A Brace for Life

 The mind is just like a muscle- the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets, and the more it can expand.

Idowu Koyenikan

Sitting here in some degree of physical discomfort. I overdid it with the grandkids yesterday and am feeling it in my neck today. I have the collar on and I leave it on for a few hours a day, mostly to realign a neck spine that is collapsing forward. I put the collar on and its like "Yes! This is the position I am constantly putting the chins of my yoga students in.  Ths is the perfect alignment! I should get my students to put this on before class so they "feel" how there neck should feel in proper position."

I feel the spine in an alignment with the brace that I have not been getting without it since the injury.

 When I put it on I can pinpoint exactly what vertebrae in the back are affected.- C3, C4 on the left side; C 5 on the right is where I feel the tenderness.  I feel pain there in the back as the front of the cervical spine is elongated because I am decompressing that which is compressed. I am going against what has become normal for the body in its protective mode. My shoulders automatically fall down away from my ears with the brace on. I realize how much accessory muscles were quickly led into bad habits  because of the injury.  That is why I feel pain in proper position. I was probably collapsing in the front neck to some degree prior to the injury. Osteporosis is manifesting in my neck and probably has been before this sneeze. A few years ago, before I began actively teaching, I had a very pronounced tech-neck  with chin constantly jutted forward and head in a chronic slight hyperxtension as a rsult.  Now I have just the opposite. I have a hyperflexion forward. Hmm!

So crazy lady, why are you going on about your neck?

This is an example of how we "contract and stretch to reach for things in this human experience" beyond the way we are intended to....leading to habits that put our lives in improper alignment, leading, therefore, to overprotection, tension, pain and suffering. We lean forward(flex) into the pleasant things we "desire or prefer" and fall back away from (hyperextend) the unpleasant things in this life.  When we start to realign...against the old habits that have become so normal to us...to wake up and straighten up into a "neutral" alignment with Life ...we may experience discomfort. We have to retrain the mind and the human to break the old habits that have become "normal" so we can stand tall in this life the way we are meant to. Yoga can be our brace.

Hmm!

How I ramble, eh?

All is well.