As Surfers we are constantly rotating our shoulders forward paddling and slouching over our board sitting for waves. In today’s day with cell phones and sitting on the computer, this also has a similar effect to too much forward rotation in our structure. The long term result is chronic pain in the shoulders, upper back and neck.

Being active in releasing pressure in the tension in the neck and shoulders will allow us to stabilize the shoulder’s and begin to correct slouching.

1. Interlace your fingers behind your shoulders, starting with the pinky fingers, with your palms facing the body to keep the chest and shoulders open. Make sure you are comfortable and keep your shoulder blades pulling down to protect your rotator cuff from over-stretching. Keep your thumbs and index fingers open and down and away from the body.

2. If clasping your fingers is uncomfortable and you are not able to keep your shoulders from lifting or coming forward, you can hold a strap between your hands. The ideal way is to make a loop with a yoga strap or belt that is the width of your shoulders. Place your wrists in the loop of the strap and keep your fingers wide open during the stretch as this will facilitate a deeper connection to your core. Use the breathing movements to open the connective tissue in the front body, strengthen the rotator cuff muscles that stabilize the scapula, and stretch the muscles in your chest. Lightly hold the strap behind you with the same intentions of opening the shoulders and chest and contracting your shoulder blades and rhomboids.

3. Take a deep breath in and allow your pelvic floor to open as you feel the breath initiating from the movement of your rib cage and oblique muscles. Imagine a balloon is in your ribs and you are blowing up the balloon with your breath. As you inhale rise up on your toes and contract your back muscles to strengthen your back extensors at the same time you pull back to stretch your chest. Visualize energy rising up the spine allowing your head to be as if floating on top of your spine.

4. On the exhale lower with control and return your heels onto the ground keeping your weight evenly distributed on your feet at the same time maintaining a feeling of keeping length in your trunk. Keep your hands reaching down towards the ground and bring your chin level as the top of the crown on your head lifts towards the sky. Imagine a string at the top of the head lengthening the neck.

5. During exhalation, accentuate the contraction of your muscles of exhalation in the rib and trunk area. Lengthen your waist as you exhale to train your core muscles to stabilize your core rather than flexing the spine which shortens and compresses the natural curves. When we do exhalation movements that cause spinal flexion, it leads to forward head and shoulder carriage than can inhibit our paddling strength and efficiency. The key to the exercise is to work with the breathing muscles in a way that creates a lengthening of the spine whether inhaling or exhaling.

Repeat a few times

Benefits:

The active breath movement on the inhale and squeezing the muscles in contraction, awakens the body, through breath, blood flow, muscles, nervous system, and quick muscle response with control.

Balance and control of movement

Strength

Flexibility with stability

Structural alignment begins to be established and awakened.

~Rochelle Ballard, Yogi, Former Professional Surfer and Founder of Surf Into Yoga

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Tony Yaniro was a serious game changer for the world of rock climbing. While others were satisfied with climbing five twelve he felt the need to go further. Establishing Grand Illusion as the first five thirteen, he planted a stepping stone for the masses.

Tony is well known for hi establishing all over California, but he also left his mark many other places, such as my home state Idaho. Tony moved to Ketchum Idaho in the late eighties. He linked up with Dave Bingham, and together they attacked the development of Idaho sport climbing.

Most of there time was spent at the mega spots such as City of Rocks, Massacre rocks, and many others! Establishing many five twelve’s and five thirteen’s. Turning these areas into great destinations for hard sport climbing! He also developed the surrounding area of my home town Sun Valley. There isn’t a ton around here, but what there is happens to be stellar. Much of this do to the psyche of Tony Yaniro.

Many people know about Tony chipping and “comfortising” holds. This used to really bug me, though it was known and ok for the times. I have come to terms that what was done back in the day was part of a learning process. That and the fact that what has been chipped isn’t going any where any time soon.

There is a local crag to Sun Valley called “Trail Creek”. The crags are short, but a lot of fun for being only about eight miles out of Sun Valley. Here Tony put up a few lines, two of which were shipped. I tackled the beautiful un chipped route called “Sacillian” 12C first, a stellar line on an exposed arête. Right next door is a 13a dubbed “Vigilante.” Great route though it yields a couple man made holds. To be honest you can barely even tell, apparently Tony was an artist when it came to chipping/comfortising.

Tony may have literally left his mark on some rock, but in the process he opened up a whole new world for sport climbing. He trained for routes, rehearsed them, whatever it took. He left his mark on the rock and in the history books.

~Beau Stuart, prAna Ambassador

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There wasn’t much time for reading lately — it’s been a 6:30 am alarm clock and a 1 am “off duty” each day while I’ve been at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. So, no new resources for you this week, but in the absence of great articles to read, here’s an alternative update. One of the delights of this week’s Outdoor Retailer show was an invitation from the apparel brand, prAna, to attend a one-hour “mindfulness session” on Saturday afternoon of the show. The session was led by author and meditation teacher Mark Coleman. After a one-minute silent meditation and discussion, we did a longer guided meditation and then discussed our individual experiences. At one point in the conversation, Mark reached for a water bottle to illustrate a point he was making, and gently picked it up with one hand. “You can pick up the water bottle,” he said, “or you can strangle the water bottle,” he added, tightening his grip around the bottle until the plastic crackled and the bottle was crushed inside his grip.

I am a total bottle strangler.

One of my greatest challenges is figuring out how to exert just the right amount of effort. Take this week, for example. I was supposed to work Wednesday through Friday, then take the weekend off to ski. Instead, I worked past midnight every night this week (and that includes both days of the weekend). And even while I was doing it, I thought to myself, “Why?” WHY do I work so hard? It’s not external pressure — I could have stopped work at 5pm on Friday and skied all weekend, and nobody would have noticed. The painful flip side to that is the knowledge that nobody but me is going to notice that I worked all weekend! I strangled the shit out of OR (like I always do), and I’d like to learn how not to do that.

