Anatomy of the Spine: Learn Yoga Anatomy With Rachel

Transcript

[Music] so the spine is the central axis for how we move and live and um and feel in the world so it's the home of our extended nervous system and it protects the spinal cord so in the yoga practice what's really cool about yoga is that we move the spine in so many different directions so if you think about how we stand in normal everyday life usually it's kind of like you know just in one direction but in yoga we twist the spine we laterally flex the spine we move into flexion and extension so it's a really beautiful spinal mobilization practice and by understanding the anatomy of the spine you're going to be able to help your students stay protected and safe and working in their own functional range of movement so let's talk about what is the purpose of the spine you guys what do you think protects the spinal cord what else mobility right like like if the spine was just a rod and didn't twist we'd be like take me to your later yeah like right right right what else does the spine do it's the home of the new thank why thank you it's the home of the nervous system okay so let's imagine for a moment you guys that you're an alien creature from another planet you don't have spines you you live in gelatinous bodies um if you were a human describing the spine to these creatures what might you say that it does for us or what does it give you structure structure yeah upright posture right or bipedal yes that's true right so if we didn't have the spine what would life be like yeah or like can you imagine yeah i'm trying to imagine like having four limbs just attached to like a spoke or something like that so it's really this elegant scaffold and what might be some images that you would use to describe the spine like like what might you relate it to things that maybe you see in the everyday world what does the spine remind you of a slinky i like that slinky yeah it's kind of mobile and movable and it kind of extends and compresses a conduit because there's all sorts of stuff inside important stuff like nerves of all sorts of things yeah a conduit like a communication pathway i'm almost imagining like a tunnel or you know yeah cool so your spine is really important for a few different reasons um so it's the central axis for movement and weight distribution so if we think about like how the weight of our body our torso everything is is kind of transmitted it's an axis of support it also transmits all of that weight and that force it protects the spinal cord which we chatted about you know this is one that i don't often think of because it's kind of so obvious to us but it actually provides a column for the ribs to attach to like i'm like oh right the ribs attached to the spine we don't think of it so it provides a sight for muscle attachments so one of the reasons that your spine is so interesting looking and has so many sticky outy bits to it is that there's lots of muscles that attach to it it protects your internal organs to some extent right it provides this kind of barrier in the back and when we look at the the structure of the spine we'll see that we're alternating like kind of bony discs was these fibrocartilaginous discs or you know bony vertebrae with fibrocartilaginous discs which actually are squishy and provide space for shock absorption so let's watch a video don't worry you can come back and write this down later all right so i like this guy i think he does a good description of course we can't hear him so i will narrate so the spinal column is comprised of these bony vertebrae that are stacked on top of each other you'll notice that they're all different shapes and sizes so the ones at the bottom are quite big and the ones at the top are quite little and the spine can be divided into four sections which have curves so the cervical spine thoracic spine and the lumbar spine and you notice that these are actually called the primary curves because when you're born you come out all rounded and then you develop these secondary curves the cervical spine and the lumbar spine and so the actual shape of the spine actually helps like a little spring like a slinky kind of with the shock absorption then down here this is the sacrum which is the very bottom of the spine which is comprised of fused discs so the way that they're numbered is from one to five so they're numbered from the top down this is the sacrum which is you can see it's like still composed of vertebrae but they've been fused together and there's our little vestibular tail the sacroiliac joint is between the sacrum here and the ilia which is this bone from the pelvis which we learned about in anatomy of the hips so here's a look at one of our intervertebral or sorry our vertebrae so you can see it's got all these sticky-outy points that's where muscles attach to and if you look down through the center when all of these are stacked there's a big hole here and that's where your spinal cord actually runs through this channel there it is so this is the little pathway so it's quite protected on all sides by this bony structure it goes down there these are called your spinous processes on the back it's like you're a little dinosaur and the ones on the side the sticky outies on the side are called your transverse side processes and then you know it's kind of coated with all of these you know ligaments and things like that so let's take a