hip flexors egoscue

gluteus max and fasciae latae, minimus and medius Corewalking

Gluteus Maximus and the Tensor Fasciae Latae

POSTED BY JONATHAN FITZGORDON / 9 COMMENTS

 

Our bones should us up and our muscles should move us. If the bones fail to hold us up as designed muscles step in to help keep us upright. This need for muscles to do jobs outside of their pay grade is responsible for a good percentage of the back pain that people smart from. The whole body suffers for any postural imbalances but some muscles due to location and importance struggle more than others.

• The gluteus maximus is an extensor muscle that runs down the leg from the pelvis to both the leg and the shin via its connection into the IT band, or iliotibial tract.
• The tensor fasciae latae is a small muscle connected into the IT band that, as its name implies, tenses the outer (latae) fascia.

The gluteus maximus and the IT band share some function but are also are meant to accomplish very different actions. Complications arising from poor posture and muscle imbalance often render both the gluteus maximus and the tensor fasciae latae inoperable or at least seriously diminished in their capacity to function as designed.

• The tensor fasciae latae, as well as tensing the outer fascia, also pulls the leg sideways and helps with internal rotation turning one leg toward the other.
• The gluteus maximus, as well as extending the leg helps to stabilize the pelvis, internally rotates the hip from its top half and externally rotates the leg from its lower part.

My writing often returns to the dilemma of the tucked pelvis which forces the thighs forward from their natural home under the hips. Once this happens both gluteus maximus and the tensor fasciae latae are basically muted in their ability to work correctly. The tensor fasciae latae which should rotate internally is instead pulled into constant external rotation due to the tucked pelvis and poorly aligned legs. The tuck of the pelvis that forces the thighs forward also turns the gluteus maximus on and unless the pelvic alignment and leg position change it will stay turned on. This on position affects the tensor fasciae latae and IT band pulling it back into chronic external rotation which like any imbalance can have far reaching consequences.

The gluteus maximus which should play many small parts to assist in the function of the lower extremity and trunk to go along with its lead role as extensor of the leg is forced instead to work with an unhappy quadriceps muscle to hold the body upright.

If you grip your butt both the gluteus max and the tensor fasciae latae will be improperly aligned and dysfunctional. Change the way you walk and stand and you can change the dysfunctional relationship of the gluteus maximus and the tensor fasciae latae.

Gluteus Medius and Minimus

POSTED BY JONATHAN FITZGORDON / 3 COMMENTS

The gluteus medius and minimus muscles lie beneath the bigger gluteus maximus. They both originate along the border of the ilium of the hip with gluteus minimus living under gluteus medius.  They both insert onto the greater trochanter a knob of bone on the outside of the femur, or leg bone.

The gluteus medius and minimus help to stabilize the pelvis along with thetensor fasciae latae when standing on one leg. When you do tree pose in yoga the deep gluteal muscles kick into gear to support the body’s balancing act. They are also doing the same dance as the legs switch when we are walking.

The gluteus medius and minimus act as both internal and external rotators of the leg. When the hip is flexed they rotate the thigh externally and when the hips extend they assist with internal rotation. They also work to abduct the thigh pulling the leg away from the body. These two muscles are also essential to walking and standing well.

Here is a simple experiential exercise that I use to show people their inner workings.

• Stand with your feet together, close your eyes, relax your butt and feel how your body stands in space.
• The do the same thing with the feet hip width apart or wider.
• Stand in both positions for a number of times to feel the different way the inner body reacts.

With the feet together there is hopefully a feeling of movement within the pelvis as the gluteus medius and minimus doing their internal and externally rotating thing in search of a place of balance.

With the feet apart too far that all tends go away. The body stops dead in its tracks. People often report that this feels stable but stable isn’t what we are looking for. We want a dynamic body that lives in a quiet state of perpetual motion (as long as the heart beats)

embrace Truth, CAroline Myss

www.myss.com has a new look - Enjoy
This is the prayer from the last Reflections class. 
http://www.myss.com/CMED/workshops/reflections/series-9.asp

hugging

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/04/thich-nhat-hanh-hugging-meditation/

The Great Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on How to Do “Hugging Meditation”

by Maria Popova

“When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.”

