Stuff I Wrote | Page 7 of 8 | Monika Volkmar Bodywork and Movement Education

Movement Practice Part 3: MLAM and Archetypes (continued)

Welcome back. In part 2 we discussed some wacky ideas about atoms and electrons and archetypes and the MLAM (Movement-Lifestyle Atomic-Model).

If you’re still into this exploration of the implications of how we interact with movement in our lives (hope you are…), in today’s Movement Practice installment I’d like to discuss the third archetype who sits at the center of the MLAM: The Integrator.

Ready?

But first… An important message about this archetype thing:

Its Not Your Fate

You may find you resonate completely with the description of one of these archetypes I’ve described so far, or that you are a blend of several. An Indoorsman/Exerciser. An Integrator/Exerciser. I personally have been a little bit of each at different points in my life (save for the Indoorsman, thanks to the example set by my parents, I was brought up with an intrinsic value for movement, even if it became very unhealthy in my Over-Identifier days. Nor do I feel as if I’ve attained Transcender status, though I know of few of these individuals, and they are an inspiration to be around, providing an example for how to live harmoniously attuned to one’s body and environment).

These archetypes are only stories. Something I made up to illustrate a point.

In the chance that you might identify strongly with one of these archetypes, I’d like you to remember that while the characteristics of one or more of the archetypes may describe you right now, they do not define who you are and how you will always be. If you feel the Indoorsman is representative of you, with a lacing of The Exerciser, you are not doomed to be these traits.

People can and do change all the time but this change does not take place without first asking the questions: Where am I now, how did I get here, and what what realm exists beyond my awareness? The difficulties in change arise in the inexorability of self-reflection and unpleasantness. It is step that most of us avoid, skipping ahead to the “here’s how to be the best you” step: The Indoorsman joining a basketball league without appraising that his health and fitness is nowhere near sufficient for this demand, for example.

By creating a caricature of the traits that you may not be willing or able to look at in yourself because they are too close, too deeply ingrained as patterns, the archetype descriptions can help you to zoom out and identify areas of your relationship with movement that you’d like to change. Stories can be powerful meaning conveying machines, but they are just stories. Our species has using stories since the earliest forms of pre-spoken-language communication to help to convey ideas in ways that conceptualizing and intellectualizing alone cannot.

My hope is that you do see yourself in one or several of these archetypes, but only so that you can get a broader context for the journey forwards as we explore your relationship with movement and how it may be impacting on your life, for better or worse.

What should interest you most is not which archetype you identify with, but the acknowledgement that the journey from shell to shell of the MLAM is what makes up the bulk of our lives, and instead of moaning about where we’re at now, we can ask, “How do I want to show up for this journey?”

With awareness, an explorative mindset, seeing our failures as opportunities to change? Or regret, disappointment, and frustration that you are who you are.

You are not any one archetype, inside all of us is the possibility of Transcender (an archetype we will meet a little later on).

Public service announcement complete, let’s meet The Integrator.

Shell 3: The Integrator

Dynamic and adaptive (in life and in his body), The Integrator possesses a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. You probably know quite a few Integrators who don’t realize they’re Integrators. Let’s demystify what makes this archetype distinct.

Professionally, an Integrator is 40% likely to have a job related to movement and fitness, such as a yoga teacher, sports coach, or massage therapist. There is a 35% chance that his job has a definite degree of physical demand such as being a bike courier, a walking tour guide, or a landscaper. There is a 25% chance that he has a low-movement, indoor, corporate, or office-type job such as a software developer, an investor, or an office manager. The common identifier of these Integrators of various professions and life-paths is that movement and being outdoors are one of their top three values, if not number one.

The Integrator can likely be spotted working out at the gym, but is equally likely not to have a regular indoor gym routine. More than the act of showing up to the physical location, he shows up to spend time in his body. He makes time for movement and activity as an integral part of his life versus seeing it as something to fit in amongst a plethora of other higher priority activities.

His movement practice is a cornucopia of movement forms, exercises, sports, and non-exercise activities that, when habitually engaged with, make him feel subjectively “good”. He has discovered, likely quite early on, that life is much preferable when h:e integrates movement into it (hence his name).

For him, “movement practice” exists on a spectrum with three landmarks:
1. Organized routines and structured practice.
2. practical movement integrations and non-exercise activities.
3. Spontaneous, creative, or improvised movement forms.

The most healthy, integrative integrator has aspects of all three landmarks in his practice, which I call possessing the Movement Practice Trifecta (MPT).

For example, The Integrator who has a fully established MPT may participate in, as his chosen organized movement practice (landmark one), powerlifting, Ashtanga yoga, or karate- Highly structured activities he wants to get better at and see progression physically. As his non-exercise activity (landmark two) he makes time for a walk outdoors at lunch time, and enjoys gardening in his leisure time. And as his creative, spontaneous movement option (landmark three) he may practice contact improv, or the flowing, creative work of Ido Portal, as well as engaging with the unplanned spontaneity implicit in playing a recreational sport.

Not all Integrators engage with the full MPT, and this does not make one Integrator better or worse, just at different points along the spectrum. You may recognize an Integrator as a doctor who plays in a ball hockey league, commutes on his bike to the hospital, and works out at the gym two times per week. You may know a CEO who’s alter-ego is a martial-artist and high level ping-pong player who is also practices carpentry on the weekend. Or you may know a chiropractor who is a StrongFirst kettle bell instructor, who plays with his dog at the dog park regularly, and plays beach volleyball on Sundays.

Many Integrators who are new to integrating do not yet have a trifecta in place, but are likely to have hobbies that can be done outdoors. If the newly anointed Integrator does not yet have a distinct structured practice, play a sport, or go to the gym, he probably has high non-exercise activity levels, as he organizes his life around his value for being outdoors and using his body in some useful, enjoyable way, such as hunting, fishing, carpentry, camping, playing with his kids and/or pets. He can’t imagine a life spent sedentary without movement or play.

Even though his day may be busy with appointments, meetings, or deadlines, he looks at his schedule weekly and makes time to move, treating these times as important appointments with himself. His priority is on weaving movement into his lifestyle. The activities that bring him the most joy and allow him to connect with his friends and family are movement based- He’d rather plan a social gathering around an afternoon gardening outdoors than sitting in a cafe; a camping trip over a gambling trip to Vegas, or a cycle tour of Vietnam over a luxury cruise in the Caribbean.

The Integrators who do have a structured training or gym routine approach it in a different way from The Exerciser. Their intention is less one of end-gaining and more about the process he engages in. It is less striving to be something he’s not, and more based on accepting who he is now, and who he chooses to be as he walks his path. Even as a powerlifter or other metric-based athlete, he is not attached to chasing numbers as a predictor of his success, and simply enjoys the journey he is on- The ups and downs, while aiming for his goals (and due to his process-oriented outlook, he often achieves his goals).

The goal of the Integrator’s training routine is to support his body so he can keep enjoying his favourite activities without omni-present niggling joint aches common to The Exerciser, and normal for The Indoorsman. He takes care of himself so that he can live the life he loves without fear of becoming injured or not being able to keep up. If he loves to hike with his wife in the wilderness, his practice of movement and strength training is geared towards helping his joints to feel healthy and happy so he can continue to do this for as long as he can.

Movement is integrated into his life, be it professionally, socially, or for personal enjoyment and health, and this contributes to his high adaptability to life’s demands. He bikes or walks to commute because it is empowering, economical, enjoyable, and as a bonus, good for his health. He values looking fit and healthy (let’s be honest, we all want to look good) but also truly enjoys working on new movement skills and trying new activities, finding himself looking forward to the peace and clarity that comes with deep practice and entering a flow state. He goes for daily walks not because the doctor told him he should exercise more, but because he knows he feels better when he gets more blood flowing to his brain and body, impacting on his abilities in his mental and professional areas of life. Because of this extra kick of blood to his brain, the production of neurotransmitters unknown to the sedentary, combined with a less chronically sympathetic nervous system state, he is also likely to be a better learner than the average human, seen as more intelligent, having more resources made available for his brain to use for something other than surviving.

His adaptability and vitality earn him his place on the middle shell of MLAM: He is resilient to mental and physical health risks, and his salubrious habits perpetuate a positive feedback loop, further contributing to his resilience. The key factors that distinguish The Integrator from The Exerciser is his moderate attitude, which sounds boring, but because of which we can account for his physical and emotional ease. Whereas The Exerciser fluctuates between highs and lows in her physical practice and mental state, The Integrator is level, enjoying a sense of inner peace and calm that the Exerciser does not, which inevitably trickles into other areas of his life, making him an excellent role model for us all.

The Integrator at a glance:

Superpower: Level-headedness, learning, adaptability.
Kryptonite: Inability to engage in a consistent routine, forced to sit for too long.
Vitality: Good energy, immune system, resilient to illness.
Relationship with movement: Integrated, balanced, trifecta.
Attitude towards the stairs: Takes the stairs because he has legs that work and doesn’t take them for granted.

Having fun with this yet? Whatever, I am. In our next Installment of Movement Practice we will meet our two professional athlete archetypes: The Dedicated Mover and The Over-Identifier. Stay tuned! If you really want me to let you know when I have some new writing to share, let me know. I can put you on my “People who actually read what Monika writes” gmail list.

Movement Practice Part 2: The 6 Archetypes and MLAM

Where do you sit on the Life in Motion Spectrum?

As mentioned in Part 1, Chris made the observation (one I believe to be astute) that most people practice movement without having a movement practice. I’d like to continue exploring the significance of this statement.

An “atomic” model for movement lifestyles

Before we formally define movement and practice (and movement-practice), I’d like to illustrate a few characters that will help us bring the concept of “movement lifestyle” to life. By that I mean, what is the style of relationship you currently have with movement?

While I initially described it as a spectrum, I feel as if this analogy may not be completely accurate in representing an individual’s relationship to movement in their lives.

Rather, I see our lives in motion as an atomic model: Our individuality represented by the electron-containing shells which orbit the nucleus of an atom. And now for my attempt to consolidate what I remember from grade 10 chemistry.

In what I am calling the “Movement-Lifestyle Atomic-Model” (MLAM), visualize that the entire atom, nucleus and shells, represents our lives and our relationship with movement. Each electron-containing shell has particular attributes and characteristics, which I will describe as movement archetypes having a particular set of characteristics: Superpowers, kryptonites, and a relationship-style with movement.

As an electron has the capability of jumping from shell to shell, giving off or emitting energy (photons), based on the interactions it has with its environment, so too are we capable of changing from archetype to archetype. The electrons have a different level of energy and degree of stability depending on their distance from the nucleus: The closest orbit to the nucleus has the lowest energy, and highest stability. The orbit farthest from the nucleus has maximum energy and is highly unstable. In this representation, the “MLAM atom” has five shells, each representative of one of the five (plus one) Movement Archetypes. The archetype associated with the closest shell to the nucleus has the lowest energy and is the most stable in it’s position, and the archetype associated with the furthest shell from the nucleus has the highest energy, but the least stability in it’s position.

