Helping Clients Feel Their Spine

Friday I taught two newer clients who needed a somatic lesson in feeling their own spines. It is funny how, until someone takes us into our own body like a guide, we are not aware of ourselves.

One of these students is an oncology nurse and personal trainer. She is coming to me to learn more about the body beyond what her training has given her. I took her through feeling her own spine from the inside. We were on the floor, supine with knees bent, and I walked her up her spine from her tailbone, thru sacrum, thru feeling the lumbar spine lifting away from the mat, and the thoracic spine dropping down into the mat, the cervical spine lifting up again, and ending at the skull. I guided her to feel the spring that the spine is, that the spring is between the weight of the sacrum and the weight of the skull (not forgetting that the tailbone is also an important part of the spring, even though it is past the sacrum and not between the two points). We did this exploration through tilting the pelvis posterior---which lengthens out the spinal curves, and then tilting anterior--which increases the curves. We end this pelvic tilting (after several sets) in neutral spine so she could feel where we work in Evolved Pilates. Once we understand the range of our spine in movement it is much easier to know when we are truly in a neutral spine and pelvis for healthy Pilates work.

We sat on really bouncy exercise balls and bounced letting the spine--the spring of the spine--really bounce up and down. It is a hydraulic system, this spine, and when it is limited in its ability to bounce it becomes rigid and more prone to injury. I guided her to really relax her pelvic floor while we bounced, and then I took her through engaging the deep pelvic floor and she felt how that stiffened up her spine, and it hardly bounced with her. Then she relaxed the pelvic floor again and felt the spine get all happy and springy. This was good for teaching her that an over-tight pelvic floor creates tension in the spine and risks injury in high impact sports and such. I also taught her how to bounce up pulling the pelvic floor up, and when she bounced down she relaxed the pelvic floor. This is a quick firing of the pelvic floor and can be challenging at first, but if the pelvic floor doesn't lift up and in during a big jump (like figure skating) then you won't have the power of the lift, and if it doesn't relax enough on the landing then the who body feels the impact and the landing lacks grace.