Speaking Body Language

“We talk to hear ourselves.”- Byron Katie.

Everyone has had the experience of thinking out loud. We speak, and as we hear ourselves, our thoughts are played aloud for review. It’s useful and probably natural. It definitely helps us become articulate.

Likewise, we move to speak to ourselves. The way we move tells us how we are feeling. It tells us when we sense danger, are excited, feel sadness, anger, pleasure, satisfaction, hunger, etc. Howard Gardener wrote about multiple intelligences. He defined one kind of intelligence as “intra-personal”, meaning self knowledge and skill. Learning to “speak ” our own body language is one way to quickly increase intra-personal intelligence.

When we are feeling pain, it is often a message from our bodily self. By listening to the message, we can act effectively and in accordance with our deepest needs. This is a skill that accrues with experience. Over time, we become more familiar with our physical dialect. Our sense of  self is deepened.

We all have a personal movement signature. You know that you recognize friends from a distance, before you can clearly see their faces. You are recognizing their movement signature.

Included in our signature are movements that speak about unresolved needs and wants. Someone who is angry but not necessarily able to verbalize it may walk with a tight fist. A depressed person may slump, or even lean as if waiting for someone to support her.

Taking notice of our personal signature and the clues it contains can make a huge difference in our decision process. And it can obviously affect our social function. We are always speaking body language, but only a few of us even realize that the conversation is happening.

Lopsided Different

Recently after Feldenkrais class a student told me that the biggest insight was in her sense of her body.  She said standing and lying down were not the same, that she was shaped differently. She called it “lopsided different”. She feels her standing has some deviations from a balanced and centered position. She expected to feel this same shaping when she was lying down. But by checking in carefully with her self, she found that she was actually arranging herself in another way.

Our bodies are not made of wood or stone. We are able to reshape ourselves. We tend to think we are just “made that way”, but the reality is that we have habits- habits so strong that we come to  believe in them as facts.  The good news is these can be altered.

What does it take? It takes noticing that the habit exists. As soon as a habit comes under examination, we start to change. It is our image of our bodymind reality that controls much of our habits. we act according to our expectations of our self. The choice to examine a habit softens the image, making it more malleable

Dr. Feldenkrais said, “If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want.” We are often doing something quite different from what we think we are doing. We have old injuries, emotional needs that may be hidden from ourselves, and places of incomplete learning. These all can be at odds with what we are trying to accomplish.

Here’s Rodin’s marvelous rendition “Saint Pierre”. Rodin had a particular genius for showing how our idiosyncrasies create character.

We don’t need to resolve everything to perfection to be able to function accurately. We can cope quite well if we take into account our quirks. awareness allows us to step around the obstacles that previously tripped us.

When we notice our “lopsided different”, there is an awkward and tender moment. Our self image, our view of reality, is up for renegotiation. This brings great possibility, and likely a dollop of fear, as the ego mind likes to hold onto existing ideas.

When we choose to stay present with that moment, we stay open to opportunity. This allows easier change. More importantly, it creates a new habit. We are acclimating ourselves to overcoming fear and trusting in change through self reflection. Through the process of noticing “what we are doing”, we build a stronger and calmer self. Our “lopsided different” becomes our greatest resource.

Sinus care

Sinus pain and infection are frustrating and sap energy. For some people, sinus problems are an obvious health issue. For some others, sinus issues are a hidden drain on their immune systems. An infection can be quietly lurking in the background for decades.

There are drugs for sinus infections. They can work, but they can have wicked side effects. Levaquin is notorious for brutal damage, and all antibiotics damage the ecology of the digestive tract.

Nutrition can help. Dr. Andrew Weill recently was interviewed in the Sun www.sunmagazine.org. He recommends going off dairy foods for three months. He says this cures many sinus problems. Beside dairy products, sugar, alcohol, white flour and junk food in general seem to exacerbate sinus infections. Spicy food can be eaten to promote drainage. Wasabi, horse radish, hot mustard and various peppers and curries can aid in clearing sinuses.

