"I was indeed suffering from a delusion that
is practically universal, the delusion that because we are able to do what
we "will go to" in acts that are habitual and involve familiar sensory
experiences, we shall be equally successful in doing what we "will to do"
in acts which are contrary to our habit and therefore involve sensory
experiences that are unfamiliar."
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It is most helpful to do these experiments with
a friend. If you don't have a friend handy, you may find using a mirror
helpful. Even more helpful would be an arrangement of mirrors so that you
can see yourself from the front and sides at the same
time.
Where is your head?
Do you know where the top
of your spine is? The bottom of your head rests on the top of your spine.
Think about that for a moment, and then put a finger on your neck at the
level you think is the top of your spine. Where is your finger? Some
people think the top of their spine is at the level of their collar. Some
people think it is at the level of the bottom of their ear lobe.
How To Locate the Top of Your Spine
Stick your
fingers in your ears. Very delicately tilt your head forward and back
about a centimeter or less. Notice where that moving is happening. The top
of your spine is at the middle of the bottom of your skull, between your
ears and behind your nose. Is that where you thought it was? *
So
now, as you sit there and read this, with your fingers still in your ears,
gently tighten the muscles in the back of your neck and see what happens
to your head. Stop tightening them, and see what happens. Play around with
that for a while. Notice that as you tighten the muscles in the back of
your neck, your head tends to drop back and down from the top of your
spine. As you stop tightening the muscles in your neck, your head tends to
move forward and up from the top of your spine. Why does your head move
back and down? Because you tightened muscles in your neck. Why does your
head move forward and up? Because you've stopped tightening those muscles
in your neck. (You can take your fingers out of your ears
now).
Why Should I Care Where My Head Is?
Because of
a simple fact which is true for all animals with a head and a spine
(that's us!): the poise of your head on the top of your spine determines
the quality of your coordination--the quality of how you move. Another way
of saying that is: the relationship of your whole head to your whole body
determines the quality of your coordination. Your head naturally balances
easily on the top of your spine, and we are naturally wonderfully well
coordinated--unless we interfere with that coordination (and assuming
normal physiology, with no trauma pre, during or post birth). When we
interfere with the natural balance of our head we dis-coordinate
ourselves.
So, How Do We Interfere With That Balance?
How do we go from being well coordinated to poorly coordinated? We
start by unnecessarily tightening the muscles in our neck. Try this
experiment. Sit comfortably in a simple, straight backed chair. Move your
arms around and notice how they feel. Now, while continuing to move your
arms, tighten the muscles in the back of your neck very gently and let
your head drop back and down from the top of your spine. How do your arms
feel now as you move them?
Now stop tightening the muscles in your
neck. Did your head move? Did your arms start to feel different? If you
aren't sure, try the experiment again. Let your head drop even farther
back and down from the top of your spine as you move your
arms.
What do you notice?
Now stop tightening the muscles in
your neck. What do you notice now?
(You can stop moving your arms
now).
If this experiment went for you as it does for most people,
your arms probably began to feel uncomfortable when you tightened your
neck, perhaps heavier and harder to move. You may also have felt
discomfort in your neck. Hopefully, when you stopped tightening your neck,
your arms felt better, and somewhat easier to move. So, why did your arms
feel uncomfortable? What caused it? YOU did, by tightening your neck. What
caused them to feel better? YOU did, by stopping tightening your
neck.
We have been talking so far about the muscles in the back of
your neck. You have muscles in the front of your neck also. Many, perhaps
most people when they dis-coordinate themselves, tend to over tighten the
muscles in the back of their neck. Some people tend to over tighten
muscles in the front of their neck, and some people do both! If you would
like to make the experiment, try tightening the muscles in the front of
your neck, and see what happens.
What About From the Neck
Down?
Let's try another experiment. Sit in your chair, and
gently tighten the muscles in the back of your neck so your head starts to
drop back and down. (If you need to remember where the top of your spine
is, put your fingers in your ears as you drop your head back and down).
Continue doing this, continue some more, and notice both what happens to
your body and the quality with which you are moving.
What did you
notice? Most people notice that they go into a "slump." How did you get
there?
