To understand bolsters you need to understand fascia, I’m not going to delve too deep into fascia in this article but I will be posting an essay on fascia soon. For the purposes of props and bolsters you need to understand that you must hold a pose for 90 to 120 seconds to begin to affect fascia. I find holding the pose for 5 minutes is the most effective. To achieve this you need to be able to be comfortable in an uncomfortable position and still have healthy blood flow.
Next is spine health. I think it’s become abundantly clear that sitting is one of the worst things you can do to your spine in our current reality it is almost impossible to avoid sitting for long periods of time. This means we need to put the time in to correct the ills of sitting. The human spine over a relatively short span has begun to change its curvature and we need to get our J spine or primal spine from our youth back. Props & Bolsters are an excellent way to facilitate this.
Now it’s time to talk about hips and shoulders. Oftentimes in the attempt to stretch our hips and Shoulders we end up aggravating your spine. This is because your hips and shoulders are very strong, much stronger than your lower back and it’s going to break at its weakest point. So it is important that you get your spine in natural alignment and stabilize it so you can isolate to your hip flexors and your shoulders. Align and stabilize your spin and then go to work on your hips and shoulders.