 

The neti pot is an awesome tool. It is a small pottery teapot-like thing ususally sold at health food stores for under $20.

Fill it with body temperature water in with a 1/4 teaspoon of table salt. Standing over a sink, you put the spout into one nostril and pour the water through your nasal passages. By tilting your head various ways you can flush your head out thoroughly. The water will pour out your other nostril or go back toward your throat.  This is a great way to relieve the cough caused by post nasal drip. Some doctors recommend also standing and tilting your head back during part of the neti procedure so that you flush the frontal sinus.

 

Here is an amazing Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson. Like all ATM lessons, it will help symptoms, but there is much more to it than first appears. Beside clearing sinuses, it will help develop voice power and clarity. It will also improve posture and breathing and could greatly help your hearing, particularly for pitch and tone.

It can seem very silly, but can be stunningly effective. Sometimes there is a lot of nasal drainage so have some tissues handy.

1. Sitting comfortably, keep your mouth closed (lips together, teeth can separate) and recite a nursery rhyme (or something else easy), as loud and clear as you can.

 
2. Hum as high a pitch as you can with your mouth closed. Then hum as low as you can with your mouth closed. Make it as loud and long as you can.

 

3 Pinch off one nostril by pressing a finger against the side of your nose. Hum absolutely as high and loud as you can. Do this a bunch of times. See if you can get higher and louder.
Take a short break.

4. Hum as low as you can. Pinch off the same nostril. Do this a bunch of times. See if you can get lower and louder.

Take a short break.

5. Recite the nursery rhyme with your lips closed. Your teeth can separate. Be absolutely as clear as possible.

6. Do steps 2-4 while pinching off the other nostril.

7. Now tilt your head back and briefly repeat 2-4 on both sides.

Rest for a minute.

8. Tilt your head toward your left shoulder and do 2-4.

9. Then tilt your head right and do 2-4.

10. Bend forward as far as comfortably possible. Repeat steps 2-4 on both sides.

11. Recite your nursery rhyme again. This time keep your teeth together, but open your lips. Exaggerate the enunciation. Make an effort to be loud and clear.

12. Pinch one nostril and hum starting highest and dropping to lowest. Repeat this many times. Try to smooth out the sound so that the pitch can drop more continuously.

13. Do the other nostril.

14. Now start with humming you lowest tone and gliding up to your highest. Be loud and go for making it smoother each repetition.

15. Do your other side.

16. Repeat your first step, keep you mouth closed and recite a nursery rhyme as clearly and loudly as possible.

You can repeat this lesson and get more results. It also works to repeat pieces of the lesson when you don’t have time for the whole. Gradually you will find you have a different sense of the inside of your head.

 

 

 

Big Toe, Big Deal

We walk, at least most of us do. We take thousands of steps a day. Each step put tremendous pressure on our big toe.

Problems can occur. Bunions, arthritis, gout, nail problems. For some folks, it becomes hard to put any weight at all on that toe. The joint that connects the toe to the foot (metatarsal phalangeal joint) can break down and even be surgically replaced.

And if the toe doesn’t do its normal job the rest of the foot, leg and hip suffer. So does the whole person, really.

What’s the job?

Feel under your foot. If you bend your big toe up (so your toe goes toward your knee), a line will pop up in the arch of your foot. It’s pretty big, since it carries your weight, and it helps maintain your arch and foot structure during walking and running. It’s part muscle, part ligament, part fascia. It holds your arch in shape right when the pressure is the strongest, and gives you some more spring when you step forward.

Leonardo DaVinci said “The human foot is a marvel of engineering”. He was right. And your big toe is a lever that acts to tighten the mechanism and keep the parts working together.

Fail

It’s a new buzz word. Fail, or Epic Fail. I hate it. We’ve created expectations of constant precision. They do not allow for the rawness of creation. The ugly, the malformed, the inappropriate; these are the material of innovation.

