‘I’m learning how to talk to bits of my body I’ve ignored’.
Said my new student the other day. Yes! I thought that was beautifully put.
This is a big part of what I do, getting people: to open a useful dialogue with their body. Especially the forgotten or hard-to-reach places (for brains).
A better brain/body connection
- Resets your body brain map, which can get ‘smudgy’ with pain and distorted with just life.
- Opens a line of communication that lets you reset levels of muscle tension on demand.
- Means you more accurately know where your body is (especially important in hypermobility), so you can subtly adjust body positions and use different movement patterns – which is super useful for pain and posture.
Whether its pain, posture or stress and tension you are trying to deal with:
You can’t change what you don’t know about. So, the first layer to this is just building an awareness. Putting your brain into your body, or a particular body part, without trying to change anything at first.
Give it go now with your foot.
You can look at or just think into it – up to you. Have your feet on the floor, sitting or lying down.
- Notice its shape – top, bottom, sides.
- Feel into all the toes, give them a wiggle if you need to.
- Notice where the heel is in relation to your ankle joint ( hint: its well behind)
- Notice if the foot is scrunched up
- Is the foot taking weight all the way around i.e. base of big toe, base of little toe and heel area? (remember you are just noticing, not correcting anything)
If you are having trouble noticing, give yourself some sensory input. Give the foot a gentle rub over all of its surfaces for a minute or so (think of scrubbing up – get into the crevices and get the sides)
Is it easier now?
How did you get on with putting your brain’s attention into your body in this way?
The feet are a good place to have a first try with this, as they are usually ‘neutral’ – we don’t have lots of habit or pain and tension to deal with there.
Would you like to see how this can help those tense and painful bits of you to undo and ease out? I’ll be showing you how in my next posts.
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