Bring your Heart Over Your Pelvis

[LockUpYourDrawers]

Am I the only one?

AIBU that a lot of the instructions given in yoga or exercise are a total turn-off because I don't actually understand what to do.
"Feel your diaphragm moving up as you bring your stomach slowly back to your tailbone"- wtf? Then they give you a few seconds to do this and I panic thinking I must be the only one who doesn't know what this means, looks like or feels like?

I really do try.

I think my knowledge of anatomy is poor. Also I am maybe too fat to really sense my stomach moving back towards my tailbone?

Is it an imaginination exercise or a real thing? I'm actually quite good at imagination, imagine you're on a desert island, you can hear the waves type thing.
But "Align your heart, pelvis and feet and then breathe into this position" is meaningless to me so I have to fake it.

YANBU - the only time I sensed my stomach moving towards my tailbone was after a bad sandwich

Oh my god this! My favourite so far has been “breathe through the spine” don’t think that part does that

Thank god it’s not just me!

I’ve just tried it...and I think I got it

You breathe in but breathe low so it feels like your stomach has moved down.

Or maybe I’m talking bollocks

I reckon if you were to exercise more often you'd become more aware of how your body is moving and it would make more sense. Though I totally agree that a lot of the yoga stuff is a bit wishy washy.. "sit bones" is a particularly one, and I once did a class where the teacher kept going on about letting your womb open up and feeling your ovaries blossom.

My yoga teacher describes it as breathing through chest, belly and ribs. If you place your hand, you can feel them moving.

Yes, you do gain more body awareness as you practice exercise. But the weird crap yoga teachers come out with often doesn’t help.

I went to a class for a while where the teacher was a lovely but extremely woo American. She’d start out each class with some kind of meditative intention or something. I remember one class sitting concentrating really hard on not laughing as she repeatedly instructed us to ‘be like a tree’. There were all sort of weird comparisons between humans and trees in it that just made no anatomical sense but I couldn’t listen properly for fear of losing it and never being able to stop laughing.

Yes! Thanks for saying what I think 😂

Thank you for this OP, I genuinely thought it was just me!. I've gone back to Joe Wicks, even though he pretends to be out of breath after 4 sit ups!

“Come up, one vertebrae at a time“.

I don’t have that many increments of coming up. I’m either up, or down.

This kind of crap is why I stopped going to yoga.

This thread is making me laugh! I love yoga but am at some of things the teachers come out with sometimes!

Totally get what you're saying! I was told to breathe into my legs yesterday. And once in a yoga class to engage my pelvic floor, which I know how to do, it was just a bit awkward in a mixed class!

To me the instructions are more about actually encouraging you to think about your posture and breathing. We spend so much time slouched or hunched, it's great to be actively encouraged to think am I actually standing upright or is my neck bent forward? (As it is now while I type onto my phone! ) I just use it as a cue to think about how I'm standing/sitting/lying.

"Align your heart, pelvis and feet and then breathe into this position"

So, just 'stand up straight', to you and me. However, how you breathe into that, is anybodies guess.

My DD sent me a link to Yoga for older people who are new to the whole thing.

Firstly, when you're new to something it's no good the person showing you what to do whizzing through it and changing position so quickly that you're given no time to even begin to get the hang of it; and I speak as a very flexible, slim, fit older person.

And secondly, speak up, some of us old folk are a bit hard of hearing. You might think your voice is soft and soothing, I just think you need to make yourself heard.

Yoga is supposed to help you relax and calm you. After about 10 minutes of trying to follow this whirlwind and straining to hear what she was saying, even with my hearing aid in, I gave up as it was all becoming way too stressful.

I had a yoga teacher that told us all to ‘pick up a pencil’ when she wanted us to engage our pelvic floor. 😳

Slightly off topic but I did a first aid course once and the instructor was talking about people who fracture their femur.

One of my colleagues was very surprised to learn that you had a bone in your thigh.

heylittlehenwhenwhenwhen
One of my colleagues was very surprised to learn that you had a bone in your thigh

Wonder if they did biology at school - we had one of those plastic skeletons. What did they think happened above the knee to keep us upright?

Phew, I'm so glad I'm not alone. There are probably other contributing factors (probably don't truly love exercise, probably don't have great posture, don't really persevere with a class if I hear this kind of stuff, don't know a lot about the body, actually don't really like thinking about body parts and am almost squeamish about some of it, shamefully not that interested in the body) but even if I never do a class/ online session again, at least I know now that not everyone else gets something I don't.
A lot of people clearly do though and the instructors themselves surely must.

I think about what they are saying and try to 'feel' it. And inevitably I feel a bit different, and I think, well, it must be that then!

I am a Pilates teacher so I sometimes talk bollocks use anatomical cuing in my classes. Many people have poor body awareness and being told to stand up straight will not have a positive effect on their posture. What you actually want in class is for one person to stop sticking their arse out and another to stop rounding their shoulders so if you can get everyone in the class to bring their shoulders over their pelvis and lengthen their spines then they're all standing up straight. Naturally all this depends on the people in your class understanding what you mean by shoulders, pelvis and spine and on being able to move them in the way that you're suggesting. Usually never happens in an open level class. When you find a teacher who has movement cues that help you to move it's brilliant, but there is definitely not a one size fits all approach. I suggest you try a different teacher. Also yoga teachers talk far too much about heart space for my liking, so you should probably try Pilates instead

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At a pregnancy yoga class i was told to tense the front, then the middle, then the back of my pelvic floor. Im surprised i didnt fart with the amount of weird squeezing and pushing i was doing down there in an attempt to do this! I'm still not sure it's possible to specifically tense a section of your pelvic floor.

I presume it must work for some people, but it's very subjective. I have a great Kundalini yoga DVD and at one point the instructor comes out with, "Zip up your muscles, rectumsexorganandnavel". At first I couldn't make out what he was saying because he said it so fast, then I had a WTF moment. Finally it made sense and I think it is a useful way of visualising that particular exercise.

Oh, cross-post with Titsywoo!

I love yoga but I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this, reminding me of the time a yoga teacher told us to "find your sit bones, moving any flabby bits out of the way" as she man handled her arse cheeks in demonstration

I'd misheard it as sic bones and always wondered what the fuck they were 🤦🏻‍♀️
Thanks for the education 🤣
One vertebrae at a time makes me feel completely incompetent 😩

But in fairness if the instructor said your ischium, rather than sit bones, I’m guessing far fewer people would know what they meant. At least with sit bones there’s a clue in the name....