Stop Stretching to Live Pain Free

Learn why: stretching might not be the remedy you thought it was, and discover the importance of muscle activation and stability. We are also answering:

✅ Why should we stop stretching?

✅ How can we flip the script on flexibility?

✅ Is pain and loss of proper functioning a result of aging?

From understanding biomechanics to practical tips for improving your flexibility and strength, this episode is packed with valuable insights for fitness professionals, yoga instructors, and anyone looking to live a pain-free life.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Today's Topic

00:43 Meet Yogi Aron: A Journey from Pain to Healing

01:33 Debunking the Stretching Myth

04:26 Understanding Muscle Tightness and Instability

06:56 The Role of Muscle Activation

12:47 The Dangers of Stretching

21:36 Muscle Activation Techniques and Isometrics

28:24 The Secret to Mastering Wheel Pose

29:19 Understanding Muscle Activation

30:04 The Role of Massage in Muscle Activation

31:08 Identifying Muscle Weakness

33:37 Activating the Glutes for Better Posture

37:37 The Dangers of Overstretching

41:41 The Importance of Mobility and Stability

43:48 Inflammation and Aging

50:27 Practical Tips for Muscle Activation

52:14 Conclusion and Resources

You can learn more about our guest, Yogi Aaron at:

Practice - https://youtube.com/c/YogiAaron 

Join + Learn - https://www.facebook.com/groups/stopstretching 

Follow - https://www.instagram.com/yogi_aaron/ 

Follow - https://www.facebook.com/YogiAaronStar/

#painfree #painrelief #backpain #health #wellness #pain #chronicpain #painmanagement #posture #recovery #mobility #physio #injuryprevention #selfcare 

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Transcript

Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast, a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement. I'm your host Aesha Tahir. 

 Hello, and welcome to this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about stretching and living pain free life. It doesn't have to be, stretching necessarily. It's like, you have to stop stretching. It's a concept actually kind of new to me too.

So we'll be debunking the myth that stretching is good for you with a very special guest, Yogi Aron. And I want to tell you about Yogi Aron because He was on the brink of spinal fusion after decades of chronic pain. Yogi Aran transformed his healing journey by developing a science based, pain free approach to yoga.

His method, Applied Yoga Anatomy and Muscle Activation, eliminates harmful stretching by focusing on muscle activation. And it isn't being taught by anyone else. And I know a lot of the audience members of this podcast and on LinkedIn are.  Fitness professionals and yoga instructors. So it is a, an important session for you guys too.  Welcome to the podcast, Aaron. 

Thank you so much for having me on the show and I hope we don't ruffle too many feathers today. 

I know I was thinking the same thing as I was just like preparing for this, earlier this morning, but I think there's space for. Different. Perspectives. There's space for different  methodologies, and that's why I'm really excited about this because  I am an exercise physiologist and,  part of my training was on biomechanics, right? So biomechanically, we have these four stages that we have to go through for injury prevention and correction of a muscle imbalance. And flexibility is the second one. So first it is trigger point release.

And second is flexibility. And for audience members all it means is that there are four steps to improving your muscle imbalances, and the first two are trigger point release and then flexibility. You are completely, like, challenging my belief system over here.

And I can't wait for you to now dig into it. Like, are people really barking up the wrong tree? Tell me about it. 

So just one little slight correction, , in the bio, when you were introducing me, it's not really a correction. It's more like an add on. You said that I was suffering from chronic pain for 25 years, which led me to the hospital.

That was correct. But I was also doing yoga and stretching for 25 years before that. And, and I think looking back at it, the stretching is what You know, debilitated me even more. So, and the reason why, and I'm going to lead into answering your question now a little bit, but  what led me into. What I call stretching yoga in the beginning for me, yoga was in the beginning about stretching.

It took me about 10 years, more or less  to find the spiritual path and yoga.   And, and there's a lot of conversation around that, but I got into yoga because my muscles were tight.  And so if you as a movement specialist,  You're our natural inclination is to think, oh, tight muscles. Therefore, I need to stretch and one of the things in the movement world, and I'm just kind of lumping a lot of different people into this world.

Yoga people. fitness enthusiasts, even doctors, a lot of doctors and doctors need to stop talking about movement because that's not their lane. By the way, that's a whole other conversation. Um, doctors are great at what they do, but they need to stay in their lane and stop saying you should stretch. Um, but  the reason what's interesting to me is nobody addresses why Muscles are tight  and, and this is like an epidemical problem, a problem of epidemic proportions that nobody ever talks about why muscles are tight.

And so there's a, I, this is a word that I'm just becoming introduced to lately.  And I like it, it suits this very well. There's a lot of grifters in the movement world and yoga teachers, by the way. are at the top of this list. As far as I'm concerned, I'm, I'm completely embarrassed at yoga teachers. And when I say I'm embarrassed,  I can say that because I was a grifter. 

