Transform how you move, feel and live

I’ve been teaching lessons in the last week on freeing up the shock absorbers.

Built into your system is a series of shock absorbers: the feet, ankles, glutes, and the vertebral discs. Often people are surprised about the last one. But there’s elasticity in the discs of your spine. They’re designed to help. Together they form a system that gives us elasticity, or bounce, as one of my one-to-one clients likes to say.

When these areas are stiff, the force doesn’t get diffused through the skeleton. It rather gets stuck. Often in the knees, but also the back. So freeing up the feet, ankles and buttocks can help the knees and back more than one might imagine.

When you have restrictions, or excess tension in these areas, we put pressure on the discs. This compromises your elasticity, and over time, creates more wear-and-tear on the joints.

Try this.

1. Bounce up and down a few times gently on your chair, in sitting. Notice what vibrates or bounces as you do this. 2. Tighten your buttocks, and try doing the same thing. I suspect you are much less “bouncy”. 3. Relax your buttocks again, and bounce. Compare the elasticity. Try once more, this time tightening up your back. Feel how stiff bouncing becomes –  not bouncy at all in fact. 4. Relax again, bounce and compare. We might not be aware of it, but those shock absorbers are working all the time, and some of them need a little help!

Poor movement quality doesn’t have to be part of aging.

When something’s wrong with the car, you’ll take it to the mechanic. But when we have restrictions in our own bodies, we don’t think to go for a tune up. We often think we have to live with it, that it has to be part of getting old.

It doesn’t have to be.  We’re designed to learn and adapt. We can move better at any age, at any starting point. It takes a little time, and an open mind. One of my inspirations, Ruthy Alon, was still moving with the fluidity of a 16 year old at 80. Just a few years before she passed away. We all have that potential. We can all improve how we’re moving. If we move better, life is simply easier.

Feldenkrais is a Brain-centred Approach

When we’re older than 21, we have to turn on our neuroplasticity consciously.  It’s what we do in every Feldenkrais lesson. We learn to pay more attention to a part of ourselves, so it can be clearer in our self image. We get more aware of what we’re doing, so we can have a little more choice in it.