It took me a while to get into Lotus, but the work has been worth every second. I'm literally obsessed about how the human body works and ways that it adapts to physical stress. I've never been a big fan of Yoga(mainly because of all the Hippies and all the people who opt to dip themselves in
pitually oil rather than wear deodorant), so I wanted to figure out how I could get into it using my body of resources that I've accumulated through my education. .
Right off the bat I'd like to say that this process was easier for me than most because I was 25 when I started and am dealing with a body that I've kept well oiled. Despite this I've had a few major obstacles that I had to get over. The first was(and still is) my right hip. When I first started to do
zazen, I had almost no external rotation in that hip(I'll explain what that means soon). Most people have one leg that is longer than the other. This usually isn't much of a problem as the discrepancy is usually minor and well adapted to. In my case, my right leg is
much longer(a few inches) than my left due to my baseball career. I was a right handed pitcher from the time I was 7 until I was about 24. That means I lifted my left leg up in the air,placing all of my body weight on my right and used it to drive forward. Do this a few million times and you can see how something might be off a little. The other thing about this motion is that it tends to create hyper mobility in the landing leg(my left), which means I have an extreme amount of external rotation in that hip. Because of this asymmetry I've was able to do a comfortable half lotus with my left leg on top from day one. It took me close to a year and a half before I was able to even get my right leg anywhere near a quarter lotus. This imbalance has also started to screw with my back.
What does any of this mean and what does it have to do with the Lotus? Well, to get into any of the Lotus positions without destroying your knees you
must be able to externally rotate the femurs in the hip. What is external rotation of the hip? Any easy way to explain it would be to sit in a chair and prop on ankle over the opposite knee. The closer the propped up thigh moves towards that floor, the more external hip rotation you have. If your thigh is not at least parallel to the floor, you will more than likely damage your knee trying to get into the Lotus(there are exceptions, but this usually has to do with the individuals limb length and is not subject to change).
So how does one gain the mobility to externally rotate the hip enough to get it up there? This is where things can get complex. There are a number of muscles that affect external rotation of the hip the major ones are the
Gluteus minimus,
gluteus medius,
pectinius,
psoas(more on this one later),
iliacus,
graclilis,
adductor magnus,
adductor longus, and
adductor brevis and the Tensor fascia
latae. Collectively these muscles are
strong and are designed for strength and stability. The hip is not a very mobile joint to say the least. Add to that a lifetime of sitting in chairs and you have a problem.
Most people will logically address this issue with stretching. The problem here is that contrary to popular belief,
you can't alter the length of a muscle. What you are born with is what you got. The only situations where muscles have been show to be able to alter length is when researchers have immobilized a limb in a stretch position for weeks at a time. In this situation the body adapted by adding contractile units to the muscle belly thus producing greater length. Unless you are willing to have yourself wrenched into a Full Lotus and then hold it for a month with out moving, then the muscles responsible for a Full Lotus will not alter length using static stretching.
So one might ask how stretching increases one's range of motion. Well, first off in most cases stretching is highly overrated as a form of fitness improvement. If it is done incorrectly it will do more harm than good. Most people need more strength about a joint. The way most people stretch, they will do nothing but tear muscle fiber and create dangerous laxity in there joints. The type of stretching I'm referring to is the kind where you actually
feel a stretch. If you've gone this far you will damage your tendons and ligaments(which aren't meant to stretch).
Proper stretching allows one to gain more mobility by tricking the nervous system and breaking up
fascial scars, thus training the muscles to return to their genetic resting length. See, most of us have the muscle length to get into lotus, its just that you've got them stuck in the "on" position and effectively placed them in shrink wrap. Typically the range of motion that you are able to move through is the one that you chronically put your self in. Once you start to go past the range that your body is accustomed to going through, the nervous system will enact something called the Golgi Tendon Organ Reflex. This is a protective reflex to prevent tissue tearing. The nervous system fears that the
musculo-
tendounous junction is not strong enough to withstand the range your trying to go through and it jerks back to prevent you from going further. If at this point you try to go further you will just tear muscle tissue and connective tissue. During traditional stretching, when one takes the stretch to the point of feeling a good deal of tension in the targeted area, all that is happening is your brain saying,"Screw you
bucko!" Until the nervous system gets the signal that it is OK to relax you will never be able to go past your current range.
So how can we get around this? There are a few options.
