What is the Relationship Between Being Uptight and Happiness?

What is the connection between tightness, uptighness and happiness?

The definition of uptight is: 

1.     Nervous or worried and tending to become upset about something that does not make other people upset

2.     Unable or unwilling to relax and express feelings openly : too concerned about behaving in a socially proper way

We can do yoga practices that reveal to us where we are resisting happiness.  Once we are made aware of our tightness and uptightness, we can begin to let go.   ~ Sharon Gannon and David Life

Pain and the Fear of Pain

Most of the people I talk to who have chronic pain often talk about the fear of pain and all of the things they have had to give up doing.  They also talk about listening to their bodies.

About 2 years ago I wrote a blog post about the problem of listening to your body.  I need to tread carefully here.  I may be the only yoga teacher who tells people that maybe they shouldn’t listen to their bodies.  But I have to explain.

First, if you have broken your leg, or tore a hamstring or have been sick with the flu, you should listen to your body and you should rest and recuperate.  But sometimes when we think we are listening to our body, we are really listening to our mind.  Our minds can deceive us, it may make us feel sluggish and lazy.  And we think it is our body when it isn’t.

Before I go any further, I want to strongly recommend that if anything that I am talking about in regard to chronic pain resonates with you, then you should see a physician who specializes in Mind/Body medicine to make sure that you have TMS and not something serious.  In my area, I strongly recommend Dr. Paul Gwozdz in Somerset, NJ.  If you need resources in other areas, please see my resource page.  I cannot tell you for certain that your pain is due to TMS and it has a psychological cause.  But, it might, as it did for me. 

Dr. Schubiner, a prominent mind/body specialist, describes the difference between chronic pain and acute pain.  Acute pain is due to a fracture, infection or cancer.  Chronic pain is something that persists for longer than the 12 weeks or so that an injury would take to heal.  Chronic pain is what I am talking about in these posts about TMS.

A lot of people with chronic pain begin to limit their lives saying that they cannot play tennis anymore, or play golf, or ride a bike or a horse, run, or pick up their kids (or their grandkids), or sleep on a soft mattress or sit on a hard chair as these things bring on pain.  But none of these things actually cause pain, the mind has just been conditioned to experience pain during these activities.  In the treatment of TMS, Dr. Sarno talks about resuming any and all physical activity.   This has to happen once there is a reduction of pain.  But sometimes you may have to work through the pain. 

In Healing Back Pain, Dr. Sarno tells the story of a patient of his, an attorney in his mid-thirties:

He went through the treatment program uneventfully and in a few weeks was free of pain and was doing everything – except one thing.  He was afraid to run.  It had been drummed into his head that running was bad for his back and he simply could not get up the courage to try, though he could do many things more strenuous than running.  After almost a year, he decided that this was silly and he was going to run.  He did, and his pain returned.  Now he was at a crossroad; should he continue to run or back off?  He called Dr. Sarno for advice, but unfortunately the doctor was on vacation and he had to make his own decision.  Wisely, he decided to bull it through.  He continued to run and he continued to hurt.  Then one night he was awakened from sleep with a very sharp pain in his upper back, but his low back pain was gone.  Knowing that TMS often moves to different places during the process of recovery, he decided that he had probably won, and he had.  Within a couple of days, the upper back pain was gone, too and he hasn’t had a recurrence of either upper or lower back pain since that time.  – Dr. John Sarno, Healing Back Pain, page 80.

The Role of Fear in TMS

“Severity of TMS is measured not only by the intensity of the pain, but by the degree of physical disability that exists.  What things is the person afraid of or unable to do?  Disability may be more important than pain because it defines the individual’s ability to function personally, professionally, socially and athletically. 

In the long run fear and preoccupation with physical restrictions are more effective as a psychological defense than pain.  A severe attack of pain may be over in a few days, but if the person is afraid to do things for fear of inducing another attack or because they have found that the activity will invariably bring on pain, even it is not an acute attack, then the preoccupation with the body is continuous and the defense is working all the time…

Most patients are afraid of physical activity, which tends to perpetuate the problem by inducing further anxiety and often leads to depression as well. “ - Healing Back Pain, Page 52.