Slicing away all that is imperfect will leave only sterility. Fascism begins in the heart with the rejection of our own humanity, our vulnerability and our resourcefulness.

We must make a space to nurture the new and tender. We must push back against the urge to prematurely require exactitude, replication and rigor. This civilization is smothered by industry. It is crucial that we respect the genius of the imperfect.

There are no straight lines in our bodies, and no straight lines in nature. What we think of as perfect- the linear, the planar, the Platonic solids- is not life, but rather death.

Life is messy. When we “fail” ourselves, we are projecting our insecurities onto our creations. Epics are adventures, and adventures contain challenges, moments of fear when the unknown takes center stage. To lose touch with our adventure is to waste our greatest asset.

Family issues

In a recent article from the New York Times, a study about knee injuries was reviewed. The hypothesis was that there is a genetic factor in knee injuries. It seems scientists have found something that they can correlate, and are beginning to investigate more deeply.

There may well be a useful genetic marker for knee vulnerability. But much more significant is the reality that we learn to move from our families. We have the largely same strengths, and the same weaknesses in our movement habits. These habits form our bodies. Without bio-kinetic input, i.e. movement, genes create nothing.

Gene therapy is fancy and sexy. Politicians are loath to be seen as un-supportive to cancer research, or anything that has a big “wow, gee whiz!” factor. More complex issues are lost, leaving funding under the control of mainstream medical and Big Pharma.

Movement research is pedestrian (pun intended). It is so mundane that it takes a disciplined mind to see the immense value of exploring normal common function. Yet if we change our plan for everyday education, we will effect much more than if we aim at a genetic minority.

I support a balanced spectrum of research. Let the geneticists and the nano-technologists develop their part. Their precision and discipline are marvelous.

But we must simultaneously support the big picture people- the artists and visionaries who drive the culture and push the envelope of human comprehension. Remember that there are people who spend a life-time developing analytic and critical scales for the arts- which are an inherent part of humanity. To devalue that body of knowledge by gross oversight is to undercut the validity of all forms of investigation into human function.

No bio-mechanical analysis will tell us what make a Baryshnikov, a Michael Phelps, or even a Lady Gaga. When the scientifically oriented ignore the rich contributions because their models don’t handle them well, then it is a loss for us all.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/phys-ed-are-bad-knees-in-our-genes/

Good dancers?

A recent article from the Guardian discussed a study that asked what makes men “good dancers” or “bad dancers”. The men were 18-35. They were filmed dancing for 15 seconds to a “basic rhythm”. Motion capture was used to create avatars- digital images designed to eliminate biases due to the men’s appearance.

The judges were straight women 18-35. The women were asked to evaluate the men as good or bad dancers. As far as I can tell, it was all visual, with no audio context. This is an interesting choice, since part of dance is about timing in reference to music.

In the abstract it says “three movement measures were key predictors of dance quality; these were variability and amplitude of movements of the neck and trunk, and speed of movements of the right knee. ” Tough grammar there. I think they mean to take neck and trunk together, and call amplitude and variability the two measures. I didn’t see the avatar in the Guardian show any neck isolations.

The right knee speed measure intrigues me. What made the scientists look for that? I’d love to know what the other measures were. If speed, variability and amplitude were possibilities, what anatomical references were chosen? Would those choices vary according to culture, gender, dance background, or other factors? And would the perception of which were significant also vary culturally, etc.?

All the measures were about shape and time. Space and effort are conspicuously absent. Would the results be different if the models could show more in relation to space, both interpersonal space and environmental space? This seems like a huge factor in sexual communication! And effort is also clearly a factor, surely perceived even by those who have no language for it.

The scientists hypothesized that better dancers are more sexually attractive. My friends in the dance world will likely be pleased. But the scientists also note that they don’t know really which movements are significant, and that the sample size is very small.

