Get to Know Your Body

Experiential exercise:  feet together, feet apart

Getting to know your body and how it works is one of the most important elements of the CoreWalking Program.

In this exercise, we play around with how it feels to be upright. Sometimes these kinds of exercises seem goofy,  but if you stick with them you will come away with a better sense of your body and how it lives in space.

Stand with your eyes closed and your feet together.

Feel your body in space.  Now step your feet apart and feel the difference.

Try this a few times and describe to yourself what you are feeling.

Does the body feel different in the different positions? Can you sense of how your energy is moving?

The energy of the body is not stagnant.   Think of the yoga pose tadasana – also known as Equal Standing.

The feet are together, the shins are parallel, and the thighbones angle out between the knees and the pelvis.

From an architectural perspective, the human body would likely fail if presented as a standing structure.  We are closer to a spinning top than a solid building.

With the feet together, you will probably feel slightly out of balance.

Apart, most people report a feeling of stability.

Stepping the feet apart allows our energy to drop, moving down and out of the body through the feet.

When the feet come back together this search for balance translates into an energy that moves up through the spine to the head.

Try this in front of a mirror – you can actually see the energetic flow.

This shift in energy is key to understanding our upright posture.

Step the feet apart and feel your deep gluteal muscles stop working.

Place them together and tap into the beauty of dynamic movement.

Our bodies are in constant motion — we are not stagnant beings.

Getting to know your body will go a long way to finding your own answers to healing your aches and pains.

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