Body Movement, Spine Health, & Emotional Hygiene
When we held our last workshop combining spinal movement (backbending), Emotional Hygiene, and Yin Yoga/ Yoga Nidra, we got a question about the 'why?' behind this trio of practices. While every participant agreed they loved the combination, it wasn't clear what was actually happening.
Let's break down why the backbending is effective using some personal experience and some research that has only started to explore the connection between working with our bodies and healing our nervous system.
One of the consequences of trauma, particularly complex PTSD (CPTSD) and PTSD is that it affects our nervous system’s ability to self-regulate. Depending on the person and circumstances, the nervous system either gets stuck in an “on” or “off” position. The “on” position is going to feel like the “fight or flight” response and bring anxiety and panic. The “off” position leaves us in the experience of depression, disconnection, lethargy (GoodTherapy).
A healthy nervous system is designed to move between the parasympathetic (“rest & digest”) and sympathetic states (“fight or flight”) automatically and, oftentimes, likely out of our awareness. There’s an emotional component at play here as well, which I'll get to in a moment. The idea of our emotions as tools and the process going in a specific order is related to our ability to move out of a chronically stuck nervous system response.
When we encounter a situation that causes an immediate reaction of fear, we start a chain of events. Typically (but not always) we realize that we’re afraid. Say for example, you’re watching a scary movie and you realize your palms are sweating, you’re very focused on the screen, any loud or unexpected noises make you jump.
Your sympathetic nervous system is likely activated in this situation and in tandem, you’re experiencing fear. In this scenario, you have ways to protect yourself available to you in that moment. You could turn off the movie and walk away. If you do that, your nervous system (if it’s healthy) will be able to complete its cycle and return to parasympathetic once you’ve ended the threat.
If your nervous system is chronically “stuck” the outcome would likely be different. You may not feel any activation of the sympathetic nervous system at all. You may not be aware that fear is present and therefore don’t engage any protection mechanisms. Alternatively, you may feel a disproportionate amount of fear while watching this scary movie, yet not be aware of any protective options. This is where we’re trying to do the work with backbending and Yoga Nidra. It’s in this place where the nervous system is “stuck” and we don’t have the corresponding emotional process working well enough to help us get unstuck.
I started to say above that the primary emotions get triggered in a specific order beginning with fear, moving to anger, then to sadness, then to joy. It’s safe to say that if our emotional response ends with fear, we don’t complete our emotional cycle. And this cycle happens in conjunction with our nervous system response. If we’re afraid, but able to protect ourselves (with a healthy nervous system), then we can return to parasympathetic nervous system. When our nervous system isn’t healthy, it takes a two-pronged approach to bring it back to a state of health.
In the World According to the Westfeldt Institute, this is where we work on getting our primary emotion tools working and we actively restore health to the nervous system, which is the physical work of backbending and Yoga Nidra/Yin Yoga. When we do our backbending practice, we activate the sympathetic nervous system. You might be thinking, “wait, that’s what we don’t want, right?”. If we remember that with CPTSD and PTSD, we often end up with a chronically “stuck” system, creating activation is a great outcome. We get to experience a shift and this feels really good (it feels like a rush of vitality and exhilaration).
We really believe it’s possible to heal ourselves of CPTSD and trauma, but not with just one tool. We can’t just focus on the body, excluding the emotions, and we can’t just work on the emotions, excluding the body. While there are other ways to activate our nervous system and experience a shift, the backbending practice has the additional benefit of restoring health to our spine, which is the extension of our central nervous system. As Esak explains, the only way to really improve circulation in this area is through movement, using the full range of motion of the spine as intended. Circulation is required for maintaining health tissues that are well lubricated and nourished. A healthy spine = a healthy nervous system.
Beyond the benefit of increasing spine health, backbending does a few other important things that help us heal trauma and CPTSD:
It helps us establish connection with our bodies and increases body awareness, something that can be very difficult, especially with certain types of trauma like sexual violation.
It helps our body expand through the ribs and chest, improving breathing capability and restoring elasticity to tissues that have become rigid through contained breathing and patterns of holding our bodies in protective positions (like shoulders slumped, heart withdrawing into the body).
It improves our circulation throughout the body from head to toes.
It improves our posture by opening the front of the chest and strengthening muscles all along the spine and back body, which has an effect on our mood and self-confidence.
By learning to breathe through discomfort and activation of the sympathetic nervous system in our backbends, we’re helping rewire ourselves to take a calmer approach to nervous system activation when there is no active safety threat.
Backbending stimulates the vagus nerve, signaling to the body to destress.
Backbending does have an impact on the psoas muscle, but this is going to be addressed more through the emotional work and the Yoga Nidra practices
From an energy-based health perspective such as is found in Chinese medicine and its many derivatives and cousins, physical or emotional disease including trauma are caused by blocks to flows of energy (chi) from and to organs and muscle groups. This is especially true of the muscles of the breath cage including rib muscles and the diaphragm, and the organs contained by them, all of which can be opened, expanded, and enervated by backbending.
The complimentary practice of Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra help return our nervous system to its parasympathetic state, thereby completing the cycle of activation we started with the backbending practice. Those who tried this powerful combination said it was “life-changing, but hard to describe” with awareness that a shift did happen. We believe that experience was moving out of the chronically stuck state of your nervous system with activation and the soothing. We’re basically hacking our nervous system and restoring balance to the body!
