 Good morning, everybody. It is Friday, May 20th. The time right now is 6 o'clock in the morning. I am actually getting it pretty late to start to my practice. I usually get up a lot earlier But I'm about to start my practice hence why I don't have any makeup on right now And I have no lights in here because this is not this is my kitchen. I'm telling you guys I literally practice right in front of the dog bowl But I thought we would go ahead and address Tomorrow I'm gonna be filming our video regarding yoga and Even though it's not gonna air until Thursday, but I am recording it tomorrow but I thought that I would go ahead and address some questions that I got about wrist pain and wrist pain is super super super super common Especially for the ladies out there This is because of the way our bodies are structured Versus the way a male body is structured if you guys remember from our work on the spiritual stuff like in the Madeline Manuscript and Kundalini and Prana upon all that kind of stuff a Prana is an upward rising energy upon is a downward Raising energy we carry all human beings carry both Prana and a Prana But men are described as being pranic while women are described as being Ponic pranic is the Sun the solar a panic is the moon the downward and This describes the energy cycle. So a man if you look at a man's body They are much broader in their shoulders and have stronger arms. Their body is more linear They don't have hips like women do and women are more a panic. That's the downward energy You think about it a woman gives birth. That's very a panic. And so for a woman's body our legs are normally stronger than our arms And so what tends to happen in like when you're first starting a yoga program or any type of exercise program where you're doing things like planks and I'll show me yoga in the primary series loan. We have 60 charangas and For women what tends to happen is they tend to take their body weight in their lower body and Dump it into the shoulders in the upper body We have to remember that all the joints are aligned with each other So a lot of times it creates like a domino effect So if the shoulder is out of joint is going to push the elbow out of joint Which is then going to push the wrist out of joint now Vice versa if the wrist is out of joint, it's going to push the elbow push push the shoulder So what tends to happen with women? I call it the chaturanga seizure is Women will take and this is not specifically in chaturanga In fact, I'm not even going to do a chaturanga for you this morning because if you're not strong enough to do a chaturanga yet You have to build up to it So what tends to happen is women tend to get into a plank position and because they're not strong They tend to do this they dump into the shoulders like this And so when a joint is in its actual socket it can bear weight when a joint is out of socket It cannot bear weight All right, and a lot of women don't know how to control the weight in their joint They haven't been taught that and because their body isn't Conditioned to hold up a body weight of a body mass. It doesn't really know what to do So the basic thing that I can teach you where's two basic things we can look at First is going to be protraction and retraction. This is super important So I have a block here. I only have one block you can see my dog is actually chewed up my block Because I typically do not work with props in my practice I that's not really something we use an ostomy yoga because props can be on Enabling and inhibiting to your actual practice until you getting stronger But for this exercise, I am going to use a block because we're going to look at protraction and retraction So this is what I mean. Let me put the camera up a little bit. Okay. I found a stool So I think this is going to be better. So protraction and retraction sit up straight Make sure your spine is straight because that's again the spine You can see with my sports brother the spine is where she's using it is So if you're sitting like this and your spine's popping out Sit up a little bit. Make sure you've got your spine in a proper straight line So what I mean by protraction retraction. So we're sitting sideways. This is retraction This is protraction. So when people are weak, you see them doing this in a plank, right? So you can take a block if that's easier for you or a book or a pillow and practice protraction retraction protraction retraction protraction Retraction so when you're in a plank position So plank position or especially a posture like downward facing dog is a variation of a handstand It's not a resting posture It is a variation of a handstand if you're in a handstand if you're doing a handstand you're not going to be retracted That's not going to be good for you. Your body is going to naturally Protract right that's the 8th position as well in Sun Salutations It's a protraction of the arms the shoulders actively protracting And so that's what you want to catch in your plank position. You want to catch a protraction so you can come to a plank position and You can try that so retraction is this that's when someone's super weak. They're retracted Protraction is this and maybe you can actually see my muscles how they turn on so retraction is this Protraction is this the whole body engages everything engages it also choose the legs To engage as well the legs have to be an active participant in these plank positions You can also take a block or a ball and stick it in between your legs I have my students do this a lot so that their their legs are Actively involved squeezing the block in a plank forces your legs to carry some of your weight Right, so just dumping forward. They're actually helping your whole body move through this position All right, so when you're in that protracted position where you're actually pushing away You're stabilizing your wrist as well You're getting the muscles in the wrist to activate to turn on and sometimes Wrist pain isn't necessarily coming from protraction and retraction. That's just the big obvious one Sometimes what you're experiencing with wrist pain Especially when you first start to do a practice like yoga or anything that involves a lot of planks Is you're literally just having to use your wrist muscles in a different way Our wrist muscles get used a lot in our day, especially I write a lot So let my wrist muscles get used anyway as a child to play the piano So my wrist muscles are already pretty good But with that being said when you start doing this you're using them in a different way They're being activated in another way versus what you normally do If you do exercises that involve pulling Like weights so one thing you can do. I have like two pound weights here. I do this sometimes. I'll just roll my wrist with weights You can do that as well. But if you're doing weightlifting You're it's more of a pulling sensation, right? It's it's a pulling of the weight Wearing things like yoga you're pushing Another pulling type of motion would be for rock climbers There are actually a lot of people who are rock climbers You know, it's on the yoga and it's a totally different sensation It's a totally different way to move your body. So if you're rock climbing you're pulling When you're