Confession of an alignerd: I don't fly anymore: a Modern Miracle

Early in my alignment journey, after much studying, memorization, restorative exercising [thank you Nancy], and walking, (and walking!) I made my way to the RE 'holy city' of Ventura, CA, to see and be seen.  There, we would have private sessions with Restorative Exercise heavyweights and take group classes for nearly a week, at the end of which we'd take a test and practice teaching people who volunteered to learn something for which they'd pay nothing, and we'd be observed teaching alignment basics.  We were to be inspected.  Nay: certified.

Now, I've been certified before and found it nerve wracking.  Pilates on all the apparatus.  I worried I wasn't knowledgeable enough and would be found wanting.  Probably waited an extra year before "testing out."  And though the folks conducting the test were perfectly lovely people, I felt as if I were going into battle, and I was, but with my own demons, not anyone assessing my ability.
Of course, I could see that only after I'd passed (whew) but forgot the lesson and felt the same stuff (dang demons) in the private sessions prior to the Restorative Exercise Exam.  Gird your loins.

Bright lights. Big City.  To get this tall, alignment is KEY.

A few weeks prior, I'd taken a trip to my hometown, (NYC) and had the pleasure of staying in a friend's apartment on the lower East side (which is now incredibly hip).

There's a place on Orchard to get individually brewed cups of coffee w/designer beans in seconds.  The tube sucks just the right amount of which ever bean you desire, your cup's brewed, and they all have crema on top!  Man, the lower East Side ain't what it used to be.
(But the pickle guys are still there.  FYI)

The buildings haven't changed much at first blush (until one gets a load of a spacious marble shower stall) from the tenements of the old days and there are many flights of steps to climb.  No sweat.  I'm a fitness professional with a well-toned core and all that goes with that.

Leaving there one evening for a dinner date at another friend's place uptown, I slipped on the worn-down marble steps and flew down about a half a flight of steps and landed pretty hard.  Twisted an ankle and wrenched a knee, so that when I'd decided I was going to continue on to dinner uptown, I had to "monster walk" forward so I didn't have to bend knees or work ankles too much [which I perma-dorsi-flexed]. From the stares, I think I made a convincing monster.

I stayed on 57th Street for two days (ice, elevation, tender loving care of my oldest and dearest friends) and a week or two later, there I was in at my anxiety-producing event in Ventura.  I explained that my knee & ankle weren't doing that well, so I might not be able to make the right moves just then, when heavyweight A informed me that it was because I was basically falling all-the-time, not in control of my descending, that it went the way it had for me.  What???   I did not possess the grace (in the moment) to actually receive his message.  I thought, " You (blankety-blank), you have no idea why I fell down those stairs....#*!!+=(."

Fast forward (I know, not a moment too soon) to me leaving a movie theater earlier today.  I was about to descend a staircase and I think it was because of the interesting carpet replacement color choice I mis-read that the stairs were beginning when I thought I was placing my foot on the landing and it would be my NEXT step which would be the step down.

SURPRISE!  I was releasing my weight onto a foot which did not have anything underneath it to land upon, and I did fall a bit, but as I no longer leverage gravity as I once did, I didn't fall forward.  I was not accelerating.  Easy to recover, I just reached for the bannister.  I was in slow motion anyway, not hurtling anywhere. Shazzam :o)

So even though I did pass my exam at the end of that week, it has taken me another couple of years to realized and validate my fundamental operational transformation:  I'm back to using my own power.  As a matter of habit (because you know I was turning my smartphone back on when I mis-read that step) I hold my weight over my heels now, apparently whether I'm thinking about it or not.

So thank you, Katy and alignment community:  thanks to you, my tissues grow happier daily and I don't fly down staircases anymore, either.  Sweet.

If you'd like to stop flying, call me.  Or  Bodywisdom Studio or read about everything you ever needed to know about alignment here.

Your body is trying to tell you something. Are you listening?

Movement is better for you than medicine:  If you do a lot of the former you’re a whole lot less likely to require the latter.  Yet we're conditioned to take a pill if we have discomfort instead of receiving it as a message from our operations department that we need to pay attention to something important.  We're taught by those who sell pills and potions that they are the answer.  I still hear the words of my father, offered to me when I was very small - on pain/or when something hurt:  "your body is trying to tell you something.  Are you listening?"  Is anybody listening?