You're too funny. I'm a yoga instructor to 200 hours. Yeah, but, but, and I think the same way. Yeah, 

but the problem is , I didn't know I was a grifter. And so that's a big part of what I'm trying to do is like  teachers to start asking that question, why are muscles tight?

And so muscles are tight because they're in a protective state. Why are they in a protective state? Because the other muscles in the body that should be.  Stabilizing the body are not working properly. So what do muscles do? They tighten up and  for people to go, well, muscle tightness is just because I'm just not relaxed.

It's like, yeah, keep telling yourself that. Um, but it's like if you walked on ice, so I lived in Canada and there was always a certain day in the year when. It got really cold and the street, you know, there was ice on the street and you would step out and you would accidentally slip cause you weren't expecting it.

What is your body do? It tightens up. And if you know like you're going to fall, like when I was healing from my broken leg and I'd be going downstairs or even upstairs, but mostly downstairs, especially in the winter time in New York city, I would always be like holding the rail with both hands and my body would tighten up because I was so afraid of falling.

So our bodies tighten up. As a biomechanical response to instability and the real question then becomes, how do we address the instability?  

Now we are talking. Okay. There 

are 

a couple of things. There are a couple of things that you said, which I want to highlight, which Sure. Make sense to me. 

And I think it should make sense to everyone. And we are going to dig deeper into that first. You're not addressing the root cause. If you're just stretching. 

Exactly. 

It might just be a pleasant ritual for you. I mean, if it makes you feel better.  I'm fine with it. But as far as when we say,  it's good for preventing or treating injuries and aches and pains. Well, that's not it because you're not addressing the root cause. Second, you just said something which is golden. And I preach this from the mountaintop, it hasn't landed. Well, is, is the instability. 

Yeah,  

The reason you have aches and pains in your joints and tendons and muscles  is because of instability in your kinetic chain.

Yeah, and kinetic chain is your body, you know, we call a human body, a kinetic chain because all the musculoskeletal structures, they're connected. Connected, so it's like. Train that is linked. Different buggies of the train that are linked together. 

Yeah. So, okay. Stability or instability. Tell me more. 

I that. Like, I find it interesting that the instability factor doesn't land. And I, I, I have a few theories about that, but one of them is you get a lot of yoga teachers saying, well, you should stretch, but you shouldn't overstretch. What the F does that even mean?

You know, like I could talk for an hour just on how stupid that comment is, but, and how ignorant it is. And so that's one point thing, but  the, you get a lot of people that will do strengthening exercises. And the problem is, is that if you're dealing from, if you're working from a place that's unstable and let's define instability just for your listeners, instability means that muscles lose their ability to contract and contract on demand.

So what do muscles do? And guys,  for those of you listening, if you can remember this one thing, you'll know more than most doctors and movement specialists because they've just forgotten this. Muscles move bones and muscles, stabilized joints. And how do they do that? They do that by shortening. And in our lane, and I'm going to say our kinetic lane, 

in 

our kinetic lane, a muscle, a healthy muscle is a muscle that can contract. 

And so when there's outside forces being placed upon the body, the muscles around the joints can stabilize that joint through different ranges of motion through different movements as the muscle is, as the, as the limb is moving through that access, and so, um,  Why is there instability? Why do muscles tighten up?

Because the muscles supporting that joint aren't working properly. Now, if your idea is just to strengthen a muscle, well, a lot of people interpret strengthen is, Oh, I need to do more arm curls. I need to do more lunges with weights. I need to do more bench press. Well, if that's by the way, that is the wrong thing to do, first of all.

But second of all, if you do that. And you're already starting from a weakened place, you're actually going to cause more stress, trauma and overuse, which is then going to inhibit more muscles. So, what we need to be doing is activating those muscles and, turning them on.

 I want to underscore it. How you defined instability, which I believe a lot of people don't understand. Also there is a misconception around, as you said, okay, you can stretch, but don't stretch for too long. And there are different kinds of stretches, right?

 There's static stretching, and then there's proprioceptive stretching, so there are different stretches for different roles that they play. So, I don't want to go too deep into it, but I do want to underscore what you said. 

We call a muscle, Instable if it's not able to,  activate on demand, or contract when we need it. Let's say  that you're doing a push up. So,  your pecs and deltoids are pecs are your chest muscles and your deltoids are your shoulder muscles  supposed to contract.

But are they contracting through their full range of motion and full strength or not. That is what determines the stability. The second part is these muscles are stabilizing your shoulder joints, your pec muscles and your deltoid muscles. So if they're not stable enough, What's going to happen?

