Why is breathing so important for meditation??

There is so much talk these days about the important of yoga and meditation for a myriad of mental and physical health conditions. 

Gp’s prescribing meditation for anxiety and depression and much more. Same with yoga, you have back pain?? Go do yoga ( il come back to this for another blog soon) but the meditation one is important and needs to be broken down a little bit. 

How many people have you heard say, I can’t meditate, my brain is too busy, too full etc etc?!? Maybe you are one of them. 

If so, just know that it’s not, you’re not alone and that it’s a completely normal thing to feel. Most of the people feeling this are people who, as already mentioned are doing it for anxiety/depression/mental health reasons and already don’t really understand why their headspace is where their headspace is. 

Why can’t i shut off?! Why does my mind never let me get a minutes peace?!! I can’t just sit cos my brain is too busy….these are all tropes I’ve heard sooo many times and who know what?!? It’s not their fault, our society has basically enforced this pattern of thinking, this bodily response on us and yet know one has pointed it out to us.

Modern society has evolved and developed so rapidly in the last 150 years that we can’t keep up, our nervous system evolved on the wide open planes of the savanna (well certainly in Africa) and it hasn’t had the ability to suddenly get used to 24/7 news, shopping, smart phones, light in our eyes 20 hours a day, working more hours than resting, exciting/scary/funny tv shows, cunts on the road cutting us up…anything, put anything from the modern world in here and it basically fits to put us into a bodily response of “oh shit”

So what?!? What’s your point wibbs, just fucking get on with why breathing is key to mediation. 

Ok,

In yoga (well raja yoga) we have 8 limbs. 8 steps that lead us to unity (after all that’s what yoga means, unity) with ourselves and our world and surroundings, both on the gross and subtle meanings. The first 2 are basically like the 10 commandments, the do’s and ding’s to live a good life (more on these to come) 

THEN we have the asana….this is what everyone thinks yoga is, the physical practice, the bending yourself into a pretzel, the sweet ass skinny sexy middle age, white women looking wonderful in the lulu lemon shops window. This part of the practice is suppose to help build a body that’s comfortable sitting. That’s it’s, it’s designed to removed the discomforts and allow you to sit. It’s all just the beginning of the journey, a little prep for what’s to come. 

NOW we come to pranayama, or the breathing side of things, notice movement is a prep for the breathing, interesting ay, how many of you go to a yoga class and do 1-2 minutes breathing followed by an hours movement, got that the wrong way round ay. So the idea is that in this fourth limb of the practice, we slow and calm the body and the mind. We use the breath, which is really the ultimate tool we have at our disposal, to calm our nervous system. Unlike any other animal on the planet, we can deliberately take control of our breath to harness different physiological states. THIS is what’s so important

The ability to spend 5-10 minutes focusing on slowing the breath, brings the body back to the savanna, back to a state of equilibrium. It slows the heart rate, lowers the blood pressure, up regulates the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) ans down regulates the sympathetic (fight or flight). 

All those things we mentioned earlier (cunts, tv shows, 24/7 everything) keep us permanently trapped in our fight and flight response. This keeps us on high alert, waiting for the tiger/lion/snake/hippo whatever other African animals might wanna eat us. How do you think you can meditate if you don’t prepare for it first?!? 

The next 4 limbs of the 8 yogic limbs are then where we begin the mediation journey…but of course as with everything, us westerners just want to skip all the important prep work and just do the 10 Minutes meditation. We just want a quick fix pull, we don’t actually wanna put any work in. 

Well I say to you, if that’s the case, don’t worry so much about paying for a meditation app, instead come join me every Wednesday evening 7-7:30pm (quick plug for my online yoga membership 😝🤣😉🤷‍♂️) and instead of trying to meditate for your mental health, why not try and breathe for it instead. 

You might just find that the states you find in the breathwork practice do actually just lead you to a place that meditation then just becomes the natural next step and you do it not for medical/Health reason but more to discover much more about your self fundamentally. 

