new blog url

Henceforth, the new url for my blog is:

paulengelmann.wordpress.com

Different Types of Thinking

Most people tend to think that most people think in the same way that they do.  I did too.  A case in point:  most people tend to talk to other people as if their reasoning is going to make sense to them; sometimes it does, often it doesn’t.

One factor why someone might not hear what another is saying, or how someone can arrive at different solutions for the same problem, is the fact that people think in different ways.  David Keirsey, based on the work of Myers-Briggs, delineates this wonderfully in his book Please Understand Me II (the title could be better – but don’t let that dissuade you).  Keirsey points out that, in this model, there are four main ways of thinking, according to the main personality types:  rational, idealist, artist, guardian.  For instance, rationalists (like me) enjoy precise logic and don’t become hung up on tradition when it doesn’t serve a purpose; guardians, on the other hand, value custom and tradition even if there are more practical and efficient ways to accomplish a task.

These personality dynamics play a significant role in understanding interactions no matter what your profession.

Relevant Blog Posts by Seth Godin

I enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog regularly.  He recently had a few posts that are relevant to HEY.

In a post entitled “Bear Shaving” he discusses approaches that deal with the symptoms rather than the cause.  In the world of physical movement, stretching deals with the symptoms, not the cause of the  muscular imbalance.  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/bear-shaving.html

HEY certainly falls into the category of initiating!  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/07/the-initiator.html

Walking the Talk

I enjoy the saying, “talk the talk, walk the walk.” As I googled it, there seems to be a few variations on the wording of the adage. Nevertheless, I’m sure you all know what saying I’m talking about.  As someone who has overcome stuttering, talking the talk is walking the walk. I now walk the talk!

Reading Bodies: An Open Book

There are many great athletes who lack mental acuity and there are many great minds who lack physical agility.  With that having been said, physical posture frequently reflects mental posture.  A lot of overmobility in the body often reflects overmobility in the mind. Someone who is stiff physically tends to be a stiff mentally.  Both literally and figuratively, someone might lack a backbone, lack core-strength, be a tight-ass, be a softy, be thick-headed, etc.  On the other hand, someone might move with grace, be at ease, be light-footed, have nice definition, have a backbone, radiate, etc.

Yoga for Stiffs (and yoga for overmobiles, too)

One of HEY’s specialities is Yoga for Stiffs, that is yoga for people, especially men, who do not have a lot of natural mobility.

My late yoga teacher, Roger Eischens, used to say, “Blessed are the stiff.”  When you’re stiff, it’s easier to create strength than when you’re overmobile.  Before an overmobile person can create significant strength, they must create stability, i.e. reduce hypermobility.

It’s also a lot easier to create mobility for a stiff person than to reduce mobility for someone who is overmobile.

Many people in our culture, especially women, have quite a few of overmobile joints.  Unfortunately, most styles of movement don’t focus on reducing the range of movement in overmobile joints and, even if they did, most don’t have the tools to significantly reduce hypermobility.

By generating the internal actions of the bones with different focuses for different body types, HEY reduces the range of motion in the appropriate joints, and increases the range of motion in the appropriate joints.

The Human Body is Mind

In our modern culture we tend to think of the human brain as the mind. When, in fact, the brain and mind are not identical (some Indian philosophies delineate this distinction to great degrees). For instance, someone might have a gut reaction or a heart of gold, which are mental activities, though not located in the brain.  Recently I came to the realization that body is mind. Doesn’t one’s posture tell a story about who they be? All the meridians in Chinese medicine, all the chakras, all the auric fields, and whatever other energetic structures you might include, have their own consciousness. Each of these individual aspects, taken collectively, form our own collective conscious, which we refer to, in the singular, as mind. The functioning of the brain to a large degree is a reflection, a symptom, of all this other mental activity.

Here are some more examples. BKS Iyengar talks about each cell having its own consciousness.  Traditionally in Chinese medicine each element, composed of the corresponding meridians and organs, possessed certain mental properties and these dimensions were treated, not through psychotherapy, but rather by balancing the five elements through various modalities, such as acupuncture, qi gong, and herbs.

Underlying Assumptions: What’s your footing?

After Carl Jung separated from Freud, as Joseph Campbell was fond of telling, he spent the rest of his life in this inquiry:  What is my own personal myth?

Myth, stories about reality that provide the framework in which reality is understood (If the concept of myth is foreign to you, I recommend reading Joseph Campbell), such as Greek myth, shapes our perception.  They are the underpinnings for our thought processes.  In our current culture, myth is frequently used to denote a false idea, which indicates the degree to which an understanding of mythology, as practiced for millennia, is not present.

The issue at hand is this: if one has inaccurate assumptions, that is to say inaccurate personal myths, what is built upon those assumptions must be, to varying degrees, inaccurate. It’s like building a house without a stable foundation.

The current myth in athletic development tends to look at the musculoskeletal system in terms of muscles only, overlooking the internal actions of the bones. This myth of how the body functions leads to a set of incorrect conclusions, or at least vastly incomplete conclusions, about the nature of physical movement and how to create structural alignment.

The Influence of Culture on Musculoskeletal Alignment: An Often Overlooked Dynamic

When I lived in Europe for a year, I was struck by how culture influences body alignment. Italians, for instance, tend to have better posture than Americans, though the muscle tone seems to be about the same as Americans. I was especially struck by how people from Eastern Europe and Africa tended to have much better posture and muscle tone.

Due to the historically recent changes in our culture – especially the American culture, in which I live – such as not squatting to go to the bathroom, not sitting on the ground, not doing as much manual labor – the list could go on and on – as well as other factors, such as the rise of higher education that places little if any emphasis on skills used in everyday life, our bodies, having been shaped by our culture, are much more imbalanced than they used to be.

It has not been my experience that most forms of movement take the cultural influence on structural alignment into consideration. In yoga, for example, they tend to treat American bodies as if they were Indian bodies! Yikes!

Individuality

Every person is an individual. Therefore in class and in personal training every person should be treated differently. Ideally each person in class would be working on what is most appropriate for them, not the person next to them.