Your joint is going to take up the load  , and then that leads to wear and tear of the joint. So there are two functions of a muscle, and first one is to contract on demand,  with full range of motion and with full strength. , second is to stabilize the joint, which Aaron was mentioning. And all that means is that when you reach for that doorknob, the deltoid and your biceps and triceps  activate and stabilize your shoulder joint to perform that action.

And if that's not happening, your joint is going to take up the load. Your tendons are going to take up the load. 

Your 

ligaments are going to take up the load. And then we have tendonitis and then we have ligament tears.  That is in a nutshell, a recipe for injury. And it's also a recipe for pain and aches. 

So, and 

what a lot of people do is. They do like they're do their push ups and then they're in pain afterwards And so they're in pain and pain is the check engine light of the body coming on So a lot of people are always say listen to your body. Listen to your body Well, your body's talking to you and in the in the form of pain there's two ways that the body talks to us pain and muscle tightness and So if you've got pain in that joint the absolute worst thing to do is to stretch and then you have all of these You Kind of movement specialist working in gyms.

And you go up to one of them, you say, Oh, I just did these, you know, this, this bench press and, um, or pushups. And now my shoulder's in joint and they'll say, come on over here. And they'll stretch the heck out of that shoulder, which is going to debilitate you even more so. Um, my business partner, and I'm speaking about this because my business partner, Adam, uh, who I talk about all the time, by the way, so he knows I talk about him, you have his permission, right?

He's, he's always like working out and I bug him a lot and he'll come up to me and be like, Oh my God, I've got this pain going from my neck down into my hands and I can't even sleep at night and he's got to take medication now cause it's so bad. And, um, and I'm like, Adam, you're having this because of this, this, and this.

And we need to get the muscles working to support the neck joint and shoulder joint. Uh, does he listen to me? No. He goes to the stretching person, the movement stretching person in the gym.  Beats the crap out of him and he, but this is the thing about stretching. You said earlier, and this is why I said, I don't agree because you said stretching sometimes feels good for people and stretching does feel great.

I mean, I taught, I stretched for 25 years and I felt amazing. And if you ask most yoga people, why are you stretching? And they'll be like, well, you should. And then I'm like, well, is there any other reason they go? Well, It feels good. And I'm like, well, a line of cocaine feels good. That doesn't mean that you should do it.

And so there's a lot in our culture, and especially with, in some of the movement world, where people are saying like, well just do things that make you feel good, but not everything that makes us feel good is actually going to be, uh, good for us. And so, you know, Adam will feel good when he gets his shoulder stretched, but then that night.

It's even worse. And that was my story. Like I stretched to get out of pain. Um, and I also did a lot of strengthening stuff too, but I stretched to get out of pain and it just got worse and worse and worse. And, um, and so what we need to do is start flipping the script and getting muscles activated.  

 This is the perfect segue into what I was thinking. So if stretching is causing us pain, How can we flip the script on flexibility?

Well, that's a good question.  You know, there was a moment in time when people thought the earth was flat. They really believed it. And unfortunately that still holds true today, but that's another conversation. 

But there was a time when, when people, when, when us as a culture believed that the earth was flat and. You know, if you said the earth was round, you would it would be deemed heresy and you would be charged with heresy, which was a very serious crime at that moment. Um, it's really hard. I've been charged with heresy a few times.

There are. People that are like, yeah, we'd love to have you come on our podcast. We'd love to have you come and teach at our yoga festival. And then they dig into me a little bit more and they're like, Oh my God, this guy is telling us to stop stretching. And then they literally ghost me. And that's happened numerous times.

I think that is just something that we just have to keep talking about and talk about the detriments of stretching. One of my favorite ways to educate people about stretching is to literally show. How weak you become when you stretch. And so when you stretch the short explanation, I can go into the deeper science of it, but the short explanation is that you disrupt the communication system between the brain and the muscle.

Um, there's always a communication system between the brain and the muscle. It's called proprioception. And when you stretch, That proprioception gets cut off and the brain no longer knows where the muscle is. So it's not like stretching literally like it, it doesn't like make your muscle disappear or something, but it cuts that connection off that what we call the neuromuscular connection.

It's like taking a pair of gardening shears and cutting it literally. And it's shocking when you, um, Not only see it like you can literally see people lose their strength. And when I say strength,  I'm also talking about range of motion. So if you have somebody like lying on their back and you, and you have them bring their leg up.

to the sky and you activate all of the quad muscles which are working the leg to bring the leg up. You can see range of motion improve. You get them to start stretching their hamstring and you then not only do you see them struggling sometimes to lift the leg up, but then you see that the range of motion is actually diminished because all the muscles That are lifting the leg up, which are the quads and the hip flexors lose their ability to contract.

