update

this just a place holder to keep blog active, so to speak

eyes closed, one leg

ive been working on this for years.  it is not easy.  then an athleta catalog comes in the mail for beloved wife & there is the model doing the one leg with eyes closed, at rest, blissful, wearing something that is for sale.  in my one-leg standing career so far i have done that for as much as 3.5 breaths before the lean begins that leads to the topple.

i want to be as flexible as a 15 year old girl

so i'm doing the neck exercises (head turns) on one leg recently.  lots of failure, where i like to be with new stuff.  today i noticed (eyes open) that head turns below horizontal did not disturb one leg balance as much as above horizontal, horizontal itself being "ok" still it is all hard to do.  so i can look down on one leg basically no problem, but if i look up its like one leg with eyes closed.

what are the implications of that?  there is a vestibular component and a mechanical balance component, the mechanical can be isolated easily enough, i can try to align my hips & shoulders, etc.  the vestibular - i dont have "balance problems" yet there are mechanical positions for which vestibular fails.  isn't that interesting?

hoody

It was cold this morning & i wore a hoody.

therefore i had this extra rustling sound in my ears while i was doing my stuff on the deck.

as i was doing the eye stuff (up-down, right-left etc.) i noticed some occasional hoody noise as my head was moving ever so slightly.

i was therefore able to relax those head muscles & eliminate the hoody noise, or almost, attaining a deeper level of relaxation, deeper than before.

all for today.

live toes

several months ago it was sensei explaining something & uke gets bent over backwards & goes up on toes.  sensei explains "lifting the hips" in that position "to get the head closer to the ground" so it doesn't have as far to fall.

so i started experimenting with up on my toes in backbend & try to do that raise the hips thing.  hard.  calf muscles get sore after few days, transient cramps in the muscles of the sole of the foot.

i found thoughts of running on toes.  i have been a heelstrike runner.  vibrams really demonstrated the problematics of that style.  i considered the aiki approach would be a lower angle but was still imagining only a heelstrike.  bringing it up in class with a more experienced person who came back with tales of a guy who runs on his toes alone.  so i tried it.

i had ortho leg problems when i was a kid.  special shoes: Thomas heels.  I was told to run "on my toes" but i didn't want to run anyway & running that way felt weird.

at the beach i started watching runners' feet, found several running on their toes.  so i learned how to do it.  on the beach i could go back & look at my footprints in the sand to see what i'd been doing.  mostly flat, occasionally toes only.  sure is a different feeling from heelstrike.

the main contact point of the feet changes from the heel to the ball.  the toes want to spread out to "grab" the floor.  the heels rest lightly, the weight spreads out through the rest of the foot.  because of that spread out weight there seems to be enhanced stability: four zones of weight bearing: inner toe, outer toes, ball, heel, instead of just heel.  because of enhanced mobility of the foot there is increased freedom of action of the ankle, that's always good, having choices.

of course the rest of the body has to be properly draped over the feet,  0-0-0.

speaking of which there was an incident where i got bashed in the nose in class.  it was nage's "fault": clumsy approach, contact with wrong part (nose), heedless follow through with unnecessary force & bad vector, possible psychological aspect.  my job as uke is to make lemonade.  after several days of thinking "how can i approach the issue with the person" mixing up with "what can i do to prevent this in future" this came up: keep the head back, go up on toes, lift hips.  i could have jumped up, as sensei once mentioned, specifically to keep uke's nose from being broken "again."

nice.

odd stuff, disturbances in the force

this morning i did the stretch routine mostly with my heels off the floor.  to arrange the angles to be able to "relax" into it: within the set parameters there are better ways to do it.  5-8 minutes heels off floor: relax the calves, relax the shins, burn baby burn.  and this time the wiggling fingers put out to the edge of the visual field to therefore pay attention to both sides at the same time.

