Lab 10 Orienting with a Twist

Transcription

1 Lab 10 Orienting with a Twist Hey, there you guys. It's Irene here and welcome to this lesson, Orienting with a Twist. We're going to cover a lot of stuff that you've already gone through so to do this I'm actually going to suggest, I'm going to teach it as though you are sitting on a chair. Of course, you can adopt this as you wish. I would encourage you to adopt this and even imagine how, not now but afterwards, how you could bring this into a standing exercise or into something where you're lying on your back or lying on your side or kneeling or being on all fours, or being on your front, even on your belly on the ground. As I said, I'll teach this as though you're sitting right now in a chair and sitting on a chair such that you're not leaning back against the back of a chair such that you've got a little more freedom on your pelvis, so your pelvis is freer. A kitchen chair is one of the better ways to do this. I'm sitting on a very cheap chair from Costco that folds up so if you hear a few squeaks, that's what it is. Just to see you sit here, start to pay attention to your pelvis. To your pelvis and even orient to your pelvis by bringing your hands to the pelvic bone, to the sides. You could even go to touch the back where the sacrum is. Even the pubic bone, right? The pubic bone which, all bones are important, but it's another important bone that we often don't touch because it's in the area that we would consider more private, where our genitals are. If you feel comfortable to just explore all of these bones and knowing that they're simply your skeleton, your skeleton, your structure, your support. The bones are where your muscles attach to, they protect organs, they protect our insides. As you're sitting here orienting to your pelvis, exploring and just touching these parts, following your impulse. If you, all of a sudden have a desire to touch your knee or your thigh, that's fine too. Just as you orient to this area, start to feel what your eyes are doing. I haven't guided you to have them open or closed. I'm allowing you to just choose where you want to go with that and have it such that if it's comfortable have your eyes open and start to look towards one of your sides of your pelvis. If I was to be more simple in how I say that, look towards one of your hips. In actuality, the hip is a joint that you can't actually touch. It's one of the only joints in our body that we can't touch because the thigh bone is deep in the pelvis in a socket, the hip socket Irene Lyon 1

2 We know our hips are there but they're a little elusive to us humans but orient and look towards one of your hips, just one and see what direction you go to. What's the immediate impulse, how do you do that? Do you look straight down? Do you turn a bit? Do you bend at your ribs? Right now, there's no right or wrong, there's no left or right. I have no clue which you are choosing and that's okay. I want this to be more of a self-exploration and stay with the same side. Hypothetically, let's just say, if you were to look and turn or look and bend to say, your right hip, when you do that how do you feel the pressure change across your pelvis? Do you have to shift something in your body? Does your posture have to swing in a certain direction? Remember potent posture from the very beginning, where I had you stand and lean a little too far forward, a little too far back and feel that sway and in doing that, feel how the muscles contract, when they might relax. Bringing that principle in as well as this principle of feeling the connection of your bones of your pelvis but also your feet with the floor, with the chair. Again, just seeing how can you look towards one hip, and that's the only constraint I am giving you. You can get there in any way. You could just move your eyes or you could bend your entire spine and think about connecting the head and the pelvis, rolling back over your sit bones, curving in the spine, flexing it to look towards that hip. There could be a way in which you arch your back as if you're trying to peer over your shoulder to look at your hip from behind. That might be a little different. Could you side bend to look at that hip? Could you twist? Could you orient and twist? How would you do that? Can you stay open to the exploration of this simple instruction, orient towards one of your hips and see how you do it. Then maybe see how many different ways can you do it. How could you change how your feet touch the floor? How could you change what you do with your arms? What have your arms been doing? What if you were to take your hands and interlace them behind your head, cradle your head and have your hands gently supporting your head, not squeezing, it but just gently supporting and how would you orient, how would you look, how would you peer towards that hip? Do your thighs move? Does the position of where your shin bones stand in relationship to the ground, do they shift? What does your breath do? Have you been paying 2017 Irene Lyon 2

