背骨を生き生きさせる
あなたの背骨は３次元
あなたが背骨について考えるとき、あなたの意識は背中に向かうでしょう。あなたはかたい床に横たわったときに感じるでこぼこの脊椎の突起を思い浮かべるかもしれません。でも、あなたの背骨には前面もあります。それは椎骨のボディーで構成されています。それらは丸く、厚みがあり、それぞれの椎骨の上下にはディスクがあり、それがクッションの役割をしています。あなたの背骨には深さがあり、椎骨の前面の表面は4分の1から３分の１胴体の方へ突出しています。(身体の前の表面から中へ約3分の２の距離に椎骨の前面がある）私たちの生命維持に必要な臓器の後ろに位置し、背骨の前面は感情的に影響を受けやすいエリアでもあります。
Read MoreBelow is a video I made for one of my Skype coaching clients. She’s a petite woman who is learning to play the sitar, a difficult and awkward instrument to tune as well as to play. I've been helping her with her sitting position, and with pain in her left shoulder that had become severe enough for her to seek medical help. The exercise I shared in this video has helped her exchange upper shoulder tension for secure support that links her shoulders to her mid-back. The video also includes a brief review of abdominal support and pelvic inclination. Many musicians—most anyone who plays a stringed instrument—could benefit from this exploration. Not to mention non-musicians who simply have a habit of loading stress into the upper shoulder area…
Read Moreあなたの姿勢を癒すために、私はいつも姿勢よりも知覚を練習するよう求めています。私はあなたの肩の姿勢や、首の位置についてアドバイスをしません。むしろ、あなたに内側のバランスの感覚や大文字の P と共にいる感覚（過去や将来の不安なしに今ここにいる状態）を発見するよう手伝おうとします。
あなたが３次元の空間でオリエンテーションを維持している間に、真に地面が下からあなたの身体を支えるのを許しているとき、いつでもこのバランスと今ここにいる経験を受け取ります。（空間というのは人々にとって省略された言葉です、ものごとやイベントが生じるところです）。もしこのことが不可解なら、私はいい本とDVDをお勧めできます！
Read MoreA year ago I posted a piece about the relationship between joint pain and digestive abuse–an after-effect of holiday cheer. You’d think I’d learn, but guess what? This year I’m fessing up again, with a different twist. Beginning in December I experienced pain in my right hip, with radiating pain down my right leg and into my knee and low back stiffness. This was demoralizing because I’d been low back pain-free for three years, ever since becoming sincere about tending to my deep core strength. The pain was weirdly intermittent. A good Pilates class seemed to chase it away, but in a few days, back it came…
Read MoreThe anniversary of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT has made me think about guns and gunmen. It’s also brought to mind a client—a different sort of gunman–who wanted my advice about his chronic shoulder pain. This man had worked for many years as a parole officer, and a requirement of his position had been a quarterly shooting evaluation. The pain in his shoulder dated back to that period in his life, and persisted despite his having been retired from law enforcement for several years…
Read MoreWhen you grasp a steering wheel (or anything else) tightly, you’ll feel tension generated from your hands up into your elbows, shoulders, neck and jaw. There are direct myofascial and neural connective trains between the hands and the head. Such muscle chain engagement delimits your steering movements, dulls your perception of the road, and contributes to your aching shoulders. Notice this woman’s eye and jaw tension as well as her too tightly gripping hands…
Read MoreI recently recommended to a Skype coaching client that he read pages 131-132 in The New Rules of Posture–pages that describe what I nicknamed “skintelligence”. One of this man’s goals was to improve his ballroom dancing. His partners had commented that they felt he was holding them rigidly, so I wanted to remind him of the surprising degree to which our tactile sense influences motor coordination. I knew that turning on his skin could help him turn off excess muscle tension…
Read More“My tongue?” you say. “What does my tongue have to do with my posture?” Actually, quite a lot…
Read MoreMy bare feet go flap-flap-flap on the kitchen floor before breakfast. The sound of it rests along the back wall of my attention as I flick my mind over the tasks ahead for this day. And muse about how much nicer it would be to laze on the couch with a book instead. It’s been triple digit weather in Los Angeles for way too long, and such heat wears a body down!
Read MoreYour midline exists before you are born. It’s visible as the “primitive streak” by the 14th day of pregnancy…
Read MoreA few years ago, yoga instructor David Thornton, asked me whether I’d been thinking about the chakras when I described the posture zones in The New Rules of Posture. Here’s what I wrote to David: I understand the chakras to be energy vortices located along the body’s central energy channel that affect all aspects of the person—body/mind/spirit. The chakras have spiritual or emotional content that impedes the free flow of energy through the core of the being…
Read MoreIn my last several posts, I’ve been drawing your awareness to the front of your spine. Releasing the tensions we hold within our bodies at this depth can restore mobility, ease and freedom we didn’t know were missing. Upper-cervical-facet-jointsIn this video you’ll practice a movement meditation that can restore mobility at the joint between the top of your neck and your cranium. This area so often expresses stress as rigidity, and is exacerbated by long hours spent in front of computer screens…
Read MoreBegin in a seated position as you did in Part 1 of this exploration. Imagine that each of your vertebral bodies contains a light source. When you inhale, the lights brighten; when you exhale, they dim. Imagine that the 24 vertebrae and sacrum can each project a distinct beam onto a wall a few feet in front of you. Each time you breathe in, your spine subtly extends, and that makes the light beams on the wall spread slightly apart from each other—visualize that happening. Breathe slowly and steadily. After every exhalation take a second to sense the weight of your body on the chair and your feet on the floor…
Read MoreWhen you think about your spine, it’s likely your awareness goes to your back. Perhaps you visualize the bumpy projections of the vertebrae you feel if you lie down on a hard surface. But your spine has a front surface too. It’s composed of the bodies of your vertebrae. These are round and thick, each one cushioned above and below by discs. Your spine has depth–the front surfaces of the vertebral bodies project 1/4 to 1/3 of the way forward into your trunk (2/3 of the way inside your body from the front surface). Located just behind your vital organs, the front of your spine can be an emotionally vulnerable area…
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