EQUIVITA

Vagus Nerve Reset

11/16/2022

I wrote before about the vagus nerve, what it is, what it does, and most importantly, it’s role in regulating the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). When the vagus nerve is stimulated/activated, it can help induce calm, lower heart rate, increase digestion and decrease digestive issues such as irritable bowel syndrome, increase cognitive function, decrease depression and anxiety, and act as a mood booster.

Some of the ways I had listed for activating the vagus nerve (cold water, meditation, humming, etc.) may not appeal to everyone, so I wanted to introduce a more active method involving specific movements that can help activate the vagus nerve. You’ll do one side of the body at a time, then switch sides, all while seated.

1. Place your left hand on your right upper trapezius, gently pushing down and away from your neck.
2. Take your right hand to your right jaw/chin and gently push the head to look left.
3. Then push the head to look slightly up.
4. Next exhale as you rotate the torso and upper body towards the left, bringing the right elbow towards the left knee.
5. Take three deep, full inhales and exhales.
6. Slowly inhale and rotate back to center, releasing the hands.
7. Pause and notice any differences in the right side of the body versus the left, then switch and do the other side.

This technique is great to do at various times, like on your lunch break at work to help destress and reset for your afternoon, at the end of the work day and before bed, before and after those stressful holiday events that are coming up, and any time you’re feeling anxious. Anytime you need to go from fight/flight mode to rest/digest mode, this is a wonderful tool.

Best,
Katherine

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Work Smarter...

11/10/2022

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Where is your resistance?

I know that it seems like a very easy question, but based on some of the exercises that I see people doing it seems worth considering. If you are using free weights (dumbbells, barbells, weight plates, etc.), the resistance force is the pull of gravity. For example, if you were going to perform shoulder rotation exercises with a dumbbell, then you would need to position yourself such that the movement would be against the pull of gravity. Standing with your arm at your side with your elbow bent at ninety degrees would not have the rotation against gravity. In this position, the resistance of the weight will not be working the rotator cuff muscles.

Similarly, with a starting position of holding weights in your hands with arms extended in front of you while your torso is vertical and pulling your hands toward your torso is not an effective way to work the muscles of your back.

Both of these examples I have recently witnessed and I feel represent good intentions without good consideration. With free weights the force you are working against is toward the earth, and you need to position yourself such that the movement you will be performing is along that same direct pull.

If you are using a different form of resistance, then the force you are working against can be different from the straight down pull of gravity. Resistance bands use elasticity to provide a variable resistance (it’s harder the further it is stretched) so positionally you would align your movement to be pulling the band into a greater stretch. This type of resistance is more intuitive because the band will stay slack if not pulled in such a way to stretch it.

A bit more confusing are cables. Cables provide a constant resistance but are typically connected to a variety of pulleys which means that the effective weight is not the same as the actual weight on the plate stack, and the resistance force is directly along the line of the cable. To ensure you are aligned correctly with cables, position to ensure your movement is along the direction of the cable that you are pulling.

Levers are perhaps the most challenging because it is not always clear how to position. T bars, landmines and leg curl machines are examples of levers used for resistance training and each is unique in how to best position. In general, if the machine has a pivot point then you want to adjust to align your joint with that point. And then ensure that your angle of movement when using the lever is using muscle, ideally the muscle that you are trying to work.

I know that it can sometimes be confusing to think about resistance force vectors, but taking a moment to consider the direction of force that you are working against can go a long way toward increasing the effectiveness of the time that you are dedicating to exercise.

And, as always, let me know how I can help.

Adam

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Recline Bound Angle Restorative

11/10/2022

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This posture allows for the belly and the heart to rest open with support. Try it for 5-10 minutes and see what you notice. As with many practices, it’s most effective when used a little bit and often.

Sit with legs in a butterfly position, wrap a rolled towel or blanket around the feet and tuck it under the knees. Lie back over a bolster, pillow or folded blanket and tuck a little something under the head to bring the neck neutral. The photo here will show what this looks like!

Let me know what questions you have! There will be an in person restorative on Tuesday, December 13th from 6:00-7:30 PM, register and join me!

Warmly,
Carla

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Secrets They Don't Want You to Know

11/10/2022

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I found this infographic helpful in understanding the basic differentiations between the left and right hemispheres as defined by Iain McGilchrist.
And as western civilization is increasingly becoming more left brain driven, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on McGilchrist’s list relative to this recent article in Science Advances: Interconnectedness and (in)coherence as a signature of conspiracy worldviews

This research identifies some of the similarities in language used for conspiracy theories, regardless of the specific content of the message. While the article makes no mention of the difference in brain hemispheres, it is clear that the language used in the messages that are promoting conspiracies are left hemisphere.
This is not really new information. We are subjected to this same type of language with advertising and, perhaps most obvious, the click-bait ads online. Some sites are simply covered with links that promise to tell us “secrets that they don’t want us to know."

