Pilates Iconoclast

Pilates Studio Hosts: Putting the Heel In Healing: Sample an Exercise That Changes Support and Tone

"Yesterday in a pilates studio

overlooking W. 30th Street,

Tim Driscoll of Backbone and Wingspan

hosted a high heel recovery clinic.

He explains that the back of the heel is a part of our bodies that needs some... um, healing..."

September 15th, 2009

So writes Andrea Silenzi of WNYC Radio in her blog posting on the Culture page of their website.

Putting the Heel in Healing

Click on the link above to see great photographs taken by Andrea showing the different stages of the clinic from leveraging the heels to exploring buoyancy using Pilates exercises on stability balls.

Also check out a great quote about the supportive potential of the

top-of-the-hamstring-tethering,

core strengthening  principles experienced in the clinic by

Kendall Farr, fashion stylist and author, who has her own great blog which at the moment is featuring shoes and boots of the fall season. Her website as well has a section "Ask Kendall" in which she answers style questions with savvy.

Because I am writing a book about High Heel Healing, I am getting feedback from people who could not attend the clinic, but who I could send a detailed description of an exercise and see what the response is:

My friend and fellow blogger,

Deb Markanton

who lives in L.A. has this to say about the Suspension Bridge exercise:

"Oooh Tim, this is very good! I love the imagery. It makes perfect sense and I was able to read it once and do it myself.  Wow, that is some stretch. And it really makes a difference in how you stand."

Here: try it for yourself, the way Deb did!

If you don't have a stability ball, you can just put your heels on an upholstered surface that is not too squishy, like a chair or an ottoman.

Lie down on your back on a mat or soft flooring,

and place the backside of the heels of your feet on a stability ball.

Position your body so that the knees are bent with the thigh bones perpendicular to the floor. Establish what would be a sitting position, only you are laying down on your back

Don't flatten your lower back - instead, lengthen the tail.

Don't flex the feet, instead, find the contact of the heels into the ball

Place the feet together and allow the top sides of the feet and the toes to soften and drape into a forward curve

Press gently but definitely with the backsides of the heels into the ball in a way in which your body senses the buoyancy of the ball, and you sense your body's own potential to be buoyant

Place your fingers on your sit bones to discover how the hamstrings on each leg connect on to each sit bone, as if the sit bones are little anchors for the hamstrings to tether down on to, like the way cords on a tent tether down to the spikes in the ground

Perform the bridge by using the gentle force of the heels down into the ball to initiate the tethering of the hamstrings down on to the sit bones. It is like a pulley system that would suspend a piano off the ground for it to be moved to a higher floor: the cords pull down for the piano to rise. In this case, the cords of the hamstrings tether down to the sit bones for the pelvis to rise.

Once your body is in the bridge, sense the suspension. The hamstrings are like the swooping cables on a suspension bridge. The cables are tethered to anchors that are fastened down toward the ground. The cables don't lift or hike the bridge up. The cables suspend the bridge so that it is buoyant and has resilience.

These are the sensations you develop in the heels-to-hamstrings-to-sit bones connection: buoyancy in the backsides of the heels and resilience in the giving full length of the hamstrings in order to give your spine suspension.

These sensations along the backside of the body (which begins with the backs of the heels) takes the weight off of the toes and also supports the spine, so you can frolic in your footwear all evening.

To read more about tethering, buoyancy, and suspension and how developing these sensations actually tones and strengthens, check out my previous posts in this High Heel Healing category. But if you really wish to understand how the heel can really connect you in your body along the entire backside from calves to hamstrings to lats to the fully supportive length of your spine....