In my personal experience, I was experiencing extreme back pain.  It was so bad I bought slip on sneakers because I could not bend over and tie my shoes.  I had stopped riding my bike because I could not bend over the handle bars.  I went to see Dr. Gowzdz who examined me and looked at my MRI’s.  He reassured me that there was nothing wrong with me and that the findings on my MRI’s (herniated disks, arthritis, spinal stenosis and spondylthesis) were normal findings for someone of my age, activity level and genetic history.  He said that there was nothing wrong with me and that I should resume all physical activity, especially as physical activity helps to reduce stress, which is what TMS is a reaction to. 

One of the things I used to love to do the most was to disappear on my bicycle.  I loved the freedom of riding, but it had become too painful for me. I decided that it was the thing I needed to do to help me get over my back pain. 

I started to ride my bike, even though it was painful.  I could barely ride to a nearby stop sign, which was about a half a mile away.  (This is from someone who had ridden the MS City to Shore Ride which is over 75 miles!)   I set a goal for myself to ride three times a week and to be able to ride a 10-mile bike ride in the span of two months.  Which I did.  Every time I rode I told myself that the pain was due to a psychological reason, not a physical one.  Dr. Gwozdz also told me that everything I did was going to help me heal faster, that it would provide proof to my subconscious mind that my pain was not physical.  If I sat at home and “listened to my body” I would not have gotten better.  The fear of pain would have kept me partially disabled.  My mind was creating a physical symptom to keep me distracted from unwanted and deeply buried emotions which I had to learn to uncover and process. 

Because of the fear of pain Dr. Sarno stated that chronic pain can be more debilitating than paralysis. Which means that sometimes you shouldn’t listen to your body!

Is yoga hurting your body? Or, is how you are practicing yoga hurting your body?

This is an important distinction. 

I know that I have hurt my body practicing yoga by thinking I was doing the right action. Only to be helped by an experienced yoga teacher who could show me what I was doing wrong. Often, this is not intuitive.

When you are practicing yoga there are more things to consider than just the shape of the pose, or where the hand is, or how the foot is turned.   It is also important to consider what you are doing while you are in the pose. This is why practicing on your own can often only take you so far. We all get into our own particular habits and ruts. It takes an experienced teacher to help us see ourselves more clearly.

I have been talking with a few students about engaging the buttocks in their poses. These conversations stem from concerns about low back discomfort to feeling a strain at the front of the thighs in the psoas. Questions like this are never easy to address in general because everyone is different.   But, I will attempt to point out one possible cause of hip pain in yoga. It usually stems from one leg that likes to either externally or internally rotate more and might be a little weaker because of pain.

This week let’s look at an example of this in a common standing posture:  Trikonasana (Triangle). 

We often look at this pose from the front:

What most students see in this is that the legs are straight and the hand is on the floor or a block.  But, what is happening when we look at this pose from the head side?

If you are not engaging your legs and your buttocks, your Trikonasana might look like this. Or, if you are not flexible enough to get your hand to the floor, you may compensate by winging the buttocks backward and moving the head forward.

In this picture I have my hand on the floor, but at the expense of compression in my front hip and overarching in my low back.   

This is what Triangle should look like from head on:

This takes a lot of strength and flexibility to get the hand to the floor, or block.  It also takes some understanding of what to do while in the pose.  In this case, the front leg buttock is being held strongly against the body, keeping the hips in line with the torso and the lower back long.  The head is back in line with the spine. The back hip is rolling backwards to open the front groin and chest, keeping the psoas from getting compressed between the femur and the pelvis.  The body looks very two-dimensional, the way it should if you were looking down on the top of your head while you are standing in Tadasana.

Chances are, if you have hip pain on one side (or maybe both!) in the Standing Poses, it could be that your forward glutes are not engaged and your low back is over-arched. How can you check this out on yourself? Try doing Triangle Pose with your back against the wall. The front foot is about the thickness of a block away from the wall. The back heel is on the wall. The front leg buttock will be touching the wall but you can try to engage the buttocks under and move it slightly away from the wall as you roll the other buttock to try to touch the wall. Both shoulders and your head should be on the wall. You shouldn’t worry if you can’t touch the floor, that can come with repeated practice. (Or, if your hamstrings are very tight, you might need some other modifications)

The other standing postures such as Virabhadrasana II, Parsva Konasana and Ardha Chandrasana  should have the same buttock/psoas engagement. This is especially true for Ardha Chandrasana as all of your weight is on one leg.  If the buttocks are weak on the standing leg side, eventually this can become a real pain in the butt!

This might be something you can fix yourself if you love playing with your poses in your own practice.  But this is often something that is more easily addressed within a private session as there are some manual adjustments that are extremely beneficial.   Contact me if interested!