Good Morning,
I hope that you all have enjoyed your 4th of July weekend. I love three day weekends as they really allow me to re-energize my body. I get to take time to work in and cultivate energy, spend time with friends and family as well as eat amazing food.
I also have a nice little new feature in the works…Videos! I promise that they will be up for the conclusion of this series so that you are able to really see how these movements are executed. I am learning how to shoot and edit them up right now. Thank you all for your patience.
Can I Move Like a Baby? (part 2)
We will continue off of last weeks post and see how well you can move. Give all of these a try. You may surprise yourself and find things that you cannot do well. This is a good thing as it now allows you to work on healing your body. Again for a more in depth study of all of these topics please check out Linda Hartley’s book Wisdom of the Body Moving.
Spinal Pattern(continued from last week)
It is time to re-hash one of my favorite movements that I love to give people. It is the inchworm. This often surprises many people who try to do it for the first time for two reasons. One is that they just can’t do it and the other is how taxing it can be on the body. Your spine must be fully integrated in order to work in a proper manner. I truly believe that this is the first movement that we must all master as without it we cannot move properly since all movement stems from the spine.
To begin I will instruct clients to lie on their back on the floor with arms crossed and legs held in the air. I then ask them to move up or down towards me (whichever I am checking) without using their four extremities. This is where a lot of thrashing and shaking ensues without much movement.
Homologous Pattern
We are now getting a few months into life and it is time to start integrating the upper and lower halves of the body. The easiest way to envision this is a frog jumping or a horse running at full speed. This will be broken down into both pushing and pulling. Pushing of the upper extremity will develop first as it is the ability to say “no.” It begins when a baby props himself up to begin looking around and seeing what is really going on around him. After this we begin to push up onto our hands and knees to push back and forth. My favorite exercise to mimic this movement is through the forward ball roll, but making sure that the inner unit is functioning before adding this in.
We will wrap this up next week with the homolateral, contralateral and gait infant development patterns. Remember that each one builds upon the next so go ahead and see how you are doing from the first part of this series.
Have a Great Day!
Nick Horowski