To discuss each of these symptoms, we will have to discuss a little bit of anatomy.
This simplified explanation obviously does not discuss the various muscles of jaw movement individually -- but you'll get a basic, clear understanding.
Earache
The jaw joints -- the TMJs or temporo-mandibular joints -- exist just in front of the ears. The excessive compression caused by chronically tight jaw muscles causes pain in just that location, which triggers muscular contractions in the muscles surrounding the ears. The net result -- muscle and joint pain.
Tinnitus / Tinnitis
Tinnitus is "ringing in the ears." Compression of the TMJs induces or increases tinnitus. One explanation is that the muscles of the middle ears, which attach to and tune the resonant frequency of the three sound-transmitting bones of the middle ears (hammer, anvil and stapes), reflexively tighten with jaw tension. You may have noticed that, while you yawn, your hearing fades. That indicates the reflexive connection.
Jaw Joint Pain on One Side
As I said, earlier, most dental trauma occurs on one side. The trauma reflex triggers muscular contractions -- and pain -- on that side.
Orofacial PainThe trauma reflex triggers muscular contractions -- and pain -- in the muscles of the face.
Bite Deviations
Uneven muscular contractions alter jaw movement and bite.
Inability to Open the Jaws Fully
Since those muscles are constantly held reflexively in contraction, they limit how far the jaws can open.
Bruxism / Teeth Grinding
Jaw clenching and grinding are the behaviors of tight jaw muscles. Nocturnal bruxism may be associated with speech and emotion during dreaming. Just as rapid eye movement (REM) during dreaming is a recognized phenomenon, the muscles of speech also move during dream-speech. Combined with hightened jaw tension, such movements could account for nocturnal bruxism. This is a point of reasoning, not of empirical studies -- but it does make sense.
Headaches
One set of muscles of biting -- the temporalis muscles -- connect from the sides of the jaws to the sides of the head, near and behind the temples. When tight, these muscles compress the bones of the head, producing headache at the sides of the head. Other muscles, the suboccipital muscles that connect the rear of the head to the neck, reflexively tighten with mouth-opening movements and may become conditioned to a heightened state of tension that goes with the heightened effort needed to open jaws held tight by muscles of biting. Tension headaches at the forehead and in the eyes result from such tension.
The jaws have connections both above and below. The muscles below go to the neck. When tight muscles above the jaws displace movement from center, the muscles below tighten reflexively, pulling the head, which weighs about twelve pounds, off-center, causing muscle fatigue and pain in the neck.
Spine Pain
When the weight of the head gets displaced off-center, the muscles of the spine tighten as part of the counter-balancing act. Fatigue and pain result.
Postural Changes
Patterns of reflexive tension thus to all the way from the jaws down the spine and throughout the trunk, changing posture and movement.
Ida Rolf wrote that the characteristic of a well-integrated body is a sense of lift.
What does that mean?
This post contrasts the effort to be erect with no-effort to be erect and in so doing, debunks misconceptions about good posture.
The Myth of Spinal Curves
Yes, the spine has four natural curves. However, the significance of those curves isn't that the spine has them, but that the spine can have them. The curves change with movement and general tension level. What makes the curves change is muscle tension in the spinal muscles, which pull on the vertebrae and change their positions, and in the legs, which pull on the pelvis and change spinal curvature at the connection of spine-to-pelvis, above.
Here's the thing: Your spine consists of vertebrae that are not square, but trapezoidal (except for one: L4, which is "square" -- meaning that the upper and lower surfaces are parallel). "Trapezoidal" means that the upper and lower surfaces have different slopes. It is the meeting of the upper and lower sloped surfaces of neighboring vertebrae that gives the spine its curves -- but those slopes are separated by discs that have a certain elasticity, so the curves change with movement. So, the myth is that the spine has a certain amount of curve or that their is a "normal" amount of curve. Curve, in a healthy person, changes from moment to moment; only in an unhealthy person are the curves fixated.
Now, even though the spine has curves, the spine can feel straight. That happens when the upper and lower surfaces of neighboring vertebrae meet squarely, and that happens when the spinal muscular tensions are balanced to arrange them that way and to make that arrangement the "home" position to which a person naturally returns in movement.
The feeling is of being effortlessly supported, balanced, and uplifted -- poised. In the literature of Tibetan Yoga, the description is of the spine "feeling like a stack of coins" -- a description that applies to sitting or standing positions, but not to action. So, the description has that limitation and in any case, these words can't mean much of anything to you unless you've experienced the feeling, so we have to leave it at that.
