Movement Connections

Our spines are amazing. They absorb and propel, spiral and pivot, soften and lengthen. They protect the preciousness of the spinal cord. They move every time we breath. The spinal column is made up of stacked vertebrae and the muscles and ligaments that support them. This boney structure supports posture and structural integrity. Deep within […]

 “Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.” It’s a powerful phrase. The trapezius muscle, the big muscle on top of our shoulder girdle, is innervated directly by the limbic system, what we call our lizard brain. This means the muscle group is responding directly to our experiences of stress, danger, and sociality. No […]

Inhale. Inspiration. The breath is a constant dance of reciprocity. We bring air into our bodies, transform oxygen into carbon dioxide, and send it back out. There are other parts of our bodies that are in this constant dance of reciprocity – digestion. feet. hands. even skin. The plants and other creatures do the same […]

Walking, running, jumping, kicking, balancing… for many of us, our feet are foundation and activation of movement. The feet also have mirrors up through the body – the sit bones, the shoulders, the bottom of the skull. There is a kind of bipedal pendulum throughout the human structure. Feet are able to step onto, stand […]

What part of your body do you consider your hips?  What happens when you bring your attention there? Is there sensation and impulse? Is it comfortable or unfamiliar to pay attention here? How does this part of your body want to move?  The hip joint is where our legs meet our pelvis. It is a […]

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 […]

What we pay attention to affects what we experience. And attention is a resource, a currency. The phrase goes, what we pay attention to grows. In movement practices, this is highlighted, and to me, paramount. Sometimes we pay attention to how we want to look. Sometimes we pay attention to how we want to feel. Other […]

How much attention to you give to this area? To the back of your core, to the lumbar curve, to the position and movement of your pelvis? What would a day in the life of you look like, from the point of view of your lower back? The low back area is a powerful location […]

Breathing, in some form, comes up in almost every session and workshop I teach. Breath, and breathing affects every thing we do, it enlivens our embodiments. All lifeforms breath. We take in molecules, create life through transformative processes, and send molecules out. Plant life takes in and sends out the opposite molecules of humans – […]

Walking, running, jumping, kicking, balancing… for many of us, our feet are foundation and activation of movement. Feet are able to step onto, stand on, push and jump off various types of surfaces – grassy fields, river beds, mountain boulders. Human feet are designed to move seamlessly through two very different modes – absorb mode, […]