Education is More Fundamental Than 'Learning New Things'

Some people confuse teaching or training with education. The difference accounts for the difficulties of public (and private) education and for the potential of somatic education. In this piece, I explain how and why that is so.

TEACHING and TRAINING DISTINGUISHED FROM EDUCATION

Teaching and training involve learning new things about the world or new things to do.

Education is more fundamental than that kind of learning.  The root of the word, education, "e ducare", reveals something.  Those two words mean "to draw out".

Etymology: the Latin words e ducare

the Latin word educare (bring up; train; educate)

derived from the Latin word educere (lead out; draw up; bring up)

derived from the Latin word ducere (to lead; to lead or draw; to lead, dim; to lead, carry; lead, command; think)

derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *deuk- (to lead)

using the Late Latin prefix e-

What is being drawn out?  What is being drawn out are ones faculties of intelligence.  Education is the awakening of our faculties of intelligence).

There are four (and only four) "faculties" (or "integrities") of intelligence that are fundamental.

ATTENTION | INTENTION | MEMORY | IMAGINATION

These four faculties are irreducible and universal -- no exceptions.

From the integrity of those four, all other faculties (such as critical thinking, language skills, aesthetics, etc.) emerge:

Examples:

• attention management
• dedication and regulation of effort (intention) -- to act or to refrain from acting (rest)
• the ability to listen (attention * memory)
• the ability to learn deliberately (intention * memory)
• the ability to deliver communications (imagination * memory * intention delivered to attention)
• the ability to teach (intention * memory * imagination delivered to attention)
• the ability to internalize ideas (primitively expressed as the ability to follow instructions) - (the intention to derive meaning by imagining a meaning, followed by remembering and exercising intention in subsequent action)
• the ability to turn ideas into functional, tangible actualities (intention * memory)
• discernment (you might figure that one out, for yourself)

Notice that these faculties exist independently of subject matter.  They are generalizable and apply to everything.


Education (in the sense of awakening ones basic faculties of intelligence) makes people teachable, able to teach themselves, and able to function at any level of excellence they earn by activating those faculties.

Without education, in this sense, people are hard to teach/train, and those who receive training either (one or more):

• don't learn well
• can't follow instructions
• are incapable of developing beyond their training
• are incapable of adapting what they've learned to new situations
• can't pass on what they've learned to others
• can't instruct others well
• can't tell whether an action adequately embodies an idea
• are knowledgeable incompetents (can talk the talk, but not walk the talk)

Sound familiar?

In public education, common curricula include

• history (faculty:  memorization)
• math (faculty:  abstract reasoning)
• science (faculty:  correlating ideas (theory) with actualities (observable evidence); cause-effect reasoning)
• the arts (faculty:  imagination and the ability to turn internal perceptions into tangible actualities; aesthetic sense)
• languages:  (faculty:  the ability to use or express ourselves in language to carry out our intentions (conscious or subconscious); to use words of language to cast a spell upon the imagination -- a spell that enchants us into remembering what never was; to draw attention to the intuitive heart of things so that a shared intuitive, understanding occurs; to convey by means of language, intentions -- and to comprehend the intentions of another by willingly taking in (remembering) what they are saying and imagining what they mean.
• literature (faculty:  the ability to assume viewpoints other than ones own; listening/comprehending and speaking/writing)
• physical education (faculty:  the ability actually to do what you intend to do or to recognize when you have not done so -- accountability); the ability to capture, stabilize and reinforce, in movement memory, the developments of mind-neuro development as the development of the four faculties continues over a lifetime)
• education in general (faculty:  developing freedom through developing responsibility for ones own faculties)

All skills are derivative from the four basic faculties (or integrities) -- without exception. None stands on their own without all four faculties operating and co-operating.

However, education, in general, seems to have become confused with teaching/training, which is heavily memorization-intensive -- memorizing being only one faculty. Education, in general, seems predominantly an exercise in memory.

The faculties most directly addressed by non-memorization subjects (such as art: imagination) are different from the faculties most directly addressed by memory-intensive subject (history).

In the view of education I propose, here, the subject matter is only the vehicle for awaking the four faculties of intelligence.

