Implications for physical and spiritual health and wellbeing
My journey of Aerial Yoga, Fly High Yoga to be precise started a couple of years ago as I found myself having a rotated vertebra (from swinging my 46 kg backpack onto my back after a long, exhausting travel day) I wasn’t able to fix using my own methods at that time. I used inversions before only for fun, hanging from a bar, but didn’t have any experience with properly supported upside down positions in a hanging belt. I was hooked from the first hour of practice, which already allowed me to restructure my spine and, on top of that, it was great fun too. This positive experience and the realization that inversions might be one of the missing links in my own work with people I’ve been looking for, prompted me to sign up for the next upcoming teacher training. The rest is history and a time of amazing new insights, great new ideas, fun, creativity and joy.
One of the most amazing aspects in Fly High Yoga in my opinion is its potential to deep and far reaching work for one’s body, and personal growth. Hence this article is about mobility, stored patterns and the positive effects Fly High Yoga can have on them.
Let’s start with the question of what mobility is. In simplest terms it’s the ability to actively move in a given space or area. Referring to the physical body it describes the degree to which we are able to use our basic physical attributes, shapes and strength in our life. Apart from anatomical limitations or limitations that come due to physical injuries, most of our mobility is fundamentally defined by the way we live, the types of movement we regularly practice, the thoughts and emotions we dwell on, the food we eat and the innermost spark of our soul.
Whatever we do on a regular basis is a projection of our core essence, our way of thinking, the way we feel and all the hurts and traumas each individually has endured and has not yet been able to heal. Due to these there are only very view people who are really free in terms of their overall physical and spiritual mobility but the good news is, there are a great number of ways to regain mobility, and Fly High Yoga can be a great asset on this way.
That being said, in my own work and when working with students I hardly stick to systems and much rather use basic principles present in different systematic approaches in free combination just as the situation demands it.
Anatomical and physiological basics of our body structure
Every human body obviously consist of a great number of different anatomical structures, defining not only our outline but also the possibilities for movement. Every joint has certain degrees of freedom specific to its physical shape and its position in the body in relation to other adjacent structures. Those basic anatomical shapes of our “passive” structures (joints, bones, tendons, ligaments, fascia etc.) are literally the manifest framework of our physical abilities to move and to express ourselves. They define the full range of space we can inhabit just by extending or waving our legs or arms in front, to the side, to the rear, up, or down or by bending or twisting the spine. The passive structure represents the full potential regarding the shape and size of space we can move our body in. Whenever we walk around, run or jump, we “move” this personal space around with us. Our ability to use this whole range of possible movements is influenced by some more factors, like for instance our “active” structure (muscles), our mind and emotions, and our inner desire to move and express in a certain way.
The different types of muscles are what keeps us in motion, no matter if it’s the heart muscle pumping blood through our vascular system or our skeletal muscles that actually move our joints so that we can walk, eat, dance etc. . They play a major role in our ability to use our structural framework. To fully understand that, we have to take a look at how our muscles actually work.
Most importantly, there is only one thing our muscles can do actively, which is to contract. So if you bend your elbow, your biceps and brachialis muscles do most of the work. If you want to extend your elbow again you need your triceps which lies on the other side of the joint to pull your forearm into the opposite direction, meanwhile leaving the biceps with only one task, which is to relax and let it happen. In one sentence, muscles become shorter when activated and when they relax they need an “external” (meaning outside the contracted muscle), reciprocal force to lengthen them again.
What’s really important about muscles, and essential for our further understanding of mobility, is how they are activated. Neurologically the bioelectrical impulse transmitted through our nerves reaches the muscle at different insertion points. Each muscle is made up of fibres which are again comprised of smaller structures the myofibrils which are made up of actin and myosin filaments. When a muscle contracts actin and myosin filaments slide over each other thus shortening the muscle. Each muscle fibre has its own neuromuscular junction, allowing certain fibres to be activated while others may still lay dormant as long as they are not needed to perform a certain task.
Thus when we use a muscle for a specific movement not all parts of it are being activated simultaneously. It’s more like a cascade, recruiting more and more muscle fibres and filaments as the required force increases or the movement becomes bigger. Over time when a muscle is not trained or used regularly to its full potential, both in range and strength, the number of motor-neurons (the junctions between nerves and muscle fibres) decreases. This is part of the body’s “efficiency” program, always turning off functions that are hardly in use for the sake of energy-conservation. The result is a decline in strength and range of motion because some parts of the muscle literally are not in use any more which leads to stiffness, structural deformation and higher risk of injury. This stiffness is not just a direct result of a structural weakness. More importantly it is the brain that literally unlearned to use all areas of the muscle properly.
