Category: free somatic exercises

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Somatic Education Exercises | potent combinations

In this entry, I present some combinations of somatic exercises that have special potency in changing tension-and-movement patterns — preceded by a bit of explanation.


EXPLANATION

Anyone practicing somatic education should be familiar with — and use — the power of synergy.

“Synergy” isn’t some New Age froo-froo concept; it’s the way “a whole is more than the sum of its parts” — it’s organization.  It’s what makes a system a ‘system’ and not just a collection of unassembled parts.  It’s coordination.  It’s integration.  For more on Thomas Hanna’s take on coordination, read his book, The Body of  Life.  He also referred to synergy in his published Wave 1 lectures; whether you are a student-in-training or a certified practitioner, if you don’t have those lectures or haven’t listened to them, get them and listen to them.  They are a major part of his functional legacy and will boost your effectiveness.

Synergy is part of what makes the standard lessons of Hanna somatic education so powerful.  In those lessons, multiple movement elements, e.g., the steps of Lesson 1 / the Green Light Reflex lesson, combine into an overall action pattern. Those movement elements are “the parts”; the action pattern you are addressing — Landau Reaction, Startle Reflex, or Trauma Reflex in its multifarious forms (see The Handbook of Assisted Pandiculation) — is the ‘whole’.

Piecework — going straight for the painful location to “get at the problem” right away, is never as effective as dealing with whole patterns, in the long run and often in the short run.  Sometimes, when a client is insistent that we work in the painful region immediately, I’ll do it.  I call this form of client placation, “Kiss boo-boo.”  But then I get straight away to the overall pattern and I explain to the client, why, if necessary to his or her wholehearted participation in the way I want to proceed with sessions.

By the same token, combining somatic exercises to address a single location is more potent than addressing it with one somatic exercise, only.  Thomas Hanna’s comment on afternoon, leading us in somatic kinesiology — that using more than one somatic exercise to reach a problem region is more potent than using only one exercise (because learning the same thing multiple ways is more potent) — may have slipped by unnoticed by many, but it’s worth noting — and acting upon.

So here are some collections of somatic exercises that are synergistic in this way.  You’ll notice two things.  That I:

  1. start with gentler somatic exercise and progress to more demanding ones
  2. combine somatic exercises published in different sources

A certain class of somatic educators continually explores for ways to improve his/her own functioning and well-being.  Such people have an advantage over those who go only with the basic material conveyed during training:  they can understand more forms of Sensory-Motor Amnesia (from the inside) and deal effectively with them, unlike those with less-developed somatic competency.

If, in yourself, you can find new and effective somatic exercise patterns, that’s best; if not so much, various programs exist that can give you a leg-up.

 

SOMATIC EXERCISE COMBINATIONS

FREEING SIDEBENDING

  1. Myth of Aging Lesson 3
  2. Quadratus Lumborum pandiculation (YouTube video / End Your Own Sacro-iliac Pain)
  3. Yoga of the Reclining Buddha (Free Yourself from Back Pain)
FREEING UPPER ARM ROTATION with SHOULDER MOVEMENTS
  1. “Dishrag” / 4-Way Twist (Myth of Aging Lesson 4)
  2. Startle Reflex somatic exercise (YouTube video)
  3. Hokey-Pokey Hidey Ho (YouTube Video)
WALKING
  1. Myth of Aging Lesson 8
  2. The Gyroscopic Walk (YouTube video)
  3. The Scottish Geezer’s Walk (YouTube video)
POSTERIOR TENSION / PAIN / RESTRICTION | FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT/COORDINATION
  1. Hamstrings somatic exercise (video)
  2. The Athletes’ Prayer for Loose Calves (YouTube video / Free Your Psoas, lesson 9)
  3. Spine Waves (The Five-Pointed Star / Quick Help for Back Pain) | arm reach addition
  4. The Dolphin
  5.  Freeing the Neck and Shoulders (from The Magic of Somatics, section 2)
SACRAL PAIN
  1. Myth of Aging lesson 1
  2. Myth of Aging lesson 2
  3. Lazy 8s (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 1B)
  4. Centering the Sacrum (End Your Own Sacro-iliac Pain)

This is a fairly “minimum” collection of exercises — enough for you to test to feel their synergy.  People with sacro-iliac pain almost certainly need more — and I’ve published an entry that explains why and gives access to a complete regimen here.

NECK ISSUES
  1. Myth of Aging, lesson 6
  2. Freeing Tight Neck and Shoulders (The Magic of Somatics)
  3. Getting Kinks out of Your Neck (The Magic of Somatics)
  4. The Yoga of the Reclining Buddha (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 2B)
  5. Spine Waves with Arm Reach (The Five-Pointed Star plus YouTube video)
  6. The Folding See-saw with Head-turn (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 1C)
  7. Myth of Aging, lesson 4 with modification for neck (YouTube video)

COMPLEMENTARY EXERCISES

  1. Myth of Aging, Lesson 2
  2. The Dolphin
  3. Spine Waves

You notice that this collection of movements is fairly large.  That’s because our necks are mobile (and can become restricted) in so many directions. Gotta do it. Neck issues are a big deal (and often involve TMJ issues); a person with pain in the spine, low back or pelvis that doesn’t resolve as expected is likely to be tight in the neck, with the distant pains reflexively caused.