Consider coming to the studio and taking a session or lesson with any of our exceptional practitioners, each of whom has had a hand (and heel) in the development of the High Heel Recovery Clinic:

Cathy Ferrara: Pilates, Pre-Natal Exercise and Conditioning, GYROTONIC®

Karen Donelson: Physical Therapy, The Feldenkrais Method® 

Gabriel Bobek: CranioSacral Therapy

Luciana Achugar Pilates

Invest in your self! Scheduling an appointment with one of us is really the best way to create lasting change in your body! Comment below on your experience with the suspension bridge exercise, and receive 10% off any series of sessions you purchase by October 15th with any one of our exceptional practitioners!

Backbone and Wingspan Midtown Manhattan 115 West 30th Street New York City

Integrating Fitness, Movement, and Health Call us anytime at 212-647-8878

Power Sitting Posture with Pilates Principles and The Feldenkrais Method® Movements

Posture is not positioning.

I have a client who tells a story of a friend of his who he and his wife often hang out with along with several other mutual friends.

At a table in a restaurant or a bar, this friend of my client's will realize that he is slumping in his seat and look around (seeing everyone else slumping), and all of a sudden exclaim to everyone at the table:

"Posture Check!"

You cannot "get out of a slump" (so to speak) by yanking your body up into some pre-conceived position of "good posture."

There are abhorrent notions ingrained in us from very early on in our body's development, such as some impatient parent scowling at us from across the dinner table, exclaiming suddenly, "Sit up straight!" which of course is as potentially damaging as "Clean your plate!"

I have a friend whose father used to line up she and her three sisters and demand to them, "Shoulders back."

My friend, as well as most people, go through most of the years of their lives perceiving "good posture" as standing up straight with shoulders back.

Posture is not lifting.

Another client of mine, before he studied with me, went to a doctor because he was experiencing intense chronic neck, shoulder, and upper back pain from sitting at a computer and typing for long hours.

The doctor told him he should take a leave of absence from his job for six months.

"Yeah, but what do I do when I have to go back to work? What can I do, or where do I go to learn how to better support my posture?"

The doctor said, "I don't know."

At Backbone and Wingspan, we are offering a free clinic in response to the many,  many people who sit all day at computers, key-stroking themselves into neck, shoulder, and upper back discomfort, and/or leg-crossing themselves into hip and lower back pain.

Power Sitting Posture Clinic on Tuesday, October 27th from 6-7 PM

featuring Pilates-based resistance band exercises,

an all-in-one upper and lower back and hip stretch,

and the art of sitting in any chair.

 
 Presented by Pilates instructor Tim Driscoll and 

The Feldenkrais Method® practitioner Karen Donelson.

 

More on notions of posture later this week...

In the meantime, check out our event listing on the

Backbone and Wingspan Facebook Page

Not a wingspan fan? We'd love to have you as one.

Backbone and Wingspan: Pilates, GYROTONIC®, CranioSacral, The Feldenkrais Method®, and Physical Therapy

115 W. 30th Street Midtown Manhattan New York City 212.647.8878

Spotlight on Pilates Instructor Luciana Achugar Focusing More on Movement as Both Teacher and Choreographer

Luciana Achugar has been an inspiring teacher of Pilates based movement for over ten years.

She has been an invaluable asset to Backbone and Wingspan since its founding in Chelsea in 2003.

However, Luciana's amazing expertise lies not merely in her adept capacity at instructing on the Pilates trapeze table and Pilates reformer.

She is even more so a performer, and award winning choreographer.

At Backbone and Wingspan, the way we teach is infinitely more movement oriented than exercise oriented. Luciana's devotion to the art of dance and her views on how movement affects life integrate vibrantly into the artful way she teaches Pilates.

Many of the passionate feelings she has about dance and about how movement affects life on all levels are revealed in this video interview

captured during Luciana's residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University on the development of one of her recent projects,

The Sublime Is Us, which premiered October 21st - November 1st,  2008 in New York City at Dance Theater Workshop.

