Somatic Education Exercises | potent combinations

In this entry, I present some combinations of somatic exercises that have special potency in changing tension-and-movement patterns -- preceded by a bit of explanation.


EXPLANATION

Anyone practicing somatic education should be familiar with -- and use -- the power of synergy.

"Synergy" isn't some New Age froo-froo concept; it's the way "a whole is more than the sum of its parts" -- it's organization.  It's what makes a system a 'system' and not just a collection of unassembled parts.  It's coordination.  It's integration.  For more on Thomas Hanna's take on coordination, read his book, The Body of  Life.  He also referred to synergy in his published Wave 1 lectures; whether you are a student-in-training or a certified practitioner, if you don't have those lectures or haven't listened to them, get them and listen to them.  They are a major part of his functional legacy and will boost your effectiveness.

Synergy is part of what makes the standard lessons of Hanna somatic education so powerful.  In those lessons, multiple movement elements, e.g., the steps of Lesson 1 / the Green Light Reflex lesson, combine into an overall action pattern. Those movement elements are "the parts"; the action pattern you are addressing -- Landau Reaction, Startle Reflex, or Trauma Reflex in its multifarious forms (see The Handbook of Assisted Pandiculation) -- is the 'whole'.

Piecework -- going straight for the painful location to "get at the problem" right away, is never as effective as dealing with whole patterns, in the long run and often in the short run.  Sometimes, when a client is insistent that we work in the painful region immediately, I'll do it.  I call this form of client placation, "Kiss boo-boo."  But then I get straight away to the overall pattern and I explain to the client, why, if necessary to his or her wholehearted participation in the way I want to proceed with sessions.

By the same token, combining somatic exercises to address a single location is more potent than addressing it with one somatic exercise, only.  Thomas Hanna's comment on afternoon, leading us in somatic kinesiology -- that using more than one somatic exercise to reach a problem region is more potent than using only one exercise (because learning the same thing multiple ways is more potent) -- may have slipped by unnoticed by many, but it's worth noting -- and acting upon.

So here are some collections of somatic exercises that are synergistic in this way.  You'll notice two things.  That I:

1. start with gentler somatic exercise and progress to more demanding ones
2. combine somatic exercises published in different sources

A certain class of somatic educators continually explores for ways to improve his/her own functioning and well-being.  Such people have an advantage over those who go only with the basic material conveyed during training:  they can understand more forms of Sensory-Motor Amnesia (from the inside) and deal effectively with them, unlike those with less-developed somatic competency.

If, in yourself, you can find new and effective somatic exercise patterns, that's best; if not so much, various programs exist that can give you a leg-up.

SOMATIC EXERCISE COMBINATIONS

FREEING SIDEBENDING

1. Myth of Aging Lesson 3
2. Quadratus Lumborum pandiculation (YouTube video / End Your Own Sacro-iliac Pain)
3. Yoga of the Reclining Buddha (Free Yourself from Back Pain)

FREEING UPPER ARM ROTATION with SHOULDER MOVEMENTS

1. "Dishrag" / 4-Way Twist (Myth of Aging Lesson 4)
2. Startle Reflex somatic exercise (YouTube video)
3. Hokey-Pokey Hidey Ho (YouTube Video)

WALKING

1. Myth of Aging Lesson 8
2. The Gyroscopic Walk (YouTube video)
3. The Scottish Geezer's Walk (YouTube video)

POSTERIOR TENSION / PAIN / RESTRICTION | FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT/COORDINATION

1. Hamstrings somatic exercise (video)
2. The Athletes' Prayer for Loose Calves (YouTube video / Free Your Psoas, lesson 9)
3. Spine Waves (The Five-Pointed Star / Quick Help for Back Pain) | arm reach addition
4. The Dolphin 
5.  Freeing the Neck and Shoulders (from The Magic of Somatics, section 2)

SACRAL PAIN

1. Myth of Aging lesson 1
2. Myth of Aging lesson 2
3. Lazy 8s (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 1B)
4. Centering the Sacrum (End Your Own Sacro-iliac Pain)

This is a fairly "minimum" collection of exercises -- enough for you to test to feel their synergy.  People with sacro-iliac pain almost certainly need more -- and I've published an entry that explains why and gives access to a complete regimen here.