That’s quite enough to get you started.  If you have the ambition, it’s an eye-opener.

Lawrence Gold is a certified clinical somatic educator who has been in practice since 1990. His clients are typically people in pain who have not gotten help from standard therapies. Contact Lawrence Gold, here. Read about his background, here.

This article was reprinted from Full-Spectrum Somatics with permission from the author.

 

 

 

 

 

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Muscle Memory isn’t Muscle Memory

Let’s get straight to the point:  muscles have no memory that controls their activity.  Muscle memory (more properly, movement memory) resides in the brain, a product of brain-conditioning, i.e., learning.

Patterns of muscular tension result from that conditioning, acquired by learning and by incidents of injury and/or stress.

Think about it:  muscles act in patterns of coordination.  How can any one muscle control the activity of other muscles?  What would be the mechanism?  Willpower?  Telepathy?  And without the ability of a muscle to control other muscles, how could their activity by synchronized in coordinated movement?

No.  Something must centrally control and regulate all muscles to enable coordination, and that something is our nervous systems, the seat of movement memory.

Whether learning to walk or to dance, if you want to change muscle memory, or movement memory, you have to do it by training your nervous system — and if you’re stuck in a tension pattern from an injury, you have to do it by training your nervous system — by un-learning the dysfunctional pattern and learning a healthy pattern of function, i.e., healthy movement.

MORE:
Completing Your Recovery from an Injury
learning coordination with somatic exercises

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The Gyroscopic Walk

The Gyroscopic Walk is a form of “super-walking” — a high-efficiency walking pattern that gives you more walking speed at less effort and that integrates your whole-body movements so you feel more free in movement, better balanced and better put together.

The Gyroscopic Walk is very good to do after any other somatic exercise or after a clinical somatic education session, to rapidly integrate (absorb and reinforce) the improvements in physical comfort and movement.

Walking is a peerless organizer. — Ida P. Rolf

The four people who attended my training day, “Trauma Lesson Calibration and Pandiculation Extravaganza”, saw me demonstrate and then learned and practiced a walking pattern I call, The Gyroscopic Walk (which I first called, “The Magnetic Walk”).  This walk integrates beautifully with Thomas Hanna’s walking lesson in his “Myth of Aging” program (lesson 8, in his book, Somatics) and with my program, Superwalking.

The Gyroscopic Walk efficiently conserves and recycles the kinetic (movement) energy of walking in a way that increases walking speed with the same amount of walking effort — or — that reduces the effort of  walking at any speed.

They learned the basic pattern of that walk in a four-step process:

  1. See.
  2. Prepare yourself.
  3. Do.
  4. Refine.

The basic pattern of The Gyroscopic Walk involves arm movements (while walking ) of a stylized kind.  You keep the palms of your hands facing your hip joints while your arms swing forward and backward.  The motion involves a swiveling motion of your forearms.  Try it; you’ll understand.

The movement of your arms swinging with your palms continuously facing your hip joints produces a sensation in the hands and arms of containing and moving a mass around a central point — which is, of course, is what sets up a gyroscopic force. With a bicycle, the gyroscopic force of the wheels keeps us up; in walking, it keeps us balanced as we pivot around our “spinal axis”. In both cases, gyroscopic force conserves and recycles kinetic energy (movement).

Now, there are three developments of the Gyroscopic Walk, maybe more, that come after this one.

NOTE:  Click here for an audio overview of, and instruction in, these and more developments.

Here’s the first:
bouncing that ‘ball of mass’ contained in the palms of the hands forward and backward with each step

As your arms swing, you keep your palms facing your hip joints; your forearms turn forward and backward with each step. 

You contain or restrain your forward-backward arm movement (reduce the amount of swing), while maintaining your walking speed, enough that you can feel the force transmitted to your legs.  That’s the experience of recycling kinetic energy. 

Your walk will spontaneously accelerate with the same amount of effort as before and you’ll feel your feet anchor to the ground, better.

Another is
exploring the Gyroscopic Walk at different speeds 

There’s something to be discovered, there.  I need not say more.

and a Third is
adjusting the location of twist you feel in your trunk up or down.

You do this action by feel, once you have understood and can do the basic Gyrosopic Walk.

a Fourth is
alternating Gyroscopic and ordinary walking

Do the Gyroscopic Walk only until you can feel the force transmitted to your legs, then revert to ordinary walking.  We’re talking a few seconds, here.  You repeat the action many times. 

