Hinging at hips…to keep your spine “safe”?

23 Jul Hinging at hips…to keep your spine “safe”?

When you have osteoporosis, there is a lot of emphasis put on “hip hinging” when you bend over.

A forward bend turns into a swan dive as you tip the pelvis over the femur and simply move the whole torso through space as one unit.

Even before I discovered I had osteopenia I did this movement in my sun salutations for years. Unfortunately, it was the way I was taught.

I say ‘unfortunately’ because what occurred over time was I ended up with chronic SI (sacroiliac) pain, hip pain, low back pain, neck pain…even knee pain.

You see what I didn’t know then is that healthy movement is well-distributed movement.

As Leslie Kaminoff, yoga educator & anatomist expert, says:

Too much movement from too few places is the essence of repetitive stress (which doesn’t just occur at your wrist joint, btw.)

So the pain I was experiencing was from this limited access to my whole body while bending forward (and doing other poses as well) – moving my spine through space as one single rod. I’ve since learned how to remedy and ameliorate all the pain with the way forward bends are taught in the Viniyoga lineage. With a direct connection to the breath, this perspective highlights the different segments of the spine and how it all connects to your whole body.

This perspective is especially important when you have low bone density (LBD).

Getting a diagnosis of osteoporosis, we can become hyper-focused on bones, especially our vertebrae, and lose site of the fact that our body is not composed of separate parts. Our vertebrae are not stacked on top of one another like a pile of blocks. Our spine, our body is one continuous unit. When it comes to organizing and articulating our movement patterns, our bones work in concert with our muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, circulatory vessels, and our entire fascial network throughout our body.

If we’re not engaging the whole system, there are bound to be areas in our body that take on more than their fair share of the effort. This could result in the already compromised low density bones being burdened with more force than they can bear. And if we’re just focusing on hinging at the hips, we’re bypassing the natural movement patterns of the spine altogether and relying solely on two joints in a body designed with hundreds of joints – can you see the cascade of problems that can result?

Moreover…do you FEEL the problem in your body?

Keeping your spine from moving is extremely unrealistic, unhealthy advice (and as I’ve noted before in other blogs, is based on outdated, misinterpreted science.)

I’ve had many clients tell me that when they got the diagnosis of osteoporosis along with the routine warning about “not rounding the spine,” as they limited their range of motion within their spine they started to have a lot of pain in their back and within their whole body. LBD doesn’t hurt, so why the pain?

Consider this – your spine is intelligently designed to move in a variety of small directions – it has 95 joints! Yes, 23 intervertebral discs + 2 atlanto-occipital joints + 2 atlanto-axial joints + 23 facet joints + 24 costovertebral joints = 95 joints (surrounded by various layers of tissues & organs connected to not only those joint spaces but the rest of your body!)

Let’s put this in perspective.

Our body has about 360 joints overall.

With 95 joints, our spine has over a quarter of all the places in the body that are intended to articulate (move) in some manner (including with the breath, I’ll add.)

Our feet are another area of the body that often lose their functionality due to becoming immobile over time, yet our feet (including our ankles) each have 33 joints! That’s another 18% of the overall movement places in the human body.

Our hands each have 27 joints (and yes hands have a lot to do with how we perceive and move through space – especially when we view the body as a continuous network of tension and compression forces and not separate, disconnected parts.)

Just in these three places – spine, feet/ankles, and hands – that’s 60% of the places that are designed to move in some way – even with low bone density.

So…

Why focus on hinging at just two joints of our hips “to keep the spine safe”?

In Yoga for Our Vital Bones I teach you how to become reacquainted with the interconnected system you live in as we explore all the places in your body that move, even a little bit, and how this assists your spine in doing it’s job safely & effectively.

Now, could there be other things going on with your spine or the rest of your body that limit its movement? Yes, indeed – that’s another reason why movement recommendations should never be one-size-fits-all. (And I offer free consultations.)

And…when we bend forward, do we include hinging at our hips? Yes, most definitely they are included.

But if you have low bone density please know that you really don’t have to default to only hinging at the hips and keeping your spine “rod straight” to keep it safe from fracture.

The study from 1984 by Sinaki & Mikkelsen that was the impetus to this reductive recommendation actually proves my point:  “too much movement in two few places causes wear and tear.” The two flexion exercises done by participants (who already had vertebral compression fractures, btw) were old-fashioned sit ups and a passive, seated forward bend “stretch”, which focused all the movement and force on the already compromised mid-thoracic spine. The understanding of osteoporosis was nascent at that time, and the predominant view of spinal mechanics may have been influenced by the common treatment of scoliosis with Harrington rods. Sadly, the outcome of that perspective was to recommend not moving the spine at all.

More current science views the body as the rishis from India did long ago – as one continuous, interconnected and multi-dimensional system, noted in the latest research on the fascial network. In addition, a modern equivalent to the pañcamaya model (described in the Taittiriya Upanishad composed in the 1st millennium BCE) is the “biopsychosocial-spiritual” model as a holistic approach to well-being.

Movement recommendations to keep our osteoporotic spine “safe” should evolve as well to a more realistic, holistic approach.

In Yoga for Our Vital Bones you can learn better body awareness to experience how to disperse the energy and effort through your entire body – across many joint spaces, from fingers to toes.

Safe movement for longevity.

Come practice and experience this yourself.

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Have questions?