yesterday in class 2 people got hurt separately, one just doing a forward roll, other did a breakfall wrong i guess, i didn't see it.  first went to hospital, sensei thought broken collarbone, other some problem with a leg.  wanted to slow down & relax more than usual.
there is a spot of time between the demonstration of the technique and the first try that the lesson falls out of the head.  the bow, the finding of the partner, the bow, the entry into the technique, the arrangement of the lesson falls apart & i stand there & have to put it back together if i can.  or, if i've trained enough on it i can go with the training & not think about it.  that empty zone, like a dream, when i got up the dream ended, i can try to piece together the fragments of the memory.  passive active.  how wide is the transition zone between passive & active?  does it perhaps only seem that there is an absolute distinction of off/on?  must investigate further.

today with a staff

today was first i was doing everything with the switch-hands rotate forearms around the stick, the tricky what to do with the thumbs, is the thumb covers outer 2 fingers like boken right for jo?  have to ask.  everything could be done in at least 2 categories: right or left palm up when jo horizontal.

arms set so jo was eye level found & doing the side to side head motion in the frontal plane i noticed that the picture of the jo seemed to have a lag in its reflective density: head tilted one way the top was solid, the bottom see through, head tilted the other way the bottom is solid.  noticed a situation in which as i rest in the tilt position the scene changes so that the solid side seemed to solider, the see through zone diminishing over some short period of time.  investigation eventually revealed an attention preference one eye over the other.  the attention was habitually drawn to the side of the tilt.  having found that tendency i could modulate/control it so that keeping the attention alone in 0,0,0 i could eliminate that scene evolution thing so that the side to side transition became equalized, like um a "perfect" sword cut.

and later i discovered that doing shomens and yokomens to the bird feeder pole is just totally excellent.  and that manipulating the jo above and behind the edge of the visual field, using the antenna function if you will, is fun if done real slow.  today.

stretching with staff

i'm not sure why i haven't kept recounting the training.  there was a period of not feeling right, the symptoms only tendencies, a wanness of spirit, little physical issues & minor viruses, combined with a steady pace of business to attend to.  wanness made "me" feel inferior in the good old childhood outcast way.  that apparently pretty much cleared now that spring is here.

bendover is still the main thing i'm working on.  been working with a staff last couple of days.  the staff is as long as from my feet to my armpit when i'm standing normally.  with pinky side of my hands encircling the ends of the staff, thumb lightly over pinky & ring fingers, one palm out, other in, arms will always move together.  now relax.

my quads have become strong enough that i can go almost all the way to the floor and get back up again with just one leg, that out leg just doing balance.  on a mat i can do it on one side but not quite the other yet.  that means that i could do it on the floor too but it would be rough i ain't into rough.

the staff preserves spatial relationships between body parts, helps orient in space by preserving a straight reference line.

more adventures in bendover

this is where i became more aware of the forward-backward axis.

so in bendover there is a certain tendency to move the butt buttward as one allows one's lumbar spine to flex and one's pelvis to rotate topside forward.  when one tries to limit that buttwardness the low back muscles are more isolated.  i noticed that in company of sword, isolated the low back enough that i got a cramp back there that lasted a week.

silent walking, head inclination

today's never-thought-that-befores:

1. was suddenly magically able to put my front foot back flat and decelerated more than before & became able to diminish the noise production of the feet on the hardwood floor by a lot.  the second time i did it it seemed that the quads have become conditioned enough to accommodate the deceleration, probably also that i had  head-back-pelvis nicely in line.
    its also an increased level of back-thereness of the head.  there is comfort & safety back-there.  today i seem extra-special more in the safe zone.
2. head turns, diagonals: there is the linear version with the chin-ear axis stays at 0, and there is the rotational version where the chin rotates toward the direction the head is turned.  Different results.

levels of cane

carrying around a sword makes me pay attention to the generally 24" out from the body zone, makes lines appear so to speak, to keep the blade from touching anything.  same thought can be applied to use of a cane.  the cane can be used to aid balance of course.  it can also be used as an antenna.  point the cane where i want to go, turn to face in that direction, go that way.

old people aikido - in the sense that the principles of aikido apply in normal interactions with objects, the object is the partner

dad is 87, mom is 89.  her habit is to sit there.  dads is to creep around all bent over.  he has been dealing with various householder stuff since they moved, kind of refuses help with it, she has had a series of medical issues.  finally he starts to feel like his world is stable enough he can spare the time to take care of himself, exercize, see doctors, etc.  he wants to do something about being all bent over, will see a doctor, will ask hopefully for a back brace.  