Seriously, I have been in the fitness industry for nearly 30 years and the ways to get yourself more fit is not some closely held secret.

The point is, this language is pervasive because it works. It is designed to directly connect with a part of your brain that will motivate you to some action. Sometimes, though very rarely, this method has been used for some positive actions (ex.handwashing in Kenya) so maybe you don’t need to ignore it entirely. Another option is to recognize the message and take a moment to think about the goal behind the message.
While it is not always possible to discern the goal, thinking about it will shift your brain from simply reacting to the message and sometimes that is enough.

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam

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The Alpha Beta Gam...e

10/27/2022

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Do you know when 2-3 cycles a second is considered a slow training speed in the body?? When it’s your brainwave cycles.

Cycles of electrical impulses, which create a wave, are measured in Hertz(cycles per second), and are commonly called brainwaves, and less commonly called neural oscillations. Brainwaves differ in speed and amplitude. Brainwaves change according to what we are doing–moving, feeling–and how engaged we are in our moving and feeling(consciousness and alertness). Brain activity is a combination of our brainwave types, it’s just that depending on what we are doing one of the brainwaves presents more dominance over the others for that activity.

One of the ways we categorize brain activity is by the five different types of brainwaves, ranging from low to high frequency, as shown in the table above. In case that print is very-too-small, below are states of activity associated with each brainwave type:

Delta brain waves(.5 - 4Hz) are the slowest brain waves. They are generated in deep meditation and dreamless sleep. Healing and regeneration also occur when the brain is in this state.
Theta brain waves(4 - 8Hz) also occur in sleep and during relaxation. They are indicative of an inner focus, and dreams and vivid imagery occur in this state.
Alpha brain waves(8 - 13 Hz) occur during quiet, thoughtful times. Alpha waves indicate that the brain is in a resting state.
Beta brain waves(13 - 32Hz) are the most common pattern in the normal waking state. They occur when one is alert and focused on problem solving.
Gamma brain waves(32 - 100Hz) are the fastest and are associated with higher levels of consciousness.

When the waves of our brain are working together, and the correct one takes the lead at the appropriate/advantageous moment we can focus clearly, sleep deeply, feel positive, generate ideas, relax, react deftly…we have a good time. Likewise, it would appear that we can develop brain waves that are out of sync and not switching roles to optimize our body’s needs– then one may experience brainwave patterns that lead to hyperactivity, depression, insomnia, and anxiety in our bodies.

To understand the modes of operation of these cycles, and how I can exert influence on the frequency and amplitude of my brainwaves, seems damn near like a superpower–if…it’s done with agile responsiveness. Like many of us, I can sense relaxation and alertness. It’s a basic Alpha/Beta game, I can sense those 2 states. I can also list behaviors that create the feeling of relaxation in my body and those that make me more alert to my surroundings.

I believe this is important because just as the brainwave corresponds to an activity, the activity brings about the brainwave. Yet another example of how training your body is always a conversation in how behavior influences chemistry. What we can do to understand and influence our training is powerful, as it is also what we do to influence our body chemistry, and by extension our homeostasis. For example, I have long used a music recording, subtitled a Theta Healing Session, for relaxation. I find that this track has a sedative influence on my body. I often use this track as a reward to down-shift from a high energy lifting session(a lifter's nod to the savasana pose/behavior from yoga). I can also use this track to disrupt my nerves if they start to key up over going to get a filling(love my dentist…not such a fan of the drill). Getting a filling, while feeling tight in my body everywhere, jaw/low back/neck, stinks. So I use the Theta Healing Session track to drop my system, so to speak, and soften all the states of my body, and then everything stinks a lot less. Likewise I don’t have headaches and teeth sensitivity, post filling, as a result of moving into a more relaxed operating system prior to the drilling. I don’t know that the ‘Theta’ in the Theta Healing Session, is tuning my brain to regulate more from Theta, what I do believe is that I am relaxed.

Now, would I like to know if that Theta Healing Session track drives my brain to operate from Theta…sure that sounds kinda cool, but that’s not my goal exactly. Medicine’s microscope, in the case of the brainwave function and influence on homeostasis, may be useful to us when we notice that elements of our operating system need help. Restful sleep, better energy, clear thinking, stable or elevated mood, if we know roughly which brainwave these elements benefit from, and we have some education around what promotes and what inhibits that state of mind, then my hope is that we hold more agency over our own ability to live well.