Now, here's an oddity of human beings: In order to feel strong or supported, people adopt efforts or various kinds. We tend to think we have to.
What happens, then, is that spinal muscles contract, pull on vertebrae, shorten the spine by compressing discs, and change the alignment away from effortless support or equilibrium.
In that way, people substitute "strength" for balance.
So, whereas a person whose back muscles are balanced feels supported and balanced from within, the person whose back muscles are tight feels "strong" -- at the expense of that sense of support, balance or effortless lift. They also feel tired, sore, and stiff.
People are endlessly trying to conform to various ideas and standards, and in so doing, they are adding stress to themselves, to their back muscles, and sacrificing balance, effortless support, and lift.
People are also endlessly experiencing stress, anxiety, guilt or shame (variations of cowering), all of which trigger the muscles of the front to tighten and the spine to bow forward. In order to counter that condition of cowering, people must tighten their backs, and counter cowering with "indomitable will" or "self-righteousness".
That condition (co-contraction of front and back), shortens the spine, literally compresses discs, and robs people of their sense of support, of equilibrium, of lift; their spine is not fully erect. We're left with pressure and stress, the experiences of "indomitable will" and "self-righteousness", which we may take as inevitable, right, or necessary.
It's clear that back pain is as much psychological as it is physical. Both aspects must be addressed for a fully erect spine -- for a person to stand at full stature, which is to say, feeling supported, balanced, and uplifted. It is also clear that departures from "good alignment" or good posture are as much a matter of misguided effort evident as muscular tensions as of objectively observable misalignments and their clinical consequences.
Although the psychological aspect I've noted above must be addressed on its own terms, the residual effects of stress and back tension can be dispeled. For more information on that topic, please see
The Diamond Penetration Maneuver is a way to get more done with less effortand less time, in clinical sessions of Hanna somatic education® and with somatic education exercises. The maneuver enhances (or potentizes) pandiculation ("The Omni-yawn") technique).
In this entry, you also have instruction for Emotional SuperPandiculation, a technique for freeing emotions. Negative emotions are always states of contraction, actual contraction, of the musculature.However, they're organized differently than common movements, so you use a slight difference of technique, given below. You can use the same technique to dissolve pains that you don't know how to move, to re-create.
Onward.
In his original instruction to us, his students of his 1990 Clinical Somatic Education training, Thomas Hanna showed us how to use The Pandicular Response to free people from the grip of The Landau Reaction, which tightens the back/posterior side of the body and, when excessively activated for long periods of time, causes back pain, sciatica, tight shoulders and tension headaches.
In Lesson One (Green Light lesson) for Landau Reaction, he showed us how to coach our client through a Whole-body yawn (pandicular maneuver), beginning with a lifting action of one leg and its opposite shoulder, arm and hand, and head, as in the video, below -- to lower them by stages in steps of relaxation, with a mini-in-breath with each mini-lift . . . . . before lowering some more.
I have found that "staged" or "stepped" relaxation can be made more powerful by a technique that I have named, "The Diamond Penetration Technique" (or SuperPandiculation). The reason I have named it The Diamond Penetration Technique (like drilling through rock with a diamond bit) will become clear to you once you start doing it.
For now, I say that SuperPandiculation uses The Power of Recognition, as I have described it in the linked article, "Attention is a Catalyst", to amplify pandiculation, or any other therapeutic or educational technique, for that matter.
Assisted Pandiculation is accelerated learning, and learning involves memory recognition development. Learning, Memory recognition, function and development are four development stages of a single function. There's one more.
Memory -- the ground function, memory -- persistence of pattern, memory
Learning -- modification of the ground function into a durable pattern of memory
Recognition -- the closely approximate match of some memory with an experience happening now
Function -- initiation of action, memory activated and applied to this moment
Integration -- facility to move freely and functionally among different remembered patterns
Evolution -- expansion of attention beyond both memory and the moment -- the space of emergence of newness, for patterns newly emerging into the moment, to be remembered into existence.
Take the starting initials of each, and you get MLRFIE! Well, so much for acronyms.
THE 'INSIDE' OF THE LANDAU REACTION PANDICULATION PATTERN
Here's the "inside" of that maneuver: The lifting action produces a sensation. By re-lifting after lowering part way, the client re-locates the sensation of lifting (contracting the muscles of lifting the leg). To re-locate the sensation activates the power of recognition, which is central to all learning. (No recognition -- no learning.)