NECK ISSUES

1. Myth of Aging, lesson 6
2. Freeing Tight Neck and Shoulders (The Magic of Somatics)
3. Getting Kinks out of Your Neck (The Magic of Somatics)
4. The Yoga of the Reclining Buddha (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 2B)
5. Spine Waves with Arm Reach (The Five-Pointed Star plus YouTube video)
6. The Folding See-saw with Head-turn (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 1C)
7. Myth of Aging, lesson 4 with modification for neck (YouTube video)

 COMPLEMENTARY EXERCISES

1. Myth of Aging, Lesson 2
2. The Dolphin
3. Spine Waves

You notice that this collection of movements is fairly large.  That's because our necks are mobile (and can become restricted) in so many directions. Gotta do it. Neck issues are a big deal (and often involve TMJ issues); a person with pain in the spine, low back or pelvis that doesn't resolve as expected is likely to be tight in the neck, with the distant pains reflexively caused.

That's quite enough to get you started.  If you have the ambition, it's an eye-opener. 

The Basis of Control, the (dis)Continuity of Self, Integrity and Synchonicity

The term, "agency", has a number of different meanings.  Likewise, the term, "communion". I will say some things, about that.

THE MYSTERY OF SYNCHRONICITIES

Synchonicities are a mystery, to many, and integrity is commonly misunderstood to mean, "behaviors socially considered to be 'proper' and 'honorable'".

Let us clarify the airwaves.

AGENCY
A place where people go to find employment.  To be put to work, to take action. A place that deploys people to employment.  A place where a lot of people are employed.  A place where secret agents hang out.  No.

COMMUNION
A religious ritual.  A religious experience.  A feeling of one-ness with (or as) something or everything.  The result of putting attention on something long enough to get an incoming experience. The experience of incoming experience (ATTENDING TO IMAGINING to the point of REMEMBERING for a time).  The experience of a group of individuals sharing a feeling of one-ness.  A flock of priests.  OK.

What happens when you put them together?  What do you get?

Agency*Communion. A commonality-based unity of agencies, a community of agencies, agencies secretly in communion with each other. A Communist Agency! No.

As living beings, we experience agency as the sense of being a doer of things, being responsible for things, but also of being witness to our spontaneous actions; the taker of responsibility (respondent) as well as apparent and seeming initiator of actions that return consequences back to us.

But -- and here's the big question -- how do we know we're doing or being any of those things?

A-hah!

We experience it as incoming experience.  Received Feedback, Information Formation, The  Narratives of Mythic Beliefs, The Transparency of Truth, The Diversion of Fallacy, Characteristic Emotions, The Body Sense, The self-Sense -- all Modes of Communion -- shaped differently at different levels of the being.

There's more than agency; there's also communion.

So.  Back to Earth.

We have incoming sensations and move in ways and at times that are outgoing --  and at other times, coming back "in" -- returning to rest, floating at center (balance) and at no-center (transcendence).

Communion doing the Sensing
Agency Moving Sensibly Between Activity and Rest
Between Activity and Rest

There may exist more or less continuity in the sensing of oneself in movement more or less continuity in the sensing of \ones own state.  Attention wanders and we don't always look where we're going. There's a condition of misdirection.

Also, the senses depend upon memory for us to recognize anything.  Disruption of ones movements and sudden changes of ones state (shock) create a break of identity (amnesia), as memory can't keep up with the intensity of the change or the speed of that change.  The phonograph needle scratches across, leaving a click (or glitch) behind, as experiences leave their mark (memory), in us.

Identity continues to live, moment-by-moment, as a sensing of self and other and the moment-to-moment embedding of ongoing memories -- most of the "embedding" happens in the background -- unless pleasure overwashes us or pain strikes for a time.  Then, we experience heightened awareness -- more or less pleasant or unpleasant, but heightened -- and heightened awareness is like the laser that burns the groove of a phonograph record, CD or DVD.  The brighter and more sharply focussed, the deeper and sharper the impression. Obvious.

In incidents of disruption and discontinuity, a gap or "abyss of unknowing" encloses or encapsulates the memory stream that existed prior to the disruption. It's "saved" and no longer a continuous part of the memory stream forming after it.  This gap of memory or abyss of unknowing separates the newly forming identity from what it was before the disruption.  That's the discontinuity, a disjointed experience.  It's a lump in the gravy of the mind, a scratch across the record of memory, a skipping of CD playback.  We do well to stir in the lump, to smooth the groove, to buff out the scratch.

But to do so requires magnifying the ability to experience communion, to smooth it out so it's fairly steady.  Then, we can apply that ability for communion -- which is the ability to pay attention -- to the trouble left behind by the disjointed discontinuity on the other side of the abyss of unknowing, the gap in memory.

