The sacrum and the coccyx--which is the last three sacral bones fused together--form the bottom of the pelvis.

A lot of weight presses down on this joint, (a good half of the body) and it is the one that most people have trouble with because if it has lost its flexibility due to injury or emotional holding patterns, then you get low back pain, hip problems, knee pain, and/or foot pain.

Like the neck, it is a negotiation point between one part of the body (the trunk), and another (the legs).

The sacrum has to swing, more side to side if you are a woman, and back and forth if you walk like a man. If the sacrum can't swing, it hinders the free movement of the legs, and increases stress on the joints and the spine.

Freeing up the sacrum is not easily accomplished once it has gotten out of balance. Auto injuries, bad posture, long bouts of watching TV, driving, or sitting at the computer can all impact the health of this very important joint.

A good chiropractor can help get the spine working again. If you have bad posture or sitting habits, core strengthening, movement education, and physical therapy can help. If you stand on you feet all day, that really puts a stress on your back, so you want to make sure you have a really good pair of shoes with cushion and arch support, and you may want to invest in support socks or pantyhose. There are some wonderful solutions out there for the people who stand up all day for their work. 

Work is the reason yoga was originally started, thousands of years ago, as a way for farmers who did back-breaking labor to restore and recharge their bodies at the end of the day. It became formalized, integrated into Eastern culture and then, more recently, our Western lifestyle. It is a great deal more scientific than one would think just looking at the people in a class twisting and bending in strange positions. The science evolved over the thousands of years that it has been practiced, and a properly trained yoga instructor should be able to help you let go of the end of your work day too.

It is always good to find a yoga teacher you trust, and start out gently when you first start to do yoga to help your back. The body has to learn new things and unlearn bad habits. In class you will learn how to move, stretch, and strengthen in all the dimensions that the asanas provide. Alignment is especially important, and the best yoga teachers will watch the class, and circulate to help correct a pose so that you get the most benefit out of it.

Be kind, be calm, and be happy all the time when doing yoga. If the mind is disturbed when you are doing yoga, then you are not doing yoga, you are doing exercise.

As you grow older, it becomes more and more apparent how important the mental calmness is in moving through the asanas.

The breath will help you know if you are calm, if you are breathing freely, no matter how hard the asana is, then you are probably getting the most benefit. It's not how much you can twist, or exhibit your beautiful body, but how well you feel connected inside. 

The reason for good postural balance, and how it ties into the central nervous system, can be seen by examining the junction of the head with the neck. Just under the skull lies a region that moves spinal fluid from the head to the trunk of the body. It has been referred to by some writers as the cranial pump, although there is no actual mechanical pump there, as you can see with the heart, let us take a look at this area anyway.

As we walk, the head rocks on a bone called the atlas. This creates a natural pumping action--if your head is in balance. The pumping action becomes restricted if the head is out of balance.

The atlas is the first of seven neck vertebrae. All mammals have seven neck vertebrae, due to a change in our Hox gene expression, and there was an evolutionary trade-off for that, it allowed us to develop a special bony structure that allows for nursing our young. We can lay on our sides and turn our trunks to look at our children. If you look at early dinosaurs and fishes, they don't have that kind of bony structure. They didn't need to nurse their young. They had eggs.

The human neck is unique in the mammalian family because we evolved a special shape and curvature that allows us to walk upright and swivel our heads to see pretty much all there is around us.

All of the vertebrae in our spine work as a unit--if we are working correctly--without injury or abnormalities.

The imbalance: that is where things begin to hurt.

Without the free flow of healthy spinal fluid from the skull to the sacrum, there is a series of mechanical, bioelectrical, and neurochemical stresses that contribute to a state of pain.

Think of it like a car: when you first get a car, it should work well, be clean, and have that new car smell. As you drive it out of the dealer's parking lot, maybe a bug hits the windshield. You take it grocery shopping and somebody leaves a scratch down the side from their bad driving. And then it gets a flat. It is really hard to drive with a flat, (I know from personal experience) because it wasn't designed to run in an imbalanced state.

Some things can be fixed in the human body when it gets dinged, some can't. But one thing that always helps is to keep the fluids going and topped off.

So that's why your yoga teacher keeps telling you to drink lots of water after class. Always a good idea. And don't forget those electrolytes!

The human body is bilateral, bipedal, and has two sides of the brain. When we walk, we usually move forward, and in order to do that we must lean forward, and put our weight on one foot, then lean again, and put weight on the other foot. The motion of walking consists of a series of logarithmic waves which add up to a spiral, if you are watching from above like a bird.

This can be proven by studying human anatomy. If you take the human body apart and peer into its depths, at the diaphragm you will see an assymmetry where the vagus nerve comes out of the spine. If you look at the lungs, there is an assymmetry because of the space the heart takes up on the left side. If you look at the shoulders and the hips, usually one shoulder is higher than the other, and the opposite hip is higher (to compensate). If you look at the a person lying down, at the soles of their feet, one foot will be more turned out than the other. All of these assymmetries add up as turns, which eventually leads to a spiral that stretches from the top of the crown to the bottom of the feet. We are built with an inner spring. It is a natural shock absorber for the human body structure.