closer look at the curves of the spine so why do you think spinal curves are important imagine if we're just straight for shock absorption yes and for weight distribution right so the curves actually help with that like a little slinky would um and there would be a lack of flexibility if it were just kind of straight up and down so curves that go out and these are called primary curves so if you imagine a little baby you know like when it's in the womb it's all curled up right so this is the primary curve where everything is like this but over time we develop these secondary curves and we'll talk a little bit more about that so these primary curves are called kyphotic they're kyphotic now there are a different number of vertebrae in each section so in the cervical spine we have seven numbered one through seven in the thoracic spine we have twelve numbered one through twelve anybody know how many we have in the lumbar spine five five in the lumbar spine and then the sacrum is uh they're fused together i think it's like five to seven um what's it going to say yes it'll come back whatever it was i was going to say so each vertebrae in the thoracic spine is actually attached to your ribs so what's interesting about these curves of the spine is that where the curves change direction like right here it tends to be a little bit more precarious so in yoga that's relevant to us because this can be hyper mobile for things like back bending so they're a little bit less stable where the spine changes direction and the they're different shapes we'll take a quick look at that in a sec so if we think about again our little fetus when it comes out that's when the baby the baby's like this the whole time and then it's exiting the birth canal and it does this right now who's had a kid how much do babies hate tummy time and so you stick them on their tummy and then they have to work to lift this big heavy crazy head that they have and they're basically training this curve of the spine right which is hard for them and then they start crawling around on the floor and when they start crawling around they start getting their lumbar curve and so babies need their lumbar curve eventually because when they stand up that's what helps them to find this in this kind of upright balance position if baby stayed like this and baby stands baby's not going to be able to balance too well so finding these lumbar the lumbar curve and the cervical curve is important for baby development so let's get into partners for a moment just let's palpate the the curves of each other's spine so stand up bring yourself aside find a partner stand behind them and start from the very top of their skull and start to work your way down so you feel your fingertips move into the neck yeah you can have a little train of three so palpate from the top of the skull here the skull you'll see one is actually kind of right between is like right but is like right in the center of your jaw you can feel it through the sides of your neck this is where c1 is like little frankenstein knobs and as you palpate down you'll come to a real knobby one so if they drop their head forward people who are being touched drop your head forward and that cervical uh that bumpy thing that you feel sticking out is is usually c7 it's the sticky outy one and then as you palpate down you'll feel that the ribs start the ribs are connected onto the thoracic vertebrae and then at the bottom of the ribs you'll feel like an inward moving place and you'll feel that the spine changes direction so that's where the ribs end and the lumbar curve begins right can you feel those little knobby bits that's like the dinosaur back of the spine okay so switch and palpate the other way i know you can give a little necro while you're there it's nice a little frankenstein thing here and everybody's curves are a little different like either structurally through how they are you know genetically how we're born but also through time like left to my own devices i would totally stand like this all the time right which is not quite functional so we also have our path of least resistance right now even though these are a general number for how many vertebrae you have it actually depends on the person some people might have more vertebrae some people might have less vertebrae so it's a general idea these numbers all right good okay let's feel our the our length of our own spine so take your hand here to like the edge of your jaw and then you'll feel your mastoid process of your skull so these two bony points here that are pretty easy to palpate now if you go right in between those you'll find two knobs this is like the little frankenstein things this is the top of c1 i know isn't that weird that's your top vertebrae it's usually sore yeah right totally weird okay so keep one finger there now take your other hand down the backs of your pants or you can do it on top of your pants and feel the bottom of your tailbone okay and then just take a moment to close your eyes and internally visualize that this is the length of your spine that's that cool right all righty so let's take a little bit of a look at this the actual structure of your spine so we have a vertebral body here it is noticeable it's big and chunky it's a big chunk of bone right and then it is they are interspersed with these um intervertebral discs which are made up which are fibrocartilage so they're cartilage but