Using the Feet & Legs Efficiently for Improving Posture and Enhancing Exercise & Sports
by Herald,
a NYC Pilates professional & Backbone and Wingspan posture expert
This new enhanced-with-interactive-illustrations-and-videos e-book is now available on the iTunes Store and viewed on iBooks.
Click Here for the preview page of the book where you can see screenshots as well as view a full preview of the book or download the preview as well as purchase your copy of this comprehensive e-book.
Below is a video showing snippets from several of the videos which teach how to walk more gracefully in high heels, how to take work and weight out of the toes and the metatarsal or ball parts of the foot by using the heel more efficiently. However, the book isn't "sole"-ly for women - or even just for women who wear high heels. There are many stretches for calves and hamstrings and the ITB or IlioTibialBand which men will get great benefit from.
As well, there is information on relieving painful plantar fasciitis:
and guidance for using the hamstrings strength efficiently for such simple but sometimes challenging pedestrian activities as climbing stairs:
and of course, creating an elongated spinal line for improved posture - which comes from well-aligning the heels with the paired points along the back body.
This famous da Vinci drawing is perhaps the most recognized rendering of the human body known to people around the world.
It's sometimes called Vitruvian Man because it portrays the human body in a perfection of proportions discovered and detailed by the architect Vitruvius who used measures of the human body for constructing buildings.
The proportions:
4 fingers constitute one hand width 4 widths of a hand constitute one foot
6 widths of a hand constitute one arm or yard 4 yards constitute the height of a man
There's great detailed and illustrated information on the
The proportions rendered by da Vinci in this drawing which is based on the measures of corresponding body parts put forth by Vitruvius have great potential effect on people: the way we feel a sense of ease and belonging within a building or the deeper senses of beauty that bring forth feelings of oneness and clarity and purpose from works of art.
But because da Vinci renders Vitruvian Man from the front,
the drawing doesn't show the spine.
The body's beauty in corresponding proportions can be related to spaces in which we live and work and also works of art that inspire and empower us.
But from the standpoint of function that will get you through a day at your desk, a long plane flight, or dancing all night, you really must have a sense of the back body that supports the spine.
I'd like to propose a different perspective on the da Vinci fully frontal frontal image that isn't based on proportion, but perception.
It's a big belief of mine that helping people change their perceptions of themselves is really primary to teaching
them how to strengthen the muscles that will support the spine.
What if we performed a vitruvius reversal and portrayed the human body from the backside?
This could be called:
Vitruvian Man With a Wingspan
Expansion of the Back Grants Extension of the Spine Grants Empowerment of the Body
When you learn how to:
Expand the back Which is like a wingspan
Then you experience how to:
Extend the spine Which is the veritable backbone
Ease & Empowerment Go Hand in Hand
Working the wingspan wide to free the backbone through
Eases the pain in the overworked neck and shoulders
while at the same time
Empowers the muscles that are in proximity to support the spine
It is my mission to relate these back-body support-for-the-spine principles that have been worked out in me through years of teaching many people how to better use their spines. I wish to help change people's perceptions of themselves as having powerfully supportive backs as well as freely expressive fronts.
Most of my days of teaching are spent sitting behind, kneeling behind, or crouching behind people's backside bodies to help them sense the power of the muscles in their back bodies: hamstrings, lats, trapezius, transversus - and to help people sense the stability in the bones of the back body: sit bones, scapula, sacrum, tail bones, occipital points, heels.
I hope to help you in relating these words and putting forth these images to offer a change the perception of yourself in order to start to sense the powerful places that will support your spine.
In the next part of this series of posts. I will show photographically and also elaborate and detail more specifically in words which muscles and bones of the back body support the spine. I also wish to show you how from a percerption of oneself from the backside, it is much more simple to understand many pain-free and powerful ways the muscles work.
Thanks so much for reading! Comments most welcome here!
in a newfound way that serves all movement, postures, & senses of well-being...
Much of this new consciousness arises from getting in touch with supportive places in the body which we are unfamiliar with because these places are located in the backside of the body...
The da Vinci drawing places Vitruvian man
inside of both a circle and a square...
This da Vinci drawing is also known as
Homo Quadratus
which means literally in Latin: Man and Square
but can also be interpreted as "perfect man" as
in regards to the perfection of proportion.
Homo Quadratus can also be
interpreted as a man or human
functioning from four quadrants
However, Vitruvius also brought out the potential empowerment and stability that comes from working from the triangular approach:
Vitruvius stated: "One has to know that when spreading one's legs the space between the legs is a equilateral triangle."