Um, and so this is like, there's some different experiments I like doing and showing with people, and I think that's one of the ways to do it is just get people to feel it in their bodies and. When people start to feel like muscles coming alive, AKA activated, once they start feeling that there's less inclination for them to ever want to stretch again, because once they do, they feel that activation going away.

They feel themselves getting weaker.  

I love how you just established the neuromuscular connection, which is key to any movement, because the movement starts here in your brain, because your brain is signaling to your muscle that you need to activate.  So if that connection isn't, working properly, there is a disconnect, right?

Yes. Yeah. And that. Also leads to a less range of motion that leads to instability,  

so one other little quick thing, and one of the things I find fascinating is that when you, you, you hear people in the stretching world, and there's a guy that he calls himself yoga body and you watch some of his videos.

And one of the things that fascinates me, and he's not alone. I mean, this is widespread.  He, his big thing is becoming more flexible, right?  There was like one of the commercials and I actually recorded it cause I was like, Oh my God, he said the quiet part out loud. They actually talk about the science of stretching.

And one of the things that they say is that you want to work on this passive stretching because as you work on it, you're going to desensitize. That communication system and then become more flexible. And they were saying it like it's a good thing. And I'm thinking to myself in the yoga world, the last thing that we're trying to do is becoming desensitized.

We want to become more sensitive. We want to become more in touch with our body. We want to listen to our body more. We want to understand what muscle tightness is, not desensitize ourselves. Like, like, How can that be a good thing? And so when you, sometimes you'll hear people say the quiet part out loud and validate what I just said as the proper biomechanics or what's biomechanically happening when you stretch.

So just wanted to throw that in the mix. 

Oh, I love this. We need to be able to listen to our body. And we need to be more in tune with our bodies,  rather than, desensitizing. Not what I prescribed to. So the idea is to reestablish and strengthen the connection between nervous system and the muscular system. So how are we achieving that?  

Well, there's a few different ways. , one of them,  I sometimes, and I, I want to be very careful when I say this, but there are some acupuncturists that are skilled in this.

 Some of the acupuncturists that work on trigger point, uh, therapy. So that can be a good thing. Um, but in the lane that I drive in, one of the best ways is through what we call muscle activation. And, and by the way, trigger point. Good trigger point will activate muscles. And when we say activate muscles, what we're doing, what we're really saying is to reestablish that neuromuscular connection, which has become weakened, uh, due to stress, trauma, and overuse.

 And, and just to kind of reiterate, by the way, for people to understand, stretching is a stress that you're applying on the muscular system.  And when we stretch, we're applying a stress and most of our neuromuscular systems are too weak to handle that stress. And that's one of the reasons why muscles shut down.

So muscle activation is the way to go. My understanding,  , is that there's kind of two different ways.  One of those ways is through manual muscle activation, which means that you see somebody who goes in and massages or palpates the muscle at the insertion and origin. Now, what I studied was muscle activation technique.

which was,  which was, , developed by a man named Greg Roscoff, who's just outside of Denver. And anybody, any of your listeners can look up muscle activation technique and find out more information about him. And I got into muscle activation technique because after the hospital incident, I realized Well, not realized I was like, what don't I know?

There's something that I don't know. And that kind of opened me up to asking that question. I thought I knew a lot. And as I got into muscle activation technique, cause it's really heavy into muscle function. It's really heavy into what muscles are doing. Um, it blew my.  I was going to use another adjective, but it blew my mind in what the big epiphany I had within like a few hours of getting into this was, I don't know anything.

I thought I knew something. I was teaching movement for 25 years. That's why I said I was a grifter. And. And I can call other yoga teachers grifters that I didn't know anything about muscle function. I didn't know anything about biomechanics. I didn't understand what stretching was doing. And if I don't know, other people don't know.

And so that kind of like awareness.  In a slow burn prompted me to get on to this path. So, but the other big question that I had, once I got into muscle activation technique was how do I translate this into yoga and, and how do we start bringing this into yoga? And so that the simple answer is isometrics. 

 So isometrics are fantastic way of turning muscles on one of the things. And I'm sure you're going to appreciate this Aisha that  when I got into working out, it was in the eighties. I was much, obviously as a wee teen back then,  but I got, I was being trained by different people. And one of the things that they constantly said  for the first many years, Do the first step, but do the first set, whatever you're going to do, do the first set really low weights, like really low.

Like if you're doing dumbbell curls and you, you curl 30 pounds, maybe the first set is like 10 pounds or even five pounds, whatever it is. Do really low weights and go really slow and do like, you know, 10 to 20 reps and go really, really slow. And that will start to turn muscles on. And you know, now you take a look at people warming up and they do these fast  movements that are like putting more stress on joints.

There's very, very little. Isometrics that you see in the gyms these days. It's all very fast twitch muscle related, which is fine, but you're not really addressing the part of the muscle that stabilizes joints, which is the slow twitch muscle fibers. So you want to, the short answer is isometrics and in muscle activation specifically.