he wanted me to see a bar he hung in a doorway, wanted to hang from it, would i watch him & comment.  sure.  so he goes over & hangs, shows me what he does.  why did he want to do this?  thought it would be a good idea.  (used to do it, decades, didnt help.  probably didnt do it enough.  do anything enough you begin learning something about how to get something out of it.  did some doctor prescribe?  no.  think it helps?  think so.

explained that first the arms stretch, then the shoulder blades, then the back, he deals with that by lifting his legs.  plans to increase time hanging.  all that's fine, anything is better than nothing.  what has to happen if he wants to stand up straighter is to stand up straighter, all the discomfort & frustration while the new habit gets formed in 2 weeks to, um, years.

then he has a moment of lost balance.  so we talk about blackouts, which is when the blood to the head changes quckly, for instance when stopping doing something.  head swims, vision darkens, happens more as get older.  what to do.  find a stable posture that can be assumed with relative safety until the blood shift is done, few seconds at most usually, called it "a neutral position." a concept seemed to go in, he said he'd think about it.

and mom complained about falling while turning, i showed her how to break down the turning movement into pieces & do the pieces one at a time.  like when she gets where shes going she can stop, figure out which way she wants to go, which foot to move where, etc.  again it seemed to go in: the idea of breaking a movement into pieces.  that would be 2 um, transmissions in a session, as it were.  in the sense of an idea being presented & the presentee allows it to get through the brain-spam filter.  provisionally happy.  see what happens.

use of sword in yogoid mode

I have been sick with tenacious green mucus upper throat. 2 weeks of un-painful cough, no fever, some malaise.  there was some outbreak of reverted old patterns.  here's hoping that i don't end up as the 9 year old i once was.

missed aikido 2x weeks.

i've been using the sword as a guide to the lines in my AM stretch.  holding it in any position will always give me something to align with.  if i move a part i can watch the sword perhaps not move demonstrating that i did the isolation correctly.

going through the various stretch movements things are done that are absolute nos in martial, like bending the torso over a straight leg.  in martial the leg would always be bent unless taking a breakfall, but in the AM stretch the goal is to produce the stretch burn in the outside of the forward leg, so the positioning is "anti-martial."

then there's that kneel thing that may someday turn into that superyoga position with the head back & a hand touching the over backwards touching the raised toe of the flexed kneeling leg.  i can't do that yet but the girl model in the yoga clothes catalog can.

anyway, use of the sword in yogoid mode.  useful.

sword

using sword in morning stretch routine.  the purpose of the sword in static (natural man for that matter) is to enable me to notice asymetries, torques, etc.  it demonstrates the axes.  when i move a part (head e.g.) the sword demonstrates that the rest of the body did or didn't move.  in walking it demonstrates my fore and back space otherwise it tends to bump into things.  exactly how close to my feet is "here"?

what is in front of me?  (after getting, after all this time, some approximate idea of what "in front" means, other than a screen, i mean)
what is to my left?
what is behind me (how do i know?)
what is to my right?
what is below me?
what is above me?
what is inside? (glub)
what is outside?

double visual

yesterday i worked on appreciation of 2 visual fields.  the brain pretends there is one field corresponding with the unified "itness" of everything that's not "me" but that is a perceptual joke: there are 2 curved images as we know.  yesterday i was appreciating that.  the attempt was to get the two ocular directions as close as possible to parallel which means as close as possible to an infinity focus.  that meant that i would be theoretically looking beyond the farthest object in the field.  in that "position" i tried to play the attention exercise with the eyeballs still and the direction of the attention changing.  ok then, so there are 2 attention spots to pay attention to, 1 for each eye, so that while the leftward attention sees a far edge in the left eye the right eye attention notes the bridge of the nose.  then of course it is possible to move the 2 attention points separately so that 1 is for example all the way in some directiion while the other is still.  attention is "all mental" so that can be done.  slight tweeking of the concept of "unity of purpose" is required, so like most exercises it is about walking and chewing gum at the same time.