doing yoga, you're pushing so again different activation. And so that's also a really important key as well physical fitness is something that's very Gray Like for my age, I know that I'm physically fit for my age in a general sense however, my physical fitness is Up to par for yoga and for like bar Right. I'm not a long-distance runner. So if you had me go run like a marathon right now, I would die You know, that would be too that would okay. My body's not conditioned for that And so we have to think about it that way when we are Doing exercise whatever exercise we're picking. We are conditioning our body to that Execution of energy if that makes sense, you know, it's like we've been talking to jamie solea a lot It's like a figure skaters are super fit, right? There's like nobody found them at all. They're super fit but They're not the same type of fit as a swimmer Same thing the swimmers are super fit too Not the same type of fit as a physical or as a figure skater Does that make sense? And so that's why it's also important to find an exercise and a practice that suits your actual body um I have once upon a time. I was a long-distance runner. I ran in high school and all through college and um As I got older running just that didn't suit my body anymore. I started to get really inflamed by it That's around the time I started practicing yoga too. And if you're doing something my gosh long yoga You really there's no energy to do both And so when I switched and I stopped doing long-distance running My body healed itself And so sometimes you have to also acknowledge and a lot of that's going to have to do with your dosha too Now and and also your blood type So I am an o negative a lot of athletes are o negative because we take in more oxygen So things like long-distance running as far as my cardiovascular system when I was doing it It was easy for me to go for miles and miles and miles. That was because of my blood type I was able to take in more oxygen through my blood. However, because of my dosha being vatapitta That's why the impact of running ended up being not so great for me It backfired and so you have to be very very much aware of that with that being said though Don't uh make up an excuse As to why you can't do something so if you're just having wrist pain That's not an excuse to quit doing things like yoga because that's actually really Really common. Sorry my dog He's snoozing right there well He's used to me exercising this early in the morning, but um wrist pain is not something you need to you need to actually look at your alignment because As we understand I've said this before in um, I don't know if I've said this on a video But I do say this in my courses. So we always always tell my courses that there are three teachers in astral yoga There's the practice itself the actual teacher and then the injury So sometimes when we're dealing with an injury Actually, I would say probably 99% of the time that we're dealing with an energy. It's actually a karmic response and again karma isn't necessarily bad All karma is is your work And so as I tell my students the the posture isn't hurting you You are hurting yourself in the posture because there's a misalignment And when the body is out of alignment That means that something in the the energetic body is also out of alignment And if we fix the energetic body, we can then fix the physical body So if you do feel pain if you do feel discomfort Don't quit just go back and course correct Figure out what it is that your body is trying to tell you All your body is trying if your wrists are bothering you Your body body is either trying to tell you that your shoulders are not in alignment that you're not protracting or or That you just need to give it time that your muscles and your wrists need to get stronger around this particular form of exercise You also the second point of reference I want to tell everybody is watch your hands So when I see students in like a downward facing dog, for example, and their hand is like not where's my block So say this is the floor and their hands kind of like this. They're not fully engaged on the The ground with their hand. I know that there as a teacher I know that there's weakness and that there's a disconnect And so sometimes I'll actually come in just put my foot lightly put my foot on someone's hand to get their hand to press to floor You also while pressing your hand to the floor need to engage into your fingertips as well If you see somebody in a handstand, I'll try to find some handstand pictures I haven't taken awesome the shots in a while, but I'll see if I can find some my handstand pictures that show my hands If you see somebody's hands in a handstand, they're like this All right, the palm is on the ground and the fingertips are engaged into the floor All right, because there's power in the tips of the finger we talked about in the hands video You know, we can we can press into the palm and you can press into the tips of your fingers That's engaging an energetic response. So your whole hand is activated Even in a plank position It's harder to do to like lose connection with your hand in a plank But if you find yourself doing that 100 that's your body telling you to press into the hand to push away From the floor Okay, it's not going to be easy. It's going to generate a lot of sweat. That's good We want that sweat that sweat is what's detoxing you and it's going to force Also your core to start to react You know, you you don't have to get a six pack just from doing crunches If you do things like planks or practice yoga It's going to happen anyway because you're forcing the core to also engage with your arms So anyway, I hope that makes a lot of sense I am going to try to at some point make a video about your hips as well and maybe show you guys some Really intense stretches that are really good for the hips because we hold a lot of Hips are like, uh, the junk drawer, you know how in everybody's house There's a drawer that you just shove things you don't know what to do with it like all these menus Bone chargers, you know, just kind of shove it in the drawer That's kind of what happens with your hips a lot Like all these uncomfortable emotions that you don't particularly want to deal with at the time Get shoved into your hips and so the hips get really tight Even for people who don't have tight hips, I don't have tight hips And I still deal with a lot of emotion coming from my hips Hip is the biggest joint, right? And that's where joints are where energy is stored So I am going to be working on that. I have to figure out how to shoot that because I don't have type of equipment to shoot like an exercise type of video So I have to figure out how to do that for you guys, but I am working on it Okay, if you have any more questions physical questions about the practice of yoga or just any type of Injury you're dealing with or anything like that ask me down below in the comment section And I'll try to answer those questions again. I am going to be filming the yoga video tomorrow saturday It will be released on thursday though where I answer some of your more Philosophical questions about the practice of yoga. All right guys, I'm going to go practice now and I'll talk to you soon