Superficial Front Line
The Superficial Front Line connects the entire front, anterior, side of the body. Let’s walk our attention along the front line with some light tough: we can begin at the top of the feet with the toe extensors, lifting your foot into dorsiflexion will expose these muscles. With the foot flexed, you’ll notice the large tendon at the front of the ankle, this is the next muscle of your front line, the tibias anterior— the anterior portion of the tibia, the large shin bone. This is a hard working muscle, and you might enjoy giving it a little massage as you walk your awareness up it. We can follow the tibias anterior up to the knee where it branches out to meet the quadriceps. Extend, straighten, your knee and you’ll see the quadriceps ignite the front of the thigh. 3 out of 4 of these quadriceps, the vastus muscles, live on the femur itself, but the rectus femoris cross the hip joint and has its origin at the AIIS, a landmark just below our normal ASIS headlight landmark commonly referred to for ‘hips width’ stances.
This is where the bottom half of the front line ends, and the top half begins. Though the fascial train appears to be split at the pelvis, with the rectors femoris’ origin at the AIIS and the rectus abdominus origin at the Pubic Symphysis, we see that these are just different connection points on the same bone— wherever the pelvis goes these two points go together— if we tip forward the front line shortens together, and if we tip back the front line lengthens as a whole. When we bend forward, though, we find that the two halves can have different experiences, as we will see in a few moments.
We continue following the front line from the pubic symphysis, up the rectus abdominus, through the sternum, to our sternoclavicular joint, where the collar bones join. From here, press your forehead into your hand, and you’ll feel the sternocleidomastoid extend out on the front of the neck. Trace this muscle down to its double origin— the thicker aspect connects to the manubrium of the sternum and the thinner portion connects to the clavicle. This muscle inserts just behind our ears, on the skull, and the fascial line completes in a half circle behind the skull.
The front line has some unique muscular qualities due to its positioning in our body— “Human beings have developed a unique way of standing which presents all their most sensitive and vulnerable areas to the oncoming world, all arrayed along the SFL. Compare this to quadrupeds, who protect most or all of these vulnerable areas”
This Tom Meyers says, is why the front line is composed of fast twitch muscle fiber— allowing the front line to “stand ready to defend the soft and sensitive parts that adorn the front surface of the human body, and protect the viscera of the ventral cavity”
The front line could not be more opposite than its back line counterpart, which is composed of thick, slow twitch endurance muscles. And as we can see, the two lines literally perform opposite functions every step of the way. Of course, together, they allow us to perform infinite tasks as we pull from both of their strengths.
Actions:
• SFL Shortening: Dorsiflexes the foot, extends the knee, flexes the trunk
Let’s Feel the SFL go from short to neutral to lengthened in this simple sequence
Do Parsvottanasana with your left leg forward, drop back knee for a portion, focus on front leg showing full flexion of SFL.
Stay focused on front foot in parsvo, step feet together
Unroll your SFL as you roll up to tadasana
Experience your neutral SFL in tadasaba
Extend through the back and externally rotate arms to lengthen the top half of the SFL
Bring left leg back for Natarajasana and feel full extension of SFL.
Part by Part
Bottom of SFL: Tibialis Anterior and Short/long toe extensors
Dorsiflexing your foot and lifting your toes are the primary contractions of the bottom portion of the SFL. In a yoga class you would encounter this by flexing the foot and tucking the toes. This serves to shorten the SFL from the knee down, creating a sense of tone and connection from the knee up in the SFL, enabling you to stretch across the hip flexors and front half of the torso.
The front of our hips are usually much more in need of opening than the front of our foot, so we usually tend towards this type of work in our yoga classes. Also, shortening of the SFL from the knee down promotes overall stability in the body, which is also why you are able to access more of your SFL by doing it.
On the other hand, if you are trying to feel the connection of the SFL, and are not as concerned with accessing the hips, simply flattening the foot and pointing the toes can help you feel the whole SFL as one united entity. It’s good not to get too stuck on one action of a portion of our chain, and to always feel it fluidly.
Examples of lengthening whole chain, including below knee:
Natarajasana
Dhanurasana
Anjaney
two segments: As we move up the SFL we soon find that in the pelvis it is broken into two parts. We saw a similar concept in the SBL at the back of the knee.
In a natural well toned standing position, these two segments act as one line of connection across the front of the body. When there is a forward tilt of the pelvis, though, this line loses that connective tone.
Often teachers cue a rebalancing of the pelvis by saying something like ‘tuck the tail’ or to ‘squeeze the glutes’ in order to bring this relationship back in alignment. Because of it’s reductionist nature, this only serves us on a superficial level, creating a stretch at the front of the hip where the disconnection occurs, but not uniting the SFL as a whole.
