Have you ever found the 5 main muscles on your body and given some thought about how they are functioning?
I think I’ll have to say a bit more about my background. I went through the professional training for Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy. Part of it is anatomy and getting in relationship with various anatomical features.
Besides that general training I had for a while 1-on-1 anatomical teaching with someone that went through classic osteopathy training and then also entered the perceptive pedagogy field and who has three decades of working on people and fixing their issues. He has a good local reputation and a bunch of Yoga and pilates teachers go to him when they are old and their body has issues from being overextended in Yoga positions.
Those are the kind of people I’m asking when I want to know something about how the body works.
One story that Danis Bois likes to tell is that he once had a meeting with the teacher who brought Yoga to France and asked them: “How do you deal with the doubt?” Then the Yoga teacher replied something like: “I have no doubt because Yoga has 4000 years of tradition”.
Part of what makes the community around Danis Bois a good spiritual community for me is that the people actually doubt whether they get things right and are constantly open to updating their models. It makes it a community that’s very compatible with being a rationalist. You seem to me like the Yoga people who are overconfident and not aware of the tradeoffs that they are making.
When it comes to the particular question of posture, I had a conversation with another person who’s also in the perceptive pedagogy field a few months ago. The person also has three decades of treating people a separate professional training in a more mainstream modality in which she teaches. She goes to workshop of different people to know what’s out there. She just wrote her first academic paper. I said something about posture being a mix of fascia and muscle and she said: “No, it’s just fascia” and I think told me in that context a story of a Alexander Method teacher who was very tense as a result of overcontrolling his body.
Those are the kind of people I ask when I want to know something about how human anatomy works.
In constrast to that you have a few years of personal experience, to the extend that you do have had positive effects in that time for what you are doing you have no idea what the effect 30 years down the line will be as you are not exposed to such data yet you present certainty while the people I listen to frequently say they are uncertain.
The aestethic of accepting uncertainty is something that both exists in the rationality community and in the perceptive pedagogy community. Part of that accepting uncertainty does lead to not just completely ignoring you based on reference class concerns and lack of both training and regularly working on helping other people deal with issues.
With my background written out, let’s get back to your theory. The way scientific paradigm work is that a paradigm doesn’t have any probability attached to it. It’s a way of seeing a field.
Only empiric events have probabilities. To do science you actually need theories that make predictions. This requires making claims more specific. I think if you would start making your claims more specific and start making claims that would actually be testable it’s likely that you get into contact with more uncertainty about your model.
Thank you for providing some background. I found it very insightful into your methods of thought and what you consider evidence. (I had to google pedagogy, I don’t know what to make of “perceptive pedagogy”.)
You’ve studied anatomy, I think great! Most people (in my experience) find anatomy intimidating but I would hope someone who has studied it would feel more comfortable giving some consideration some, fairly basic, anatomical facts.
I said something about posture being a mix of fascia and muscle and she said: “No, it’s just fascia”
And you are happy to accept that statement? That muscles, the bodily tissues that change the relative positioning of different parts of the body, don’t affect the position of the body (i.e. posture)?
The state of the connective tissue system (including the ill-defined fascia) is important. The way muscles are functioning, moving the parts and repositioning, is also important. Humans have the capacity to send motor commands to “voluntary muscles”. Muscles can be used to consciously alter positioning, to change posture. Anyone who says body position is just about fascia loses a lot of credibility in one swoop IMO.
Those are the kind of people I ask when I want to know something about how human anatomy works.
Have you done any independent research? Fact checking? Thought about it for yourself? Or are you relying on the opinions of others (however great you feel their experience/knowledge/credentials are)?
I don’t want anyone to just believe me, I want the anatomy to be given some thought. I am constantly open to updating my model, but without feedback I can only work with my experiences. And the facts.
You didn’t answer the question I asked:
Have you ever found the 5 main muscles on your body and given some thought about how they are functioning?
Thank you for providing some background. I found it very insightful into your methods of thought and what you consider evidence. (I had to google pedagogy, I don’t know what to make of “perceptive pedagogy”.)
It’s not a term where you will learn that much online.
In the beginning Danis Bois started out teaching Fasciatherapy. After a while he came to the conclusion that the New Agey people are too closemined and he wanted to try the scientific community. He got a Phd in pedagogy and became professor in somatic-psychoeducation and perceptual psycho-education at the Universidade Moderna in Lisbon, Portugal. As a result he added a new aspect to his teachings. More recently, as his knowledge progressed he used the new term of perceptive pedagogy.
