Hi guys. Ciao! From Italy. I’m on an 8 hour train ride to Sicily and the landscapes are gorgeous! Let me tell you about my journey for the last couple of months that have lead up to me randomly vacationing in Europe. In January, I went to a Hatha/Kundalini/Tantra/Pranayama 200 hour yoga teacher training in Bali, with Shoshanti Yoga. And in February, I went to a more focused Tantra women’s training school in India, with Satya Loka Traditional Tantra School.
2 posts ago, I told you guys a long story about my spiritual awakening and where my healing journey towards the spinal injury of my herniated L5 disc has been. I would like to share with you the new findings of my healing journey. There are so may facets to healing from emotional, to mental, to anatomical, physiological and biological and the journey has been an emotional rollercoaster ride.
When I went to my first yoga teacher training in Bali, I was defeated. Many of the attendees were “Vinyasa heads” and connected to yoga more for the physical aspects, rather than the connection to the spirit, which is what is focused on in traditional Hatha. I spent my sessions easing in and out of poses and honoring my body. Bikram in the past, when I was in athletic shape, focused on the masculine energy in the mastery of the pose. I find myself currently in the yin, healing where I surrender to the feminine. Too much yang had many of my muscle groups tight. What I discovered is that I was holding in the body. But not only in the body, emotionally as well.
So here is a chart of the emotions we carry in the body. Identify every single tight zone or trouble area you may have and look up the emotion correlated with these stagnant energies in the body. Ironically, they are all pretty accurate. I got really clear on what my intentions were for each yoga session. This became a highly healing retreat for me. I would wrote down 20 of my emotional blocks, and in one session, I would have life changing and altering shifts in mindset, as well as physical fascial releases. I continued doing this during the last two weeks of the retreat and shifted all that my heart was desiring DAILY and quickly, with little need for integration time. The ability to observe without judgment. A hard leap for anyone to not taking things personal, and a leap out of my spiritual ego. The biggest shift was the strengthening of energetic boundaries and protecting myself. Only we can control with our subconscious mind what others take. Energy vampires cannot take if you do not allow it to be so. It all begins with self. Scan your body and take note of your tight zones. And scan this chart. It will be uncanny how accurate it is and how certain emotions scientifically are proven to hold in certain areas of the body. Some people clear the physical and the emotions simultaneously without even being conscious of it. But the emotions release whether or not you are conscious of it. If you don’t heal the emotion, the injury will vibrationally continue reoccurring.
My next retreat in India, I was specifically really interested in anatomy. My anatomy teacher was a whiz! I had discovered bandhas on a deeper level, or what a personal trainer would call activating your core. We have 3 bandha’s the root, the navel and the throat. In further activating these centers, I came to a place where I could self align my posture. In studying their amazing anatomy course they were using, I discovered that my trouble zones navigate through the entire core which is from the neck and all the intercostals down to the adductors or inner thighs. I started doing simple tests and activation exercises, which I know from personal training and corrective exercise specialist training, and these tests showed me that my adductors were completely inactive. This morning on the bus, I hurt my back carrying my suitcase. This actually activated a part in my middle back where I was inactive. Now I am finally sitting up straight with good posture, despite my back pain which will go away in a few days. Now, when people think core, they often think abs, but there is a kinetic chain of muscles that connect from neck to the lower extremities that work together in synchronicity to hold the posture and spine straight, hold the hip in place, keep the knees in alignment and keep the muscles from moving without blockages. This begins with a strong core and includes the scalenes, the iliopsoas, the adductors and the TFL. The psoas, TFL and the piriformus were three muscle groups I completely looked over. If you scan the internet there is a lot of incomplete information on how to heal these issues. Bodybuilders are concerned with the primary movers and muscular stature, that they often overlook these stabilizing muscles. And that’s why you see legends like RONNIE COLEMAN on JOE ROGAN talking about why he has had surgery on each and every one of his spine vertebrae’s. It’s often hard to diagnose when you have pain in your neck, your back, and your knee, and it’s coming from an imbalance within your entire kinetic chain that you never consciously pay attention to. This needs to all cohesively be addressed.
As I studied this anatomy course, I started learning more about the illiopsoas and how the entire core and legs function together as a whole. My entire spine injury has been related to the psoas being tight. This specifically pulls on the inactive QL muscles and is the cause of my l5 herniated disc. But what also caused the psoas from being tight? One. Wearing high heels in the club and at work for years. 2 the constant tilt of the pelvis to stick out the glutes in bodybuilding IN HEELS gave me a tilted pelvis. When walking around in Bali I realized the hips were tilted and started walking with a straight hip for once spontaneously. On another note, the scalenes or neck muscle are also part of the core and affect the entire body. Typing on the computer and being on the iPhone a lot gives your neck a curve forward which can effect your entire posture and create upper crossed syndrome affecting also your upper back shoulders and lat movements. On the 3rd note… I was sitting in a bean bag chair playing video games for 15 hours a day during Covid lockdown. Sitting in this position for long hours shortens the psoas. It was a beautiful disaster and all the perfect conditions for this spontaneous injury to happen.
So what have I been discovering about my body now? Well, the spine I have known is curved in several places and is not being stabilized. Breast implants causes my upper body to have a slight slouch. I need to remove my breast implants. The herniated disc has my psoas pulling down so my QL wasn’t stabilizing my core. So this has my spine curving in three places. This is because the stabilization of the spine in the l5 and sacrum doesn’t allow me to have strength to balance when there are multiple tight zones in the body. So I have been chasing around static stretching and foam rolling tight areas while instability moves back and forth throughout my body and spine. You have to really learn to move the body in a free way as I liked to call ecstatic movement. Rotate the body parts into each direction so that you can move tight and stagnant areas especially in the joints and hips. Kind of like an ecstatic dance where you let the body move wildly however it chooses to.