“I embrace you with all my heart,” Albert Camus wrote in his beautiful letter of gratitude to his childhood teacher shortly after winning the Nobel Prize. To embrace one another with our whole hearts is perhaps the greatest act of recognition and appreciation there is. To do so in more than words is the ultimate gift of our shared humanity. And yet despite this awareness — or perhaps precisely because of it; because of its enormity — we rarely give each other this gift.

How to perform this highest act of generosity is what legendary Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh(b. October 11, 1926) explores in How to Love(public library), his luminous meditation on the art of “interbeing.”

“Spirituality doesn’t mean a blind belief in a spiritual teaching,” Nhat Hanh writes.“Spirituality is a practice that brings relief, communication, and transformation.”One of the most transformative forms of secular spirituality is communication itself, in its most sincerest semblance — the intimate bravery of letting ourselves be seen, of connecting with our fellow human beings with the vulnerability necessary for openhearted living.

In the late 1960s, Nhat Hanh invented — in the most organic and inadvertent way — a simple practice that brings embodied form to the communion and mutual understanding at the heart of this spiritual intimacy. With his signature good-humored warmth, he recounts:

In 1966, a friend took me to the Atlanta Airport. When we were saying good-bye she asked, “Is it all right to hug a Buddhist monk?” In my country, we’re not used to expressing ourselves that way, but I thought, “I’m a Zen teacher. It should be no problem for me to do that.” So I said, “Why not?” and she hugged me, but I was quite stiff. While on the plane, I decided that if I wanted to work with friends in the West, I would have to learn the culture of the West.

To surmount this cultural barrier of communication, Nhat Hanh devised a fusion of East and West furnishing a universal human language for what everybody needs — a practice he called “hugging meditation,” which, in requiring that we disarm all of our chronic cynicisms, appears at first intolerably awkward but blossoms into deeply rewarding:

According to the practice, you have to really hug the person you are holding. You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of appearances, patting him on the back to pretend you are there, but breathing consciously and hugging with all your body, spirit, and heart. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into that person and she will be nourished and bloom like a flower.

Illustration from 'Hug Me' by Simona Ciraolo. Click image for more.

At the heart of hugging meditation, Nhat Hanh points out, are the core Zen principles of interconnectedness and “interbeing,” with each other as well as with the universe. With the great simplicity and sincerity of Zen writings, he considers both the interpersonal and the intrapersonal rewards of the practice:

When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings. Hugging with mindfulness and concentration can bring reconciliation, healing, understanding, and much happiness. The practice of mindful hugging has helped so many people to reconcile with each other — fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and friends, and so many others.

Illustration by Ben Shecter for 'The Hating Book' by Charlotte Zolotow. Click image for more.

But beyond the action itself the most important commitment — an intention of absolute presence with the other and with the moment’s ephemeral aliveness, which is perhaps the task most challenging yet most sorely needed for our spiritual survival in the modern world. Nhat Hanh outlines both the philosophical foundations and practical steps to mastering this delicate art of holding one another’s wholeness while fully inhabiting that blink of existence:

Hugging is a deep practice; you need to be totally present to do it correctly. When I drink a glass of water, I invest one hundred percent of myself in drinking it. You can train yourself to live every moment of your daily life like that.

Before hugging, stand facing each other as you follow your breathing and establish your true presence. Then open your arms and hug your loved one. During the first in-breath and out-breath, become aware that you and your beloved are both alive; with the second in-breath and out-breath, think of where you will both be three hundred years from now; and with the third in-breath and out-breath, be aware of how precious it is that you are both still alive.

When you hug this way, the other person becomes real and alive. You don’t need to wait until one of you is ready to depart for a trip; you may hug right now and receive the warmth and stability of your friend in the present moment.