This assymmetry is a good design. If we were perfectly symmetrical, then it would not be as easy to walk on two feet, which is why it was so hard to build robots that walk. The scientists and engineers in robotics had to study intensely what makes us able to walk, and to somehow mimic that in metal, cables, and microchips. It is a very complex and difficult task, especially at the levels of the hips, knees, and feet.

However, there is one thing that humans and bipedal robots have in common: they both have to deal with gravity. Indeed, it is gravity that makes walking possible at all, otherwise we would just float off into space, or tie ourselves to something rooted in the earth, like a tree.

Gravity pulls down on soft tissue, and it is our skeletal posture (held in a dynamic state of balancing, falling, and catching ourselves) and core strength that keeps us upright. As we age, we begin to collapse in gravity, and the way we collapse is a spiral.

To see that, you can look at an older person, and notice three things: one shoulder is higher than the other, one foot, or both feet are turned out, or turned in, their shoulders are bent forward, (or they can be overly straight, the so-called military stance) and their knees are stiff when walking. That is because they have lost some of the original flexibility, and are compensating for the loss of the spring in their step.

To put the spring back in your step three things need to happen: lengthening of contracted muscles and ligaments, integration of right and left hemispheres, and strengthening of the abdominals, pelvic muscles, and midback. There must also be a neurological rebalancing of the spine from front to back. Some people lean into their future, some people are drawn back by fear in the spine, and some people have learned how to be in the moment.

Yoga is designed to help in all of these dimensions, especially learning to live in the present moment.

For years I looked for a solution for leg cramps, which was brought on by activating the legs in yoga class. I found that if my students got good, deep sleep, helped their electrolytes by drinking mineral water, or drank orange juice/banana smoothies regulary, they had fewer leg cramps. I have heard magnesium helps as well, so sometimes a soak in Epsom salts in the bath will help.There is a magnesium oil and a homeopathic remedy with quinine on the market that are also supposed to help. I have used the homeopathic, but have yet to try the magnesium oil. Both can be found at your local health food store, or on the internet.

These cramps can also show up in the lower back, after shoulder stand and doing forward and back bending poses. Then lying on your back with your knees up will help calm the area.

When you get a foot and leg massage, that sometimes can induce a cramp. By putting pressure on the soles of the feet by standing or walking, or even have another person apply a broad, firm pressure over the whole area of the sole will help the cramp to stop.

Where the cramp is located can be significant in revealing a postural imbalance or an underlying condition, such as the aforesaid insomnia. With the help of your doctor, you may be able to discover the cause (or perhaps multiple causes) of your leg cramps.

Everytime you cough, you use a lot of muscles and nerve reflexes. It is your body going to war against any and all irritants in your respiratory system.

The mechanism of a cough is as follows:

The diaphragm and external intercostal muscles (the ones between the ribs) contract, creating a negative pressure around the lung.
Air rushes into the lungs in order to equalise the pressure.
The glottis closes and the vocal cords contract to shut the larynx.
The abdominal muscles contract to accentuate the action of the relaxing diaphragm; simultaneously, the other expiratory muscles contract. These actions increase the pressure of air within the lungs.

Then you cough. The vocal cords relax and the glottis opens, releasing air at over 100 mph! A cough has all the force of an minor explosion.

The point of the vigorous release of air is to rid the body of dust, fumes, smoke, bacteria, viruses, anything the body needs to eliminate from the lungs and airways. Even The bronchi and non-cartilaginous portions of the trachea get involved, collapsing to form slits through which the air is forced, which clears out any irritants attached to the respiratory lining.

If you cough long enough and hard enough, your intercostals will grow tired and sore to the touch. Even the joints where the ribs meet the back and sternum can grow inflamed, causing sharp stabbing pain with every breath. This is a condition called intercostal strain. In its mild form there will be a painful ache or soreness located around the ribcage.  The pain is aggravated by deep breathing, side bending and twisting. It can be treated with rest, ice, and a little aspirin. But if there is severe bruising, and muscle tearing, there may be bleeding, and should not be treated at home, but by a professional: your primary physician and/ or chiropractor. Physical manipulation may be needed to put the ribs back in place, and ultrasound can ease the pain, speed healing.

Bringing the body back to normal function, and getting comfortable with taking a full deep breath may take weeks, so be patient with yourself if you develop this after a bad cold, or any of a number of respiratory ailments that can lead to prolonged coughing.

I have a funny relationship with colds. I get about one a year, and I use that time to do a cleanse, dropping all my favorite habits, like the morning cup of coffee, and eat only the purest of foods, be lazy, read the book that got put aside, and wear big fluffy slippers.

I do a lot of natural things: salt water sniffs and gargling with Himilayan salt, deep breathing in lemon peel steam, and drink Linden/elderberry tea.

This year was different. I got my flu shot, and that week, caught my husband's cold, and that cold would not go away. I usually get over my colds quickly, 3 days most of the time, because I don't fight them, but this one dug in deep, and went on for 10 days. I was miserable and depressed because I couldn't do my walking regime, it was windy and cold outside, and the walks were giving me migraines. If I did yoga, I got headaches from bending over. If I went to the gym, I got dirty looks because of my sniffling and snorting into tissues. And the worst part is I got a sinus infection and had to go on antibiotics.