I think that educators tacitly hope that the faculties of intelligence of their students will be up to the demands of their subject matter -- but few (if any?) teachers make an effort to directly awaken the four basic faculties of intelligence or to diagnose and remediate deficiencies of those faculties (all of which are doable in an organized and structured way that allows for unexpected emergence of changes).

Unless educators recognize that the subjects they teach are merely vehicles for awakening a person's faculties (actually, for a person to awaken his or her own faculties, which is the only way it can be done), such educators are not educating the basic faculties of their students, in the fundamental sense that I have presented in this writing, but relying upon those faculties being adequately developed so that they can teach a subject and have their students receive it at the level at which it was delivered, to them.

Teaching "subjects" to groups of students whose basic faculties are unevenly and even haphazardly developed (in a proto-educated state) and so who are not necessarily well-prepared to learn, can't receive the material at the level at which it was delivered; it's beyond them. They catch parts and pieces, which they internalize according their capacity, given the uneven and even subconscious development of their basic faculties. They remember rote answers by rote but may not see significances or applications of what they know to situations. They're not "firing evenly on all cylinders".

The inordinate challenges of public education may be traced to the confusion between challenging the capacity of their students' faculties to learn and remember and the awakening of those faculties to begin with.  The latter, awakening those faculties, is primary, preparatory, and ongoing, underlying all the learning of things and ideas, and abilities developed, and mental understanding, and intuitively-informed creativity.

An ordinary person in whom the faculties named are well-developed can more easily be taught (or self-teach), feels and functions better, in general, than one in whom those faculties are more rudimentarily developed. Obvious, right?

NOW, POLITICS

Who Controls Our Children?
(schools dumb down kids deliberately)

(a bit slow getting to the hot topic, so keep listening)

SOMATIC EDUCATION
Psychology is Physiology

For every psychological change that occurs in us, a physiological change also occurs. All subjective experience (psychology) entails active, observable physiological activity. Psycho-physiological activity goes on from moment to moment. The physiological activity does not cause the subjective, psychological experience; it is merely the tangible manifestation of it. Physiological activity is the only way an objective observer can observe the subjective experience of another -- without experiencing it as the experiencer experiences it.

Psycho-Physiology is Mind-Body is Somatic

So, education physiologically changes us, as much as psychologically changes us. Mental development entails physiological changes -- neurological changes, hormonal changes, distress ("stress") index (on a scale of
"1 >to> 1,000.000,000"), brainwave behavior, heart-rate variability, tension-based habitual posture, chronic injury pain -- you get the idea.

See the relation between physiology and psychology? This isn't supposed to be "new information"; it's an announcement of a way of understanding the human condition (and conditioning), better, with a bearing upon our course of action in the education of the human species.

SENSATION AND MOVEMENT
The Mind of Movement

Most basically, the physiological changes that occur, occur at the (sensory-motor) level -- sensation and movement.

We can easily see that fact in the earliest years of school, when students are expected to develop their movement skills (P.E. and writing); just as moving ones lips when one reads indicates ("sub-vocalization") that the mental act of reading activates muscular activity, just as rapid eye movements during sleep correspond to dreaming activity, just so, all thinking involves a play of subtle modifications of muscular tensions, and the ability to think depends upon the adequate awakening and integration of those movements.

To make this point, let me illustrate in a way that you can test for yourself.  I say that you can't count to ten in your mind any faster than you can count to ten out loud.  That means thinking each number as clearly as you would say it.

Test yourself, now.   Do it.

See?

Much is made of the mind, these days, while the body is treated as if it were "meat" to strengthened and stretched, enjoyed or suffered.

The body is fundamental, even to abstract thought. (Think of the role of good nutrition in learning.)

Most people develop only relatively rudimentary movement skills and rudimentary perceptual skills and are of average intelligence.  Artists develop fine movement skills and fine perceptual skills and, lo and behold, artists are generally of higher intelligence.

I'm not saying that higher intelligence leads to finer movement skills.  I'm saying the reverse:  developing finer movement skills and finer perceptual skills raises intelligence.  Well-coordinated movement supports well-organized thinking; poorly coordinated movement suggests poorly organized thinking.  And the kicker:  improving coordination (refining movement) improves thinking.

