As the main tortoise of Tortoise Slow Fitness, I am ever and always interested in discovering new ways of thinking about conscious movement.
Recently I participated in a continuing-education seminar called "(Re)Defining the Core," presented by David Lemke, a fitness expert from Austin, Texas, through Cross Country Education.
I found some Tortoise food for thought there. Two morsels:
(1) The human body is not symmetrical, and David posits that physical and psychological stress tends to take a body into its fetal position of comfort, wrapping around the assymetrical arrangement of the organs. "When the going gets tough, the Tough want Mommy," says David.
(2) As we go through life, we humans employ lazy habits of posture and movement while unconsciously giving over to the positional effects of stress. As a result, we lose "muscle inventory." The neurological response to long-term disuse of a given muscle is to "forget" it, so we lose strength along with joint range of motion.
In the practice of conscious movement, one thing that happens is that we begin to remind our nervous system how to engage "lost" muscles of posture and movement, with the possibility of restoring and maintaining balance, fluidity, and stature.
Recently I participated in a continuing-education seminar called "(Re)Defining the Core," presented by David Lemke, a fitness expert from Austin, Texas, through Cross Country Education.
I found some Tortoise food for thought there. Two morsels:
(1) The human body is not symmetrical, and David posits that physical and psychological stress tends to take a body into its fetal position of comfort, wrapping around the assymetrical arrangement of the organs. "When the going gets tough, the Tough want Mommy," says David.
(2) As we go through life, we humans employ lazy habits of posture and movement while unconsciously giving over to the positional effects of stress. As a result, we lose "muscle inventory." The neurological response to long-term disuse of a given muscle is to "forget" it, so we lose strength along with joint range of motion.
In the practice of conscious movement, one thing that happens is that we begin to remind our nervous system how to engage "lost" muscles of posture and movement, with the possibility of restoring and maintaining balance, fluidity, and stature.