a practice
for anyone interested:
my (almost daily) physical self-practice (inspired by the “check-in” of one of my mentors, Christopher Sritharan)
I begin by asking my body a question or starting from a place of curiosity surrounding something I feel in my physical form. this could be muscle “tightness”, a feeling of stuck energy or holding in my body, or it could be pain. when these are not present, I often start in my body where I am naturally called and go from there.
I then gently explore movement around this area with a saturated level of attention and focus in order to determine if any movement may not be initiating from its natural origin or otherwise recruiting assistance from other places in my body. this is a skill I have been developing for the last five years (and will for the rest of my life). it was very hard to sense or feel this level of detail in the beginning, but I sense at a much higher resolution now and suspect ever more fine-tuned perception will grow with time.
I gently see if I can refine the movement down to its origin using felt perception of soft and hard tissues (i.e. can my hip flex from rectus femoris, can my ankle invert from tibialis posterior or anterior, can my fingers flex and extend, etc., etc.). when it can refine, I stay with that and reassess the whole again. when it cannot, I make a note and if I have time look around at what else could be inhibiting the area. I check and check again when I remember to.
I also layer my knowledge of biomechanics, yoga, fascial connections, etc. over what I find, but I do not think any of these structures are necessary to feel or sense in this kind of practice, they only sometimes help to make sense of what I feel. (and sometimes they get in the way of making sense of what I feel too!)
I seek out and stay with places that are “holding” or not moving well. I try not to force things along, but it is a tendency I have had for a long time as a trained mover, and perhaps because of other aspects of my personality and history… and the propensity to force is still something I work a lot on letting go of. :-)
the propensity to “find the answer” is also something I grapple with a lot and have spent a lot of time unraveling in myself. there is a lot more to let go of. :-)
I breathe with myself in the places where I am able. I notice how the breath does or does not change something.
I explore ideas and try things out, often hitting dead ends, occasionally making discoveries and sometimes checking references to see if I can find what I feel in the vast written literature of western medical anatomy/physiology, biomechanics and also yoga and Chinese medicine. sometimes I get lost, sometimes I get frustrated. I got lost and frustrated a lot in the first years but I find somewhat less of this now.
over time, I look back and see how much I now feel and know about myself that I simply did not in 20 prior years of movement training. I see how much trust I have built inside myself in this process of starting from “not knowing”.
I am heartened and inspired to continue another day.