they're quite stiff and they have and we'll look a little bit more at that structure in detail soon and then these are stacked on top of each other to make space for the spinal cord and then exiting between the spaces between each disc are your nerves your spinal nerves the shape and the structure of your uh vertebrate change so at the top here's an example of your cervical vertebrae thoracic vertebrae lumbar vertebrae so you guys do you see this see these little structures right here do you guys see this okay so those are how they stack on and connect to each other so what's interesting about the the vertebrae is that on each side they connect to the top and the bottom so they all connect down to each other and those change shape so see how this is facing mostly up these are facing mostly like this and then the lumbar ones are facing kind of in so all you need to know from that is that this is a joint right so a place where two bones meet is a joint so the shape of how these connect to each other as we trickle down from the cervical spine down to the lumbar spine the shape of how those bones meet changes so it goes from like here to you know here to here and so what we need to understand from that is that different movement is possible in each segment of the spine depending on how those bones are connecting to each other does that make sense so depending on how one vertebrae is connecting to the other will depend on how much movement that has forward and backwards or in rotation or side to side so different parts of the spine will be able to move differently it's not one size fits all yeah people who have super flexible backs that can do these wonderful crazy back bends crazy backwards yes and then there's other people like me even when i was like a young child i just didn't have that kind of flexibility totally yeah so where does that kind of come in because it's such a good question people are super flexible and they might be in super good shape super flexible that's right so flexibility comes from two different things one would come from the actual shape of the bones so for example you see how long these bones are okay so this is especially true when we get to the thoracic spine but if these bones are closer to each other or longer then as soon as i start going back they're going to bunk into each other that means am i going to be able to move as far does that mean that i'm not as good a yogi do i not work as hard will i be flexible someday now okay right the other part of flexibility comes from connective tissue so if we remember that around every single joint there's a joint capsule and also up and down the spine there are ligaments that anchor the front and the back so you have these long swaths of connective tissue that help hold the spine intact so somebody who has flex um flat more flexible connective tissue because connective tissue the kind of the the um sturdiness of it and the mobility of it varies from person to person some people are more mobile in their connective tissue and their fascia some people are less so say you have someone who's got short bones highly mobile connective tissue well they're going to be able to look a lot fancier in their back bends you know like i have a big hinge in my low back i can hinge here like crazy so i can do back bends that look deep but that's simply that's not necessarily because i've been practicing it's just because the way that my body is structured facilitates that so when i hear people talk about working on their flexibility or working on their background yeah because they want to get them you know i always get a little bit worried about that because i think you know you really your spine is pretty important and you don't want to be hurting it yes and so when people talk about working on their flexibility i think you can only do that up to a point that's correct you we want to like for example if i sit around and work down my back bends for a long time i can make them i can become more flexible in my back bends to some extent based on connective tissue and softer tissues that become more mobile or things like that but there will come an end range where it's no longer functional for me to improve that flexibility right where it becomes counterproductive actually for me to become more mobile all those beautiful cirque du soleil people that we see who are hyper mobile the reason they can get away with that is because they're so damn strong but if they're not strong anymore if they don't have the musculature to support that kind of mobility they start to fall apart so we want i think in my opinion i agree with you i think the yoga practice should make us more functional not always more flexible sometimes more flexibility will be more functional and sometimes it's counterproductive and sometimes it's just kind of for the sake of like let's try it out let's see what happens right so yeah i think if it's causing pain or damage or hypermobility then that's a good time to work on your stability instead so let's just look a little bit at each section of the spine one by one so the cervical spine has how many vertebrae one way you can remember this is like is meal times so there's seven vertebrae in the cervical spine it's like you have breakfast at seven do we still do that did people still eat breakfast the thoracic is 12 like high noon the lumbar is five okay maybe it's when your grandma eats like at five