Chest Relaxed, Shoulders Back

To continue on with healing sore necks and shoulders... ( I know it's been a bit of a break here, didn't mean to be gone so long) There has been a surge of painful shoulders in my practice and among my friends, so this has been on my mind and lips a lot. One of the most important things to do is get those shoulders down and BACK. When directed to stand up straight and get your shoulders back, most people push their shoulders back using their pectorals.(chest muscles) What you want to do is PULL them back using the muscles between your shoulder blades. The pecs are already strong muscles, and building strength in the back muscles is key to a variety of postural changes that will help your shoulders feel better. I'll describe how to do that most effectively on the blog, so I'll see you there...


So, part of having healthy happy shoulders starts with foot placement. Toes forward shifts our weight forward, relaxes the butt muscles, allows the spine to lengthen, and drops the shoulders. This was covered in the last post.  So now we have to get those shoulders back.  Most of our everyday activities involve postures that drop our head forward, and curl our upper spine.  This rotates  the shoulders forward, and shortens the pec muscles.  While this is going on the muscles between the shoulder blades are contracting to provide stability for shoulder movement, but are simultaneously being stretched, and are static for long periods of time.  This makes them weak and cranky. Really cranky.  So, the cure for this is, as in almost all cases, increased blood flow by way of muscle contraction.  The trick here is to get the back muscles to contract, and keep the pecs from being involved.  The solution is to get your arms behind your ears.  Let me explain.  Lift your arms as if you were holding a bar above your head., so your arms are straight out to your sides, and elbows bent in a 90 degree angle.  Now, move your elbows so that they are behind your ears, put another way, move your elbows towards the back of you, upper arms still parallel to the floor.  Got it?  Good.  Now from here, squeeze your shoulder blades together.  Your chest muscles should be out of the equation and the back muscles should be going, "ahhhh." Do a few repetitions in sets of 8-10. Do throughout the day to nourish and clean out the tissues.  Even simpler... with your arms at your side, again bend the elbows to 90 degrees, and rotate the hands so they are palms up and thumbs are pointing behind you.  Now squeeze the shoulder blades together.  So there  you have it, go forth with your feet forward, and shoulders rolled back.  You'll look proud, and your back and shoulders will be happier. 
Peace

Feet Forward, Shoulders Down

   Sore neck/shoulders? Of course, we all have them. Believe it or not, the beginning of having less pain there begins with your feet. This will take a bit of explaining, so I'll start here, and finish on the blog. The first part is this: stand up, or do this sometime you're doing something like washing dishes. First assess how you feel in your various parts: legs, hips, shoulders. Now, look down at your feet. Chances are one or both of your feet are rotated away from the mid-line of your body, the opposite of pigeon toed. Now bring both feet so they are pointing straight forward, (you'll have to look at them to make sure.) Take a deep breath, relax, and let your body regions readjust. What happened? For most folks there is a predictable sequence of events. I'll go through it on the blog if you want to follow the discussion there. 


 Continuing on with the exercise from today's Facebook posting, the first thing people say is that they now feel pigeon toed! Our muscles have proprioceptors in them that tell us where we are in space, but chronic muscle shortening can distort what they perceive to be the right place for us to be!
     Next, your body weight should have shifted to your quadriceps, the muscle on the front of the thigh. And your shoulders should have descended, relaxing from where they usually reside up around your ears. Some of you  may have felt your spine lengthen, as your tail bone tucked under. 
     The kids song about the "hip bone is connected to the thigh bone" is very literally true, and applies just as surely to the soft tissue. We are a collection of parts, but we are one; each member influencing the position and function of even its most distant neighbors.
     Try to develop the habit of feet straight forward. This will involve some hip stretching to counterbalance the outward rotation of the hips, which is caused by contracted gluts. This  will require some mindfulness, but will pay off in a happier body. 

Peace

Cat Poem

A poem for those who love cats, and also, strangely enough, one for those who don't!


I COULD PEE ON THIS

Her new sweater doesn't smell of me
I could pee on that.
She's gone out for the day and
    left her laptop on the counter
I could pee on that
Her new boyfriend just pushed
     my head away
I could pee on him.
She's ignoring me ignoring her
I could pee everywhere
She's making up for it
     by putting me in her lap
I could pee on this
I could pee on this


from I COULD PEE ON THIS, AND OTHER POEMS BY CATS
by Francesco Marciuliano

Thumbrint

Just a poem this week, by Eve Merriam


THUMBPRINT

In the heel of my thumb
are whorls, whirls, wheels
in a unique design:
mine alone.
What a treasure to own!
My own flesh, my own feelings.
No other, however grand or base,
can ever contain the same.
My signature,
thumbing the pages of my time.
My universe key,
my singularity.
Impress, implant,
I am myself,
of all my atom part I an the sum.
And out of my blood and my brain
I make my own interior weather,
my own sun and rain.
Imprint my mark upon the world,
whatever I shall become.