In our affluent society, the more privileged one is, it seems the less one needs to do, for oneself or for others.  Someone else tends, cleans, prepares, fetches, delivers, conveys, trains, all so we have more time to enjoy ourselves.  Or work.  Or workout. Or work late.

If you’re sitting all day at a desk, drive to and from work (or school), even if you exercise for an hour every day, that one hour out of twenty-four won’t make up for the stasis your body must endure the rest of the time.  The human body’s not designed to be inactive but for the time you are asleep.   You’re designed to move around during waking hours (the other 2/3 of your life).

Your heart is a muscle, one of several hundred. It’s designed to move blood around your body and maintain circulatory operations at a minimal level while you’re asleep.  But it only pumps around the big pipes.  If you want to get blood to ALL your tissues, you need to use ALL YOUR OTHER muscles to get blood all the way out to the littlest blood vessels, fill the capillary beds, make your fingers and toes warm, keep your complexion looking fabulous. For this result you need to move everything a bunch.  Which you can probably guess I'm not doing while I'm typing this.....

When you wake up in the morning one of the first things you probably do is stretch.  It feels good.   There’s been little circulation to your muscles because you don’t move very much when asleep (well, some more than others).  Get some circulation going where there’s been none for a while. Have a stretch.  It feels so good, you lean into it and you don't even have to think about it, the operations department simply demands it and you comply without question because you're not really awake yet.  You're so receptive to your body's commands :o) Good times.

Sitting in a chair all day long is no good for you or anyone else.  A sedentary life may be survivable indefinitely, but if you want to feel good, you have got to move your body.  Get some circulation going and keep it going.  All over.

In third world nations where folks have to walk everywhere, hunt, carry water over land for their survival, folks don’t have diabetes, heart disease, pelvic floor disorder, or an avalanche of hip and knee replacements.  When they sit down, they sit on the floor or ground. (Tried that lately?) For toilet functions, squatting is the order of the day.  When’s the last time you squatted for long enough to "take care of business?"

Birds fly, fish swim, snakes slither, humans walk.  Mostly.  We’re versatile :o)  Our feet are unique in the animal world, and we’ve managed to get ourselves to the four corners of the globe (and long before anyone got their learners' permit).  We walk LONG distances.  Swim, too, but not nearly as far and maybe that’s because we'd be likely to become somebody's lunch long before we made land.  We've evolved to walk, to move around from place to place.

And here' s a thought that just came to me:  what if ADHD is simply children being aware that sitting in one place is illness in the making?  What if they’re still in touch enough with their bodies to get the message it’s sending them?  Robust and a variety of movement is the way the body takes care of itself.  Muscles move, circulation results.  Oxygen, food, garbage removal only gets to  tissues when the local muscles are moving.  So instead of giving our young drugs so they’re able to sit without moving for hours on end, maybe we should get a clue:  everyone’s body wants and needs to move a bunch.  

These bodies of ours are remarkable recovery machines.   You tear your skin open shaving, skin your knee, cut your finger, and it will cover the hole and then close it up and then grow a custom replacement cover [that blends in so well you can’t even tell where it was] and it does all this without you having to think about it.  An amazing self-healing machine.  And that’s just a part we can easily observe.  Ever wondered how goosebumps happen? 

The operations department in your body monitors operations 24x7 to keep things ‘just right’ so you can enjoy your life right up until the very moment your time’s up.  99.3% [ok, I made that up] Very nearly all of the cells in your body aren't older than ten.  So there’s really no reason why you couldn’t feel like and do a cartwheel right now.  Right?  Except for maybe your body's been talking and you haven't been listening for quite some time.  If you're reading this the good news is:  it's never too late to get moving.

In this great nation illness is just another profit center and nearing 20% of GDP.   Big Pharma would much rather doctors tell you to take a pill than to take walk.  No one’s going to get rich selling you a movement prescription.  But if you fill that one, you just might never have to go back to the doctor again.

Your body is trying to tell you something.  Are you listening?  Defy gravity.  Stand up straight. Align your body so the operations department gets accurate data and keep everything moving.  Then listening to your body will be a LOT more fun.