English isn’t the main language but French and the French base term is pédagogie. The scope of the term in French and in German is a bit different then the scope of the English word pedagogy and in the university time the translation was education as in somatic-psychoeducation.
And you are happy to accept that statement? That muscles, the bodily tissues that change the relative positioning of different parts of the body, don’t affect the position of the body (i.e. posture)?
Posture it’s where the body naturaly without effort. For a muscle to hold something in a specific position it has to fire constantly which costs energy. It makes sense for the body to save that energy by using fascia to hold the posture.
It’s also worth noting here that I did pay a serious price for receiving physiotherapy after Schrott for my scolioses (e.g. the goal is posture correction). It trained into my body reflexes that when the muscle tonus falls below a certain point my body tenses up. The cost of that was an inability to fully relax.
It was quite an effort and required an ability to intervene in quite basic processes to get rid of most of that stuff.
You haven’t noticed the skulls around the idea of muscles driving posture.
Have you done any independent research? Fact checking? Thought about it for yourself? Or are you relying on the opinions of others (however great you feel their experience/knowledge/credentials are)?
The same somatic-psychoeducation comes about from it being a paradigm about how to learn from the experience out of the moment. Valuing embodied knowledge instead of abstract knowledge in generally true accross different somatic paradigms and that’s why it’s hard to acquire state of the art knowledge in the field by reading. It’s also why a lot of knowledge isn’t written down as a lot of people don’t value abstract knowledge.
This isn’t physiotherapy where people have a textbook that tells them what to do and then do it. Coincidently that’s also the reason why the physiotherapy textbooks are rubbish. It’s how you can find something that’s for you interesting that you haven’t read in any textbook about physiotherapy.
The 1-on-1 anatomy thing wasn’t about transfering intellectual knowledge it was about feeling the entities in the body of another person (so in some sense it was 1-on-1-on-1)
A simple yes or no will do at this point.
The point I was making is that I thought about all the main muscles and how they work multiple times in the last five years.
Thinking through how muscles work is nothing really new. The physiotherapy might not really do it regularly and rather learn abstract knowledge and that’s why you didn’t find the ideas when you looked there but that work has been done elsewhere.
The issue is that the body is very complex and different processes interplay with another.
Posture it’s where the body naturaly without effort. For a muscle to hold something in a specific position it has to fire constantly which costs energy. It makes sense for the body to save that energy by using fascia to hold the posture.
This is an issue of definitions then. I agree that it is the connective tissue system that provides passive support for the body, minimising muscular effort. I also believe it is the location of ‘physical restrictions’ that cause tension, alter positioning and restrict range of movement.
My definition of posture: The position of the body—all of it, at any time.
(I checked a few sources for a definition of posture. Lots of options out there, pretty much saying what I am calling posture and several mentioning the role of muscles.)
I’m not advocating attempts to get muscles to hold a specific position—in any shape or form. Think gentle movement and relaxation …
Working with the ‘5 main muscles of movement’ and consciously connecting with them provides a lot of sensory feedback about the relative positioning of the torso, head and limbs. Whether it be using 5 midline markers, the linea alba or Base-Line muscles (pelvic floor + rectus abdominis) as the starting reference for positioning (whatever works for an individual). This sensory feedback provides the information needed to work towards a full range of natural movement and a body that is balanced and aligned—where all the parts of the body in the correct relative positioning and free to move, including the myofascial meridians.
Working with the ‘5 main muscles of movement’ and consciously connecting with them provides a lot of sensory feedback about the relative positioning of the torso, head and limbs.
While that claim is true, it’s also not useful as there are a lot of different ways to get sensory feedback.
Take a posture idea like “A simple way to adjust your body into a better posture is to imagine a string attached to the top of your head, towards the back. ”
It seems reasonable for a lot of people. We are at a point where Alexander Technique teachers say “You have inaccurate stereotypes of us if you think we would advocate a bad idea like that.”
Given your idea of how posture works, would you also argue it’s a bad idea and that your idea is very different. If so how do you think your idea is different?
Yes, there are a lot of ways to get sensory feedback. I listed some to increase awareness of the relative positioning of the midline anatomy here.
imagine a string attached to the top of your head, towards the back. ”
The “imagine a string” example is great—if it works for an individual and they engage the ‘right’ muscles to improve posture. It didn’t for me, my body was too restricted and misaligned, my ‘myalgia of imbalance’ too advanced for imagining a string to be of any help.