It is still a very good addition to movement science. Motion capture allows some very interesting possibilities. Hopefully, some of the scientists will think to talk to some of the dancers about experimental design.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/08/psychologists-killer-dance-moves-men

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/09/06/rsbl.2010.0619

Self Validation

Seth Godin recently bogged about how validation is over rated. He is referring to validation from others. I agree. We get pulled away from our own experience. We invest in the words and actions of others. We divest from our own actions.

Self validation is the important one. Others will have opinions. Since there are a lot of others out there, there will be a lot of opinions. My opinion about me is primary for me. Your opinion about you is primary to you. My opinion about you is secondary to you. Outside opinions can be very useful, but only as a reflection or contrast to your own opinion.

Children need external validation. It is part of a teaching process. Good teachers (we are all responsible for teaching the children!) work to make themselves obsolete.

My choice for teaching is through bodily experience- somatics. The truth of internal reality can be felt via the body. This is a path that disallows intellectually or socially imposed constructs. They are replaced by direct sensation. There is then a shift from the child model of other directed reality, to an adult model of personal validity.

We can accept social pressure to depend on approval. Disapproval can bring great fear- fear of being cast out from the tribe and left alone to die. But our social reality is that we are millions of tribes intermingling. We no longer need the validation of those geographically close to us to survive.

Modern communication also presents us with opinions from a multitude of distant sources. TV and news media re-enforce the alleged value of external authority. This has changed drastically in just a few decades. It is relatively new to be bathed in this ocean of opinions, so a new urgency has arisen for filtering out toxic input.

There are many strategies for reducing input. One of the most effective is to direct perception toward internal phenomena. Choosing to pay attention to the self attenuates the reception and impact of the external. Self exploration is more engaging and more profitable than reacting to the information storm of contemporary culture.

In a society where youth is exalted without regard for inherent foolishness, the voice of authority is childish and naive. Going against the current is wise and necessary. Attend to your physical reality and your personal sensations. They are your truth. Validate your self. It’s the adult thing to do.

Practice

Imagine you LOVED your body. Every day you woke up delighted with your physical self. You knew that you could find great entertainment, marvelous education, and transcendent pleasure- all by connecting with your body.

Imagine you could develop wisdom and compassion, humor and creativity, and feel confident that you could make a positive contribution to any social event just by showing up and being yourself.

Would it be worth an hour or two a day to feel that?

It takes practice, not just occasional or casual practice, but committed, focused, consistent ongoing practice to get to a masterful level of somatic awareness.

H.L. Mencken sad, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has not been tried.” I believe that the same holds true for somatics. A little bit is great, but the reality of a serious practice is transcendent.

Mind and Body Healing?

I saw an advertisement for a talk. The speaker was addressing how illness has underlying emotional patterns. He titled the talk “Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind”. Then he expounded on all the techniques for using your mind to heal, and even said “You will learn …the purpose of all healing and why complete healing must start with healing the mind” It seems he’s a bit confused! Do we start with the mind, or do we use the body to heal the mind. Chicken or egg?

He seems in the right neighborhood, but I am guessing he’s new to this idea that the body matters, and is capable. Why not actually use your body- instead of systems such as TFT, EFT, EMDR, etc? These methods create structures that take you out of your experience, fostering dependence on magic healing.

You don’t have to trick or dis-empower yourself to heal. Simply by paying attention to sensation, and refusing the impulse to create a hierarchy of experience, you can hone your awareness. Your habits will naturally come up for re-evaluation. Using the newer, better data, you can make new and better choices.

Choice doesn’t have to be conscious. Most choices are actually sub-conscious, and so are the majority of changes in habit. Just by changing a few details, we can affect our perception of our self. What we call normal will shift.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Plato.

Our healing depends on our habits. We can change, and we can heal. And the change that matters is not an arduous mind game, but a playful exploration of our bodily experience. Why not simply stay with our own experience, and cultivate our native physical intelligence?