Now I have Hara, what do I do with it?

[Kokoro777]

In the quest to solve my terrible 9 month-long back pain (and lately, crippling sciatic pain), I've been having one-to-one core strength teaching sessions with a specialist physiotherapist. She's been helping me activate and strengthen my transversus abdominis (TA) in the deep, lower abdomen/pelvis and other muscles too, in order to support the vertebrae and hopefully alleviate the symptoms. Its very difficult to do since the effects are really subtle, but now I can activate my TA at will and even when moving around, when I remember to engage it.

So how do I use this new skill in my Iai? I'm told its vital to use the hara but I'm not sure how. Do use these muscles throughout a kata or just during the cuts? Do I activate TA just at the kime point in the cut? Can anyone guide me?

[Durandal]

well attack with your hara, you know where it is now

[Kokoro777]

well attack with your hara, you know where it is now

I save that attack for the laydeez...

[b8amack]

You belly flop the ladies?

[Michael Hodge]

Can anyone guide me?

Read this book. That character building stuff we keep hearing about is featured quite extensively in it. The physical aspect of hara is but a tiny fraction of its full measure.

Michael Hodge

[DCPan]

Could start with the dynamics of breathing...~page 6.

http://books.google.com/books?id=LxN...page&q&f=false

[Peter West]

Sounds like you've been going to a physiotherapist instead of Sports Massage. The TAs will not be the problem. If you've been over weigh, spend a lot of time sitting at a desk and have sciatica there are three muscles that need direct attention on each side of the body.

The main culprit in Sciatica is nearly always the Piriformis. This small muscle, when over stressed, causes the Sciatic nerve to be restricted and causes pain in the leg.
To deal with this, first the gluteus muscles, which have become lazy through excessive sitting, need to be activated and strengthened. When they are soft or weak, the Piriformis takes on their function but doesn't have the strength. The function of the piriformis is to stabilise the hip joint, and is too small to take on the Gluteus function.

As the gluteus is strengthened, the Piriformis needs to be stretched and relaxed. Relaxation often requires the extremely painful pressure directly to the trigger point of the muscle in the hip joint area, usually with the therapist's full weight on an elbow. (Not nice, but gives instant relief to the sciatica)

Finally, to ensure the mobility of the legs, in addition to quad, ham string, adductor and Ilio-Tibial band stretching, the Psoas major needs to be stretched and softened.

Working on any abdominal muscles, while beneficial to your personal health, will not give any direct benefit for sciatica or back pain. (as far as I am aware from 3 years working with a Sports Massage Therapist). This is merely dealing with the symptoms and not the cause.

[teflon tengu]

Using your belly in Iai, is done by pumping (flexing) the belly muscles out. The belly should bulge out when flexed. If you're sucking your belly inward while flexing this is wrong. A good excercise to do is to get a partner and a jo. Both of you Hang onto the very end so that the heel of your hand covers the end of the jo this keeps you from getting a little circular bruise under your naval. You'll both place your hand just below your naval so you'll be connected so to speak by the jo. The excercise is done by trying to move your partner backwards by pumping your belly with each step, so that it is the belly pump that starts your partner moving backwards and not the strength in your legs. You soften your belly muscles before each pump and each step. As you pogress in this excercise your partner can give you more and more resistance. The excercise is easier demonstrated than described, so I hope this makes sense. This translates into your iai when you pump the belly during your cuts at the time the sword would make contact with the opponent. The belly softens at the completion of the cut. It also would pump during the press in furikaburi and soften again as the sword comes overhead just to pump again during the kirioroshi. The reason why you want to do this is because it solidifies the upper body so the energy that you put into the cut continues through the target at the point of impact, and that the rebounding energy from cutting a solid object (like a person) doesn't cause your upper body to recoil, ever so slightly, taking power away from the cut. Hope this is helpful.

[Kokoro777]

The main culprit in Sciatica is nearly always the Piriformis....

We are working on this and and hamstrings but its a gradual process. My hamstrings are so tight (50 degrees of flexion only and form a person who used to be able to do the splits in my 20s/30s) that we're having to work up on toward more advanced ideas. Its more likely to be a disc problem because if local pressure is applied to the area of the bulging disc (L5/S1-lower back), I get pain in my popliteal fossa/calf but the pain is so bad, I'm open to any ideas (except leaches)!

