Showing posts with label Anatomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anatomy. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 September 2014
A
blog about why some anatomy basics are useful in coordination work.
Welcome to the
blog. We’re starting right away, so get comfy to read.
Let’s breathe fully and deeply once together, just so we’re both on the
same page.
Ok. Let’s start.
Today’s blog will
try to explain why I believe it’s important to know
some basic anatomy in any attempt at trying to correct postural issues.
I’ll be happy if by the time you’ve finished reading you are able to recognize anatomical knowledge as something alive, in
constant development, something that grows from evolving ideas and sensory
information.
What attracts you
to the study of anatomy?
To beging with,
let’s recap the paradigm from which we’ll
look at the issue.
Unity: we learn with
our mind and with our bodies, and we consider the body as an integrated whole.
Use-Function-Structure:
we look at anatomy (structure) in relation to what function it performs,
remembering that our use affects both.
The Coherence in our Design:
everything in our anatomical design has a reason for being there.
Interferences to Accurate Perception:
our ideas about our bodies and the feelings and sensations we get from it don’t
always coincide, and sometimes our ideas are way off-center.
How above
What: It’s more importante to understand how it works,
how the bits and pieces relate to each other and to the whole, than to fill
ourselves up with anatomical data and trivia that we cannot comprehend nor make
practical use of.
The
force of Habit: Old ideas die hard, like weeds… they
come back again and again every time we let our guard down.
Let’s now
consider why it’s a good idea to study some basic
anatomy.
But before moving on, yawn and stretch. If
we hold one attitude of mind and body for too long, our bodies and brains go
numb. Move your tissues a bit to allow oxygenated blood to return to them.
Great. Let’s
continue.
Does knowing anatomy guarantee I’ll
have good posture?
No. If knowing anatomy automatically made you an
elegantly poised individual, then all doctors, anatomists, physiotherapists and
P.E. teachers would be paragons of good posture and carriage. Sadly, this is
not the case.
What’s the use of studying
anatomy then?
1. Good posture is a matter of
coordination. If you’re not
one of those naturally (and unconsciously) well-coordinated people, then you’ll
have to learn conscious coordination. In order to do this, you need to be able to feel where your different body
parts are and what they’re doing in relation to each other. And for this
you’ll need to know your most important bits and
how they feel.
2. Knowing basic anatomy (name, shape and feel of the main
bones and joints) gives you a common language to be able to follow instructions
in an intelligent way.
Even if
you rank among the naturally well-coordinated, it’s not a bad idea to know how you’re
doing it, for the following 4 reasons:
a) In case you lose
it and want to get it back.
b) In case you get
stuck in your progress in any physical discipline you practice.
c) In case you want
to explain or teach someone else how you do what you do.
d) To open yourself
up to other possibilities and choices you may not imagine you have.
Our bodies are
fascinating universes waiting to be explored.
This is all for now.
See you next time.
Victoria
Friday, 2 May 2014
Did you know that
your back pain, your chronic muscle tension and your bad posture could be products
of your ignorance of a key language that is being spoken non-stop all around
you, but that you somehow cannot perceive because you don’t know about it?
What would you give
to learn to speak this language?
I’ve been giving English language lessons for many years here in
Uruguay. Generally my students are adolescents who are trying to keep up with
their school’s English requirement, or who are trying to pass one of the
several English language international examinations. These kids come to one
hour lessons weekly, sometimes two or three times a week. Some of them don’t
even like English all that much. And yet, they understand and accept that, in today’s
world, it is necessary for them to
know and speak English. Their parents have made that point abundantly clear to
them.
What strikes me as interesting is that we all live immersed in
another language of which the vast majority no nothing about: it’s the language
in which body and mind speak to each other. It is not a verbal language; it is
a language of neural stimuli and physiological responses, and we perceive it
through our physical sensations and emotional states. However, since we have
never been taught this subtle language’s grammar, structure or vocabulary, our
interpretation of it, and our ability to intervene in this ongoing
communication in order to achieve certain desired results, ends up being
limited, when not downright counterproductive.
