Core Awareness, Revised Edition: Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise, and Dance

The outward rotator muscles counterbalance both psoas and iliacus muscles.

Gravity stimulates the fluid cellular growth of living bone. During infancy the naturally bowed legs are stimulated to lengthen, strengthen, and eventually straighten. All throughout our childhood bones continue growing, with permanent fusion occurring some time after the eighteenth year of life. Encouraging a baby to stand before his or her bones

Overextension leads to feelings of exhaustion and resentment, whereas reaching out from a supple dynamic core is a free exchange of energy that emerges from deep within.

Drink red clover, nettle, and oat straw tea with a touch of peppermint or fennel to replenish the adrenals. Eat and drink moistening foods such as chia seeds, aloe vera juice, artichokes, burdock root, cucumber juice, and/or slippery elm tea.

Good positioning always includes a: Stable pelvis (see Chapter Three, Centering the Pelvis) Centered joints (see Chapter Four, Connecting to Bone) Released, supple psoas (see Chapter Two, Engaging the Psoas Muscle) Anchoring

The body does not need to be taught to stand, move, or breathe. We simply need to stop interfering with our natural capabilities. Therefore, awareness is key. To embody this new understanding is the next challenging frontier. Being a self-correcting system demands that we shift our focus and intention away from doing it “right” to gaining awareness

It is for those ready to let go of their identification as a dancer, yoga student, athlete, or performer, to embrace the common human experience of sensation in motion.

When the pelvis is not balanced and good skeletal positioning is ignored, a seated or standing hamstring stretch, for example, does not activate the hamstrings but engages the iliacus and gluteus maximus muscles, which in turn pull on the SI joint ligaments.

Having never been given permission to throw a tantrum, I suggested he stomp his feet. Lying on his back on the floor he pounded his feet and hands and made facial grimaces. When he stood up he was pleasantly surprised to find his clavicles and shoulder girdle had softened while he felt more grounded through his legs and feet.