I hope this little overview was of interest, if you are looking for a simple breathing practice To follow until you come join me online every Wednesday (just click here to sign up www.mandukyayoga.com/become-a-member)  try just sitting, setting a alarm for 3 minutes, close your eyes and breathe through your nose, just focus on nothing but breathing through your nose for 3 minutes. If you do need something a bit more definite to follow, try breathing in for a count of 3-4 seconds and 5-6 seconds out (adjust these as needed if they are too long just focus on the exhale being longer than the inhale). When the 3 minutes is up see how you feel. Hopefully you will just feel a bit more settled calm and quiet in the head. If so you have found a practice that you can go to as and when your brain gets busy ay. 

Improving posture and gait in traumatic brain injury…using Anatomy in Motion.

The wonders of understand the human body and movement through the lens of @garyward_aim and his anatomy in motion lens.

This week I started working with a client who suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling three floors  from a roof.

The Left Hemisphere Traumatic Brain Injury left him with Right Sided Ataxia (A Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement )along Painful and slow walking for 21 years.

When we explored what his feet were doing on the floor, how he stood and walked there were some pretty key things happening that would affect his balance. 

Getting his foot tripod on the floor was a big one and allowing the joints to move as they have evolved to suddenly have him a strong, deep grounded sensation. 

He could also actually balance on his foot which he said he hasn’t since his accident. 

If a brain is to maybe relearn lost movements, perhaps we need to change the lens through which we rehab them. 

Gary ward has 5 big rules, one of which is that rather than looking at the body in a way that muscles move joints, we get the joints to move the muscles. 

How does that even work?? We all know that the muscles pull on the bones to move the joints right??

Well perhaps yes, while we are working out, trying to get fit and strong, but in gait, as we walk, no. 

Take 20 seconds right now to stand up, close your eyes and just observe yourself in space. 

Observe how you cannot stand still.

Observe how you drift forward/back/left/right

All without having any control, your joints are moving/swaying/falling with gravity and you muscles are reacting to hold you upright.

This is the same principle we put into practice when working with our lens turned to see through anatomy in motion.

If someone, say this clients, balance/gait is hideous and we just say it’s due to his accident and tough shit, but don’t dig down, we are doing ourselves and them a disservice by not looking into some fundamentals of how perhaps we are reacting with our environment 

This clients feet, had compensated to his new way of walking such that he was on the outside of one foot with his toes gripping the floor, holding his tripod away from the ground.

The optimal tripod is when we have out 1st/5th metatarsals and our heel all firming connected neurologically with the ground. If just the big toe rather than the metatarsal head is grounding, it can throw the whole body off.

Because of this, he always felt as if he was standing/walking on a thin blade of his foot, Making walking, standing balancing feel off balance, uncomfortable and unsafe.

By allowing the bones to move the muscle, using AIM wedges, by getting the client to relax and try to do less, the foot bones did the only thing they could really do and following the joints shapes they have.

As the joint surfaces in the foot glide over one another properly, the muscles attached to them will have no choice BUT to lengthen, causing them to slow the movement and pull those joints away from their end range.

This is really where, in this kind of brain injury, I would suggest the best changes can be made. By not making the body try to move but by allowing the body to move itself so that all those tissues are just lengthen to slow movement down naturally to return it to centre. 

And what seems to be even better is that, perhaps, even in a brain injury where the movement has been lost for 20 years, that very movement is actually hardwired in and when it feels that ability to pass through centre, to both lengthen and contract properly, the brain grabs hold of that movement and says “I’m keeping that”.

Efficient movement is hard wired into us, efficient movement is less energetic meaning we would have more for over endeavours, evolutionary speaking. 

If we can have a body that wants to stand upright, stacked on its axis’ properly then it gives the greatest amount of of opportunity to both lengthen/contract, flex/extend, rotate left/right and always return back to centre. 