There exist specific ways to do that (the TetraSeed Awakening Invocations). We find the way into the lost, disjointed experience and we integrate it into our integrity.  We get free in it and free of it. It loses it's compulsivity. It becomes vulnerable to changing, available to emerging newness.

We do clean up on ourselves by making the unconscious, conscious, and undergoing the shifts to ourselves that result from making the unconscious, conscious -- the TetraSeed Awakening Invocations being of effective means of doing so.

The more we clean up, the subtler our sensing and the subtler our control.  Also, the clearer our self-signal and the better our ability to home in on the signals of others and the signals of things to come that invade us through incoming imaginaation (but that we may not notice because of our own disjointedness and mental noise).

Also, as we clean up, more power goes into our actions -- with less effort than we're used to -- because, in our integrity, we have wakened intelligence and released our old forms of self to conform to that higher intelligence. We are more congruent, integrated, "laser-like", free of the drag of unintelligent memories formed as the mark of our remembered experience.  This added potency makes necessary "recalibration" of how much intent we apply, in life, (i.e., recalibration of our self-re-control) from time to time, on a ongoing basis.

This recalibration is the ongoing occupation of human proto-mutants, everywhere, who are learning to awaken themselves so that they and their environments develop more intelligently.

This isn't from Outer Space or science fiction. You think it is? I assure you: it's actual and true of a percentage of humans, today -- the leading face of the progressive movement of humanity, often unseen.

Have you heard of synchronicity?  (who hasn't?).

Synchronicity is an unexpected synchronization of events that have recognizable connections of significance.  In other words, they're too blatantly related to be overlooked, but too weird to act upon.  Synchronicities (dreams that foretell, reveries that show up, in life, like the song that goes through your mind and then shows up on the radio -- how often do you hear that song played? or the person you think of, who calls within a day) -- resonant moments in the stream of experience -- more likely to be recognized if the individual isn't already and presently drowning in the background conditioning of consolidated memories, the noise of a mind with an accumulated pile of unresolved business that causes him (or her) to lag behind in his (or her) responsiveness to present circumstances.  For most of humanity, as far as I can see, "fuggeddaboutit".

Still, synchronicities appear in movies, and even in the circumstances surrounding the creation of each movie -- such as the impossibilities that beset of filming the tale, Don Quixote (not "Man of La Mancha" -- a musical) --- and the state of grace that blessed the filming of the film, "Miracle on 34th Street" -- and the unexpected good fortune that "Casablanca", a film of virtue and healing, with a plot twist at the end, emerged as a classic, an outcome not expected by the studio to be particularly noteworthy -- and the weirdnesses that beset the filming of, "The Wizard of Oz".

But I digress.  Not really. Not at all, actually.

Synchronicity.

Agency in Communion with Communion
and Communion Intelligently Informing Agency

There develops a finer clarity of self-expression -- the way agency transforms when in communion with communion, and adapts more easily (though occasionally, it must be admitted, screaming, with feet dragging and fists pounding -- that's humanity in the 21st Century).

There develops a finer clarity in how Communion communicates the situation of reality to Agency.  (Get the metaphor?  No?  Then I'm wrong -- or you're just not aware of that, yet)

Sensation and movement are inner and outer perspectives on the individual (soma - body).

Sensation is Communion.
Movement is Agency.

The correspond to

ATTENTION (COMMUNION)

~ and ~

INTENTION (AGENCY)

Communion:Attention:Sensation  || Agency:Intention:Movement

See how they go together?

Soma is (we are) sentient (sensory attentive and intentionally moving), developmental (faculties emerge), initiatory (pushy),  malleable (omni-adaptive, more or less), and can be observed to undergo changes of tension and intention as experience activates different memory patterns.  You know.  Nervous tension, emotional "reactivity", resistance to change, guilt, offensive defensiveness internal conflict, regret, shame ... (the list goes on an on). You get the idea.

Want better self-awareness and self-expression?  Want greater intelligence? Improve the vehicle of expression -- yourself -- not by adhering to a set of ideals, but by dissolving the drag of confused agency and awakening the full structure of your intelligence, the full spectrum of your faculties.

It's a progressive job that allows synchronicities to happen and be recognized with seemingly increasing frequency. It's a progressive job that increasingly reconciles us to the the mystery of existence and the intuition of non-existence. It's a progressive job that relieves us of the marks of experience and integrates our continuity with that, about which we had lost intelligence. It's development of higher integrity.

The TetraSeed Awakening Invocations are potent, in that regard.

