NEW YEAR’S CAKE: RECIPE FOR BODYMIND HEALTH
What is a recipe for spinal health? Let’s call it the Movement Cake! Mmm….
The ingredients don’t vary according to what you know about baking. What goes into it, determines how it will taste. You wouldn’t add steak into a cake would you? That would be a pie. We’re talking about cake: imagine a a 24 layer cake, with vertebrae as layers, and the disc’s as icing.
Let’s get back to the ingredients of the spinal health, I’m getting lost in my metaphor’s deliciousness, is it a red cake, german chocolate, carrot, etc? Ahem…
Life is movement, and the degree of conscious awareness depends on the development of more and more complexity of movement. We humans, developed our neural connections as a baby, crawling and creeping on our hands and knees, until the ‘second curve’, the lumbar and neck begins to develop from the movement and curious interest in its environment. If a baby or toddler gets constantly interrupted in its movement explorations, which make neural connections, or if an adult tries to stimulate it’s feet to stand constantly before they have developed the strength themselves, there’s a gap, two ends of connectors are not connected.
This gap can lead to compensation, the body looks for another way to do what it needs, which may not be its job, but is recruited anyway. Add to this years of practice of this compensatory use and a developmental deficit shows itself in some way, whatever the way, was missing. And when puberty shows its transitional information, that gap may show itself in some psycho-physical distortion. Add years and decades to practicing this compensatory use, and here we are, finding ourselves in pain!
So now we’ve baked a cake whose ingredients don’t support the cake it was meant to be, it’s toppling, lets say. How are we going to remedy this? We’re going to go back in and re-bake it: retro-actively connect those two ends, and let it right itself.
INGREDIENTS for new cake:
45 minute Alexander Technique lessons — table work, chair work, and an activity applying the principles
1 or 2 times a week, (twice the baking time is recommended)
‘Lie Downs’ at home in between lessons, the time for you to practice and observe what you do.
Practicing the principles; Awareness, Inhibition and Direction.
Becoming more aware of what you’re doing, noticing your habits of movement and thought.
Often, giving one’s self the directions* when the habit shows itself and you recognize it and pause to not let it go through its usual pathway.
Give yourself time to consider another choice.
Making different choices strengthens the second principle — Inhibition.
Accept the awkwardness of the newness you’re feeling. Embrace it, this is what will lead you out of pain — emotional and/or physical(they’re inseparable).
Recognize the tenacity of the habit, and don’t beat yourself up, for having habits, they got you to where you are now, making the conscious choice to go in another direction. Reclaim your conscious power!
We’re all baked a little weirdly, a little too much of this or not enough of that; this is Life. We learn and we can unlearn. Life gives you the opportunity, every moment, to undo and discover you’re true nature for yourself.
THE HOW — In the lesson:
Set the oven at however long it takes to undo, and not remake those same pains and learn the skills to do it yourself.
Spinal movement in all dimensions, horizontal, vertical and sagittal. (Across, up/down and forward/back.)
Leading with the head, to allow the torso to follow, bending the hips, knees and ankles to come to a lower position from standing vertically.
Let the habit of the compensation be over written by the new movement in the new moment.
Allow the teacher to use their ‘thinking hands’ and experience to guide you through the forest of habits, into the new pathway to a beautiful meadow!
Allow your awareness to deepen, and you will bridge the gap — you will know where you are, on top of your sitz bones, the head poised and the breath coming in and out naturally, and you will see Life more clearly, as it is, not recreating and using the old gap against yourself (or others), and your natural intelligence will lead the way!
And if you’ve already been my student, you know I usually end the lesson with, “ok, you’re cooked!” :>)
(*Directions — saying to yourself in your head, giving your nervous system the command: “I allow my neck to be free, to allow my head to release forward and up, to allow my spine to lengthen, and my back to widen, to allow my legs to release away from my torso, to allow my shoulders to widen”. Then allow for a natural breath to occur)