If you want to turn a muscle on and get it neuromuscularly connected, try to bring it, bring it into an isometric state. So, and then also try to bring it into its most shortened state, hold it there for six seconds effortlessly. That's another key word, effortlessly, effortlessly, hold it there. And repeat that six times.

And so that's, that's a great way. And that's the lane that I drive in in, especially with yoga. I do do muscle activation technique privately with people cause I know how to do it. Um, but in my yoga classes, what I teach is isometrics. And so if we're doing like, for example, a back bend kind of practice, and I want to take people into guiding them towards like a pose called wheel pose. 

Uh, which is a fantastic back bend to do. What I'm starting to think about is, okay, what muscles. Are going to be shortening to get us into wheel pose. And can I answer? Yes.  

It's my favorite set of muscles. 

Yeah. Glutes glutes glutes.  Yes. Yes. Well, yes. And so we also want to address other muscles too. So glutes,  you know, the lower back extensors and then the upper back extensors.

And this is where I, I think. You know, the rubber meets the road and trying to translate this into the yoga world because, and this is why I say like, there's a lot of grifting in the yoga world, in the yoga world.  And maybe you learn this in your teacher training. I don't know. But if you're preparing for wheel pose, you're taught to do thigh openers, to do heart openers.

What the F is heart openers, but that's a whole other conversation.  You're taught to do shoulder openers, which is the absolute worst thing to do because when you come into wheel pose, you actually need those shoulders to be stable. You need all of the, this, especially the back of the shoulder muscles to be working properly.

And, and then of course, you know, sometimes you even see things like pigeon pose being taught as a preparational pose for wheel, which actually has a detrimental effect on glutes. So what we want to do is improve the contract ability of all of those back muscles. Um, and then if we do that, we have a stronger, more stable, um, uh, wheel pose.

I always kind of joke with, with people who don't know about a Yama. I say, how many yoga postures do you think it takes? to prepare for wheel and you get a varying response, 20, 15, sometimes as low as nine, it actually takes three. You only need to do three poses to adequately prepare for wheel pose. And I've done this experiment on numerous people and, um, and it just blows their mind because after they do it, They're like,  first of all, I'm afraid of wheel.

Second of all, that was the most stable I've ever felt coming into wheel. And why is that? Because we got, we, we improve the muscles ability to contract and contract properly that are lifting us and coming into wheel. 

 And I've talked about those a lot. Like activating the muscles. Are we doing the right prep poses for our back bends or even hip openers, and one of the things I want to define if somebody doesn't understand that is.

Isometric. So isometric is when you're holding a contraction in your muscle for 30 seconds or more. That's how I define it. 

Six seconds. So in muscle activation, we're doing it six seconds, 

coming out, 

taking a rest and doing it six times. 

Another thing I want to explore,  is the force application as.

a way to activate muscles at the origin and insertion points of the affected muscle. tell me a little bit about that. If you practice it.

I practice it because I'm trained in muscle activation technique. So there, there is no doubt  that if you go to a good massage therapist that knows what they're doing. 

And a lot don't, unfortunately.  If you go to a good massage therapist that knows what they're doing  and they massage at the insertion and origin, a better word is actually palpate. , because you don't need to dig in.  Most people's bones are just right there. Like my bicep tendon is like right there. I don't need to dig into it.

Digging into is actually going to cause more inflammation and cause more problems, um, that you're going to have a, a net positive effect. As a muscle activation technique  practitioner, uh,  what I'm trained to do.  First of all, identify where the biggest muscle weakness is in your body. And I'm glad you 

brought it up.

How are you identifying? 

The simple answer is looking at just differences in range of motion. So simply like for those of you who might be listening to this podcast, if I'm sitting here and I'm turning my head to the right. And I can turn it and look over my right shoulder. And then I turned my head to my left and I can only turn halfway.

There's a huge problem in function. And so my left side rotators. For my neck to be able to turn left are showing up weak and that that's a problem that needs to be identified. So then what I would do is I would then activate all of the muscles that are turning the head to the left. And just by the way, one of the big major, uh, rotators for the head Is your trapezius muscle, your upper trapezius muscle.

And so that's kind of interesting. I'm just put a pin in that.  And so what I would do then is activate them. And what we, when we activate muscles, it's not just simply palpating insertion and origin. We're actually testing. The force output of that muscle. And this is if you study kinesiology, this is where Greg's background in kinesiology comes into play.

You bring the muscle into its most shortened state and then test the force output of that muscle. If it doesn't work, we go in, we massage or palpate the insertion in origin, uh, and then we come back and retest. And so I said earlier, if you just only palpate. Insertion and origin that's going to have a positive effect, but doing the testing before and after that elevates it up,  you know, in M.

