Tired of Sitting in a Chair? Try Walking on It with Your Pelvis

March 4, 2021 Frank Wildman

The purpose of “The Pelvic Walk” is to help you discover how to sit more lightly, move your pelvis more easily while sitting, and turn in your chair while performing activities in the workplace or home

1. Sit comfortably in the middle of your chair without leaning back. Make sure your feet are flat on the floor. Feel yourself sitting as tall as possible. Separate your hands and rest the palm of each hand on your thighs.

✓Awareness Advice:
Make sure you don’t slump in your chair as you progress through the movements. To heighten your sensation of the movement, you can close your eyes, but remember to maintain a physical attitude of being upright and looking outward.

2. Slide the right side of your pelvis forward in the chair as if you wanted to reach straight ahead with your right knee. Then, slide your pelvis and leg back in the chair. You will be pivoting on your left buttock and sitz bone. Repeat this movement several times until it becomes lighter and more comfortable. Rest briefly and then return to your starting position.

✓Awareness Advice:
Be sure that the work performed in these movements is done with your torso. Keep your feet flat on the floor and do not push too hard with your legs.

3. Repeat the same movement moving the left buttock and thigh forward and backward, pivoting on your right side. Which side glides more easily on your chair?

4. Explore each side again and observe how much your head and shoulders turn. Rest briefly and then return to your starting position.

5. Keeping both feet on the floor, lift the right side of your pelvis off the chair and bring it back down. Do you tilt your whole body to the left, or can you do the movement shortening the right side of your waist and keeping your head approximately in the center?

✓Awareness Advice:
If at any point you cannot feel the movement clearly, or cannot perform it to your satisfaction, stop, close your eyes and imagine performing the movement. Then imagine what it would feel like if you were moving and picture the movement happening.

6. Repeat the movement on the other side. Again, which side is easier? Rest.

7. Return to your starting position in the middle of your chair and place your hands on your knees and walk your buttock forward. Then walk the other side forward until you reach the edge of your chair. Then walk your pelvis backward. As you walk your buttocks forward and backward in your chair, make the movement easier.

8. Return to sliding each side of your pelvis forward and backward alternately while looking straight ahead. Work to make the movement easier as you slide one side after the other

-Frank Wildman, PhD

This “Pelvic Walk” exercise is excerpted from the book, The Busy Person’s Guide to Easier Movement, by Frank Wildman, PhD, which has common-sense lessons connecting the mind and body through movement to help people move with more ease, comfort and efficiency.

The Power of Moving like a Child

January 31, 2020 Frank Wildman

As we age, a lifetime of injuries and poor movement habits can limit our capabilities, coordination, and mobility. The best way to break through these restrictive boundaries is to explore and discover new ways to move and babies offer a great example of how to do that.

Babies have to learn new ways to move every day, all day. Rolling, reaching, putting a foot in the mouth, twisting, turning, scooting — these are all ways that babies learn to observe their world, to eat, and to move.

All humans learn to walk, to sing, to dance by first learning new ways to move. Think of any skill you ever acquired in your entire lifetime, and you can appreciate the fact that you acquired that skill by altering and redesigning your habits.

So to change our inefficient and possibly painful movement habits, we need to expand our repertoire of movements like a child. The first step in this process is first sensing with precision how we move and how our whole body is involved in any movement. Rather than exercise, we need to think of sensercise — moving to increase our sensory capacity.

Often it’s very difficult for many people to sense parts of their body that don’t seem obviously connected to a movement they are performing. For example, if you lift a weight in a standing position, traditional ways of thinking would focus attention on the bicep muscles of the arm, which need to contract to lift something. However, in the real world of gravity, if you lift something in front of yourself using just your biceps — even a bottle of water — you would fall forwards as the weight shifts your center of gravity in front of yourself.

In order to become more efficient, effective, and stronger, you need to sense the other parts of your body that are involved in the act of lifting. Sense how the calf muscles push the front of the foot into the ground a small amount to help counterbalance the weight in front of us. Sense how the back and belly work to take the weight from your hands and arms through your shoulders and down your spine.

We need to sense how any movement requires an integration of all body parts — not just the obvious major muscle group that’s acting the hardest.

This kind of attention is how we improve our ability to sense and change difficult movement habits and painful postures. The awareness of how different parts of our body contribute to accomplishing an action can unleash the power of an integrated body and lessen strain on any one set of muscles.

Greater awareness can mean the difference between strain, excess tension, and even the feeling of weakness and smooth, confident, coordinated movement.

How do we move to gain awareness? If our mind is captured by the effort of achieving a goal or we count how many repetitions we’re performing, that’s where our attention is trapped. Instead, learning to move in order to feel how we move can restore our integrated, whole body movement we once had as children and is the secret to gaining greater awareness.