To take the string idea further, think of the linea alba and nuchal & supraspinous ligaments as part of this string. To straighten the string the main muscles are the rectus abdominis and trapezius muscles. The “attached to the top of your head, towards the back” I’d replace with the external occipital protuberance.
Also, for FWIW, while I don’t have ChristianKI’s level of education in movement, I am an experienced mediator, have done a reasonable amount of work with body scans and some work with tuning the motor cortex and three years of pretty serious contact improv dancing prior to lockdown. I think my proprioception is likely better than average, altho I’m not super confident in that, nor do I have a good sense if it’s 60th or 90th percentile.
I watched a few videos and contact improv looks great. (Full disclosure I watched the videos x2 speed I’ve little patience watching most stuff). For people in a good enough physical condition, and relaxed enough to go with it, I can see it being beneficial and a lot of fun. (5 years ago I would have hated the idea because back then movement = pain, pain, pain and I couldn’t have let go to move) It looks like free-flowing movement, guided instinctively by the body rather than the brain trying to control and direct. Support is being provided which allows increased movement (I achieve similar things by legs hanging off the bed, leaning over arm of chair, using the kitchen worktop as a bar, swinging from posts...) Working towards a full range of natural movement means moving through all the positions possible, the “more awkward” is easier when support is available and the ‘support’ is also moving which adds more randomness and further increase range of movement. I find a similar, gentle, effect moving around in water and letting my limbs float around but if I get the opportunity I will try contact improv.
Now seems a good time to have a minor rant about our modern flat earth..… Walking (especially barefoot) over uneven terrain flexes and stretches the whole of the body in a way that shoes and flat ground just don’t allow.
I will take some time to have a good read of bewelltuned. Are there particular bits that resonate with you? For now, pulling this quotation:
By repeating certain movements and positions over and over again (e.g. during sitting work), we involuntarily strengthen connections between movements and muscles that don’t make much sense lumped together.
This fits with my distorted ‘body map in the mind’ that sends motor commands to the ‘wrong muscles’, adding to imbalance and misalignment.
What do you experience when you are focused on your body?
(body scanning? I don’t know much about the methods involved)
How would you describe your sense of proprioception?
My ‘conscious proprioception’ skills were pretty much at zero when I started and it’s been a revelation actively experiencing the sensory feedback from by body. Starting with focus on my pelvic floor and rectus abdominis ‘Base-Line’ muscles from where movement originates and using my midline anatomy as the reference for positioning of the rest of my body.
Active engagement of the Base-Line muscles creates a positive feedback loop, increasing awareness of :
Voluntary activation of muscles.
The body map in the mind
Proprioceptive feedback that is compared to the map. Seeing the sparkles. The basis of chakras and Qi?
Now I’m aware of my body in a way I never was before. I was always very clumsy…
I think I’ll have to say a bit more about my background. I went through the professional training for Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy. Part of it is anatomy and getting in relationship with various anatomical features.
Besides that general training I had for a while 1-on-1 anatomical teaching with someone that went through classic osteopathy training and then also entered the perceptive pedagogy field and who has three decades of working on people and fixing their issues. He has a good local reputation and a bunch of Yoga and pilates teachers go to him when they are old and their body has issues from being overextended in Yoga positions.
Those are the kind of people I’m asking when I want to know something about how the body works.
One story that Danis Bois likes to tell is that he once had a meeting with the teacher who brought Yoga to France and asked them: “How do you deal with the doubt?” Then the Yoga teacher replied something like: “I have no doubt because Yoga has 4000 years of tradition”.
Part of what makes the community around Danis Bois a good spiritual community for me is that the people actually doubt whether they get things right and are constantly open to updating their models. It makes it a community that’s very compatible with being a rationalist. You seem to me like the Yoga people who are overconfident and not aware of the tradeoffs that they are making.
When it comes to the particular question of posture, I had a conversation with another person who’s also in the perceptive pedagogy field a few months ago. The person also has three decades of treating people a separate professional training in a more mainstream modality in which she teaches. She goes to workshop of different people to know what’s out there. She just wrote her first academic paper. I said something about posture being a mix of fascia and muscle and she said: “No, it’s just fascia” and I think told me in that context a story of a Alexander Method teacher who was very tense as a result of overcontrolling his body.
Those are the kind of people I ask when I want to know something about how human anatomy works.
In constrast to that you have a few years of personal experience, to the extend that you do have had positive effects in that time for what you are doing you have no idea what the effect 30 years down the line will be as you are not exposed to such data yet you present certainty while the people I listen to frequently say they are uncertain.