Other titles of her pieces evoke the exceptional depth

of the love of movement:

Exhausting Love at Dancespace Project

A Supernatural Return to Love 

There are many refined reasons that the human body must move, beyond our needs to get to work, perform our jobs, play sports, and relate to one another. Many people who initially seek out the work we offer in Pilates, GYROTONIC®, CranioSacral, and The Feldenkrais Method® do so out of the desire to release tension and stress or desiring to have a better muscle tone or desiring a sleeker posture.

Luciana’s next work,

PURO DESEO,

which translates both to "pure desire" and "nothing but desire,"

will examine the relationship between artistic process and art as commodified product.

PURO DESEO, which premiers at The Kitchen in the Spring of 2010,

will be supported through a generous grant from the MAP FUND.

To witness an artist of integrity, exploration, determination, and a limitless fascination for the expressive and communicative and transgressive potential

of the human body, 

please see luciana achugar perform:

Nov. 11, 2009 at 5:30pm
Brooklyn Arts Exchange
Open Rehearsal
421 5th Ave,
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Free
www.bax.org
 
Jan. 22nd & 23rd at 7:00pm
 Brooklyn Arts Exchange
Workshop: Puro Deseo
421 5th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.bax.org 

May 2010
The Kitchen
Premiere Puro Deseo
512 W 19th St
New York, NY 10011
www.thekitchen.org

 

For more information about luciana achugar,

or to support her artistic vision,

please visit: www.lachugar.org

Pilates Based Exercises : High Heel Recovery Clinic Raves: Tension Replaced with Toning

Pilates Iconoclast Brought to You From Midtown Manhattan NYC:

In the September issue of Gotham Magazine, an editor who attended one of our press previews had this to say about the experience: "movement studio Backbone and Wingspan's.... private one-on-one Pilates program designed to restore your posture..... after just one hour you'll feel taller. looser, and better prepared to to rock this season's platform Louboutins." - Ingrid Skjong - Gotham Fitness 

Read the entire mention about Healing Heels if you are already or would like to become a fan of Backbone and Wingspan on our Facebook Page.

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The principles related through Pilates based exercises taught on a stability ball give practical application, such as how to wear heels (or really any shoes) in a way that you can not only avoid injury, but actually start a muscular toning process.

Whether you are like this woman with a stash of heels under her bed, or whether the new cool weather has encouraged you to ditch your flip flops for shoes of more substance, we invite you to read about what other participants of our previous High Heel Recovery Clinic have raved:

"The High Heel class provided a nice combination of theory and exercises with some knock out visuals such as a juice cartoon with one corner smashed in to represent a heel (in a high heel) that had collapsed.

Another unforgettable visual was a plastic sacrum that was held over a person's real sacrum and was then compared to a picture of a stone arch. The topmost stone of the arch enables it to hold its structure.

Gabriel pointed out that in a similar fashion the sacrum functions to provide stability to the pelvis and upper and lower body.

The level of instruction by all the instructors was excellent. - Sue Rothwell

"We learned the ins and outs of the backbone, the tail bone, why they effect your posture, and why your balance and stability are what makes your feet ache. It’s cause you’re not walkin’ right. We’ll be there again on June 24th to double check our techniques. I have worn heels a couple of times since our private class, and have consciously noticed less pain in my footsies, while using Tim, Cathy & Karen's advice."

                                    -  Ashley from The Luxury Spot

Backbone and Wingspan is dedicated to presenting Pilates exercises with Universal Principles of Movement as the underpinnings. In this way, the workout you receive can be sustained in subtle ways more efficiently through the rest of your day, and the simultaneous release-of-tension-while-toning process becomes more second nature.

Lunge into More Core Support on the Pilates Reformer

Backbone and Wingspan has a great new profile for Manhattan, New York City, featuring

Pilates GYROTONIC® The Feldenkrais Method®, CranioSacral Therapy, and Pre-Natal Pilates reviews on this Insider Pages Directory.

This Pilates Iconoclast post coming to you  from Backbone and Wingspan in Midtown Manhattan, could also be entitled "deepening femurs."

