Feel Your Alignment

Body Awareness, Learning to Feel Your Alignment Instead of Thinking About It

What if there is no perfect blue print pose for your body but a number of them. What if the perfect way of doing a pose for your body is dependent on any number of factors including the weather, the season, how you feel, the position of the moon, the people you are with etc.

Would a set of alignment points help you find your perfect pose on any given day?

What if instead of learning alignment points (or as well as learning alignment points) you learned to feel and control the elements of your body, learning the potential of each part and each relationship and how to realize that potential.
Instead of striving for a particular alignment you could instead feel each part and how they relate and based on your body awareness you could find your alignment from within.

You could focus on individuals parts or relationships one at a time, making adjustments and then moving on to the next part, continually making adjustments and continually moving towards a pose that makes your entire body feel good.

Instead of waiting for the pose to happen or trying to force it, you steadily move towards it sensing your body all along the way.

Move Slowly, Smoothly and Repeatedly with Rhythm

You can develop your body awareness little bits at a time by moving target areas slowly and smoothly. By doing so you give yourself the chance to notice the changes that are happening in your body. You also develop control since it takes control to move the parts of your body slowly and smoothly.

Feel Your Bones (and Develop Body Awareness)

To develop your body awareness, you can start of with by learning to feel your bones and how they relate. You can learn to feel them by moving them slowly and rhythmically.

Feeling Your Pelvis and Hip Joints

To develop your ability to feel and control your pelvis you can rock it back and forwards.

You can focus your awareness on your sitting bones, feeling them move as your pelvis moves, or you can focus on your pubic bone or both. You could also focus on feeling the upper crests of your pelvis. You can then fill in the gaps, the boney connections that link these points.

From your pelvis you can move your awareness to your hip joints, feeling the change in relationship between your thigh bones and pelvis.
Becoming Aware of Your Lumbar Spine

Once you've got a feel for your hip joints you can move your awarness to your lumbar spine, the part of the vertebral column that connects you ribcage to your pelvis.

As you tilt your pelvis forwards you can feel your lumbar spine bend backwards. As you tilt your pelvis backwards you can feel your lumbar spine bend forwards.

Since the lumbar spine has 5 segments you could also devote effort to feeling the links, one at a time, between these segments. Or you could focus on feeling the vertebrae themselves.

To make this easier you can estimate the position of your lowest ribs and the position of the top of your pelvis. Your five lumbar vertebrae have to fit into this space.

Sensing Your Thoracic Spine

You can rest for a moment (or a day or two) if you choose. Then you can carry your awareness up into your thoracic spine, the part of your spine that your ribs attach to. And so that this part is easier to feel, you can focus on bending your thoracic spine and lumbar spine backwards each time you inhale and then bend it forwards while exhaling. (You can continue rocking your pelvis backwards and forwards while you do this.)

So that you can learn to feel your ribs and thoracic spine you could also focus on twisting your ribcage relative to your pelvis and your ribs relative to each other.

You could expand your ribs while inhaling and twist while exhaling (like wringing out a wash cloth) or you could hold a twist while breathing into your ribs, using your breath to move your ribs and using your arms to help you gradually twist deeper.

So that you deepen your awareness at the same time you can first focus on feeling the left side of your ribcage and then the right.

And so that you feel all of your ribcage you can first focus on feeling the front part the side part and then the rear part of each side of your ribcage. This is easier if you breathe into your ribs, since this will cause your ribs to move and you can then learn to feel your ribs via this movement.

Relaxing Your Muscles to Feel the Weight of Your Bones

Other techniques for learning to feel your bones include swinging actions of the arms where you relax your arms (or try to) so that you can feel the weight of the bones of your arms and even your shoulders as you swing your arms forward and back or from side to side.
Use your hips to provide the drive for these actions.

Muscular Elements of Body Awareness

Once you've gained some body awareness awareness of some or all of your bony elements, you can then use them as references for learning to feel and control your muscles.

You can learn to feel the muscles that attach to the bones that you know by feeling when they are active and when they are relaxed. Again, you can use slow, smooth rhythmic movements.

The differences in sensation between muscle tissue activating and relaxing can help to tell you where the belly of your muscles are. You can fine tune your body awareness by trying to pinpoint muscle attachment points to bone. With this awareness you can then learn to activate specific muscles by drawing one end point towards the other.

Learning to feel all the muscles associated with a particular action you can learn to feel under what circumstances particular muscles activate and you can learn to control when particular muscles activate.

The overall goal can be muscles and bones that work in harmony towards whatever you are trying to do.

Connecting to Your Body

Learning to feel and operate your body by learning to feel the parts (bones, muscles) you can then apply that ability to connect to your body to any situation that you are using your body in whether a yoga pose, sport action or while creating art, a product, commerce or simple fun. You might then find it easier to learn anything that you wish to learn. Practice would still be required but because you understand the elements of your body that practice time would be a lot less than if you didn't know.

Developing your body awareness and learning how the parts of your body work together is like learning the letters of the alphabet and how they go together so that you can write (and read) freely.

Learning how to read music and how to play notes on a guitar you can learn to play any piece of music. Learning basic elements of driving like steering, breaking and speeding up you can drive a car while handling what is going on around you on the road.

Learning the basic elements of your body and how they relate to each other (and the earth) you can learn to freely drive and express your body.

Basic Movement Elements for Developing Body Awareness

* Tilting pelvis forwards and backwards and allowing lumbar spine to bend while doing so
* Forwards and Backwards bending thoracic spine/ribcage
* Side tilting pelvis
* Twisting ribcage (keep pelvis stationary)
* Costal breathing-Lifting and expanding ribs while inhaling, allowing them to relax downwards while exhaling
* Activating feet so that feet, ankles and lower leg are strong
* Learning to shift weight so that weight is over fronts of feet and then over heels. (balance)
* Learning to spread shoulder blades and retract them (for mobility and stability of the arm)

Improving Body Awareness with Basic Body Part Actions

Body awareness is the ability to sense your body and how the parts of it relate. It can also mean knowing what your body is capable of at any moment in time.