As if I wasn’t already aware that Gary Ward’s anatomy in motion model was the best through which to view human movement, working with a traumatic brain injury that’s 20 years old and seeing such a marked change and have the client also immediately notice it too, just puts the cherry on the cake. 

If someone with a traumatic brain injury can begin to move and feel better within 90 minutes, perhaps you can too. 

Why not get in touch to start your own movement journey to move with less pain, more confidence and a far greater understanding of your own body and how to move it better in the future yourself.

"6 million adults do not do a monthly brisk 10 minute walk..."

Oh..pre-lockdown unsocially distanced walks…weren’t they just the best

4 out of 10 (41%) adults aged 40 to 60 in England walk less than 10 minutes continuously each month at a brisk pace - PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND!

Thats right…You read that correctly. 6 million adults aged 40-60 dont even get 10 minutes of alking in A MONTH…A FUCKING MONTH. how crazy is that?!?! This statistic is taken from the govenements own website, gov.uk.

Now there are obviously numerous health benefits to moving. We are all told about the benefits to our cardiovascular health, the reduced chance of heart attacks, strokes, raised blood pressure etc etc, but i want to bring up some ideas of moving for our skeleton.

Approximatly 5% of the uk population as a diagnosis of Osteoporosis. This is a a condition in which bones loose their strength and density and are more prone to breaking (sometimes just a sneeze can break a rib) but why do our bones become fragile?

Throughout “human” history (im talking the last million or so years) bone density was never an issue (obvs there was a lot else to worry about ) and that actually since bone scans show that our ancestors had far better bone density than we do now.

“Density remained high throughout human evolution until it decreased signigicantly in modern humans, suggesting a possible link between chaged in our skeletn and increased sedentism.”

— Habiba Chirhir, Tracy Kivell - recent origins of low reabecular bone density in modern humans. 2015

Image taken from Primate Change - Vybarr Cregan-Reid. (great book well worth a read)

So us getting cleverer with out time and ability to pass off work to machines has had a pretty massive affect on out bodies. It has meant that all the hard manual work we once would have done doesnt need to be done by hand any more. It means that we dont need to walk the 5 minutes to the shop cos we can drive.

As a species we literally evolved to walk and run..we came out of the trees and off 4 limbs and onto the african plains on two legs. we discovered the world through walking. Our hips, our spines our feet all evolved to make this our go to form of movement. Fuck exercise and the gym…we all know no one likes them things really (jokes all my gym loving buddies i know how much you guys really do haha) but walking is the greatest tool at your disposal to help load your bones. yes loading with weights is helpful but your own body weight is more than enough, you just need to give it a good old go.

Start with 5 minutes walk a day. thats basically around the block right?!?! thats totally doable, right?

After a week and when your bored of those views up it to 10 minutes. Thats like 1/3 of an episode of friend/scrubs/insert favourite sitcom...Nothing Ay?!?!

“Everything Needs to move”

— Gary Ward - Anatomy In Motion

Just remember that while pretty much EVERY fit person has to will themselves to get up and at it, our whole body does need to move and be loaded. We as a species have not evolved to want to “exercise”. Traditionally Its a massive waste of hard fought for energy (im talkimg hunter gatherer era humans here) and so why the fuck would they walk/run/jump/climb/build muscle in excess, when they needed all the energy from their catch to last them till their next meal.

Also remember that its NORMAL to want to take the lift/esculator rather than the stairs..but again, our whole body NEEDS TO MOVE, just start looking at these movements as your free gym. Fuck going and getting all sweaty on a treadmill, just take your body for a walk and pay attention to it. Go slow and steady and let it build up and adapt to the new loads (this is important and as humans our egos tell us we can do that…what ever that is….most of the time it cant and then you get put off doing it again when everything starts to ache and hurt.)