A. T. world, they say, like, 1000 times like it's it's night and day and you have results that just don't make sense. D last a long time. I don't really te, well let me rephrase that. I do not teach that. Um, that's Greg's Lane. That's muscle activation techniques. Lane. I'm not licensed to do that. I don't teach that.

 But what I do teach is activating muscles isometrically. And so what. we're working towards then is, is bringing that muscle into its most shortened state. , and then holding it there  for six seconds and repeating it six times. We were talking about the glutes earlier. So there's very few ways to properly activate the glutes.

They're not easy to bring into a shortened state. , but one of the poses in the yoga world is a pose called bridge pose, which is, Fantastic. I would say a bridge a day will keep the doctor away. Yes, yes. And 

orthopedic surgeon away too. Yeah. Yes. Oh, I love bridges. Yeah. Yeah. They're my go to. 

 And so coming up into bridge now we're, we, I kind of move away from what  the yoga world does is the yoga world's very obsessed with making the bridge look a certain way.

Your feet have to be a certain way. Um, your chest needs to be lifted and puffed up and your shoulder blades should be squeezed together. The only thing I care about, just come up as high as you can, squeeze your glutes as much as you can, hold it there for six seconds, and then come on down, take a breath, And then repeat that six times.

And so by doing that, it's a fantastic way to get the  glutes activated. Another pose is lying on your stomach. some people call this donkey kicks. I've heard this recently donkey kicks,  is lying on your stomach  and then, then one knee. And lift that knee, that femur bone as much as you can off the ground while engaging that glute, leave the both pelvic bones on the ground.

So you're not coming up and talking into your back that you're really isolating the glute as much as you can. That's also fantastic. And for a lot of people actually prescribed both do the donkey kicks first. Uh, and then do that six seconds, six times on both sides and then come and do bridge pose after that and do that every day for like two weeks and your whole posture is going to change.

So many people have bad posture, um, and they try to, you know, correct it by sitting up straight. The real problem is a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times it can be traced back to the glutes just not working properly. So get those glutes working. You set the foundation for a strong back and a strong back is a strong life. 

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. You're talking my language.  

Can I actually comment on something that you said? Well, say, sorry, say what you're going to say first. 

So I am author of the book, Unhunched Discover Wellness Through Posture. And I talk about posture in that book,  through and through because most of my clients that I have seen over my decade long career in exercise physiology, and I used to work with,  physical therapists to create  corrective programs, exercise programs for them.

You know, it was the glutes. It was the core. You know, the corset like muscles. Oh, they were always weak. Once we got,  our clients to activate those muscles and strengthen those muscles.  Most of their,  other issues, like even issues in your shoulder. That's why I always  emphasize and highlight that our body is a kinetic chain.

So everything is connected. You know, your shoulder dysfunction is going to show up in your hip. Your hip dysfunction is going to show up in your ankle.  But if you can do one thing that would be activate your glutes, Strengthen your core muscles and when I say core, I'm talking about your glute complex hamstrings too, I even consider hamstrings part of, core,  some people would disagree, and then your transverse abdominis and multifidus we are talking about because those are real, real deep core muscles.

Yes, 

multifidus. Yes. Yes. Never hear people talk about multifidus. . 

Thank you so much for highlighting that. And you had a thought. Go ahead. 

Yeah, I just want to comment. Yeah, I can't remember how you said or why you said it specifically, but you're talking about And I'm very anti hip openers, for a lot of reasons, but number one, hip opener is kind of like this, this buzzword that a lot of people throw around.

And I, by the way, I was guilty at for years, years and years. I would say it's so important to open the hips.  And, um,  And, you know, from a, I'm going to talk as a man for a moment, from a male perspective, one of the things that got me into stretching is I would constantly watch older people, especially old men walking around and I would watch their body. 

and their hunchedness and it was always coming back to the stiffness in their hips. And so I was very obsessed with  becoming more flexible because I didn't want to get old. Incidentally, if you ask most people why you should stretch,  most answers will come back because I want to be healthy and I want to be young.

You know, the stretching equates to  staying young, which is interesting that I ended up in the hospital with almost a spinal fusion at 45. Um, not how I was envisioning living my most youthful life. But so the interesting thing is in the yoga world, especially, and even in, you see this in the, of course, in the gymnastics world, how many people have gone through hip replacement surgery of some kind or, or some sort  surgery or intervention.

 60 percent of my clients and both my mom and dad, like, you know, it's so prevalent. People don't understand it. 

And so I'm like, honey, if you really want to open your hips, great. You're going to open them all the way to a hip replacement because you're going to have no more stability.