Complement How to Love, more of which you can read here, with Jack Kerouac on how to meditate and Sam Harris on the paradox of meditation.

More on Dying Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, Watts,Kabat- Zinn

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/27/dropping-ashes-on-the-buddha-death/

oen-sa recounts his conversation with Gita, the seven-year-old daughter of one of his students at the Cambridge Zen Center, after the death of the center’s beloved cat, cleverly named Katz. (“KATZ!” is the transcription of the famous Buddhist belly-shout, used as a way of focusing energy and intention during Zen practice.) Katz had died after a long illness and was given a traditional Buddhist burial, but the little girl remained troubled by his death. One day after practice, she came to the great Zen teacher for an explanation. He relays the exchange:

“What happened to Katzie? Where did he go?”

Soen-sa said, “Where do you come from?”

“From my mother’s belly.”

“Where does your mother come from?” Gita was silent.

Soen-sa said, “Everything in the world comes from the same one thing. It is like in a cookie factory. Many different kinds of cookies are made — lions, tigers, elephants, houses, people. They all have different shapes and different names, but they are all made from the same dough and they all taste the same. So all the different things that you see — a cat, a person, a tree, the sun, this floor — all these things are really the same.”

“What are they?”

Illustration by Edward Gorey from 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' by T.S. Eliot. Click image for more.

With an eye to our tendency to mistake a thing’s name for its thingness, Soen-sa answers by urging the little girl to contact the universal life-force of the metaphorical cookie dough:

“People give them many different names. But in themselves, they have no names. When you are thinking, all things have different names and different shapes. But when you are not thinking, all things are the same. There are no words for them. People make the words. A cat doesn’t say, ‘I am a cat.’ People say, ‘This is a cat.’ The sun doesn’t say, ‘My name is sun.’ People say, ‘This is the sun.’

So when someone asks you, ‘What is this?’, how should you answer?”

“I shouldn’t use words.”

Soen-sa said, “Very good! You shouldn’t use words. So if someone asks you, ‘What is Buddha?’, what would be a good answer?”

Gita was silent.

Soen-sa said, “Now you ask me. “

“What is Buddha?”

Soen-sa hit the floor.

Gita laughed.

Soen-sa said, “Now I ask you: What is Buddha?”

Gita hit the floor.

“What is God?”

Gita hit the floor.

“What is your mother?”

Gita hit the floor.

“What are you?”

Gita hit the floor.

“Very good! This is what all things in the world are made of. You and Buddha and God and your mother and the whole world are the same.”

Gita smiled.

Soen-sa said, “Do you have any more questions?”

“You still haven’t told me where Katz went.”

Soen-sa leaned over, looked into her eyes, and said, “You already understand.”

Gita said, “Oh!” and hit the floor very hard. Then she laughed.

Soen-sa ends the anecdote with an exchange intended to be funny, but in fact a tragic testament to contemporary Western education being a force of industrialized specialization, deliberately fragmenting the unity of all things and deconditioning our inner wholeness:

As she was opening the door, she turned to Soen-sa and said, “But I’m not going to answer that way when I’m in school. I’m going to give regular answers!” Soen-sa laughed.

Illustration from 'The Book of Memory Gaps' by Cecilia Ruiz. Click image for more.

In another section of the book, Soen-sa examines the principles and practices that help us cultivate the pre-thinking mind necessary for truly tasting the metaphorical cookie dough of the universal life-force. Responding to a letter from a Zen beginner, a young woman named Patricia who had trouble grasping the value and very notion of “don’t-know mind,” he writes:

Throw away all opinions, all likes and dislikes, and only keep the mind that doesn’t know… Your before-thinking mind, my before-thinking mind, all people’s before-thinking minds are the same. This is your substance. Your substance, my substance, and the substance of the whole universe become one. So the tree, the mountain, the cloud, and you become one… The mind that becomes one with the universe is before thinking. Before thinking there are no words. “Same” and “different” are opposites words; they are from the mind that separates all things.