I learned — after much effort — how to not strangle law school. I felt intense pressure and anxiety during law school. I felt like if I didn’t study every minute, I’d flunk out. So I overcompensated, and performed above the level I needed to during my first two years of school. It wasn’t until my last semester of law school that I actually achieved my goal of “picking up” law school instead of “strangling” it, and was delighted by my first straight B’s report card. Those straight B’s meant that I passed all my classes, but they also meant that I’d taken care of more than just my schoolwork that semester. I’d climbed, I’d spent time with friends outside of school and family, I’d taken care of myself. Instead of an A in school and a D in living, I was stoked to score straight B’s across the board.

So now, I am home, and it’s a day where my deadline is not yet met, I am at the place of tired where I feel as if my eyes are going to water. Today will roll into tomorrow, which was full to a convex meniscus even before I roll today’s missed deadline into tomorrow morning’s workload. And it’s unmistakable that I do this to myself. I overpromise. I set expectations too high (for myself, and when communicating expectations to others). I put accommodating other peoples’ timelines ahead of taking care of myself (or honoring my own boundaries) and try to juggle more balls than I have the skill or temperament to juggle.

So what do I do to loosen my stranglehold on these facets of my life? I did it once — during law school — and I can do it again, right?

What I learned then was to take time to climb; to make a schedule and stick to it even when the work wasn’t “done;” and to make a point of spending time with friends that weren’t a part of my “work” life, with whom I could talk about anything but law school. Now, in the years that have passed, I’ve learned about meditation and flow and — a concept that I’ve spent precious little time indulging in lately, and which probably deserves more of my effort — lightness. In times of stress, I actually close my eyes and think of a feather. It’s white, like the one in Forest Gump. It hangs in midair, floating gently from side to side. When I feel serious, I feel heavy. Attached to the ground. I feel the gravity of being pulled down; the inertia of not moving; I feel anchored. When I think of a feather, I’m reminded that lightness enables movement. Lightness leads to flow.

I learned this same lesson through climbing. If you overgrip — if you hang on harder than the minimum amount of effort that it takes to keep yourself on the wall, you pump out, your endurance fails, and you can’t hold on anymore. Worst case scenario, you feel your fingers actually peel one by one off the grip you were holding; the force on the remaining straining fingers increased because of the additional weight they now have to bear because of the failures that have occurred, this process repeating until you fall. That lesson is so familiar to my cells, that just typing those words made my hands sweat.

And I’ve learned strategies through meditation. If I gently return my attention again and again to what is here before me, rather than spinning off about consequences or what happens next, then I can be more present. What is the purpose, in this context, for strangling the shit out of a bottle (or a writing project, or a proposal, or a speaking engagement, or a rock climb)? If I’m present, and mindful, then I can pick up the bottle deliberately, with just the necessary amount of effort to achieve the goal.

This is one area where I’m in the awareness stage, not the “I have the answers” stage. How about you? What are your tips and strategies for lightening the stranglehold on life and work and exerting only the necessary amount of force?

~Sara Lingafelter, Social Media Specialist at REI

(She is not speaking for REI in this post. The views she’s sharing are her own, and do not necessarily reflect REI’s views).

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A winter yoga festival right in the heart of the Elk Mountains in Crested Butte, Colorado. Come join us! Yoga, Music, Family, Meditation, classes, clinics, celebration, and more! Yoga Rocks the Butte benefits Yoga World Reach, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing yoga outreach to third world countries and underdeveloped areas.

“We are enthusiastic about hosting this inaugural event,” commented Ethan Mueller, vice president, general manager of CBMR. “With its natural beauty, peaceful atmosphere and welcoming spirit, Crested Butte is the perfect location to host a festival of this caliber.”

Yoga Presenters, Workshop Gurus &  Musicians For more information  visit www.yogarocksthebutte.com.

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Recently I had the privilege to attend the Igniting the Center workshops with John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga.

Although I have been practicing Anusara yoga for a couple years and have taken the Anusara Immersions with Michael Fukumura, I had yet to study with John. I was stoked, excited and curious. There were no expectations as to what would unfold, I was grateful just being there.

I claimed my space in the second row and settled in and sparked up conversations with those on surrounding mats. Although strangers, many of us chatted as if we were life-long friends. There were beams of smiles on everyone’s faces as people sat in close circles sitting cross-legged laughing about sore hamstrings and tight muscles. The previous days of workshops left everyone’s bodies proudly sore from the intense asana practice. It’s the same kind of body fatigue you boast about after a long day surfing, running or after a hard day’s work doing what you love. You’re achy and tired but for all the right reasons.

As each person walked in, they had a friend to embrace. It was unknown whether these friendships were new and cultivated over the course of the workshops or whether these people practiced together for years. Yet I could see the theme of Igniting the Center had already begun. People were stoked, the center of their hearts open to each other. The center of the seed of their potential anticipated another time to shine on the yoga mat.

This workshop also held special meaning to me as a prAna employee. Not only is John Friend one of our Ambassadors, but I knew I would be practicing amongst many prAna customers. It was amazing to see prAna on bodies in action, what people like to style a prAna garment with and how they performed throughout the 4 hour workshop. Working in customer service and the prAna Influencer program, I support our customers all day long. So seeing our customers rocking out in prAna and supporting the brand they are also supporting my job. What a recognition of interdependency and a constant feeling of gratitude to prAna enthusiasts.

If you have a chance to practice with John Friend during the Igniting the Center world tour, definitely do so!

Diane Cruz, prAna Customer Service/Influencer

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