You know how you started to get there, because you know
that you tightened muscles in the back of your neck to begin pulling your
head back and down from the top of your spine. What happened next? Were
you aware that you also had to tighten muscles in your body to continue
"slumping?"
To many people, when they "slump" it doesn't usually
feel as if they are tightening muscles to do it. It usually feels like
something they would call "relaxing," especially if they slump after
"standing up straight" for a long time, or working hard.
Does your
slump feel "relaxed" to you? Do you like sitting there slumped? Or is it
beginning to feel uncomfortable? (Remember, you should still be sitting
there slumped!) Most people don't like sitting slumped for very
long.
So How Do I Stop Slumping?
Many people would
tell you to "Sit up straight." They would tell you to DO something to stop
slumping. So let's try that. As you sit there, slumped, "sit up straight,"
and notice what you do to "sit up straight." Notice two things: what
direction you are moving in, and what quality you are moving with.
Note that "direction" means pathway: what path did you take to get
from point A ("slumping") to point B ("sitting up straight")? "Quality"
means how you might describe how you move: is it easy, comfortable, tense,
unfamiliar, light, heavy, etc.
How comfortable is your "sitting up
straight?" Could you "sit up straight" for a long period of time and be
comfortable? Could you "sit up straight" on a bench without a back for
several minutes to an hour, and feel comfortable and free from pain?
Most people are uncomfortable "sitting up straight" for very long.
If you are uncomfortable, let yourself go down again into a slump, but as
you do it, notice how you are moving--in what direction you move to slump,
and with what quality you are moving. Notice especially what you do with
your whole head in relation to the rest of you.
Remember that we
are talking about your WHOLE head. Many of us think of our heads as
everything from the ears forward. This makes some sense, because we seem
to do so much with that part of our heads: see, smell, taste, hear. But
our whole head (which encloses the brain we need to see, smell, taste and
hear with!) is much bigger. If you are not sure, put one hand on the back
of your head (where you might put both hands if you are lying on your back
and wanted to put your hands under your head) and the index finger of your
other hand in one ear. Now tighten the muscles in the back of your neck,
and pull your head back and down. Do you notice how your whole head is
moving?
So, there you are, slumping. Did you notice how you got
there? If not, let's experiment some more. Start where you are (you should
be still slumping)and "sit up straight." Do it slowly enough that you can
notice what direction you are moving in, and what quality you are moving
with.
What did you notice?
Did you start moving with a
nice, easy quality? Did you continue with that quality, or at some point
did you start tightening muscles? Did you notice if your head moved first,
or if another part of you moved first? If you are not sure what you did,
here's an easy way to find out. First go into a slump. Now, think about
your idea of "sitting up straight." Now go ahead and "sit up straight,"
but after you feel you are "up straight," consciously "do more" of
"sitting up straight." What direction did you move in? What quality did
you move with? Were you aware of what muscles you tightened to do more of
"sitting up straight?" Most people tighten muscles in their back to "sit
up straight." Did you? If you aren't sure, repeat the experiment,
observing until you have an idea of what you do to "sit up straight." If
you are not sure what you are doing with your head when you try to "sit up
straight," put your fingers in your ears again as you move.
A
Different Way to Stop Slumping
So now you've learned something
about how you slump, and what you do to "sit up straight." But you still
have a problem: You don't want to slump, but "sitting up straight" in your
usual way isn't comfortable either. What can you do?
First, do you
remember how you got into your slump in the first place? You got into your
slump by tightening muscles in your neck and body. You DID something to
slump. So what makes more sense: to stop slumping by DOING something else
to "sit up straight" or to stop doing what you did in the first place to
slump?
Let's do another experiment, to clarify this concept. Hold
up one index finger. Place your other hand, palm down, on top of your
index finger. Push down.
What happened?
You probably
observed that your index finger bent, felt pushed down, or in some way
distorted. Now take your hand off.
What happened?
Your
finger should have returned to its original condition.
Why did you
finger "bend?" Because you pushed on it. Why did it stop bending? Because
you stopped pushing on it.
Why did you slump? Because you pushed on
yourself, by tightening muscles in your neck and body. How can you stop
slumping? By stopping pushing on yourself.