Not knowing how to speak this tongue is much more limiting for
our wellbeing than not knowing any other language. And yet, few people know
about it, and even fewer take the time and effort to study it. The results of
this illiteracy are serious health problems, both physical (hernias, chronic
muscle tension, joint wear and tear leading to arthritis, etc.), and emotional
(uncontrolled stress responses, anxiety, stage fright, etc.), as well as
general unhappiness borne from not being able to achieve our desired physical
and mental outputs.
You need to learn how to listen to and understand what your body
and mind are telling each other, because it is this ongoing conversation that
is dictaing your phsyical form (posture). Your posture (the end result of this
conversation in this language you may know nothing about) has direct effects on
your physical and emotional health, as well as on how others perceive you,
which in turn directly affects your relationships and social life. Being able
to consciously have a say in this conversation, in order to re-direct its flow
towards the results you desire, should be a priority in our education, in much
the same way that we are expected to speak a second language and know how to
use a computer for most jobs.
If we accept the premise that to correct your posture and
improve your physical and mental performance you need to learn a new language
(let us call it the Psychophysical Language), it is to be expected that you
won’t be able to master it from reading a book or taking a few lessons.
However, you do not need countless years of lessons to get to a fairly proficient
level; after all, you used to speak this language fluently as a very young
child, so it’s just a question of uncovering what you already know but forgot.
As with all language, it is possible to quickly learn to recognize some key
words and phrases, and to learn to communicate with them to achieve basic
goals. With time, patience and commitment you could become quite fluent at it,
to the point of “blending in with the natives” so to speak.
This is why I would like to teach you some of these key words
and phrases, so that you can start having a dialogue with your body-mind. Your
mind is already conversing with your body, but it does so at an unconscious
level. We’ll try to bring some of this conversation up to a conscious level, so
that you can start hearing what your mind is telling your muscles, and can
decide if perhaps it wouldn’t be to everyone’s benefit if you altered the tone
of their conversation.
Let us start with the feet. What are your feet telling you?
Your feet are the base of support for your whole body when you
are standing and of your legs when you are sitting on a chair. They are made up
of a lot of little bones (26), muscles (38), joints (40) and tendons (over
100). Given all these available structures to articulate, your feet are able to
“speak the psychophysical language” with a great nuances of tone and an ample
vocabulary. If we give our feet the necessary space to move freely, they are
able to adapt their shape to all types of terrain and thus help you keep your
balance. However, we tend to have them cramped, compressed and bound up inside
shoes that do not allow them to communicate all the information they have about
where and what you’re standing on. Mostly, we only listen to our feet when they
scream in pain after long hours of being tortured.
In my previous blog I told you about the importance of creating a spcae and time for practice.
Conscientiously practicing a little bit of self-observation every day es the
equivalent of studying the grammar of this psychophysical language we’re
talking about today. The more you get to know this sensorial language in which
your body and your mind speak, the more you’ll be aware of it, and how it
affects your performance, in your daily life. And as soon as you start to
listen in on these conversations and understand their general gist, you’ll be
able to join in on the dialogue and thus avoid only finding about the important
things when they’re already a health problem.
So this week I invite you to start by reconnecting with your
feet. I’m leaving you 3 simple practices to jumpstart your exploration. It’s
best if you do them with bare feet, so take advantage of your morning or
evening shower to practice them.
1.
We tend to have the soles of our feet really tense
and this generates tension throughout the whole posterior musculature of your
leg, all the way up to your sitting bones. To release your feet think about the
space between your toes and imagine that warm water runs between each pair of
toes. Be aware that your toes are way longer than you probably imagine.
Although they’re covered in skin, which makes them look like one big mass, your
toes actually start halfway down your foot. They need the space between them in
order to move freely and adapt and mold to different surfaces and thus help you balance.
2.
When you are standing the weight of your body should
be spread equally among 3 key points on your foot: the heel, the base of the
big toe, and the base of the little toe. You are in essence standing on a
tripod, or a three-legged stool. Check to see which of these three points you
tend to favour the most, and which foot you tend to favour the most. Play with
your body weight, alternating the emphasis on each point and noting the effect
that it has on your posture and the amount of muscle tension you must put on
your legs and lower back to keep your balance.
3.
