Standing on autopilot

Most of us would probably not consider the act of standing to be something particularly special. Nearly everyone we know is able to accomplish this act without any significant problems. Toddlers require time to figure out how to do this, but once they are up on two feet, their parents may occasionally long for the days when they were less mobile. As we age, we may reach a point when we have to admit that our mobility and stability on two legs is not what it once was.

For most of our lives however, we rarely think about just how complex the act of stabilizing and moving on two limbs is. In comparison to walking or running, standing is relatively simple, with far fewer variables to factor in to maintain a stable orientation in space. Even so, while we are standing, our nervous system and the motor cortex at the base of our brain is constantly evaluating the orientation of our body in space and making a multitude of small adjustments to the various muscles of our spinal column and other areas of our body to maintain stability.

This ongoing act of stability is automatic, for the most part, and frees our conscious neurological mental processing to ponder more important tasks, such as where we left our phone or what to buy at the grocery store.

Although this process is automatic, it can contibute to problems. Over decades of using our body in repetitive ways such as:

·      sitting on a wallet

·      regularly crossing our legs

·      using a computer mouse

we can alter the habitual alignment of our limbs with respect to our spinal column and to our torso as a whole. These alterations in structural and postural, alignment can affect how efficiently our autonomic neurological stability-processes function. The more that our foundation (our legs) becomes less stable and inefficient in supporting and stabilizing the mass of our body in space, the more auxilliary muscles that we must recruit to help us to not fall over. Imagine attempting to walk on boat that is rocking or on icy snow The more our arms and shoulders roll forward and hunch with respect to the rest of our torso, the less stable our weight distribution is and the more tension is required in the rest of our body to not fall over. Think of the leaning tower of Pisa.

To remedy this situation, it is necessary to address structural imbalances, particularly in how the limbs are oriented in space with respect to the torso.  It is also important to identify how the body’s mass is supported from the feet up through the top of the head.

At Mandala Awareness, the body is treated as an interrelated system. Different methods can be used to address different parts of the system. Rolfing structural integration can be used to evaluate the structural relationship of a body to gravity in space. Visceral, neural, and vascular manipulation can be used to look at specific anatomical layers of movement in the body, such as across joints of the limbs and the spinal column as a whole. Prajna Yoga can be used to integrate a deeper awareness of how to feel and sustain shifts in alignment through movement and breath. SourcePoint Therapy ties all these structural pieces together through its concept of a Blueprint of Ideal Health. Meditation allows us to settle deeper into new patterns of possibility.