This post is an expansion of the post immediately previous entitled

Core Columns of Support for the Spine

I have discovered in many instances ways to impart these principles of movement in a way that a person can relate directly to the work that they perform in their career.

I will call forth now again

"the body as architecture".

A relatively new client who I teach is an architect, and was able to walk without pain for the first time since February because I related to her the image of the femur bone as columnar and the hip as the corinthian capital above, and the foot, particularly the heel, expanding both back and wide as the pedestal of the column. She was able to realize this core stability in a lunge on the Pilates reformer.

I currently teach a few people who are both fascinated and experienced with underlying foundation and structure.  It is inspiring that two of the several body mythologies I intend to write about are the body as architecture and the body as garment, and here within a span of a month, I am introduced to an architect and a fashion designer,

I believe the reason the lunge brought freedom in the hip is that this woman  under-stood not separating, but relating column and capital for core strength  She was able to transform in a lunge what she had previously perceived as a hip stretch that involved pushing the femur bone back and out of the hip in order to attempt to release tightness.

It is a matter of relationship, not merely alignment, as alignment can be misconstrued merely as a lining up the elements, but if they are not given a sense of relationship to one another, the person may have a sense of needing to hold muscle to maintain the alignment rather than

Ladies Who Lunge!

In this video you will see another student of mine who is a runner, performing the lunge. There is significant time spent expanding the back of the heel of the extended leg, so as to not push back on the Pilates reformer from the ball of the foot. Deepening the toes down into the surface of the Pilates reformer carriage, the foot can then still serve as a pedestal of support for the release of the hip.

Any comments, questions, real-life stories to relate about the relationship to your hip?

Please feel free to comment directly in the comments section below, and also please  travel over to the right-hand sidebar to become a.........

Pilates Iconoclast subscriber!

Also visit our website for more information on all of the other talented teachers and practitioners in the

Backbone and Wingspan Universal Principles of Movement Studio.

Integrating Fitness, Movement,and Health

Core Columns of Support for the Spine

Pilates exercises performed with underlying universal principles of movement are most beneficial to postural support, any sport, and even any artistic endeavor.

This is because the principles employed are accessed through the imagination, and thus induce a fascination for the person taking on those principles within the movements.

This fascination for the body becomes a fuel for the person to then play with the principles throughout the day whether walking to work, training for the marathon, drafting drawings for a building or sketching life drawing models.

Principles involve play, and thus are very different than rules that are adhered to. This is an important distinction for me to make, as I believe that what makes Backbone and Wingspan distinctive is the use of imagery to induce deep change.

I read in The New York Times years ago about a study that was done on the reason why the twin towers didn't topple over. The reason is that there were core columns connected down into the depth of the foundation.

I passed the twin towers often on my way to work and was amazed that on very windy days they swayed. The skyscrapers were an exceptional feat of the interplay between stability and suspension.

The body's core is also grounded and rooted into its foundation, the foundation being everything in the body below the navel line. This includes the lumbar spine with the deep core muscles attached to the front of the vertebrae, called the psoas. 

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   No building begins with wall construction.

The walls don't support the framework, but that's what's implied when people perceive attaining core support by shoving the abdominal wall towards the central structural framework of the spine.

That's also what's implied in using muscles (even other than the abdominals) to hold the spine.

I had a great ballet teacher who used to say,

"It's all about moving, not about holding."

The deepest abdominal muscle called the transversus abdominis expands wide horizontally off of the back of the same lumbar vertebrae that the psoas is connected to in the front. The transversus wraps from back to front to form a cylinder of support.

I find that in order to grant someone access to the deepest core support for the spine, both to access the rooting support of the psoas and the embracing wrap of the transversus, the stability of the femur bones must be employed by deepening the bones into the ball and socket joints of the hips.

It is helpful to point out the anatomical truth that the femurs are the largest single bones in the body.

I often say, the femurs can be a burden or a boon. Boon. Bone.