By now we hope you will
agree that it makes more sense to stop slumping by stopping doing what you
did to slump in the first place. So, how do you stop? Remember what you
did to slump? You began by tightening muscles in your neck, and continued
into your slump by tightening muscles in your body. So now to get out of
your slump, you want to stop this tightening.
Begin with the
relationship of your whole head to your whole body. While you are sitting
there, slumped, think about allowing the muscles in your neck to relax.
Allowing your muscles to relax does NOT mean that you DO something to them
to relax them; it means only that you stop tightening them. You will have
to think very clearly that you are stopping some muscular activity that
you do not want. (Here especially is where a friend or a mirror can help
you, to be an outside eye for you, and notice if you are stopping
tightening the muscles in your neck, or if you are doing something more
trying to relax them). Allowing your muscles to relax (which means you
stop tightening them) will probably feel like you are doing "nothing." In
fact, you may not notice any change at first (which is why it is helpful
to experiment with a friend, who can report what they see). At this point,
many people will be tempted to "do" something so that they can feel
something, so that they "know" they "have relaxed" the muscles in their
neck. RESIST THIS TEMPTATION! If you try to do "more" you will only
tighten your muscles, which is the opposite of what you want. So, go back
to your thinking, and very delicately, with the smallest thought you can
make, think about allowing your neck to relax.
As you begin to
stop tightening the muscles in your neck, your head will begin to move
delicately forward and up from the top of your spine. (If you're not sure,
put your fingers in your ears again while you do this). At first, it will
be a very little bit forward. That's fine. Just notice the delicate ease
with which you are moving, and allow it to continue. You will probably
find that as your head moves just a little bit easily forward and up from
the top of your spine, your whole body will begin to follow easily that
upward direction. Again, it probably will only be a little bit at first.
Again, this is fine. Pay attention to the quality of your thinking, and
the quality of your moving. Let your thinking and moving be as easy and
delicate as they can be.
When to Stop
How "far" can
you go with this new thinking? Eventually very "far" indeed. For now,
however, it is most important to make a small, beginning change, and be
happy with that. If you try to do too much (see Pitfalls), you will, in fact, be
"doing" too much, when what you want is to "undo" what you don't need to
do in the first place. So when to stop is after you have done a little bit
of this new thinking, especially if you have noticed a nice change, and
especially if you want "more" of that change. Although most people do not
want to believe it, it is true: you will succeed far more quickly, and
with far fewer frustrations and disappointments if you do a little bit of
clear experimenting and thinking, observing, experimenting, and thinking,
and then STOP, than if you try to do "more." So:
TAKE LOTS OF BREAKS!!!
Especially if you do feel yourself becoming
uncomfortable or stiff, then REALLY take a break. Go read a book, get into
another world, call your mom or brother or a friend, go for a walk, and
only notice the scenery, feed the cat, whatever. Take a
break!
Continuing to Begin
You now have some
information that will make it easier for you to change how you move. You
have also done some experimenting with one particular activity, sitting.
You can now make this same experiment with any activity you choose.
So, pick some activity to do. Wait a moment, and organize
yourself. Notice what you are doing with your whole head in relation to
your whole body. As you did with the "slumping/sitting up straight"
experiment, think about letting your neck be free. Think about letting
your whole head move ever so delicately forward and up from the top of
your spine. Remember, you are only THINKING, you are not doing something
to make changes. Notice what is happening with your body. Continue all
this thinking as you go into the activity.
What did you notice?
Were you able to continue your new thinking as you picked up the pencil,
or scratched your nose? Did you remember where the top of your spine was?
If you got part way through, and realized you had stopped thinking in this
new way, that's fine. It is a new way of thinking, a new skill, and like
any new skill requires practice.
For now, from time to time, take
a moment to pause before you begin an activity, and organize yourself.
Think about your neck, think about your head, think about your whole self
being easy and free as you begin the activity. Notice what you notice,
have fun, and see what you learn.
*If you look at a picture of
a skull and spine in an anatomy book, noticing where the ear holes are,
you will see that the top of your spine is actually a little bit lower
than your ears. However, FUNCTIONALLY, and in terms of the balance of the
whole of your head on the top of your spine, you will find the most
freedom and ease of moving if you think of your head moving from a point
between your ears and behind your nose.
Please let us know how your experiments
turn out. Contact us at the TPS Post Office.
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