In Defense of a Good Yawn

A blog about the importance of stretching and mobilizing.

Hi! How are you today? Good to see you around! Today we have a special blog.

But first; let us take a moment to fully arrive. Get comfy and share with me a few seconds of quietude, let us close our eyes and breathe deeply three times.

I like to give myself every so often a respite of inner silence, just so that I can better acknowledge that a new action is about to begin. It’s a way of honoring every new beginning. It also allows me to connect with the purpose of this new encounter, which would be hard to do if the inertia and noise of what came before was still active in me.

The purpose of this blog is to clarify why it’s important to mobilize daily all our tissues and joints.

I’d feel satisfied if at the end of your reading you feel a little more inspired to move your joints daily… even if you don’t start doing so right away.

So, knowing what this blog is about, what is your purpose for being here?

I’ll begin by revising the fundamental principles that underlie what I’ll suggest as a daily practice.

Then I’ll tell you a little about:

- why it’s important to move your joints daily

- what joints you should be moving

- how you should move your joints

Whenever you actually do this mobilization work, I suggest you remember that:

1. You’re a Unity: All your tissues are connected, which is why when you move one part of your body it is inevitably having an effect in the whole. Try therefore to be aware of your whole body as you move a part of it.

2. Your Use, Your Functions and Your Structure are all interrelated: Remember that body and mind are also a unity, which is why the quality of your attention and your thoughts will be affecting the quality of your tissues and the degree of tension in them.

3. If you Remove Interferences Everything becomes Easier: When your tissues and joints are tight, contracted and lacking space for free movement and expression, all actions that you undertake will require a lot more effort and tension. As you start gaining space and mobility in your joints, your physical and mental output will increase with half the effort you are exerting today.

4. Interferences are spotted as Perception becomes more Precise: The more perceptive you become, the more you’ll discover about your own functioning, and hence the better able you’ll be to catch your habits as they come in to interfere.

5. The Key to raising your Sensory Appreciation is keeping your Curiosity Alive: Your habits will want to make you believe that you already know everything about a certain action. Do not allow them to misguide you so. There is always something new to learn, one new layer to peel, from even the simplest action.

Why is it important to move your joints daily?

Cats, dogs, horses, toddlers to it instinctively and regularly.

Even you do it occasionally. A good yawn and stretch after a long day’s work.

The body and mind do so to self-regulate, especially after they have been fixed in one same position or attitude for a long time.

Mobilizing your structures with conscious awareness will also help you to:

1) rediscover the movement possibilities of your body;

2) recognize the effect of having a limber, loose and flexible body on every level of your being;

3) calming your mind and teaching it to inhabit the body, improving your ability to hold and focus your attention.

.

What joints should be moved?

The ideal, of course, is to move all of them in all possible directions and ranges.

Observe how dogs and cats do it, how they stretch, yawn, roll-over and around, twist and shake all over, and go on with their day.

If you prefer a more detailed guide, you can use the following:

Legs and Feet:

- tense and stretch your toes and feet

- rotate your ankles

- bend and straighten your knees

- allow your leg to loosely rotate in the hip socket, making circles inwards and outwards.

Arms and Hands:

- tense and stretch your fingers and hands

- rotate your wrists

- bend and straighten your elbows

- - allow your arms to loosely rotate in your shoulder joints, making circles inwards and outwards.

Head and Neck:

- gently say “yes”, “no” and “maybe” with your head, as if you were drawing lines and arcs with your nose in the air.

- Remember that your head meets your neck at the midpoint between your ears, right in the center of your head. As you move your head be aware of that pivoting point.

Eyes and Mouth:

- Squeeze your eyes and your jaw and then open them wide.

- Yawn deep and wide and unabashedly.

- Think of something funny or sweetly pleasurable and allow that memory to bring a true smile to your face, one that shines in your mouth and eyes.

Trunk:

- Interlace the fingers of your hands, straighten your arms, and stretch forward, up, slightly back, sideways and twisting around side to side.

How should you move your joints?

This series of gently stretches and movements can be practiced by anyone. The important thing is to do it consciously aware of each movement.

Remember to breathe. When we concentrate sometimes we hold our breaths, and this generates unnecessary tension in our systems. Breathe freely and in rhythm with each movement.

If you do the full practice, remember to take frequent breaks to rest body and mind between one exercise and the next. If you are not used to taking your attention into your body, the practice can be at first quite tiring. So allow your body and mind to wander a bit between exercises, and then gently rein them back in for the next set.

Ok, that’s all for today.

Stretch. Yawn. Make it big, exaggerated and noisy.

Get rid of the cricks, cobwebs and lethargy.

Expand, contract and expand again, like an acordion.

See you next time.

Victoria

Read More

If I can’t get a movement right: Is it due to lack of technique, lack of practice… or am I missing something else altogether?

Image by Tina P.

Anyone who practices a sport, or any other type of physical activity, has at some point been in the situation where a certain movement seems “undoable”. Maybe it’s a yoga pose, or the roll-up in Pilates, or the serve in tennis, or the butterfly stroke in swimming. We practice, and practice some more, get some advice on form and technique, practice, and practice again, and end up frustrated and believing that, “This is just beyond my capabilities. I’d better find myself another hobby”.

