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DIR Return to: Cranial Restructuring
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#Post#: 2335--------------------------------------------------
Some considerations for self-treating asymmetry
DIR By: Progress
Date: July 5, 2017, 5:08 am
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--- Quote ---
> Dude in question probably has a slightly fallen arch on the
foot of the shorter leg. This foot is probably larger (longer)
due to flatness from the fallen arch, with the ankle above weak
and supinated and the big toe/medial ball of the foot taking all
the weight. The longer leg would have the opposite problems, the
lesser toes and lateral ball of the foot taking the weight of
this side of the body. Other ramifications: uneven
closing/clicking of the jaw, frozen shoulder on the longer side,
minor instances of unilateral neurapraxia (ie.
piriformis/thoracic outlet syndromes, bells palsy, etc.) from
pinching of the nerves at rotational hotspots, and a touch of
scoliosis to boot.
>
> From fixing my own similar imbalance I can tell you it is
incredibly painstaking a process but can be done. It all begins
with the way the foot makes contact with the ground in walking,
meaning how the weight moves across the arches in gait and the
degree to which forward propulsion comes from pushing off of the
stance foot versus stepping or prancing forward with the swing
foot. This is ultimately the job of glutes/abductors and
psoas/adductors to balance out. Consider that this guy has
inhibited glutes on the short side which fail to support the
greater trocheanter and cause the femur to lean/rotate forward
and internally, and an inhibited psoas on the long side that
fails to support the lesser trocheanter and causes the femur to
lean/rotate backwards and externally (just femur, lower leg will
rotate in opposite plane). As well, the same muscles on the
contralateral side will be tight. The whole picture amounts to a
rotation of the spine and hence the entire body musculature
towards the shorter leg and a tendency to pull up the shoulder
on the short side to cover up the scoliotic appearance.
>
> Walking slowly and purposefully at an oblique angle as an
exercise, with feet rotated below the ankle both pointing
towards the shorter side, can do wonders to reshape the bones of
the foot. So too balancing energy from the central line of the
thigh between the medial and lateral components of both quads
and hams by marching in place without lifting the feet: moving
the knees back and forth evenly and along the plane of the
rectus femoris, focusing on the biarticulate connections of this
muscle, and without allowing the sole of the foot, heel or toes
to leave the ground. The resulting torque of this exercise can
be directed up and down the body to bring balance to the whole.
Just mindfulness of the weak muscle chains is a good start: weak
lateral chain on the short side, weak medial chain on the long
side. All work on the foot, legs and hips must also be allowed
to carry into similar rotational movement in the hand, arm and
shoulder, as well as in the jaw, hyoidals and suboccipitals.
Good luck to him, it takes years of dedication to truly resolve
this problem once and for all. But it is worth every ounce of
effort! I knew my body inside and out by the end, and gained
much control and strength, as well as righted my jaw, aligned my
teeth to a degree and even grew back some hair on my scalp.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Many people get their spine twisted simply by training with
bad form and too much weight, or at least training worsens a
preexisting spinal rotation that could have as simple a root as
right-handedness. There is no way to undo these problems other
than becoming aware of the invisible tension in your back, to
become conscious of the movements made by muscles that are
holding on tight due to some ancient trauma, which do not
contract in your daily life, but whose help you need to regain
balance between the two halves of your body.
>
> Here is a suggestion: take a muscle relaxant and explore your
movements infront of a mirror, looking for feelings of release.
Dynamic meditation. Make yourself familiar with new movements,
especially at the level of the neck and head. If you feel your
head is rotated upon the top of your spine, try to lift your
neck and head in a way that lengthens and straightens the
cervical spine and brings the chin down and head backwards onto
the torso from its regularly forward position. Stretch the ****
out of your jaw muscles, to the point of near dislocation, by
tilting back your skull as you lift it up, and dropping your jaw
and sticking your tongue as far out as possible. Imitate the
little men/jaguars in the center of Mayan mandalas. Stretch your
mouth and eyes wide. This is an exercise in vital force, and all
rotations begin with a falling into passivity by the body, when
one merely supports against gravity rather than activey holding
themself upward. Fierce faces often found in religious art
contain ancient wisdom of self healing. Make your face look
ugly. You will need to contort to release your jaw, but once it
does, the rest of thebody will start falling into place.