All that said, whatever visual representation we choose doesn’t matter. Simply I wish for us to think outside the box a little bit. Not everything is a spectrum in which one end is the opposite of the other. In nature there are plenty of binary relationships- black/white, hot/cold, suffering/joy- but I think (and I could be wrong) that the relationship we have with movement is more complex, multi-faceted, unspectrumable.

The 5 (+1) Archetypes

The first five Movement Archetypes compose the five shells of the MLAM:

Shell 1: The Indoorsman

Shell 2: The Exerciser

Shell 3: The Integrator

Shell 4: The Dedicated Mover

Shell 5: The Over-Identifier

Compliments to my amazing illustrator, Monika Volkmar.

Not represented by a shell in our atomic model is The Transcender archetype. This is because, as I will explain a bit further along, the Transcender isn’t represented by a single shell, but as the model in its entirety, giving it the ability to jump from shell to shell, changing energy levels, to be any of the given archetypes at any time, for the necessary time.

The poem by Rainer Maria Rilke comes to mind:

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I will give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

As mentioned, shell one (The Indoorsman) is the most stable electron orbit, meaning the hardest to change in his ways, whereas shell 5 (The Over-Identifier) is the most unstable, meaning that it is fragile to changes in its environment and prone to identity-crises (not always a bad thing, mind you). In the middle, The Integrator has the most stability and adaptability (or anti-fragility) to the changes in environmental inputs he encounters and maintains a healthy relationship with movement. The Transcender is paradoxically stable and unstable simultaneously.

Let’s now paint a picture for each archetype in the MLAM:

Shell 1: The Indoorsman

Stable yet sedentary, The Indoorsman, as you would expect, spends most of his life indoors, in climate controlled offices and ergonomic desk chairs with extra lumbar support. He can often be heard complaining about “mouse shoulder” and “text neck” yet fails to actually do anything about these ailments because that would require a degree of honest engagement with himself that he is not yet prepared for. (Note that from here on out I will use “he” to describe both men and women Indoorsmen. Why didn’t I choose “she”? As a lady-writer shouldn’t I be empowered to use the feminine pronoun? Simple. I like efficiency: “He” takes less time to type than “she”, “Indoorswoman”, and “Indoorsperson”. Also, I plan to use “she” for the next archetype description so any feminists reading can rest assured).

The Indoorsman senses undertones of discontent, ranging from moderate to severe, with his state of life, body, and mind which are easily dismissed as background static, and quickly gotten used to as “normal”. That perpetual headache and chronic fatigue? Par for the course to any Indoorsman, his symptoms barely register as blips on the radar bearing any significance. He doesn’t realize these symptoms are in fact abnormal for a healthy human being until, on a whim, he gets a massage and has a few days of relief in which he feels a nondescript sense of “better”, but can’t pinpoint exactly why. “Better” does not last more than a few days because he has no knowledge, tools, or guidance for how to maintain it. It’s not his fault, but it is his responsibility to acquire these tools.

The Indoorsman can sometimes be spotted reading health and fitness literature (if we can call Men’s and Women’s Health magazines such) but rather than as a serious attempt to inspire a change in his lifestyle, he mostly makes fun of how photo-shopped the fitness models appear, not seeing it as a realistic comparison to themselves (for it isn’t), and using humour to push down his insecurities (The Indoorsman is quite good at this, in fact, self-deprecating humour is one of his super-powers). Nevertheless, the effects of these images on his psyche slip under his radar and contribute to an insidious low sense of self-worth, barely perceptible to him in his current state of cripplingly poor self-awareness.

Despite his sarcastic remarks and statements that he “accepts how he looks”, and has no desire to get in shape because he’s “ok with himself”, deep down he desires to try to change. What’s holding him back is that he lacks any sort of role model for this behaviour, as most of his friend group consists of other Indoorsmen. This lack of role models throughout his life combined with years of Indoorsmanism makes his position in the MLAM highly stable, or resistant to change. That, and change scares the crap out of him.

That is until one day he decides that something needs to drastically change (sometimes after hitting a rock-bottom, or another equally devastatingly inspiring life event). In an effort to try on a value he’s never before held, but that he deems will move him in a healthier direction (movement and exercise), he takes up an activity like ballroom dancing, playing in a recreational basketball league, or most commonly as an entry point to movement for The Indoorsman, jogging. Though he may only average 2000 steps on a movement “heavy” day, he feels like his current physical state is “normal” (because it’s all he’s ever known) and so he imposes an unrealistic expectation on himself to perform at a standard higher than is realistic. There is a 90% likelihood that in his first venture into exercise he unknowingly pushes past his physical threshold and, if he doesn’t find himself struggling through the ordeal, he wakes up in agony the next day. Based on this experience, he may or may not decide that repeating this event to be a good idea, further contributing to his stability- fear and resistance to change, in the MLAM.

The Indoorsman at a glance:

Superpower: Ability to tune out discomfort, self-deprecating humour.
Kryptonite: Sunlight, exercise, sports.
Vital stats: Haggard, lethargic, pale, poor-immune system.
MLAM Stability: High.
Relationship with movement: Non-existent, wishful thinking.
Attitude towards the stairs: Avoids taking the stairs at all costs.

Shell 2: The Exerciser

Prone to bouts of occasional physical activity, The Exerciser is not sedentary like the Indoorsman, as she is characterized by her attempts to make up for her predominantly static life with 60 minute clips of intense activity at the gym a few times per week. If she happens to be an individual of affluence, she is likely to spend these bursts of activity with a personal trainer, on whom she is dependent to keep her accountable to her otherwise uninspired exercise regime.

She is likely to be using exercise for one or a combination of four primary reasons:
1) In an attempt to restore a sense of health and balance in her life without actually addressing the reason why her life feels so unhealthily off kilter in the first place.
2) Because she knows she’ll feel better about herself after doing some physical activity, despite the fact that maintaining a routine is hard and often she finds her workouts make her body hurt afterwards.
3) To lose weight, gain muscle, or fit whatever aesthetic ideal she’s chasing in an attempt to heal her self-esteem or fill a void within.
4) For no better reason than she feels like she “should” due to pressure from a doctor, a friend group, her parents, or the all-pervasive media influence.

None of these reasons allow her to accept who she authentically is right now, but are based on her striving to be someone she’s not. Nor do these reasons respect her yet to be uncovered “why” behind her movement practice.

The Exerciser cares a lot about how she looks and she often uses exercise to burn calories and tone muscles. She also is prone to believing the notion that a good workout is one in which she works up a sweat, and concludes in an exhausted, dizzy state. In the case of some physical culture ideologies, ultimate success is unlocked when one vomits and/or pees her pants, and The Exerciser sees these as completely rational criteria. These exercise intentions are ironic because she is often running on mere fumes and adrenaline due to mental and emotional burnout from her day job and other poorly managed life-stresses. She likely to have a large sleep debt, thus her scheduled gym-time is probably better spent doing something more restorative, like sleeping (something she refuses to give in to).

The overarching intentions of The Exerciser are to make up for unhealthy habits: Poor nutrition, over-working, under-moving, staring too long at a screen, existential angst, and comparing herself to unrealistic media portrayals of celebrity bodies. Unlike The Indoorsman, these images can trigger the Exerciser to embark on a strange, shame-induced motivational roller coaster, making her position on the MLAM less stable than the Indoorsman (more prone to taking action and changing something about her life).

When speaking of exercise, The Exerciser often uses the verbiage “fit it in” over “make time for it”: Isolated bouts of physical activity rather than a lifestyle integrated with movement. While she can appear on the outside to be admirably health-conscious , this is largely because when she does workout and cook healthy meals, she posts it on Instagram for all to see, using hashtags like #fitfam, #beastmode, and #paleoaf.

Despite how she strives to appear on the outside, she is out of touch with her body and its needs. Her inner homeostatic mechanisms are out of whack (immune system, metabolism, hormones, circadian rhythm, etc.), and their signals are near impossible to interpret in her hypervigilent state. She lacks presence with her body moment to moment, because to truly tune in would mean to let her guards down and acknowledge the honest state of her body- A bit of a mess. That said, she knows (in a superficial way that she has yet to truly experience) that she must try to be present with herself, connect body with mind, yet when she tries it is an act closer to resembling war than harmonious living. The Exerciser exists on a spectrum from primarily sedentary sometimes exerciser, to compulsive over-exerciser. Neither is an exceptionally healthy, balanced relationship.

What distinguishes The Exerciser from the Indoorsman is that she has a definite value, or at least an interest in having a value for movement where the Indoorsman has none. While misguided and unclear in her intention for movement, she’s taken an important step- The attempt to make movement a part of her life. Some fine-tuning required, she is doing the best with the information she has at this moment in time.

The Exerciser at a glance:

Superpower: Gets shit done, desires change.
Kryptonite: Prioritization of needs, media portrayals of “fit” bodies.
Vital stats: Chronic fatigue, hypervigilent, sympathetic-dominant.
MLAM Stability: Medium.
Relationship with movement: Unbalanced. Ranging from obsessive to sporadic; highly structured routine to challenge creating a routine.
Attitude towards the stairs: Takes the stairs whenever possible because she can burn 10 extra calories if she sprints them two at a time.

2300 words seems like enough for now… Stay tuned for the next installment of Movement Practice in which we will continue to explore the four remaining movement archetypes and discuss whether any of this even matters (does it?).

Movement Practice (part 1): Then and Now

Welcome to the first installment of my new writing project: Movement Practice. I’m examining the role movement plays in our lives and our relationship with it. Sound like your cup of tea? Let’s do this thing.

AiM University

In 2015 I attended a 6 day biomechanics course that changed the trajectory of my life. The course was called Anatomy in Motion and from the moment the instructor, Gary Ward, started talking I sensed my life would never be the same (I was right).

Up until that point, as an injured dancer turned personal trainer and bodyworker, I had been researching and exploring different continuing education courses with the aim of finding “the thing” that would give me the clarity and understanding of the human body that could help both myself and my clients more efficiently reach their goals and allow me to more easily work with the chronic pain clients that I tended to attract. Anatomy in Motion, as I later explained to Chris Sritharan, the other course instructor, was “the answer to the questions that I didn’t know how to ask”. All I wanted to do was study their work for the rest of my life- I’d enroll in AiM University and do a Master’s, PhD and whatever else they’d offer until they got tired of me.

Through AiM I was introduced to a new way of seeing the human body in motion, and I haven’t been able to go back. The clarity with which the complex structure of the human body was communicated struck a chord somewhere deep inside of me. The way the course was taught embodied how I learn best: Putting descriptive words to movements of bones and joints and feeling them in our bodies. From that point, my practices of movement shifted, both personally and professionally, in a way I couldn’t articulate at the time.

I’d like to speak a little more about this personal shift (and because my personal life is intertwined with my professional one, the trickle over effect in these two arenas is significant).

Then and Now

Chris, who I now consider an important mentor, made the distinction between movement practice and practicing movement. At the time, the two were inextricable to me, yet in hindsight I can see that this distinction is what I was starting to experience.

Chris said to us, “there’s a lot of people practicing movement and not a lot of people with a movement practice. There’s a lot of people in the business of teaching movement, but not a lot of coaches aiming to remove the barriers that are preventing people from understanding how to move”. I’ve heard him repeat this line and variations on it at nearly every course I’ve attended (which at this time of writing is six).