If biomechanical perspective, open hips equals dislocated hips. And that's. And not that people end up with dislocated hips, but their hip is so, uh, unstable, meaning that none of the muscles are working and you have a lot of other issues, which you don't need to get into right now that compounds because of that.

, and so I've had very dear friends, , including my mother who had, incredible range of motion because of all the yoga she did in her late teens and twenties and thirties, get hip replacements. And one of my dearest friends, um, she came to visit me in Costa Rica, my yoga retreat in 2021  and I said, Susan, you need to stop doing these.

hip stretches and stop telling people to do it. And I would test her. I tested all of her hip muscles. They were a mess. There was nobody at home. Usually I can get something going on. There was like nobody going on. There was nobody at the, at the hips. And I got all of her hips activated. I said, this is what strong feels like.

What did she do? She went to go teach another yoga class and pushed her students deeper into these, Hip stretches. Well, just a two months. It was two months ago. Now she just came out of surgery for double hip replacement surgery. 

And, 

and I'm like, yep, that's what happens. You're going to end up. So  one of the things that comes up was there's a few questions that you have to ask.

Number one,  why do we need More hip mobility. What is it that we're actually going for? And so, well, some people are like, well, you should be able to do a squat. Why? I mean, okay. If you really want to do a squat, what are the muscles moving the bones to come into that squat? Um, if you do need to, what, if you want to sit cross legged, well, what are the muscles that are moving the bones to come and sit cross legged?

Improve the muscle function of the body. And you'll be able to have more range of motion. My teacher, Greg used to say, still says, when you have flexibility, you always have instability and with instability comes injury. But when you have stability, you will have all the mobility that you've ever wanted. 

Oh my gosh, this should be engraved  on all, on all yoga practitioners, like walls and yoga studios. Like seriously. Yes. It's mobility. It's mobility. It's mobility. It's mobility and stability. If there were two key words, those, those would be it. , But people don't learn 

I mean, Susan is still teaching hip openers, you know, and I often joke, you know, yoga teachers will be rolling in the wheelchair.

Down the hallway to the operating room yelling over their shoulder to their students. Don't forget to open your hips. I mean, this is the kind of insanity that we're plagued with. So to go to your question about how do we flip the script? It's going to be one person at a time until it becomes, you know, until it becomes its own epidemic. 

Absolutely. You know,  you're playing your part. 

Yeah, I'm trying, I'm endeavoring to. You're making, you're 

making the impact.  We need to flip the script by  switching the terminology from flexibility to mobility. From instability to stability and from tightness to activation.

Okay, I want to talk about a few things that you just mentioned,  because they're so important and they resonate with my audience. And one of the things you mentioned is longevity and youthfulness,  I love your story. Like  at 45, you ended up with almost a spinal fusion and all you, you were trying to do was to live a long functional life, right?

 Longevity, there are so many things we can do to achieve longevity.  And the work that you're doing, the muscle activation technique that you're teaching is one of the key parts to it. Are we actually aging because we are getting old  or there's something else going on in our lifestyle? 

So, I'm going to say something that could be a little simplistic or even myopic, uh, in the perspective. But  real aging, I believe, and there's a lot of studies that come out in places like the Mayo Clinic. 

To show this, that so much aging is directly related to inflammation.  And  one of the great, great rattled off this.  Study that the Mayo Clinic released and I haven't found it yet I have to bug him to get it But they're now starting to say  like before they were saying like heart disease is the number one thing that's gonna age us And then there was like, you know other things like cancer and you know, high cholesterol and Yes,  they're now saying  that the real issue is in the muscular system is deterioration,  atrification  of the muscular system.

Yes. And  

as we get, you know, some of your listeners are going, well, okay, so I need to make sure I do strength training. That's not necessarily the right answer. I would say isometrics.  I would all backed by strength training. So if you do isometrics and then add on some strength training, but  the point is that you want to make sure that the muscular system is working.

So why does the muscular system stop working? I said it earlier,  stress, trauma, and overuse plague that neuromuscular response. What is the, what is the byproduct? Of stress, trauma, and overuse inflammation.  And so when there's stress in the body, the body releases inflammation. Now that can be, by the way, a good thing.

Uh, inflammation can have a bit of a healing effect, but  the body needs to be able to carry that inflammation away. What carries that inflammation away. And this is something that's missing in a lot of the conversation. Because a lot of people focus on circulate circulation. Well, what governs circulation is the heart  blood flow,  but that's not what carries the inflammation away.

What carries the inflammation away is the lymphatic system and what, what operates the lymphatic system. The muscular system movement. And so we, you know, one of the most wisest things that ever said was use it or lose it, move it or lose it. And there's a lot of truth to that. Uh, because you look at people that are suffering from a lot of.