SEE
The Immortal Harold Somaman -- What Keeps Him Going?
There's a connection. Wonder about it.

The Gold Key Release
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copyright 2017 Lawrence Gold

Somatic Ethics

There is a way about somatic education that can be seen as a kind of ethic or approach to life.  By that same token, there is a way of seeing how the way someone participates in somatic education is the way they participate in life.

For one thing, we're dealing with matters of relationship, where relationship isn't a static thing like an abstract concept, but a dynamic of play -- how we do things.

For our first example, let's take the case of how a somatic educator may conduct a session of somatic education with someone.  In general, our way is to observe and understand, from within, the predicament of our client.  We may look at him or her standing full length, and by observing the stance of that person, replicate its feeling in ourselves.  There's a feel to what we see.  We kind of get inside you like a hand in a glove and, aided by our theoretical understanding of the behavior of the three major reflexes of stress and our recognition of interconnected movement patterns, we discern what's going on in you.  Of course, we cross-verify those findings with your history of injuries, palpation (manual assessment)  and your current sensations.

So, here's the first ethic:  We get information from both inside and outside, in feeling and in understanding.

Having done that, we choose and guide you into the easiest, most accessible, and generally, most direct route into what you're already doing habitually.  We have you make it more.  To do so, you must first recognize it as something you can do -- and then do it.  So, we guide you, we direct you, into replicating elements of the action you are habitually doing (differentiation) then guide you into assembling all those elements into an integrated pattern -- the more integrated and complete, the better.  You go in; you come out.  You learn the path into and the path out-of.  We help you find it.

You see what I mean about relationship, yet?  There's are patterns in us formed by the physical, emotional, mental and intuitive stresses of experience, patterns of remembered tension in our musculature and arrested-but-held impulses to action.  We guide you to awaken to what each one is -- and generally, no sooner has that awakening occurred then you are already at least partially, if not largely, out of that pattern.  It happens before you know it, actually (although we feel it).  Then we have you move about so that you can feel what's changed.  Then we do some more.

Into . . . . . out of

The Rule of Thumb, here, is "Whatever they are doing 'wrong', have them do it MORE, and then less -- alternately.  Imagine the liberation.  "Destination -- Jello" -- but Jello with an attitude!

Now, I suppose there are various ways of going into and out of -- some of which look like going around the problem.  So there are degrees of relationship -- degrees of directness -- degrees of relevance -- degrees of comprehensiveness.  See?

Now, consider that language:  relationship, directness, relevance, comprehensiveness.  Those four terms are sufficient to define an ethic.

Relationship | Directness | Relevance | Comprehensiveness

Here's where some variation can creep in.  An additional "point on a continuum" is "more and less", "consistent and inconsistent".

"More or less" may be more or less force, more or less speed, more or less intensity, more or less subtlety.

"Consistent and inconsistent" are terms having to do with times and occurrences and also with changes of rules.

Do we change the rules in the middle of the game or do we change the rules between games?

In the case of somatic education, since we are showing a person how to go into and come out-of, some consistency is "desirable".  We want to make enough of an imprint in a person's memory that they can find it at will, and then they have also found the way out.  In general, "The way it goes in is the way it comes out - and "The way it comes out is the way it goes in."

That's a high-speed strategy because it makes the greatest imprint with the least effort.  Another ethic:  A case of "get more result with even less effort".  Targeted, rhythmic repetition helps a bit.

That kind of high-speed strategy makes even lesser efforts cumulatively effective.

But of course, the point is to get the result -- not to reduce effort.
Another ethic:  The way to conserve effort is to get the result very efficiently -- at least as efficiently, and perhaps even more subtly than by less focussed, less specific, less intent, less attentive efforts.

Those are just of few of the ethics we may see in the process of somatic education.

I have observed other variations on ethics among clients.

COMMON ETHICS

There are some interesting ones.  I gave them names.

• The Cooperative Helper
• The Wooden Man
• Half-Hearted Participation
• The Really Hard Worker
• It's Over Before It's Really Over
• "Doesn't Know When to Quit"
• All-or-Nothing
• Criss Cross

Cooperative Helpers go right along with you but never really relax at the core: they've learned to be in control in your groove -- they-re very cooperative -- but if they get into anticipating too much, they get jumpy and never relax.

The Wooden Man appears, to others, to change slowly, if at all, but he reports how much change he is feeling.  This is a really sensitive individual because (s)he feels so much change when so little is happening.