That's something for you to test.  Here's how.

The field of somatic education (here, the word, education, is used in the sense of this article) develops finer movement skills and finer perceptual skills, faculties that involve changes of brain organization.  The process of somatic education develops the faculties of paying attention, listening and internalizing information, acting with intention, cause-effect reasoning, discernment, aesthetics, and memorization. 

Read the following article, "An Expanded Understanding of The Three Reflexes of Stress" (or listen to the audio), and then test my words.

That will be a hint about something bigger.

VIDEO: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9pxT32uh2w

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lawrence Gold is a certified clinical somatic educator (trained in Hanna somatic education® in 1990) with a clientele who come to him for elimination of chronic pain. He offers a guarantee of satisfaction. Contact him at https://somatics.com/wordpress/contact.

Psoas Muscles | Core Integration | Free Somatic Exercise: The Dolphin, Part I

an action pattern complementary

to those in the program, Free Your Psoas.

https://somatics.convertri.com/psoas-2017-6-13

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.

Freeing Tight Hamstrings

To free tight hamstrings, it's important to understand their four movement functions.

1. leg extension at the hip joint
2. leg flexion at the knee
3. rotation of the lower leg at the knee joint
4. stabilization of the pelvis when bending forward

To free hamstrings, we must free them (gain control of tension and relaxation) in all four movement functions.

If we do not gain (or improve) control in all four movement functions, one or more of those movement habits will dominate control of the other movement(s).

In addition, the hamstrings of one leg work alternately with those of the other -- as in walking; when the hamstrings of one leg are bending or stabilizing the knee, the hamstrings of the other leg are extending or stabilizing the other leg at the hip.   In those movements, the hamstrings coordinate with the hip flexors and psoas muscles.  (Co-contraction of hamstrings and hip flexors/psoas muscles leads to hip joint and ilio-sacral (SI) joint compression.)  So our approach (being movement-based) must take those relationships into account.  Otherwise, we never develop the feeling of free hamstrings in their familiar movements.



LEG EXTENSION AT THE HIP JOINT
That's the "leg backward" movement of walking.  The hamstrings are aided by the gluteal (butt) muscles, but only in a stabilizing capacity.  The major work is done by the hamstrings.  In this movement, the hamstrings, inner and outer, work together in tandem.

LEG FLEXION AT THE KNEE JOINT
That's the "getting ready to kick" movement and also the "pawing the ground" movement.  In these movements, the hamstrings, inner and outer, also work together in tandem (same movement).

To the anatomist and kinesiologist, it may seem incomprehensible ("paradoxical") that the hamstrings are involved in both movements -- leg forward and leg backward -- but that's how it is.   Though the hamstrings are involved in both cases, different movements cause a different feel.

LOWER LEG ROTATION AT THE KNEE
That's the turning movement used in skating and in turning a corner.  In this movement, the inner hamstrings (semi-membranosis and semi-tendinosis) relax and lengthen as the outer hamstring (biceps femoris) tighten to turn toes-out and the inner hamstrings tighten to turn toes-in as the outer hamstring relaxes and lengthens.

STABILIZATION OF THE PELVIS WHEN BENDING FORWARD
The hamstrings anchor the pelvis at the sitbones (ischial tuberosities) deep to the 'smile' creases beneath the buttocks (not the crack), so one can bend forward in a controlled way, instead of flopping forward at the hips like a marionette.  In this movement, the hamstrings coordinate with the front belly muscles (rectus abdominis).

In most people, either the rectus or hamstrings dominates the other in a chronic state of excessive tension, so freeing and coordinating the hamstrings involves coordinating and matching the efforts of the two muscle groups.  When the hamstrings dominate, we see swayback; when the rectus muscles dominate, we see flat ribs.

TRAINING HAMSTRING CONTROL
In training hamstring control, it's convenient to start with the less complicated movement, first.  That's the anchoring movement that stabilizes bowing in a standing position.  (See first video, above.)

After we cultivate control of "in tandem" hamstring movements, we cultivate control of "alternating" hamstring movements.  (See second video, above.)

