A note from Carl:
How do you know if you are moving well? For so many of us, we have lost that internal compass.
In working with private clients and teaching classes around movement for the last couple decades, one of the most common questions that Erin and I hear begins with “How should I…”
How should I breathe? Which part of my foot should hit the ground when I run? Where should my head be? What position should I sleep in? How much curve should my low back have? This list goes on and on and on. Most people realize by now that the response we will give to such a question will usually be a question that brings them back to their own experience. Not because we like to be enigmatic and koan-like, or that we avoid direct answers, but because we recognize the harm that can come when we outsource our internal compass to another being or another system.
Moshe Feldenkrais once said, “A correction can become a problem for a lifetime.”
I’ve seen so many cases over the years where a correction becomes an invisible compulsion that becomes just as problematic as what the original correction was trying to correct. The yoga teacher who can’t stand without rolling his shoulders back and lifting his chest, the tai chi player who doesn’t remember how to un-tuck her tail, the countless bellies that are rigidly held in to create a “strong core” to deal with back pain…
The thing is, any concept or rule that we try to impose on to ourselves will never match the uniqueness of being a living being in a field of gravity. It can so easily become a contrivance and then a problem for a lifetime.
And yet, there are certain qualities and indicators of being organized and moving well, and ways that we can tune our compass to them without imposing a rule or correction on ourselves.
As I had been reflecting on these qualities for the workshop we will be teaching this weekend, I’ll describe how I worked with them on a walk yesterday, and how it helped me work with a tweaked knee.
I had a dear friend, Matt, visiting from Salem, MA, and we went on a camping trip to Diamond Fork Hot Springs. It is a stunningly beautiful area south of Salt Lake City. The hike to the hot springs is about three miles, and after the hike, the knee that I had tweaked playing basketball was swollen and quite tender. The next day, I thought about skipping the hike to not make my knee worse, but then I thought, let me hike as a way of listening to my knee.
On the second day, I let Matt go on without me so I could walk at a slower pace. So often, just that shift can make a huge difference in our tweaks and injuries, the willingness to slow down enough to sense what we are doing.
As I walked, I felt my knee. I wasn’t obsessing on it or trying to fix it but I was it inhabiting the sensations of my knee as I walked. I would occasionally ask myself, as we so often do when teaching movement lessons, “Is there any way this could be easier? Is there a way that this walking could be more pleasurable?” And something would ease in my chest or my shoulders, something would soften in my jaw, and that would make my knee movement a little more comfortable.
Another principle we work with is our relationship with the ground. We have loved the image of the ground as being like a living being. On my hike, as I imagined myself walking on the back of a large elephant, my steps became much less clomping, and it felt like my ankles, knees and hips joints became more fluid. And then I would lose it, I would drift into thinking about something for a while, and I would notice that I was jarring the ground with my heel, and then I could soften again. And again and again.
I would occasionally ask, “Is my hara (lower abdomen) alive and free to move?” As I would ask that, there would be a shift where my legs and shoulders could move more easily, and, my knee would hurt less.
Another question I would ask is, “Can there be ease and length in my spine?” and, sure enough, something would let go in my neck, letting my walking become easier.
Each of these questions, along with several others, were ways of tuning to my inner sense of moving well. I was not trying to do anything different, not trying to correct anything, yet when I felt into my hara, my breath, my spine, my jaw, my knee, while also taking in the incredible beauty of the fall colors and smells and sounds of the river, something inside was reorganizing.
By the end of the second day and six miles, the swelling and pain were gone from my knee. I was both very surprised, and not.
We are so looking forward to diving deeply into these inquiries around moving well this weekend. And for the rest of our lives.
Wishing you ease, without corrections,
Carl
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