hips drawing diagrams (oh, so Western from me).

And here is the belly dance inspired yoga class we had (yeah, some more stick men :)