Concluding the Posture-Movement Education
Today is the seventh day in a row that we will be talking about movement principles that I learned from my mentor, Dr. R. Grant Ramey. Before I move on to the 7th principle, let’s have a quick review of all the six principles we discussed this week.
- Principle #1: Learn how to get comfortable featured on Day 41
- Principle #2: Move the whole body with comfort featured on Day 42
- Principle #3: Embody the Somatic Experience You Feel featured on Day 43
- Principle #4: The body moves 3-dimensionally and not in straight lines featured on Day 44
- Principle #5: Form first featured on Day 45
- Principle #6: Overstrained postures appear in everything you do featured on Day 46
How Does it Feel?
So here is movement principle # 7: Connect your feelings to your movements. Embody the rhythms of life.
Nobody should tell you if a particular position is right or wrong for you. Like, here’s how you should lift, or here’s how you should sit at a desk. Of course, if you’re in movement education study, you should absorb the instruction but you need to try it and feel it before you accept it. And you should be able to feel the difference.
It’s none of anyone’s business when it comes to your feelings!
-David Allan Wellness
Your feelings determine your state of comfort and it’s time to get connected with them for maximum benefit. The answers to your feelings don’t originate outside of yourself. Only you know how you feel and that determines how you use and move your body. Since it always takes a certain amount of strain to do anything, our goal is to minimize the effort and maximize our power.
Let The Comfort Scale Determine Your Experience
Ah labels… good posture; bad posture, correct posture; incorrect posture. Drop the labels and adopt the comfort scale. To determine if any movement is less stressful or more stressful for you, we have come up with an imaginary comfort scale to measure the comfort and discomfort associated with any movement. This scale is a number line graph from 1 to 10, where 10 equals maximum strain (and thus, discomfort) and 1 equals minimum strain (and therefore, comfort).
With this grading on the comfort scale, you can quickly assess how your body is feeling. It helps you to determine how you are feeling in a given position or regarding a specific movement. This awareness and observation connect your feeling with the movements and will keep you present to the time that is now…
The Present: Always the most important time of the day and why they call it the present.