Movement and Fluids

    When new clients come, I give out a welcome bag that includes a folder of articles about massage and health. I'm always looking for simple things that people can do and incorporate into their day that will keep them feeling better. There are at least a couple of software programs out there that you can get that will remind you when its time for you to take a movement break. So this was a fun find: http://www.undulationexercise.com/index.htm The exercise "the octopus" which is one of the free videos here, is one I include in my welcome pack. Anything that gets you up and moving during the day is a great tool to have on hand. The Octopus is especially great for hands and forearms. Do it mindfully and really feel into the movements for all the subtle changes and differences from side to side. For a little more on why movement is different than just stretching, and a couple of little poems, check out my blog posts for this week. Peace



 Our bodies are wonderful and intricate living machines.  I don't usually like to use that  analogy, but for this discussion it's useful.  

     Our bodies were designed for gentle, nearly continuous, movement for most of the hours in a day.  Think of foraging across a landscape.  Moving along and picking seeds and fruit. The system that propels us along, the vehicle in which we dwell, is largely hydraulic. The tissues and even ligaments are mostly water.  

     The "pump" in this system is two fold:  the heart and the contraction of the muscles.  So when we sit for too long, the muscles in the legs stop pumping fluids back up to the torso, which puts the burden of moving fluids all on the heart.  This puts quite a strain on the heart and is one of the reasons sitting is so tiring.

     Additionally, not all fluids in the body are pumped by the heart, this mostly includes the lymph, which relies solely on the movement of muscles to move it around. So when we sit for too long, lymph pools and can become sluggish, which is not a great thing in a system responsible for removing the gunk from the body.

     One more thing that movement does is stimulate  the production of synovial fluid.  Everybody has had the experience of being a bit stiff when waking up, but then it works its self out in a few minutes.  Part of that is that the fluid that keeps joints lubricated is produced by the lining of the joint capsule and is secreted only when the joint is moving!

     So there you are, a thumbnail sketch of body hydraulics.  Now, get up and undulate!  It really only takes a few minutes of movement to undo hours of sitting, so get up and have a bit of a jig.

Peace

Sing of the Earth and sky

Just a couple of quick poems to enjoy. Take a deep breath, relax,  let your mind expand and release all the little hobgoblins...


Sing of the Earth and sky,
sing of our lovely planet,
sing of the low and high,
of fossils locked in granite.

Sing of the strange, the known,
the secrets that surround us,
sing of the wonders shown,
and wonders still around us.
                                                     
                                                                 Aileen Fischer



from Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

                                                                 William Blake


peace

circling arms, breath in

  This week's topic is more about stretching. We're all pretty good with the simple flexion and extension of the limbs, but in the torso there are muscles that wrap around, and need a different approach. One of the simplest is a standing twist. T'ai Chi and Qi Gong players will know variations of this. This is also good for stretching tendons and ligaments in the hips; additionally it works the spinal column muscles and energizes that part of your body.
Standing with crown of head floating up and tailbone tucked under, soften the knees. Inhale. While you exhale twist around to look behind you. Keep the hips still and the feet flat on the floor. Don't strain. Twist as far as you comfortable can, then slowly and easily return to center while inhaling. Repeat to the other side. Continue as long as you like. To get additional benefits you can add the arms. For those directions, go to my blog and read the very first entry, Circling arms, breath in. Be well!



   The addition of the arm movements that go along with the spinal twisting motion work to open the chi channels in the shoulders, and are all  some form of circling. Some circles are bigger, and some are smaller,deeper or shallower.  Since I am not a T'ai Chi instructor this is just a synthesis of various styles I have practiced.
      The breath is key,as it is in all aspects of life. The free and easy flow of breath signals the body that all is well; so if during these movements, or during a massage, you find your breath is strained, or held, release it and the tension will start to flow out and be replaced by more fluid movement in your body.
    Standing looking forward, allow the top of the head, the crown, to float up.  Tuck the tailbone under.  This straightens the spine. You can start with your hands facing your lower abdomen, palms a few inches out from your body. As you twist to the right the right arm circles out and down and the breath goes out.  At the apogee of the circle which is also the end of the twist, scoop with your hand.  This can be very shallow, or more pronounced, the hand never rising more than about shoulder height; as you circle the arm forward and the torso returns to center, the breath comes in.  The combination is this: the breath moves in as the right arm moves toward the (center of)the body, and out as the right arm moves away from the body. 
     The movements should be fluid and easy, the combination of breath and movement does a great deal to increase energy flow as well as the more grounded bodily fluids, loosens muscles and calms the nerves.  One version of the movement is called Swimming Dragon.  I like that image.