Half-Hearted Participants don't really put much into it.  They don't "ramp up" enough really to engage.  You've got to ask them.  Repeatedly. They may say one thing and do another -- or promise something and not do what they say.

The Really Hard Worker on the other hand, never quits!  (S)he springs into action, sometimes ahead of you so it's a little like reigning in a horse.  Thoroughbred.  Jumpy.  A bit high strung.  Tends to hurt him or herself by excessive effort or by never taking rest.  We repeatedly have to remind him or her to use less effort and to go more slowly.  Be more leisurely.

It's Over Before It's Really Over is the person who, somewhere near the middle or three quarters through a movement, suddenly gives way and quits.  Understand, this is a movement for which the person set the effort-force level to begin with -- and (s)he gives way, feeling overpowered by someone who matched her example at the beginning!  Misconstruing that she is resisting being overpowered by them, rather than they that are respectfully resisting her, she feels overpowered.  Pacing, follow-through -- and recognition of responsibility -- are the teaching, here.

Doesn't Know When to Quit never takes a vacation.  This is a person who is a bit slow to enter the relaxation from a "movement into tension" and a bit slow to relax faster.  Even after a move to complete relaxation, this person also springs into action at a moment's notice -- even when you want him to relax and have said so.  It's a learning thing.  We take such a person down in stages, having him/her use progressively less effort with each repetition.  We sneak up on the relaxation state.  (Shhhhhhhhh.)

All or Nothing -- such a person in a high-powered sports car would be dangerous.  (S)he knows only "all on" and "all off".  It's "pedal to the metal" or "hit the brakes!"  Fitful.  Sudden.  Not much gradation of control.  Can you imagine?   Workaholics.  Such people may look forceful, but tend to cave in a bit more suddenly than you might expect.  They just need practice floating in the mid-range of things -- the so-called "Middle Way" -- which is not mediocrity or "centered balance", but variable, floating self-regulation with capacity for the extremes.

and Chris Cross -- this is a very interesting person.  Confuses right and left.  Ask him to lift his left arm and he lifts his right, for a moment.  Sometimes a long moment.  You ask him to look right, he looks left, for a moment, then looks right.  Catches himself.  Feels dumb.  This typically happens with new, non-habitual movements.  Here's the news:  four (4) out of five (5) people do this a few times during a session.  It's very confusing for the person when I bring it to his attention -- and it is for that eventuality that the sayings, "the other right" and "the other left" were framed.  This is a person who means to do one thing and does the opposite.  Which can be handy -- if we're engaged in learning the way in and the way out.  But also amusing.

Anyhow, you can see that these types together define a kind of ethic and more types could be added to make a more complex ethic.

But let's look again at what we have, here.

• The Cooperative Helper MEETS Chris Cross
• The Half-Hearted Participant MEETS Wooden Man
• All-or-Nothing : It's Over Before It's Really Over
• The Really Hard Worker : "Doesn't Know When to Quit" 

Looks like we've defined some ethics, here, doesn' it?

Here's the last somersault:  We contrast/relate the sets of ethics:

• The Cooperative Helper MEETS Chris Cross   |   Directness OF Relationship  
• All-or-Nothing : It's Over Before It's Really Over   |   Staying Related
• The Really Hard Worker : "Doesn't Know When to Quit"    |   Getting More with Less
• Half-Hearted Participants MEET Wooden Men    |   Focus with Consistency

http://somatics.com/somusic/Angels_in_Winter.MP3

We get information from both inside and outside, 

in feeling and in understanding.

It goes "Inside-out" and comes "Outside-In".

Somatics has an inside.

Fun, huh?

The Gyroscopic Walk

The Gyroscopic Walk is a form of "super-walking" -- a high-efficiency walking pattern that gives you more walking speed at less effort and that integrates your whole-body movements so you feel more free in movement, better balanced and better put together.

The Gyroscopic Walk is very good to do after any other somatic exercise or after a clinical somatic education session, to rapidly integrate (absorb and reinforce) the improvements in physical comfort and movement.

Walking is a peerless organizer. -- Ida P. Rolf

The four people who attended my training day, "Trauma Lesson Calibration and Pandiculation Extravaganza", saw me demonstrate and then learned and practiced a walking pattern I call, The Gyroscopic Walk (which I first called, "The Magnetic Walk").

This walk integrates beautifully with Thomas Hanna's walking lesson in his "Myth of Aging" program (lesson 8, in his book, Somatics) and with my program, Superwalking.

The Gyroscopic Walk efficiently conserves and recycles the kinetic (movement) energy of walking in a way that increases walking speed with the same amount of walking effort -- or -- that reduces the effort of  walking at any speed.