Now it wasn’t yoga that specifically helped me heal. Yoga helped me learn to release, tune into the body more and listen to what the emotions were telling me to heal, and yoga specifically focused on the core and spine. I found most poses difficult because my posture was so out of alignment and when you are out of alignment, you cannot hit poses without hurting yourself more. So the key was to back out of the pose and listen to where I need to soften. This started helping me realign naturally. Little bit at a time. But it wasn’t all the answer. I will say tho… diaphragmatic breathing helps a lot. Breathing incorrectly can cause more anxiety and stress if we have reversed breathing or incorrect breathing patterns. I had to fine tune my breath work. But through breath work and clearing the noise, you get more clear in your process.
I recall seeing a Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation specialist in Vegas when I was first healing in 2020. I only went to one session and then I quit because I couldn’t afford it. As I sit here on the train, my friend txt me that he could tap into my energy and my hamstrings were inactive. He always is tapping into my energy, it’s so bizarre I thought he was crazy at first, but then I started listening and our interactions became gold.
So what I did was ground my heels into the ground. I squeezed my bandhas. Closed my eyes. And went into a meditative breath to tap into the body and the energy. I could feel energy open through the hamstrings and it released the tension between the feet, all the way up the back, to the neck, and opened the entire core channel from feet to neck. Now my hamstrings are back online. I played with this push and pull technique in the rest of my body. This is how I reactivated muscles in my upper body when I had a shoulder injury and dislocated my shoulder.
The strange thing I noticed is when I sit in a chair, I keep my toe constantly flexed. This is a programmed condition from wearing heels. So for about 15 minutes I deeply focused on driving my energy deep into my feet, mainly the heels. This released more tension in the entire core line, hip tension, and tension in my knee. My feet still go in flex but it’s not as bad. I think I will incorporate these grounding techniques daily until I release the tension in my feet. This will affect my entire kinetic chain. As I play with the grounding of my heels, the tension of my hips and lower back release. As I play with tension in the neck, the jaw, the shoulders, tension also in my back and hip release. Tension and intensity in the nervous system in the past had my upper and lower extremities putting stress on the body with opposing torsion. I had beginning states of plantar fasciatus and have to constantly keep the feet stretching. It’s quite painful and when you get these kind of injuries they can become life long and incurable if left untreated for too long.
You have to find the muscles that are also inactive. For me, my entire body went inactive during my state of paralysis at the beginning of the injury. I had to reactivate every muscle in my body on my own. But the crazy thing is new little muscle groups will fire off, ones that you forgot and didn’t know they were there. My injury is very unexplained. I had good posture then and was in bodybuilder shape. I believe I had done some injections and we had used a generic hylauronic acid. Could I have gotten neurotoxin? There is something about this that seems highly neurological and not purely physical. The central nervous system is not suppose to repair. But for some reason, I was able to turn things back on. Energy and reiki jump started the engine. But now I had to figure out every wire of the car and how to put it back together on my own. This can be very expensive if you try to pay for it, but I noticed that I always called in what I needed among friends, family and professional trade work, and hired professionals here and there when I could.
BULLET POINTS
- Apart from healing the mind and negative self talk, I had to do plant medicine to open my mind, make lifestyle changes, and change the relationship with myself and how I show up for myself.
- Healing the emotions and stuck trauma, I had to do a lot of shadow work and learned cbt and dbt therapy as well as energy clearing.
- Calming the nervous system through breath work, aruveydic diet and proper exercise and yoga.
- Learning how to diaphragmatic breathe correctly through yoga and breath work facilitation. (there are many types)
- Learning to surrender, soften and let go (through yoga) FINDING THE BALANCE
- Activating core (through exercise and yoga)
- Restrengthening the under active muscles. (primary muscle weight training)
- Stretching tight areas via static stretch and foam rolling (you can hire a CES specialist or look up corrective exercise and CES analysis if you are anatomy savvy)
- Reactivating unactivated muscle groups. (PNF therapy or dry needle acupuncture. I was fortunate to have my mom do $5000 worth of free acupuncture on me.). But PNF is a simple technique if you understand anatomy. But there seems to be a lack of quality practitioners. PNF and stretch coaches go in similar categories but are different. Make sure they are a highly qualified practitioner who works with injured people on the regular. The average personal trainer in the corporate gym I see always pretending they know what they’re doing, but I do one mini session with them, and they’re always lost.
- I went to Bali and I got so many massages. But be careful where you go, get referrals and check reviews. I always like to look for energy body work and healers and Ayurvedic spas as they tend to be better practitioners. But this may not always be the case. Use your intuition!
- Herbs and food was a huge part of my healing. Yoga diet is nice to lose extra weight and clearing sugars helps the body heal quicker. But I’ve also struggled in the past with thyroid and adrenal burn out. Finding the right foods to eat and the right herbs can help the body and mind replenish and heal quicker. Where as someone with thyroid issues can benefit from a Mediterranean rich diet of avocados, olive oil, eggs and fish and seafood and iodine. Where as someone looking to detox the mind might go sattvic/ayurvedic.
The truth is, there is not one fix for these issues. You have to heal the emotions and the mind, and the rest will follow.
Consciousness is key. Self body awareness is key. Follow the energy and the body will tell you how to heal itself. I learned intuitively and with a basic knowledge of anatomy and googling a lot about anatomy, brain function and physiology. The body told me how to heal and I listened.
I want to make sure she gets the message. When she comes home from school I’m going to make her toothbrush scrub those shoes till they are white like new because I took good care of those shoes, they are my favorite gym shoes. Then we’re going to see what she has to say and depending if she is humbled or not will determine if she is off grounding. I hope she takes the humble route, because grounded kids are bored kids. 😦
Kristie Manning 