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.

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.

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.

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.

absolute relation

continuing from the observation yesterday that the attention could be left on a specific point, say, the 0,0,0 of that particular moment & that then the eyes or the head or the body section or the body in space can do whatever they do spatially & the attention can remain on that spot.  an imaginary line "appears" connecting the evolving visual with that spot.  as the body goes through its stuff that it does the angle & "length" of the line relative to the spot changes.  in bendover the line goes through the back of the head.  i can turn around, go inside, upstairs, out the front door, etc. the line relating to that arbitrary 0 spot remains.  i "know" where i'm "at" relative to that spot because i can "see" the imaginary line.  that is, sitting here in the office the line goes out the left back of my head through the house to the spot, and, i guess a little down.  theoretically i could take my line out in the car with me, or everywhere, maybe never get lost.  lot of mental energy perhaps.  or maybe it gets easier like every skill.  maybe this is what that anthropological nugget i heard on radio: tribe somewhere even the little kids never get lost, the language has absolute spatial reference built into it. 

do you know what i'm talking about?

clinging

i am actually experiencing myself losing track of both straight ahead & horizontal & having to recalibrate & find it again all this without moving, just standing there.  this is not pathology, rather an interior experience of discovering that the nose is rotated off of 90 degrees to shoulder axis yet the cortical bureaucrat is stamping the form right on.

the eyes cling to some aspect of the visual as the head turns.  this time it is a dark green patch of short pine needles on that tree over there.  the interest clings to it as if a charismatic individual.  clinging to what it was looking at before.  clinging because our earliest ancestors clung to the mineral substrate from which they had emerged.  it is the first thing we did and do. 

we have become however free swimming spores of awareness, which we bring willy nilly where none has been before.  the opposite of clinging.  from clinging we have evolved to the opposite of clinging: exploration.

clinging modulated through the sensors of course like everything else.  all of the sensors cling.

nostalgia - the relative comfort of the immediate past moment gratefully survived, clinging to that image while the head turns & the scene changes with new problems & possibilities.  who, me?  asks the practitioner, momentarily attempting to deny that nostalgia happened, clinging to the memory as the new now rushes at the "me."

1.
today was a further exploration of the blood-rushing-from-head-starts-toward-black-&-tingly sequence.   for anyone some amount of time in bendover will produce brfh upon arising.  the drill is to have the feet pointed properly, toes spread, soles flat, ankles (how to describe?), knees bent, pelvis tilted, etc. all the way up to chin tucked, eyes 0,0,0.  stable position.

a trick is to move, do something through the black-tingly, make it go away faster. 

but if like today the purpose is to go into the brfh then take the stable position & let it roll.  today's interesting thing was a more advanced sequence than normal that seemed almost to produce that kind of retreat from the senses, the "tunnel," as the "me" begins to dim & turn itself off or goes to sleep or whatever, i think they call it "loss of consciousness."  i can see why people can think this stuff is dangerous, but no.  there is no danger at the edge of the cliff unless one is inclined to do stupid things.

2. today also an exploration of the front outer thigh muscles, technically vastus lateralis i think.  for decades in bendover all of the quads would "involuntarily" contract in knee-locked bendover.  i watched it happen.  then i learned how to uncontract them.  what it is is in bendover with the hamstrings stretched the quads are naturally shortened-contracted but they want to "help" by energetically contracting further.  that is not necessary, wasteful interference in the business of maintaining the balance point.  the hams are supposed to stay relaxed in the stretch, the quads can just lie there quietly & relax.  eventually i learned how to do that & was able to get closer to hanging in the balance point.

there is that side leg stretch that starts with a wide 0,0,0 stance, procees to bend the knee of one leg while "i" keep my hand at the toe of the straight leg: the straight adductor stretches, the joints of the bent leg reveal their limitations.  i experienced the quads of the straight leg sympathetically contracted through all the phases of the stretch.  attempting to relax the quads yielded success with the right leg & maybe 90% on the left with more difficulty, that outer left hamstring is really tight in the tendon (months, years).

3. knealing on live toes - keeping the other toes spread so they don't fold over, ready be dislocated.  very gradually the ability to move the toes separately begins to emerge.  burning joints.

4. that burny spot on the upper outer left foot is going away.

layering - walking & chewing gum at same time

so today i tried doing the attention-eye-head movement exercises in coordination with a simple step forward with one foot or the other. losing it or beginning to in say the the first time i tried opposite circle eyes with that step. had to figure out how to do that without beginning to pull the trigger on the "i'm falling" panic thing.

earlier i was moving slow enough to not scare the birds away from the feeder ~8 feet away. someone will think: that happens to me all the time. any tips?

with the bird feeder as the temporary center of their universe i wide cast and found 5 birds in trees taking turns at the feeder. i can't track them with my focal center but when i keep the center wide data comes in from the edges and it becomes clear that there are 5 birds out there, and where they are. tips? i want to learn to read signs in the peripheral. i'm at those-2-blobs-i-know-they're-25. i can read upside down, can you read in the peripheral? tips?

i still think 24 hours after i thought it: hamstrings are the key to world peace. those whose hamstrings are relaxed are disinclined to make war.

bendover

loosening the legs the ongoing theme. i look forward every morning session to the bendover to the left in which the outside of the left leg stretches and burns from little toe to upper thigh.

and i explored the darkness as the blood leaves the head in standup, find and take a stable position as the darkness flows from top to bottom. Then the eye motions, which today brought dizziness into view, the stable position taken, minor adjustments to stance, set of shoulders, set of gaze, attention here or there, to go through the dizziness and continue the exercise.

keeping the eyes still through torso rotation has been a project this summer. as always the edge is the hard stuff that i don't want to do. the constant promise is that as i get that thing under my belt something else will come up and some of it will be something i never even thought of.

like arcing the circle in tenkan. i had been doing tentan as a circular arc made by the back leg as it retreats relative to the partner. then a teacher said: basic stance toes point toward the apex of an acute triangle, very important. that relative foot position eventually allowed me to notice that i could replace that circumferential motion with a straight line movement, making the leg movement the string instead of the bow: shorter, less energy use. i did it "wrong" for 1.5 years before i was able to take in that level of detail.

those who do not want to find out those kinds of things about themselves, its just too bad.

balance point t12 & c4-5

the thoracic vertebrae do not have much give in them because they are tied together by the ribs. extension is typically limited to the excursion of the ribcage during inspiration but a bit more is possible. gravity can be brought into play by serious back bends of say 60 degrees or more. this because i got back from aikido class & she said: straighten up, you're all bent over with your chest collapsed. yes dear, thankyou. it was true. i was tired. i had dropped my ball. i had reverted.

2 people quit the class recently. they did not want to go through the multi-week process of finding out that that they could not indeed walk and chew gum at the same time, even just walk right. each new phyical thing demonstrated to be performed suboptimally, each finger, each joint angle, the senses not trained in any useful way.

so i felt like i found a balance point at t12-L1 that i could use to get a relaxed extended ribcage so i could carry my torso "proud" and stay relaxed. the habit is to not even try & just let that balance point collapse into flexion & i end up all bent over creeping along with my walker.

that reminded me of the other balance point, a certain feeling in the middle of the neck. the control of the head is at C1, if the back of the head is extended & the chin is tucked there is a point at which the "bow" of the cervical spine is neutrally cocked.

of course all of this specificity falls apart a soon as i depart from very slow.