Thoughts on body awareness

[Mark Jakabcsin]

Following is a line of thinking that has been kicking around in my head since the recent training in Toronto. These thoughts are not fully developed but a work in progress. I am looking for any input, positive or negative, that can be generated by the forum at large.

During the 3 day instructor training and again during the weekend seminar Vladimir did a progression drill that forced me to look at things differently. The first part is an oldy but a goody. Lie on your back, inhale/exhale on command, tensing then releasing various muscles upon command. This has always helped me to be more aware of my body as a whole and specific parts as well. Likewise it has helped me understand how breathing and awareness can reduce tension and promote health. The twist, at least for me, was when Vladimir told us to inhale and tense our tendons. Say what? So he repeated to tense our tendons. I thought about this awhile……….came up rather blank, then just did the best I could. At one point he told us that to tense our tendons we needed to change positions. Say what? So he repeated that our arms and legs must change position to tighten our tendons. I think some folks must have understood this but for me there was no light bulbs going off, not even a flicker. Actually my light bulb was similar to black hole status at this point. Then of course, he told us to tense our nerves……..ah…..ok. I thought about this, had a tiny clue and simply did the best I could. Someone else must have said, ‘Say what?’ or else he sensed the clueless nature of the room because he then said our breath needed to kinda scratch our nerves. Chew on that one awhile.

Then we did it all again during the weekend seminar. This time I understood the, tighten the tendons, a little bit. By twisting my arms/legs and keeping my muscles relaxed I could actually feel my tendons. This helped me to become more aware of my tendons and the relationship between my tendons and muscles. One could be tense while the other could be relaxed.

This is a long way of explaining how Vladimir opened up my thinking about body awareness. Example: Quickly become aware about your right leg.………………..now focus on your back.…………..now your left arm. What specifically was your attention focused on when your awareness moved to your leg…….your back…….your arm? Perhaps shamefully I must admit that when I do these drills I tend to become aware of my muscles (generally the large ones) and skin. I suspect this tends to be more the norm and that the average Joe (or Mark) is not truly aware of all that makes up the leg, the back, the arm, etc. The progression drill Vladimir shared with us got me to thinking about the different areas of my body that I was not aware of, like the tendons, the nerves, the skeleton, etc. I also realized that when we do the breathing drill where we feel our pulse in different parts of the body Vladimir is helping us to become aware of our arteries and veins and the circulator system. No doubt this is not news to many of you but the dimmer dial on my bulb got a slight turn towards light. (Still to dark to read by but bright enough to find the bathroom late at night.)

There are so many different avenues to explore with this small insight I had to narrow my choice down to a specific area, over time I can explore other avenues of body awareness. While working on feeling my tendons I become aware of my bones to a much greater degree than ever before. Strange that when I was instructed to become aware of my leg/arm I felt muscle and skin but really did not ‘feel’ my bones. I guess it never occurred to me to ‘feel’ bones, I mean there just in there. The whole concept of feeling my bones has helped me become more aware of my skeleton as a whole and I must say my skeleton is frequently misaligned. By predominately being aware of my muscles I allowed my skeleton to assume inefficient poses and movements, i.e. things just were not aligned as solidly as they could and should be. Frequently the adjustments are very small, hence it is easy to lack the awareness of the misaligned skeleton unless one is aware of the skeleton to begin with, which I was not.

Example: Stand normally, lift one leg off the ground and hold it for 10-15 seconds. Now do the same drill but when you lift your leg shift ever so slightly so your spine is pointed at the heel of the foot on the ground and hold it for 10-15 seconds. How was your spine aligned the first time? Was the first alignment different than the second? If yes, did you notice a difference in your stability between the two methods? Try the test several times and see what you think, then start to swing the lifted leg around trying both methods. When you start to lose balance immediately become aware of your spine and point it at the heel of the foot on the ground and see how quickly you can regain your balance. Perhaps your MPG will be different than mine but I noticed a definite difference.

This opened up thoughts about how the bones, tendons and muscles interact. Generally I have thought of movement as moving the muscles that move the bones via the tendons, but can movement be created the reverse way, i.e. move the bones that move the muscles via the tendons. Or perhaps move the tendons which move muscles and bones, this is the one I think I like best. The big advantages I potentially see for thinking of movement in this regard is 1) the ability to keep muscle tension to a minimum since the tendons will be leading the motion and 2) increased awareness of the skeleton since the tendons move both the muscles and the bones. This increased awareness of the skeleton will definitely improve ones form and posture.