o'clock p.m okay so how how mobile is the cervical spine take a take a little feel through your own neck can you drop it forward lift it up lateral flexion turning what do you think pretty darn mobile which is good because we gotta look around in the world right we gotta turn and look at stuff so this has great motion so that means usually a lot of times um parts of the spine like we're cut remember how we kind of take the path of least resistance just keep in mind cervical spine really easy to move all right so that means our body is going to tend to want to move the more mobile areas first we'll just put a pin in that the thoracics oh oh yeah this is so cool i just want to show you something really cool about the top of the cervical spine this is your for this is c1 these are the ones you felt the little wings this thing here with this big knobby thing pointing up so if we have a circle c1 is c2 this is really cool this is a weird pivot joint that your body has kind of created so that you can do this when you turn your head it's this pivot joint turning so more than your whole neck turning actually it's this little joint here that your skull kind of sits on that pivot that's allowing it to turn isn't that neat so that's a really cool um interesting structure that you don't find somewhere else in your body that's kind of neat all right so thoracic so there's how many vertebrae in the thoracic spine twelve yes they're kind of heart shaped they get bigger in sizes they descend and move towards the lumbar spine and they have longer spinous processes right so these little dinosaur backs here are longer which can restrict your ability to extend what else prevents this part of the spine from being really good at back bending you're well yeah ribs can ribs i don't know if they prevent back bending but that will definitely impact your movement because you got all these big bony this big bony cage attached to this part of your spine but what's the shape of the curve of the thoracic spine it's a primary curve so is this a back bendy shape no it's the opposite right so this part of the spine doesn't like to it'll never backbend it'll never go into extension but it can become flatter right but it doesn't really like to back bend because its shape is anti-back bending make sense also it's attached to the ribs so let's think about what kind of movements are really easy in your in your in your thoracic spine what does your thoracic spine like to do it likes to rotate it likes to rotate does it likes to forward fold it likes to flex does it like extending not so much no not so much with the extension so what are some possible implications for asana what kind of positions yolk for um and yoga poses will be easy for your thoracic spine to do forward fold exactly anything where i have to round crow pose oh it's going to be good at that right what's going to be hard for your thoracic spine to do exactly wheel pose right back bends exactly and daily life tends to put us more here right no all right so that's where we tend to fall to which is one of the reasons why yoga can be so great for getting people into the more open back bending shapes so let's talk about the lumbar spine so how many vertebrae do we have here five i'll try not to telegraph and these are massive weight-bearing bodies like this is really supporting a lot of weight so what kind of movements are good in the lumbar spine what's the curve extension right so this part of the spine because the curve goes in it likes to back bend so if we remember the cervical spine and the lumbar spine love to back bend if i do a back bend it's likely that i'm just going to go like this yay i'm doing camel right as opposed to stabilizing these parts of the spine that tend to be more mobile in that direction and then working the back bend into the upper back which is stickier so when we start working on back bending we want to keep in mind that we're going to need to stabilize these parts of the spine a little bit more and then mobilize this part of the spine a little bit more in order to stay functional in order that we have um we're kind of like a healthy extension of your spine so there's good lateral flexion in the lumbar spine one action that it doesn't do very well is twist it doesn't do much with the rotation um all right good so back bending back bending and back health so the lumbar spine and the cervical spine tend to do this so we'll tend to back bend here and here now she's doing a great one can you see how nice and even this curve is through her spine so that's kind of what we're going for when we teach yoga we're going for a nice even back bend that's kind of not just stuck and sticky in one place not just compressing into one place but an even distribution throughout the curve of the spine as much as is possible given our own structure poster is not just related to the spine right you've got your hip flexors totally abdominals your shoulders all of that all of that yeah that's a yeah that's a great point so there's lots of parts of your body that need to be open to do back bending including this for sure and shoulders too especially in wheel pose when we have the arms up like that yeah so there are other implications too just in terms of bony implications though the spine will tend to do more here and here just on its own in terms of the bony structure all right just two more little things here uh the sacrum and