What Do You Believe About Your Movement Design?

What do you believe about how you are designed to move?

There are two schools of thought:

1. I have a flawed design – I must find a way to improve it.
2. I am perfect – I can discover how to use my design well.

I follow the second idea...

You are already perfect – there is nothing wrong with you.

Pain – if you have pain or discomfort – is friendly. It is trying to tell you something is being used incorrectly. Pain is not what is wrong about you, pain is what is right about you.

Pain is your way of telling you: “You need to learn how your wonderful design works.” It’s like showing a little child how to put on shoes. If a child puts their right shoe on their left foot, it will hurt eventually.

The child is not using the shoes as they are designed, and someone needs to show them how. At BodyChance we show you how. Except now we are not talking about shoes, we are talking about your head and spine, arms and legs, hands and eyes. About how you breath, and stand, and sit and walk and all of the things you do every day…

Do you know how to use your Self according to how you are designed?

You didn’t learn this at school, because it is not understood correctly…

Alexander discovered that a universal principle of movement is that your head is affecting your spine. Alexander showed that the relationship between your head and spine has a profound influence on how you use everything else: legs, arms, hands, breathing, singing, walking…

Everything!

At BodyChance we call this discovery program BodyThinking. ATSuccess Pro members can study it online, it's available if you want.

Take this simple example: where you you think your arm begins? Most people will point to their armpit. The anatomical answer is just below the neck. That’s right – your arm connects into your spinal axis at the neck!

It does not connect to the spine at your shoulder, because your shoulder still part of your arm! Many people misunderstand this. I see this all the time at BodyChance.

And because they misunderstand, they think things like:

“I must keep my shoulders down.”

When you think something like that – you will experience discomfort, because it is not what your body wants. Last time I wrote: “A wonderful life is a life lived in alignment with your passion, your values, your needs.” The was the first of five ways to lead a wonderful life.

The second way is this: To understand what your movement wants!

It “wants” an arm that moves from the joint just below your neck. Trying to move it any other way is a war against you: it’s like wearing the shoe on the wrong foot!

Yet people do. People think their arm begins at the shoulder. When you believe that, you can believe it’s OK to keep your shoulders down while you raise your arm up.

The problem is: your shoulder is your arm.

How can you move your arm up and down at the same time?

Answer: You can not.

Result: Discomfort and pain.

It’s just a step away from insanity. It's Alice in Wonderland. And yet it’s innocent. Learning the truth about your arm is what sets you free. Stiff necks, sore backs, tension headaches –these are symptoms of an internal war. It is your wrong idea going against your wonderful design.

Remember – nothing is wrong. You are already perfect.

It is just what you are believing that is giving you trouble. Learning the truth about your movement sets you free, and freedom feels wonderful.

It is no longer you against you – because you understand how to make peace. What you believe, and what is true – you learn how to bring these two into harmony again.

In BodyThinking course at BodyChance, trainees learn many of these truths. It is an adventure into you. You learn how to learn about you.

You learn how you nod your head, how you move your arms, how you bend back, how you use your eyes, how you breath: you make a request in the group so a BodyChance teacher can explore it with you. It is really fun, and very satisfying!

Trainees in BodyThinking course spend two years learning about their movements: how you are designed to move. You can not learn this just from books. You also need to learn it as an internalized experience in your Self.

It’s like wearing the left shoe on the wrong foot – you need to feel the shoe on the correct foot to understand how wonderful your design is. When you have been used to wearing your shoe on the wrong foot for years and years, putting it on the correct foot feels wonderful.

No book can tell you that.

BodyThinking course at BodyChance is about re-aligning your beliefs with how you move, based on Alexander's discovery. Alignment brings harmony and peace.

This is the second way to leading a wonderful life!

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As you no doubt guess, this is the second in a series of emails introducing the Teacher Education course that BodyChance runs in Japan. This email was about the BodyThinking course. I wrote another blog about the rational of that course “How FM Sabotaged the Alexander Technique” You can read more about that by clicking here.