“The facts are friendly”
Learning where your joints are, and using accurate language can really support you to move more easily, fluidly and sustainably. If you want to know how to maintain your balance, unkink your neck and where your shoulders should be… read on.
Information and knowledge are useful. Putting these into action is even more useful. Committing to doing this action one, three, or ten times a day – then you’ll really start to notice the benefits.
As many of you know, one of Alexander’s major discoveries about us mammals is that the relationship between the head and spine govern the coordination of the rest of us. Yes – all of us! Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – we don’t separate – its all one thing – our Self.
Backbone, spine, vertebral column
“The facts are friendly”
I’m talking about geography and joints today.
This is an idea I got from Bruce Fertman who wrote a beautiful book on the Alexander Technique by (another) very experienced teacher and beautiful writer.
https://peacefulbodyschool.com/store/book-where-this-path-begins-by-bruce-fertman/
Usually, when people talk to me about the parts of their body which hurt, the language is colloquial and imprecise. My shoulders ache, my neck is stiff, I’ve got a pain in my hip, my knees hurt.
This is all normal, and I do understand. This is my native tongue and the language I was brought up using. We have an idea of what region people are talking about. It isn’t medical language where bones and joints have Latin names and even numbers. It is extremely useful to know which bone is broken or needs surgery!!
And yet the imprecise language we use, although it is a common language, doesn’t always help us. The language of shoulders and knees is more of a political region – a line you can draw on a dress, or a cut-out figure, but doesn’t really correspond with the landscape of mountains and rivers – bones and joints.
“The facts are friendly”
One of the things I love to do when working with people is to help clarify the basic map of their body.
Even the GPs, endocrinologists and anaesthetists I work with, don’t always know about Their Own body map. Yes, they have far more medical terminology than I do and know all the multiple ways the body can go wrong with injury, illness and disease. They know it ‘out there’ or ‘in you’ but not always so much in their own moving healthy body.
So part of my job, as an Alexander Technique Teacher, is to teach people about where their joints actually are and where the movement should actually happen. If you are imprecise with the words you use (and why wouldn’t we be, if that’s what we were taught) or if we learn the information in our head, but it doesn’t filter into our own body learning, then it is no wonder that many of us mis-map our joints.
The top of our ‘hips’ is not the same as the hip-joint – they are 5 inches away from each other. If you try and move from the top curve of you ‘hips’ or the pelvic crest, instead of the place where one bone meets another – the thigh bone meeting the hip socket – you are way off the mark, and will mis-use yourself. This can lead to any number of aches and pains – and if you mis-use your body, it will complain! Alexander work can help to re-educate your mind and your body – both together at the same time.
“The facts are friendly” and can lead to much more cooperation between your mind and body, and help your movements be better coordinated and decrease many aches and pains brought about by mis-mapping and mis-using ourselves.
During a recent lesson I was talking to a client about their arm joints – and she said “It is mind-blowing! It’s like seeing the universe inside your own body.”
If you are curious to understand a bit more about your body map and joints, please give me a call.