Where does life suck in your body

I've been working at improving my personal biomechanics for many years.  Those of you who have been around me for the last couple of decades might know that my left knee started acting up in the early 90s [probably talking to me long before that ] finally locking up in the mid-90s and STILL I managed to ignore it.

Now, no one would call getting rear-ended on the freeway good-fortune, yet in hind sight it most certainly was: it lead me to chiropractor and a physical therapist, neither of which i'd ever seen before in life.  During these encounters I came understand what was going on with some of my muscles and my knee.  Oh yes, and I was introduced to a homeopathic arnica gel concoction [a great thing to know about].

I'd studied pilates earlier in life and after the accident I took it up once again with a vengance.  It worked wonders for me.  My knee started working again.  I told everyone how to fix their physical problems through core conditioning!  I certified.  I taught others so my friends could be left in peace (well, once my student teaching hours were completed).  Skip down the road (well I could almost skip) a decade and while a well-conditioned core is a really good thing to have, I had to study Alignment/Restorative Exercise to get my knee back to a place where I can skip down the road [and I can].  I've been at the alignment thing for a little more than a year.

While I am pretty physical and do a lot of stuff, I am also pretty lazy.  It's precisely because I'm lazy that I love both my alignment practice and core conditioning:  because once you're on board with these concepts, life in general becomes easier and makes it possible to really enjoy all the rest of the time I'm alive in this body.

Life's better when your body works.  Can I get an amen?  No one likes doing the "100s" (well I don't know anyone who does).  And the first time one stretches muscle that's been ignored for longer than overnight, a uniformly pleasant experience it's not :o) In a relatively short period of time (my 500-hr. pilates certification took longer) I have come a long way toward being completely happy in my body and I'm in my sixties.  I'm not perfect and I don't even care how much farther I have to go, I'm so happy.  OK.  I'll shut up already about how happy I am.

Life's been trying lately.  I've lost my Mother recently. Other stuff.  And I realize that I deal with my emotional issues energetically [in my body].  A month ago I walked all the time.  Lately I fit this activity in if I can manage to push this immobilization out of the way.  It's as if I have been possessed by evil spirits who keep me playing sudoku for hours on end (I know, I could be eating ice cream, too).  Calf stretching?  Who has time?  All this to say:  when you find yourself in times of trouble, how do you react?  (as I type this I realize I could be walking instead of typing)

I'm back.  Ordinarily I'd edit this out of a blog BUT THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT of what I'm saying (and maybe just to myself).  We're meant to move. When you're not busy moving around, maintaining the goldilocks length of your muscles, they're tightening up, getting pulled out of alignment, gravity is deforming you, and it's not as much fun to be in one's skin.  (if you had a standing workstation right now you could be aligned and even stretching your calves while reading). And maybe you are but even if you aren't, thanks for reading. :o)  Think about the happiest times of your life, and I'll bet they're when you were doing cool stuff.  It's hard to sit still in enthusiasm.

And so we all go through stuff that bums us out.  I seem like a cool customer (I was raised in NYC where it's good to put on a united front) but when the going gets tough, my digestion slows way down, and my tight places get tighter.  Where are your tight places?  Are you into your 2nd hour gazing into a lighted screen?  Maybe it's time for a stroll.  At the very least, time to stand and stretch.  There.  That feels better, no? 

Life is sweeter when I'm able to be aware and in touch with myself in life's largest terms.  I go for a walk by the water's edge (SF Bay nearby) and I become aware of my place in this present earthly configuration.  Breathing's bigger and easier.  Oh, yes.  Body:  temple of the soul?  The nearer I get to the goldilocks place, the more sense that makes.

So how's your temple today?  Ribcage mobilizing as you breathe?  Calves got that long look and easy feeling?  The goldilocks thing all starts from the soles of your feet and works its way up.   Think I'll take a little walk.   Check the mail and my reciprocal arm swing.  :o) For the time being, I'm using any excuse.

And if you don't know anything about the aforementioned goldilocks thing, alignment, or restorative exercise (but would like to have more fun in your body) there is a bunch of great information available @ alignedandwell.com and a lot of great instruction available @ bodywisdomstudio.net.  Come on over to Point Richmond for a class, or ask me to locate a REx practitioner near you.