Phil Donahue, the host of the American talk show, The Phil Donahue Show (a show that ran for 29 years ending in 1996) loved to ask the interview question, “what did somebody say to you at one point in your life that changed it?”. In that reflective space we can find that there are distinctive moments of “then and now” in our lives. While I didn’t recognize it at the time, this thing that Chris had said was my “then and now” pivot point.

I attribute the new trajectory to which I was unknowingly beginning to dedicate my life not only to the new way I was learning to see the body, but to a shift in values, unconsciously influenced by Chris’ words: What is the difference between practicing movement and movement practice?

The subtleties of this distinction are elusive. So much so that in the years I explored them I had not idea that this was what I was in fact doing. I observed a shift in myself and how I approached exercise and movement and journalled on the experiences I was having. The general feeling throughout the process was of some atavistic revival taking place within me. A rewilding process weaving itself through all areas of my life. A rooting into something new yet familiar. Clumsy enough to make my professional practice a challenge as I attempted to adapt to a new way of thinking in a workplace that didn’t value it, yet inspiring enough to get back up at each falter and reprimand to continue forward through the fog.

Romanticism aside, as I write these words now, this question is defining of this point in my personal and professional life: What’s the difference between practicing movement and having a movement practice? Is this distinction even important (I feel that yes, it is). Is one better than the other (no, I don’t think so). And for you, the reader, is it worth spending your precious, limited time with these words?

You’ll have to keep reading.

Transitions

I remember a then in which I only practiced movement, and a now in which I have a movement practice that defines parameters for how I practice movement.

I recall how then, I strived to fit an aesthetic. Now my practice includes and often prioritizes skill acquisition over how my body looks.

Then, I clenched and controlled my movements with maximum strength and stability as pinnacles, and numbers as landmarks at all cost. Now, I ask, how can I let go of the need to control and create more freedom for myself?

Then, I had rigid routines, protocols, and a schedule to adhere to, no matter how my body felt (dance performances, my Wendler 531 routine…). Now, I allow for a flexibility, spontaneity in my practice reflected in how my body feels day to day.

Then, I neglected warming up to get exercise out of the way as quickly and efficiently as possible. Now, I enjoy and make time for my warm-ups and movement preparations- If I don’t have time for them, I don’t have time to train.

Then, I tried out any exercise that looked “cool” at the gym because someone “fitter” than me was doing it. Now, I am aware of the intention behind any exercise I put into my movement practice.

Then, my goal was to burn as many calories as possible. Now, I don’t consider the energy expenditure of an exercise at all in my decision to include it in my movement practice.

Then, I tried to be perfect. Now, I know to focus on the process, not the end goal.

Then, I was no pain no gain- I tuned out pain symptoms and signs of over-training because they got in the way. Now I tune in and respect what my body is asking of me on a given day and feel no guilt for taking rest when I need it.

Then, my relationship with my body was a metaphorical battle. Now, my body and I enjoy a relationship based on trust, honesty, listening, and respect.

Then, I was an exerciser and over-identified with my movement form. Now, I am a dedicated student of movement.

The list could go on. How many of these resonate with you?

If you have the idea that my “then” was describing practicing movement as something “bad”, and my “now” as me having a movement practice that is “good”, I want to make it clear that this is not the case. Simply, I want to illustrate the journey from then to now and the shift in priorities therein.

Imagine a spectrum on which to the far left we have things we define as exercise and activity, and to the far right we have this thing called a movement practice. Right now, you and I are sitting somewhere on that spectrum. This isn’t a judgement, its a fact. Unfortunately, you can become stuck more to one side than the other on this spectrum with the lack of variability to slide around on it. In fact, both sides of spectrum are inextricable as our “lives in motion” and we need to access all points along it depending on our current needs. Its the context that defines whether or not one should aim to slide more to one end or the other.

My “then” was not bad, and my “now” is not good, neither does thinking this way serve me. What did serve me was where I was at the time with the amount of information I had. Could I have found a less painful way of doing things if I had more information? Sure. Could I have suffered less if I had more objectivity? Of course. But I didn’t, so I don’t get too hung up on “should-haves” and “if-only-I-knew-thens”. Neither should you.

What you can do as a useful, reflective exercise, is place yourself somewhere on our movement spectrum. Where do you feel you sit right now? Are you immovable in that space, or does your position vary day to day, week to week? Are you adaptable, or are you stuck in a moment in time? And importantly, are you ok with this?

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 in which we will explore the differences between practicing movement and movement practice, and my three archetypes: The Indoorsman, The Exerciser, and the Over-Identifier. Will one of them describe you?

Movement Practice: Introduction

Ahoy.

I am working on a new writing project that explores one of my highest values: The cultivation and evolution of movement practice, and helping others to create healthy practices of movement in their lives and reconnect with their bodies. I’m tentatively calling it (surprise, surprise) Movement Practice. Very creative eh…

Needed a picture for this blog post so here’s one of me doing some movement practice with Charlie pooch at Rattlesnake Point last weekend (I’ve got handstand goals). If you’re the kind of person who follows dogs on Instagram, check out @no_bull_charlie.

In this project my primary aim is to describe how for fulfillment, health, and resilience (or anti-fragility, for you Talebians) in our lives, a movement practice, in whatever form it takes, is an integral part of a life worth living. If you know the story of how when I was 22 all I wanted out of life was to be able to walk 30 minutes without pain, it’s no wonder that I have such a fascination with this topic. Our voids become our values…

(FYI I accomplished my walk-30-minutes-pain-free goal just last year and recognize that this general state of “pain-free” is transient at best. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the shit out of the relationship I now have with my body).

In this writing I am planning to provide examples and stories of the what, why, and how of movement practice both from my own life and from experiences of my clients with the aim of helping some more folks to establish their own movement practice in a healthy, sustainable way.

And I need your help! I need to do some “market research”. I’d really love to know how you think about movement and exercise in your life. Would you help me out by answering a few questions for me? Just four of them:

Why do you have a movement practice? (if you don’t have one, why not?)

What does the phrase “move daily” mean to you? (How does “move daily” show up, or not, in your life?)

Consider the terms “movement practice” and “practicing movement”. Do those terms mean the same thing to you, or something different? Please explain 🙂

Do you feel your movement practice has an effect on other areas of your life beyond the physical? Think mental/emotional, spiritual, financial, vocational, social, family. If yes, would you share an example?

I appreciate you taking the time to help me out! Can you write down your answers and email them to me? Or maybe I’ll take you out for coffee and we can talk about it. That would be nice.

And even if you don’t want to share your answers with me, doing your own reflection on these questions will probably be useful. So I encourage you to write down your answers on a scrap piece of paper, napkin, or with a stick in the sand.

If you’d like to be kept in the loop on this writing project, please shoot me an email. I can share some of the writing with you as I go. Or maybe I’ll just share it here on my blog. Because that’s what blogs are for…

Removing the System’s “Handbrake”

A tale of navigating pain, with me, Monika. Our special guest for today is L.

L is one of my personal training clients. She is a badass 59 year old lady who has been slowly unwinding her body from a state of chronic pain over the past two years.

Last week she came into our session with a neck pain flare up. It hurt to tilt and rotate her head to the left. L usually likes to train hard, bust out push-ups (she can do 6 now!), and get a sweat going, but on that day she just wanted to be able to move her neck, so that became our focus.

Image result for your inner physician and you Concurrently to this story about L, I was reading John Upledger’s The Inner Physician and You in preparation for taking the Upledger Institute’s craniosacral therapy level one course (stoked!). Reading this book was fortuitously timed, as I began to observe some of its main themes surface in my bodywork practice. In particular while working with L last week.

The aforementioned themes, fresh in my mind from reading Upledger’s book, that seemed to over-arc this session were:

The individual is his/her own healer
We all have an “inner physician” and “censor”
Until the “root cause” is identified, the same symptoms may keep returning

Nothing new, I know. But sometimes these truths don’t sink in until we’ve had enough experience of them. The timing of L’s neck pain was a gift to me in order to better explore these themes in real life.

How do you even shoulder-check?

L’s neck pain had been present for a long time at a low level as general stiffness, but last week when she came in it was bad enough that I wondered how she had even been able to shoulder check as she was driving over to see me.

As a side note, the thought occurred to me the other day: How many car accidents are caused by people with left side neck pain who can’t shoulder check?

I asked this same question to a client of mine a few years ago, “How did you even drive here if you can’t move your head to the left?” His answer, “I don’t need to, I drive fast…”. Please don’t be this guy. Take care of your body and be less of a danger on the streets.

Anyway, back to L. Her history.

When I first met L she had two bad knees (one had been operated on), thought she was going to need a cane to walk, couldn’t sit cross-legged because of her painful knees, and couldn’t lift her arms over her head due to shoulder pain. You could say she’d gotten her body into a bit of a messy spot.

Today, L can squat, lunge, sit cross-legged comfortably, lift her arms up and hang from a bar, and best yet, can do 6 full push-ups. She’s come a long way.

The main issue that initially brought L in to doing sessions with me was her right knee. She’d had surgery on it when she was 19 and, like any normal 19 year-old, she didn’t put a lot of thought into the recovery process.

A few weeks ago I asked her how she’d rate the care she received for her knee, and she said, “I was 19… So. Yeah. That.” Like most of us at that age (or at any age, let’s be honest), she had probably rested until the pain went down enough to start walking on it again without a lot of value placed on doing any sort of rehab exercises to regain full motion at the joint.

If the symptoms disappear and you can get around well enough, no more problem, right?

And then if you develop neck pain 40 years later, it’s probably not related, right?

I will admit now that I too am guilty of this way of thinking in my previous work with L.

I ignored a problem

Very shortly after L and I began working together, her knee pain stopped. It was that dang Anatomy in Motion stuff– It really simplifies how to work with knees (and the whole body, really).

After her pain disappeared I reassessed her knee and saw there was still a movement issue: Her knee was stuck in an externally rotated position (tibia pointing out farther than femur), and her knee seemed to not have any transverse plane movement when she bent or straightened it (which we should be able to see and feel in a healthy knee).

But because her symptoms were gone, and any time we tried to feed what I felt to be “appropriate” movement into her knee, it felt painful. So, like any trainer who doesn’t want to lose a client because we keep doing stuff that hurts, I decided to ignore it. And we did that for a year without her complaining about her knee again. I thought this was good, and that the problem had taken care of itself.

Until last week.

Time doesn’t heal, healing heals with time.

Can we experience healing without pain?

Here we see surface an intriguing point of learning from Upledger’s Your Inner Physician and You. Upledger described several phases of an acute healing process. He describes, in his hands-on work, a “therapeutic pulse”, a “release of heat”, a temporary increase in the pain, and then relief from it. He says that this increase in pain is a part of the process, and it always subsides if the work is brought to completion correctly.

This has me wondering, what if, in the moment of doing the appropriate healing work, the increase in symptoms is necessary? When I stopped moving L’s knee because she reported pain, was that something to move into or away from? Healing or dangerous?

If it is true that a temporary increase in pain is part of the healing process, yet many of us avoid moving into a problem because it temporarily hurts, it is no wonder that we get ourselves into increasingly messy spots. We choose comfort over truth and deny ourselves freedom and ease.