I know you really rate your sports massage therapist, Peter, and she really helped you with your knee problem, so I wonder if you might be able to ask yours if she could recommend anyone in the South/West Yorkshire area? There are a lot of charlatans out there so a recommendation is always a good thing.

Anyway, hara.....

[Peter West]

http://www.theisrm.com/directory.php

This directory give all people at or working for level 5 (Leah was level 4 but recently became level 5 and is now on a world tour studying massage and therapy methods from around the world).
Anyway, she gave me this link and says anyone on this site should be trustworthy.

I saw my knee specialist at the hospital this week. He was truly amazed by what I could do and how easily I live with my knee considering the damage.

Leah told me once about disk damage. generally it is mostly fixable (that is to say, the correct therapy can take pressure off the disk so that it can heal). This involves weight loss, reducing excess spinal curvature, mostly by massaging the deeper muscles such as the Longissimus thoraces and Multifidi, but these are very deep and take a long time to get to. Doing huge amounts of stretching (e.g. Yoga) and core strength development (Pilates). Getting the order and rate of development is crucial to avoiding further damage of course.

Also muscles that cross the leg/hip and hip spine joints such as Pectineus, Psoas Major and Iliacus.

[Peter West]

At the 2011 Okehampton Koryu Seminar Leah spent the whole afternoon working with people as we trained to assist with injuries, explain the risks involved, and later to spend 2 hours doing a full body stretch. I think everyone benefitted and many people now do far more extensive stretching as a result.

[Steve Bishop]

Athletes at UoE use foam rolling after every session- it seems to work very well.

[hl1978]

In the quest to solve my terrible 9 month-long back pain (and lately, crippling sciatic pain), I've been having one-to-one core strength teaching sessions with a specialist physiotherapist. She's been helping me activate and strengthen my transversus abdominis (TA) in the deep, lower abdomen/pelvis and other muscles too, in order to support the vertebrae and hopefully alleviate the symptoms. Its very difficult to do since the effects are really subtle, but now I can activate my TA at will and even when moving around, when I remember to engage it.

So how do I use this new skill in my Iai? I'm told its vital to use the hara but I'm not sure how. Do use these muscles throughout a kata or just during the cuts? Do I activate TA just at the kime point in the cut? Can anyone guide me?

The hara is more than just that muscle, for example you need to use the perniuem area as well to push or pull (think of a beach ball that you push and pull to contort to different shapes). Now even if you can articulate the hara so that you can see a ball of muscle moving around, it doesn't do much good if you can't connect it on out to the arms. That is where breathwork and stretches come in. For something like that I would look into yoga or chen tai chi. You will figure out eventually how to use that breath pressure to tug on different parts of the body moving it from the middle on out.

Alternatively, you can do a reverse breath and do a leg press using the breath only to extend the legs. This is something better shown in person than online though.

[chidokan]

one of the women in my class has a back problem (slipped disc) and usually wears a back brace all day at work. Since starting iai last year, she tells me the brace has been used less and less as time has gone on. It has been interesting to watch the improvement in posture, although she did go through some pain initially whilst correcting the muscle 'twist' she had developed by leaning slightly sideways to avoid putting pressure on that side of the spine.
Nice to see iai has a positive effect on peoples health, isnt it!

[Kokoro777]

Its reassuring to hear 'positive back pain stories' (without having to read 'Take A Break') and several people have said they had bulging discs and sciatic nerve pain and yet they've recovered after 12 months or so: bulges do seem to 'correct/cure themselves' provided there isn't any continued trauma. For example until a week before Christmas, I couldn't sit down for more than 10 minutes without terrible pain ( that went on for 7 months so you can imagine what it was like driving down to Barnstaple et al. Iai seminars) but now I can manage 30+ minutes with little pain. Not only am I looking for pain relief but also preventing my condition going to full disc herniation hence the core/pelvic muscle exercises etc as prescribed by a private back-pain specialist physio. I've found a sports massage practitioner (thanks Peter) and will see him this week to see what he thinks. Perhaps the combination will be a winning formula.

With regards 'Hara', its clear I've completely misunderstood the issue and that's given me an idea for a new thread.....