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Neck, shoulders and upper back, 5: Learn to really move your shoulder blades
A Micro Pause where we keep looking into the movement of the shoulder blades. Keeping an investigative attitude and a curious mind we move freely with full awareness of what's going on in the body.
Moving your shoulder blades in an unstructured manner allows you to foster an investigative attitude towards your own body. Also, it helps you move your shoulder blades in all directions, which will increase the mobility of the shoulder blades and all surrounding tissue of the upper back.
Neck, shoulders and upper back, 4: Learn to move your shoulder blades
A Micro Pause where we look into the movement of the shoulder blades.
Moving your shoulder blades in a very structured and controlled manner is good as it helps with body control and lets your really examine the ranges of motion of the shoulder blades. When we move within a static shape, such as the square shape in this exercise, it becomes easier to compare movement patterns between the shoulder blades, and between different directions of movement. trying to move evenly will help you increase the mobility of the shoulder blades.
Neck, shoulders and upper back, 3: Negotiating with your body
A Micro Pause where we practice viewing our relationship to our bodies as a negotiating one.
Body Intelligence is about treating your body as an ally, not an obstacle, and with allies we negotiate, we do not demand.
Demanding of your muscles to release their grip and extent into their full length (by applying a hard pull) is not very useful. Negotiating with them to do so is much more efficient.
Why? Because thats how the nervous system works. The muscle need to feel like its safe to extend (in the sense that it won’t cause it to break and/or not being able to contract again) in order to let go of its grip. On the level of the nervous system this can be accomplished by a continuous action of gently pulling and releasing.