The aestethic of accepting uncertainty is something that both exists in the rationality community and in the perceptive pedagogy community. Part of that accepting uncertainty does lead to not just completely ignoring you based on reference class concerns and lack of both training and regularly working on helping other people deal with issues.
With my background written out, let’s get back to your theory. The way scientific paradigm work is that a paradigm doesn’t have any probability attached to it. It’s a way of seeing a field.
Only empiric events have probabilities. To do science you actually need theories that make predictions. This requires making claims more specific. I think if you would start making your claims more specific and start making claims that would actually be testable it’s likely that you get into contact with more uncertainty about your model.
Thank you for providing some background. I found it very insightful into your methods of thought and what you consider evidence. (I had to google pedagogy, I don’t know what to make of “perceptive pedagogy”.)
You’ve studied anatomy, I think great! Most people (in my experience) find anatomy intimidating but I would hope someone who has studied it would feel more comfortable giving some consideration some, fairly basic, anatomical facts.
And you are happy to accept that statement? That muscles, the bodily tissues that change the relative positioning of different parts of the body, don’t affect the position of the body (i.e. posture)?
The state of the connective tissue system (including the ill-defined fascia) is important. The way muscles are functioning, moving the parts and repositioning, is also important. Humans have the capacity to send motor commands to “voluntary muscles”. Muscles can be used to consciously alter positioning, to change posture. Anyone who says body position is just about fascia loses a lot of credibility in one swoop IMO.
Have you done any independent research? Fact checking? Thought about it for yourself? Or are you relying on the opinions of others (however great you feel their experience/knowledge/credentials are)?
I don’t want anyone to just believe me, I want the anatomy to be given some thought. I am constantly open to updating my model, but without feedback I can only work with my experiences. And the facts.
You didn’t answer the question I asked:
Have you ever found the 5 main muscles on your body and given some thought about how they are functioning?
A simple yes or no will do at this point.
It’s not a term where you will learn that much online.
In the beginning Danis Bois started out teaching Fasciatherapy. After a while he came to the conclusion that the New Agey people are too closemined and he wanted to try the scientific community. He got a Phd in pedagogy and became professor in somatic-psychoeducation and perceptual psycho-education at the Universidade Moderna in Lisbon, Portugal. As a result he added a new aspect to his teachings. More recently, as his knowledge progressed he used the new term of perceptive pedagogy.
English isn’t the main language but French and the French base term is pédagogie. The scope of the term in French and in German is a bit different then the scope of the English word pedagogy and in the university time the translation was education as in somatic-psychoeducation.
http://fasciatherapie.org/international/index.php/fasciatherapy-dbm/danis-bois is one public biography of him that gives a bit of an overview over a part of the work and the part that interfaces directly with anatomy.
Posture it’s where the body naturaly without effort. For a muscle to hold something in a specific position it has to fire constantly which costs energy. It makes sense for the body to save that energy by using fascia to hold the posture.
It’s also worth noting here that I did pay a serious price for receiving physiotherapy after Schrott for my scolioses (e.g. the goal is posture correction). It trained into my body reflexes that when the muscle tonus falls below a certain point my body tenses up. The cost of that was an inability to fully relax.
It was quite an effort and required an ability to intervene in quite basic processes to get rid of most of that stuff.
You haven’t noticed the skulls around the idea of muscles driving posture.
The same somatic-psychoeducation comes about from it being a paradigm about how to learn from the experience out of the moment. Valuing embodied knowledge instead of abstract knowledge in generally true accross different somatic paradigms and that’s why it’s hard to acquire state of the art knowledge in the field by reading. It’s also why a lot of knowledge isn’t written down as a lot of people don’t value abstract knowledge.
This isn’t physiotherapy where people have a textbook that tells them what to do and then do it. Coincidently that’s also the reason why the physiotherapy textbooks are rubbish. It’s how you can find something that’s for you interesting that you haven’t read in any textbook about physiotherapy.
The 1-on-1 anatomy thing wasn’t about transfering intellectual knowledge it was about feeling the entities in the body of another person (so in some sense it was 1-on-1-on-1)
The point I was making is that I thought about all the main muscles and how they work multiple times in the last five years.
Thinking through how muscles work is nothing really new. The physiotherapy might not really do it regularly and rather learn abstract knowledge and that’s why you didn’t find the ideas when you looked there but that work has been done elsewhere.
The issue is that the body is very complex and different processes interplay with another.
