Easy, upright sitting

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Note: All of these can be done at your office or anywhere!

This short sequence helps unwind the crunchies in your spine. You hug yourself with your hands on the shoulders and make a number of movements up, down, and side to side. Then you vary the head and eyes relative to the spine. It helps reset any lingering tension in the mid-back and return you to a nice upright posture.

For a full lesson like this, see:
43 Tilt knees, lengthen arms

This lesson also uses alternating movements of the spine rounding and arching, this time with bringing the knees in and out. You test the flexion and extension of the spine as the hips are in different positions. After a couple minutes, you realize that the hips and the low back could be in any relationship, the legs can be free no matter what the back is doing. 

This is a lovely thing to do after you've been sitting for a while and you're preparing to stand up but you know you're going to feel stiff. If that's you, try this move! 

For the longer lesson like this, see:
433 Sit to stand, tilting like a stick

This is a “marker sequence” to help you sense where neutral is. Between the two extremes of super hunched and super arched is the middle. When you give your system a chance to sense the options, your nervous system, being smarter than you, will settle on neutral. The trick here is getting out of your own way. I work with many, many of my clients to bend, bend, bend and then settle. It's a re-training to find ease, but it is possible!

For the longer lesson like this, see:
433 Sit to stand tilting like a stick.

Here is a longer sequence to find neutral in sitting with more variables and a little more information about what we're doing. It's worth experimenting with. It's not that you'll stay in this spot forever, mind you, but it's that it is available for you to find again and again.

This is a wonderful unwinding of the spine as you articulate all the vertebrae like a chain. Leaning the elbows on the knees, you round and arch from an awareness of different spots along your spine. Slowly the bending returns and you become less stiff, crunchy, and grippy. As you reset the relationship of the pelvis over the hips, you can sit up with the ease and comfort of full skeletal support. I recommend doing this one all the time as your spine will love you. Don't do it “just to get it done,” really sense the points of articulation along the spine.

For the full lesson, see:
434 Sit to stand with repositioning the feet

This movement helps articulate the upper back. You rest one hand on the opposite shoulder and lower the elbow to your desk or table, resting the head in the crook of the arm. As you draw with the elbow, the “package” of your arm, shoulder, and upper back create an invitation for the fine motor skill of drawing to come from your middle back.

It really wakes up the vertebrae that get stuck in place when we type on the computer for too long (rather like I am doing now!). You do the other elbow, of course, then fold the arms and hold both elbows, resting the head on them and start swiveling both arms on the table.

Did you allow your pelvis to move? Your belly to be free?

This is a martial arts thing that I learned from my teacher, Dennis Leri. You push the sides of your hands into your waist just above the pelvis, then try to push them out from the inner abdominal pressure. It's a BIG push of the abdominal muscles. It is not from the breath. The diaphragm is not the only thing that moves your abdomen! Think of the bihg “Huh!” sound that martial artists make from deep in the belly. It's like that. 

Try it many times, then try to keep the belly expanded so that you could not push your hands back in and still breathe. It is possible. This is what we use in Feldenkrais to ground the pelvis as we're moving people around all day on a table. There has to be a dropping down so that we generate action from the center. Test it for yourself in many ways. Play around. It will allow you to breathe, stay grounded, and stop floating up into your shoulders and neck like a coat hanger. 

This short sequence will help connect your arms to the spine and upper back. Sitting at the edge of a firm chair, place your hands on another piece of furniture, like an ottoman, bench, couch, or another chair. Simply slide the hands away from you and come back. As they slide, what happens to your spine? Does it round, arch, or stay straight?

Feel the sit bones as you slide the hands. The sequence will guide you to connect the belly button to the hands…another “grounding” sequence with variations to determine what, exactly, you are doing in the belly and back to relate to the arms. This helps you become more congruent in how you extend your arms and access your center of mass.

This is a short move where you create a swivel stick of the spine. Think of the base of your sternum drawing a circle on the floor with a little laser light beam. (It helps to put the finger tips on the breastbone to give yourself some feedback.) Notice how much of yourself you allow to move. Who said you couldn't move your pelvis, too?

Another way to keep the spine mobile as you go throughout your day.