A simple quick exercise , working with a physioball.
This is a short, one-take video walking you through some useful things I like to do on a physioball. I’m doing it quickly and posting it in the spirit of “perfect is the enemy of adequate.”
This comes out of and has applications for the artsport of contact improvisation, but I find it good for the body and mind generally. Working on the body, we work on the mind and working with the mind is essential for some kinds of work on the body. Especially if you are someone who spends a lot of time looking at a computer screen, a few minutes of this per day will probably be fantastic for your back, sense of alignment, breathing, and nerves. At least it does that for me and others I’ve suggested it to.
The gross level movements are incredibly simple. I don’t need to explain deeply and can just show that. Just doing it on a gross level is likely going to be useful. First, I’ll just demonstrate on that level. Then, I’ll walk through the subtle things that I am doing within that gross level movement. That’s actually for me the main thing.
I’m going to work with a 50cm diameter ball. They come a bit larger and smaller, and you may choose one to fit your size, how open your back is already, and other things you want to do with it. For what I have in mind, I want something that is just around the limits of my ability to have my feet on the ground while I reach my hands to the floor. A bit larger than that is also fun, to go back and forth between hands and feet.
What if you fall or lose control? You should already be somewhat comfortable with falling and rolling on the floor. If you are worried about it, work on a softer floor and/or use a smaller diameter ball. It is good actually to practice falling as you get more dynamic.
First, the first, gross level is quite simple.
I lay down backwards across the ball with my feet on the floor. Opening my arms out to the side. I’ll relax here for a moment, letting my head drop backwards and letting the arms drop more to the sides, so I get a nice opening stretch across the chest. I’ll move around a bit and particularly try to look around and see the world upside down as I move about. I’ll also take some time until my breath settles down and becomes easy. … at least a few breaths.
From here, I’ll leave my head back and let my pelvis fold, so I roll into a squat, laying across the ball. I’ll go back and forth a few times, working the pelvic crease and keeping the back relaxed into the support of the ball.
Next, I go to the side, reaching a hand toward the floor. Importantly, I am leaving the opposite hand stretched out in the direction that I came from. In some contexts, people call this a “space hold”. The idea is that we have a kind of out-of-place stabilizing response to go into primary flexion, where we are trying to “hold onto something”. Here, I think about holding onto the space for stability. It’s just an image to help me relax into balancing across the ball while I move. I’ll do this from one side to the other. Importantly, I am always keeping my neck relaxed and head dropped, again, relaxing into and feeling the support of the ball as I move. I’ll look around and stay visually oriented while at the same time trying to feel my whole body and where it is in space. I also try to keep breathing, so the ribs are still moving with the breath and I am not locking the torso in any way.
Next, I’ll stay on top of the ball, but roll myself to the side. I give myself a nice side stretch. I go again through the back to the other side, relaxing the neck and dropping the head throughout. Again, I am trying to relax so I don’t go into primary flexion while moving. I stay visually oriented and keep breathing full and easy.
Finally, I push toward my hands and then back to a squat, folding the pelvis. I’ll do this back and forth a few times, leaving the head behind. If it’s comfortable, you can start to easily take your feet a bit off the floor and maybe even fold them up over your torso as you are on your hands. Keep your feet relaxed. Think about going directly into a little ball with your legs and pelvis, rather than swinging your feet high into the air. I find that this more works on loosening up the pelvis and is more likely to keep you balanced. Part of the trick then is to leave your head behind as you go toward your feet, particularly if you feel yourself not quite getting to your feet. Rather than trying to force it, just reach further with your feet and let gravity do the work in its time. There is a tendency to try to “force it”, but this usually involves primary flexion as a kind of “fear response”, and this does the exact opposite, often throwing you out of control off the ball. Back and forth feet to hands to feet to hands. Breathe. Open the chest and neck, drop the head.
Finish by going to a squat and rolling yourself off the ball. See how you feel. How do you feel different?
Next level is what I am doing subtly inside of the gross level movement. Really I’ve already said this, but I am now putting it another way and emphasizing it… the relaxing work.
As I am spread out across the ball, again, I take time for my breath to normalize and to relax. I try to really drop the arms as I reach them out to the sides seeing in each moment if I might let go of more holding that is keeping them from dropping. Usually there are a few layers of this to get through.