>
> Every muscle in your body is paired, and as it is, every pair
has a tight brother and a loose brother. Your job is to bring
them into balance. Your tongue has two halves, but at the tip
they move as one, and extending your spine from the hyoid,
meaning putting the base of the tongue up and forward, if your
body is relaxed, the rest of the spine will follow passively
into alignment. If it does not, find the source of the blockage,
the immobility where the wavelike movement wont go pass downward
in spine legs or arms. Break through the immobility with
concentration. Getting it to spasm is the first step to getting
it working. Bodybuilders put all their willpower into lifting
big weights. Bodybalancers put all their willpower onto lifting
their own weight with their whole body. And as bodybuilders get
stronger over time, trust that these painstaking feats of
concentration get easier the longer your practice. Alignment
happens all at once when you find it in your stretches, but
making a habit of staying in alignment is a matter of time and
training. I would recomment Alexander technique to anyone
looking to align their bodies. It is damn near custom designed
to heal people from this problem, and is presents active
solutions where yoga and martial arts present passive solutions.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Here, another great balancing exercise you see in Mayan art.
Stand with the legs spread and the feet outward at 180-degrees
from each other. Engage the gluteus maximus to tuck the pelvis
while bending the knees laterally from the hip abductors to
assume a kind of ziggurat stance, while simultaneously using
your lats to bend your elbows and raise your palms upward. Look
for tightness and unevenness in the lower back and SI joint
while doing this. Allow it expression as an unwinding and assume
whatever contortions follow; they are all necessary stations on
your way to straightness.
>
> The complimentary motion that straightens the legs is hip
adduction, squeezing the inner thighs together. From the
previous stance, do this while keeping the gluteus maximus
contracted. It will push you into a pelvic thrust that is very
healthy for evening out spinal movement.
>
> The great thing about this position is how easily it becomes a
lunge, which is an innvaluable but often misunderstood stretch
for spinal tension from the hip. Most people assume the lunge
shape then attempt the stretch, and never quite get the full
benefits. The zigurat stance eases you into the proper
mechanics of a lunge. If your glutes are inhibited, as is often
the case with such inbalances, be prepared to push as hard with
your willpower as any power lifter does to get them contracting
together and in a straight line. Just watch out, cause its also
easier to drop the bar.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Here are more ideas. The lateral S-curve to the spine begins
with the shape of the foot and its lateral and medial arches.
Shape of the arches is determined by the paired bones of the
lower leg (tibia and fibula). If these bones rotate differently
between the two legs in gait, the arches of the two feet will be
different shapes, and this is the origin of the
hip-imbalance/scoliosis that everyone seems to have these days.
Your feet are locked in their shape by your weight moving
through them into the ground. Change begins with regaining
mobility in the lower leg, particularly the soleus that controls
the fibula (and returns blood to your upper body) and the toe
extensors in the front of the leg which are sadly undertrained
by people who think the calf is the only muscle there!
>
> Further problems come when these bones are relatively immobile
during gait and do not generate sufficient torque to straighten
the spine from movement alone. Similarly, they may have
mobility, but stiffness in the lats prevents the torque from
being translated from the glutes up to the shoulder for a
sympathetic rotation in the paired bones of the forearm and a
healthy shoulder swing while walking. Then you get
frozen-shoulder/thoracic-outlet/jaw-weakness and various other
common problems.
