Today I’m teaching a yoga class on twisting.  Most of us twist from the lower spine - also known as the Lumbar spine - when we’re not paying attention.  The lumbar spine is an easy set of joints to twist into, and it comes naturally - but it’s a really bad idea.  There’s actually not a lot of range of motion to those joints, and repeated twisting down there causes lower back pain and all sorts of other issues.  We are actually made to twist from our upper spine, also known as the thoracic spine, or t-spine; but many of us have allowed that area to “freeze” from disuse and from hunching our shoulders.  Sitting up straight with good posture can help a lot, but so can exercising the area.  The trick is to somehow lock down the lumbar spine so that we have to twist from the top.  In the yoga room we have various tricks for this, such as to verbally call for the lower hips to rotate against the twist.

One of my favorite exercises to improve t-spine flexibility is one I learned from my mentor Harvey; he calls it the Hamstring Frisk (because it’s also good for stretching the hamstrings).  It’s simple: stand about a leg’s length away from a wall, and bend over and put your hands on the wall so that your body makes a perfect “L”.  (It helps to have someone watch your pose the first few times because many people think they’re straight when they’re not).  Now, imagine a hand pushing down on the space between your shoulder blades.  Move away from that hand - BUT - do not change that 90 degree angle between your torso and lower body, AND do not squeeze your shoulder blades together.  Now, the first time you do this, you may say “Adam, you’re crazy; I can’t do it without doing one of those two things”.  But you *can*, and you *will*, and when you do it feels amazing.  You may even hear little crunching noises as joints that haven’t moved in forever finally mobilize.  The key is the muscles of the spine, which can move and flex the joints in the spine.  Try it!