How to Touch Like a Catholic

In 1999, I started touching in a new kind of way.

I touch like a Catholic – reverent, studious and caring. (The good ones)

The “studious” part is related to my anatomical studies, and putting together BodyThinking – my new online training program for analysing movements.

I would specifically target a muscle group - say the iliopsoas muscle in the pelvis upper leg and back are – and induce an action specific of that muscle.

For example, explore the question of whether contraction of this muscle while standing will result in straightening or curving the lumber spine? The old anatomical belief, based on the mechanical relationship of origin and insertion, seems to suggest a lordosis curve, while later studies point towards the opposite being true.

They STILL haven’t figured this out?

After Galen, Leonardo de Vinci and 20 centuries of fuss, you’d think we have a clear picture by now, but no.

Still debates.

Many of these debates are highlighted – including the one above – in my new $50,000 BodyThinking program which has gone online and is currently available at a significant discount until April 30th. Register here to learn more.

To assist my students experiencing their anatomy, I started my new kind of touching.

It was weird and creepy sometimes. How it felt, when you were moved by this polite, touch, was both intimate, and impersonal. Technical even.

But very demanding. Very vector. Very purposeful. This muscle will do THIS, and this is how you are systemically affected. It was the latter part that was new – sensing the vibrations of movement throughout the system.

Running a joint movement inside, along a specific plane, then sensing the systemic results of this intention, is the sort of mad-clown fantastically special thing only a teacher of Alexander's discovery could come up with.

Curious about the iliopsoas experiment?

Impossible to say. The trouble with analysing any movement is the inconvenient fact that there needs to be a real intention behind it. Just doing a movement for the sake of the movement will tell you next to nothing about how it functions in the whole you.

That’s why neat, universal descriptions of specific muscle action are almost a waste of time. You must know the purpose of the movement over time before you can assess it.

And that’s the truth really.

Every movement so different, the purpose changing so often, that there is no “right” use, no “definitive” answer. BodyThinking manages all that.

Go here to learn more about it.

Picture credit: Pixabay