Operating out of the Deep Core
Every month, our Yoga Discussion WhatsApp chat chooses a theme. For June’s guiding concept, Saturday morning regular at Left Coast Power Yoga, Molly, suggested the phrase: “Not Your Basic Boat” (Thanks, Molly!). What an amazing doorway into exploring an often ignored muscle, the TVA, and two big ideas about how we move on our mats and through the world.
What is the TVA?
The transverse abdominis (TVA) is the deepest of our abdominal muscles. The famous 6 pack abs are on the surface – they run up-and-down. The diagonal running obliques are an important middle layer. The TVA lives under the obliques, and its fibers wrap horizontally around the middle, like an internal corset — or a weightlifting belt you were gifted at birth. Because it is so deep (and rarely talked about), many of us have never knowingly contracted it in our lives.
The TVA isn’t really a “mover” muscle — it’s a stabilizer, and in a well-organized body it switches on a hair before you actually move, bracing the spine before the load arrives. Reach, lift, twist: the deep core leads, and the limbs follow… Or at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work! We start from the inside, and the outside follows in a more powerful, intentional, graceful way… this has deep philosophical implications.
You’ve already met the TVA in class!
Even if “transverse abdominis” is a new phrase for you, you’ve probably been cued to engage this muscle for years. Every time a teacher says “navel to spine,” or “draw the lower belly in and up,” or “hug the midline,” we’re trying to activate the TVA. When someone tells you “don’t sag!” in plank, chaturanga, or handstands — that scoop that keeps you from drooping at the belly into a banana shape is the TVA at work. When a cue asks you to “knit the front ribs” before a backbend, or to find a “hollow belly” in an arm balance or headstand — same deep layer. I’m not a fan of the ever popular “engage your core!” because it’s pretty vague, but I suspect that’s the intention of that one as well.
In the Hatha tradition this drawing-in has a name: uddiyana bandha, the “upward-flying lock.” Bandha means lock or seal, and its whole job is to gather and contain our energy rather than let it leak out through scattered, sloppy effort. But because this is yoga, nothing is just physical!
Samana Vayu (draw in) and Vyana Vayu (radiate out)
In yoga, prana moves through us in various currents called vayus (“winds”). Two of them operate out of our core.
Samana vayu draws in towards the navel — the same neighborhood as our TVA. Samana is the gathering, consolidating, digesting force. It draws inward toward the center. It is the phenomenon of consolidation.
Vyana vayu is Samana’s counterpart. It radiates outward from the center to the very edges — circulation, distribution, expression, reach. It takes whatever has been gathered and circulates it out.
So Samana consolidates at the core; vyana carries outward to our extremities and beyond. The TVA supports this at the physical level — the deep center gathers and braces, and only then does movement radiate gracefully out into the arms and legs. Consolidation and alignment inward, non-chaotic action outward. The body is a metaphor for skillful living.
“Going inward” in meditation, seeking our center, is not an escape from the “real world”. We don’t consolidate in order to withdraw from life. We consolidate so that whatever we then offer comes from a place of depth and organization, rather than scattered, disorganized reactions.
The keel, the anchor, and the open heart
Back to that boat! And also back to May’s theme of the heart!
We talk a lot about anchors in class — that felt sense of being tethered while everything on the surface pitches and rolls. A boat has another deep, hidden helper too: the keel, the fin below the waterline that lets the boat move smoothly without capsizing. Both live out of sight, beneath the surface. Both are the entire reason the boat doesn’t tip over.
The metta we practiced last month radiates in exactly this shape: from a settled center (self-love), outward in widening circles, to all beings. Vyana, essentially.)
Let’s find our deep core this month! Not just physically, but metaphorically. Let it gather and fire before we act.
I marvel at how the body keeps teaching the lesson the mind is trying to learn. What do you do to get yourself steady before doing hard things? Tell me in the comments.