still busy

had been feeling a squished feeling in chest, all bent over in the thoracic, oldish, what old people do, bent over, head forward, eyes toward ground.

what to do?  the morning routines, the aikido, the attention, still squished.

today i did the morning routine with the long stick, because i felt like it.  so,
1. for the attention directionals i held the stick at base of skull level behind the head.  continued through the head movements.  immediately some numbness in left upper arm, of course the shoulders get tired immediately.  keeping the stick in that position, relaxing the hands, keeping the stick not quite touching base of skull, arrange the rest of the back & pelvis, in all the stick helps to define the vertical & horizontal, the chest is lifted & spread by the needs of the shoulders, so the whole experiment with the stick is immediately rewarding (because a real experiment does not "succeed" or "fail" except if data is not obtained).

6-8 minutes of arms up at shoulder level gives some comfortable-with-discomfort practice.

2.contiuing into the torso movements the forced relationship of the 2 arms creates a different set of effects in the torso, increased burn in the side to side bendovers & some interesting where-do-i-put-my-head situations in the side leg stretches.

Planning to do again with the stick.  There is stuff there.

too busy

been too busy to write.  too was going for the 5th kyu test & didn't want to jinx it by imagining that i know how to do anything.  and really too busy.

that hot spot in upper outer left foot = gone & it can move all over without that adhesiony burn.  now there is another one on mid outer right foot, trying to find the position to make it burn.

have been doing things in morning that are never done in aikido like hyperextending the knees.  today in side bendover went straight down the front of the knee in hyperextension, a great well of burn up the front of the left leg.

also the side leg stretch without tightening the quad of the out leg.  still working on it.

relaxing quads in bendover

continuing with relaxing the quads in bendover.  i think the reason they do that is to guard the ligaments in the back of the knee.  that's great but we learn to fearfully overguard and it holds us back, largest muscles in the body bumping around, trying to be helpful.

in side-reach bendover i found there is a front leg and back leg, the front leg quad wanted to tighten as i bent over and fully extended the knee.  i spent the last year learning how to do the move without engaging the forward quad.  now i want to do other things without engaging the quad.  pivoting for example.

pivoting on the ball of the foot turned out to be no problem, quad stayed relaxed.  pivoting on the heel turned out to be difficult.  had to move the center of gravity around, had to try manual gentling, had to back off & try again.  i think though that i have established that the quads are not required to make that move.  can learn how to save energy.

this a continuation of what i did yesterday, when i researched unnecessary recruitment of the quad in side leg stretch: the application of gentling, etc.  the progression was: ordinary side leg stretch with foot flat on floor keep quad relaxed, at any point of the stretch (trunk moves away from that leg), rotate on heel, allow toes up in air. quad really wants to tighten up & guard.  multiple failed attempts.  gentling, etc.  fail and partial fail. 

toes, legs

today some minutes with heels off floor.  it is not standing on toes, it is balls of feet with toes stretched out relaxed for stability.  if the toes grab everything else wants to grab too.  if toes stay relaxed then a stable platform can be made on which the rest of the body can be draped.  after some small amount of time in bent-over-backwards the muscles of the anterior compartment of my left lower leg started to burn, so once again a tightness in that leg has been revealed, another one to work one.  in aikido we are always wanting to keep as much of the foot on the floor as possible, so is this toe stuff non-aiki?  don't think so.  any more than bendover in warmup is.  bendover is an exquisitely exposed position for the head based body: the butt becomes the most important mediator with the "rest of it" while the head & its sensors can't see what's going on.  bendover in aikido is a split second thing & rare.  all the more reason to do it in warmup.  it has endless things to tell about the hamstrings & low back.

fall.  i've returned to working in the downlow zone, exaggerated knee bends, walking around down there like groucho marx with a sword.  quads burn down near the knee.

legs have biggest muscles in boday but they are attached to the "nether regions" where the boday maintenance stuff is as the arms are connected to the "higher regions" where the desire functions are processed.  using the leg muscles inevitably reminds us of our bodily functions because every leg movement rubs stuff in the digestive/reproductive zone (while the arms just pull on the head).  so they thought let's immobilize the legs so they won't think about that stuff, more time for upstairs work.  thus we spend our days in chairs, the leg muscles are the biggest.

ways of throwing acorns at a tree:
1. left hand / right hand
2. throwing side foot forward / throwing side foot back
3. stepping forward with throwing side foot / stepping back with throwing side foot
4. stepping forward with other foot / stepping back with other foot
etc.
5. oh, and chucking it backward using a mirror, haha.

a lot to play with, starting with my left hand throw was always sucky, still is, but much better.

going back out again to do more balance on one leg stuff.