That's the central principle of The Diamond Penetration Technique. I give detailed instructions, below.
Hereare the advantages of using The Diamond Penetration Technique. It:
rapidly penetrates Sensory-Motor Amnesia
rapidly awakens sensory awareness and motor control that has never been awake, before (penetrates Sensory-Motor Obliviousness)
speeds integration of multiple "movement elements" into a single coordinated action
increases the result of a single pandiculation -- control and relaxation
decreases the number of repetitions needed for pandiculation to get the desired result
shortens the time needed to get a good result from a somatic exercise lesson
Obviously, these benefits are interrelated and useful when working to transform yourself.
I have elaborated that principle into a very powerful technique, "Diamond Penetration" or SuperPandiculation. Very powerful. Clinical practitioners can apply this technique to assisted pandiculation maneuvers; clients can apply it to somatic education exercises and to free-form pandiculations you may do to work out pains or restrictions for which no somatic education exercise currently exists.
I have developed several increasingly powerful variations of The Diamond Penetration Technique, which I outline, here.
"The Quick Return"
"The Quick Return and Sustained Hold"
"The Two-Movement-Element Combination"
"Twos and Threes"
"The Diamond Pattern"
"The Multi-Movement-Element Combination Sequence"
As you can see, these variations increase in complexity. The way to learn them is to do them, not to memorize them as instructions. Learn only one at a time to full proficiency before undertaking any others.
Now the instruction. I'm going to spread things out in detail, so stay with me.
The Quick Return
Repetition is basic to recognition.
In The Quick Return, we contract into movement and feel the sensation of the end-point of movement ("where we end up in the movement"), then relax part-way for an instant, then re-contract and re-locate the exact same sensation.
Contract and feel what's tight.
Relax part-way.
Re-contract to feel the exact same thing.
That's a Quick Return. It activates The Power of Recognition (familiarity, or memory). We might call each repetition "a pulse of sensation."
An example from Lesson One of the Myth of Aging program would be,
"Lie on your belly, head turned, with your thumb in front of your nose, your hand flat on the surface. Lift your elbow to the limit. Feel what that feels like in your neck and shoulder.
Now lower it a bit, and immediately lift again. Find the exact same sensation at the same place and intensity. That's called, 'a Quick Return'. Remember that for use, as we go along."
"Mini Quick Returns"
During the relaxation phase of pandiculation, you can do many "mini" Quick Returns on the way to complete relaxation.
PRINCIPLE
It takes two incidents or occasions to activate memory; prior to that, it's just sensory awareness or cognition -- no recognition. In fact, without recognition, something happening is identical to nothing happening; we don't know what it is, other than that it's "something but we don't really know what", which makes the experience somewhat evanescent.
Now, the thing that makes one occurrence different from two occurrences of the same thing is the contrast between "happening" and "not happening". "Not happening" has to separate the two occurrences. That's the principle, "Somas perceive by contrast," or "Somas can perceive only changes." In somatic education practice, the common contrast is between activity and rest -- which is why I instruct clients, "Come to complete rest between repetitions." Without "not happening", there's only one long incident.
The Quick Return and Sustained Hold
We know that for a sensation to emerge, and for attention to steady on a sensation, takes time. Quick things escape our noticing.
So, after the Quick Return, we sustain the action ("sustained hold") to let it "fade into view". Attention steadies in and on the sensation. The sensation becomes more vivid.
To apply a sustained hold, you first do a series of Quick Returns (however many) then hold the final Quick Return; during that holding time, remember the pattern and tempo of the Quick Returns that got you there, i.e., brought you into this holding pattern. Then, you slowly relax, taking time at least equal to the amount of time it to to do all of the Quick Returns . . . . . or longer . . . . to complete relaxation.
Thus, you
first sense and do the movement and a number of quick returns
hold the final quick-return, then
remember the movement (counting out the same tempo) while holding the contraction, then
back out (ease out) of the movement slowly and deliberately to complete rest.
You come to know the beginning of the movement, its middle, and its end -- initiating it, sustaining it, and letting it go.
How useful do you think that might be for learning to occur?
The instruction would be:
"Do a Quick Return and hold. Now, slowly relax."
PRINCIPLE
Experience takes time.
