Intelligence in Action
Legally Blonde
by Graeme Lynn, GCFP, CSTAT
The natural world exhibits a phenomenon to that which, in the world of fashion, requires the need for liposuction. When you drive around the countryside you will frequently see pine trees’ branches swept by the prevailing westerly winds like a woman’s hair in a slipstream. Pine is a soft wood, and the constancy of the west wind shapes the tree as it grows through the seasons. The same shaping occurs in our connective tissue by our characteristic patterns of movement and posture. If one habitually moves in an imbalanced way, those areas of the body through which there is little movement of little thrust are the areas where tissue build-up occurs. And, as in the above-named film, exercise does not alter this: exercise is like the occasional storm coming in from the north. Such imbalance has another unfortunate long-tem consequence, stress on the supporting joints: the hips, knees and feet.
Rather than such radical processes as liposuction or possibly even knee- or hip-replacement surgery, the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method offer two effective means of consciously learning balanced movement and posture. Such improved use of oneself, which obviates the need, in time, for invasive medical intervention, is made possible for two major reasons: we have a natural pattern of mechanics that is integrated and a virtually limitless capacity for learning.
The Feldenkrais Method works by addressing the movement-related question: Is this or this or that movement easier for my structure? By exploring subtle differences, and by being thus called to awareness through movement and finding options to the habitually stressful, we re-learn natural coordination. Through such a process of learning, movement becomes freer, harmonious, and integrated; flexibility arises from having more movement options; nothing gets flabby through non-use; nothing gets over-stresses through imbalance.
The Alexander Technique works by addressing the movement-related question: What am I doing to interfere with the natural pattern for my structure? And ‘answering’ that question, under the Alexander teacher’s manual and instructional guidance, by noticing the patterns of interference, un-doing them, and allowing the teacher’s direction into better self-organization. The human upright carriage provides a natural upthrust in response to gravity. By sensing and undoing one’s habitual contracting against that upthrust, the body opens freely into balanced alignment and there is no part of oneself in which the anti-gravity response if not rightly activated.
From the conventional view there are some six hundred muscles in the body. Thus, in aerobic and circuit training, there is an address to as many of those muscles as possible. However, the sum of the parts does not make the whole. From the somatic view, the body is rather like one muscle shaped by the structure. And one responds always as a totality. For a moment, stand up and, with the left hand, reach, as for something well above you, and notice what is happening to the right heel. It lifts. How did that happen? If you reach at a slightly different angle, the heel – and the entire rest of the body – shapes itself to the action in a slightly different way. This action of the whole body at every moment in every action is centrally organized. This central organization of movement is the purview of these two somatic methods.
The Feldenkrais Method facilitates the improvement of sensing the whole bodily pattern of movement. This clarification of the kinaesthetic body image is founded in the nervous system, which is the central informative organizer of movement. Because of the inextricable interaction between self-sensing and movement in the organization of the nervous system, such clarification of one’s self-sensing necessarily facilitates harmonious movement. The Alexander Technique works to free what Alexander called the ‘primary control’ of movement, which is the central or senior formative organizer of movement. The primary control is the dynamics and coordination of the relationship of the head with the neck and of the head-neck relationship with the back and, via the centre, with the rest of the body. By clarifying, over time, one’s sense and control of this senior organizing function, the functionally integrated coordination of action naturally results.
Everyone wants to look and feel good. Improved appearance is possible in a natural and intelligent way through improving the quality of movement. One’s characteristic manner of movement, like the prevailing wind’s shaping of the pine, shapes the body over time. If one’s manner of use comes to be balanced, free, flexible, and integrated with one’s structure, that shape comes to be healthily functional and naturally attractive.
To schedule lessons, please contact Graeme in Toronto, Ontario, at 416-964-7026, or click to email.