But of course, it is hard to know whether this is true. Upledger was describing craniosacral work which is a gentle manual therapy. Does the same apply for movement?

Of course I mean moving gently, patiently, mindfully an area of the body that is experiencing an issue produce the same healing effect as holding it and waiting, with the same patience, for the area to release itself? If I start to move an area and feel pain, should I stop right away? Or is this a cue that I am initiating a healing process and would be doing myself a disservice by not bringing it to completion, fully exploring it.

I suppose this is something Upledger might say the individual intuitively knows the answer to in the moment, if we take the time to inquire.

Whatever the answer may be, I think the experience of pain is always a nice opportunity to open a discussion about the change/comfort matrix.

Change and comfort matrix

I think that all movement (and life) experiences fall into one of these four quadrants (in which “unsafe”, in the body, generally equates with pain or doomy apprehension, and “safe” is the absence of pain and a sense of comfort).

Safe + different= Where you want to be exploring (no pain, but maybe unsteady, awkward, challenging, shaky due to it being a new experience)

Safe + same= Staying in the comfort zone (no pain, no challenge, no change)

Unsafe + different= A new may of moving that triggers a threat response (painful, unsteady, awkward, challenging, fear provoking, activates sympathetic nervous system, and no lasting change)

Unsafe + same= Staying in the (not so comfortable) comfort zone (painful but no more painful than what we’re used to so it feels “normal”, moving habitually, no change)

Perhaps we just need to stay with a new input (movement, manual therapy, idea) for long enough to make the transition from unsafe/different to safe/different, because any new input to our nervous system may initially be perceived as dangerous, whether it really is or not.

Just some thoughts on navigating pain that I’ve had lately…

Pattern recognition

So anyway, here I was with L, feeling like I had no idea what we were going to do, plan for today’s training session out the window.

We had tried a number of movements that usually help get her neck and spine moving as part of her warm-up, but everything hurt too much to do, so we aborted mission.

From Upledger’s book, another theme presented itself: Treat the body on each day as if you are assessing for the first time. Try not to be biased by how the individual was last week, what other people have “diagnosed”, or even what the individual says about it. These stories may not apply to today.

And in that moment when zoomed out I was able to recognize a pattern.

In Anatomy in Motion (AiM) we assess the whole body in terms of phases of gait- What each joint does and when it does it as we walk. Each phase has it’s own signature shape, or pattern which we can begin to recognize in ourselves and others.

In the AiM Finding Center 6 day immersion course we are trained to understand what should be happening within each pattern at each joint in the body at any given moment in time as we walk.

L’s head not being able to tilt or rotate to the left was part of the same pattern in which, at the same time, her right knee should be flexing (we call this pattern “suspension phase”, more commonly known as foot flat). Since I knew, historically, her right knee had movement limitations, I wondered if the position of her neck was the result of an exchange within that pattern over many years of adaptation around a problem.

If the pattern can’t be completed by one joint (the knee), we see this phenomenon called “exchange” in which another structure will try to accommodate for that.

Exchange: If we can’t fulfill a lack (missing knee motion in this case), we will look somewhere else to fulfill it (perhaps at the neck?). This happens at all levels in our lives. When something is missing, we find other ways to fill space, whether they are the healthiest for us or not, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Had her neck become a solution for her knee that became a problem of its own?

To test this knee/neck relationship, I had L simply stand with her right knee bent while testing her painful neck ranges- They immediately improved in range and felt less painful. Not perfect, but better.

You should have seen the look of L’s face when I said, “I think your neck issue is because of your right knee”. Like I’m a crazy person.

For those who have already taken AiM or are interested in the biomechanics of this, these are the mechanics I observed when I reassessed L’s right knee:

Tibia anteriorally tilted (top of tibia tilted forward under the femur)
Knee externally rotated (tibia rotated laterally of femur)
No further movement into external rotation as the knee flexed (we should see the knee externally rotate as it bends)

If you haven’t taken AiM or don’t give a shit about biomechanics (unlikely, if you are reading this…), what this means is her knee was stuck in a more “bent” position in both sagittal and transverse plane, and couldn’t access any more bend, it already being there, bent.

The strategy, in my mind, seemed to be that we ought to show the knee how to extend and internally rotate, or more specifically, get the tibia to posteriorally tilt and internally rotate under the femur. Doing this would help it find a more centered resting spot allowing it somewhere to go when she bends her knee, rather than hit a block, and in theory, this would relinquish her neck of its excessive role in the full body pattern.

Using two movements from the AiM toolkit we explored ways of getting her knee to experience the above movements it was missing, and then integrated that up through into her neck as best we could.

L was mindful that the sensation in her knee felt different, and vaguely unsafe. At that point, we had a nice discussion of the comfort/change matrix. Fortunately, L trusted in the thought process I had explained to her, and after a few more moments of gently feeding movement through her knee, she reported that she was in the safe/different quadrant (is trust the anathema for feeling unsafe?).

When we finished, she stated that something definitely felt different about her neck, though she wasn’t sure what. She tested out her painful neck ranges, and they had improved. Not perfect, but on the right track.

Someone’s elses’ limiting beliefs

After this exploration, L told me an interesting story.

Apparently, when she had gone back for a consultation from a sports medicine doctor about her knee years after the operation, she had been told that she would never have full function of her knee again. She wondered aloud, “Have I been unconsciously limiting my potential because of something a doctor told me years ago? Something that wasn’t true?”. She didn’t question this statement at the time, that her knee was doomed never to work again, because he was the doctor. She seemed genuinely fascinated to understand how lifting this limiting belief could liberate her body from pain.

Let go of the handbrake

At this point I brought up the idea of the “handbrake” to the system- That we can try to teach the body to move “better”, but if there is something getting in the way (usually something from an injury history), then nothing will change because the brake hasn’t been removed.

Part of our job, as explorative movement facilitators (I am going to put that job title on my business card), is to find what’s getting in the way of people moving well, and then trusting that the individual’s own, intelligent system will be able to do the healing itself.

Another theme that surfaced from Upledger’s book: We are not healers, we are holding space for the body to heal itself.

I cannot be so arrogant to presume that I know what is best for someone’s body, life, mind, whatever.

All I can hope to do, and perhaps what is the highest form of healing, is to have the intention simply to be with somebody through their process. To listen before asking. To be present with them. Explain my thought process so that they have the option to trust it.

This is not a relationship between the healer and the broken, but a relationship between equals.

Priming the system

I also explained to L that other movements and stretches she can do directly for her neck are still good. The are ways of priming her nervous system for healthy ways of moving once the handbrake is removed.

By priming her nervous system with general movements, we are making future options for neck movement more familiar, more recognizable for her body to perform, once she has dealt with the thing that got in the way of it all to begin with.

And that brings me to…

The things that get in the way

I am reminded of a talk I listened to recently by Brene Brown, titled The Power of Vulnerability (listened to it twice in a row, strongly recommend), that mirrors this discussion.

To introduce her talk, Brown tells a story about a speaking gig at which she was expected to present on fluffy things like, how to be happy, how to be successful, etc. But as a shame and vulnerability researcher, her area of focus was “the things that get in the way”. The things people don’t want to talk about because they are hard and raw and most of us don’t want to go there.

It’s well and good to tell people how to be happy and successful, but how many people can actually take action on “happy and successful” until they’ve dealt with their own handbrakes? Shame, fear, and vulnerability. The unsexy stuff.

In the movement, personal training, and rehab worlds, we have plenty of people showing us how to move well (happy and successful), but not enough people talking about the things that get in the way (the handbrakes to the system).

There are literally thousands of resources that can teach you how to squat, deadlift, handstand, improve your “bad” posture, do yoga, “fix” your flat feet, etc. but hardly anything that can show you how to navigate the roadblocks. I think this is because 1. it is such an individual thing that it is hard to make a guide on, and 2. Becaues most people don’t think about “what gets in the way”, they just want to jump right into “happy and successful”, and “happy and successful” sells a hell of a lot better.

One of my teachers, Gary Ward, founder of Anatomy in Motion, has created an online resource that I think is the closest yet to removing the handbrake without actually working with a practitioner in rea life. His movement exploration is called “Wake Your Body Up”. <—Check it out.

The inner physican

Upledger describes in one section of his book that we have inside us an “inner physician”, and a “censor”. The censor has good intentions (safety!) but is the one who is skeptical about everything, who calls bullshit and can put a block in the road of healing. The inner physician opens a dialogue for healing, for finding the root cause of an issue and exploring, and asks us to trust the process.

L is in touch with her inner physician. She left inteigued to explore the work we did, intrigued by the thought process behind it. To her, it made perfect sense. As Upledger wrote, our bodies have an intelligence of their own, and if we open that dialogue with our own inner physician, we will find that we intuitively know what the problem is. Just have to pay attention…

Conclusions?

L’s homework was to practice moving her knee (safe/different) a few times a day using the movements we explored- remove the handbrake (stuck knee) and give the body a chance to heal itself.

I am grateful to have had this experience with L, and look forward to continuing this process with her.

I am left thinking, we always get what we need from life. Did L experience a neck flare up because she needed to address her knee? We’ll see what happens.

Building a Buffer

Why is it important to “do the work”? The important physical work, the work on our thoughts and minds.

We do the work to get out of the woods (physical pain, suffering due to our thoughts and emotions).

We do the work reaching out in the dark, not yet knowing which direction we’re heading, but driven by the hope that one day we will see the light at the border where the trees meet the clearing.

We do the work because we learn to enjoy the feeling of it- even enjoy the challenge of it, and the feeling afterwards; like settling into a comfortable arm-chair in front of a fire, beer in hand, after a long day’s work.

And we do the work because we are building a buffer that will serve us in case of a Black Swan- a disastrous event we can’t possible predict, but need to insulate ourselves against. A preventative measure.

In the case of a Black Swan (written extensively about by economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the book by the same name, a Black Swan is a rare, random, cataclysmic event that seems to happen without warning), we are forced to surrender to a power greater than our own desire for time that is ours to with what we wish. Time-selfish time, free of scheduled obligation. We cannot predict when we will be asked, sometimes forced, to sacrifice this precious, unscheduled time, time that we would rather be using for ourselves, to serve another’s needs.

This is of course an illusion. Time cannot be ours or theirs, time simply is.

But it is in these times of sacrifice that we had better hope we’ve done the work and built a sufficient buffer to weather it out.

If a family member dies. If a loved one gets hurt and needs us for support.

“Is my buffer big enough for both of us?”

There is a purpose for time-selfishness, and it is to build the buffer that allows us to be there for others when their worlds come crashing down, and our daily motions shift not to serve our own physical, emotional, spiritual needs, but theirs, as well.

This is one of the highest reasons why we do the work. We think we’re doing it for ourselves, and we are, but we are doing it for ourselves so that we can, selfishly, keep our sanity while we are asked, without predictability, to drop our routine life as we know it and cope with what’s been thrown at us.

Call it tolerance. I call it having a buffer. And I want a buffer that will last me for days, weeks, months, without tending to it, so I can survive on the minimum effective dose of self-care.

Like a spider plant that seems to thrive when you neglect it for just the right amount of time.