If you need to, come see me or another AiM practioner to ge your feet and legs moving as they should and enjoy moving your own body again. Its amazing the difference you will feel and how much you will enjoy it when things move as they should

Why dont we look at this whole 2020 lockdown bullshit as the perfect oppertunity to get out of the house for small little walks and strolls and to get back in touch with ourselves and with nature. Why not also take your shoes off and walk about barefoot in the grass..let all them nerves in the feet actually feel something. you won’t regret it.

A day in a tree with stour valley creative

While I sit here enjoying the sun with my two spotty dogs I contemplate going out and walking them and climbing some tree’s. It’s my main form of non yoga movement. The dogs go crazy and I find a cool looking tree to mooch around, climb and ​swing in.

Vaulting over a 4” high cut off limb

A couple of weeks back I went and met up with Rebecca Robinson from the stour valley creative, who was interested in asking me some questions about how I went from being an uniformed nurse working in a&e to a barefoot yoga teacher with a keen interest in natural movement and climbing trees. I shall let you read the piece she has written in the link attached but it was an absolute pleasure and she got some awesome photos of me climbing/balancing/squatting and generally being a bit of dick (see pictures for evidence.) 

For me, Becca totally captured silliness of me and this form of “exercise”. I do not, and doubt I ever will, understand why people go to a gym...go and walk on a machine and simulated stairs...that to me is insanity and all while being under sterile air conditioned conditions. Give me a bit of dirt and bark and roughness on the arms and legs any day. 

If you are looking for a photographer for a family portrait, business or event photography or you want to get some nice little action shots of you doing something outdoorsy, head over to 

https://www.stourvalleycreative.com/wibbs-coulson

to read the piece she has written about me and also to check out some of the other work they do. They are an up and coming local business and I am all about supporting that type of thing...as you should be too!

And you should go climb a tree...don’t climb for height just scramble around. 

This barefoot life

So blog time about being barefoot. As a lot, if not all, of you know i have been completely barefoot for the last 7 months. This seems to get a whole lot of weird looks and constant questions as to why. I write this blog from the perspective of a yoga teacher and nurse who spends their life dealing with people with maybe some sort of knee valgus/varus issues, pain in the feet, hips, back. Tension and cramping in the feet and shins and hips, with a lack of mobility to even find the most basic of movements such as a hindi squat (the resting pose of pretty much 3/4 of the world population.) allowing the base of our body, the foundation of the structure we call "us" to do its job properly can have a massive impact of all sorts of pain and structure issues.

While there is probably about enough material for a book rather than a blog to be written on this subject, i while keep this fairly basic and short....(Psssst there are actually books written about this very subject, and written much more concisely than i ever could, hence me not writing one.....see in particular Katy Bowmans whole body barefoot and simple steps to foot pain relief) 

The feet and ankles make up 1/4 of the moving body

So as the picture above shows, there is a hell of a lot going on with each foot. 33 joints per side, so even without a decent maths GCSE (i did it 4 times haha) thats 66 joints JUST IN THE FEET ALONE. Your spine has also 33 but only 24 actually move, while 9 fuse as we become adults. Now just think about how important it is all those spinal facets are moving and gliding over each other as they should. As soon as they stop there is all sorts of pain and discomfort felt through out the whole body, not just the back. Well guess what, your feet are no different, in fact in many ways they are almost more important as they are your foundations, they are what your entire Bipedal structure is built off just them. This doesn't even account for the 200,000+ nerve ending that are in the feet.

So briefly, i have been transitioning to being barefoot since around 2012 when i got my first pair of vibrato 5 fingers and since that time have just gotten to the stage where it just seemed a lot of work to put shoes on to just go to the shops, so now i have stopped. A lot of the questions i get asked are...Q: doesn't it hurt to ask on stones/concrete/acorns/whatever, just insert word there. A: is no....your feet are pretty amazing things, and the more you use them as they were designed to be used the more they get used to it. All those 66 joints suddenly start to find life that has been lost through wearing shoes (to use Katy Bowman's expression, shoes act as plater casts for our feet) al those nerves suddenly being to understand how lumps and bumps and digits and acorns are suppose to feel and so your feet begin to mould around the environment your are you. you begin to walk and step lighter, using your feet to feel your away through your walk. below is a video of me running barefoot across walberswick beach with my pups a couple of weeks back.

