Firebreathing, nauli and jiggling - at the end?

Hi Ribbit. I am curious. Can you find out from your older women what they mean by "strain", and what they mean by "overhead"? I have found that overhead work has become much easier for me since getting heavily into chest and shoulder isolations in bellydance. My upper spine is now way more flexible than it was 12 months ago. I can now stand in WW posture and arch my back until my upper chest, between boobs and collarbone are about 15 degrees from than horizontal, ie not quite far enough to balance a glass of water. That is amazing for me!

However, I think you are talking about raising your arms over your head, which is what I was referring to doing after nauli etc. Is it frozen up shoulders that stops them, I wonder? I can do it more easily if I face my palms upwards when taking them up, and meeting them at the top. It doesn't work with palms downwards. My arms just stop about 90 degrees from each other!

The other thing is that it is harder when your butt is tucked, because your sacrum, where the lattimus dorsi is attached at the bottom, will be lower down and the LD will run out of stretch before your arms are extended fully. The top of the LD attaches to the top arm bone (humerus) up high at the back near the shoulder joint. Stretching the LD, which happens when you flap your wings, like Christine tells us, will lift the coccyx and bottom of sacrum and reinforce the lumbar curve, making it lock the pelvic organs down onto the front abdominal wall, keeping them forward. Butt tuck = no can flap wings high. Kapiche?

I also know that it is an Occ Health no-no, lifting loads over shoulder height, but your own arms, unloaded, should not pose a problem.

The Creator designed us this way so we could reach high tree branches with both hands, and not send our pelvic organs down the plughole!

Cheers

I wonder if they mean that they feel their pelvic organs descending? If you tuck your butt to stop your organs escaping, it will tip your pelvis back and tip your organs back off the pubic bones and over your vagina, where the intraabdominal pressure will push them straight down a straightened vagina. Voila!

Now if you try it yourself you will see that bending the knees slightly and sticking your butt out slightly, then bracing your abs, not sucking them in. Just make a big, fat solid sausage of them so your pelvic organs have room at the front of the abdomen and they have to slide uphill before they can descend, and the vagina will be at right angles to the force of the organs, keeping it shut.
Do it very slowly and deliberately, not like a clean and jerk. When you get the load high enough you move your feet in towards the shelf so you only have to move the load slightly forwards and slide it in. I just tried it with a 17lb pile of stockposts and cast iron pans. The only vulval distension I felt was underestimating the inital lift or if I tried to do the last bit to overhead too quickly. There is no way I would try and lift that load to an overhead shelf in everyday life. These pots live in a low cupboard, but I wanted to see what it would feel like.

If they can only lift high enough by tucking their butt, they are lifting too much. Put half the pile down and lift it in two loads. That should fix it.

The moral of the story is that we big, strong women need to think like weak girls, not like Atlas. That way, we survive long enough to lift another load, and another load, and another load.

Would you feel able to teach them WW posture, and see if it helps them? Or jsut send them here to check it out themselves.

Louise

Hi Ribbit

Yes, not tucking your tum after half a lifetime is really hard. I try to separate tucking it in from bracing it firm. when you carry your rectus abdominus between ribs and pubis in a state where it is floppy, ie not at its functional length, all you can do with it is let it all hang out, or fold it up and tuck it in. I figure if you are holding it in, it is supporting the transverse abdominus, and preventing it from needing to work because it just leans on the RI. Holding your chest high allows the abdominal and pelvic organs to lean against the TA and the RA, both at their functional length, and distend them with breathing, and it gives them something to work against all the time, so they become fitter, so they become more springy (boing!) and don't need holding in. That's my theory anyway.

When I need to prepare for a big load of intraabdominal pressure, eg lifting, I kind of set my diaphragm, breathe with my ribs, and all my abs and back muscles firm up, but I don't tuck my tummy in. However, I still sometimes find I am tucking my tummy in. It is often when I feel pressure in my vulva that I realise that the tummy tuck is back. Relax it and the vulva sensations go away.

Could you encourage your aunt to join use?

L

ps, my back muscles are feeling a little overworked after my pot lifting exercise yesterday, but POP's are OK.