Um, like swollen feet, for example, and, um, knee issues. And then you look at their legs and they're just, you can see that they're just swollen. There's so much lymph, uh, gathered up there. And the, the more, uh, sedentary we become. It just exacerbates on itself. You know, one of the best, I used to hear this all the time.

The best advice that doctors give for people that are depressed is get out of bed in the morning, move your body, you know, going to the gym is better than a pill of Prozac. Um, I don't want to get too much into trouble with saying that doctors have said that. But there's a lot of truth in that statement that.

When we move, we're moving out lymph and, and we're sorry, moving out lymph, we're moving inflammation. And that inflammation that builds up in our bodies has a detrimental effect.  Inflammation, um, can start to eat away literally at our flesh and at our, at our insides. And it has a very detrimental effect if it's not moving.

So. It's, you know, this whole, there's a whole connection between staying young and muscle activation and getting those muscles working properly can start to turn back the clock. I was very privileged. I did a workshop recently in Dallas, Texas, and one of the women there was, I'm going to say she was around 80.

I don't know exactly, but she was,  Very typical 80 year old kind of woman. She loved this stuff. She was like, Oh my God, this is like, it's changed my life. And you could see it. Um, and then she booked a private with me and I got a chance to do muscle activation technique with her. And I was doing this thing.

There's this one thing where we check the upper TVA and upper, um, abdominals, the, the fourth rectus. And you have to lean the person back, they twist and then you kind of  apply some force. And obviously with her, I applied like a little force and she came back and I was holding her. It wasn't, wasn't like beating her up or anything, but I came back and I, even I was starting to wonder if I activate this, how many times I'm going to have to do my palpations for this to turn on. 

It did the first palpation. I did the test and she was rock solid. I actually applied quite a bit of force. I couldn't move her. And that was like a big aha moment, even for me. And this just happened like a month ago that when we get muscles working, it changes our bodies completely and we can regain that strength that we had or that we, that we should have, but that we had when we were much younger and Greg says that age.

Always happens in the neuromuscular system. Like that's where the first real signs of age happens. And, but the good news is we can easily turn back the clock.  

That is key. We can turn back the clock and move, you know, move throughout the day as much as you can. That's, my slogan. I always say that That's actually, , the key message of my book, Unhunched .

So, Aaron, thank you so much. I mean, gosh, you're a wealth of knowledge. I need to have you over again.  

Well, I would love to come on because as I told you before we hopped on live, I'm just, uh, releasing a whole education series. It's going to be free, uh, for people to tap into and understand, you know, some techniques in how to.

become pain free. Um, I just wanted to actually give your listeners. I mentioned earlier about neck rotation and I, I threw in upper traps. One of the, this is simple. Like I have like little hacks. It's not the be all and end all. So, you know, but if your listeners are just sitting and want like feel neck tension, just simply shrug the shoulders really slow and come up as high as you can. 

Hold it there for six seconds. Look up just a little, like 10, 20 degrees, and then slowly lower down as much as you can.  Don't just drop them, but drive them down as slow as you can. Now you're getting into a muscle called levator scapular, and then relax. And you can do it your own test. You know, look to your right, look to your left, see what your range of motion is, see what the tightness is.

And then just do that. Come up, hold it six seconds. Come all the way down slowly, slowly, slowly. And hold that for six seconds and then relax and repeat that six times and then do a test after look over your right shoulder, look over your left shoulder, and you will see a lot of tension disappear and mobility restored.

It's really cool. And the most, the best thing about it. No stretching involved.

 Thank you so much for debunking the stretching myth for us getting into muscle activation, how it hinges on the mind body muscle connection and building this mind muscle connection is what is going to help. you have,  stronger muscles  they will be able to work more efficiently and you can increase stability, , in your body and all that muscle too.

So where can our listeners and viewers find you? 

Yeah, people, please. And I hope you included in your show notes. Um, my website, Yogi Aaron dot com y o g i a a r o n dot com. And right there, they can access my free, uh, pain free series.

I have a pain free series that's out. Um, people can go through it. It takes about seven days, um, and they'll learn so much about their bodies and be able to already give certain tips to their, you know, um, clients or students, um, for them. But yeah, I really encourage people to do that. I also have a book, uh, guess what it's called.

Stop stretching. 

And it's available on  Amazon and that book has been a game changer for a lot of people. It's one of the very few books I've ever seen out there. And I say this with a lot of humility, uh, that actually teach real muscle function, like teach you something about not only what muscles are doing, but also how to get them activated.

So it's a very informative book. It's life changing. 

Awesome.  I'm going to include all of your social media links and I'm going to include your website that you mentioned in our show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day. And I think, our listeners and viewers, Got a lot out of it. I can tell you I got a lot of out of it and I've been working in this field for 10 years now. , this was amazing. Thank you.  

Thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. 

Thank you so much for joining us today.  Bye for now.  

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