SI Joint Health: Part 4

Who doesn’t love an excellent spinal twist? For most individuals, rotating the backbone feels refreshing.  Aside from twisting to the correct to look behind us whereas we again our automobiles up or change lanes, we don’t rotate our spines quite a bit in our every day lives. That may very well be why twisting feels so good. However twisting in yoga might be perilous for the SI joint if we don’t apply with each care and information. Just a few weeks in the past, I wrote in regards to the significance of not squaring the hips in standing poses. The identical holds true for twisting.

A few years in the past, I realized from a mess of yoga lecturers that conserving the hips squared in a seated twist helps rotate the lumbar backbone. That might make sense if the lumbar backbone was able to rotating. The very fact is, the aspect joints come collectively in such a means that the lumbar backbone is just able to about 1 to three levels of rotation. That’s about 2 to 4 millimeters. So once we attempt to drive the lumbar backbone to rotate, we will as a substitute find yourself rotating the sacrum. This may result in SI joint dysfunction.

Hold the SI Joint Secure in Seated Twists

If you’re having signs of SI joint dysfunction, your finest guess is to keep away from twisting, at the least till you begin to really feel higher. But when your SI joint is feeling okay, do this tip for conserving the joint steady and wholesome. The next instance explains how one can maintain your SI joint protected in Parvrtta Sukhasana (Rotated Simple Seated Pose).

1. Sit in Sukhasana (Simple Pose) on a folded yoga blanket in order that your hips are increased than your ankles.
2. Rotate your torso to the correct. As you rotate, you’ll probably really feel the correct facet of your pelvis desirous to scoot again as properly. As an alternative of resisting this, let the correct facet of the pelvis scoot again. This retains the twist within the thoracic backbone, which is the a part of the backbone that’s designed to twist.

Working towards easy twists on this means can assist you keep away from SI joint issues sooner or later. This adjustment might be utilized to all seated twists.

It’s necessary to keep away from twists the place you’re levering together with your arm when your SI joint is misplaced or in case your SI joint is liable to dysfunction. So you must apply any seated twist the place you’re putting your elbow on the skin of an upright, bent knee with care. As an alternative of putting your elbow on the skin of your knee, merely maintain the knee together with your hand.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.