There is detailed information about both da Vinci's notes that accompany his drawing of Vitruvian Man - and Vitruvius' text describing correlating measures of the human body at:
So in order to work from the back body in four quadrants that equally support the spine on all sides, it's very helpful to tap into the truth of the revurring three's in the human body:
There are:
Three Curves of the Spine: Lumbar-Thoracic-Cervical
Three Joints to the Arm: Shoulder-Elbow-Wrist
Three heads of each triceps muscle connecting on to each shoulder girdle
It's a Triangle that Connects Triceps to Traps to Lats to Sacro Iliac
The triangle formed when both sets of
triceps connect into the lower traps
Learn
to
Use:
Triceps Traps Lats
Scapula Humerus
Triceps has three heads The muscle wraps back and under the scapula Releases the shoulder & then the neck Connects into the powerful lats and lower traps Lats wrap all the way down to the sacroiliac joints on either side of the pelvis
The triceps should not be cut up or ripped because then they cannot connect to the larger muscles that empower the back body: lats, lower traps, and transversus.
Learning a way to work the arms into the back
Assists with many exercises and movements:
Pull ups or chin ups Hanging from a bar Holding handlebars when biking
Keystroking computer posture Subway Straphangers
Carrying a Baby or Picking Up a Toddler
With this wingspan way of
working the arms, improve:
Golf Stroke
Squash Racket Swing
Tennis Ball Serve
This is one of the signature exercises of
Backbone and Wingspan® which is pictured and detailed to more specific degree
on one of the pages of my website
Check it out to see all the benefits of working the arms from this wingspan of triceps into traps into lats
Also check out this video (just over 2 1/2 minutes in length) to gauge the
benefits of releasing a stiff neck, tight shoulders, and upper back tension.
See live the kinds of hands-on support I provide in a one-on-one session.
Witness how she uses her wingspan to hover and fly her spine instead of
having to hike herself up from her shoulders as she arches and lengthens.
This is the triceps wrapping back to the scapula which creates the wingspan.
Thanks so much for reading! Comments most welcome here!
When you stabilize the shoulder blades, you free up the cervical spine or neck.
When you breathe into the lower back ribs, you free up the thoracic or mid-spine,
When you extend the lower vertebrae down thorough the sacrum, you free up the lumbar spine.
What I have learned in more than a decade of looking at people from the back side, is that empowerment comes first from a change of perception.
Because we see and perceive ourselves and each other from the front side most often, you have to use sensation and imagination to connect to the back body places that support the spine and help you get to the core strength.
This is what my fascination for attempting to reverse the perception of the famous Da Vinci drawing has come from:
if you see the body from the front,
the tendency is to perceive a torso with arms and legs sticking out from it.
But if you see the body from the back side,
it is more clear and more possible to perceive a spine with arms coming from either side off the spine like wings and
the legs coming off either side of the spine like the haunches on a horse.
The power of three is more prevalent here:
one central spine with
two arms arising off of it from either side &
one central spine with
two legs extending off it from either side.
Just the idea of "core" implies something central - and something that is central would have something on either side of the central thing as well as something above & below the central thing.
Finding this central spine in you is what first and foremost grants you access to your core -
then the core extends the lower center of you down into the ground &
suspends the upper center of you out the top of your head.
Threes within the three's:
I wrote in the previous post which is part two of the three, about how there are three triceps heads which attach to each scapula or shoulder blade.
This begins the action which grants wings which come off of either side of the thoracic spine and serve to suspend it off the lower spine & legs.
There is this same power of three in the hamstrings which connect up on to each sit bone:
there are three hamstrings on each leg, and when you connect them up to each sit bone, they serve to support the lower or lumbar spine.
So you have three in that there is one spine
supported by a pair of legs and
a pair of arms,
and you have three in that there are
three tricep heads and
three hamstrings
which are what connects those pairs of arms and pairs of legs
to that central line of spine.
This is why the back is of utmost importance
to supporting the spine,
much more so than the frontal abs -
which many people just pull in to
try to support the deep-underneath spine.
And if you're interested in toning those hard-to-tone areas of
the undersides of the arms or the upper sides of the legs,
you really must get in touch with the truth of using
the triceps-to-scapula and the hamstrings-to-sit-bones connections!
Thanks so much for reading! Comments most welcome here!
Backbone and Wingspan® focuses on the bones of the back, not all of which are the obvious vertebrae that comprise the spine - albeit the backbone.
