Awareness Through Movement #429

Ankle and head on the side - MARIANNE RIVINGTON

It would be wise to read this whole post… otherwise you could be thinking we’ll be sitting on our butts scratching behind our ears for thirty eight point three two minutes!!

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Marianne clarifies some of what we’ll be exploring with the notes she provided:

"This lesson involves lying on the back and lifting the head,
with the head and leg in varying positions.
As I was worked my way through…
struggling with the guidance to lift my head with straight legs…
I was reminded of Moshe’s writing about this in his book from 1949 titled
Body and Mature Behaviour.
I did most of the lesson with bent knees,
feet on floor… and I invite you to consider this option if you find it more comfortable.

If you have the patience to read through Moshe’s words
and his rather densely worded 1949 style…
your persistence might be rewarded
with fresh insights for your journey of self exploration.

Below are some excerpts from Chapter 15 ‘Tonic Adjustment’:

“… this is the essence of the problem.
The well adapted person feel right only when he does the right thing
- the ill adapted feels right while doing the wrong thing.

The fact that he nows it, does not help him any more
than the neurotic is helped by knowing his behaviour is abnormal….
For while standing or sitting, the detail of changing the position of the head
is insignificant in comparison with the total volume of habituation present.
If he could be screened from gravity altogether,
there would be no necessity at all to unlearn the old patterns of doing.
The next best we can do, therefore is to lie flat on the floor.
We free the central nervous system from the habitual exteroceptive impulses
arriving through the soles of the feet,
and change most of the proprioceptive impulses of the whole body,
the otoliths and optic impulses included.
The subject is practically free from all stimulus evoking his habitual response to gravity. He is free from the major anti-gravity activity of his muscles
and nervous centres as much is possible…

We have seen the stimulus sensation reaction is such that
the smaller the stimulus,
the finer is the increment that we are able to detect.
So that once an unnecessary contraction is established,
the sensitivity is reduced and a continually deteriorating situation is established.
On the other hand,
were it possible to increase sensitivity,
the same law would act so as to decrease the contraction.
For smaller increments would be sensed as a strain and would feel wrong.
The process would tend to educate the subject to feel wrong in the same manner
as the man with proper gravity adjustment.
This would be a complete solution to the problem.
The next step is, therefore, reduction of the habitual unnecessary strain where it exists, without direct conscious attention.

The reader will remember that in faulty carriage,
the lumbar and cervical curves are maintained in the laying position
exactly as when standing.
Obviously, the minimum contraction detectable as such
is sufficient to maintain the curvatures,
in spite of the gravitational forces now acting so as to flatten them.

The next step therefore is to reduce the curves
i.e to reduce the minimum contraction sensed.
Lifting the head off the ground involves contraction of the flexors of the neck,
now used as antigravity muscles.
Their antagonists, the extensors, relax accordingly.

For the first time then the extensors of the head
are forced reflectively to a lower state of contraction
than the subject is normally used to associate with the sensation of “no effort”…

We have thus achieved our aim;
we have succeeded in lowering the threshold of contraction below the habitual one without the direct conscious attention,
and without involving more than a small number of muscles,
none of which are conditioned with the habitual response to gravity.
And we leave the subject to learn the “feel” of reduced contraction of the neck extensors…

After a few repetitions the subject becomes aware of the abdominal muscles contracting when lifting the head. And he generally asks if he is supposed to draw up his knees; he feels he would be more comfortable in that position.

The abdominal contraction is necessary to anchor the chest and sternum
to which the neck flexors are fixed.
The abdominal flexors contracting, their antagonists (the spinal erectors )
decontract and the lumbar curve now follows the same steps as the cervical one.
The abdominal contraction is difficult and awkward with the legs extended,
on drawing up the knees the lumbar curve flattens out completely
and the lower back touches the ground.
The subject has then begun to feel an urge to do the right thing,
and feels wrong when he should.
People with good body mechanics if requested to “lie down and lift the head’
do spontaneously draw up their knees unless the order is so worded
as to prevent them from doing so.

…We may now return to our subject, left lying with his head lifted off the floor,
and gradually trying to bring it to its normal relation with the vertical.
To begin with, the flexors of the neck have assumed antigravity activity
and their antagonists have correspondingly relaxed and lengthened.
Persistence in the same position fatigues the flexors
which are suited for rapid, phasic activity,
but are ill suited to replace the slow, strong and tonically contracting extensors.
The tonus of the extensors continues to decrease reflectively,
and they lengthen until they can yield no more.
After that lowering the chin stretches all the extensors of the cervical region.
The subject, rising from the floor and resuming his habitual standing finds,
however, the slow after effect of the stretch reflex continuing for considerable time
i.e. the head is raised to a higher position reflectively,
and, what is essential without conscious volition.”

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I couldn’t think of any pictures to illustrate this lesson…

However, spring is arriving in Ottawa…
and with it this cute little skunk moved in under my back step.
I think this may be an expectant mother skunk…
she stepped out one morning this week and generously offered a cameo appearance for this image.
Who knows…
maybe I will soon have pictures of baby skunks to send :)”

with a look of all-knowing for the learning we have in store to sit with the skull so graciously atop the full length of the spine.

Enjoy learning more of your Self in this lesson with Marianne: