Somatic Mechanic

Basics - Bringing New Understanding to the Director’s Cut - NYTimes.com

And now, just in time for Oscar junkies, comes a new statistical mincing of the movies that may someday yield an award category of its own: best fit between a movie’s tempo and the natural rhythms of the brain.

via www.nytimes.com

 

I've been described as a "sparkle-brain" in the past; it's not a compliment nor an insult insofar as I can tell. It just means that my thought processes are like fireworks or sparkles, with each burst of thought related to the previous burst (though sometimes only I can see the relationship - I drive my husband crazy.)

  This article in the NYTimes describes these natural rhythms of the brain in terms of movie structure, and if you are a teacher it's something that deserves attention. Your students thoughts and attentional behavior will wax and wane naturally and if you decide to stick with one exercise or one idea for an entire class you're still going to have to vary your lesson somehow or you will bore them to death. Teaching a great class is a lot like directing a great movie, and this article explains why that is so.

Observatory - Converting Body Movements Into Electricity - NYTimes.com

It may not seem like it, but even the laziest of couch potatoes is a human dynamo. The act of breathing — of moving the ribs to draw air into the lungs and expel it — can generate about a watt of power. And if the potato actually gets up off the couch and walks briskly across the room, each heel strike can produce even more power, about 70 watts’ worth.

via www.nytimes.com

This article shows us the solution for the article last week about sitting and its detrimental effects on health! In order to power up your computer or television, you have to provide the current by wearing an item of clothing (pants? a vest? a sweater?) embedded with the piezoelectric crystals described in this article. Then you have to MOVE your body to power up your devices.
Even better, wouldn't it be great if you could store the electricity for later use? For instance, you know Mad Men is on tonight, you know you want to watch it, so you have to be active enough during the day to (*gasp*) earn the 60-minutes of downtime later on... Cool ideas...

Mindfulness and mood

 Nice article from Livescience describing the mechanism of awareness and mood states.  As Eric Franklin, author of "Inner Focus Outer Strength" says, "without awareness you have no choice".  Instead you'll only get what you always got before.  This mindfulness is the basis of ideokinesis and of improvement of motor skills.  So if you want to be a better dancer, Pilates or Gyrotonic student, or tennis player, mindfulness and awareness is the key.  

Meditation exercises could boost mental toughness in soldiers readying for war, keeping them from becoming overly emotional, according to new research.  --from LiveScience.com

Sitting leads to health problems....

The NYTimes has a great article today that summarizes the health impact of sitting.  It's not pretty folks. 

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

 

The author repeats the oft-suggested recommendation to turn your desk into a treadmill+desk area.  The idea being:  run or walk on the treadmill while you do your desk work.  I am reminded of how it felt to go for a run while pushing my infant son in a stroller.  All I can say is:  DON'T DO IT.  It completely disrupts the normal biomechanics of running or jogging or frankly, even walking.  You can check this out by going out for a run and holding your arms out in front of you.  Very quickly you realize how much momentum is created by your arms swinging at your sides.  If you are running or walking on a treadmill and you can't swing your arms (because they are on the keyboard in front of you) you are losing the wind-up phase of every step.  Ick. 

However, it may be that the health benefits of walking on a treadmill while working is worth the biomechanical ick factor.  I just know that I couldn't do it.  Instead I fidget.  I bounce my leg up and down... I type a few words then spin in my chair,  I look out the window, etc.  I never knew that being a fidgeter would turn out to be in my favor!

Vital Signs - Study Ties TV Viewing Habits to Life Expectancy - NYTimes.com

The study followed 8,800 adults ages 25 and older for six and a half years and found that each daily hour of television viewing was associated with an 18 percent increase in deaths from heart disease and an 11 percent increase in overall mortality.

via www.nytimes.com

 

Our physiology is best adapted to activity, not sitting! We are more like monkeys in trees than like sea sponges. Richard Dawkins' book The Ancestor's Tale does a wonderful job of taking us backward through evolution, all the way back to ctenophores like this

Fascinating stuff.  

Recall the earlier article about arterial flexibility being related to trunk flexibility?  Well this is where the rubber meets the road folks.  You gotta move it, shake it, stretch it, and challenge your body.  If you are only challenging your mind through PBS programs and science tomes your life expectancy will reflect that.

The NYTimes article about sitting and life expectancy is here.

Spirituality is blocked, or not blocked, by regions in the brain

 

LiveScience reports:

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say.

The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain.  

Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys generate self-transcendence scores.

Selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions of the brain induced a specific increase in self-transcendence, or ST, the surveys showed.

Are meditation experts just really good at activating and deactivating certain areas of their brains?  In a concrete sense, is that what meditation is?  I'm thinking of those PET scans of the brains of experienced meditating Tibetan monks and how they showed specific patterns of neural activation (more information here, and here.)

Get awesome lips without surgery or sticky lip gloss

 

So my 9-year old son and I are standing in line at the grocery store and I'm zoning out, thinking about making dinner and getting him started on his Cub Scout project.  My boy is looking at the magazines at the checkout stands and says, "Mom, that lady's lips are weird."  It cracked me up because I didn't know which celebrity he was looking at, but I was already agreeing with him. Yep, most of them are definitely weird.  

Turns out he was looking at a "plastic surgery gone wrong" issue, and the photos on the cover were amusing yet horrifying.  I was explaining that some people use surgery to look pretty and sometimes end up having to talk weird with great big lips.  So I was imitating how someone with lips-gone-wild would talk.  And I had an interesting experience:  I found out just how much tension I was holding in my mouth and lips.  And I also learned how tension in mouth-and-lips translates into neck tension.  Hm!

Here's how you do it:

Imagine you have these lips

Wow - that's a whole lotta lippa.  How would your mouth feel if you had that much lip?  Close your eyes, and imagine your lips as being inflated like these. I don't necessarily want you to stick your lips out into a pout, just relax your muscles and let your mental imagery guide the sensation.  Would these lips be projected outward, tense, squeezed?  Maybe yeah, if they were overstuffed like sausages.  So let out some of that inflation, until your lips feel like the next photo.  In your imagination, release the imaginary valve that will deflate your lips until you have Brigitte's lips:

Ok, too much lipstick.  And that's still kind of an over-filled lip.  Do your lips feel relaxed?  Do you like how they feel?  And, by the way, I don't mean "feel" like reach up with your fingers and touch your lips, I want you to use your internal sensations of how tense your lips feel.  This is called proprioception; it's your ability to sense yourself (such as your body's position, posture, and muscle tension).   In my own imagination, Brigitte's lip feels a little ... umm... turgid.  And I still feel a bit of tension in my puckering-up muscles.

How 'bout Jessica Alba's lips?  Yep, they look pretty good.  Ok, so in your imagination, deflate your lips a little bit more until they are at Jessica's plumpness.  Now smile.  Now pout.  Now open your jaw slowly, and close it.  Can you feel the relaxation across your cheeks and even in the back of your neck?

If you're a guy, you can aim for this:

Oh Lordy lordy lordy.  What a mouth.  (Y'know, I had a very interesting experiencing googling on Rudolf Nureyev and looking at the resulting images.  VERY interesting.  And that is ALL I am going to say about that.  Lordy lordy lordy.)

Okay, so let's keep going, deflating our lips (this sounds very strange, I know) beyond what we like.  Close your eyes, inhale and as you exhale, imagine your lips deflating more until you've got this:

 
(Mary Pickford.)  Do you notice the new tension in your face?  Open your jaw and close it.  Smile. Frown.  Which is easier with this amount of tension?  Smiling or frowning?  For me, it's easier to frown.   That's not good!  Okay, close your eyes and inhale, then exhale and deflate your lips until you get this: 

Hee hee hee!!!  I know, it's not a very nice photo.  But what's interesting about this is that her lips are actually fairly plump.  It's the tension in her face that is making her lips look really thin.  When I look at this photo, I actually feel the tension in my own face.  It's one of the skills of being a teacher of movement, when your student moves, you can anticipate how she feels as she's making the movement.  If I see your shoulders hunched up, I know how your neck is feeling and if I let my attention lock onto that for too long, I'll actually feel it in my own neck.

Last time now, inhale and exhale, deflating your lips until you've got this:

Do you recognize her? She's Margaret Hamilton, she played the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.  She had the perfect lips for that role: thin and tense.  Okay, now that your lips are that thin, do you like the kinesthetic sense of it?  No?  Me neither.  Check your cheeks and neck.  Tense and icky, huh.

Some people say that we deserve the face we have after 40.  I think that's a little harsh, but I like the sentiment.  Our facial posture, just like our spine posture, can change.  We don't have to have injections or buy expensive lip plumping gloss or hire a private makeup artist or inherit the perfect genetics.  You can maximize your natural features through mental imagery and by altering the way you hold your face.

These lips below are gorgeous, and yet not obviously plastic (surgery):

 

Audrey Hepburn

 
 
 Marilyn without makeup and with....

 
the Marquise de Pompadour...

If you would like to maximize your natural lips, hold them softly.  Don't tense your neck, cheeks, and lip muscles.  It's unnecessary and probably leads to you looking like the Wicked Witch of the West.  (Did I ever promise I wouldn't exaggerate?)  Beyond looking like the Wicked Witch, how do you think a tense face contributes to your mood?

Imagine if your lips were like tubes of toothpaste, all that tension would squeeze out the paste!  And then your lips would look like shriveled up empty Crest tubes.  Do you want that for YOUR lips?  Of course not.

Next time you are in an argument with someone, look at their lips.  Are they tense, tight, and thin?  Do you want that for yourself?  Notice your own mouth and lip tension.  Do you spend the majority of your time with tight, tense lips?  No amount of lip-plumping gloss is going to overcome that, no matter what Maybelline writes on their packaging.  Next time you notice someone else's beautiful plump lips (celebrity or girl-next-door) I want you to practice softening and releasing the fullness of your own.  (Yowza!)