I’m working on letting go of fear and disorientation based holding. This holding is not actually helpful and in my experience both blocks finer awareness and motor skills and itself is like the system being primed for nervous reaction. As I let go of this holding, I am just a little bit less likely to be triggered into a dysfunctional out-of-control reaction.
What does that mean to stretch? A lot of people don’t really know what that means because it can mean many things and usually is a mix. On the one hand, we might have muscle fibers that are active and we are trying to become aware of them through the resistance and then let go of the activation. We might have fascia that is sticking or binding around our habit range of movement, so we try to break up these fascial adhesions. A couple of other good things that we often do without thinking about it while stretching are generally relaxing and finding body awareness and good body use and alignment. Relaxing here means letting go of holding of the breath, but on a deeper level it also means quieting the nervous system so that we don’t go into muscular fear responses. For many people this is so much a part of their background experience of life, this reactivity, that they are not even aware of it until they deliberately try to quieten the mind and pay attention. As we become more relaxed, we potentially become more present, become aware of out body in more fine detail. The process of this deepening of awareness is effectively endless, and reactivity has a way of coming back always, so we are often in a way starting over here as we stretch.
I orient. Being upside down and being supported in the back space by something mobile is an unusual situation. We tend to get disoriented. In that disorientation, we get reactive. We are trying to have more functional awareness and movement, which requires being more relaxed. I relax into the support of the ball and feel where my body parts are in space, how they connect. I relax the neck and drop the head and look around. I orient visually as I am feeling the body . I really try to make sense of the visual information of the world upside down in the context of my body being in that world in the specific way it is in the moment. When we are not oriented, we tend instead to be primed for uncontrolled reactions.
As we start to move, there will be a pernicious nervous response to go into primary flexion. This can be experienced as a compulsion to look where we are going. The problem is that the head has weight… a lot of it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so as we move our head toward our feet, we deliver a force to the rest of the body in the direction of our head, which usually throws us back the way we were going. Also, these fear reactions are associated with a brief shutting down of body awareness. As the reflex fires off, we for a moment are literally out of control of our bodies. As we learn to relax and not be triggered into these reactions, we literally become more moment to moment aware of our bodies and environment, capable of making more sophisticated and intelligent movement choices.
I move, try to stay oriented (visually and physically), keep breathing, relax holding, enjoy stretches of fascia as they come.
Space holding. This is another aspect of letting go of primary flexion. As I go to the side, I leave my arm trailing arm out to the side, even reaching it behind me, rather than bringing it and my head forward into that primary flexion ball. On a gross mechanical level, it is about balancing as I am moving, using the support in the back space. On a sensory motor level, it is about letting go of reactivity and feeling the body.
It’s actually the same as I go feet to hands. I leave the feet behind rather than pull them with a jerk with me (the primary flexion response). I am “space holding” with my feet, and I use the weight of my feet and gravity to roll me and the physioball back toward my feet, rather using than a big jerking action. As always, leaving the head behind helps embrace the support in the back space and helps inhibit the primary flexion reactivity.
So I am doing all of this during these simple actions. Breathe. Relax. Let go of holding and primed responses. Inhibit primary flexion by letting the head hang. Embrace support in the back space. Orient visually and proprioceptively.
It really just takes a couple of minutes.
Enjoy!
Karl
PS. on the word “inhibit” … As a bit of a tangent, many people hear “inhibit” and think that is a bad thing. “We should be uninhibited”. This is understandable, but here, I use it in a positive, technical sense, as used by FM Alexander. He differentiated between suppression and inhibition, which are often used as synonyms. In Alexander’s work, he referred to suppression (usually a bad thing) as introducing a resistance to an ongoing process or action. Usually this would be quite literal, involving muscles work against each other. For example, the action of the biceps might be inhibited by action of the triceps … wasted effort and closed body awareness. Inhibition on the other hand was the act of understanding a habit action and discovering how to not do it. Instead of blocking the habit action of the biceps with the triceps (suppression), we recognize the precursors that trigger us to activate the bicep and decide to not activate the biceps in that moment (inhibition). Through inhibiting dysfunctional reactions, we retrain ourselves into a state of improved body use and functional body awareness.