Twirling legs, 36 min
This lesson finds new ways of shifting your weight and moving from the center. By highlighting proportional distribution of work, the whole musculoskeletal system becomes more intelligent, better organized, and increasingly efficient.
I love this lesson for the softness it brings to my ribs and the letting go I feel in the low back. You might find something else in your own system, like your hips are less “tight” (more integrated!) or your posture is more upright, or your walking is easier, or your legs swing with new momentum.
The takeaway is this: When everything works together, life is easier.
**Tip: If you feel any strain in your arms while doing this lesson, change your strategy instead of pulling harder with the arms. Think creatively about your trajectory and consider how many possibilities you have in your spine, chest, collarbones, head, belly, low back, eyes, neck…
Thought for April 4th: Allowing resistance to melt
Resistance creates barriers. The opposite of resistance is connection. Increasing connection means melting resistance.
How many muscular contractions do we have that create rigid barriers between ourselves and others? Rigidity and tension block our relationships.
If we fall when we’re rigid, we get hurt…physically and emotionally.
How do we melt those barriers—the tension in the belly, the vice-gripped chest, the forced smile, the stopped breath, the curled toes, the hunched shoulders, the clenched jaw?
We melt them by engaging in non-habitual patterns, by offering the nervous system new ways of doing, sensing, thinking, and moving.
It’s only when new patterns are safe and viable that the nervous system will adopt them. If we’re mean to ourselves, the nervous system cannot learn.
The only thing you have to do in these lessons is assess where you feel connected and where you feel resistance. You get to own that answer because that's your life.
It really does take very little time to shift things, to learn what it means to take space for yourself, to find out your limits. What happens when you feel disoriented, confused, or disconnected? If you know that, you also know when you are connected.
* * *
And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.
― Hafez
Want more help?
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