Another interesting realization is that muscle and bone do not actually directly connect. Hence when someone places a fist on say my stomach and begins to push the force does not go directly into my skeleton unless I let it via my own tension. The muscles more or less float across the skeleton with occasional connection points via the tendons. As a force pushes my soft tissue I can hold my skeleton in place and allow the soft tissue to float, move, absorb or direct the incoming force without affecting the skeleton. This is difficult to explain but those that have pushed Vladimir and feel their hand/fist sink in with no movement of the skeleton can probably understand what I am driving at with this line of thinking.

Much work to be done and much more to explore but the knowledge that there are different layers to body awareness has been a big gain for me. I look forward to others comments and insights on this topic.

Take care,

Mark J.

[morten danielsen]

Dear Mark.

Great thread. And great post you have made.

Great training - I was pusszled by Vladimir when he said - how was it; how many winds can you get! Well I have managed to get my breathing in a hole different level than before the training. And focusing on the breathing instead of focusing on the body has made a lot of difference to me - and that is not quite the case - it is more; focusing on the bodys need for breath and then focusing on the breath as a way of overcomming/fulfilling the need. In my experiencing of this.

In connection to your experiences - I have thought about one thing Vladimir pointed out once - he said something like; when hitting the awareness must first be in the fist! It is probably taken out of context but I have played around with it and noticed that when my intention/awareness is starting from the hips as in traditional karate (the way I learned it long ago) then thoughts, time and force is spend without contact and I tend to loose energy through tension (and come late with the hit). When the intention/awareness starts in my fist I hit without hesitation, waste... hard and very relaxed.

5 cents.
_________________
All the best to all of you.

God Bless

Morten Danielsen

[Sharon Friedman]

Hi Mark.

In my first seminar with Mikhail we were instructed to breathe into our bones in parts and whole and to become aware of the pulse in the different tissues. I work on this everyday to grow aware of myself so there will be more to give.
The bones are like the shaft of the bow and the tendons and muscles are the string. The blood flowing and the heart beating and the wave of the breath are the energy coming to draw the string which effects the bone which in turn creates the tension or ability to work in the whole of it. That way you start to breath into the bone and through this you become aware of the different directions the tissue (muscle, veins, tendons, joint fluid and all) is capable of. The key to open the door to any of these movements is the nerve system. You give a command and a door opens and a tendon is aligned in a way to manifest the energy within it a certain way, your breath wave allows all the body to align in a way so the movement is done with the least amount of resistance and the muscles contract and relax at the same time to allow the shaft of the bow (the bone) to give the vector a shape.

So start to breath through the bones and your awareness to this will grow, feel the pulse in your spine and the wave of the breath as it leads to the hips and back up. To feel the tendon tension have a friend pull on your limbs and torso in different places and positions and as you notice how the body elastically finds a response or escape you become aware of the tendons working and later on through more breath work you can work it yourself knowing in which position they are ready to manifest their energy
.
Match the movement with your breath as you take 5 or as many steps for the inhale as you focus on breathing through the bones and than 5 steps for each breath phase. Go through your body as you segment it yourself and than combine it as you see fit. For example here is a sequence for this breath work using 10 steps for each area:

fingers and palm
wrist joint
forearm bones and tissue
elbow joint
arm bone and tissue
shoulder joint
shoulder blades
chest
throat all around
face and skull bones
upper part of the spine (feel the pulse there)
middle part of the spine
ribs
long muscles of the back
lower part of the spine
stomach
(now start to walk backwards with your hands up in the air relaxed, it helps to free the coming parts while still sensing the upper body)
hip joints front and back
behind muscles
thigh bone and tissue
knee joint
shin bones and muscles
ankle joints
foot bones and muscles along with the toes

now shake the possible stored tension from the body and relax.

After checking with a spell checker I only found one mistake
Have a great weekend

Sharon Systema Israel
_________________
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin
Systema Israel http://systemablog.blog.com

[Eric Hansen]

Mark - great post on a very interesting topic

[Stéphane Beaudin]

An interesting exercise I find, is to hold your forearm, so you will feel any muscular tension, and try to make your hand tendons tense/stand out (on the same hand whose forearm you are holding, of course). See how much tension you can put into your hand tendons before you become aware of muscle tension in the forearm. When you have a good sense of this, and you can get a significant amount of tendon tension with little or no perceptible muscle involvement, try and reproduce that feeling in other joints.

The hands ate a good place to start, because the fingers are connected to the forearm muscles by very long tendons, this it makes things easy.

[Mark Jakabcsin]

Eric,
I have a book on Somantics sitting on my desk. It was mentioned awhile back in a different thread so I bought the book. Now I need to find the time to actually read it (so far all I have done is look at the pretty lady on the cover). The information you shared is most interesting so I will bump it up on my 'to read' list.

Thanks for the insight.

Take care,

Mark J.