New variation: 🏃👨‍🍳🦎🐍 shake and bake lizard snake, perfect for sleeping bag yoga

 

This new variation I invented recently, to add to the move set shake and bake 🏃👨‍🍳🥧 <- hyperlink on emoji

I do this move as part of the sleeping bag yoga routine. 

Basically, the frame is similar to these 2 popular yoga poses.

Now instead of a static pose that you hold for 5 seconds, 10 seconds, or whatever, take it off the rails and make it into a mobility exercise with constant motion, twisting this way and that, 

* also flexing the spine inversely every now and then (like alternating updog and down dog principle), 

* adding neck movement,  incorporating different neck exercises like turtle, neck circles, 

* doing pushups like a lizard 🦎 from updog position, I'll pop off 9 or 18 at various speeds, to try to get some circulation and flow into lower arms and wrists, hands, fingers. 

* use your imagination. Just flex your spine as many ways as you can think of, 🐍all the range of motion a snake can make,  keep it moving most of the time, but take pauses to go into a static position like updog or cobra for 5-30 seconds at a time, but not too long that your spine gets sore.

* do this for a couple of minutes, or longer. The key that makes it work is the constant movement, and flexing of the spine allows you to do deeper work melting blockages in your spine and body, heating it up and breaking it down. Compared to just doing yoga static updog and downdog. If you have a sore back with back issues, it's still going to be sore and mostly unfixed afterwards if you just use conventional physical therapy with overly simplistic range of motion, or static stretches. The key that makes the shake and bake family of moves so effective is the continuous motion builds up heat that penetrates to all cells in the body and melts the frozen tight areas. But you have to make sure you spend enough daily time heating the body up and melting the ice, many sessions throughout the day. First make sure you do enough to NOT retrogress, and then figure out how much more you need to do to fix back problems and make forward net progress.

what inspired this move:

Great new move to help with jhana constipation and people with lower back, middle back pain.

I do this move in the morning as part of my 15-20 min. sleeping bag yoga routine (done lying down inside a sleeping back). But I also will do it many times throughout the day in between sitting meditation session. For example, rather than doing a straight 3 hour sit, usually I'll break it up it up into 45 min or 60 min portions with 5-10 of stretching and mobility exercises in between. What this new move replaces, is just vanilla updog and cobra, or updog and cobra with some twisting. Finally the light bulb went off recently and I decided to explore, how much movement can I add into these limited static poses?

🦀 Crab shuffle squat suite

 I made a really important discovery the past year.

We've been taught to think of stretching (muscles, tendons, ligaments) with an overly simplistic and restrictive model which severely limits the potential benefits.

You think of stretching as you having to straighten your body and some body part of interest. 

revolutionary insight (I'm sure I'm not the first to realize this) 

Stretching can happen in any bent shape or unexpected posture. But we rush through the transition, where very useful and important stretches are happening, and rush into the straight extended pose where we think the "real" stretch happens. And in these common, extended pose stretches that we see in yoga, runners stretches, etc., the static posture favors certain body parts to get stretched, while neglecting 95% of that same body part that was supposed to be stretched.  For example, if you do a standing forward bend, the goal is to stretch the entire back, but only the stretchiest part of the back gets a stretch, while the upper back which really needs stretching, near the neck, shoulder, doesn't get much stretch. Not to mention all the other parts of the back you don't stretch unless you add some twisting, and contracting certain areas while doing the forward bend. Similar problem with a runners lunge or side to side leg stretch. The stretchiest part of the leg tissue gets stretched, but the rest of the leg which really needs stretching, is neglected.

enter the 🦀 Crab shuffle squat suite

This isn't the only way to exploit the important insight above, but it's a great example of how you can take a few very simple yoga poses and stretches, and turn it into a whole universe of amazing stretches by spending time and pausing, improvising in the space before and the transitions to what we used to think the "real" stretch pose was. For the purpose of the video, I go through the transitions fast just to move along so you get the idea. But in a live drill, I would go through movement and transitions more slowly, improvise, and give extra love and attention to parts that need it, that the conventional world's idea of stretching and yoga would completely overlook. 

Some important details you can't see from the video unless I point it out

I'm frequently rocking on my feet, between heel down or toes down, that will hit many areas to stretch around the feet, ankles.

Whenever my hands are planted on the ground, they're strategically placed so my shoulders and arms get stretched. 

And on top of that, I slowly move my neck through various points of motion.

To get even more advanced, if you shape and move your hands in feet in various configurations, then you get hand, finger, foot, toe stretches. 

5 for the price of 1

In other words, when you see me doing what looks like a normal runners stretch, I'm actually doing at least 5 stretches at the same time, for the same price in time and energy to only stretch one body part if I follow conventional stretching protocol. This is a huge benefit in efficiency (time, energy, money).