With greater awareness, we can begin to explore movement like a baby in non-linear ways with twists and turns, breaking free of the linear movements exercise equipment can limit us to.

This lesson is an example of the sort of exploratory movement I’m talking about; it asks you to learn how to trust yourself to be in touch with your body and brain through your sense of movement.

Before you start this lesson, read through it and look to the photos for guidance. This mental rehearsal will help you unleash your physical imagination.

GO SLOWLY — Take your time, you’ll learn more!
INSIST ON COMFORT — If it hurts, it’s not helping you. Never try to override pain if you feel it.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION — Allow the movement to become very clear and lucid in your mind, like a scene from a movie.
REST FREQUENTLY — These movements, while gentle and pleasurable, may cause slight strain because you are using parts of muscles you may not have used in a long time, or you may be using them in ways that are not familiar.
CHOOSE A COMFORTABLE SPACE — Make sure that you have space around you to move and that your clothes are loose enough to not restrain your movement.

Releasing the Hips into Pleasure

Intention: To find a comfortable and pleasurable way of releasing excess work in the stiff muscles of your inner legs and hips.

Starting Position: Lie on your back with your arms down at your sides and your legs long.

1. Feel the pressure under your heels and notice whether you feel more pressure from the floor touching your left heel compared to your right. Is the pressure on the outside of the heel more apparent on one side than the other? Also observe the pressure under your calf muscles. Does that pressure help tell you which of your two legs is pointed more to the ceiling and which is pointed more to the outside? Make sure your legs are relaxed. Don’t try to hold them in any particular way.

2. Very gently turn your right leg farther to the right and let your knee softly bend so that the outside edge of your right foot begins to slide on the floor up toward you. Then, slide the edge of your foot back down the same track it went up. Repeat the movement several times, very slowly, searching for the path of least resistance and effort as you slide the outside edge of your foot up and down on the floor.

Change Your Age Tip: As you slide your foot up and down, make sure your knee hangs open completely so that there’s no work happening in the inner muscles of your thigh. The more unnecessary muscular work you perform, the more difficult, heavy, and resistant the movement of the leg becomes. Every so often let your leg rest, with your knee bent and your foot pulled up, to make sure you are letting go of your inner thigh muscles.

After exploring the movement of sliding the edge of your right foot up and down the floor, rest and observe what has changed in the way your leg rests on the floor. Is your leg softer? Is it pointing in a different direction than earlier? Does your hip feel softer? You might even find that your lower back has released to the floor on the right side.

3. Perform the same exploration of this soft and lazy movement on the left side. Is it easier or harder than on the right? Notice whether your eyes or even your head want to move to the left when you move your left leg up and down. Rest. Feel the expansion in your pelvis and the release of excess work in your legs. Pause with your legs long and arms down at your sides.

4. Turn both of your legs open, with the knees hanging apart, and slide the outside edges of both of your feet up toward yourself at the same time. As you go up and down this way, slowly and gently, feel what your back and your pelvis are doing to assist the movement.

As the edges of your feet slide up, keep some distance between them.

5. Rest with your arms on the floor above your head and your elbows slightly bent out to the sides. Once again, slide the outside edges of both feet up toward yourself and leave them there with your knees hanging open. Now let your head easily roll from side to side while breathing deeply.

Rest in this position, with the knees suspended and the arms open, and feel the comfort of being like a baby sleeping on the floor. Let your ribs move freely as you breathe. If letting your knees hang open feels uncomfortable, place a pillow under the side of each knee to give yourself more support.

-Frank Wildman, PhD

Sensercise: The secret ingredient to improving Body Intelligence and acquiring New skills

December 12, 2019 Frank Wildman

Why do some people get great benefit from resistance machines or weights, yoga, and rehabilitation and others derive little to no benefit or find exercise of any kind difficult and often painful? The answer lies in how we sense ourselves.

Exercise—whether for rehab, getting stronger, or having fun—should first require being able to sense your whole body when you work out or move at all.

As a movement scientist and therapist, I saw Sandra who had been hit on the passenger side of her car. The accident created an injury to her right leg and right hip. She presented to me with a limp and a barely mentioned irritation-into-pain in her right hand.

Sandra was aware of her limp and was afraid of it getting worse. The issues with her right hand, which she attributed to too many hours working on the computer, made it difficult for her to write or even type. She had been sent to physical therapy rehabilitation, but the exercises she received did little to benefit her and created more pain, so she stopped.

That she had a limp was obvious so I began to look for the invisible, a strategy I frequently employ.

I was interested in why she didn’t better use her other hip to balance the pelvis so the limp could diminish. Instead of giving her exercises for her injured right leg, I helped her to sense how she was using her left leg, her back, and her upper body (her arm swings, etc.). I helped her through a touch that would direct her to feel what she was actually doing with the rest of her body instead of being preoccupied with her right leg.