In relating the core through myth as defined as using image and metaphor to convey a deep truth that eludes access through literal interpretations, I will attempt now to use architecture as a metaphor.

 The femur bones could be considered core columns.

A couple of weeks before I posted a comment about the core to The New York Times article entitled Core Myths, and was so inspired to write my impressions of the mythology of the core, a woman was referred to me who is an architect. I felt a little inhibited in her first lesson to speak about architectural images, but I said to her at one point while she was on the reformer, "The femur bones are 'columnar', if that is even a word, columnar." She said, "It's a word."

Well, as the lesson progressed, and I assisted her in feeling the femurs deepen into the hip joints, I couldn't remember the name for what is at the top of a column, as in the columns that are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

"Capitals'" she reminded me.

Anyone who lives or works in Manhattan has no doubt been across the street from or next door to some building that has been torn down and then been subjected for weeks to endure the all-day jack-hammering down into bedrock.

This unnerving cacophony is necessary so that a developer can replace a four story building that once housed, say artists lofts, with a twenty-eight story high-rise hotel.

The taller the building, the deeper the foundation.

The skeletal system is an amazing structural framework of an interplay of anchoring stabilizing forces and three-dimensional bendable suspension. Anchoring doesn't have to do with pulling in and suspension doesn't have to do with pulling up or lifting.

When the femurs are utilized as  columns with the hip sockets akin to capitals and the feet (with heels expanding back and wide) as pedestals, then it is possible to use this underlying columnar support to gain access to the central core.

People are laboring to support a central structure of the body with no thought to the  footing or foundation below and by trying to lift what is meant to be suspended above. No architect would devise a structure such as this - it could not stand or sustain itself.

Our bodies don't fall over with lack of footing or foundation - our bodies have muscles that have the capacity to hold and grip - but since it is not the inherent function of muscles to hold bones in place, they cannot belie their nature, and they inform us of our faulty notions and usages and get sore or eventually give out.

One of the best ways I have found to pass on the principle of stability accessed through the femur bones being deepened into the hip joints is in a lunge on the Pilates reformer. This acquaints a person with the truth of that the body can be ascertained and efficiently and powerfully utilized as movable architecture.

Watch for a future Pilates Iconoclast posting for a continuation of this body-as-architecture mythology including a video of the Pilates reformer lunge. You'll see still the columnar femurs relating to the Corinthian capital-like hips and the pedestal heels even with one leg forward in the lunge and the other leg extended behind.

You will learn that both femurs need to have an equal deepening relationship to their respective hip joints in order to access and sustain core support for the spine.

Questions? Comments? Subscriptions? (All free!)

Check out the right hand side bar for a link:

Subscribe to Pilates Iconoclast

Comments posted directly to this weblog are so appreciated not only by the author, but as a way to open conversation, and to better inform others!

Thanks so much for reading, considering, commenting.

Tim Driscoll

 

Core Notions

 At Backbone and Wingspan in Midtown Manhattan we are true teachers.

The use of imagery illustrates the vast difference between a trainer or instructor and a teacher. An instructor tells you what to do: this is exertion- oriented.

A teacher provokes a thought process within the person who is being taught through relating relevant or inspiring images -

this is movement-oriented.

A movement teacher gives a physical education through information that is physically experienced but these experiences are initiated, enhanced, and sustained through verbal and visual imagery taken in through thought.

This is the first in a series of postings

inspired by a New York Times article entitled Core Myths and accompanying

Phys Ed column in the "Well" blogs section of The New York Times.

I believe there is a mythology, distinct from the definition of a myth being a false notion, which through potent imagery, can change how people perceive the core, which is both deep and three dimensional.

A very important thing I have realized in relating information about the concept of core to my colleagues and students is relationship. I believe that the muscles do not operate on the spine, nor is the core something comprised solely of muscles. You don't work core muscles to better support the spine; the spine itself is a portion of the core. The muscles and the bones have a relationship to one another that is supportive and which involves depth, direction, and dimension.