Let’s take a moment to see some of the key players in this circumstance, and then work on aligning them in our postures.
Middle Portion of SFL: Quadriceps & Rectus Relationship
The quadriceps connect the top of our knee to the AIIS, the underside of the common ASIS.
This muscle is commonly shortened as we sit. When we sit alot, and don't move enough, this can result in a forward tilting of the pelvis when we stand up. Try it and see.
Similarly, the rectus abdominus connects to the Pubic Symphysis, and when we slouch or sit in a forward position, we lost it’s upward pull, resulting in the allowance of that forward tilting pelvis.
As we said earlier, the pelvis marks the point of separation within the SFL, as the knee marked a separation point for the SBL. In a neutral standing position, the fibers are continuous and connect the entire line, when the pelvis tilts forward the fibers run at different angles, disconnecting the lines integrity. Excessive Sitting can turn off the uplifting power of rectus abdominus, further promoting forward pelvic tilt
A student with a forward tilted pelvis will have a very limited experience of asanas such as Vira 1, or back bending postures like anjaneyasana and ustrasana, because of this disconnection in the SFL.
This disconnect causes them to ‘miss’ the hip stretch, ’avoid’ the core work, and pinch the low back at the thorax lumbar junction. To remedy this we can work to bring the SFL online with a little pre-tensioning, and then simply work to maintain that connection as we begin to stretch across a toned SFL.
Here’s how to do it:
First sit in a chair and notice the shortening of the quad and lack of upward pull in the abs. Stand up slowly and maintain that relationship, allowing your pelvis to tip forward.
Lift the arms and feel the 3 challenges of this alignment: ‘avoiding’ the hip stretch, ‘missing’ the core work , ‘pinching’ the back.
Now let’s get the SFL online: bend the back knee, sweep the arms out like hugging a big ball, allow the tail bone to drop heavy, and hollow out the front of the body. Feel the connection across the hip joint between the quad, pelvis, and abdominals. Now that the SFL is reconnected, keep the awareness of this tone as you approach Vira 1 again.
From this toned connection, you should feel a remedy of the 3 issues. Now you feel the hip stretch, the core work, and an even work across your back.
•We can bring this same work to Anjaneyasana and Ustrasana. In these poses your back leg is already bent, so simply sitting the hips back and scooping the arms around, and hollowing out the front body, will all serve to reunite the SFL and get the postures back online.
We can also use this work in a waving vinyasa to support our work in Up dog
Top of the SFL: Sternocleidomastoid
Let’s feel the origin of the SCM on our sternum and collar bone, as well as the insertion of it at the mastoid process behind the ears. Put your hand on your forehead and push forward and down, you will feel the SCM contract and can trace the shape to its origin at the sternum and clavicle. This is concentric contraction of the SCM.
This replicates head forward position, which is caused by shortened/ tight SFL (and/ or also a lengthened, weak SBL which we will talk about later). This is a common postural pattern that we see due to a lot of sitting, computer work, and stress. Not only is it uncomfortable, it also inhibits breathing.
To really feel this muscle pull us into a better postural position work we can watch it eccnetraically contract. Place your hand on the back of your head and push up and back into it. Feel the length of your neck. (low neck flexion and upper neck extension)
This is something you can bring into your life every time you drive, as headrests are meant to interact with this portion of your head in order to lower the impact of whiplash as it sends the force through the spine as a whole, instead of isolating the impact into your neck. This shows that when our alignment is good the spine and muscles of our back can better support the weight of our head and gravity.
Direction of pull in front and back line:
It’s easy to imagine the body as stacked bones or blocks, even the Rolf institute uses such an image. But our free standing body is held together via the concept of tensegrity, a play of tension between soft tissue and bones that holds us up in thin air so to speak. We can't go into this in too much detail today, but we can use this concept to help us understand and feel the interaction between thh SFL and SBL.
There is an integrated tension throughout the body, literally a direction of pull happening, we aren’t just stacked blocks. To understand this pull, we can imagine the mast and sail of a ship.
Imagine your body as a ship, and the sails are positioned on the front line. Our thick tensioning back line pulls these sails up from the back— just like in the picture here. Our body pulls the ropes down from tieback, which rises the sails up in our front line. In your body, the direction of pull begins at the heels. The gastric and achilles pull downward, as do the hamstrings and erectors. This downward pull across your entire back side generates an upward pull across the entire front side.
Have you ever wondered why we say to root the shoulders down and in, and to lift the heart? This is because it aligns with the natural directions of pull in our SBL and SFL.