She was curious if I could help with her right hand and arm. Though her hand and arm were not injured in the crash, I began to understand the connection between the right leg and hip and the right hand and arm. In response to her accident, she reduced the motion of her head and neck, which in turn led to the stiffness and pain in her hand.

Sandra needed to feel the connections and integration of her body parts until she could sense the relationships as much as I could see and feel them. More than any exercise, she needed some Sensercise.

What happens after injury?

After any insult to the body, your brain will tend to withdraw sensation from the area that’s been damaged, in pain, rigidified, or collapsed. This is called sensory motor amnesia.

An insult to the body can be caused by anything from a car accident to an athletic injury. We also feel insults to the body when someone successfully insults us. A punch in the gut or a public humiliation tends to have virtually the same somatic effects: a sucked in diaphragm and a collapsed chest—a protection while waiting for the next insult.

In response to injury, our brain will try to protect us from pain—by developing a limp to allow a wounded hip to heal, for example. Right after an injury, this is helpful, but as time goes on, it can cement clumsy and stiff movement habits with wide ranging consequences.

All insults diminish our sensory acuity, which then leads to less coordinated movement, decreased spatial awareness, insecure balance, and can lead directly to further insults like accidents and re-injuries. Diminished sensory acuity helps explain why some people benefit from rehabilitation, yoga, or strength training while others do not.

To regain our sensory motor memory, we need to improve our body awareness through Sensercise.

As Sandra began to sense how she was using her entire body, including her breathing and the use of her head and neck to orient herself in the environment, her limp began to improve. Only after several sessions of altering her movement habits did I begin to work directly with the right leg or hip. After about a month, Sandra began to walk normally. She was startled to find that her right hand and arm pain disappeared. How could this be?

I gave her some Sensercise movement strategies. I asked her to intentionally reproduce the limp that she previously had and also to tighten her neck and reduce head motion as she had the habit of doing after her car accident. Her intentional limp created pains in her back and hip and her reduced head and neck motion ended up creating the stiffness and pain that she felt in her hand and arm. By exploring how she could create the pain, she discovered how she could not only diminish pain but also improve her movements because she sensed the integration of her body.

Rebuilding our sensory maps

To improve body awareness and help our brain to protect ourselves, we have to rebuild a sensory map of our body in the same way we originally built a sensory map of our body from the day we were born until somewhere in the beginning of adolescence.

How do we build and rebuild our sensory maps as needed? First of all, though something we call exploratory movement. A baby learns to explore all the time. Children explore not only with themselves and their own movements but also how their movements relate to playmates as well as adults. This involves continuously attending to kinesthetic information in order to know what movements to perform and how to relate to other people.

Here’s an example of how you can examine, sense, explore, and change your sensory map. Suppose you wanted to go from sitting to standing more easily. How would you learn to do it?

A typical exercise approach might say build stronger, larger thigh muscles. And then perform a regimented manner of moving up and down from a chair to standing then sitting. This would be called performatory movements. In other words, take the internal understanding of yourself for granted and exercise your habits accordingly.

A more exploratory approach would be to first sense in a sitting position, without back support, if you are sitting with equal weight on each buttock and sitting bone? Try standing with your feet well in front of your knees. See if you can do it. This involves a lot of momentum as well as strength as you throw yourself forward. How about exploring the same movement with your feet closer to yourself than your knees. As you rock forwards on your sitting bones, do you find it easier to stand? What about if you explored the best position for your feet? Maybe one foot could be a little closer than the other. Can you discover in this way the best place for your feet?
Then as you begin to stand, do you orient your face down? Why? Since you want to stand up, what if you looked forwards and reached your mouth and head in the direction you want to move? Does that make it easier? You could even reach your arms out in front of you as you reach your face forward and rock up to your feet.
How about sitting back down? Could you reverse the act of standing in order to sit down? This means if someone took a series of photos of you moving from sitting to standing, you couldn’t tell if they were photographing you from standing to sitting because the movement is completely reversible. Standing up and sitting down would have the same shape.
You could further explore how wide you want your legs apart, if you want your feet pointing forwards or out to the side.
Additionally, do you have a habit of using your arms to stand up? If you eliminate pushing off the armrests, you’ll naturally develop strength in your legs, coordinated with your balance.
Finally, do you breathe in or out when you come to standing? Perhaps a better question, do you breathe? Or do you clench your throat and tighten your diaphragm as if you were lifting a heavy object? This is called the Valsalva maneuver. If we become aware of and eliminate those unnecessary Valsalva contractions, we can breathe and move more easily.

This exploratory approach to movement and rehabilitation—Sensercise—is the way to recover after an insult to the body as well as the way to achieve greater coordination and mobility in general. With Sencercise, you can better experience your body and your life—and to enjoy any activity.

-Frank Wildman, PhD