Twist and don’t shout
Twisting.
It's completely normal movement for your spine. It’s something we all do every day in combination with the other movements (forward, backward and side bending), without giving it much thought.
Any movement your body can do, I would argue it should do - to the greatest range you can go to safely. When we stop moving joints and muscles in particular ways and to range, over time, we lose that ability. I think we should maintain as much freedom to move as possible.
So if your spine can twist, you should twist it.
Obviously spine twists come up regularly in yoga - and not just in the obvious poses. There are suble twists everywhere. Trikonasana (triangle pose), is a great example of this. You wouldn't think it’s a twist - and it’s more incidental than the main point of the posture, but 100% there is a twist in Triangle.
So where am I going with this?
Twisting is good. Check.
But when we twist, we want our spine to be as close to a neutral position as possible.
So remember at the beginning I touched on all the movements of the spine and how we combine those movements constantly? If, for example I dropped something slightly to one side of me - to pick it up I would be bend my spine forwards and to one side and then twist towards the arm I was using to pick the item up. All fine and normal.
But I also talked about how we should be exploring movements to our range of motion (within limits of what is safe). These are the kinds of movements we focus on in yoga. So if we’re going into our deepest forward bend (for example), we don’t really want to be combining that with other movements of the spine like lateral (side) bends or twists. It’s partly to do with safety and partly because your range will be limited. The bones in your back are not all the same shape - they gradually change as you move up the spine to allow for all the different movements (I don't want to go into great detail here but look it up if you’re curious, it’s interesting). But back to my point, combined spinal movements will be more limited. They also transfer and intensify the load (strain) towards the joints doing the most work- which is risky.
Let’s go back to the example of triangle pose. If you happen to have heaps of mobility in your hips and hamstrings, you can probably have your bottom hand all the way down to the floor and still maintain a neutral spine in triangle. But if however, your range of motion is closer to what I would call normal, then to bring your lower hand to the floor, you will need to laterally bend your spine. But triangle is also a twist - so this combination is gunna suck hard..! You’ll feel stuck and probably hate every second you’re in triangle pose. So the answer is - don’t go as low! Put a block under your hand or push off your shin. Think neutral spine and it will free you up to expand across your chest and over time, explore the twist towards range! You’ll have space and feel great!
I love concepts. And this is a simple one to apply across the board. Neutral spine equals more twisting mobility and safer twists. Simple is that 😅