the coccyx so the sacrum it's fused vertebrae about five in the sacrum about three to five in your tailbone it doesn't move so much like it might knot a little forward a little bit back but it's pretty stable and remember that it's it's attached to the pelvis it's like really swaddled in there so there's not a lot of movement in there a little bit um one thing i want you guys to notice and this goes to liz's question about why can i backbend and someone else can't or why can i not back why do i have trouble back bending and other people seem more flexible take a look at these two different segments from the lumbar spine so in this lumbar spine notice how much space there is that's going to let you backbend a little bit more there's more room notice how close these are together that means there's a little less room so we can see again before we even consider muscles and soft tissue which of course play a role but just in the shape of our bones some people are going to be more back bendy and some people aren't any questions so far it's really freaking hot in here all right guys let's pause it here when we come back we'll move on to intervertebral discs and we'll start looking more inside the spine and let's get ready to practice all right so what do you guys remember about the spine from our discussion so far four parts to it yeah so seven what's the middle one twelve 5 and what are the names thoracic is which one point middle what's the top one cervical what's the bottom one lumbar yeah and then what's the what's the bottom bottom called the fused pieces all right so when we looked at how skeletal variation might account for some of the differences that you experience when you're back bending in yoga practice and why you see someone beside beside you who's like crazy freaking bendy and then someone over here who's stiffer do you guys want to do a little experiment yeah okay everybody come lay down like little like little um like little sphinxes here on your tummies yeah and let's let's face this way like little sphinxes little sphinxes on your elbows okay so come into your best backy bend so your best back bend so if you can straighten your arms straighten your arms yep if you can straighten your arms don't strain your arms amazing good so let's look at lucky and lisa and everybody else come stand and you guys come to the front just for a moment just for a moment come come so i'm gonna ask you to get up like little serpents and come over to the middle come on over oh sorry liz sorry what did i call her did i call you lisa who's lisa this way yeah yeah come on over just lay down just next to each other it's fine same direction i just want us to notice again variation so and come into your best back bend tada right so just noticing the differences between how their spines like to move so liz obviously if you look at her lumbar her lumbar is not as dividy and if you look at lucky look how much she can hinge in her low back right is one of them a better yogi i know she like folds in half so one of the lucky's like the real yogi right because she can do that is that what it is no it's poor form and collapse no of it but just to take a look because our students are going to be appeared there more extreme everywhere in between and it's not a matter of their practice as much as it is a matter of their individual body that's it that's all thank you ladies it's beautiful to get to see different forms right because we kind of think if we look at a book that it's all supposed to look one particular way thank you liz thank you lucky thank you [Music] makes it harder right but it felt like it was more open or something that's cool yeah oh great so what was that look down i had you look down so that you could basically it's so that you can do the first half of the dual action right to draw the bottom ribs more in and up and it also helps to lengthen the tailbone so there's a combination of lengthening the tailbone and drawing the bottom ribs in that you get and then you can move more into the upper back once you have that stabilized so this is a great so yoga whenever we're practicing and we can think of the yoga sutras there's always a combination of space and stability sierra and suka so you know if we have tighter bodies there's less space more spacious bodies more space so if you find yourself into a pose and you feel like i have nowhere to move the best way to create space is often to come out of it slightly come out of the post so that you back off the end range of your own motion and your own musculature so you can find a little bit more wiggle room and then reset and then go down into it when when we're all in the depth of our pose it's very hard to adjust so it's fine to pull out find a little bit more wiggle room and then come back in yeah all right so let's move on in the spine to looking at the intervertebral discs so we earlier today we were looking at the vertebrae different shapes different structures sticky-outy bits so now let's look at what comes in between them so the intervertebral discs are really important for shock absorption and mobility so they're cartilaginous and they're cartilaginous joints with the vertebrae so they have some movement and it's the combination and the stacking of all of them together that gives the spine all of its mobility so each one has a little bit of movement and then the combination of all of them creates basically spinal