The bones of the spine can be directed in and of themselves - they aren't dead weight that has to be put in place or held to be supported.

The bones have an innate buoyancy depending on the body's relationship to the force of gravity which is not meant to be resisted, but to be tapped into and utilized.

The skeleton is a movable architectural (even archetypal) structure, but what gets confusing and eventually debilitating are notions of a straight spine, flat abs, and holding.

No part of the spine is meant to be flattened or straightened  - when you flatten any part of the body, you deprive yourself of length and length is something that creates space.

People have a faulty notion of the spine being straight in the same way people have a notion of a myth being a lie.

Science wants to grant people measurable methods of corrective ways to do things.This betrays self-investigation. Being "told" how to "hold" my spine in place is antithetical to my life experience.

Nothing has changed so much the potentials of the investigation into the depths of my core as reading The Power Of Myth . Of course, Joseph Campbell strains to define myth not as opposed to fact, but as using poetry and metaphor to grant someone an experience that goes beyond something able to be defined by words.  He stated that the new myth makers will write symbolic stories that reconnect man to the planet and to the animals we share the planet with. 

Writing in scientific and anatomical terms is anti-myth. Of course in a society which has been conditioned to perceive myth as the opposite of fact, perceiving holding the spine with core muscles would make sense.

In the next Pilates Iconoclast posting: How deepening the femur bones serves to liberate the lumbar spine, and within this liberation you explore the core as a rooting sensation into the legs.

Thanks so much for reading. Questions, comments, augments, arguments welcomed.

                                                                                                                                    Tim

Also see Core Support in a Search Engine Society

for what the imaginative and hands-on informative support (here at the studio) can grant you to be able to access the deepest abdominal layer, the transversus abdominis. This is the muscle in question in the "Core Myths" New York Times article in which the author of the article poses,

"Is your ab workout hurting your back," and "Can developing your abs hurt your back?"

After reading the article, see what may answer those questions for you in any of the postings here in: Universal Principles of Movement

from the Category: Core

Shin Spinning

At Backbone and Wingspan, in Midtown NYC, Pilates movements are grounded with Universal Principles.

Principles in this series of lessons:

Spin               Space               Volume 

                                                       Outer space

There are images of space that I have seen in which I get a sense of the vastness of the universe. Despite having never actually been in outer space with my body, I believe enough from having perceived images of the cosmos to have a sense of it that affects my mind. I sense a potential for expansion within myself from picturing in my mind the enormity of it all.

  Inner Space

Like the moon or Mars I have also never seen the two bones that make up my lower leg: the tibia and fibula. Knowing the names of those bones makes no matter for our purposes, I just love mentioning the names of those particular bones because tibia and fibula would make very good names for twins - the shin twins.

The shin is one of the easiest places in the body to perceive as flat, and therefore I have discovered the shin area and front of the ankle to be one of the tightest places to the touch. The front of the ankle and the shin are crucially important areas of the body to help someone to release in order for the body to be grounded.

Read more about the import of the relationship between the front of the ankle and shin for your body to be able to access the deep core support for the spine in this post:

Feel the Feet to Get More Core

 

I believe that one of the reasons the shin and front-of-the-ankle area are so tight is because we are told from a very early age to "stand up straight."

I have found that people are generally ungrounded through the feet because the perception of "standing up" makes them lift the weight up from the front of the body, particularly lifting up and pulling back from the front of the foot.

I have noticed when leading people through exercises with the feet, people tend to push from the tendons in the front of the ankle, which diminishes space in the ankle.

Space is necessary for a joint to function.

On a more subtle level what people are doing when they are standing or walking is actually pulling back into the ankle to attempt to move forward and pulling up in an effort to stand up straight.

Remember a big part of these principles being universal is that you find both freedom and strength by being in sync with the aspects of the universe.