By cultivating control of "in tandem" and "alternating" movements, we fulfill the requirements of functions (1.), (2.), and (4.).  The exercise linked in the paragraph above indirectly addresses function (3.) (lower leg rotation at the knee).  Other exercises that have this effect exist in the somatic exercise programs, "The Cat Stretch" and "Free Your Psoas", for which previews exist through the preceding links.

Manual manipulation vs. neuromuscular training

A basic understanding of muscle tone recognizes that the seat of control of muscles and movement is not muscles, but the brain, not "muscle memory" but "movement memory", not "posture" but habitual or learned movement patterns of varying degrees of comfort and efficiency.

Lasting changes in muscle tone require movement training at the neurological (i.e., brain) level, something that manual manipulation of muscles accomplishes, at best, slowly, but which can be achieve quickly by somatic education, a discipline that rapidly alters habitual posture, movement, and muscle tone through an internal learning process.

More at

• http://somatics.com and 
• http://somatics.com/pandiculation-instead-of-stretching.htm 

in reference to: What is Neuromuscular Therapy? (view on Google Sidewiki)

Trigger Point Therapy

This writing will interest you if

• You've had unsuccessful trigger point therapy.
• You have chronic muscle tension.
• You have mysterious pains that defy diagnosis.

The "new and entirely different" approach I describe here can dissolve trigger points permanently in minutes, restore your comfort of movement, and make you independent of therapy and therapists.

In this piece, I'll explain what causes trigger points, discuss the common therapeutic approaches used to eradicate trigger points, and present a newly available approach to trigger points that works quickly and decisively where other methods produce slow, partial, or temporary improvements.  Then, I'll show where you can get access to the newly available approach.

TRIGGER POINTS EXPLAINED
Trigger points are pressure points in muscles that are very tight and sufficiently sore to to trigger tension and pain in other muscles linked to them in patterns of coordination.  That's what makes them "trigger" points.  "Patterns of coordination" means complex movements (e.g., walking) that involve multiple muscles.  Simple enough?

The term, "trigger point", was coined by Dr. Janet Travell (physician to President John F. Kennedy, who had chronic back pain from an injury sustained during wartime on the boat, PT-109).  Dr. Travell did a masterful job of mapping out the relation of these points to pain felt at distant points in the body.  However, only in the past twenty years has a clinical approach been available that equalled Dr. Travells insights, and that approach has yet to become mainstream.

TECHNIQUES FOR ERADICATING TRIGGER POINTS
The common techniques for eradicating trigger points are based upon a mechanical view of the body and of muscles.  Muscles with trigger points are considered by therapists to be "stuck" and certain common therapeutic techniques used are said to "break" trigger points, generally by working on the muscles or trigger points, themselves.

This approach to trigger points fails to apply the basic facts of muscular control --  that the center of control of muscle tension (tone) is the brain (not muscles, themselves) -- and that muscle tone is learned and alterable by experience, and that once learned, becomes so automatic that it may seem to be permanently set.  However, it's understandable since, until relatively recently, no effective way existed to apply neurophysiological knowledge about muscular function to a therapeutic approach, and all that was available were more primitive approaches based upon massage techniques and drug therapy.

Common therapeutic approaches to trigger points operate as if the source of muscular tension is the muscle, itself; therapeutic approaches based on this view produce poor and unreliable therapeutic outcomes that lead to the need for repeated therapeutic interventions.

Here's the correct understanding of trigger points:  they are pressure points in habitually tight muscles -- caused to be tight by brain-conditioning (generally from injury or stress).  Trigger points are caused by brain conditioning, not by muscles, themselves.  So, muscles are not "stuck", but responding actively and in the moment to what the brain is telling them to do;  trigger points do not exist as a result of mechanical stuckness of muscles; they exist as habitual states of muscular overactivity.

A therapeutic approach based upon this understanding acts not upon the muscles, themselves, but upon the brain-level conditioning that causes chronic muscle tension and trigger points.  Such an approach produces decisively reliable results that typically do not require repeating.

Let's review the common therapeutic approaches to trigger points.