You’ll feel things connect and relax in a new way, leading to smoother, more powerful walking.

And there are more — but I think that’s quite enough to chew on, for now.

Lawrence

PS:  Oh, here’s an afterthought ….. just a little happenstance one. 
Listen:  We can use the Gyroscopic Walk, when alternated with the
Scottish Geezer’s walk, to re-set our idling speed and to tune up our
walking movements, whole-bodily.

Just in case you don’t know what I mean by, ‘idling speed’:  the higher the idling speed, the higher the tension level overall in that individual — also known as “stress level”, “being somewhat wound up” — and the ever recommended and approved of, “toned” (partially tense and ready to go).

The two walking patterns are, in a sense, opposite and complementary, so they provide contracting sensations that heighten perception.  We can use the Gyroscopic Walk, when combined with the Scottish Geezer’s walk, to re-set our idling speed so that we can explore and find the “idling speed” and/or “tone” we like best.

The “tuning up your walking, whole-bodily” part is something for which you need satisfactory experience with the Gyroscopic Walk to understand this discussion.

PPS:  I wrote this message for Hanna somatic educator colleagues and clients with experience.

If you are not a Hanna somatic educator, these words may be “helpful”:  To do the Gyroscopic walk, you must already be free and well-coordinated enough to get into a movement rhythm; stiff places and pains interfere, so get some somatic education to free yourself.

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Freeing Tight Hamstrings

To free tight hamstrings, it’s important to understand their four movement functions.

  1. leg extension at the hip joint
  2. leg flexion at the knee
  3. rotation of the lower leg at the knee joint
  4. stabilization of the pelvis when bending forward

To free hamstrings, we must free them (gain control of tension and relaxation) in all four movement functions.

If we do not gain (or improve) control in all four movement functions, one or more of those movement habits will dominate control of the other movement(s).

In addition, the hamstrings of one leg work alternately with those of the other — as in walking; when the hamstrings of one leg are bending or stabilizing the knee, the hamstrings of the other leg are extending or stabilizing the other leg at the hip.   In those movements, the hamstrings coordinate with the hip flexors and psoas muscles.  (Co-contraction of hamstrings and hip flexors/psoas muscles leads to hip joint and ilio-sacral (SI) joint compression.)  So our approach (being movement-based) must take those relationships into account.  Otherwise, we never develop the feeling of free hamstrings in their familiar movements.

LEG EXTENSION AT THE HIP JOINT
That’s the “leg backward” movement of walking.  The hamstrings are aided by the gluteal (butt) muscles, but only in a stabilizing capacity.  The major work is done by the hamstrings.  In this movement, the hamstrings, inner and outer, work together in tandem.

LEG FLEXION AT THE KNEE JOINT
That’s the “getting ready to kick” movement and also the “pawing the ground” movement.  In these movements, the hamstrings, inner and outer, also work together in tandem (same movement).

To the anatomist and kinesiologist, it may seem incomprehensible (“paradoxical”) that the hamstrings are involved in both movements — leg forward and leg backward — but that’s how it is.   Though the hamstrings are involved in both cases, different movements cause a different feel.

LOWER LEG ROTATION AT THE KNEE
That’s the turning movement used in skating and in turning a corner.  In this movement, the inner hamstrings (semi-membranosis and semi-tendinosis) relax and lengthen as the outer hamstring (biceps femoris) tighten to turn toes-out and the inner hamstrings tighten to turn toes-in as the outer hamstring relaxes and lengthens.

STABILIZATION OF THE PELVIS WHEN BENDING FORWARD
The hamstrings anchor the pelvis at the sitbones (ischial tuberosities) deep to the ‘smile’ creases beneath the buttocks (not the crack), so one can bend forward in a controlled way, instead of flopping forward at the hips like a marionette.  In this movement, the hamstrings coordinate with the front belly muscles (rectus abdominis).

In most people, either the rectus or hamstrings dominates the other in a chronic state of excessive tension, so freeing and coordinating the hamstrings involves coordinating and matching the efforts of the two muscle groups.  When the hamstrings dominate, we see swayback; when the rectus muscles dominate, we see flat ribs.

TRAINING HAMSTRING CONTROL
In training hamstring control, it’s convenient to start with the less complicated movement, first.  That’s the anchoring movement that stabilizes bowing in a standing position.  (See first video, above.)

After we cultivate control of “in tandem” hamstring movements, we cultivate control of “alternating” hamstring movements.  (See second video, above.)

By cultivating control of “in tandem” and “alternating” movements, we fulfill the requirements of functions (1.), (2.), and (4.).  The exercise linked in the paragraph above indirectly addresses function (3.) (lower leg rotation at the knee).  Other exercises that have this effect exist in the somatic exercise programs, “The Cat Stretch” and “Free Your Psoas”, for which previews exist through the preceding links.

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