Finding liberation from cramped ankles and overworking shins has to do with creating space in the ankle joint, and then putting a spin on the shin to receive a grounding into the earth while at the same time being able to suspend the spine in order to move forward.

Put a spin on your way of thinking!
Your body is a reflection of the earth!

Watch for a continuation of the informative nature of the relationship between the ankle....... and the heel below it, and the shin above it.........

in a future

Universal Principles of Movement

Pilates Iconoclast posting,

inspired by a post in The New York Times "Well" Blog entitled

"How to Fix Bad Ankles."

 Also, please review one of the first posts of Universal Principles:                                                     Footing, 

for a comprehensive "under - standing" (to lead you away from the notion of having to stand up) of the sole, the heel, the arch, the ball, and the toes.

This post focuses on the elements towards creating an expansive foot which grants a pedestal-like support for the ankle to suspend and the shin to spin.

For many years I knew a marvelous osteopath who was my student as well as my physician.

She called the ankle, "the neck of  the foot."

More on that soon. Comments and questions are most welcomed.

                                                                                        Tim

"Power Sitting" Posture Clinic # 2 Recap

 

In Midtown Manhattan at

Backbone and Wingspan

Pilates

CranioSacral Therapy

The Feldenkrais Method

and Physical Therapy

practitioners developed the "Power Sitting" Posture Clinic

to provide movement-oriented exercises and stretches that relay principles of support for practical utilization in posture that serves long periods of sitting that many people endure. 

Our newly developed "Power Sitting" Posture Clinic will be offered on Tuesday, October 27th from 6-7 PM.

Our clinic in July hosted a great group of people interested in really learning the elements of stability that lead to both support and freedom.

I wish here to relate some responses to the feedback questions that a few attendees of the clinic responded to.

I wish to put forth the responses as well as some reflections from myself and the other practitioners as a refresher for those who attended this clinic or the one we had previously in May.

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What is it that attracted you to a clinic named "Power Sitting" Posture?

*  This is how I spend my entire day -

       sitting at my desk or sitting in meetings.

*  The realization that poor posture dictates

       my sitting and standing.

*  I spend way too much time sitting,

     and am always interested in how to improve my posture.

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Karen Donelson, Physical Therapist and The Feldenkrais Method practitioner, voiced the intention underlying the "Power Sitting" Posture clinic:

"I think the strength and difference between our workshops and others is that we are approaching the sitting-at-a-work-station issue from a movement standpoint rather than from a static positioning.

Ergonomics is the study of human use and most medical and ergonomic clinics deal with the passive set up of the individual, and the movement of their inanimate objects (computer, desk, mouse, arm rests, etc.).

With our intended goal of providing information and the experience of the moving and sensing self, our attendees gain useful ideas for being in their work places more comfortably."

The thing to understand here is that posture is not positioning or holding, and that your body adjusts to the needs of your work.

Here Karen works with someone in the studio privately, relating the foot to the pelvis while simultaneously relating the hand and arm to the shoulder girdle.

Participants in the clinic explored this in learning how to move the arms and upper body to reach (imaginatively) towards the phone, or file cabinet, or stack of papers using the pelvis to perform the movements.

As Karen relates: "My component integrates the two ends of the spine into movement. It allows the participants to experience moving from the hip joints instead of from the neck or mid-back." See more about Feldenkrais

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What changes in your body do you feel from the time you arrived to now?

• I feel that I am standing on my feet.
• My neck feels much more relaxed.
• I feel that I have been put through the rigors of a workout and
• I feel more aware and proprioceptive
• I feel taller and straighter
  

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Which of the images related to you during the movements were helpful?

"Breathing through the "gills" - great image"

":

Cathy Ferrara, who teaches Pilates, and is also a Pre and Post Natal Expert, often in her teaching, relates the image of breathing through the sides of the ribs as if the ribs are fish gills .

This image helps people to refrain from too much chest and belly breathing.

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Breathing into the sides of the ribs helps to expand the mid back, so that the muscles there - the lower trapezius and lats can be activated.