The first one is what I consider to be the best thing I ever tripped over. It is called Self-
Myofascial Release. What you do is purchase a foam roller(watch these videos:http://www.coreperformance.com/search/?keywords=foam+rollers) and roll around on the areas where you are restricted. The dense nature of the foam roll kneads out adhesion's and scar tissue in the fascia encasing the muscles and the pressure from the roll inhibits the Golgi Tendon Organ reflex and signals the muscle spindles to relax. The videos that I provided a link to explain the procedure pretty well. Here is a great e-manual showing you SMR:http://www.robertsontrainingsystems.com/downloads/SMR-manual.pdf. If you can't procure a foam roll, use a tennis ball instead.
Warning: this WILL hurt like all get out at first, but the relief you feel after is well worth it. The more a spot hurts, the more you need it there. It's like a deep tissue massage in that you feel like a million bucks after. Lately I've found that foam roll exercise alone have been enough to get me
preped for the Full Lotus. As a bonus, if I happen to be extremely sleepy(which I always am) the foam roll exercises wake me up. The whole routine should only take a few minutes and you don't really even have to do all parts of the body(just make sure to do your spine,
glutes,
TFL, and
adductors). I really can't praise this thing enough as it has helped way more than just my Lotus.
After you have gone through the foam roller series you will benefit much more from stretching. Once again, traditional stretching probably won't cut it(actually there is a good body of scientific evidence that it does NOTHING positive at all). If you are going to do static stretching(where you move yourself into position and hold) you need to move into position
extremely carefully to the point of
gentle tension and than stay in that spot until you feel the tension subside. Gentle is the operative word there. What we are trying to do is tell the CNS that it is OK to be there. After a few seconds you should be able to go slightly further. This approach is great...if your patient and attentive. You can't time the stretch in this form of stretching as you are waiting for the a relaxation response. The amount of time this take varies and is dependent on a number of things. Personally, I think this is the best way to go, although it will take some time to develop your Lotus. How long? I have no idea. To learn this method(and there is more about it to learn than what I just wrote; it isn't quite as simple as I just explained) I recommend this book:http://www.drstevenstark.com/ . There is a great FAQ section on the site that goes into detail about the method. IMO this is the best book both educationally and practically on stretching ever written. A good number of my correspondents agree.
A quicker, but more intense and dangerous method would be
PNF stretching. I won't bore you anymore than I have with the details of this time tested protocol(this is considered by many to be the ultimate form of stretching). Suffice it to say that this is an even quicker method to tricking the stretch reflex.
PNF stretching involves moving into the stretched position, contracting the stretched muscle isometrically for 6-10 seconds, relaxing, moving through an increased range, and repeating for 3 cycles. An example of a
great stretch performed in this manner of the Lotus is this:http://www.stretchman.com/video.html. The book by this author is also highly recommended and represents the most accessible guide to
PNF on the market(it also comes with a very helpful DVD). I do the seated version shown in the video throughout the day and before I do
zazen. Works like a charm. If you could only do one stretch for the Lotus I would choose this one.
The third and final option I will mention is Active Isolated Stretching. This is yet another method that tricks the stretch reflex, this time using a contraction of the opposing muscle group to relax the stretched muscle. The stretch is then held for a 1.5-2 seconds. Some good video's of this being done are here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tVWsSoI_ro&feature=related. The advantage of this method is that it is done in a repetitive fashion which allows blood, lymph, and other fluids to reach the cells and joints. The downside is that it is quite labor intensive. I'm still learning this method so I'd prefer not to comment on it any further.
I think I've typed enough for now and probably have bored you with things you didn't care about. To sum everything up here are the key things you need to know about how to stretch to get into a safe lotus: externally rotate at the hip, don't force yourself up by hinging at the knee, get a foam roller and do some
SMR(IMO this one is critical for us Westerners), and choose a method of stretching that will teach your nervous system to allow movement through a greater range.
The Full Lotus will take time to develop, but anyone who has ever sat in it will tell you it is worth the effort. Work at it and you will get there(unless you've had reconstructive surgery in the effected areas). In my next post I'd like to go into WHY the Full Lotus is so great and crushes all other sitting forms(the half Lotus running a close second).
Peace out,
Al
"Satori is being enlightened to the fact that we are deluded. There is then the desire, however small, to stop these deluded acts. That is how ordinary people are saved by zazen. So we realize, beyond a doubt, our ordinariness through our zazen practice, and any departure from zazen (Buddha) will give rise to the inability to deal with these delusions and hence we will lose our way. We can say that the world has gone astray because it can't deal with its delusions...All the troubles in this world, political, economic and so forth, are created from situations in which the awareness of one's ordinariness is absent.