It is my mission within each and every session to create a true learning experience within the exercises we may perform for strengthening or the stretches we may perform for releasing tightness and tension.
I'm really here to relay experiential information that can change the way you perceive your body as opposed to giving you cues for how-to-do or adding a tip or two while you move.
Backbone literally implies possessing a sense of the spine but figuratively, in a way that translates to your physicality,
Backbone connotes a mutual feeling of both ease and empowerment.
Backbone is a great facility and freedom in the expression of oneself.
There are several other bones along the backside of the body
that serve to support the spinal column and
thus give full access to the entire line of spine and
grant a true sense of both ease and empowerment -
these other bones along the backside are
the scapula,
the sit bones,
and the sacrum.
The scapula are the wing bones, and dropping into the musculature underneath the scapula
"The serpent bound to the earth, the eagle in spiritual flight - isn't that conflict something we all experience? And then, when they amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings. All over the earth, people recognize these images."
I had a revelatory moment one day in my teaching while relaying to a student that the quality of the spine moving through space is an undulation.
I remembered someone telling me that the spine is a serpentine line.
You'll discover and experience all the ranges of motion of the spine within your study
with the Backbone and Wingspan Integrated Back Strength way of understanding your body:
and Rotation of the Ribcage while Unwinding or Spiraling the Spine
I put together that serpentine comes from serpent. I realized that when I chose Backbone and Wingspan, without knowing it, I had given my business - and my beliefs about the body - a mythological name.
Backbone and Wingspan is a spine that has the capacity to feel flight.
Backbone and Wingspan features exercises and stretches that are movement and posture oriented, but you certainly can still receive great muscle toning benefits! The truth is that efficient use of the muscles to support the skeleton brings an elastic toning of those muscles because the part of the muscle that attaches to the bone is most often the part of the muscle that needs the most tone!
People's perceptions of Pilates and yoga often don't include mention of the bones - most people think of Pilates as having to do with long and lean muscle tone and core strengthening.
Because Backbone and Wingspan is movement and posture oriented, I approach the people I teach primarily from the bones - the spine, the pelvis, the shoulder girdle.
In our upcoming High Heel Recovery Clinic, we will hone our knowledge and utilization of two often-overlooked bones. They're not elusive just because you can't see these bones of your own. These are bones at the bottom of the pelvis:
the sits bones.
The anatomical term for sits bones is ischial tuberosity, so that signifies that they are tuberous points attached to the ischium - which forms the lower and back part of each half of the pelvis.
The phrase 'bone up' relates to studying aspects of a thing that you wish to pursue - becoming familiar with the elements of some experience you wish to embark upon. You might 'bone up' on a company which has called you in for an interview or you might 'bone up' on an artist who has a show coming up at your favorite museum.
How did that phrase originate?
Why did someone use 'bone' to imply the acquiring of knowledge? Maybe because there is intelligence in your bones. Feeling it in your bones implies a sensing of something - beyond understanding it intellectually.
The bones are obviously deeper than the muscles, so it makes sense that to have a deeper understanding of your body, you'd explore facets of deeper parts of your body than muscles - you'd explore your skeletal system and spine.
However, going deep to the bone takes more imagination and sensitivity than exertion. You learn to sense the weight of the bones and how they respond to gravity.
But with the sits bones you can actually use surface to sense them and direct them down for pelvic stability and to be able to tone the hamstrings.
Truly working deeply from a physical standpoint means that you are conscious of the bones that are the structural framework beneath the muscles, and you know that you can direct parts of the skeleton and the spine using very subtle forces. You can learn to initiate movement from the bones in your body.
If you learn how to use the surface that you're sitting on to direct the sits bones down and a little bit behind you, then the stability of the entire pelvic structure will follow because these sits bones are not separate from the pelvic structure, but simply kind-of knobby points at the bottom of the larger pelvic bones.
or you can think that for the single central spine to be supported,
there are a set of sits bones to stabilize the lower spine
as well as a set of scapula to help suspend the upper spine
but is important to note and to even emphasize that
the way the bones work to help either to stabilize or suspend
is with subtlety
One of Herald's oft-used and favorite 's' word phrases:
"subtlety is sustainable"
In our clinic, we hope to present
an informative experience that
will knock your nylons off !
But just know that if you want to 'bone up' - that the most important bones to become informed of are the bones that you can use your seat to find - because the sits bones will inform your body of a grounded stability that can eventually be transferred into standing and walking and running and cycling movements.
So 'bone up' by learning how the sits bones go down!
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