Hands, Wrists & Elbows
Week 7 – Harness the Bend of Your Elbow
Introduction
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Harness: the presence and power of peace is abundant and we are invited to become sensitive to it, to be receptive of its flow.
- This week we will focus on how to ‘course correct,’ to make little adjustments to the direction of the elbow point, in order to create a strong lift (the ability to ‘prop up’ the upper arm for ease in our shoulders).
Next steps:
- Journal: What is it that you desire to harness? Write down some of the first things that come to mind. Then, notice this means it must be something that is already true, already vibrant and flowing but needs your attention and active alignment to bring it more fully into your life and expression of life. How does this shift how you view your desire?
- Practice Tools: Contemplate the visual of the propped objects and the potential to harness our elbows in support of our upper arm and torso.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Anatomy & Biomechanics:
Track Your Ulna With Your Elbow Muscles
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Flexion and extension are the actions at the elbow, but within that movement so much more is also happening
- Carrying Angle – the angle between the upper arm and the radius when your arms are by your sides with palms turned forward in supination.
- The smaller the angle, the more the ulna (elbow point) will point in towards the side body versus the ideal tracking up into the tendon of the triceps.
- The carrying angle at the elbow is partially based on the shape of the bones at that joint but it also has to do with an imbalance in the musculature around the elbow.
- Activation of the anconeus can balance the activation in our supinator and support the lead from the ulna up into the tricep tendon and armpit.
Next steps:
- Practice Tools: Learn more about the anatomy of your elbow through the anatomy slides.
- When carrying a bag in your hands, notice the usefulness of creating a carrying angle in order to not hit your legs with the bag! When you are finished carrying the bag, consider what actions you could take to refresh the balance around the elbow (the following unlocking movements for example!).
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Unlocking Movement:
Straighten With a Midline Hug and Pronation
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Use the unlocking movements:
- Use the midline hug at your wrist to undercurve your elbow point, leading to a lift into your armpit.
- Notice the pronation invites your inner wrists to turn down (internally rotate) and your outer elbows to turn down (externally rotate).
- As the engagement clarifies, can you feel your elbow propping up your upper arm, boosting and giving rise into your armpit and shoulder?
Next steps:
- Back off: come standing and place your hands shoulder-height on the wall with your arms straight. Pull your hands down (very much like the bent elbow work in video 4) Go with your elbow as it narrows under and then lifts to further straighten your arm. The goal is not to lift your elbow up into the inner elbow, but to connect it to the back of the arm and into the support of your shoulder.
- Practice this in a mirror or record and watch. Take your arms in varying planes and aim for the same engagement and tracking at your elbow. How does what you feel compare to what you see happen?
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Unlocking Movement:
Clear Depth and Reach in Bent Elbow Poses
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- Use the unlocking movement to:
- engage into the depth of the elbow
- find your way around the bend
- maintain a throughline from hand to armpit
- Develop the depth and strength of the bend of your elbow:
- make use of the different relationships to gravity
- take time pressing your elbows into the wall and floor to harness more
Next steps:
- Return to the previous unlocking movements that used the bend of the elbow (week 5, video 3 and week 6 video 3) as well as the poses in the move sections. See how they have shifted with the new exploration. Consider adding them to this unlocking to create a sequence that works for you to refresh and continue to build your awareness in varying positions and shapes.
- Practice Tools: see how these unlocking movements inform your further exploration of the asanas offered.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Sanskrit Study: Shantaya
Peace is Given and Worked Towards
Key Points to Reflect & Integrate:
- We use our own effort to align with Peace, to reveal it amongst us
- Peace is also revealed in moments regardless of our alignment with it, sometimes seemingly in spite of our alignment with it. Although, overall, this “Grace filled revelation” happens more and more as we align with Peace.
- Shanta Rasa – the taste or experience of Peace inspires us to work towards Peace in our actions and to soften into Peace in our awareness.
Next steps:
- Journal: When have you known peace due to your own alignment with peace? When has peace arisen in a moment that was unexpected or in a set of circumstances that showed no signs of peace.
- When you yearn for peace, see what happens if you begin with centering into your elbow and positioning your elbow in order to create ease into the front and back of your shoulder.
- Comment below with your questions, thoughts, or insights.
Practice Tools: Move
Short Asana Sequence
Live with Julia:
Q&A on the Forearms & Elbows
HOME PRACTICE
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The track switch image from today! Photo by lovephotoalbums.com
Check out the Q&A to find out more :)
Unlocking #1
I felt the forearms burning after the practice! These exercises are great for my weak forearms. Hugging blocks help me to use the strength of forearms and biceps to control my elbow movements. Blocks are also helpful to feel the back body. For the 2nd exercise, in my first trial my hands were too close to blocks, so my elbows automatically rotated to avoid touching blocks and the eyes of elbows faced forward, which is my tendency. So I changed the hand placement and applied the hugging action from the 1st exercise to prevent from my tendency.
Unlocking #2
I like the practice of Chaturanga on the wall. Without weight, you can practice the actions of hands, arms, belly and feet. Pressing the pinky edges on the wall looks easy, but I found it’s a lot of work. It’s a good exercise too for my weak forearms. For the shoulder stand, I avoided lifting the legs because of my shoulder stuff. And to reduce the weight on my thumb joint, I put a block in the highest so that my forearms can fit under the hips and do the same action but less weight on the wrists.
Visual
All are imbalanced but balanced.. Interestingly after learning anatomy, I thought the relationship between the beam and house is similar to the relationship between the forearm and upper arm. The houses are almost crushed but not really – balance in imbalance. In Jenny Saville’s portrait, as Julia mentions, the pedestal is thin while her body is large, and I felt balance in imbalance here too and confidence in vulnerability. It appears to show celebration of a fresh body but it’s raw, fragile, and tender. They remind me of paradox teaching of Tantric.
Julia’s response to Odella:
Odella this is really important, I’m so glad you shared! There is a difference between learning what the intentions and actions are (which is what the videos offer) and the application and discovery of the unlocking for yourself.
I contemplate the methods and effectiveness of this online course constantly. It is not meant to be a lead class, a training where you take in what you can at the pace it’s being presented. It’s effectiveness is in being a guided personal practice, to give a focus and tools to explore your own practice and how it shifts and what clarifies and integrates. And all of these things take place in their own time, as part of your own path of self discovery.
So while I have to give a flow and set it up to only be so many hours of material and to be completed within a year… My hope is it is there to support you as you unfold your own practice day after day after day.
Odella writes:
i find then when i watch the unlocking movements carefully and do them very slowly i get a lot more out of them. otherwise its like i am in a class and trying to keep up without really exploring the movement.