What is the Piriformus?

The Piriformis is one of the ‘deep 6’ hip muscles responsible for external rotation of the thigh bone. It is also a muscle that sits right in the middle of the gluteals and often responsible for that pain you get right in the middle of your butt cheek. Pam’s video will teach you manual massage (ball rolling) techniques to release the Piriformis to reduce pain and increase muscle performance.

Watch the Video and Learn How to Roll!

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For more information or to connect with Pam, connect at www.pamgodbois.com

Engagment Vs. Alignment

There are so many opinions about how to do each posture in yoga, and they each of their benefits and their draw backs. The major confusion however comes from not understanding the difference between a muscle engagement and an alignment. Alignment is a placement of your bones or a set of joint articulations. A muscle engagement within a static posture is what we would call isometric – engagement without movement. To help you understand, get into chair pose with your knees bent. Ask yourself if your quads are active? Yes, of course they are, but the quads are the muscles that straighten your legs and yet your knees are still bent. THIS is why so many get confused, you can engage muscles that support the alignment, and you can engage muscles that appose the alignment.

Balancing Action Vs. Fundamental Action

In Chromatic Yoga I created two terms to help understand isometric engagements. Balancing action is the muscle engagement that apposes the alignment – Quadriceps activation in chair pose is the perfect example. Fundamental Action is an isometric engagement of same muscles as the joint alignment, so in the case of chair pose you would have to engage your hamstrings which is challenging due to the relationship to gravity in that posture. An easier example is plank pose, you have to activate your triceps in order to keep the elbows straight. To clear up the how to of chaturanga I have created the following video. 

See the full blog and chaturanga part 2 on theyogimatt.com/free

The Chaturanga Breakdown

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To see Matt's full tour schedule, trainings, and online training tools visit www.TheYogiMatt.com and follow him on Instagram at @TheYogiMatt

Gluteus Maximus

In the practice of yoga, I often hear well meaning teachers use the cue “relax the butt” positions that require hip extension, like backbends.  While I get the intention is to decrease the risk of lumbar spine compression in back bends, my question is, Does it really do that, or is it simply reinforcing a weak back body chain

After many years struggling with pain in my lower back and an avoidance of any kind of back bends, I have begun to realize, it is the mechanics themselves that were causing me problems. See the video above to gain a better understanding of the movements caused by engagement of the Gluteus Maximus, and see how firing up these muscles can decrease pain and improve your strength and range of motion.

 Get Your Glutes Engaged with These Simple Steps

Alginment Ideals

In Chromatic Yoga we look at alginment from the standpoint of bennefits and drawbacks wrather than right or wrong. There are thousands of alignments that are excellent and only a few that have the potential for harm that we would likely opt out of. In the case of down dog – because most students have been told to relax their shoulders whenever their arms are over head there are tons of shoulder impingement issues in the Yoga community around the world. This is why I created this video to help you avoid impingement so you can continue to practice comfortably in your body. There are many ways to avoid shoulder impingement but many of them are complex and challenging, this is perhaps the simplest and easiest to attain in your practice. 

For the full blog and the 2nd video please visit www.theyogimatt.com/free

Connect with Matt

To see Matt's full tour schedule, trainings, and online training tools visit www.TheYogiMatt.com and follow him on Instagram at @TheYogiMatt