A few other questions i get asked would be things like Q: What Happens if you stand on something sharp and it gets infected? A: I look where i am going and i don't stand on anything so nothing gets infected. Q: What if you stand in dog poo (always ALWAYS the favourite to ask) A:i wipe and wash it off. exactly as you would do if you were wearing shoes, only it comes off that much easier...those waffle grip Vans are a bastard to get it out of. Q:Dont you care what other people think of you being barefoot??  A: If you know me at all then thats a simple one...No, people only care about how other people perceive them...if all you are worrying about is "will Fred and Jane think i am weird if i don't wear shoes" than your concerns are clearly aimed in the wrong place with the world as it is right now. Learn to be happy as you are in your self...maybe thats wearing shoes, but also make sure you learn and understand the issues that comes from wearing shoes/heels and the problems they can create (hello bunions)

Working with the Ipswich Town football players over the last 10 weeks has been a real eye opener as to what feet look like, even at a young ages, when you live in boots with a tight toe box. Toes squished together, metatarsal phalangeal joint enlargement (evening causing bunions) and toes which don't want to move as they should. The video above was filmed and shows Adam webster, Tom Adeyemi and Tommy Smith all playing with lifting the big toe and keeping the others on the floor and then web lifting the 3 middle toes and keeping the big one down. Great exercises to bring some of that neuro-plasticity back and remind those feet what they are capable of. Using th tennis balls to roll your feet on is also a great way to re-awaken the tissues in the nerves in the feet without beating the crap out of them like you would do if you used a golf ball...you aren't trying to "break down" any tissues or anything but just remind your feet what it is like to be awake, to be alive.

So if you are looking for shoes to wear there are a growing number of them on the market that make barefoot stuff shoes, the main two I've used and can vouch for are Vibram (they make the "crazy" 5 finger style glove shoes which you need to be happy with your self and not care about being seen as even weirder than being barefoot) and Vivobarefoot who make some pretty stylish nice shoes. like i say there are many brands these days and they are all trying to make the idea of wearing a shoe as close to being barefoot as possible. They have A wide toe box, a thin sole and a neutral heel rise. Traditional shoes pretty much constantly have a raised heel, and no i don't just mean girls and your high heels (or guys if you like). Your running shoe has a raised and padded heel to "take out the impact" that running causes through heel plant running. Go for a run barefoot and your body will not allow that style of running cos it bloody hurts so you shift to a mid foot running technique without even trying, your body just knows how it should run in nature. i wont go into the depths of running shod/barefoot and actually your body is great at adapting either way but if you are struggling with pain and injuries maybe its something you should think about. 

So to conclude, Whilst i am at the extreme end of the whole barefoot thing and i wouldn't expect, though i would love, people to suddenly start walking everywhere barefoot, i do hope that maybe you might look at the ideas behind being barefoot and trying to do it more often. The reason i do it is to find a greater understanding and comfort in my own body.  One of the reasons for this could be so that tescos don't kick up a stink when ever i walk in there (apparently its unhygienic being in there barefoot...even more so than the shoes that have never been washed) There are said to be calming benefits to walking on grass barefoot so maybe even just start there and slowly try to build up walking on your pea shingle drive, i shouldn't use these words as tescos quite often try to kick me out, but every little helps. You won't end up with super hard feet the whole soul of the foot adapts and just becomes harder wearing. If you have any questions about such things, feel free to drop me a line, this has already been WAY to long, but i will leave you with a clip of what your feet can be capable of if you used them like they can be used everyday