>
> The solution to all these problems is the same. Increase your
general consciousness off the lower leg and the ankle in
particular by learning to grab the ground with your feet and to
generate torque and move it up your thigh and into your spine as
you walk. Do you know that the ankle support provided by most
shoes weakens the ankle tremendously over time by performing the
ankle's job for it? For starters, learn how to walk inside your
shoe rather than with your shoe'd foot as a whole. Stretch your
lower leg and feet like mad! Stretch your thighs, which will be
out of balance and overly tight at the hamstring (that becomes
tight as rock when the ankles are weak to protect them from
rolling). Bring that stretch up into the obliques, which are
really extensions of the legs. Try to hit your right serratus
anterior and rotator cuff, which might just be the key spot that
puts your back into sufficient symmetry to hit the bench
properly.
>
> The most important thing from this, though, is that to align
the pelvis, the legs must be straightened and brought into
balance with each other. Then everything else falls into place.
You will have to learn how to balance on your feet again, as if
you were a baby learning to walk, or as if your were learning to
surf with the whole world as your surfboard. It will take longer
for you than it would a baby because you have to first break
down old habits, and this is where everyone runs aground. Only
with incredibly powerful desire for change and severe
perseverance can you summon the willpower necessary to stretch
decades-old tensions and restore youthful length to your
musculature. In the process you will also have to resolve the
psychological tensions that hold you this way. Knowledge is far
second to willful effort over time. There are only so many ways
someone can tell you to relax and stand up straight and tall
with your chest held high by your abs, and your abs held long by
an extended lumbar spine, and your hips forward to allow the
spine to extend down and forward (tailbone swinging like a
wasp's stinger I always imagine). If one side feels like it is
dropping, straighten it! It all comes down to the actual doing
of it. Lengthening and straightening all of the time. Even in
bed while sleeping. Anything less and you will not be worthy of
the health and happiness that come with balance.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> The important thing is that we know it is a track. When I
begin a stretch, I feel I am unwinding along a prescribed
pathway. I know that when I feel a click or a pop anywhere along
the way, that I have missed an important avenue, and I will
backtrack and try to find what muscle or fibrous grouping I
failed to allow expression. If you can get on the track and
persist in the stretch long enough, it is possible to eventually
reach symmetry and regain the essential pulsing wavelike
internal motion of the body. I get on track between my shoulder
blades, by squeezing them a bit and allowing their circular,
unwinding movement to begin. The expression that opens up from
there is pandiculation, but it radiates out as we continue down
the track: one proper unbroken figure-eight for each vertebra,
each new spinal nerve activated widening the circle and
expanding its influence toward attaining a singular spinal
movement which is the lever action of the body as a whole under
gravity.
>
> The even more important thing, the thing which will sound
insane, but which attempts to communicate the deepest truth I
know, is that the failing of the spine under gravity is exactly
one and the same as the failing of the mind under morality. If
you need a better explanation than the fact we are first and
foremost moral (that is, social) entities, if you reject the
idea of morality because it suggests a spiritual reality to man,
then consider this. To be a social organism is to be a
communicative organism, for mankind is attempting to come
together as a larger organism just as the cells in your body
have come together to make you. The adaptive mechanism for this
evolution is global truthful communication. This is not a
function of verbal language, however. Words are not only for
truthful communication, but are also how individuals attempt to
hide from one another. But we cannot hide what the shape of the
spine tells all others about the nature of our habitual actions
and the guilt and shame we carry within. The guilt and the shame
distort the body with tensions, and we are all experts on
reading each other's proportions and movements. We always know
exactly who stands before us, though few people have the clarity
to know it consciously, and even fewer to put it to words.
>
> Stretching alone will not get you where you want to go.
However much you unwind over the day, you will go to sleep and
your unconscious mind will twist you back up so that the next
day you have to start all over again. Understand that life is a
test. What you do in private matters. You must grow as a moral
entity. Whatever you loathe about your thoughts and behaviour,
your must erradicate with extreme prejudice. Just as shame would
weigh you to the ground and turn you into a worm in the eyes of
the other, pride will lift you with scapular wings and transform
you into an angel. Pride cannot be faked. A straight and
symmetrical body with freedom of movement and expression cannot
be grown without a good soul. No technology or exercise program
will do that for you.
--- End Quote ---
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