You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain’s Representations of the Body

Cynthia — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:58:51 +0000

Want to chat about this? A great read with ride ranging implications on the potential changing nature of who we perceive ourselves to be.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=you-are-what-you-touch&page=2

Several thoughts arise for me:

1) In the course of seeing many people per day with varied professions, one of the more interesting ones is musicians, particularly those who play a stringed instrument because it requires such an assymetrical adaptation to the body. Organ, piano, and some wind instruments can be played with a ride range of body positions but strings instruments begin to reshape the torso, neck and arms (and of course the rest of the body as well) in a significant way. If the individual is a professional or high level performing musician (many hours per day), one can remove the instrument and the person remains in that essential shape. They begin to look like their instrument in a way.

Recently in a mentoring session, the mentor arranged for me to work with an upright bass player. Before seeing him, she said, even his tissue feels like taught guitar strings. And actually I would agree. This article certainly support this observed phenomena.

Having said that, once can see that walking about in the would in a continuous shape for playing the Upright Bass can be a challenge. So we get a big hint in this article. Vary our tool use (and therefore our mind/body use) a lot!!!

2) One of my more favorites sayings is that we are continuing shaping our literal body according to how we use ourselves and the surfaces with which we connect. This research implies this to be the case, although it is not directly what it is studying. Still connection, activates proprioception, and this activates the body map or brain map. Again variation seems important. Don't sit in the same chair all day; use a droid all day, etc. Stare at a computer screen. As I type those specific words, I invited myself to type with eyes close for a while and voila a completely differently experience. I now sense my fingers coming to the keyboard in a new way. I am more aware of my breathing and my eyes searching for the keys even though they are closed. I can also pause from typing and invite the images of the screen to arrive to and received by my eyes instead of reaching for them and the dropping into myself is extraordinary in that moment. These are variations on "How" to use the tool if the tool itself can't be changed which of course this research does not explore.

3) Also implied is the importance of the way in which a somatic practitioner connects with the client. To the degree it is effective, the client does not so clearly distinguish, as an example, the moment his/her arm ends and the practitioner's begins. The movement that is transmitted back and forth between practitioner and client has a seamless quality to it and perhaps when functional use is added to the mix (the movement has function meaning, not simply highlighting a local area) the brain goes beyond sensing the area (oh there is a sore area of my body) to "this is a tool I can use. Oh I am that tool." Perhaps it also implies the important of how a mother brings the baby to the breast or bottle to feed. The way in which eyes connecting might even change the infant's body map.

So it brought up some fun thoughts for me. How about you?

submitted by Cynthia Allen

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…to be nothing is to be like a single dot, and from a single dot a person can do whatever he wants - Pinchas of Koretz #kabala #feldenkrais #hasidic

Cynthia — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:00:51 +0000

"A person should consider himself as dumb, as nothing in his own eyes, in this way his brain is renewed,
both in a spiritual as well as in a physical sense, in his working life and in the health of his body,

and in all that belongs to him…

"…When, for example, a person falls ill, and is at a low point, nothing,

this is where the remedy comes from. Because to be nothing is to be like a single dot,

and from a single dot a person can do whatever he wants."

- Pinchas of Koretz

from Making Connections

Hasidic Roots and Resonance in the Teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais

by David Kaetz

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Millions killed stepping out of comfort zone

Cynthia — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:29:22 +0000

What’s the worst thing that can happen when being a little adventuresome? Yep, it turns out all those fears my pappy taught me regularly come true according to the Onion. Thinking about trying a new dish at the Tai restaurant? How about talking to your neighbor? I was ready to do it after 15 years living next to the same folks but am now rethinking. Maybe a bellydancing class. Or how about….you know it is coming since this post is from me….trying the incredible scary Feldenkrais Method or perhaps learning to meditate.

Ah what the heck maybe I will take my life into my own hands. Whose hands would it be better in?
submitted by Cynthia Allen

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Sand Art tells story moving story of hope and war and aging

Cynthia — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:43:24 +0000

It the internet age this is too long, I know. But if you can find the time to sit back and relax into it you will be transported and moved. Youtube (click on picture)

As a child, I was raised with a precusor of this art form. Pastel storyboards in church. I only got to see them rarely and was at first bored and then always amazed. My then, mother-in-law Zella, from my first marraige, Zella used to do these in the town of Nehli, Nebraska for the church which was tiny and contained only a handful of people, mostly made up of my husbands family. It was always a delight to watch her come alive as she did biblical stories to music.

Due to technology, this art form has taken a beautiful leap in the use of sand on a light board. And this particular artist’s art includes her movement and staging.