You can improve your body awareness by learning to feel the parts of your body and how they relate. You can learn the options or possibilities for each part. You can then choose how to put those options together based on how what you are doing and the circumstances at the time.

Rather than thinking in terms of a perfect "blue print" for a pose, you can think in terms of a set of options for any pose and choosing from among those options given how your body feels at that time.
Scanning

So that you can determine how your body feels, you can either scan your body or feel it all at once. Scanning can be a way of working towards the ability to feel our entire body all at once. In either case you practice body awareness.

While scanning you can decide what to do with each part based on what we feel. For example, scanning your feet while in a standing forward bend you might notice that your feet feel tired and so you shift weight on to the centers of your feet or your heels so that your feet can rest.

Or you might choose to activate your feet and in addition shift your weight forwards to force the back of your lower legs to activate. You might also decide to make feet ankles and lower legs strong so that the hamstrings have a stable foundation-a fixed point-making it easier for them to release.

Feeling your hips we might choose to focus on creating space in the hip joints. Or you could choose to widen the thighs and use the inner thigh muscles to tilt the pelvis forwards. Or you might focus on sucking the top of your upper/inner thighs towards your lower belly activating the psoas and illiacus and using them to close the front of the hip joint and open the back.

The more aware you are, the more options you have to choose from. The more body awareness that you have, the more aware you are of the options for your body and the more aware you are of where and how the parts of your body relate Now.
Integrated and dis-Integrated (or Differentiated)

By learning the small ideas that make your body up and how they relate, you can learn to feel them and control them and then you can choose from among these possibilities in the context of an integrated posture.

An integrated posture uses all elements of the body together. This is as opposed to a dis-integrated or differentiated posture which you might use to focus on learning the small elements of your body.

As for "alignment," that can be a guide to learning to feel your body or operating it. You can learn to feel the position your body is in by repeatedly moving towards an "ideal" alignment or reference position and then away from it.

If the movement is slow and smooth enough you can develop body awareness (and control) because of the sensations generated by moving it. If you can observe yourself in a mirror we can also calibrate what you sense to what is actually happening. You can tune your senses and your ability to control your body.

A List of Actions for Developing Body Awareness

This is a partial list of body part actions that you can use to develop body awareness and better control over the parts of your body. In each case practice doing said action slowly, smoothly and repeatedly.

The feeling while practicing should be a comfortable one.

Rest when you've had enough.

Practice regularly to the point that you can do an action without having to think or "try." Then you can try doing these actions where appropriate as part of bigger, "integrated" postures or actions.

Activating Feet (active arches means front and back of each arch presses into floor while center of arch lifts)

* Roll shins outwards and inwards (Outwards is "active)
* Activate outer arch when rolling shin outwards
* Activate inner arch and outer arch when rolling shin outwards
* Practice holding feet active with minimum effort

While keeping feet active, use feet to feel and control center:

* Rock weight forwards and backwards, from heels to front of feet and back
* Balance on heels, then on fronts of feet
* Shift weight on to heels but keep fronts of feet touching floor-find position where feet can relax
* Shift weight forwards just enough that toes naturally press down into floor but some weight still on heels.
* Keeping weight forwards so toes engage, practice shifting all of weight onto one foot then the other.
* Practice weight shifting with weighted foot turned out.

Hip Joint actions-these actions are designed to help you understand some of the possibilities of the hip joint.

* Reach thigh away from pelvis and then relax. (Can be done first while sitting and then while standing.) This movement is very slight but sensible. Feeling is similiar to that of spreading the shoulder blades. Creates space in the hip joint
* Pull thigh into hip socket and then relax. Makes hip joint stable-handy when balancing on one leg.
* While standing, spread thigh bones and then relax. Can be used to widen top of the pelvis or to create space between thighs.
* While standing, draw thigh bones towards each other and then relax.
* Roll pelvis forwards and backwards while sitting and standing. Do while allowing spine to bend and then while keeping spine straight. Learn to move pelvis at the hip joint.

Leg and hip actions
* Pull shins inwards
* Pull shins outwards
* External rotation leg neutral, back and leg forward
* Internal rotation leg neutral, back and leg forward
* Reach with whole leg forwards, side and back (while balanced on other foot)
* Pull thigh towards belly when leg is grounded...

Sacro-illiac joint
* Pull tailbone towards pubic bone
* Suck sacrum forwards
* Relax sacrum

Mid Section (low back,low belly)
* Tilt pelvis back/front, side to side using abs and low back
* Side bend lumbar spine,
* Front bend
* Back bend
* Slide ribcage
* Pull lower belly in
* Expand upper belly

Ribcage
* Expand front, back, side ribs
* Inhale into back
* Lift and expand ribcage
* Lower ribs (relax downwards)
* Make ribcage big and hold
* Make ribcage medium size and hold
* Make ribcage small and hold
* Twist lower ribcage
* Twist upper ribcage
* Twist pelvis relative to ribcage
* Twist thoracic spine

Neck
* Slide head
* Pull head back and up
* Lengthen neck
* Twist cervical spine
* Side bend cervical spine

Shoulder blades
* Widen shoulder blades and then relax
* Shoulders up and shoulder blades together and then relax

Hands and Fingers
* Magic fingers (wiggle)
* Spread fingers and relax
* Tighten fist and relax
* Hook hand
* Palm hand

Arms
* Pull forearms inwards
* Internally rotate arms
* Externally rotate arms
* Reach arms up, to sides, front, back and down.