The buffer gets larger and, as it does, the size of the minimum effective dose (MED) gets smaller. And counter intuitively, the more time we spend doing the work on ourselves, the more time we have later to spend simply being, without worrying about the MED, or the buffer. And ironically, this time spent being, not worrying, not working intentionally on ourselves, becomes the self-care in itself. Just having the space and time to be.

To sit. To lie down. To go for a walk (what other options exist?).

But that doesn’t mean we stop building our buffer, because it’s become such a way of life now. We make time for it. We enjoy the challenge of it. Enjoy the peace of it. The honesty of it.

We keep chopping wood, and one day, as it out of nowhere, we realize we have chopped enough. The wood pile is stacked high enough, so we can continue chopping without needing to chop, for we know there are others that have not yet started- are still staring, with uncertainty, at the axe.

We chop wood for them with the peace of knowing we have enough for ourselves.

A Case for Prioritizing Biomechanics

Before we start, no, this is not a post to put the B in BPS (bio-psycho-social) on a pedastle. The B could not exist without the PS, nor could we have a PS without a B. Such is the nature of all things that exist interdependently. I do not wish to engage in this debate. I also suck at debates…

Moving on!

Somewhere around year 2015 I’ve found myself in a bit of an existential crisis that I’m certain many other personal trainers have found themselves in at some point:

I LOVE WORKING WITH BODIES BUT I THINK THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPER I’D LIKE MY CLIENTS TO GET OUT OF EXERCISE AND THAT I’D LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH THAN COUNTING REPS.

Of course there’s more to being a trainer than leading mindless workouts and rep-counting. And I’ve never thought about my work to be limited to just that.

And as a personal trainer who does not claim to specialize in weight-loss or nutritional counselling or physique enhancement- typical things associated with my field, just what meaning does my work have?

WHY the heck am I doing this? Aren’t personal trainers supposed to help people lose weight and exercise and sweat and build muscles and all that stuff? And if I don’t place a priority on that stuff… Then what else do I bring to the table?

As I deepened my learning about the human body, began to observe what was really happening with the bodies of my clients, I began to see that strength training and “exercising” maybe wasn’t the thing they needed to prioritize.

When a client who had hip pain couldn’t do the usual “go-to” exercises, I found ways of working around the issue for as long as possible to deliver a pain-free workout, but this wasn’t enough. I wanted to have the information and abilities to address these issues with movement, not work around them with strengthening exercises that may end up more deeply ingraining their structural issues.

The more I learned and studied the human body and movement I began to view my work in a different light. Strength training and general “fitness” training lost it’s be-all-end-all power as the ultimate tool for helping people, and I realized that I needed to be doing more for the people who trusted me with their bodies than provide “exercise”.

I think other personal trainers have experienced a similar meaning-crisis, which may lead to 1) changing careers, 2) adding new skills to our arsenal and adapting the way we work and market ourselves, or 3) becoming disillusioned completely with our work and industry and lose all sense of meaning in it.

I am currently in the depths of situation #2 (only very briefly did I linger in #3….): Learning to integrate the skills I possess that go beyond strength and conditioning, re-positioning myself as a personal trainer who does more than lead “workouts”, into the realm of restoring optimal movement quality to support a wide variety of goals any client may have, from reducing pain symptoms, to optimizing physical and sports performance, to lifting heavy stuff because it feels empowering.

Today I would like to speak a bit more specifically about a fundamental piece of my operative philosophy that I find myself repeating as I learn to integrate the tools I possess: Investigating the bodies true priorities before deciding that strength will make things “better” (whatever our definition of “better” is).

As a personal trainer with understanding in both areas of strength training and biomechanics, how to balance these priorities? Is strength training with good technique enough to improve movement mechanics? Or will addressing biomechanics lead to improvements in strength that resistance training alone could not?

Obviously it’s not a “this over that” situation. It has to be both and all in any situation.

And HOW to achieve that balance is the tricky, variable bit, as no two people are the same.

Too, there is the issue of expectation and trust, when a client is looking for a type of training that validates what they perceive to be their specific limitations or goals, rather than seeking the truth of the issue, which may not be the same as how they perceive it. This is where client education, proper assessment are important, as is being able to meet the client where they’re at. If I give them something to do that is so far off the radar of their expectations, they will likely not appreciate it or see the value in it. This begs the question- do I give them what they need, or what they want?

Again, the answer is, BOTH! Always both. Finding the sweet spot for every individual. Meeting them where they’re at.

I think the art of “finding the sweet spot” is one I will be aiming to master for the rest of my life…

Finding the sweet spot

As we can all appreciate, in a holistic model of helping someone reach their goals, we have to take all aspects of “training” into consideration:

Restorative stuff: Yin (stuff having to do with homeostasis of all systems):

Possessing ideal joint mechanics*
Ideal breathing mechanics
Sleep, nutrition, stress management, hydration, blah blah blah, for healthy organs and systems function

Exercise based stuff: Yang (training you do to push your body to do stuff harder, faster, better, etc):

Strength and power training
Aerobic/anaerobic exercise
Skills/sports specific training

I would like to argue that biomechanics are like a mesh that surrounds and intertwines all aspects of the Yin and Yang of performance, health, and well-being.

For example, having ideal and efficient joint biomechanics (movement/posture) will help with breathing, reduce issues of compression on the organs, blood vessels, nerves, lymphatic system, etc, help the body stay pain free, enhance sleep, allows for proper digestion and elimination, and improves blood flow to distal body parts and the brain to enhance cognition and emotional regulation.

Having great biomechanics also spills over into all aspects of fitness and athletic development: the building blocks for producing force and power efficiently, and will impact on aerobic fitness by virtue of having mechanics in place for efficient breathing and economy of movement. Ideal biomechanics will lay the foundation for performing specific skills better, while also allowing an athlete to unwind from their repetitive specialized movements so they can get back to training the next day. Not to mention people with more efficient biomechanics will likely have less risk of injury and will take less time off training.

What do I mean by “better” biomechanics?

I’m talking about adult human gait mechanics of the Flow Motion Model as the “gold standard”.

Read more about that HERE. And HERE. And HERE.

Some may say that the “exercise stuff”- strength training with good technique, high quality technical skills work, will be enough to take care of the bio-mechanics bit in itself, and why spend time focusing on it?

“Squatting with ‘good’ form will keep you pain free”

“Animal Flow will fix your joint issues because it is ‘natural’, variable movement”

I agree to a certain extent, but disagree that people with real biomechanical anomalies will be “fixed” by good squat technique and simply getting “stronger”, or by pretending to be a monkey and crawling on the floor. (Note, I realllly love squats and crawling on the floor…)

Moving differently is great, but moving differently is still only a work-around for a specific issue or movement being avoided, whether conscious of it or not.

Yes, working specifically on changing the way people move and time their joint actions can be subtle, focus-demanding, tedious work, requiring daily practice, patience, and trust. Most meaningful work is…

That said, addressing biomechanics won’t automatically make you stronger. If coming from an untrained state, enhancing spine and shoulder mechanics, for example, will not miraculously bring you from zero push-ups to 5, just as if you are in pain, going from 0 to 5 push-ups may not reduce your symptoms.

Prioritizing…

Do you know your priorities? In your life? For your body?

Take a close look at what values, in the physical realm, are honestly important to you. Do you play a sport? Are you trying to maintain “fitness” as you age? Do you want to feel strong? Pain-free? For health enhancement and quality of life gainz?

Many people are unsure what they want out of a physical practice, and what they value in one. They may say they want one thing, like to be strong, or to be “in shape”, but don’t have a clear picture of what that means.

“Strength” might be a means to an end- Not the real value, but an expectation for a process.

Someone may perceive that exercise and strength training will make them pain free and perform better at their sport, and come in with an expectation that strength training, like they’ve read about on someone’s blog (not mine….), is what will get them to their REAL goal, which may have nothing to do with their level of strength.

I’ve been investigating what I truly value in a physical practice for the past several years, after my forced exit from the world of dance.

My primary value for my physical practice is to comfortably, confidently inhabit my body, at rest and in motion, and possess an awareness of it that allows me to heal myself when I get into trouble with it (which is inevitable).

What secondary values do I hold that bring my primary value to life?

Strength. When I feel strong I feel more confident and comfortable in my body. My definition of “strong enough” is probably different than that of others. I have no desire to compete in a powerlifting competition, or be an elite athlete, but I enjoy the experience of being in my body more when I can do push-ups, chin-ups, squats, and deadlifts.
Quality of movement. This is fundamental to strength development and so I prioritize my movement mechanics over getting strong. Can my joints do all the things their architecture was created for? I will not push my body in training beyond the point where my mechanics can take me.

Knowing my priorities now helps me to choose how to act according to my goals. As a dancer, my priorities were the inverse, and I was pretty depressed and in pain.

What if we don’t know what we really value? Or what if our perceived goals are not in alignment with what our bodies need? And what if our goals are not really our goals, but someone else’s goals for us? Then our approach to training will be off as well.

There has to be this sweet spot where our true values come together with where we’re currently at, and our method reflects and respects this. I think this space is met when we take the time to investigate what we really value, and is defined by acceptance, patience, and trust. A falling away of the ego and expectation for what we “should” be doing.

Maybe I’m getting a little philosophical now for a blog about biomechanics… But the method we follow matters little without investigation of the “why” behind it.

That’s what THIS tattoo is a reminder of…

So, that said, I want to share two stories from two different dancers and how they view their priorities, and their take on biomechanics vs. strength training.

Meet Sergio

I recently met up with a reader of my dance blog in real life- A dancer/musician visiting Toronto from Europe. I’ll call him Sergio.

We met up for coffee and he told me the story of his discovery of strength training and of how, inspired by Pavel Tsatsouline, the simple addition of squats and other basic strength training exercises into his gym routine boosted his dancing because he was able to move more efficiently. This is how he found my blog- searching for information on strength training for dance.

Image result for pavel tsatsouline — Comrad!

If basic strength training had these effects on his body, why couldn’t everyone have easy access to this simple performance enhancement method? A sentiment that resonates with me as well, and is why I got into this field in the first place, spending three years focused heavily on working with dancers. That’s why I wrote a book (<— available by donation right now!).

Sergio wondered why I care so much about getting into the nit picky details of movement mechanics when performance enhancement is so readily available to anyone who steps into a gym and picks up a weight and uses progressive overload.

Again, I don’t disagree with this. I’ve experienced this performance enhancement phenomenon it for myself, and many of my dance clients have, too. And, as my role as a personal trainer, people are neither expecting nor asking me to help them with specifics of joint biomechanics that they aren’t even aware are a thing to work on.

But to get someone to squat on their flat, pronated feet that don’t know how to supinate makes me feel ethically wrong, and sooner than later I feel obliged to shed light on the client’s limitation.

Yes, initially getting stronger will probably make that person feel better. But let’s go back to the squatting on pronated feet example.

25% of the bones in the body belong to your feet. If 25% of your bones are not moving in a full body loaded exercise, like a squat, for how long will squatting be the solution until it becomes a new problem? Something else is going to have to move to make up for 25% of your bones that aren’t moving. Will it show up in a few days? Maybe a few months? Years? I’m not willing to ignore that and wait with crossed fingers. (And yes, your foot bones should have some movement when you squat).

