Shame, Movement, Pilates & Yoga

"No-one wants to talk about [shame]; 
and the less you talk about it, 
the more you have it."
Brené Brown.

So let's talk about shame shall will?

At first glance, shame has little to do with Posture.

However, shames drives dysfunctional Posture in two ways:

1. Driven towards Postural disintegration.
2. Driven towards Postural integration.

The first one is pretty obvious. 

A person who feels no self-worth is shy to be seen by others. 

You avoid contact and connection. 

Uprightness gives way to stooping. 

Muscle tone gives way to atrophy. 

Nothing is engaged, nothing moves. Muscles weaken.

A permanently bowed head and constant apologies.

Or the opposite, but let's not go there.

***

The second one – using shame to drive you towards integration – is not so obvious posturally. Why does a person ashamed of their body want to make it better?

Obviously, because of the shame they feel.

The desire for beauty often arises from an inner feeling of ugliness. 

Attaining beauty is the outward motivating energy – for a new boyfriend, a reunion of high school friends, seeking a new job. You want to look good, so you start to do exercises and asanas to make your Self look better.

And this poses a problem when you are the teacher who has been picked by a student to restore beauty in their Posture. Why?

Because your student's motivation is to impose upon what is despised.

This involves adding things, doing more. Things like tucking down the pelvis, holding in the tummy, straightening the spine, strengthening the core. All these can add more stress to the stress of shame. In the short term, you may look better. In the long term, you tire of the effort to do all these extra things. You start getting new aches and pains.

Therefore, for real success, you first need to know how to subtract the movements of shame. And in this, Alexander's Discovery will guide you.

Alexander subtracts, Pilates adds.

(So do Yoga, Radio Exercises, Gym training etc. all add).

You need both approaches – subtracting and adding - to deal with Postural shame.

How does Alexander subtract?

In analyzing movement – using the principles of the BodyThinking Program, which is based upon Alexander's Discovery – you first seek out the unnecessary.

What is shame causing you to do Posturally that you don't need to do?

This requires good knowledge of how your head/spinal coordination is affecting your arms and legs in movement.

How well can you communicate this by words?

Success as an Alexscovery teacher does not only depend on your hands – your tongue has a big job too. I call it "markeaching" because you invite new students into your practice by the power of your ability to get them to understand the reason and advantages of doing so.

Markeaching is at the core of my ATSuccess Foundations course, and I am opening it up again after a two-year hiatus. Read more about it here:

https://atsuccess.com/foundations