These back muscles are very supportive of the spine. A better supported spine means release of the overworked neck and shoulders muscles.

Sitting a long day at your desk, you may not be able to perform a big stretch, but you can certainly take moments to breathe into the sides of the ribs.

Here to the right is a Pilates exercise in which breathing into the ribs is essential so that the arm movement comes from the power of the back and not the shoulders.

                                                           Check out our extensive Pilates Page

Core Support in a Search Engine Society

Search Engine Society

We operate within a phenomenon
someone thought to call a
 world wide web 

(world implies a sphere, a global perspective, a fully-realized creation; wide implies expansive, far-reaching, all-encompassing, embracing;
web implies intricacy, being caught-up, captured)

We search ubiquitously from some enormous ephemeral astounding interconnection of information and imagery.

Our lives are influenced in countess subtle incomprehensible ways through this invisible technology driven largely by something someone thought to call metatags:

brilliantly built-in markers devised to make expedient searches for information and products we expect with immediacy.

If you perform an initial unsatisfying search, then you are given an option to perform another one with a label someone thought to call refined.

These are the terms that are tangled with technology

with easily accepted but estranged meanings:

search, refined, history, refresh.

We've lost touch with the refined inward searches for deep meaning accessed through a forgotten image and story based mythology driven by something someone thought of long before metatags.

Metaphors.

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In our bodies which house a vast storage of wisdom information, you don't access deep support for the spine by performing something as unrefined and unsustainable and undimensional as pulling in something from the front.

You access an inwardly deepening sustainable and refinable support from connecting first to what is below - you root.

I believe there is a mythology (distinct from the definition of a myth being a false notion)

which through potent imagery can change how people perceive the core, which I believe is inclusive of the entire abdominal structure, the musculature directly connected to the lower spine, the lower spine itself, the entire serpentine spine sensed as a vertical line, the pelvic floor, the three lower chakras........

This world wide web technology has literally flattened our perspectives on our bodies, peering for hours into a flat screen searching, surfing, spending -      we are conditioned to an      outside-of-ourselves experience relieving us of (virtual)ly any            inner depth exploration.

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No wonder people think their abs should be flat!

Tell someone the term wrap and they'll most likely think you mean a type of sandwich rather than an encircling ultimately embracing force that literally touches upon our deepest core.

You need a rooting force towards the ground to find a sustainable  suspension of the spine.

Rooting and wrapping go hand in hand as I often put one hand lengthwise under someone's lumbar spine to help direct a rooting force into the stability of the sacrum,

and the other hand width-wise over the abdomen to help the person sense the wrap.

Backbone and Wingspan: Spines in Flight

Pilates at
Backbone and Wingspan's Midtown Manhattan studio focuses on the bones of the back not all of which are the obvious vertebrae that comprise the spine albeit backbone.

 This is a true learning environment. We're here to relay experiential information that can change the way you perceive your body as opposed to giving you a few tips to add to your exercise routine.

Backbone literally implies possessing a sense of the spine but more so it connotes figuratively a feeling of ease and empowerment.

There are several other bones along the backside of the body that serve to support the spinal column and thus give full access to the entire line of spine and grant a true sense of both ease and empowerment -


these other bones along the backside are the scapula, the sit bones, and the sacrum.

The scapula are the wing bones, and dropping into the musculature underneath the scapula (the triceps, the lats, the lower traps) ultimately gives one the sense of being winged.

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell states,

"The serpent bound to the earth, the eagle in spiritual flight - isn't that conflict something we all experience? And then, when they amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings. All over the earth, people recognize these images."

At one revelatory moment in my teaching in relaying to a student that the quality of the spine moving through space is an undulation,  I remembered someone telling me that the spine is a serpentine line.

I put together that serpentine comes from serpent.

I realized without knowing it, I had given my studio a mythological name.




Backbone and Wingspan
is a spine that has the capacity to feel flight.