What is Trigger Point?
A trigger point is an area of neurological activity in the body. Even when you are relaxed, a nerve impulse is maintaining contraction in a specific spot(s) in your muscle(s) as an adaptation for your most common stressors. Trigger points can form because of stress/anxiety, over/repetitive use, dehydration, trauma, injury, or a combination there of. Using a therapy ball, the practitioner will stimulate a trigger point moving into therapeutic sensation. The acting of staying with and relaxing through sensation is a practice in self awareness. The practicioner can bring what was in the subconscius into conscoius awareness for lasting results.
What is Yin Yoga?
Guided by the feminine principle of receptivity, Yin yoga sets up the body in supported, passive stretches giving the practitioner time to relax, gather information and take cues from their physical, energetic, and emotional body. The postures are held from 1-5 minutes, effecting more than just the muscles, but getting into the fascia, connective tissue and opening channels in the subtle body.
For more information check out Ashley Weber’s interview of me about yoga and trigger point on her wonderful podcast Yoga And…
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3VVfiHgxDDAYl0b2vZDn5u?si=LALwq1utRp2btVh19NXgPA
Bringing it together
Because following sensation and getting deep into the muscle bodies and attachment points can be intense and also bring up a lot of emotion, the yin postures offer time to rest while still effecting supportive change, release and integration. Offering the modalities back to back allows for a balanced therapy session; tension may be created from on muscle group playing tug-o-war with another (ex: back vs. chest) and stretching one muscle group via a yin posture allows for a deeper or more sustained trigger point release in the other.
How TPY can help you
Your body is an efficiency machine! Therefore, it is going to prioritize your most common posture and movement, and develop tension patterns to support those. A common story is as follows; A person wakes up in a side- lying (fetal) position, sits at a table for breakfast, commutes to a desk job that lasts 6-8 hours before they get back in the car go home, eat dinner and get back into the fetal position to sleep. The person has lower back pain every time they stand up. They have sharp pain between their shoulder blades and their neck feel sore. Their body has adapted to the sitting/fetal shape. Through a series of trigger point and yin postures, practiced regularly, the brain can be re-trained to let go of those patterns of tension and reduce or even eliminate the pain. This technique can be used to recover from repetitive movements (think, tennis serve) asymmetric postures (think, holding and nursing a baby) injuries and other stresses.