Image result for foot bones — 28 bones per foot. 56 bones total. 206 bones in the body. That’s 27.18% of your bones in your feet. Cool!

Where Sergio is at now, he is prioritizing strength training. Is that wrong? I don’t think so, because we don’t have enough information!

In Sergio’s credit, he is very body aware, and has a deep practice of inner investigation. He knows when something is not right for him and knows how to change when he’s stuck in a pattern that doesn’t serve him.

But while Sergio claims he has no current troubles with his body, what I think needs to be considered is what happens in 5 years if he keeps strengthening, reinforcing, his body with possible underlying movement issues that he is not aware of? After all, he IS a dancer, and I’ve never seen a dancer (or a human) who didn’t have some issues with their body.

I am a good example of how Sergio’s mindset started off great, and then went horribly wrong (or right… depending how you look at it).

I fucked up.

Here’s a story about me, because it’s my blog and I’ll write about myself when I please.

When I initially started strength training as a 20 years old dancer, I noticed right away that the extra work capacity that came from developing strength through squats, deadlifts, and push-ups had a dramatic change on my dancing. I felt like I’d struck gold. Found the “missing link”. My teachers noticed I was dancing “better” and I started getting all sorts of positive attention from them.

But what happened over the course of two years? I became over-trained (because I wasn’t planning my training schedule properly and was working out 4+ days per week on top of dancing everyday for hours), and I got injured (because no amount of squats or deadlifts in themselves could resolve the underlying postural and movement distortions my body had ingrained over the course of my life thus far).

What I needed was to address my movement mechanics to support my training, both in dance and at the gym, and in life (to get some healthy blood back into my brain, to be quite honest).

Applying myself to strength training was like fixing an atom bomb to my proximal hamstring- Using a potentially useful science in a destructive way.

This is a photo taken right after I injured my left hamstring. I was a pro at moving around my issues. (Photo cred to Heather Bedell)

Unfortunately, Google can’t assess your structure

Advice on how to address your specific movement mechanics is nearly impossible to search for online. (Maybe that’s why you’re reading this?)

This is because the same injury may manifest in X number of different outcomes and no two people will have the same experience of the same injury.

A fully “healed” ankle sprain may show up years later as a laterally flexed spine or a rotated pelvis or a knee that doesn’t extend. So one can’t just go online, type in “exercises to fix an ankle sprain“, or “exercises for my sore SIJ”, and find the solution. Because Google can’t assess that “why does my back hurt when I squat?” is a result of an ankle sprain five years ago that has now manifested itself as postural and movement distortions through the entire skeleton.

“I want to strengthen my ankles”

I will use another example of a young Highland dancer I did a few sessions with recently. We’ll call her Ally.

One of her primary goals was to improve her ankle strength to help her jumping. If you don’t know what Highland dancing is, it’s hardcore. You basically have to jump on one foot for 2 minutes straight without moving your upper body or putting your heels on the floor, all while looking pleasant.

Check it out:

I noted that one of the most important assets for a highland dancer would be the ability to create a rigid lever through the ankle, holding a supinated foot shape throughout the high volume of single leg hops they must do in their routines.

Image result for supinated foot rigid lever

The foot creates it’s most supinated, rigid structure in the toe off phase of the gait cycle, and so for a highland dancer, being able to access the mechanics of this phase- foot supination, ankle plantarflexion, is crucial to carry over into their sport.

Crucial to this is also the ability to create a mobile, adaptive foot that can leave the rigid state when they are not dancing to allow for “normal” gait mechanics for proper recovery from training and performing. Too, the muscles of supination will only get their chance to load during pronation, and so to not access pronation limits access to supination as well.

We need both!

Too, a highland dancer would need the ability to generate power from their hips, especially since dorsiflexing the ankle is going to be limited due to not being able to put the heels down during their jumps. That said, the hips are also going to be limited in how much they can load and explode as the dancer must stay perfectly upright, limiting how much they can actually flex from the hip to generate power (glutes load in hip flexion). Much of the strength is really coming from a partial range of motion in the ankle, from partially plantar-flexed, to fully plantar flexed.

Like I said, it’s a hardcore dance form.

Getting back to Ally.

Ally already lifts weights. She can squat and deadlift more than most teenagers, and so she already has a base of strength to support her dancing. But are her biomechanics in place for her dancing to benefit from the stregnth training she is already doing?

As it turned out in our assessment, Ally could not supinate her feet- both feet were stuck pronated, ankles dorsiflexed, especially her right foot. Remember, in highland dance, being able to supinate the feet and plantarflex the ankles is kind of really important.

Her hips also did not flex. Instead of flexing her hips, her ankles dump into dorsiflexion and pronation, she posteriorally tilts her pelvis, and flexes her spine. This means she does not load her glutes when she jumps- They stay locked short.

This also shows up in how she deadlifts- Hips unable to flex, so she massively dorsiflexes her ankles and pronates her feet. Is the way she is currently deadlifting helping her dancing? Or reinforcing inefficient movement patterns that will ultimately limit how much she can progress in her dancing? I am leaning more towards the latter.

In Ally’s case, I would prioritize her movement mechanics initially over adding “ankle strengthening exercises” to her training program.

When Ally asks for “stronger ankles”, what her body is craving is feet and ankles that can supinate and plantarflex to create a rigid lever to jump on, and hips that can experience flexion to help her load her glutes and generate more power in her jumps.

In her dance training and working with her technique coaches she would want to slow down to integrate the new mechanics. For example, as we’ve been working on helping her train her demi-pointe with REAL supination mechanics in place (as opposed to type 2 pronation- ankle plantar flexion on a pronated foot), she may need to take a few steps back in her dance training to make sure she can better use these mechanics. A few steps consciously, patiently, back can lead to monumental progress forward.

Gary Ward’s type 1/2 pronation and supination. The ankle can be in either dorsiflexion OR plantarflexion while the foot is pronated or supinated, but we want a particular relationship between the ankle and foot in pronation and supination (type 1), not type 2, in gait.

In her cross training with weights, she would want to focus on integrating the changes in movement mechanics into her lifts. As we’ve been working on helping her get REAL hip flexion (instead of the exchange that is taking place at her ankles and spine) she may need to take the intensity back in her strength training to make sure she can access a proper hip hinge. All the hours of cross training she is doing with her cross fit workouts may not be to her benefit unless they are reinforcing useful mechanics.

CONCLUSIONS?

There is a balance to find. A sweet spot in training for any goal.

Does their goal truly reflect their priorities?

Is there necessary work to be done on basic on joint/movement mechanics?

How much technical skills training can their body take with the mechanics it currently has to work with?

What volume and intensity of strength training will enhance their performance without reinforcing old movement habits that are not useful?

And how to package this in a way that inspires trust in the process?

These questions haunt my dreams.

But this sweet spot is not a perfect 50/50, or 25/25/25/25. Balance may mean 75/25, or 80/20, and this depends on where you are now, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going. And the purpose of one’s training will never be fixed, but always changing, day to day, week to week.

As in Ally’s case, as highly trained Highland dancer who already has a solid base of strength, it is my view that addressing her joint mechanics will likely have the biggest impact on her performance goal, and this point in her training. For now.

In Sergio’s case, as a highly trained dancer with no current injuries, adding in something he didn’t have in his training-Strength development, made a radical difference in how his dancing felt. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. For now….

But for both, neither solution will last the course of time. Things always need to be reassessed and adjusted based on where the body is now.

When I was a hypervigilant, chronically-in-pain person, low threshold, restorative work helped me find balance. But then after a few years of that, to restore balance, I needed to also explore the other spectrum (which I did through Hardstyle kettlebell training).

It’s more a question of constantly asking and evaluating “What’s missing that is preventing me from doing what I do better”? Where are you not supported in your training? Where are you not supported in your life?

The Mindset for Healing

“Overall, these exercises are much harder work than the physio I was doing before, in that I have to really concentrate on small things. Can’t just put myself through them. Have to be present. It’s good. It’s why I sought you out rather than doing more straight up physio as I kinda knew this was what was missing, what needed to come next.”

This is an from an email sent to me by a lady that I am working with after, our second session.

We’ll call her Jean (not real name).

Jean is the epitome of the perfect student of exploratory movement, and I think the quote above sums up nicely just what that means.

When the body is in pain, generally there are three main systems we are working with:

Muscles, joints, structure, biomechanics (MSK stuff)
Mindset and emotions (perception of experiences, chronic negative emotional states etc.)
Organ and systems health (digestive, immune, etc)

Of course, these three become an inseparable web called a “life”.

Image result for biopsychosocial

As a body-worker, some things I can help with, and some things I can’t. For the individuals themselves, one thing they can start to work with that doesn’t cost a thing is the mindset bit.

Jean’s mindset is on point with where one would want it to be to make changes and heal other systems, and I want to use this blog post to explain a little more about what I mean by that- having a mindset to change and heal.

Because “healing mindset” isn’t this woo woo, think positive, manifest good health and meditate on being better you’ll be ok… It’s about engaging with the work.

When the standard approach fails…

Jean found me through my dance blog that I’ve since taken a break from writing on (danceproject.ca), but she is not a dancer. She is a pianist and also participates in horse riding and dog sledding.

Jean is in her 50s and has been experiencing pain for many years but had stopped seeing her physiotherapist because it wasn’t doing anything. When I first met her she expressed that she was frustrated with the care she was receiving from physio because they were only looking at the parts of her body that hurt: Her right knee and hip primarily. But they weren’t looking at the rest of her body, and Jean had a strong intuition that this was the reason things were going nowhere. She felt very distinctly that there was something going on with her upper body that was related to her knee and hip issues, but no one was looking there.

Smart lady to listen and act on her intuition.

Looking at the location of symptoms as “the problem” and stopping there is the standard approach. The approach that says, “treat the symptom”.

Luckily (I think…) for me, I never learned the standard approach because a) I went to school for dance, not for whatever it is I do now*, and b) all my most influential teachers are out of the box thinkers, who don’t ascribe to the standard approach and aren’t afraid to go against the norm, old-school movement paradigm. Maybe I’m missing out? I’m ok with that.

Jean was pleased that our initial assessment looked at her whole body, from her toes to her skull. Isn’t it nice to be treated like an entire person? Don’t you hate it when people only see you for one aspect of who you are?

*What do I even do? I dunno. I work with bodies and movement. I get people to move their joints in specific ways. I sometimes massage them, Thai style. I sometimes have people deadlifting heavy things if they want to. But the end game is always for them to have a different experience of their bodies, push their comfort zones, and access the movements their bodies are currently missing. What’s my job title? You tell me…

Ready for an AiM-style geek out?

For the Anatomy in Motion (AiM) students like me 🙂

Here is how Jean showed up (some interesting distortions):

Pelvis: Right hike, left rotation (stuck in right suspension)

Spine: Right lateral flexion, right rotation (stuck in right suspension)

Right knee: Can’t externally rotate (can’t access right suspension)

Right foot: Can’t pronate (can’t access right suspension)

The story her body was telling me was that nothing from the hip down knew how to pronate, and her pelvis, spine, and ribcage were trying to make this happen for her. Or, maybe her pelvis, spine, and ribcage were trying to stop her foot and knee from needing to pronate because it felt unsafe?

