Thoracic Mobility

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This will sound odd but without reservation I can tell you that I’m all kinds of giddy over the thoracic spine (aka t-spine)!  I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about the t-spine and learning about the implications of proper t-spine mobility and strength.  Bret Contreras has a good article on the topic.  Mark’s Daily Apple has two articles on the topic, this one and this one.  This PDF from Mark Buckley is very informative. And Nick Tuminello discusses the do’s and don’ts of the spine in general in How Not to Warm Up.  I’ve got a few drills to show you that should be done by any modern Westerner–that is, anyone who sits for a living, drives a car, watches TV and/or bicycles. But first, what is the t-spine?

Hello spine.

Anatomy

Your spine or vertebral column normally consists of 33 bones.  You have seven cervical vertebrae in the neck region, 12 thoracic vertebrae that make up the mid-back, and five lumbar vertebrae that make up the low back.  Down at the very bottom you’ve got the sacrum and the coccyx, aka the tailbone.  So think of your t-spine as starting from the base of your neck and ending on an even level with the top of your hip bones.  So why should you care about this region?

The thoracic spine is built for movement.  This part of our spine was made to twist, flex forward and sideways, extend back plus a combination of all the above.  But look at the modern Western lifestyle: We sit and we hunch.  We hunch at a computer.  We hunch over a steering wheel.  For fun, we hunch in front of a TV.  If we’re cyclists, then we hunch even during our athletic event.  If we play golf or softball then we get rotation but generally only in one direction. In other words, the t-spine spine gets very little movement.  What are the implications?

Organ function
It’s fairly obvious that most of our internal organs rest near our t-spine. Those organs are innervated by nerves that exit out of the thoracic spine.  This means those organs send and receive information to and from the brain by way of the t-spine. Have a look at the chart and notice which organs receive their nerve supply from the t-spine region.

Your organs' sources of nerve innervation

Your organs' sources of nerve innervation

If this part of your spine is immobile then you could have compromised organ function.  That could mean anything from hand and wrist pain to breathing issues, thyroid issues, heart dysfunction, kidney dysfunction, digestive trouble, and who-knows-what-else.  Thus mobilizing this area may well improve organ function.

Limb function & pain issues (or avoidance thereof)

Proper t-spine movement is tied very strongly to good shoulder and arm function and to good low-back health.  (I’ve had personal experience with this, both with my own pain issues and with various clients.)  A gunked up t-spine means the shoulders are going to move badly.  A tight t-spine will likely result in shoulders that are unstable.  Thus the shoulders may pay the cost of poor t-spine movement.  Similarly with the low-back.

The lumbar spine is not a terribly mobile part of the body.  It has about 6-7 degrees of rotation in each direction. The t-spine however has about 35 degrees of rotation each way.  Your entire spine rotates as you walk, run, swim, reach behind you and obviously if you golf, swing a bat or throw a punch.  If you lose t-spine rotation then your lumbar spine will likely start to compensate and rotate more than it was designed to.  So that low-back pain you keep heating and icing and stretching, etc?  It very likely may be caused by poor t-spine movement.

Appearance

Why do most of us work out?  We may say “just to be healthy” or “my doctor told me to, but the real honest reason most of us exercise is for looks.  There’s nothing bad about looking good!  Good t-spine movement and positioning can help you look better instantly.

Remember that we’re a hunched over society.  Look around you.  How many rounded shoulders do you see?  This doesn’t look great.  Imagine if people drew themselves up, lifted their collarbone, and lengthened their spines.  No question but that we’d look stronger, healthier and more attractive.

Okay, so there’s some info on what your t-spine is and why proper movement is vital.  Now it’s time to move!  (Please pardon the discrepancy between the audio and video.  I’m trying to figure out what the problem is.  Youtube is a challenge for some reason.)

Can Yoga Be Harmful?

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“With it went my belief, naïve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and never harm.”
– William J Broad, NY Times

If you haven’t read or heard about it, the New York Times recently ran an article titled How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.  It’s far from the perfect article.  For one, it’s full of anecdotal evidence.  Second, many of the examples given of yoga causing injury consist of people doing rather extreme versions of a pose or movement.  I think the article does bring up valid questions: Can yoga cause harm?  Is it always safe for everyone?

I’ve had a couple of harsh experiences with yoga.  Once I had a teacher that thought since I looked big and strong I could do some sort of headstand.  I figured I would follow the teacher’s lead and give it a shot.  Without question I was not ready for this pose.  I left the class with a very painful shoulder.  This instructor had been teaching for years and was very highly sought after at the gym where I worked.  I was in another class where an instructor all but insisted that I move deeper into a pose and I simply couldn’t do it.  My nervous system was trying to protect me by preventing further movement into this position and she had me trying to force my way into a deeper range of motion.  Again, by the end of class, I was in a bit of pain.  This is not what I was after.

My observation is that yoga is often championed as a panacea cure-all for any number of ailments: back pain, knee pain, mental stress, possibly even digestive issues.  I can’t say everyone says this type of thing but in every gym setting where I’ve worked yoga is discussed and presented in this glowing fashion. But is yoga really any different from any other type of exercise? Might there be a few risks?

First and foremost, yoga is movement.  So is running a 100 m sprint.  Driving a golf ball is also movement.  The power lifts are movements.  Typing on a keyboard and watercolor painting?  Also movement.  Guess what: Movement can cause injury!  (By the way, try NOT moving and see how healthy you become.)  Further, yoga is a lot of very different movements.  One may be quite safe, another quite unsafe.  All parts of yoga can’t be viewed fairly as the same thing.

We can probably agree that movement is essentially necessary and usually healthy.  We can probably agree that walking is typically safe and healthy.  But what if we have a sprained ankle?  Or a damaged vestibular system such that we can’t tell which way is up?  Then even walking might be quite harmful.  Lifting weights is similarly healthy in most cases.  If we have a herniated disk or if we use bad technique then lifting may be very unhealthy.  Why would we view yoga as any different?  If we have poor kinesthetic sense then moving into any number of poses could cause pain and/or injury.

Further, we as Americans often have the view of “If a little bit is good then a BIG WHOLE LOT must be great!” More is better in other words. I’ve heard some yoga people speak proudly of not only how deep they can move into a pose but also how quickly they can move from one pose to another.  Sounds a lot like the talk in any weight room.  Just substitute weight and reps for poses and depth of motion.

Glenn Black is an experienced yoga teacher who’s interviewed for the Times article.  He speaks to other yoga teachers and practitioners on the issue of injuries.  He talks about ego.  (I think the popular image of yoga is that it is an ego-less type of thing.  But what human activity is free of ego?)  Black says, “My message was that ‘Asana is not a panacea or a cure-all. In fact, if you do it with ego or obsession, you’ll end up causing problems.’”  This seems a very wise statement, and I’m pleased that this article may start to shed light on the idea that yoga should be evaluated the same way as any other type of exercise.