Spring!

Spring is a great season for my message today, which goes out to all of you:

Bodyworkers
Alexander Teachers
Physical Therapists
Somatics Teachers
Anatomy Geeks

I have developed a special workshop for you! Would you like to:

1) De-pressurize & revitalize your whole body
2) Show you how to stop hurting delicate fingers, wrists, elbows, arms, and shoulders
3) relieve “knowledge overwhelm”, reignite your innate creativity, and refresh your spirit?

Register before April 22 and get a 20% discount. Want to find out more? Read on below, or go right to the registration page on my website.

Do you ever feel like knowing so much about your body/mind can be a burden? Like, Knowledge Overwhelm? Do your hands, arms, and shoulder hurt after a day of work, even though you feel like you should somehow know better, cause you know so much? If you’ve studied the body a lot, you may have been given tons of great information. But have you been able to really understand it? Do you had trouble figuring out how to use your hard-won knowledge in practical ways? I’ve got the perfect antidote.

I’m prone to overwhelm. My endless curiosity and my hunger for learning are something I just can’t seem to turn off. To balance that part of my nature out, I have developed a practice that allows me to start fresh, all over from the beginning, every day. I’m so glad that I don’t have to come from a place of knowing everything anymore. Instead, I can use the Alexander principles to start from a more open point of view: a place of finding out, verifying, and trusting my own discoveries.

My working title for this practice is “Beginners Mind, Beginners Body”. It follows the 43 segments of our head-to-tail structure, which can be found at all levels of tissue: bone, muscle, nerves, skin. It can seem way too complex, but I’ve found that if you give yourself time, it’s actually simple and refreshing. It’s the perfect antidote to overwhelm. I’ve been exploring the nerves in sequence, one at a time, by working with the layer of tissue with the most sensation: the skin.

When you touch skin, you are contacting many layers of intelligence. It doesn’t require “hard work” to make that contact. The skin does the work for you because it has so much nerve supply! An area of skin that is innervated by a particular nerve is called a “dermatome.” So you could also call it “dermatome mapping.” This is a deep dive, experiential practice, not one that requires memorizing names and information. It’s more like going for a refreshing swim!

I’d like to invite all you body geeks to join me in this practice. I’ve been doing videos starting from my head, and working towards my tail.

Go here if you want to start at the beginning (the jaw). If you have a problem area, you can jump in at any point that interests you. I’ve been so sick this week that I wasn’t able to create a new video, but that’s OK. Go here if you want the most recent video on cervical nerve 6, which innervates the skin of the thumb.

If you are included in the list at the top of this email, chances are your thumbs get a lot of pressure! Maybe you don’t have to work so hard.
And please – if you feel like you should already have the answer to this problem, you are moving more into knowledge overwhelm, and maybe just maybe you need a break.

Happy Spring! Lets see if we can peel away some of the layers of what we think we know, and the meanings that have accrued to parts of our bodies, and see what our bodies have to teach us from the inside out.

“My shoulders are too narrow.”
“My shoulders are too broad.”
“I feel like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders!”
“No matter how many times I shrug and release my shoulders, they never seem to relax!”

A couple of weeks ago I led a teaser workshop for my upcoming four-class series “End Chronic Shoulder Tension Forever.” Together we explored the top three totally wrong ideas most people have about their shoulders:

NUMBER ONE WRONG IDEA: MY SHOULDERS SHOULD BE WIDER
This idea makes people try to widen across the front of their chest, which means that muscles in the front of their shoulder joint are being overstretched and weakened, often resulting in shoulder joint injuries. The muscles in the back between their shoulder blades then become hyper-tonic, no longer able to let go and release the shoulder blades away from one another. This can also cause difficulty breathing freely because your ribs can’t move well, and problems with balance because when your shoulder blades are held rigid, they can’t slide around in the back as they are designed to do, aiding delicate shifts in balance. Postural mal-coordination then gets held throughout your musculature all the way down to the soles of your feet.

NUMBER TWO WRONG IDEA: MY SHOULDER BLADES SHOULD BE LOWER
This idea makes people push their shoulders down and away from the neck and head. This also causes compression of the entire spine and thorax, difficulty breathing because of immobility in the sternum and ribcage, and also affects balance on down through the whole body.

NUMBER THREE WRONG IDEA: MY SHOULDERS CARRY MY HEAD AROUND
Number three is usually variable or highly individual and particular to one person. In this past workshop, it was the idea that our shoulders carry us, and our head, around. It’s very easy to disprove this one, because all you need to do is look at the incredible structure of the human body to see that the shoulder girdle (the collar bones, shoulder blades, arms and hands) is beautifully draped over the ribs. All 24 ribs are supported by the spine so that they can move delicately with each breath, causing a sliding of the shoulder girdle as it easily rides this wave of motion.

The weight of the head is also carried through the spine, passing over the arch of the sacrum, across the pelvis and down through the big sturdy leg bones through the feet into the earth. So as your feet press against the earth, and that spring passes up through your legs, hips, and spine, it supports your shoulders and head! Not the other way around.

I think what happens is that we loose our active relationship to the earth cause we sit all the time. Our legs get kind of deadened and we don’t feel that springy push against the earth traveling up through our spinal column.

Do you wonder if some of your shoulder tension is caused by wrong ideas? My next workshop is for you if:

– you are ready to let go of having sore, tight shoulders all the time
– you are ready to let go of limiting ideas about what you are supposed to look like and how you are supposed to “be”
– you want to feel energized and supported in your body all throughout your day
– you want a practical, provable, and innovative way of making yourself feel better

To experience the amazing motion of your shoulder girdle, check out my latest video.

Information about the upcoming workshop is below!

Peace and love,

Clare

WAYS TO CONNECT:

////// END CHRONIC SHOULDER TENSION FOREVER: WORKSHOP SERIES
Saturdays, March 11, 18, 25, April 1, 2017, 12:30 – 2pm, $160
Go here to register and see more details.
////// FLOWER POWER SESSIONS:
Do you, or someone you know, want relief from chronic shoulder, neck, back, or jaw tension and pain without drugs or surgery? Bring me a flower (yes, really, just one beautiful flower!), and I’ll give you 30 minutes of time in which to discover your innate ability to free yourself from chronic patterns of tension and pain.

Click here to book your session.

PRIVATE LESSONS //////
– 1 hour 15 minute first consultation
– 1 lesson at a time, no commitment needed
– 5 lesson package
– 10 lesson package
– 20 lesson package