The fundamental mechanisms of how our muscles are activated are important, as they not only show us where there might occur problems to be solved, but also how to actually solve them.
The origins of stiffness or immobility
The good news is, that you never really loose muscle fibres or filaments! Thus our common use of words “…my muscles are too short…” is quite misleading. They can actually never be too short physically. The only exception would be if there had been an injury where the muscle was actually torn. Other than that, whenever there is a lack of flexibility it is most likely due to one of the following three reasons:
1) The muscle wasn’t used to its full capacity for a long time leaving the brain and neuronal network incapacitated to consciously use the muscles full strength and range of motion.
2) Due to repeated bad body positioning like too much sitting, motion restricting clothing, repeated movement patterns like working on a band conveyor, or even wrong training, the facial structures (connective tissue) in and around the muscles become tight and deformed.
3) A high degree of internal tension adding to, or leading to the problems described in point 1) and 2), due to emotional or mental trauma or copied restricting movement patterns.
(Note all of those described point can have both localized or non-localized effects since tensional patterns in one part of the body always have some sort of effect on all other parts aswell)
To move the body in the same way and to perform the same tasks every single day reduces us to a mere shadow of what we are capable of. It’s like walking through a forest, every day on the same path for years. This path will obviously be caved very well, but you do not see a lot of the beauty and diversity of the wood around you because you never change perspective. On all untouched paths more and more plants will grow and it’ll be more and more difficult to ever walk them. The more you limit yourself to the familiar path the less likely you are to walk a different one, because the more energy and motivation is required to ever change the used one. It is the same with our being. The more you use only a portion of what you are in terms of the physical body, and use only those constantly repeating movements you perform every day when you wake up, go to work, come back home and go back to bed, the more your body unlearns to move with greater variety. This is why so many people hurt themselves nowadays as soon as they walk outside of asphaltic walkways, because they are not used to keeping their balance on an uneven ground anymore. It’s because the body is literally and figuratively reduced to its own “caved” paths and movements. There are many different ways to regain your mobility and the necessary neuroplasticity to increase your adaptability and diversity of movement thus allowing you to change perspective more easily and live a full, fun and positively adventurous life.
When we are young, our whole body is most likely still flexible and adaptable. It’s a fundamental law that all parts of our being are connected with each other and the world that surrounds us. Every neurological impulse is a representation of the way we live and perceive the world, which obviously depends not only on who we are but also on what we have experienced in our lives. Just as much as this is true, it is also a fact, that certain movements, body-positions, or other outside influences on our bodies have an effect on our emotional and mental expression and adaptability. Imagine a balloon that is subjected to an outside force. Once the influence is gone it will naturally return to its original shape. But if the balloon is already a bit older, and not completely filled with air (life) anymore, when you squeeze it, at some point it might very well be that it’s rubber walls start to stick together thus deforming it permanently. This is pretty much what happens in life whenever we are caught in situations that either do not fulfill us completely or even hurt us. As soon, as your individual spirit and drive to live becomes dulled, you start to become more and more like the balloon that had already lost some air. If you are confronted with traumatic, violating situations under these circumstances, your ability to adapt and return into your full unharmed state is compromised.
The state where you can use your full potential of acting, or reacting to outside influences accordingly, without retaining any traumas or blocks and where you are able to easily change perspective for greater understanding, plus where you are free to choose what to do without being limited to old habitual patterns that might be based on old hurts, is called enlightenment.
Just to understand the reciprocal influence of the physical body, energies, emotions, mind and spirit, holds great potential and the key to positive change.
The world as we experience it influences us physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically and spiritually. Just as much as a dirty, crammed and extremely chaotic flat has a chocking hindering effect on one’s mental and energetic clarity, so does a tense, stiff, twisted or pressured body. Yet, as soon as you clean up the flat get everything in order and create a state which still feels comfortable for you (some people need a bit of a chaos in their lives) and allows you to unfold anew in the space you gained, your mind and emotions can relax and new possibilities unfold. When you do the same to your body, clearing it of unnecessary tension etc., it will not only liberate you physically but also mentally, emotionally and spiritually. You will suddenly be able to see ways and chances that have never before been there in your perception. This is when true freedom starts.
Mobility is not something that has to do solely with our body. It’s actually a mirror of our current overall status in life. Are we full of energy? Can we move in all the wonderful ways our body allows us to? Are we in a healthy, to outside influences adaptable state, no matter if it’s physical, mental, emotional or energetic? Are we able to be ourselves in any given situation without being limited by short-sighted or restricting beliefs of social or religious norms? Are we able to be loving and kind instead of fearful or angry as soon as the stress level rises?
Those are just some examples of what can be asked when checking ones mobility status and what mobility can actually mean.