 

Dog Walking Increases Exercise Adherence and Enjoyment

The NYTimes has an article today about a study that compared the consistency of older adults who walked with dogs or with other humans.  Cute article.  The researchers found the dog walkers enjoyed their walk more, made less excuses, and increased their balance and walking speed.  Why would this be?  The walking distance was the same, the weather was the same... the difference lies in the motivation and the enjoyment had in walking a doggie companion.  This brings up all kinds of issues interesting to exercise psychology and health:  

-why would someone feel more responsibility to a dog's health than to their own?

-why are dogs more enjoyable companions than humans?

-should a national health care policy allow people to deduct the care of their dogs because they contribute to the owner's health?

I wonder if Pilates clients would also be more consistent if we had trained dogs to work out with.  Like circus dogs or agility dogs or something like that.  That brings up some great ideas for choreography!

It appears that dog walking is always taken seriously, certainly by the dog, if not by the human.  But it's not something you can excuse yourself by saying, "Ooo it's too hot today/too cold today/I'm tired/I'm too busy".  It's serious business.  I've often wondered about the dog shows occasionally broadcast on television, where dog trainers trot with their dogs around the ring while the judges watch. The trainers wear sensible shoes and very serious skirts or suits.  See?  Dog walking is movement married to serious business!

  

 So, another reason to love a dog.

Becoming Your Own Massage Therapist - NYTimes.com

AS a former cross-country runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where a free massage was part of an athlete’s weekly schedule, Briana Boehmer remembers the benefits of having qualified hands work her sore muscles.

via www.nytimes.com

 

NYTimes has an article today about self-massage... it's funny but the article is written as though this is a brand-new idea.  

The foam rollers and balls are great tools for self-massage, and it's a sneaky way to exercise too. It takes a bit of effort to be down on the floor and manipulating your body over a ball or roller. I'm reminded of this every time I teach a group class of older adults and pass out the self-massage tools.  It's not easy for inflexible or weak folks to be rolling around on a ball or foam-roller on the floor.  Here's a few tips for making it as easy of possible:
-don't wear a hoodie. The ball will get caught in the hood
-if your hair is long, put it up in a ponytail
-wear a fitted t-shirt, or if you're feeling brave, a unitard or leotard and tights. The ball often rolls up inside a loose t-shirt
-if you find any "speed bumps" inside your muscles (prevalent in the outer edge of the thighs) go s-l-o-w and don't hold your breath.

Also, keep your inner eye on your self-talk.  Remember that whatever you are thinking, your body will work extra hard to make THE TRUTH.  So if you are thinking "Aaaiggh!!!  This is awful" then your muscles will tense up and resist the force of the ball.  That's like tensing up when the massage therapist rubs your leg!  The most supportive thoughts will be something like "my muscles are malleable and allow the ball to stretch them and iron out any trigger points".  

There are a lot of different products you can get:

 -- Eric Franklin's awesomely wonderful Franklin Balls for about $25/pair.  The texture prevents the ball from sliding away from you if you work on a smooth floor like tile, marley, or wood.  The Franklin balls also come in a smooth surface for about $30/pair.  They are fantastic for footwork as well.  He has a couple of books that describe how to use the balls:  Conditioning for Dance and Ball and Imagery Exercises. 

--the foam rollers in various lengths, diameters and cut in half or a full round.  They tend to get dirty in a busy studio, because just when you're not looking, someone will stand on it.  In their shoes.  So, now they also have removable covers that you can take off and wash.  Coolio!

-- a Yamuna Body Rolling ball with an instructional DVD for around $60 or a simpler massage ball for about $15.  

Hope you have a good time rolling around on the floor!

Overcoming Cerebral Palsy - NYTimes.com

Gregg Mozgala, a 31-year-old actor with cerebral palsy, had 12 years of physical therapy while he was growing up. But in the last eight months, a determined choreographer with an unconventional résumé has done what all those therapists could not: She has dramatically changed the way Mr. Mozgala walks.

via www.nytimes.com

This fellow has cerebral palsy:

 Now usually, people who have cerebral palsy stand with their knees bent and turned inward and their back really arched.  Granted, there is variation in the severity of the disease, but make no mistake, it is a very serious disease orthopedically.  Walking is difficult because the joints are held stiffly and the center of gravity cannot swing gently and elastically around a small range of motion.  Instead the body "lurches" from side to side.  Every step is a proposition in how to fall down.

  Now dance therapy, movement therapy, and somatic education are not infant disciplines.  Lulu Sweigard, who wrote Human Movement Potential was born in 1895.  Mabel Tod wrote The Thinking Body in 1937.  However, western physical therapy has been focused on what the experts can do for (and to) the patient, the result is the somatic disciplines have flown under the radar for nearly a hundred years.  In these disciplines, the expert is the subject, and they explore their physical self instead of passively receiving information from the outside.

This article is evidence of one young man's experience with a somatic discipline.  The description makes me think of Emilie Conrad's Continuum training.... I certainly don't know if the choreographer in question uses Continuum but I was reminded of Conrad's work.  Very powerful, primal.... so much about our bodies happens beneath our conscious "radar" but is accessible through curious exploration.  I'm so glad this young man found his Achilles tendon (see article) as I'm sure it will inform his movement for the rest of his life.  And I am so glad that the NYTimes has published this article -- what a public service to their readers.  Article here.