Sustain the hold for the total amount of time it took to do all the Quick Returns. For two Quick Returns (three movements into position), sustain the hold for a "count" of three -- equal to the time it took to contract and then do two Quick Returns -- then relax during a count of three. (That doesn't mean, "Relax and then count to three." It means, "Take a count of three to go from contracted to relaxed.")
Comparing Memory to Actual Action
Integrating the flesh-body and the subtle-body (mind).
Having done a Quick Return and Hold, you now remember the sensation of movement (while holding the contraction)and then do another quick-return to compare the sensation of doing the action to the memory of doing the action. Are they the same? If not, keep making new memories until they match.
You might then repeat the movement and compare to memory until the movement and the memory closely match.
PRINCIPLE
Memory is the root of action.
HIGHER INTEGRATION
While sustaining contraction, create a memory of the feeling. You have two things going, now:
doing the action
creating a memory that matches the feeling of the action
STILL HIGHER INTEGRATION
With each act of creating a memory, scan yourself for any sensation you may have missed, in earlier repetitions, and include it in the memory. Compare your memory to the sensation of the action.
STILL HIGHER INTEGRATION
While sustaining an action, scan the rest of you for any effort that doesn't directly help the action, and relax it (usual result: elongation).
Emotional SuperPandiculation
This is an opportune time to tell you about Emotional SuperPandiculation. You use Emotional SuperPandiculation to free yourself of any painful
emotions associated with your condition (or any negative emotion, altogether). To do that, identify any emotion
that you have present and do
the Diamond Penetration Technique with it,
with the following subsitutions.
Instead of doing a movement, merely put
your attention on the present emotion.
Instead
of relaxing out of
contraction, merely release your attention
from the present emotion
(while, as appropriate, retaining attention on
the memory of it).
Instead
of releasing the memory of the sensation of
contraction, merely release the memory of the
emotion.
Repeat with a
single emotion until
you've released it. Then address
whatever emotions remain
the same way.
The Two-Movement-Element Combination
Coordination develops when we combine two actions ("movement elements") into one.
In the Green Light lesson, we lift the elbow-hand-head-shoulder with the opposite-side leg, as in the video. Those are the two movement elements.
Using the Quick Return, the instruction could be:
"With your hand flat on the surface, lift your elbow to the limit. Now do a Quick Return (relax and re-contract) and hold.
Now, lift your straight leg. Now lower it a bit, and do a Quick Return.
Now, do a Quick Return of both, together." (combination Quick Return)
When doing the Quick Return of both, together, the movements should be synchronized to start and end together. That develops coordination (integration).
HIGHER INTEGRATION
I have discovered another kind of "three part action" that rapidly integrates two movement elements. It goes beyond The Equalization Technique.
It goes like this.
Do a Quick Return of the first movement element and hold.
Do a Quick Return of the second movement element and hold.
Both movement elements are now active. Now, integrate them with each other in a three-part maneuver:
Pulse the first movement element to firm up the second movement element.
You'll feel it. If you don't feel it, you've partially lost the second movement element. Bring it back and pulse the first movement element, again, until you feel it make the second movement element stronger.
Pulse the second movement element to firm up the first movement element.
Pulse the first movement element to firm up the second movement element.
You've now forged a better connection between the two movement elements. That's the other kind of "three" maneuver, an integration maneuver.
You can use this "three" maneuver with any two synergistic movements of any somatic exercise ("synergistic" means that the two movements help each other).
Twos and Threes
Now, we get a bit more sophisticated.
Once you or a client have done a combination Quick Return, you're in a position to do two Quick Returns. That makes for, not two quick experiences of the same thing, but three -- the first action and the two Quick Returns.
If that's confusing, lie on your belly with your thumb by your nose and do two Quick Returns. You'll see it creates the same sensation three times. Just do it.
Here's the thing: If, with a single movement, you alternate between one Quick Return (to complete relaxation) and two Quick Returns, you alternate creating two experiences of a sensation with creating three experiences. That's a contrast, in itselfand it keeps attention fresh.
When done as a combination Quick Return, it's a very powerful way of creating learning that causes a series of internal shifts of sensory-motor organization.
The instruction could be:
Lift your elbow. Now do a Quick Return and hold.
Lift your leg. Now do a Quick Return and hold.
(two movements at the same time)
Now, do two combination Quick Returns (a "three"). Relax completely.
Now, do one combination Quick Return (a "two"). Relax completely.
Alternate doing two and doing one. Continue until you get better coordinated.