Therapeutic attempts to eradicate trigger points take two approaches:

1. mechanical pressure
2. injections of salt water (saline solution)

MECHANICAL PRESSURE
Therapists using the "mechanically stuck" model attempt to get trigger points to release by applying manual pressure to trigger points.  The idea is to deprive "triggered" muscles of blood flow, and by so doing, to get the muscles to a state of fatigue, so they let go and lose their trigger points.

Such an approach produces a temporary disappearance of a trigger point.  The trigger point re-appears soon thereafter (much as with ordinary massage) because no change of brain level conditioning has occurred.  (The one advantage of "trigger point therapy" over massage is the recognition of the relation between trigger points and pain at a distance from them.)

SALINE (SALT) SOLUTION INJECTIONS
Injections of this type produce heightened sensation in the involved muscles, which sends a signal to the brain that the muscle is more contracted than it really is.  The brain, which regulates muscle tension "by feel" (sensation), allows muscle tension to decrease to the level or intensity of sensation to which the brain has become accustomed.  At this lower level of tension, trigger points disappear.

For obvious reasons, the results of this approach are also temporary.

Both methods (manual pressure and injections) treat the muscle as the problem and the trigger point as the target of therapy; both overlook the fact that, since the basic function of muscles is to produce movement, a change of how the brain regulates movement is necessary to change how the brain regulates muscle tension.

The answer to trigger points may be an unexpected one, but it's obvious from a moment of consideration:  movement education.  Movement education teaches regulation of muscle tone (tension) and of coordination.

However, most methods of movement education are primitive and inadequate to decrease the conditioned level of muscle tone.  A more sophisticated approach is needed.

That's where somatic education comes in.

WHAT'S "SOMATIC"?  WHY "EDUCATION"?
The term, "somatic", derived from the Greek word, "soma" -- meaning "living body" -- means having to do with the living body, as experienced and controlled from within -- your experience of yourself, as you are to yourself.

"Education" means, "the process of developing our faculties or abilities".

So, "somatic education" means the process of developing our faculties as a living, self-aware embodied person.

Its special meaning, in the context of the discipline of clinical somatic education, has to do with gaining control of our own living processes, those otherwise treated with medicine or therapy.

The meaning of "somatic education" is different from a doctor or therapist "working upon" another or administering some treatment such as a drug, electrical stimulation, or injection, which are the methods of medicine and therapy.

Where trigger points are concerned, somatic education brings about improved self-control or self-regulation of our muscular system and movements.  The practical outcome is alleviation of conditioned (habitual) muscular contractions that create trigger points to begin with through gaining better control of our strength and movement.

THE TECHNIQUE
We learn control of muscles and movement, starting with learning to crawl and creep, stand and walk. 

The techniques of somatic education make use of this natural process of learning and to it, add techniques powerful enough to override and replace conditioning that keeps muscles tight and creates trigger points.   The process occurs far more quickly than the natural learning processes of movement -- and than the therapeutic approaches commonly applied to trigger points.

One of the major techniques involves an action pattern similar to yawning, but applied to varieties of movement and coordination. 

VIDEO

In the clinical techniques, a lasting shift of muscular control and relaxation of muscular tensions occurs in less than one minute, for any movement pattern addressed.  A few repetitions over a period of minutes can restore highly contracted muscles to comfortable, natural rest, comfort, and full strength without the usual methods of manual manipulation, injections, stretching or strengthening -- and the changes are durable and long lasting.

Examples of the clinical techniques can be found on YouTube.com, channel "Lawrence9Gold"; a specific example, used to alleviate back pain, can be seen here.

• GET A HANDLE on what's behind trigger points here.
  
• DISSOLVE YOUR OWN TRIGGER POINTS with somatic exercises: programs
  
• basic program for public use here

From here, nothing remains to be said, except, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lawrence Gold has practiced clinical somatic education and trained new practitioners since 1990. His clientele have presented with a wide range of pain conditions. He offers a money-back satisfaction guarantee. Contact him at https://somatics.com/wordpress/contact.

True and False Teachings about Good Posture

While "good posture" is considered a sign of good movement health, there are true and false teachings about how to achieve it.