~2 years of almost daily morning workouts.

one leg stuff with a sword to keep the arms occupied.  lots of wobble.  long way to go.

things that can be done with surgical scars

surgical scars are tough, fibrous, poorly vascularized stuff with entrapped nerves that can cause pain.  the fibers are usually laid down kind of willynilly, whichever way they happen to grow.  this is reasonable because the wound has to be knit together and the tissues rejoined but it is also complicating.  the goal of post-surgical scar amelioration is to allow ordinary tissues to infiltrate into the scar zone to soften, disperse, shrink the scar.  infiltration happens naturally but the process can be helped with manual manipulation.  if the scar is big enough it will be impossible to get rid of it completely but improvements can always be made.

the center of the scar relatively hard but there are threads of the connective stuff projecting out into the healthy tissue.  they have to be there to anchor the scar.  they limit movement of course.  if we think of them as pathological we call them adhesions.  these are subjects of possible amelioration too.

the method:
1. while the stiches are in gently stroke the area around the scar in radial lines from about an inch or two from the stiches out, the general idea to "encourage" the excess fluid of the swelling away from the trauma zone.  as days go by a little more vigor perhaps, and maybe eventually some small circular motions with light finger pressure.  avoid pulling on the stitches. 
   pain: if there is pain try to find out exactly what it is at what intensity, don't do that.  as the amelioration continues try advancing into the pain zone, see if it can be rolled back.
2. after the stitches are out start working directly on the scar. 
a. the skin scar will be adhesed to under layers, eventually one wants to separate the layers.  take scar between thumb & finger, push it transversely back & forth, if there is pain explore it, avoid tearing things but allow stretching to occur.
b. also use fingers to dig under the scar.
c. to promote infiltration of normal tissue into the scar hold the scar itself by pressing directly down on it with a thumb or other finger, dig in lightly just lateral to that hold down finger, give it a little yank.  if pain expect it to diminish over time.

with new scars nice results can be obtained: they look and feel better.  as time goes on the scar shrinks & hardens and it becomes harder to get results, but still something can be done.

ask me questions.

drilling down

1. attention circles yield insight on different kinds of spacing out.
the circle is there in the "imagination."  "i" can "see" it in my "mind's eye."
spaceout types:
1. the lumpy bumpy distorted "circle" "drawn" by the "gross attention" trying to control itself in guise of doing it right.  the attentional equivalent of holding the pen too tightly in the fingers leading perhaps over time to carpal tunnel syndrome.
2. the true space out of simple aversion from the (boring) higher energy attentional task to a favored neutral task (daydream, conditioned prayer, desire for some habitual thing, etc.)
3. ongoing internal commentary: "hmm, lumpy today..."
i'm sure further categories of spacing out exist.  name some for me please.

2. still the tendency to space out the middle of an eye movement: to jump from start to end "skipping" the middle with the "intention."  the justification is "i know what's there, i can skip that part."  that's probably true, probably there's not a spear coming through that zone, but the exercize is to progress gracefully through the entire movement, bumpy & plodding better than skip the whole thing & pretend i really did clean the toilet.

3. varieties of head circles:
a. move internally stationary head-neck assembly around vertex at c6-7
b. hold neck internally stationary, move head only
c. attempts to lower the vertex down the next
very different neck crackles produced, some muscles apparently isolated for the first time.

4. an aura like others describe as migraine in right eye, drank usual 2 cups of coffee ~1h earlier.

5. continuing to prepare for sideways breakfall, a new position: overbalance to side in extension like i will do a sideways cartwheel, spasm in the outer lower down leg, burn in upper outer thigh & above hip, down leg.