I love this message from Amba, the founder of Nosara Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Amba is one of my many favorite teachers and here in this article she shares the importance of stretching the spine every day. If you’ve ever taken one of my adult yoga classes, you have experienced many spinal warm ups before flowing.
Check out her words here:
Did you stretch your spinal cord today?
A message from Amba
The spinal cord connects everything in your body from the brain to the little toe. Have you sent it any conscious awareness or thanked it for being in your life today? Without it, you would be dead, and without it functioning most efficiently, your life and life expression is limited.
Why bother stretching the spinal cord? Let’s make an analogy: think of an expressway built by the government from NYC to San Francisco that runs above ground, higher than the skyscrapers.
At first the expressway is new and cars are flying across country and able to do their business so easily and efficiently. Then the government ignores the expressway and does no maintenance for 10 years.
Do you think even one car could make it across the country? No way! The concrete would begin to crumble, vines and weeds would take over, the rain and wind would rust everything, and it would become absolutely useless.
Well, this is exactly what we are doing with our spinal cord when we do not maintain it. The fluids begin to dry up, the nerve endings ‘rust.’ We sit at computers all day, or we sit in cars, then we stand a little bit, walk a little bit, maybe even get on the treadmill a little bit. But none of these kinds of movements are directly affecting our spinal cord. We need to get upside down. We need to twist from side to side, and to squeeze ourselves from the inside out. We need to stretch our backs from the lower back all the way to the upper back, all the way through the neck to the base of the skull, where the spinal cord enters the brain. And we Wake up!
Good Morning Vietnam! Good Morning Humanity!
It’s time to wake UP.

Love,
Amba
Founder of Nosara Yoga Institute