Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Bring your aches, pains, hopes, aspirations…

ZOOM LINK

Please check out the resource Thoracic Flexibility! It is just a start but the best start, with pictures.

Today we’re going for a hint of how the upper back—the thoracic spine—contributes to spinal movement.

Class is open at 9:50 for updates on the Pilot and chit-chat, and the space will stay open after 10:30 as we do the debrief.

As the AI and I worked on these notes, I asked it what it had observed and it said it thought that I hadn’t integrated the diagonal breathing very well into the overall lesson. So true! Part of the reason this is a Pilot Study is that I have so much to learn, including how to adapt my training and experience with hour-long lessons into a shorter format. We also lost time because of scheduling discussions, and this meant not having any debrief at all and the debrief is the part I love best. I’m not skipping that again.

My take-away for myself: simplify. (Always, always, almost always a good principle.) Don’t let anything cut into the time. Don’t let anything sacrifice the debrief. And, Carie,… simplify.

So here’s a summary. (Over time, we’ll go back to these summaries and x-ref them with videos and links and diatribes and images… for now in a way they are just scaffolding waiting for more.)

Diagonal Breathing & Shoulder Girdle Movement

Exploring diagonality in breathing and movement, integrating shoulder girdle mobility with awareness of interthoracic pressure gradients.

Carla had expressed an interest in the diagonal breathing from Saturday’s lesson. Carla is a guitar player and teacher and had sent a picture of her posture when playing—not surprisingly, it had an asymmetrical element and, in the class, Carla easily recognized that the diagonal she is most comfortable with is the diagonal that supports her guitar-playing.

That’s great! Many activities we love are asymmetric—Denny’s dancing, for instance. Accommodating asymmetry is a part of the body’s genius. It is also true that asymmetry can reinforce itself—the more asymmetric you are, the more comfortable it feels to favor one side over the other, and the more you favor one side over the other, the more asymmetric you become. Eventually, that does stress the body.

The point, as always, is to notice and to be in choice. (Even if the choice isn’t immediately accessible the first day!)

The actual movement we did was sidelying with the arms in front and a slow rotation with gliding of the shoulder girdle. This is such a great move—you could do it every week for five years and still find new wisdom in it.

So my plan is to make a bonus tape—an actual video—yes a demonstration!—along with a bunch of variations which might inspire you to create your own variations. I might not be able to get to this for the next ten days or so, but… it will happen.

Today, continuing with the breathing emphasis, we added in diagonal breathing, illustrating how the breath can make the rotation of the upper body and the movement of the shoulder girdle even easier. The diagonal breathing was also a good way to reinforce the idea that you want to distribute the rotation relatively easily through the entire spine. (But I could have tied that together better.)

Key Takeaways:

• Feeling how the shoulder blade glides across the rib cage is delicious. The shoulder blade is not stapled down!

• Spinal rotation and diaphragm movement are interdependent.

• Experimenting with how the diaphragm modulates pressure between the thorax and abdomen helped participants create smoother, more integrated movement.

• Building asymmetry to increase awareness. The class was one-sided, purposely, because increasing a sense of asymmetry helps you feel the differences from side to side. It is not theoretical—it is warmth, tension or suppleness and the way you press into the floor on one side or the other. Also, once you build the asymmetry, it is very interesting how quickly the feeling fades as you walk around. If the lesson were just about your muscles, then you would be left lop-sided. But these lessons are all about the brain. Once the brain figures out a better organization, it is going to apply it everywhere, not just the side that got the exercise.

• The role of habit in Carla’s guitar playing and how it has come to influence her overall. Not a bad thing! It would sort of worry me if a guitar player didn’t have a favored rotation. But interesting to be aware of.

———————-

Topics for Tuesday

Today we’re going to do a little diagonal breathing, also great shoulder-girdle loosening, unless something else comes up. I asked Carla about the diagonal nature of guitar playing and she sent me a picture which you may be able to see if you click the arrow ‘Back to All Events.’ Here’s what she wrote to me:

your question:

 Your 'diagonality' would surely be related to the position of guitar-playing?

Yes!