mobility also they create spacers between the intervertebral disc so you can imagine if you had bone on bone on bone on bone that would sort of suck right so what they create is like a little squishy thing in between to keep the bones from rubbing against each other over time as we'll see wear and tear on these discs is what can cause some problems so the intervertebral discs have two like parts to them basically there's the um nucleus pulposus so like what it sounds like nucleus being the center pulpy pulposus being kind of squishy there's a soft kind of squishy or gel-like it's not really so jelly but center and then the anulus fibrosis fibrosis like fiber being the kind of harder outer part of it made of connective tissue and it's uh it's like a specialized ligament that connects the top bone to the bottom bone and so it looks a little similar to this maybe not as squishy as this but a little jelly donut you can think of it that way so what's kind of cool as a fun fact is that at night your discs become more plump with water have you ever noticed how you're stiffer in the morning well one of the reasons that i don't like to practice yoga first thing when i get out of bed is because my spine feels really stiff and it's not just like oh i've been laying in one position all night although maybe that would contribute to it for sure but your discs are hydrophilic they like water and so at night because there's no compression on them like this they start to kind of plump up so when you get out of bed in the morning you're a little taller and you're also a little stiffer however over the course of the day you're like you're kind of squishing them out right so at night they get a little plumper and during the day they kind of squish so that's one of the reasons why you might feel stiffer in the morning when you're practicing or when you're kind of moving around also what's kind of cool is that astronauts did we talk about this before astronauts who go into space because there's no gravity on their spine they get taller like it's like something i for i have to go look at the um i have to go look at that book that i read this in but it's like it's kind of substantial like more than like half an inch like they grow in height because there's no compression on their spinal discs but they can't walk when they get home pros and cons kind of interesting right okay has anyone had any back issues like disc issues hollywood tell us about it yeah so yes so the back so the discs as you can see here this is a little this is what we would call a bulging disc so when the nucleus pulposus the soft squishy center when it starts to press out into the anus fibrosis and create a bulge that's called a bulging disc and then when you hear the word herniated disc and slip disc is like i guess that would be like a bulging disc they don't really slip out but you know and then a herniation is when it actually extrudes from the nucleus pulposus which is bad because it one deflates and two because that squishy that soft centery stuff is kind of caustic to the spinal cord and irritates it so there's a whole world of yucky when that kind of happens um so you can sort of see what that looks like so also you might get bony spurs and bony growths that can cause compression so oftentimes when these slip or bulge they extrude to the back and of course what's back there your spinal cord so if it's impinging your spinal cord that can cause you know radiation tingling numbness pain all that kind of good stuff um well they can deflate a lot but they won't go away because they're they're there but they could deflate and that would be arthritis in your back i guess right so one of the um yeah so like my dad for example is going back into back surgery so what they used to do and what they still do is that when this starts to happen is that they'll sometimes pin these and stabilize them together but that can cause other problems like he had back surgery 20 years ago and now he has to have back surgery again to kind of go up the chain right so not so not so great um now you'll notice most of these herniations um happen in the lumbar spine which sort of makes sense i mean not always but a lot of times because that's the most weight bearing right so that's where there's the most pressure down and also in the lumbar spine most of them happen um slipping out to the back because of our posture which tends to be tailbone tucked under so when we sit when we drive so if you can imagine the column of my spine when i sit like this i'm compressing the front of the spine and it's pushing the disc back does that make sense as opposed to the way that i love to stand which is less typical which is more in the hyper extended back in this case i would be pushing my discs more to the front makes sense if i'm kind of squishing if this is normal and i'm slouching tucking my tailbone under it's kind of squishing the disc like this and then you walk around like this all the time or you sit like this and compress all the time in the front rather than it being evenly distributed across the whole of the intervertebral disc so over time it kind of squirts backwards so one of the reasons why we may be seeing so many back problems is because of the chronic sitting that happens that puts pressure on the discs in that particular way one of the reasons that yoga is good for you is that it teaches people to become more aware like when