This is an issue of definitions then. I agree that it is the connective tissue system that provides passive support for the body, minimising muscular effort. I also believe it is the location of ‘physical restrictions’ that cause tension, alter positioning and restrict range of movement.
My definition of posture: The position of the body—all of it, at any time.
(I checked a few sources for a definition of posture. Lots of options out there, pretty much saying what I am calling posture and several mentioning the role of muscles.)
I’m not advocating attempts to get muscles to hold a specific position—in any shape or form. Think gentle movement and relaxation …
Working with the ‘5 main muscles of movement’ and consciously connecting with them provides a lot of sensory feedback about the relative positioning of the torso, head and limbs. Whether it be using 5 midline markers, the linea alba or Base-Line muscles (pelvic floor + rectus abdominis) as the starting reference for positioning (whatever works for an individual). This sensory feedback provides the information needed to work towards a full range of natural movement and a body that is balanced and aligned—where all the parts of the body in the correct relative positioning and free to move, including the myofascial meridians.
While that claim is true, it’s also not useful as there are a lot of different ways to get sensory feedback.
Take a posture idea like “A simple way to adjust your body into a better posture is to imagine a string attached to the top of your head, towards the back. ”
It seems reasonable for a lot of people. We are at a point where Alexander Technique teachers say “You have inaccurate stereotypes of us if you think we would advocate a bad idea like that.”
Given your idea of how posture works, would you also argue it’s a bad idea and that your idea is very different. If so how do you think your idea is different?
Yes, there are a lot of ways to get sensory feedback. I listed some to increase awareness of the relative positioning of the midline anatomy here.
The “imagine a string” example is great—if it works for an individual and they engage the ‘right’ muscles to improve posture. It didn’t for me, my body was too restricted and misaligned, my ‘myalgia of imbalance’ too advanced for imagining a string to be of any help.
To take the string idea further, think of the linea alba and nuchal & supraspinous ligaments as part of this string. To straighten the string the main muscles are the rectus abdominis and trapezius muscles. The “attached to the top of your head, towards the back” I’d replace with the external occipital protuberance.
Also, for FWIW, while I don’t have ChristianKI’s level of education in movement, I am an experienced mediator, have done a reasonable amount of work with body scans and some work with tuning the motor cortex and three years of pretty serious contact improv dancing prior to lockdown. I think my proprioception is likely better than average, altho I’m not super confident in that, nor do I have a good sense if it’s 60th or 90th percentile.
I watched a few videos and contact improv looks great. (Full disclosure I watched the videos x2 speed I’ve little patience watching most stuff). For people in a good enough physical condition, and relaxed enough to go with it, I can see it being beneficial and a lot of fun. (5 years ago I would have hated the idea because back then movement = pain, pain, pain and I couldn’t have let go to move) It looks like free-flowing movement, guided instinctively by the body rather than the brain trying to control and direct. Support is being provided which allows increased movement (I achieve similar things by legs hanging off the bed, leaning over arm of chair, using the kitchen worktop as a bar, swinging from posts...) Working towards a full range of natural movement means moving through all the positions possible, the “more awkward” is easier when support is available and the ‘support’ is also moving which adds more randomness and further increase range of movement. I find a similar, gentle, effect moving around in water and letting my limbs float around but if I get the opportunity I will try contact improv.
Now seems a good time to have a minor rant about our modern flat earth..… Walking (especially barefoot) over uneven terrain flexes and stretches the whole of the body in a way that shoes and flat ground just don’t allow.
I will take some time to have a good read of bewelltuned. Are there particular bits that resonate with you? For now, pulling this quotation:
This fits with my distorted ‘body map in the mind’ that sends motor commands to the ‘wrong muscles’, adding to imbalance and misalignment.
What do you experience when you are focused on your body?
(body scanning? I don’t know much about the methods involved)
How would you describe your sense of proprioception?
My ‘conscious proprioception’ skills were pretty much at zero when I started and it’s been a revelation actively experiencing the sensory feedback from by body. Starting with focus on my pelvic floor and rectus abdominis ‘Base-Line’ muscles from where movement originates and using my midline anatomy as the reference for positioning of the rest of my body.
Active engagement of the Base-Line muscles creates a positive feedback loop, increasing awareness of :
Voluntary activation of muscles.
The body map in the mind
Proprioceptive feedback that is compared to the map. Seeing the sparkles. The basis of chakras and Qi?
Now I’m aware of my body in a way I never was before. I was always very clumsy…