In the coming months I look forward to exploring more of how we understand the brain states of activity and their respective influences around aspects of homeostasis. To myself and my coworkers, the body is one heck of a fabulous playground, so we will explore some of the behavioral opportunities that influence our brainwaves and we’ll get to playing!
In robust health,
Tami

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-function-of-t-1997-12-22/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/brain-waves

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Fitness and the Process, Fitness and the Goal

9/2/2022

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“Absorption in projects threatens to obscure the beauty of the process.” This quote is from Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by Kieran Setiya. And in this book the author differentiates work that is being performed for a goal separate from the doing of the work itself. He names these as Telic and Atelic where atelic work is done for its own sake. Think of having a hobby that is just for enjoyment and not as a side hustle to supplement income. This, he says, enables a greater focus on the now and enjoyment of the doing.

I, of course, thought about fitness and how if the focus is just on achieving a goal there can be lifestyle altering intensity, but it is not sustainable.

For instance, if you are only focused on losing 50 pounds, what happens to your fitness plan once you have achieved that goal? Statistically we know that you will start gaining weight.

For me, I have always held the belief that if you have a body then you should take care of it. And while the specifics of what is included in taking care of your body will vary, the primary intention of caring for one’s self stays the same.

But this is not the same as finding enjoyment in the activities of taking care of yourself. True, there are certainly some who really enjoy the feeling of exercising, but there are many who don’t. For this group exercise is pain, discomfort, hot, sweaty and, frankly, something to be avoided. So, how to address this issue where even people who hate the feelings of exercise, need to be exercising?

Without doubt this is a challenge. This is not just an individual challenge but also one that challenges the healthcare of our entire nation. If we humans don’t find enjoyment in the doing, then we probably aren’t going to do it, whatever it is, unless we are forced.

And this leads directly back to why people spend so much time, effort and money on activities that are simply for their enjoyment. If we believe Professor Setiya this is how people find happiness and true enjoyment in their lives, and they do this not because they are forced but because they want to. But I don’t think that this is the same as saying that people must enjoy everything about the activity. For instance, a gardener who might hate weeding can accept that it is a necessary role for the bigger picture of what they do enjoy.

Similarly, while it may be hard to find enjoyment when you are in the midst of your cardio exercise, you could adapt your focus to the bigger picture and how great it feels to know that you are taking good care of yourself. And taking good care of yourself, physically, is the basis of the 5 Keys Fitness Process. You may not enjoy each Key equally, but each deserves its attention in your program and by using the system you can feel how great it feels to take good care of you.

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam

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Neti Note

9/2/2022

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A lot of folks start picking up their neti pot as Autumn approaches. Here is your friendly reminder to replenish the moisture of the cilia afterwards by putting a little oil in the nose. You can use any type of oil that you’d ingest or even ghee. Use a finger, a q-tip or a little dropper, little dab will do it, light coating, works like a charm!

That step gets skipped a lot, and missing it can dry out the the cilia making it tough for them to do their job.

Warmly,
Carla

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Toning and Stretching for Your Diaphragm: The Basics

9/2/2022

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Photo by Elaine Bernadine Castro from Pexels

“The beauty of freediving. It gets you experiencing the underwater gardens up close in just a single breath!...It’s like scuba diving, but without an air tank – just yourself, your pair of lungs, and thousands of fish species,” writes free diver, David Hamburg. Free divers take breath training to the limits; with training, they are known to be able to stay underwater for minutes at a time–experienced free divers are able to last as many as 10 minutes (I just choked on my saliva). While dives like these take more than stretching the diaphragm, when you start to stretch your muscles of breath, you can radically open up the potential of your human body!

Last month, we had the opportunity to map the diaphragm, with the support of 2 graphics to give you a sense of how the human diaphragm looks, where it is located, and finally how it influences ease and/or tension in the hips, in the shoulders, and in the global sense of feeling tense and tight in your body or more relaxed and at ease in your body. While the diaphragm should always work (since this is the main muscle of breath), one's ability to control how the diaphragm works is a great tool to develop. A while back Carla and I took the opportunity to record a video teaching diaphragmatic breathing, to help the viewer practice finding their own diaphragm and controlling the breath with it–hence mapping the diaphragm.

This month I wanted to build on some ways to provide that muscle with tone and stretching. As with any other human muscle, there are ways to tone, condition and stretch your diaphragm. There is a lot of room for play with this work, so our aim today is to drive home the foundation of what challenges the diaphragm to work well, and receive stretch.

Training for your diaphragm:
When it comes to toning the diaphragm, taking time to work with the breath practice taught in our video linked here, for increasing sets of time, will set you on the path to habituating effective diaphragmatic breath control, and toning that muscle. Likewise, once you have a good connection with this practice lying on the floor, you may also practice it seated, so you could take a moment during the day and artfully breathe while seated, at work perhaps.

In the video below I will take diaphragmatic breathing through a set style activity, and then we will challenge our ability to inhale into the diaphragm by lengthening the torso, or by twisting as you try to pull a full inhale. Finally you will experience how to stretch the psoas and iliacus area of your pelvis, using the same breath techniques covered at the start of the video.