What are we doing wrong? Why are we not ‘getting it’? After all our invested effort, why are we still struggling?

No doubt the element of technique and coordination needs to be learnt. That’s why we take lessons or hire a personal trainer who teaches us correct technique and corrects our form.

No doubt there is also the element of practice (good old repetition) to learn the necessary muscle coordination to get the movement sequence right. And for some exercises there is also the need for muscle strength, and that takes time to build up.

However, there is an element that is generally overlooked, but should go BEFORE any discussion about correcting technique or increasing practice hours. When this element is lacking, you are setting yourself up for frustration and possible structural damage to your joints, bones and muscles.

In order to avoid these psycho-physical ailments, I suggest that, before you start practicing the same thing over and over, you acquire a good grasp of the following three items:

1. Your general “postural” state

The foundation of all movements is in your “posture”.

The word “posture” has a bad rep, but mostly because it is a greatly misunderstood term.

We tend to think of “posture” as something static, rigid, tense, as something to be attained and held onto by sheer muscular effort.

However, our “posture” is determined by the RELATIONSHIP that our bones keep with each other. Our bones meet at the site of our joints. To have “good posture” means nothing more than to have enough space at those joints so that our bones can freely move and change their relationship to each other. It is a generalized state of free expansion, not one of tension and compression.

Your posture is not made up of the ‘position’ of your bones, but of the ‘relationship’ they keep with each other. This relationship allows (or not) your muscles to function at their optimum length and maximum potential.

Therefore, when you just can’t execute a movement correctly, the first thing you need to check is your postural state. Are you contracting or expanding? Is there enough space in your joints for your bones to move freely and your muscles to act at their optimum length?

Trying to correct your execution of a movement before freeing up your general postural state, is like trying to drive your car with the hand-break on: possible, yes, but at a huge energetic and structural cost. If you insist on driving in this manner, you’ll surely end up with a broken car in the near future!

2. Your ability to keep this expansive postural-state during movement.

Once you establish this state of expansion and joint space, you need to learn how to keep it going while you move. This is not easy to achieve at first.

If you’ve been practicing a movement for any length of time, chances are you already have a learnt way to execute it that “feels correct”, even if this way isn’t delivering the desired results. I can assure you that you have this recorded sensation in your memory because while you were learning to perform the movement, and were rehearsing it over and over again, you were doing so not from this new expansive postural set-point, but from a different starting postural state.

For your “sensory-muscular memory” the movement has to “feel” a particular way, and your brain (more specifically, your cerebellum) will do everything possible to guide you towards the manner of using your body which produces that feeling.

Correcting this “sensory-muscular confusion” is going to take some effort from your consciousness and your attention. This can be more exhausting than doing push-ups and pull-ups!

But don’t be disheartened, for with this practice you’re killing 2 birds with one shot. On the one hand you’re correcting your faulty execution of the movement you so much want to ‘get right’. At the same time, and with no extra work on your part, you are becoming more intelligent, learning to focus your attention, and increasing your capacity forself-control. All in all, not a bad bargain!

Items 1 and 2 are what an Alexander Technique teacher can best help you with. But the 3^rd item will depend exclusively on you, and it is:

3. Remembering to never start to practice the movement without previously: a) releasing into your expanded state, b) having a clear idea of what the movement requires, and c) having an action-plan to carry out your movement without losing your expanded state.

This is perhaps the most important point: Remembering to stop before starting.

It is only if you REMEMBER to apply points 1 and 2 before executing the movement, that you’ll be able to achieve conscious control of your execution, and thus finally correct any deviations from optimal form.

How important is this conscious control in correcting your execution of a movement?

Well, if you’re distracted, or in a hurry to get immediate results, you’ll be less able to control your impulses. And your impulse, if there is no conscious control, will always be to do things according to your established habits. And your established habit is exactly what you want to change. Hence: conscious control is vital!

Although you have the ability to do the harder thing (that which requires self-consciousness and self-control), you are biologically programmed to do exactly the opposite (the easier thing, the recorded and memorized program that requires no mental energy).

There is nothing wrong with living according to your habits. The problem is when those habits are getting you into trouble or stopping you from achieving what you want. The only way of changing a habit is by using your ability to pay attention, focus, concentrate and be self-aware… it is not a muscular task, it is a mental one.

DO SOMETHING CONCRETE WITH THIS: Choose a movement in which to apply this sequence of thoughts.

• Choose a movement you want to correct. Example: I want to correct my tennis serve.

• Investigate the different movements that make up that bigger movement, and choose one of them. Example: lifting the arm above shoulder level.

• Take note of all the different circumstances in which you do that movement in your daily life. Example: when I try to reach something above me on a high shelf, when waving to a friend, when hugging my tall partner, etc.

• Of all those situations, choose one or two, and commit to applying the 3 steps before executing the movement. Example: each time I have to reach over my head to grab a plate from that high shelf, I shall stop before starting to lift my arm, expand by releasing into my full free posture, consider what is and is not required for the action (no need to lift my shoulder), and smiling and breathing I shall lift my arm.