My students of that training day learned the basic pattern of that walk in a four-step process:

1. See.
2. Prepare yourself.
3. Do.
4. Refine.

The basic pattern of The Gyroscopic Walk involves arm movements (while walking ) of a stylized kind.  You keep the palms of your hands facing your hip joints while your arms swing forward and backward.  The motion involves a swiveling motion of your forearms.  Try it; you'll understand.

The movement of your arms swinging with your palms continuously facing your hip joints produces a sensation in the hands and arms of containing and moving a mass around a central point -- which is, of course, is what sets up a gyroscopic force. With a bicycle, the gyroscopic force of the wheels keeps us up; in walking, it keeps us balanced as we pivot around our "spinal axis". In both cases, gyroscopic force conserves and recycles kinetic energy (movement).

Now, there are three developments of the Gyroscopic Walk, maybe more, that come after this one.

NOTE:  Click here for an audio overview of, and instruction in, these and more developments.

Here's the first:
bouncing that 'ball of mass' contained in the palms of the hands forward and backward with each step

As your arms swing, you keep your palms facing your hip joints; your forearms turn forward and backward with each step. 

You contain or restrain your forward-backward arm movement (reduce the amount of swing), while maintaining your walking speed, enough that you can feel the force transmitted to your legs.  That's the experience of recycling kinetic energy. 

Your walk will spontaneously accelerate with the same amount of effort as before and you'll feel your feet anchor to the ground, better.

Another is
exploring the Gyroscopic Walk at different speeds 

There's something to be discovered, there.  I need not say more.

and a Third is
adjusting the location of twist you feel in your trunk up or down.

You do this action by feel, once you have understood and can do the basic Gyrosopic Walk.

a Fourth is
alternating Gyroscopic and ordinary walking

Do the Gyroscopic Walk only until you can feel the force transmitted to your legs, then revert to ordinary walking.  We're talking a few seconds, here.  You repeat the action many times. 

You'll feel things connect and relax in a new way, leading to smoother, more powerful walking.

And there are more -- but I think that's quite enough to chew on, for now.

Lawrence

PS:  Oh, here's an afterthought ..... just a little happenstance one.  Listen:  We can use the Gyroscopic Walk, when alternated with the Scottish Geezer's walk, to re-set our idling speed and to tune up our walking movements, whole-bodily.

Just in case you don't know what I mean by, 'idling speed':  the higher the idling speed in an automobile, the faster the engine turns over, when stopped at a traffic light; the higher the "idling speed" of a person, the higher the tension level -- also known as "stress level", when supposedly at rest. Another term for "stress level" is "state of readiness for anything," a state of "being somewhat wound up".

The two walking patterns, the Gyroscopic Walk and the Old Scottish Geezer's walk are, in a sense, opposite and complementary; when you alternate between them, they provide contracting sensations that heighten perception and the ability to relax.

We can use the Gyroscopic Walk, when combined with the Old Scottish Geezer's walk, to re-set our idling speed so that we can explore and find the "idling speed" and/or "tone" we like best.

The "tuning up your walking, whole-bodily" part is something for which you need satisfactory experience with the Gyroscopic Walk to understand this discussion.

PPS:  I wrote this message for Hanna somatic educator colleagues and clients with experience.

If you are not a Hanna somatic educator, these words may be "helpful":  To do the Gyroscopic walk, you must already be free and well-coordinated enough to get into a movement rhythm; stiff places and pains interfere, so if you're stiff, get some somatic education to get free.

EMERGENCY BACK SELF-CARE | FIRST AID FOR BACK PAIN | SOMATICS.COM

If you have back pain, then the first thing to consider is that you don't "have" back pain; back pain "has you" in its grip. That way of describing it would seem to be more true to your experience, wouldn't it? This video, below, shows how you can get control of the back pain that has you in its grip and then get rid of it, while recovering the comfortable and secure use of your back.

Although some people believe that standard procedures are "time-tested" and inherently more reliable, in this case, the opposite is true. Faster, more complete, and longer-lasting relief can be obtained with a less invasive, "high-touch" procedure that hits "the mark" than by standard procedures that miss "the mark". What is "the mark"? What to do, right now? 

This video shows what you can do to relieve your own back pain and restore freedom of movement. The procedure has helped thousands of people who have already had back surgery or other invasive procedures.

For a clear understanding of a new, more effective approach to back pain than stretching, strengthening, adjustments or massage, please see this page.

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