About your core, literally
The core of the issue
🎶Words don’t come easy to me… I’m singing ER David’s song in my head, because today I’m feeling especially …
[Irritated is not the right word. Stumped? Maybe. Frustrated? I suppose. I google and get exasperated, vexed, annoyed, bothered. Well, something along those lines. Maybe bothered is the best word.]
… bothered by the fact that I can’t seem to be able to get what’s in my head expressed in words. 🧠😶
I am ….
[what is troos in English? I google: comfort.]
… comforted by something I read in Samara Bay’s Permission to speak:
“Words are not the thing. Words exist in order to get at the thing.” ~ Samara Bay
She says this because she believes the act of speaking – which I’m now sommer using for ANY type of expression – is like giving birth.
[Have I used this idea of hers before? Yes. In this piece.]
It’s a process that involves a bit of labour, she says. And in certain circumstances, like when you have nothing to prove and aren’t feeling judged, you’re comfortable to take the words you’ve got and show them: Does this work? Does this make meaning where there was none before?
And maybe something clicks for someone who is listening/reading and they say, What about THIS word? Or THAT? Or maybe, Oh, that makes sense.
So, I’m showing you these words relating to our cores. See if they work?
💬I told you here about my visit to the physio for incontinence.
The physio told me about breathing fully to engage the diaphragm and also how to tilt the hips and how (and in what order) to squeeze the pelvic floor muscles.💬I told you how I tried out a tai chi class IRL [in real life] here.
The instructor explained how we were to hold ourselves and one of the instructions was, Concave your stomach.
I understood it as the same as what the physio said about tilting the hips.💬In the step class at the gym I would hear, Engage your core or Pull in your stomach.
💬In the yoga class I would hear, Draw your belly button towards your spine.
💬I wish I can remember what the belly dancing teacher said. I google. Google says she probably said something like, Scoop the belly; Engage the lower abs; or Lift the pelvic floor.
💬That last one could also be, Squeeze the pelvic floor muscles. Yes, like in knyp [Afrikaans word meaning in this case, ‘stopping the flow of anything from that region’.]
Why am I telling you all this?
It’s because yesterday, I came across a movement coach on Instagram who also deals with incontinence – Petra Fisher. I watched her free video series, Ribcage Magic, where she describes how our core is like a cannister and that issues, like incontinence and even knee pain, are a result of our cannisters being skew and then pulling the rest of our skeleton out of whack.
💬She tackles the correcting of the core from another angle. The ribcage. The words she offers are, Ribs over hips.
All these words are like pieces of a puzzle that we get to fit together to hopefully find the right posture and right level of core muscle engagement!
I am now tilting, concaving, pulling, drawing, scooping, engaging AND lifting and squeezing AND playing with my ribs as I go through my day!
Have you heard another way of describing what to do with your core while exercising/living your life?
Would love to hear it.
Best wishes,
D