Hi Students,
Following is a lesson for you to explore during your day. Look at the previous post to learn how to register for the More Ways to Improve Your Posture workshop, on March 23! Sign up before March 2nd to get the early bird special and to ensure your space.
During this lesson move gently without forcing or stretching. Focus on how you do the movement as well as on how you return each time. After each movement sit back in your chair and rest before going to the next one. Let your curiosity guide you. Add any variations that you can think of, to this mini-lesson. Have fun and enjoy this exploration! ~Donna
1) Sit at the edge of your chair so you are not touching the back of it. Place your feet underneath your knees so there is a 90 degree angle in your hips and knees. Place your right hand on top of your head and very gently move your right elbow and head to the right so your right ear moves toward your right shoulder and return. Make sure that when you do this movement that your head and eyes stay facing towards the front of the room.
2) Repeat the same movement (#1), and this time notice what kind of shape you make with your spine. Is the shape more like the letter “c” or the letter “r” when you move to the right? Make it more like the “c” ; then like the “r”. Sense how you move differently to do this. Which one feels easier to create?
3) Repeat the same movement (#1), and notice this time when you side bend to the right, which sit bone gets more weight? When you make the letter “c” with your spine does a different sit bone get more weighted then when you make the letter “r”?
4) This time place a folded towel or garden pad underneath your left sit bone. Sit and feel that your left sit bone is now higher than the right sit bone. From this starting position gently lift the right sit bone off the table and then place it back down. Which foot helps you to do that? Keep your whole foot on the floor as you do this movement.
5) Repeat the same movement (#4), and notice if your spine is making a letter. Is it more like the letter “L”; or a tilted “I”; or the letter “c”? Does your head move to the left or to the right or does in stay in the middle? Purposely create the tilted “I” and sense where your head moves. Now create the “L” and sense your head placement. Lastly make the letter “c” and follow the path of your head in space.
6) Start this movement with you right hand on top of your head and the elbow out to the side, and with a towel underneath your left sit bone. At the same moment you move your head and elbow to the right, lift the right sit bone off the table. Can you create a letter “c” in your spine moving from both ends of yourself? Gently and slowly explore this movement distributing the “c” curve throughout your vertebral column more and more evenly.
7) Do the first movement (#1), and feel what has changed. Repeat all the movements on the other side and notice if it is easier or harder on the left side.