The first thing you may discover is that you forget to stop, and only remember you meant to do so when the action is already complete or underway. Nevertheless, if all you manage in this week is to catch yourself once or twice before hurling yourself unthinkingly into action, you will have achieved a lot: you have started to break the habit… consciousness prevailed!

Let me know what you discover.

See you next week.

Victoria

Read More

The language no one taught you but is the key to your wellbeing

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).

Read More

How to create a 'habit of change'

[In my last blog I reviewed the 4 great teachers we can have when it comes to learning something new. Today I’m starting a new series of blogs on how to take advantage of teachers 3 and 4: personal practice and ‘real life’.]

When you decide to learn something new or change a habit, you need to experiment with and practice using the techniques and tools learned in class, before using them in ‘real life’ situations. 

Experimentation and practice allow you discover three crucial things: see how the techniques actually work when you’re on your own, discover how much you actually understood of their use and which bits are still unclear, and to own the techniques, start making them yours, adapting them to you and your life.

For example, many of my students come to me for lessons to learn how to improve their posture and general body-mind coordination. In each lesson we see how to maintain a comfortable upwards attitude – both stable and flexible – during their daily activities of sitting, standing, working at the computer, playing tennis, etc. The students who make the fastest progress are those who ‘do their homework’ so to speak: they play with the tools, techniques and concepts learnt in class, testing them, trying to prove or disprove them… and they arrive to their next lesson with new doubts, questions, complaints and discoveries. All this is wonderful fodder to propel their next set of discoveries in class.

The problem for most students, however is that they can’t find the time and space to practice. Once the day starts, it seems difficult to stop their daily chores and activities in order to give themselves a few minutes of formal practice… there always seems to be something else to do, one more issue to solve, and at the end of the day they’re too tired physically, mentally and emotionally to practice something that requires their full attention.

This seems to be a universal problem for a lot of people (yours truly included): it’s not that we’re lazy or that we lack the will or desire to change our habits… it’s just that it doesn’t seem possible to insert a new practice in the middle of our already hectic and overflowing days.

My personal solution to this problema has been to consciously create a space for practice using three simple parameters: safe place, safe time, and safe context.

The first and most important thing is to create this time-space-context for practice consciously, that is deliberately. It’s really no use to tell yourself, “Tomorrow I’ll practice when I find a free moment”. You need to know exactly when, where and what you’ll practice, so that you’re not leaving things up to chance.

Safe place: Choose a place to practice where you’ll privacy and you’ll be free of interruptions. The idea is that you feel free, safe and comfortable, without any fear that you’ll be seen and judged on your performance.

Safe time: You must schedule your practice time in advance. Best time is whenever you have the energy and privacy to practice for the amount of time you’re roping off. I have found that my best times are very early in the morning, since I tend to lose focus, energy and willpower as the day progresses and I’m sucked into the issues of daily living and working.

Safe context: Finally you need to know exactly what you’ll practice, and make it something that’s meaningful to you. The best tactic for this is to “dress the new in old clothes”, that is, practice your new coordination or your new idea in an activity you need to do anyway. This way you are keeping your commitment to practice, while at the same time silencing that nagging voice in your head that only wants to do ‘useful’ things and not waste time on ‘superfluous’ activities.

Allow me to give you an illustration. I have discovered that in my own case the bathroom in my house fits all the above paratmeters. It’s a safe place: as unorthodox as it may seem to practice stuff in the bathroom, it is a place where I’m alone and unseen, uninterrupted, and I have full-body mirror. It’s a safe time: every morning I prepare for my day in the bathroom (shower, get dressed, comb my hair, brush my teeth, etc.) which means two things, (1) I don’t need to carve out a special time for practice (it’s already happening every morning), and (2) all the activities I do in preparation for my day give me ample opportunities for practice.

For example, if I’m practicing not gripping my feet, I can think of the space between my toes while I shower, remembering that my toes begin halfway down my foot and releasing them from there to the very tips. Or if I’m playing with my coordination and investigating movement patterns and unnecessary tension in my arms, I can brush my teeth or comb my hair, or do any other precision activity with my non-dominant hand (although I do not recommend putting on mascara or eyeliner with your non-dominant hand if you’re in a hurry).

The important thing is not to determine if I am doing it ‘right’ or ‘wrong’; what matters is that fact that every day I’m practicing this habit of ‘observing myself’ and being ‘mindful’ of my actions. Little by little, this self-observation habit starts to percolate to other times and activities, until I find myself naturally ‘practicing’ self-observation throughout my day.

To sum up, in order to make progress in what matters to us, we need to take the time, make the space, and create the context to practice it daily, if even for only a few minutes. It is this daily reminder of what really matters to us that will turn the new behavior or new way we want to do things into a habit. Only then will we start seeing real, lasting changes.

This week I invite you to find a time, space and context for your practice. Tell me about it in the comments box below. How or what do you do to practice the things that matter to you?

See you next week.

Victoria

Read More