Regaining mobility is an absolute life altering act of healing on so many levels, that everything that seemed undoable before suddenly slips in the realm of ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE.
You might still be asking yourself what all of this has to do with Fly High or Aerial Yoga.
Fly High Yoga challenges both your body and your mind. For some, certain positions need time to get used to, not only physically but also to open themselves to the mere idea of hanging upside down. This however is a great way to get yourself to do something you most likely never did before and everything that’s new to us always comes with the potential of positive change because it rattles our cage of habituality.
The rarely talked about potential of Fly High Yoga
Bear with me for a moment while I explain a bit more in detail.
Whenever there is some sort of hypertension or blockage in you, your body automatically tries to create a “work-around” in order to still function as energy efficiently as possible given the new situation. All those structural work-arounds and balancing muscle tensions are designed to optimize your physical body in its natural environment and bearing, head to the sky and feet to the ground for most of the day. Once you invert the body all of a sudden none of the meticulously acquired equalization and compensation tensions work anymore. This creates sort of a healthy state of blankness in the body’s library of how to balance inefficient or hindering patterns. This is awesome, because it resets you to a time in your development when you didn’t have a lot of reference of how to use yourself in this form and this environment. At this point you’re quite close to being a child again, able to take new information at a tremendous rate. The amazing thing about this is that at that point in life (as a fresh born up until maybe two or three years of age) you most likely haven’t been hurt quite often (or were still able to adapt) and you’ve still been in exploratory mode with a quite flexible body similar to a young bamboo plant. Have you ever asked yourself why most babies or very young children seem to be much less afraid of new physical challenges or life itself than old people? Well, this is one of the reasons. The older most people get, the more emotional-, and mental baggage they carry, making them rigid over time not only in their minds but also in their bodies, which are often the physical manifest to ones lived history. This is true for everyone in a more or less severe way.
Back to our “artificial child state” (hanging upside down in the belt).
Using the Fly High Yoga belt enables you to evade compensational patterns of your body, your mind and your emotions, which puts you in a great place of ease and freedom, favoring positive heartfelt emotions and triggering spontaneous expressions of joy and pleasure. By doing so you create the perfect environment to heal enabling you to rewrite limiting beliefs and physical tension, which equals more authenticity and the ability to new perspectives in your life and the path you choose.
On top of that the Fly High Yoga belt puts pressure on your fascia helping them to realign and gently triggers your muscles, both, their flexibility and their strength, which helps you rewire your brain and motoneuronal network back to peak efficiency. You literally regain flexibility and strength, not because you work so hard with your muscles but because you optimize the recruitment of muscle fibres and filaments.
Increasing your mobility is a liberating process that will propel you forward in your healing and personal spiritual development. Whenever you feel stuck or emotionally down just simply fly a little bit upside down and you will realize how fast your mood improves and new prospects show.
This being said, inversions using Yoga props like belts etc. can be used in a large number of ways, reaching from simple, joyful group-sessions that send people home with a smile to really deep therapeutic work that crosses back and forth between physical, emotional mental and energetic aspects. Obviously the latter should only be done in private sessions and then again only if you are a knowledgeable therapist with the ability to address all those different areas of our being since guiding someone into experiences that lie beyond your own ability to “catch” them is to be avoided.
Furthermore my experience in working with my students using those different aspects showed that a clear focus really does matter the most when using such tools. I never had troubles with unintentionally triggered emotional or energetic outbursts in classes that where targeted on fun, physical safety and overall wellbeing. (This is not to say that it absolutely can’t happen)
However many of my students who have been with me for years and were used to having their focus on energetic, mental, emotional and physical aspects alike sometimes had quite interesting and strong reactions to the use of inversions with the belt that often required work far beyond a Yoga or Aerial Yoga session to stabilize the effects and turn them into positive developmental impulses. But that happened because they were used to scanning, identifying and engaging with hindering patterns.
Having made that experience still led me to set even more precise frames for training sessions whenever there was someone present who I knew was currently actively engaged in some deep level personal development process.
Obviously you don’t always know, but one does develop a new level of attentiveness when being aware of the potential that lies within those methods.
So in a nutshell, I think that the conscious use of inversions, especially with tools like Fly High Yoga belts, can be extremely beneficial for ones Yoga practice aswell as overall wellbeing, mobility and joy. The physically freeing effects are amazing and definitely translate into mind, energy and emotions aswell.
And for those few out there who are professional therapists.. those props can definitely be an asset, both in assessment and treatment of postural and or body- psychological questions.
Have a great day and enjoy whatever conscious movement you are still about to do today :)
Here is a quick overview of some of the poses in Fly High Yoga.
official Fly High Yoga Website: https://www.flyhighyoga.com/