Scott Anderson, Ph.D.

The old saying a young man with a stiff spine feels old, while an old man with a flexible spine feels young has captured my imagination of late. As my body has aged, I’ve found that there’s a lot of truth to this adage. Over the years my practice has shifted and evolved. For many years, I was enthralled by the outer limits of flexibility, as I believed that flexibility and freedom were related. I spent hours opening my shoulders, spine and hips, and came to enjoy a great deal of flexibility. While my joints could move every which way, my mind seemed to become more rigid as I doggedly pursued flexibility. In my experience, being Gumby-flexible didn’t translate to a more flexible or resilient mind. I ultimately let the uber-flexibility experiment fall away, and focused more on joint stabilization. This focus on stability helped heal my chronic back pain but I found my spine becoming more rigid in the process. And as my spine felt stiffer, I started to feel older and creakier.

Many of us have found a home on our yoga mat, and the comforts of home have helped us reconnect our minds and bodies. The time on the mat has shown us so much. How can we build on what we’ve learned through yoga as we work toward developing whole-body fitness? Nordic Skiing is one of many ways to develop aerobic fitness As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, the science is consistent and clear: Hatha Yoga does not build the kind of aerobic fitness that confers so many great benefits for body and mind. While this may seem like some pretty bad news, all is not for naught. Many of us have learned a lot about our minds and bodies from our yoga practices, and this embodied wisdom can help us explore the territory that lies beyond our comfort zone. When your joints are looser— and many yogis and yoginis were born with a degree of joint laxity— developing heart-healthy aerobic fitness can be more challenging.  The world of fitness, and particularly aerobic fitness, is largely

In talking about fitness and yoga, it’s essential to broach the subject of joint laxity. While those of us in the yoga community often uphold a very flexible body as open,   this flexibility may actually be symptomatic of joint laxity. From the Wikipedia entry on joint laxity: In   a 'normal' body,  ligaments  (which are the tissues that connect bones to each other) are naturally tight in such a way that the joints are restricted to 'normal' ranges of motion. This creates normal joint stability. If muscular control does not compensate for ligamentous laxity,  joint instability  may result. The trait is almost certainly  hereditary , and is usually something the affected person would just be aware of, rather than a serious medical condition.  Ligament laxity is a cause of chronic body pain characterized by loose ligaments. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligamentous_laxity ) As the last sentence of this quote implies, joint laxity isn’t entirel