In anatomy, when we talk about extension, we are talking about arching the back and lengthening the front of the body. If you’ve recently performed a cheerleading jump where the arms and legs are behind you and your whole back is arched, then you’ve done extension. If you also had pom poms in your hands, you get extra credit.
In yoga, however, “extension” refers to space in the joints – length in the front, back, and all around the sides of a joint so that the bones sit at a distance from one another. Yogic extension is tallness.
It’s easier to understand how to arch your back than to understand how to stand taller. We know about traction, which refers to any number of ways that we draw the bones away from each other. You can hang from a bar, have people (or other animals) take hold of your arms and legs and pull, see a bodyworker or chiropractor, hook yourself up to various kinds of traction devices, or just bend forward from the waist and drop your head to lengthen out your back.
These are nice, but what about when you’re just walking around the world doing you? What magic makes the bones stand a little bit away from each other, the sum total being that you gain an inch in height? It seems like only a miracle (or a very powerful helium balloon… but how would you get through doors?) could accomplish that.
To get taller, you need to balance the action of muscles around a joint. The pull of one muscle must be balanced by the pull of the opposing muscle. If one muscle dominates, you tilt toward that side. Then, higher up, you have to tilt the other way to avoid falling over. The result is a loss of height and increased strain in joints, muscles, and ligaments.
Lengthened muscles and the flexibility that results make space and movement possible, but that alone won’t make you tall. Strong muscles are necessary to support and maintain joint space and maintain your stability. Without stability, you collapse.
Strengthening by itself is inadequate in another way. If the muscles shorten too much, they clamp the bones together like a vice. Now you’re short again! (If you’re Alice in Wonderland, extra points for this short/tall thing you’re doing. Otherwise, go to the back of the line.)
What it comes down to is this:
Flexibility, when not combined with muscle strength, equals collapse.
Strength, when not combined with length, equals rigidity.
Collapse and rigidity both make you smaller.
But wait – there’s more! Even a good balance of stretch and strength isn’t enough. Complex coordination is also crucial.
You are an animal (I’ll bet people tell you that a lot). Animals move. You need to be able to contract and lengthen your muscles in many different directions, sometimes in a very fast sequence, in order to move efficiently and gracefully. (If, like me, you do a unicycle act on a tightrope, you get extra points for this one.)
So far, you need (at least) three things to be fit and tall:
1. Length in the muscles, to create space in the joints.
2. Balanced muscle strength, to maintain an upright position.
3. Coordination, to allow graceful, complex movement.
One of the reasons yoga can be so marvelous is that you’re almost always stretching, strengthening, and coordinating at the same time. If you do a downward-facing dog pose instead of hanging forward to lengthen your spine, you will be working on all three things simultaneously (You can redeem all your extra points at some unspecified point in the future.)
Here’s your last chance to make points: awareness.
To improve tallness, you have to be able to feel what tallness is for you. Seeing your posture in a photo or a mirror is helpful, but you need to be able to feel tallness and your deviations from it to maintain it. Each moment of life involves a slightly different alignment of the skeleton, so posture is always present, and so is the call to consciousness.
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