The popular view of good posture is that it is something you have to maintain; it's a "good" holding pattern.  The concepts, "neutral spine position" and "alignment", fall into this category.  "Shoulders back, chest up, stomach in" are typical instructions for maintaining good posture.

The popular view and the typical instructions I have described constitutes a false teaching about good posture -- and by false, I mean detrimental.

Here's why:  It adds strain to an already strained muscular system and unnaturally restrains movement.

The common teaching about good posture assumes that good posture is not the natural or free condition and that one must therefore do something to maintain it. This view may seem reasonable and inevitable; "If you don't do something to maintain good posture, you're left with the poor posture you had, already."

But an unrecognized truth underlies this assumption:  Most people are beset by habitual muscular tension patterns that drag them down from good posture, tension patterns of which they are unaware because they are so used to them, tension patterns formed at the time of injuries or of emotional stress (i.e., nervous tension).

In actuality, good posture is the easiest condition to maintain -- if you are free of habitual tension patterns.  If not, then you must do something to counteract those tension patterns, to restore good posture.  That's the condition most people are in.

This assertion may be hard to accept until you have experienced the reality of what happens when you get free of your habitual tension state.

Massage and bodywork typically seek to alleviate habitual tension, but with rare exception, they do not alter a person's postural set because to do so would require a second step:  to develop better coordination.

Coordination is the basis of good movement, good posture, good alignment.

Posture, viewed another way, results from moving into a certain shape and holding it.  It's a function of movement.

Most movements are developed by learning.  So is posture.

The difference is that injuries and stress change movement patterns in lasting ways that are commonly beyond the ability of people to change; these movement patterns persist on automatic.  That's why teachings about posture recommend counter-actions to those movement patterns.

So, what's the answer?  Are we forever destined to poor and worsening posture as we grow older?

The answer is, no.  But what is needed is a way to undo habitual muscular tensions formed by injuries and stress.  "Undo" means to eliminate or reverse, not to counteract them by some sort of opposition or ongoing counter-action (either through "good posture" disciplines or through strengthening of muscles).

Such a way exists.  The discipline of clinical somatic education teaches and employs exactly such a way.

PANDICULATION: The Action of Undoing

All animals with a backbone do a certain action instinctually upon arising from rest, as they become active.  This action, commonly mistaken for stretching, involves a strong muscular contraction followed by a leisurely relaxation; it's called, pandiculation.

"Pandiculation", refreshes the brain's body image and purges accumulated tension. Different animals have different patterns, but all do it in some form.  Birds do it by shrugging their wings back, reaching their legs back, one at a time, and then flapping their wings; cats and dogs do it by first bowing, arching their back, and then shaking.  Humans do it in the natural "yawn and morning stretch" (different in performance from the calf or hamstring stretches athletes do).

Clinical somatic education uses techniques that activate this genetically-present action behavior methodically and in a magnified way to free people from the grip of tension patterns formed by injury and stress. 

In the case of clinical somatic education, we apply the contraction/relaxation behavior to places where the person holds tension; with injuries and stress, these tensions always exist in patterns, so it's not a matter of "releasing muscles", but of releasing entire patterns via movements in those patterns. 

The result is a lasting release of muscular tension.  Then, we teach movement patterns that link muscle groups together in certain inherently well-organized patterns of coordination, to replace less well-organized, unhealthy, painful patterns.  

No longer is the person dragged down from good posture by habitual muscular tension.  (S)he is free to stand and move at her or his full stature and in the easy balance that free and well-coordinated movement permits.

The results of pandiculation distinguish the good posture of freedom from tension from the 'good posture' maintained by pitting one muscle group (used to maintain good posture) from other muscle groups (held tight by the lingering effects of injury and stress).

Easy balance is the natural state, whether at rest or in movement.  Good posture isn't something you maintain; it's nearly effortless, the product of good balance and good coordination.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lawrence Gold is a certified Hanna somatic educator who works to free clients from a variety of pain conditions that often have persisted despite therapy. He is one of the few practitioners who offers a money-back guarantee of satisfaction. Contact him at https://somatics.com/wordpress/contact.

Read a research article on pandiculation.

See examples of pandiculation in videos on YouTube channel "Lawrence9Gold".