That messed up my gut, and I couldn't eat yogurt because that was dairy, and all the other yogurts cost so much, I can't afford them. (My local organic grocer has soy, coconut, and all kinds of wonderful fermented beverages, and they cost a pretty penny. You spend $75, just to get one bag of groceries, and you wonder what you're going to eat besides your designer yogurt.)

So I fell back on some old probiotics I had tucked away in a drawer. That did it.

Finally, at the end of two weeks of honking and suffering, I had my nostrils back, and I could do yoga without getting headaches. I could go to the gym, walk up stairs, and hooray, I could even ride my bicycle!

Heaven.

In evolutionary history, the infant clung to its mother while the mother moved around and hunted for food and shelter. If the infant lost its balance, the startle reflex helped it to regain its hold on its mother by crying out, extending the head and the legs, throwing the arms up and out with the palms up, and flexing the thumb, which acts like a hook.

Once the infant felt reconnected with its mother, the reflex relaxed and the infant was comforted by the mother.

It disappears after the first two months, or so it is said, but we still jump, thrash with our arms, open our mouths and eyes wide, and let out a cry to indicate we have been surprised.

Once the surprise is over, we have various reactions: denial, laughter, or anger at the person who surprised us. If it is a particularly good horror movie it is acceptable to cling to one's date and upset their popcorn. But for most of  us, mother is not there, and even if she was, she'd give us a strange look if we latched on to her.

There is an adult startle reflex: jump, scream, run, and/or strike out. In certain people, they are able to contain it, and respond rationally to a situation, using the frontal cortex instead of the brain stem.

This is called self-control, and eventually it takes it toll.

Yet it is a prized attribute for our society, and is a good thing to learn.

It helps control needless spending, auto accidents, and intra-family murders.

A good idea if we want to continue as a species.

However, inside your body all kinds of things are happening: the stomach tightens, heart pumps faster, the blood flows to the extremities, and the feet get ready to spring.

Unwinding becomes very important it one leads a stressful life, especially if you are in public service. (Hence the "going postal" jokes.)

The feeling of being wound up is an actual fact, and the body contracts in a spiral, centered around the stomach, where the stress goes first, turning off the digestion so that all the blood is ready and available for fleeing or fighting. (Or if you are a bunny rabbit, freezing and looking invisible.)

One of the best ways to unwind is to move, and let go of the stress.

More about unwinding next time...until then have a great life.

One of the most interesting techniques I learned from yoga was to take a breathing break. It can happen in seconds, or last two hours, but I know that when I am tired, pouring more caffeine in my body is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Same with alcohol.

I am never happy with the results.

Breathing softly and deeply allows the tissues in your lungs to absorb the oxygen in the air.

It also allows the pituitary, thyroid, and adrenals to make hormonal adjustments that make your body more efficient.

It makes good sense to take a break and take time to breathe. It makes even more sense to do it slowly and softly, and to give it a chance to percolate. (def.,filter or trickle through)

Same as thoughts.

The body has a way of adapting to stress: your breathing pattern. A good example of this is when you climb a set of stairs: as you approach a level of oxygen stress, you start breathing harder. This gets more oxygen to your heart, and the muscles in your legs, where you need it. That's your body shifting gears.

When you stop, your breathing gradually slows down. That's shifting gears again.

When doing yoga, learning to manage your breathing through breathing practice is an essential part of learning how to shift gears, so you always have the energy you need.

Yoga is a good complement to aerobic exercise. It will deepen your lung capacity. Your lungs relax and open up, your connection to your central nervous system improves, and the musculature surrounding your lungs gets fed. Feeding the muscles the nutirients and oxygen they need is the other hand of strengthening your muscles by challenging muscles to make them stronger. 

Four things happen to your body when you become bed-ridden after a surgery or an injury. Your spine becomes more elongnated and loses its curves. This curvature is your shock absorber in gravity. The second thing that happens is you lose muscle tone, so exercising in bed to help retain muscle tone is recommended until you can get out of bed, and return to an upright position. The third thing that happens is your bones lose mass and become brittle: there are ways to counteract that loss. The fourth thing that becomes obvious when you try to move is that you become stiff and creaky: this can be countered by gentle joint mobilization exercises.

The body is dependent on a fluid that is found in every living body tissue: ground substance. It contains all the nutrients needed for rejuvenation and repair of damaged tissue. Movement drives the circulation of this fluid, and by doing an ever-increasing strengtening regime while recovering from injury or surgery, it is suggested that you move very, very gently your joints, your shoulders, hips, and torso to help the ground substance circulate. Otherwise it turns to a thick gel: like jello, only instead of cold that makes the jello gel, it is the lack of movement that causes ground substance to become thick and useless.

On the bright side, many, many professions have looked at this problem, and developed exercises that will help.

While you are exercising hold a picture in your mind that you will get out of bed and when you do you will feel grateful that you prepared yourself for it by retaining as much muscle tone and bone strength as you can.