you're doing your dual actions of the pelvis your paired actions taking the thighs back and playing with the tailbone down is that people are starting to find where their neutral is and become more aware of the fact that when they're sitting oh am i sitting with my pelvis completely tucked under you know maybe how does how does my yoga practice show up in my life maybe i can sit right on my sitting bone so my pelvis is neutral and then when the pelvis is neutral the low back is more neutral and more lifted right that's one of the reasons yoga can help people here's an interesting discussion have any of you heard of a guy named john sarno this is an interesting thing with back pain okay so when someone has back pain they go to the doctor right and they're like scan me and they scan you and they're like oh there's a lot of stuff that's wrong in there so john cerno was like all right this is interesting let's go scan healthy people so they scanned dysfunctional people pain people who are in pain they scan people who are not in pain and they're like everybody's messed up right it's just some people are symptomatic some people experience it and i don't know about you guys like what happened when your back went out or when your back went out the times that my back has gone out divorce moving i was like literally brushing my teeth and i was like oh dear and had to like lay down now did i do something no i like picked out my toothbrush but i was also going through an insane time where my husband was drinking and i was getting separated and life was chaos and it was like oh my back went out so it's an interesting question with some of these you know emotionally yeah that there could be other stressors rather than just there being a issue with the back right like when these symptoms flare up it's so it's just a nothing just a point of curiosity kind of contemplate all the time on holiday yeah i had no symptoms when i was away i see it all the time that's wild right [Music] yes yeah yeah and it's something i mean it's literally like our axis of support right so your body's like lay down now take a break but depending on synthesis really you shouldn't be getting until everybody listen don't get imaging for six weeks [Music] all right so here's a little picture of daily life in the spine so exactly what we were just talking about which is that this tends to happen right this kind of talking under tends to happen people walking around like this daily life so this is kind of how we wind up all the time what margaret you know here we are so and the head forward which can put a lot of pressure back here and cause us to be even more kyphotic so again using the yoga practice as a way to align the pelvis align the ribs the spine and then finding a head neck position where the neck is supported and then encouraging maybe our students to take that off the mat so there's awareness off the mat so one other thing that happens here that i want to talk about is the hamstrings in the lumbar spine so you can see here how she's tucked a little bit like this isn't totally neutral her sitting bones aren't going up there in line with her spine but she's pulling her tailbone down so what happens when our hamstrings are tight and i'll show you sitting in dandasana which is one of the poses we did earlier here is that if my hamstring my hamstrings attach from where to where do you guys remember where the insertions are where are your hammies where do they start yes sit bones they start up here right and where do they end here right so they cross the hips and the knees right so if i'm sitting down imagine this thing here and here right if i'm sitting down and my hamstrings start here and they go to here if they're tight i will do this because it's being pulled under so far so good okay but the solution for this is quite nice because they also cross my knees if i bend my knees i create slack which means i can sit up right but when people are moving through daily life they may not be thinking about these sorts of things so the the yoga's capacity to stretch your hamstrings and stuff like down dog or any of these poses can be good for relieving this tailbone tucked under thing if that's being caused by tight hamstrings can help you out um in this particular case for downward facing dog what might you cue her to do in order to find a more neutral spine bend her knees and lift her tailbone yep so she needs to find the slack first which you can find by bending her knees and then she'll be able to lengthen her sitting bones up towards the sky more she's got two which action does she have too much of in this pose inner thighs back or tailbone down she has too much tailbone down so she needs more say it proud thank you right so she needs more inner thighs back so where might this this issue show up this tight hamstring issue name some poses where we might experience the tightness of our hamstrings forward fold exactly so rather than being here in our forward fold right people might come into it like this right and then be like oh have you seen this before right right so again if they bend their knees they can find more space to come down so since people have tight hamstrings good thing for us to keep in our back pocket all right awesome here we are so why don't you get into pairs or groups of threes and run through your review questions and then we will move on and do our next anatomy session [Music]