Licensed Teacher Content | November 2006
The Belt Corners
As Standing is the most challenging stage of the Five Stages, the more you pay attention to your body and to how Your Body’s Way adapts, the better you will be able to guide others into the process of being a Conscious Personal Trainer (CPT). Listen to your body and really tune-in to what your body needs in these exercises. Stand with ease, and power.
In Standing, integrate Principle 5, Awareness. Become aware of the sensation of tension: the sensation of muscular pulling, stretching, squeezing, and packing. Notice the sensations you experience as your muscles pull on the bones, as you sustain the shape of Standing.
Ask yourself, “Where in my body is the structure of my skeleton saying, ‘I need healing.’ Is it my hip joint, so I rest comfortably into the sensation of Standing? Is it my spine, asking for more mobility and space to extend? Is it a joint, asking for more space so that the angle between bone and joint can realign, creating more comfort?” Listen to your body and relax into the sensation of surrender.
In Standing, integrate Principle 1, The Joy of Being in Relationship (With). This integration gives you an opportunity to be in relationship with ease. How? Every time you sense yourself exerting effort, shift into sensing release. Use the sensation of release to sustain the architecture of Standing, and the movement of Standing via breathing. Be in relationship with flow. Flow is key to sustainability and comfort. Notice when your flow turns off and turn it back on by tweaking. Turn what feels like a predominantly muscular sensation into a radial and spatial sensation of connection.
In Standing, integrate Principle 10, Symbology. This integration gives you the conscious focus and intent to experience Standing not as an imposed posture that is fixed, but as a living, breathing, spatially interconnected architecture.
Symbology is all about the language of form and freedom. While there is an explicit form, Symbology brings the spontaneity and energetics of shape-shifting, which keeps what appears to be a fixed motion, in motion. Symbols resonate. Symbols are experienced and unfold a story. What is your story that unfolds for you as you rest in Standing? As you lift your head and reach out, is it a new connection between you and the world around you?
Use Symbology to break through muscular tension, isolated tensions, and slip into body space configurations that support you in sustaining Standing. Represent to the outside world, and to your spirit, power and grace, comfort and ease, patience and readiness.
In Standing, integrate your magnets, the perfect tool for looking at your muscular tension patterns. This integration serves as a force to move you into right action. Postures made by pushing and effort ultimately leave you powerless. Create Dynamic Ease in movement by sensing the magnets of counter-shaping; i.e., the opposing action that creates Dynamic Ease.
When you sense the desire to rise up, first settle down. If you sense the desire to shift right, first shift left. Every action has a relationship to the center of your body weight. Every action is connected to a central point and axis. In Aikido, this point is called the One Point, or Hara. Turn on your Hara to activate the One Point, and use this One Point to radially move energy out, thereby expanding the outline and edge your perceive as the edge that contains muscular compression and tension. Become one with all that is.