We can now join exercises 1 and 2. Release the soles
of your feet, remembering the space between your toes, and feel the weight of
your body distribute itself on the 3 points of contact: center of the heel, base
of the big toe, and base of the little toe. Imagine that at each of these three
points of contact you have little suction pads that adhere your feet to the
ground, connecting you with the earth. Move your toes around, opening them and
closing them, while keeping the sole of the foot soft and the 3 key points in
easy contact with the floor.
Practice these exercises for a week and let me know what you
find out about the conversations your feet are having.
See you next week with more Psychophysical Language grammar and
vocabulary lessons ;)
Victoria
P.S. Alexander Technique teacher Angela Bradshaw has just published an excellent book on how
to recover your body-mind balance and release unnecessary tensions, called “Be
In Balance: A Simple Introduction to the Alexander Technique”. It comes with a
lot of easily applicable exercises and ideas. The book is easy to read and full
of great drawings, and makes for a great introduction to the concepts of the
Alexander Technique for those wanting to explore it. You can get the book on
Amazon.com on this link (US)
or this link (UK).
Friday, 21 February 2014
Creating
Space is an act of self-definition… it’s how you get to know
the vastness of you. It’s what Creation looked like really. This is what it
looked like for God (Genesis 1).
You see, apparently God was creating space between
stuff, so that we could distinguish one thing from another and give each bit it’s
proper use.
Let’s
see what it would look like for you. We’ll create space in your armpit.
Now, for most people, the armpit is this
politically-incorrect stretch of skin that is prone to produce unsightly stuff
(sweat, hair, odor) no matter how much Dove tells us they will make them pretty if we use their products.
What most people don’t remember is that the armpit, is
a pit (i.e. a hole), and as such has “walls”
enclosing a space. And that space is vital for your shoulder joint to work correctly.
So let’s create
your pit again for you, shall we?
1.
Now take your right hand and grab the front
wall of your left armpit (for anatomy geeks, that’s your pectoralis major… for
the rest, that’s the front wall. Period). Allow the left arm to rest easy by
your side and imagine that front wall releasing, relaxing, softening (I like
using the image of warm water running along the area and massaging it loose…
but use whatever image or word or quality of touch that achieves the same
effect for you).
2.
Now grab the back wall of your left armpit
(latissimus dorsi, teres major) and allow that to release.
3.
Now softly touch the inside of your upper arm,
way up in the pit, that’s the outside wall of your pit (coracobrachialis,
biceps, triceps) and ask that area to release too.
4.
And finally touch the inside wall (serratus
anterior), way up there in the pit, it’s a hard surface cause there’s ribs and
ask that area to release too.
Now take a moment to notice the difference between the
left armpit and the right armpit.
If all went well, you should have a clearer sensory
picture of the left armpit now, compared to the right one (if all went really
really well, you might even have released some tension in your neck, shoulders
and/or upper back).
The clearer picture
comes from having differentiated one bit from another bit, that is, from
creating space between bits.
This
principle of creating space in order to tell what’s what, applies to everything
in Life.
When you are immersed in a habitual reaction (be it a
habit of body, mind or emotion), you are not aware of what’s going on, you’re
acting out the script, completely identified with your cast character. The only
way to realize you’re playing a role is to take a step back from the play and
see it - and everything in it - for what it is.
With space, your previously amorphous armpit became
this fabulous joint composed of different parts that interact with each other
in a space.
The same idea applies to your emotional life. (I’ve written
about this before, if you’re interested you may want to check out this post
about how I dealt with anxious thoughts, or this post and this post
about stopping and seeing things in context).
Creating
space is not about separating yourself from something in order to cut it out
from you. Rather, it’s about getting to know the different pieces of you a
little better. They’re all still you, but you know what you’re made up of.
It’s the difference between knowing you have $500 in
your wallet and knowing that you have $500 in 3 $100 bills, 2 $50 bills, and 5
$20 bills. It’s all still $500, but in the second case you know you have change
that you can use to pay the bus fare.
Creating
space gives you more options, more freedom to choose how to use your resources.
---
Images credits:
"World Nature" by Danilo Rizzuti/freedigitalphotos.net
"Sensual Young Female Model, Closeup Shot" by stockimages /freedigitalphotos.net
"Bus Stop" by anankkml/freedigitalphotos.net
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