Regardless of the story I choose to attach to her structure, what I was witnessing was an exchange (something I wrote about HERE).

We can consider that in the phase of gait in which the foot pronates, that the entire skeleton is organizing itself to allow pronation. It’s not just a foot pronation, it’s a whole body pronation. In AiM this whole body pronation phase is called suspension.

As mentioned above, while Jean ‘s pelvis and spine are pronating, she is missing some very important pronation mechanics below: Foot pressure not getting onto the anterior medial calcaneous, foot bones not spreading and opening on the plantar and medial surfaces, and femur not rotating internally over the tibia.

If things aren’t happening below, something up top may need to do this for her. In her case, I believe this is why I was seeing the type two spine mechanics (same direction lateral flexion and rotation), right pelvis hike, and left pelvis rotation. If you can’t pronate below, something must make up for it above, or next door. A useful strategy to help her make up for a hip, knee, ankle, and foot that don’t pronate, but not an efficient way for the body to move that will stand the course of time.

Want to try this for yourself? Stand with your feet side by side and:

Put your weight primarily on the outside of your right foot
Hike the right side of your pelvis
Twist your pelvis to the left
Twist your ribcage to the right
Laterally flex your spine to the right

Not an effortless posture to hold! Feels pretty terrible for the right hip doesn’t it? No wonder Jean was having some issues, eh? But somehow this was the most efficient way her system knew to hold herself based on that tangly web of “life”.

So, we have really one of two options for how to sync her joints back up. We can:

Teach her foot and knee to pronate to match the rest of her body.
Get her spine and pelvis to experience the other end of the spectrum (left lateral flexion and rotation) to free up the opportunity for her right foot and knee to safely experience pronation.

Or, more realistically, probably do both (and we did both).

Anyway, that’s just a little bit of background on what she was dealing with to provide some context.

The mindset for healing

What I really think is beautiful to share about Jean ‘s journey so far is her mindset and attitude embracing the process that I suggested we follow.

If we come back to the quote at the top of this post, from the email she sent me, I’d like to break down what is so lovely to take from it, particularly if you are someone who has been in pain for a while, like her.

“These exercises are much harder work than the physio I was doing before”

In AiM, we try not to call the movements we do “exercises”.

This is partially because of the connotation the word exercise has for many of us.

“Exercise” brings up images of a gym, performing a set number of repetitions of a movement with the end goal of getting stronger, or more flexible, or sweating, or punishing ourselves for eating cake, or burning a particular amount of calories, or making ourselves vomit from effort, or escaping from reality, or for mental health, or cardiovascular health, or whatever our notion of what exercise is for may be.

And so the word “exercise” comes with undertones of needing to get something out of it, which is not what we’re trying to teach with the AiM philosophy. The goal, instead, is the process itself: Exploration and learning; investigative movement. To show the body a new way of doing things. Give it an experience.

How often do we go into an experience expecting to get something out of it, and missing the meat of the experience itself? Like going to a concert, and watching most of it through your phone to get that perfect video memory of it (done that…).

Image result for people on their phones at a concert — Wouldn’t you rather watch the show directly with your eyes?

The movements are simply to immerse the body in an experience it doesn’t usually get to have. To access joint motions that are currently being avoided. To move into new airspace and dark zones where learning can happen. To open up new options for movement that had been denied. To reorganize the skeleton and resultant muscle tensions.

Per Gary Ward’s big rule of movement #2, joints act, muscles react (from What the Foot). We want to give the muscles something different to do by moving the structures they attach to, not by trying to strengthen and stretch the muscles in an attempt to control the skeleton.

To quote something Gary said on an immersion course:

“The presence of muscles that contract first before lengthening will always be present in a system that doesn’t flow.”

No automatic alt text available. — You shoujld follow Gary on instagram @garyward_aim. He posts useful stuff like this and photos of his kids climbing that will make you jealous.

Some people report they feel “stronger”, or they are getting more “flexible”, or they have more energy, as a result of practicing the AiM movements, but these are only secondary to showing the body a more efficient way of moving.

How many of us have truly investigated our relationship with exercise? I did this in 2015 as an experiment and I would encourage anyone to do the same. I stopped anything that felt like exercise. I wrote two blog posts about it and the ensuing existential crisis here PART 1, and here PART 2.

Many of us are forced to investigate our relationship with exercise only when exercise has no longer become possible- after injury in particular, as was my particular case.

At this point we have a choice. To go back to the way of doing things before injury, or to try to understand that how things were being done “before” is what led to being in this state now.

“I have to be present. I can’t just put myself through [the motions]”

Not to go mindlessly, counting down the reps of the homework exercises until they’re done, but to be fully immersed in the experience.

In fact, I rarely give a specific number of reps to do. Why? Because the goal is not to get to 10 reps. The goal is to be immersed in the experience of the movement. Its not what happens when you get to rep 10, its what is learned in the space of reps 1-9.

There will be a distinct sense of “knowing” when you’re done with a “set”. You’ll feel something has shifted. You’ll feel things working that haven’t worked in a long time. Your brain and body will simultaneously say “enough!”. But to know when you’ve reached this point means you must pay attention to what you are feeling. It could happen in 3 reps, or it could happen in 12, but you have to tune in to this feeling.

In Jean ‘s case, the foundation of our process was to tidy up the coordination of the joints that were out of sync: Change the ratios and timing of pronation through her entire system, from her foot up through her spine.

It took a lot of focus and energy on her part. She had to tune into parts of her body that she had no prior awareness of and the movements they were capable of performing.

Just being able to feel where the weight in her feet honestly was through all the noise in her system proved to be a challenge.

“Where am I, and where am I not”.

Had Jean simply counted to 10 and gone through the reps without awareness, she would be moving too quickly and automatically to learn a new pattern or to feel whether she was moving the parts that we were actually aiming to move.

In the book Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes, Daniel Everett tells a story of how the remote Amazonian tribe he is living with, the Pirahã, do not use numbers or math. He tried to teach them simple addition, but they didn’t have any prior experience with the concept of numbers or adding and would not learn. What if for some people, areas of their bodies feel like math did to the Pirahã? They could learn math if they wanted to, they have the same brains as every other human, after all. But they have survived so long without it, found a way of living without math, why start now?

“I have to concentrate on small things”

We weren’t going for big sexy movements, but small, precise ones. She needed to tune into how things felt rather than just perform the motion.

For example:

Can you get your weight onto the anterior medial part of your heel?
Can you drop your right pelvis lower than your left?
Can you feel your spine bend to the left when you reach your right arm up?

As a closed system, changing one thing about the body must cause an adaptation from everything else. One degree can throw the entire system off.

If the pelvis isn’t level by one degree, everything else will be off by at least that much, probably more. If you draw two lines originating from the same point, one degree apart, how far apart will the two lines be after 2 inches? One foot? 100 feet? One degree matters, especially if there is pain present.

So for Jean to accomplish just several degrees of movement from a joint she doesn’t normally even have awareness of, or feel a change in where she is weight-bearing on her feet, while subtle, feels like an entirely different place to put the body. Off balance. It’s only a matter of degrees, but the brain starts to freak out because it doesn’t know where it is, and this is where the learning happens.

It takes so much more energy to focus on and feel the subtle differences I am describing than it does to squeeze your butt 10 times while thinking about what’s for lunch, and so for Jean, our work is hard not necessarily for the physical effort required, but for the ability to tune in, cope with change, and integrate it.

Not a “fire this muscle” approach, but a “move your structures into new spaces” one.

“I knew that this was what was missing”

“What’s missing”. In AiM philosophy, it always comes back to finding what’s missing, and claiming it back.

In Jean’s case, what’s missing was all of the above: Having her whole structure addressed, being asked to tune into her body, feel the parts she wasn’t aware of, move in ways she normally does not, access joint movements she has not felt for years, and do this subtle work in a completely present way.

I think Jean’s experience rings true for many people, certainly for myself in the past: Get hurt and go about getting treated in a way that has no expectation for us to engage with the work and be a part of our own healing process. Lie on the table and get worked on, without an expectation to do any work.

People are rarely presented an experience that allows them to heal themselves, and many people will rarely look for one because they don’t know what they don’t know.

In fact, in our first session Jean said:

“I’ve experienced body work of different sorts. But body work is something being done to me. It helps to get things to let go, to wake up things that are shut down. It does not teach my body what to do when I get up off the table. I feel like as soon as I move I’m going right back to whatever caused the problem in the first place. I need someone to teach me how I myself can get my body to swap out dysfunctional for better, consistently, and long term.”

I knew right then that we were going to get along great.

Conclusions?

If things are not changing in your body, ask:

Are you treating it as a whole system, or as separate parts?

Are you being present with it, or just going through the motions?

Are you checking in with it daily, or ignoring it’s signals?

Are you moving with awareness?

Are you moving out of your comfort zone, accessing ranges that you don’t usually move into, or sticking to what you know and normally do?

Are you determined, trusting, and committed to the process, or feel doomed to be stuck forever?

The real healing happens in the space of engaging fully in the process. Like Jean’s begun to do.

Realizing that the process is the goal.

“It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top” ~Robert Pirsig.

Jean always mentions how because she is “old”, she is having a hard time at making changes. But I don’t think this is true. I think she is doing incredibly well at making changes because of the attitude she has towards her journey. Its not a race after all, and it will take the time it’s going to take.

Time doesn’t heal, but what you do with the time you have to heal, will.

Don’t Blame the Muscles…

I recently started a small group six week program that meets Sunday mornings. I unofficially call it “Church of Core”.

Its a program designed under the premise that, being that there is so much misinformation on the internet, in the media, and from people at the grocery store on what we should be doing to “train the core”, there should be a class to help people understand the truth of how the body moves so they can make their own informed choices on what to do at the gym.

And honestly, do whatever you want at the gym. It’s all good. Do what makes you happy. Just make sure your body possesses and understands the mechanics to cope with those choices.

I wanted to share a little case study from a participant in the program who was having some issues.

Twist and shout (ow)

Nancy (not real name) is a dancer in the program. We had just finished day two, in which we’d explored sagittal plane spine movement and stability, and she asked me if we were going to look at rotational movement next, because she was having some issues that and she had a big dance workshop weekend coming up. I said, yeah, come early to church next week and we’ll take a looksie.

Nancy’s primary complaint was that left ribcage rotation caused a straining painful feeling through her left side from her pelvis up to her ribcage. This is obviously an issue for a dancer because rotating is kind of a big deal in a lot of dance movements. She got the same symptoms with right pelvis rotation- Pain and tension through left obliques. So it’s not just a left spine rotation issue, its a transverse cog issue.

In AiM, “cogs” refers to the role in gait of structures moving in opposition against each other, like turning cogs. In gait, the pelvis and ribcage have a cog-like motion in that they should always oppose each other’s movement in all three planes of motion: In normal walking, when the the pelvis rotates right, the ribcage should rotate left.

In the case of Nancy’s symptoms, it was not just a ribcage rotating left issue, but an issue with any part of the gait cycle in which her left leg is forward (pelvis right) and her upper body is swinging to the left (ribcage left).

