January 2023: Deep Core

What do you consider your core? What do you consider your center? What assumptions do you make about how a core should be, how a center should be?

I don’t tend to train abdominals for strength on their own. My bias is in cultivating supple availability. 

Beneath the abdominals, behind the organs, on the front of the spine lies a muscle called the psoas, or the iliopsoas complex. It runs like a waterfall down the front of our spine, pools in the bowl of the pelvis, and anchors on the inner thigh.  Our organs rest on this muscle. Important nerves move through this muscle. Lymph nodes interact in the groin area.

This muscle, deep in our core, is responding all of the time to the state of our body, changing subtly with every state. It helps create embodiments of pleasure, power, excitement, danger, rest, and on and on. The tone of the muscle changes with what is needed.

A simple way to feel this space in your body: 

Lay flat on the ground. 

Bend one knee in to your chest, send the other leg out long. 

Breath here. Notice the sensation of compression in one hip and the sensation of openness in the other. Both directions are necessary, and we can’t move into one without the ability to move into the other. 

Switch sides, and breath into the second side as though it is a whole new exercise. 

What is it, to be ready and available for what is needed at any given moment? How do you know what is needed at any given moment?