PRINCIPLE
Changes of patterns awaken the Power of Recognitionand trigger learning.
Do (some action, such as lifting the elbow) and hold. Now, relax completely.
Do one Quick Return (2 experiences of a sensation) and hold. Now, relax completely.
Now, do two Quick Returns (3 experiences of a sensation) and hold. Now, relax completely.
Now, do three Quick Returns (4 experiences of a sensation) and hold. Now, relax completely.
Now, do two Quick Returns (3 experiences of a sensation) and hold. Now, relax completely.
Now, do one Quick Return (2 experiences of the sensation) and hold. Now, relax completely.
Now, do the action without a Quick Return (1 experience of the sensation). Hold before relaxing to complete rest.
The experience "backs a person out of contraction" and gets them able to feel more and more with less and less stimulation.
To see the value, try it with any movement or combination.
PRINCIPLE
Bucky Fuller pointed out that four incidents or occasions of an event were the minimum needed to recognize a stable pattern.
It goes like this: one incident or occasion:
internal experience: "Something has happened."
(capture of attention)
two incidents or occasions of the same thing:
internal experience: "This seems familiar."
(recognition)
three incidents or occasions of the same thing:
internal experience: "There seems to be consistency."
(building upon recognition - "There is something to learn, here")
four or more incidents or occasions of the same thing:
internal experience: "There's a consistent pattern, here."
(development of knowledge)
Test this out in yourself through introspection.
APPLICATION
The Diamond Penetration Techniquecan be applied to single movements, to simpler somatic exercise lessons (e.g., those of "The Cat Stretch" or "The New Seated Refreshment Exercises"), to more complex somatic exercises that involve as many as seven movement elements in combination (e.g., "Free Yourself from Back Pain" or "The Five-Pointed Star"), or to inherent action patterns such as those of walking ("SuperWalking"), twisting, or wriggling.
This technique lends itself to The Equalization Technique, discussed in The Evolution of Clinical Somatic Education Techniques. In a combination Quick Return, match (by feel) the effort of one movement to the effort of the others; equalize them. Read the article.
The Multi-Movement-Element Combination Sequence
In general, it goes like this:
Do a Quick Return of the first movement element, and hold.
Do a Quick Return of the second movement element, and hold.
Do two combination Quick Returns of the two movement elements, and hold.
Do a Quick Return of the third movement element.
Do two combination Quick Returns of the three movement elements (with Equalization Technique).
Do a Quick Return of the fourth movement element (if there is one).
Do two combination Quick Returns of the four movement elements (with Equalization Technique).
Keep adding movement elements that fit together (synergistically) until they are all assembled into one Grand Coordinated Movement.
You can do Mini-Quick-Returns with the entire movement pattern, through the relaxation phase to complete rest.
Calibrating Memory (Subtle Body) to Sensation (Dense Physical Body)
Having done any of the variations, above, you can end a sequence by alternating a single quick returnwith a moment of rest (or a moment of holding the contraction), during which you remember (or imagine) and compare what you just felt with what you remembered.
You alternate a single quick return with remembering/imagining until your memory matches the experience very closely.
Then, you do a final contraction, hold and remember, then relax very, very slowly.
When the memory matches the experience, you have integrated your subtle and dense physical bodies. Relaxing at that point enables you to come out of contraction much more completely than otherwise.
Special Relaxation Patterns
This section is meaningful to people who are working with an exercise pattern that involves combining two movement elements at the same time into a larger movement pattern.
PRINCIPLE
We perceive by means of contrast; we correct things by making a comparison. We gain control by means of the memory of action combined with the memory of sensation.
SUMMARY
Each pulse of movement creates a sensation that you locate as your "target" for Quick Return.
In each repetition of a pulse, you locate the identical sensation in the identical location.
In combination Quick Returns, you locate the identical feeling of the whole movement each time you do the combination movement.
Each pattern of repetitions (2's, 3's, "diamond pattern") magnifies the Power of Recognition.
I know this is complex. That's why you start simply, at the beginning. Internalize each level of complexity until you have it all under your belt.
Then, teach your clients to their capacity, but not beyond. If they "lose it", coach them until they've mastered what you've covered, before going further.
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)
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)
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?
(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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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.
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:
See.
Prepare yourself.
Do.
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.
To free tight hamstrings, it's important to understand their four movement functions.
leg extension at the hip joint
leg flexion at the knee
rotation of the lower leg at the knee joint
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.