It’s nice when things make sense like this because they sure as hell don’t always do.

Her chiropractor identified that her issue was her left external obliques. Let’s look at why her obliques might be complaining about this rotational pattern.

Obliquing, long and short

If we’re going to blame a muscle, it stands to reason that we should know if its sore because of concentric shortness/compression, or it is locked long, under eccentric load.

Left ribcage + right pelvis rotation will lengthen the left external obliques, as the left EOs rotate the spine to the contralateral side

So, we could infer that the muscle is not happy with being loaded eccentrically to decelerate left spine rotation.

In the case of many muscles strains, the tissues have become locked long and because they are already loaded and lengthened they will have trouble decelerating joint movement because they’re already stuck doing that all the dang time.

In Nancy’s case we want to know WHY left spine rotation has become an issue to manage. Why are the obliques being lengthened all the time? Perhaps there is something NOT happening in this rotational pattern that the left obliques are picking up the slack for?

Time to stop thinking about muscles

I’m not telling you what to do, but muscles are confusing and chaotic. Looking at joint motions makes things much less noisy.

To quote Gary Ward, “Would you rather look at 13 muscles that connect to the knee or look at the 4 movements it can do?”.

I’d rather work on 4 things than 13, personally.

What stood out in interviewing her body was that her right talus was positioned internally rotated, everted, and could not externally rotate and invert. The chances of her right foot being able to supinate were pretty slim. This turned out to be key for helping her access left ribcage rotation with much less discomfort.

In the Flow Motion Model™, whenever the talus goes right, the ribs and spine go left, and when the talus rotates left, the ribs and spine go right.

This is because the rearfoot and pelvis always move in the same direction in transverse plane in gait (in all planes, actually), and recall that the ribcage and spine always oppose the pelvis.

So we could infer that the ribcage and spine should always oppose the talus*.

Therefore, if the talus can’t go right, another structure might have to go right MORE in order to accomplish every phase of gait in which the right foot supinates (and that’s most of the gait cycle, FYI).

In Nancy’s case it seemed to be the spine/ribs trying to rotate excessively to make up for a lazy right talus. And what might get tired of decelerating this motion over and over? The left external obliques.

Supinate the shit out of it

So we got Nancy’s foot to experience supination with her foot tripod grounded on the floor. With a little nudging and wedging, her right talus obliged and started inverting and externally rotating. Sweet.

We then integrated it into a pattern that required her to do left spine rotation and right pelvis rotation (we chose right propulsion phase). What was cool was that as long as her right foot was supinating, she could access left spine rotation with almost no discomfort.

When she retested her rotations there was significantly less discomfort than before. Her right talus was also sitting less everted and internally rotated at rest.

The entire process took about 20 minutes. Then we hugged and went to church.

*Talus and ribcage always oppose… Except for that fraction of a second in which gait is homolateral!

Conclusions?

Few things, I guess:

Learning to work with the FMM and AiM philosophy makes connections like this possible.
Blaming muscles for issues doesn’t provide enough useful information. I was not thinking about what muscles were tight or overworking of facilitated or inhibited while I was working with Nancy (which would have driven me crazy back when I used to do a ton of Neurokinetic Therapy® testing). Saying “it’s my oblique that’s the problem” doesn’t tell you why. Muscles react to joint movement. The answer will show in the structures, their position, and the movements they can and cannot do.
Thinking about her oblique pain in terms of concentric muscle action might not have led to the same resolution, but thinking eccentrically made a lot of sense in this case.
The “talus drives the bus”, and its useful to know how movement of the foot affects movement up the chain.
Knowing how to palpate the talus is a useful skill (that I didn’t have until very recently, thanks to “Foot Dating” on an AiM course).
It really is true that one of the most powerful experiences for the body is just to help the feet to experience true pronation and supination.

Why Should You Stretch? (part 1)

I used to be very flexible. These days, it’s a slow grind to get my hands to the floor in a forward bend.

I’ve lost the ability I had as a dancer to bust out a middle split, cold, anytime or place, provided I’m wearing stretchy pants (and I’m ALWAYS wearing stretchy pants because I made excellent career choices).

May be an image of 1 person and smiling — *A spontaneous JCVD splits-off moment with my step-nephew-in-law, back in the day when I could splits anytime…*

I don’t consider myself to be flexible anymore, and you know what? I’ve never felt better.

Ironically, most people think they need to stretch more to get out of pain. Or that being flexible is a universal goal. But the stiffer I get, the less pain I have.

So what’s that about, huh??

Flexibility doesn’t make you a better person

I’ve spent months and years worth of hours of my life stretching to get more flexible, and all I got was injured, tight, and fragile (that should be on a T-shirt.)

But it wouldn’t be completely accurate to blame my problems on stretching. The fact is I made pretty bad life choices. Excessive, mindless stretching just happened to be a symptom of my complete lack of respect for and awareness of my body.

I pushed through pain, performed through injuries, and I lived in fear that if I ever stopped stretching my dance career would end. Which was again ironic, because I wanted to quit dance when I was 15 but just couldn’t seem to let go…

Anyway, flexible as I was, I was trapped in my body. Shackled by the constant tightness you know probably all too well if you are as obsessed with stretching as I was. A tightness that only seems to be relieved by stretching more. A tightness which, ironically, is your body’s way of asking you to stop stretching it.

I’ve learned that my body feels much better when I don’t stretch it when I’m less flexible. So I don’t stretch anymore because I like to think I’m not a complete idiot.

This is part one of a blog series about why stretching and flexibility are not the ultimate pain panacea. Part one is a bit of a rambly, ranty thing about the traditional paradigm: “If it hurts, if it’s tight, stretch it”.

Beyond mobility and stability: Harmony

In 2015, I decided to try elimitating the words “mobility” and “stability” from my vocabulary to see if I could define everything the body did in terms of actual anatomical motion. It was an awkward, challenging year (probably for my clients, too…).

How is that body part moving? In what direction? Is it moving too much? Too little? Too fast? Too slow? I wasn’t focused on muscles, I was looking only at joint motion, which was a big paradigm shift after taking the Anatomy in Motion 6 day immersion course in 2015.

The reason why I started this vocab change was because the words no longer seemed useful to describe an experience the body is having.

Stability implies no motion. Mobility implies movement. But in the body, nothing is ever not moving. Everything is always moving, just in different ratios, relationships, and timings with other body parts.

When something is actually NOT able to move- true stability- there is problem. For example if your knee actually can’t bend and is stuck straight. That’s a stable knee. But that’s a problem.

Knees have to be able bend for us to walk. But we want to get it to bend in a way that is meaningful for the rest of the body. With the right timing, and ratios of motion in relation to the other body parts, not just by doing a mindless leg curl, inconsiderate of what every other joint in the body should be doing when the knee bends.

So is stability a good goal? Not in the true sense of the word. Is mobility a good goal? It depends on how the thing is moving, in relation to the entire system.

To me, a better word is harmony. Or order.

I don’t want my body to be mobile just for the sake of mobility, because Kelly Starrett said you should want to be a supple leopard.

Becoming a Supple Leopard 2nd Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance: Starrett, Kelly, Cordoza, Glen: 9781628600834: Books - Amazon.ca

I want my body to move harmoniously, in an orderly way. This goes beyond mobility and stability. Beyond flexibility. This is a unique state for each one of us.

Am I over-thinking? I don’t think I’m thinking enough…

Flexibility is not a universal pain solution

One of my mentors, Chris Sritharan (Anatomy in Motion instructor) once said that there are 4 ways we can use a body part:

Overuse
Underuse
Misuse
Disuse

Do stretching address any of these? Not really… (but over-stretching a muscle that doesn’t need to be stretched falls into the “misuse” category).

I hear people say stuff like this constantly:

“I should stretch more.”

“I never stretch, that’s probably why my body feels so tight all the time.”

“I do always do hip stretches, by they just keep tightening back up.”

“My neck hurts *goes on Youtube to look for neck stretches*”

Sound familiar?

Back in my pre-thinking days (I consider age 22 to be when I officially started trying to use my frontal cortex for inquisitive thought), my left hamstring felt really “tight”, so I stretched it daily, really hard.

A few months later I strained my left hamstring while I was stretching in jazz class warm-up one day. Injured while warming up… The irony. Well, I was only doing what I thought was right based on the information I had.

I thought stretching would set me free. Make me a better dancer. Make my tightness go away. Make me a better person, even (if only I could do deeper splits, everyone will admire me and I’ll be a big success! Nope…).

Can we stretch my shoulder?

A few years ago, a client came in saying that his shoulder felt “tight”, and, “can we do some stretching for it?”.

I had to take a breath and collect myself. A part of me wanted to say, “No we cannot stretch your GD shoulder because the problem isn’t your shoulder, it’s that ankle sprain you keep denying is a problem!!”.

But I didn’t… Because I like having clients that support my ability to pay my rent.

His shoulder didn’t actually need to be stretched per se, because the muscles were already in a lengthened state in the area he had discomfort- That spot actually needed to be shortened to take the tension out, not put more tension in by tugging on it more.

But, because I try to be diplomatic, we did a thing that I told him was a “stretch”, and afterwards, when the sore spot felt better, I explained to him how it wasn’t actually a stretch and why it worked (it was a whole body lunge-type-movement to get his foot to pronate, disguised as a shoulder stretch).

How the traditional stretching-makes-everything-better paradigm fails

A client I used to see many years ago would come in every week with low-grade back pain that she describes as tightness. In her words, “it’s fine because I just stretch it out with yoga.”

To which I wanted to ask if yoga “works”, then why do you show up every week with the same old back pain? But I didn’t… Because it was a time in my life that I was financially insecure and was terrified of losing a client by asking potentially provocative questions like this.

My point is that stretching a muscle doesn’t necessarily teach that muscle anything. To again quote Chris Sritharan (aka #sritho):

“We’re not trying to stretch a muscle, we’re trying to give it something to do.”

What do muscles do? Manage joint motion: Joints act, muscles react.

If flexibility and stretching were the solution to the body’s problems, then contortionists, dancers, and circus performers would never have issues. Ever. But they do. Lots of ’em. Explain that for me with stretching logic.

I think a big problem is that most of us look for a solution too quickly when we should take the time to ask better questions.

Asking questions like, “why is it tight?”, instead of “what stretches should I do?”.

In fact, this blog post was born from my feeling completely insufficient at the art and science of asking questions.

Questions help us see facts. “My neck feels tight”, isn’t a fact, it’s a subjective experience.

“Tightness means I should stretch”, isn’t a fact. It’s a belief.

Well, that’s enough of a ranty primer for part one. In part two (and probably three) we’ll go deeper….

What are the questions we need to ask to get the facts we need to go beyond stretching?

What ARE the facts we need?

What do I mean by harmony and order? (hint: gait mechanics)

If not stretching, what SHOULD we do?

How is stretching different than eccentric loading? (hint: center of mass management)

“But Monika, I hear you talking about feeling stretches all the time in your classes… I’m confused.” Me too! It’s a good way to be. It means there’s something to learn 🙂

Stay tuned!

Until then, may you have the courage to stop compulsively stretching your tight spots, and the curiosity to wonder, “why is it tight?” in the first place.