3 attention to that? Have you been able to notice when your breath might get tight or get open and flow? Then just let that be, just have a little rest. So far I have given very little direct instruction, a few suggestions. I'm wanting this to be more open ended not a structured, but reminding you of some of the concepts, how to feel your body move through space, your posture, how you feel your skeleton connect with the floor, how you drive your intention to notice what happens, your breath, your impulse, your eyes. To bring to light all the variations that your body can do as you have this one simple instruction of orienting to a hip. Then I'll pose the next question. What would it be like to orient to your other hip? How do you do that initially? Without thinking about it just what's the initial impulse? How is your system? How is your nervous system, and your skeleton, and sensation, and your movement? How is it already grooved in a certain way that makes this possible? How do you peer and orient to this other hip? I'll let you play with that a little. As you play with that, notice how you shift movement across the chair, how you feel yourself move across that chair, what has to lighten up, what has to anchor? Is your abdominal cavity tight? Are your abs clenched or can your core be fairly relaxed, easy, full belly? Can you feel your air, your lungs, your breathing drop down into your kidneys and adrenals? Can there be this softening, softening through the spine? How you look towards that hip? How do you orient? Do you do it with a twist? Do you do it with a full flexion? Do you just peer down and stare at it? Can you look at it sideways? Can you look at it sideways the other way? You see I've been talking for about 14 minutes now. We could spend two hours with all sorts of variations I could have you balance such that one leg is not on the floor. We could do this such that one hand is behind your back which is going to change the relationship of your shoulder to your chest, to your ribs, to your spine. We could do this such that your legs are really close together, legs really far apart. As I mentioned you could do this standing, you could do this lying down. Imagine if you were lying on your back, supine back, legs long. How would you orient to look at a hip, one of your hips? What would you have to do to reorient yourself, to shift, to move and roll your body across the floor like a baby such that you could check that hip out. What direction would you roll 2017 Irene Lyon 3

4 to first? Just imagine that. If you were lying on your front on your stomach on the floor on a bed, how would you have to bend, what would you have to shift so that you could tuck around and check out your hip or that groin area is on the left or on the right? Now, the other interesting thing, I chose the hip. What if we were to then choose say, ooh, I don't know, your belly button or your knee or your ankle or your shoulder or the back of your elbow or the tip of your fingers? See, we could choose a different body part, a different landmark, impose a constraint on ourselves, lying, sitting, standing, kneeling, on all fours, sitting on an exercise ball, at the beach on the sand where it's a little less solid ground and just start to explore how could you orient to see a different body part, a different place, how could you twist, how could you bend, how could you extend the spine, how could you side bend, how could you bend and flex, how could you side bend and extend. All these degrees of freedom, that keyword that we have learned in this last lab, differentiation, neurodifferentiation. This concept of orienting with a twist, it's my made up way of reminding you if you can take orientation, take a bit of a twist, a bit of a spiral, with a bit of a bend, a bit of an extension, a bit of a twist, bring that flow and that fluidity into not just the movement but your curiosity, how you play. I love it obviously when you do the lessons and you practice. Wouldn't it be cool to take some of these concepts and start to create your own way of exploring your body? You can do this in little bits at a time when you're waiting for someone at the airport or maybe you have a whole hour one day to yourself and you don't have the capacity to play one of my lessons but you have the capacity to use your imagination, your curiosity and just the eyes, your orientation, your intention to attend to a body part and how you move towards that part, how you orient to it. I hope that this sparks up this knowing that you have got the capacity to play. You have the permission. You have the body. No matter how old or young or achy or disabled or struggling or vigorous or healthy it might be, no matter what, if you can orient and attune to your own system and know that there is a spiral somewhere in your body. There is, that you can do wonders at teaching yourself how to slow down to pause, to feel, follow the impulse, feel your bones, feel how the movements happen Irene Lyon 4

5 Go play. If you need to come back to this to be reminded, have it play in the background. Even though I might be guiding to your hip, guide yourself to your knee or guide yourself to your big toe. Get creative. Break the rules. Have a wonderful rest of your day Irene Lyon 5