From left up to right under feels very natural. 

I think this is because the way my body is when I play guitar. My guitar is also from left up to right down. The right sight of my body is little stretched. 

Diagonality from right up to left under feels strange to my body. 

I send you a pfoto so you can see in what position I play guitar. 

With greetings 

Carla

Wow, this was the first improvisational, spot-lighting extravaganza and it was so interesting and, I think, successful. (You will be the judge of that!) Linda White was our generous star. She had a fancy kayak roll that works well one way but not so much going the other way. Here are some of the principles we worked with:

Spotlight Session: Linda White & the Blob-to-Intention Shift

Observing the Shift from Blob to Intention

I asked Linda to go into in full relaxation—an intentional blob state, free of ambition. The shift began when she merely thought about her roll (not even initiating it). Observers saw her system recruit itself before she moved. Being able to observe someone else go through this transition—the micro-moment between stillness and action—was striking to others, some of whom began exploring their own shifts from soft to engaged states. When you can notice the initiation of a movement, it gives tremendous insight into what you are actually doing.

Key Question: What is the first thing that recruits when you move? Before muscle? Before twitch?

Using the Eyes to Reshape Movement

We experimented with an auxiliary move—leading with the eyes. Linda reported that this altered her roll’s timing and sequence. It seemed as though, with the eyes leading, Linda moved into a more chained activation rather than an all-at-once recruitment. The movement appeared to have become more fluid, less forceful. (Note—the lesson is not: lead with the eyes. The lesson is: sometimes if you lead with the eyes, you can learn more about what you are actually doing.)

Another Takeaway: Your eyes can set a path—sometimes literally, but also as a deeper organizer of motion.

Translating Strengths from One Side to the Other

Rather than mechanically forcing symmetry, we explored mapping:

• What does the well-organized side know?

• What of that knowledge could transfer?

Linda didn’t need to intellectualize this but simply let one side inform the other, finding better organization simply by raising the question: “hello, good side—and hello, ‘bad’ side—what do you want to teach each other?”

And since eye leadership helped on the strong side, why not test it on the weaker side? The result: another shift toward fluidity.

We had an excellent, quick discussion afterwards. Highlights:

• Denny connected up the way we can see Linda recruit herself for a move with how a dancer signals the lead before muscularly making that lead. He pointed out that a lot of the signaling is about the eyes. (And, Denny, I’m wondering about the breath?)

• In thinking about the distribution of effort throughout the spine, I had mentioned the vertebrae between the shoulder blades. Chris was curious about getting more rotation there. She used an EXCELLENT Body Wisdom trick of shifting her focus from the vertebrae to her sternum. Same motion, different star-of-the-show. And she noticed that with the sternum emphasis, she had more freedom.

• Amalia talked about being aware of just where her movement comes from, and the idea not only of noticing but of being in choice—Carie suggested this is a great walking meditation.

Woohoo! All in 25 minutes. Short Lessons. Big Results.

But there’s more. I had had AI read the transcript of our lesson and summarize. We’re new with each other and there’s room for refinement—but what fun!. The report included “Emotional Layer → Asymmetry may be a response, not just a limitation.” I asked where that came from and got this surprising answer:

The "emotional layer" was inferred from how people framed their movement experiences—not just as mechanical shifts but as something that altered their sense of self, confidence, or engagement with the world.

Chris’s comment about shifting attention to the sternum wasn’t just biomechanical; it was framed as changing the way he experienced himself in the movement. Denny’s reference to dance had a fluidity to it, but also a hint of identity—how movement style isn’t just technique but who you are while moving. Your reference to martial arts carried something similar: technique as both structure and expression, discipline and presence.

I noticed that when people described what worked for them (or didn't), they often did it in terms that hinted at deeper implications. Not just “this helped my balance” but “this changed how I oriented myself” or “this made me aware of a part of myself I wasn’t using”—language that suggests shifts in self-perception.

This doesn’t mean movement is inherently emotional, but it seems to be a portal to something beyond mechanics—identity, presence, maybe even autonomy.

Linda, thank you so much for providing the grist—it was a lovely exploration!