Out-standing in my field!

It seems that clients are show­ing up lately with what I’d call ground­ed­ness issues.

It’s not uncom­mon for peo­ple to describe feel­ing off bal­ance, unsure of their foot­ing, etc. and not “get­ting†that they are also describ­ing a phys­i­cal condition.

I remem­ber a friend say­ing, “Have you noticed, as you get older, you get less flex­i­ble?†I replied, “Yes, and bod­ies get less flex­i­ble, too!†She laughed, said, “I was think­ing phys­i­cal, but now that you men­tion it, my mind’s tight­en­ing up too.†She then booked a body­work session.

The process, for me, is to notice how the body and mind (and spirit) are always in sync.

Yet, the body stuff often gets ignored.

Take the pic­ture, above. The 2 peo­ple were pho­tographed the same day, stand­ing in the same place, for a work­shop I was lead­ing, on bodywork.

I decided to sand­wich one per­son over the other, just so you can see the dif­fer­ences in their stance (allow­ing for the height dif­fer­ence…) The dif­fer­ences are also clearly indi­cated on the right 2 parts of the image, using orange lines.

This is how we get ungrounded or off bal­ance, from a body­work per­spec­tive. We don’t notice that our stance (both in life and phys­i­cally) is off kil­ter. The body reacts to the inter­nal pres­sures we cre­ate for our­selves, and mir­rors our over­all con­di­tion. Which is why we love tak­ing body­work pic­tures, so our clients can see what we see.

My clients lately have been report­ing leg pain, and lower back pain, and if you think about it, that makes sense. If you are canted off cen­tre, your body has to work harder, and that means pain—especially in the legs and lower back. And the knees.

From an emo­tional per­spec­tive, feel­ing unsafe, unwor­thy, unloved—all are aspects of not being grounded.

The inter­nal feel­ing is as described—insecure and off bal­ance. Typ­i­cally, when asked, clients will then talk about how their way of being does not “fit the norm,†and when pressed fur­ther, describe an exter­nal “normâ€â€” the “norm†comes from some­one else. Mom or dad, a for­mer part­ner, friends—someone has an idea about what “being a well-balanced per­son†means, and then they judge my client as not being in compliance.

What hap­pens is that my client has learned, over time, to not trust “her­self.†In a sense (s)he is fight­ing against her own nature, by tight­en­ing up, and this tight­en­ing is what causes the body to go askew.

We sug­gest stand­ing firmly on your own two feet, both phys­i­cally and emotionally.

Part of this requires the will­ing­ness to resist giv­ing in to the pres­sure to con­form to the ideas of oth­ers. Bal­anced, safe liv­ing requires let­ting go of clinging—to rules, to fam­ily rules, to old stories.

We then do body­work on the client’s legs, butt and belly, so that it’s pos­si­ble for them to actu­ally feel energy mov­ing in their legs and lower body.

Another way to achieve bal­ance and sta­bil­ity is to learn to stand firmly on the ground.

Two tech­niques are Moun­tain Pose, and Horse Stance. I’ve men­tioned Horse Stance before, so I’ll just give you the link that describes it.

Moun­tain Pose (tadasana) is a tra­di­tional rest­ing pose in yoga. (There’s a video of this on the actual blog page.) Super­fi­cially, it looks like you are just stand­ing there. Not so.

First of all, the legs are active. Weight is evenly dis­trib­uted between the feet, toes are spread, and the body is in alignment.

One way to feel this is to back against a wall oppo­site a mir­ror.

Stand with your heels against the wall, butt and shoul­ders against the wall, back of the head lightly touch­ing the wall. The arms are also active. The fin­gers are extended down­ward, with a bit of ten­sion. You can use the mir­ror to con­firm that you are stand­ing straight up, not tilted one way or the other.

Back to active legs. If you put a yoga block between your lower legs, and then spin your legs a bit (as if you were try­ing to push the block for­ward,) you get action in the legs, and this in turn helps you to feel the energy flow­ing in your legs.

Ulti­mately, this bal­anc­ing and focus­ing exer­cise, when added to Horse Stance, improves your pos­ture, your stance, and your balance.

Learn­ing to sep­a­rate what you believe from what oth­ers are try­ing to get you to believe and do is how we find safety and secu­rity in our emo­tional life. Both approaches, danc­ing together.

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