The Crura 

What are those weird things and what do they do? 

Finding Your Crura and Finding Your Core

"What's the Crura?" you ask!  It's like the root system for your diaphragm.  Which, stick with me a little bit for the anatomy!  It'll  pay off.  Because knowing what they are lets you 'activate' them and that lets you tap into your core strength.  

If you're like me, you might have had the idea that your diaphragm was like an umbrella or a mushroom:

or

<-- this pic is from a really cool website!

Which, okay, you caught me napping in biology class!  This does not do either the diaphragm or the crura justice.  

Enter Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen who has explored the body-mind-awareness and shares this through Body Mind Centering, Lisa Clark, and Amy Matthews, some classes at the Dallas Yoga Center, some dvds and this youtube clip:  

So this was the raw material I started with.  

First I eyeballed that video a fair amount.  Like, what is she doing?  Then I realized I had my 'root system' wrong.  It's not like the roots are coming out just the bottom.  The whole stalk is knitted into the anterior longitudinal ligament (the long one on the front) -- through the fascia, the ligament is knitted into the spine through fascia.  These layers are tight.  Like shrink wrapped tight.  And they go from the tail bone to T12 and then even upward from there.  (!)

So the first thing to do is find the bones.  

If you're not familiar with anatomy, any handy skeleton pic will do.  Have a look at it but don't worry about memorizing it, just know there's something like that inside of you.

To find the bones, you kind of play pin the tail on the donkey in 3D inside your body.  You pick a place and you ask your self/subconscious -- 'is that a bone?'  you will get a response.  Then you move forward, backward, left, right, continuing to ask the same question.  Some answers will be the same and some will be different.  You get different answers because you'll be in different kinds of tissue.  You won't know which kind of tissue at first because it's all new info.  Eventually, though, you'll figure out where the spine is because you'll get enough similar answers that show up in the shape of your spinal column.

(Okay ... as Bonnie mentions in this article on Engaging the Crura of the Thoracic Diaphragm, the easiest way to learn this is to find someone who already knows!)  

Secondly, 'find' the ligament.  

For this, I thought about rollers of various kinds going up the front of my spine!  Or, the shrink wrap idea works, too.  You're going for a thin and extremely tensile layer just in front of the vertebra.

Here's a handy anatomy pic:

As you 'roll' up your spine you will find there's a sense of close connection in places.  And in other places a sense of not being connected.  Also a sense in some places that you can be 'in' the ligament, but not in other places.  The thing to do is continue going up and down the spine asking for feedback from your self / sub-conscious to the questions: "I am in the ligament?" "Is the ligament there?"  and then you continue until you get a good sense of the entire ligament and the entire ligament vacuumed onto the front of the spine.

Next you add in the Crura

The process for this is similar to the first two steps with the different that this time you're adding in a third layer.
It is hard to find a side view!  

If we go with the mushroom idea, it would be like the mushroom was attached all the way from top to bottom, where the blue is.

I added in a pinkish line to show how the diaphragm and it's crura and connections might be conceptually thought of to lie right next to the anterior longitudinal ligament.

Using either the mushroom or the pic just above here, the trick is to take your awareness into the length of the diaphragm connection and determine how closely the diaphragm and ligament are connected.  

Of course, they are already physically connected!   It's more a question of how functionally they are connected.  Places you can't find in your imagination / mind / awareness are places where the connection is not 'consistent.'  By creating the connection with mindfulness you become aware of what the benefit of it is.

For me, it is a stronger core.  The energy radiates from the center outward.

Here's a front view that's much more illustrative of the actual body.  You can see how the muscle comes into the fascia/ligament around L1 and continues down.  It is harder to see how it extends up.  It allows you to see the structures, though, which allows you to have some bearings as you begin to form your map of what's going on inside of you.

So, that's all folks ... 

This is one of those things I've been playing with for three or so years.  Which is to say, read it, take it in, play with it, put it down, come back to it.  Figure out how it works for you!

I've found this useful in riding, running, yoga, doing the dishes ... standing in the grocery line.  

Where can it fit into your life?

Lynn

03/22/20