Stretching Your Diaphragm Video

Breath practice and breath practice in combination with movement can relieve tension and impairments associated with prolonged sitting. If you really want to get weird, try searching how free divers turn hyperventilation into a tool to stretch their diaphragms and in turn, turn their bodies into deep sea diving wonder tanks. Have a question about anything covered in this piece, or previous blog posts, my email address is always accepting queries!
[email protected]

In robust health!
Tami

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The Least You Can Do

9/2/2022

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Fitness over a lifetime will include times where you are focused on goals and achieving new milestones or personal records for your body, as well as, other times when other aspects of your life take primary focus and your fitness goals are centered on maintaining. During these times your program should be based on the minimum to maintain.

You may have heard it recommended that you should go through your closet and get rid of any clothes that you haven’t worn in a year. This is similar to how the body treats skeletal muscle. If it hasn’t been used, then it must not be needed and can be broken down to be used as energy.

This has often been summed up with the simple phrase “use it or lose it.”

So, how often do you need to use the muscle to remind your body that you need to keep it? Well, since we are all different there is a wide range of days between bouts of resistance exercise that will remind the body to keep it around. A good guideline is to do your resistance exercise once every 5 to 21 days, with the frequency increasing with age because as we age the body gets more efficient and better at getting rid of muscle it feels is no longer necessary.

But, before the body starts to break down the muscle it will start with the energy systems within the muscle. This is why coming back to lifting after some time off, even just a week, can feel so much harder. Even if you haven’t been gone long enough for the muscle loss to start, it certainly can feel like it because you have lost the energy to power the muscle at the same level. And, of course, without the energy to power the muscle at the same level, you won’t be able to lift at the same intensity to remind the body to keep the muscle.

The good news is that these energy systems come back quickly and after your first “Welcome Back Workout” you could be back to where you left off.

Remember, it is much easier to maintain muscle than it is to convince the body to build new muscle. So, during those times when exercise is not your top priority, plan to do the least that you can to ensure that you don’t lose too much of what you had worked so hard to gain.

And, as always, let me know how I can help.
Adam

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To the Point

9/2/2022

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The foot has 28 bones, 30 joints, and over 100 muscles, ligaments and tendons. Our feet are the foundation of our body, both physically and metaphorically. They support us, carry us to our destination, push us up… and where our feet are in physical space plays a role during our physical exercise. Trainers and group exercise leaders will usually give some guidance as to if you should be pointing or flexing the foot during a specific exercise, but why does it matter? Well, to put it simply, each one works a different part of the leg, and activates different muscles.

So what happens when you flex your foot? Dorsiflexion of the foot happens when we push through our heel and the toes come towards the shin much like if you were standing. During dorsiflexion, the front of the leg is engaged and active, including the shins and quads, while the back of the leg (hamstring, achilles) is lengthening. It also helps keep the foot, ankle and knee in proper alignment. When you point your toes (also called plantar flexion) the reverse happens; the front of the leg is lengthening and the back of the leg, including the hamstring and calf, is engaging.

As an experiential experiment, try laying supine (on your back) or maybe sitting on the couch with your legs out straight. Point the toes and sense into the muscle engagement in the legs. What comes online and what feels stretched or lengthened? Now try dorsiflexing the foot, pushing through the heel and pulling the toes towards your shins. Again, notice what changes happen in the muscles. Next, try a single leg lift, once with a dorsiflexed foot and once with a pointed, or plantar flexed, foot. How do they compare? Another example to try is hip raises, or bridge pose in yoga terms. Try raising the hips with the feet flat on the ground, pushing into the ground with the heels. Then, try pointing the feet, being on “tippy toes,” and notice the difference in which muscles are in charge of the movement.

But which one, dorsiflexion or plantar flexion should you do during exercise? Well, as a prior college professor loved to answer, it depends! It depends on a number of factors, including what muscle group(s) you are focusing on, what specific exercise you are doing, and let’s not forget that each individual is different in the anatomical makeup and health of their foot and ankle which can play a part in determining this. If either of these, dorsiflexion or plantar flexion, is difficult due to tightness, tension, pain, muscle weakness, etc., focusing on foot mobility can help strengthen the foot muscles, improve flexibility, and ease pain. Medical News Today has a good listing of foot exercises that can be done easily at home in just a few minutes, making them great daily practices!

Best,
Katherine

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Vagus Nerve Reset

Work Smarter...

Recline Bound Angle Restorative

Secrets They Don't Want You to Know

The Alpha Beta Gam...e

Fitness and the Process, Fitness and the Goal

Neti Note

Toning and Stretching for Your Diaphragm: The Basics

The Least You Can Do

To the Point

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