Inverted and in Trouble

Sometimes the act of turning upside down brings your students' old posture problems to the surface again. Here's how you can help.

By Julie Gudmestad

I've often noticed that posture problems previously corrected in yoga can resurface when students begin work on inversions. It's as though we revert to old patterns and habits when we're turned upside down, just as people often revert to old coping mechanisms when stress is high. Unfortunately, old and incorrect habits of posture make for an uncomfortable, and sometimes injurious, yoga inversion.

A forward head posture makes a classic case. After years of tipping the head forward and down to see a printed page or computer keyboard, or to engage in fine eye-hand coordination, the head and neck seem to become "stuck" jutting forward, probably due to soft tissue (muscles, ligaments, and other connective tissue) shrinking to fit the habitual position. While work in a variety of yoga poses will help stretch out the shortened soft tissue and strengthen the muscles that hold the head centered in place, all of that training seems to get lost when you turn upside down. Imagine the awkwardness and terrible compression on the neck in Sirsasana (Headstand) practiced with the head forward of the line through the torso and legs.

Alignment: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In optimal alignment, whether upside down or right-side up, your body should form a vertical line from the ear to the shoulder, to the hip, to the knee, and to just forward of the ankle. This vertical line indicates that the centers of your body weight—the pelvis, the chest, and the head—are centered over each other. If one section shifts forward, then another must shift backward to compensate, and the line that should be vertical becomes curved like a crescent, or even like an "S". These crescents and curves change the way your body relates to gravity, resulting in painful compression on the inside of a curve (the concave side) and uncomfortable strain in muscles trying to support off-center body parts.

Common misalignments and their discomforts include forward pelvis (this causes the crescent shape, with the ankle and ear behind the center of the pelvis), which compresses the lumbar spine; and forward feet, with a bend at the hips causing the legs to angle forward so that the pose looks like a "Y" with one arm missing. The latter position is usually caused by tight hip flexors that prevent the hips from fully extending to bring the legs up in line with the body, and it causes painful muscle overwork in the lower back as you hold up the weight of the forward legs. The forward head in Sirsasana, mentioned above, causes compression in the cervical spine, which can contribute to wear and tear on the facet joints on the back of the cervical vertebrae (otherwise known as arthritis in the neck). The discs that separate the vertebrae in your neck were designed to support the weight of your head, usually 10 to 12 pounds or more, so it's possible that excessive compression also contributes to degenerative changes in the cervical discs, including thinning and weakening that can lead to disc bulging and even herniation.

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