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From Hafiz: It used to be that when I would wake in the morning

Cynthia — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:56:59 +0000

It used to be that when I would wake in the morning,
I could with confidence say,
“What Am ‘I’ going to Do?”
That was before the seed
Cracked open.

Now Hafiz is certain;
There are two of us housed
In this body,
Doing the shopping together in the market and
Tickling each other
While fixing the evening’s food.

Now when I awake
All the internal instruments play the same music:
“God, what love-mischief can “We” do
For the world
Today?”

- Poet/Mystic Hafiz
from The Gift, Translation by Daniel Ladinsky

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Are We Just Aching for a Surgical Fix? Part 3 — Any ideas on how we can know?

Cynthia — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:20:12 +0000

In part 1 and 2 of this little series, we looked at studies that found similar positive outcomes for patients whether they used physical/training rehab only or had the surgical intervention. This kind of information gives us the chance to consider our own attitude towards surgery.

The issue of whether to have a surgery is not simple. As I have tried to figure out my own health needs this year or walk through it with clients, I am continually struck by how challenging it is to have enough information to make make good decisions about potentially life-changing surgeries with very sketchy information. The standard answers of (more…)

Hafiz - I am Hole in a flute That the Christ’s breath

Cynthia — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 12:32:00 +0000

I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through–
Listen to this
Music.

Excerpt from A Hole In A Flute
The Gift - poems by Hafiz
Translation by Daniel Ladinsky

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Okay, now that was fun! Intro to Somatics for 30 of Xavier University’s Special Ed Faculty

Cynthia — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 17:50:20 +0000

Kathy Krebs and I rocked teaching Bouncing on Heels and Crossed Arms from Bones for Life and a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson on rotation in standing. The follow-up sharing, awareness, and interest was fantastic. What a great group of teachers, Dr. Sharon Merrill has in her program. It was so easy to pull forward principles of somatic education based on comments. There were some great questions on classroom application and if I do say so myself, some great ideas (given we had only a few minutes for that part). The hunger in the room for more was almost palpable. Thank you Xavier Special Ed! Thank you Kathy Krebs! Thank you Sharon Merrill!

In May of 2011, three of us will be co-teaching a 20 classroom hrs workshop in Xavier’s summer program. All this action is an outgrowth of a small interdisciplinary think group that formed almost a year ago to ask the question, “How can somatics be mainstreamed (more…)

Walk Like an Upside-Down Pendulum

Cynthia — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:31:22 +0000

Look at the apparent ease with which this African woman at left carries her load. Of course, it isn’t easy, yet studies show Luo and Kikuyu women are supremely well organized, even outperforming male U.S. soldiers with loaded rucksacks. She can carry up to 20% of her body weight on her head before she begins to need more oxygen or burn additional calories.

Just to put this in context, if you weigh 150 pounds, this means you would be carrying 30 pounds. Can you imagine balancing even 20 pounds on your head and, say, walking around the block? Much less without gasping for additional air? Scientists call the capacity to carry this weight without needing more air “carrying for free.” In fact, she may add to her load up to 50% or more of her body weight and head into town. While her “free energy” zone has been passed, she will still carry her load at a lower metabolic cost to herself than to you or even to our beloved Army guys and gals.

In the 1990s gait researchers mapped the movement of the human center of mass in space and discovered the trajectory is like that of an upside-down pendulum swinging. Instead of a curve down, it curves upward with the crest being at the point when you are completely balanced on one foot and the other foot has lifted away from the ground and is swinging forward.

In the change over between steps, most of us will lose height faster than

(more…)

Give your bones a blast

Cynthia — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:06:40 +0000

Way down, deep in your marrow, you just want to have a blast once in a while, right? Actually, the root of this might begin in your bone marrow where cells called “osteoblasts” are the construction crew responsible for building up the matrix of your bone with fresh new materials. At least when all goes well, osteoblasts are busy building your bone.

Unfortunately, injuries, poor posture, medications, lifestyle, and ageing can send a message to the osteoblast construction crew to take longer and longer breaks instead of doing their job, while the demolition crew, known as osteoclasts, picks up speed. When the demolition crew starts to work harder than the construction crew, the matrix is unable to stay healthy. In Bones for Life®, we use springy pressure through an aligned skeleton to remind osteoblasts of their job and of your intention to live your one great life with zest.

Watch this short video of Jeanne Hills of Phoenix, Arizona, as she talks about the benefits she and her patients have received.

Are you ready to feel the biological optimism that Bones for Life® can bring to your life?

Segment I in Florence, Kentucky, is a great place to start. You can take this workshop (more…)