A few months later, in another letter to Patricia, he explores the three pillars of Zen’s don’t-know mind:

Zen practice … requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.

What is great faith? Great faith means that at all times you keep the mind which decided to practice, no matter what. It is like a hen sitting on her eggs. She sits on them constantly, caring for them and giving them warmth, so that they will hatch. If she becomes careless or negligent, the eggs will not hatch and become chicks. So Zen mind means always and everywhere believing in myself…

Great courage … means bringing all your energy to one point. It is like a cat hunting a mouse. The mouse has retreated into its hole, but the cat waits outside the hole for hours on end without the slightest movement. It is totally concentrated on the mouse-hole. This is Zen mind — cutting off all thinking and directing all your energy to one point.

Next — great questioning… If you question with great sincerity, there will only be don’t-know mind.

Complement Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, indispensable in its entirety, with the great D.T. Suzuki on how Zen can help us cultivate our character, Alan Watts on death, and beloved Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hahn on how to do “hugging meditation.”

http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/10/31/alan-watts-on-death/

Guided Mindfulness Meditation, Series 3 (Dying Before You Die)

Jon Kabat-Zinn

From the Album Guided Mindfulness Meditation, Series 3

July 15, 2013

Oliver Sacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/opinion/my-periodic-table.html?_r=0

Out beyond ideas of ...from Parker Palmer 7.25.15

I Believe ...Rainer Marie Rilke

I Believe

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

~ Rainer Marie Rilke
(English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Joan Didion on grief

http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/05/joan-didion-on-grief/

her harrowing record of the year following the death of her husband of four decades, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion, born on December 5, 1934, offers a soul-stirring meditation on grief in all its unimaginable dimensions:

Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be. … Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves.”

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.

Mary Oliver's When Death Comes

WHEN DEATH COMES

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

Mary Oliver in Blue Horses

Song: “Death with Dignity” by Sufjan Stevens When Death Comes

you must be able to do three things... In Blackwater Woods Mary Oliver

buddhist call to ending racism resources

http://buddhistsforracialjustice.org/call-to-white-buddhists/

ood places to start:

• Race: The Power of An Illusion (California NewsReel): Watching this three part documentary with teachers and/or members of your spiritual community can be a powerful way to begin to understand how racial dominance has been established and maintained in the United States.
• The recent publication “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People about Racism” has been eye-opening in deepening awareness and understanding of impact. In this article, Dr. Robin DiAngelo explains the concept of white fragility and offers wise insights and important guidance for White individuals and White group inquiry.
• You can also find resources, and Dharma-based support for developing a racial awareness program, on the website:whiteawake.org.

Within our Dharma communities valuable resources in inquiring into racism and white dominance include these relevant talks:

• “Beloved Community” Tara Brach (IMCW 6/17/15). In this intimate talk, Tara explores the often hidden expressions of racism that fuel separation and violence, and pathways toward healing and freeing our collective hearts.
• “Exploring Our Belonging and Kinship” Ruth King (IMCW 2/4/15). In this talk Ruth explores the “relative” reality of kinship, compassionately names patterns that harm, and then offers specific mindful exercises that we can use in personal or collective practice to heal and bridge separation.
• “Reclamation of the Sacred” Thanissara (Spirit Rock 5/5/15) This important talk recognizes causes of collective dislocation, naming colonial devastation and ways towards tenderness.

There are many teachers, of all different lineages, who have made offerings of this nature, and whose interviews, articles, books, and/or recorded talks are available online. These include: Larry Yang; Rev angel Kyodo williams; Lama Rod Owens; Gina Sharpe; Arinna Weisman; Jan Willis; Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, PhD; and others.

Another source of Dharma and ongoing social critique from a Buddhist lens is the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s online platform:Turning Wheel Media.

A helpful resource from outside the Buddhist tradition is the essay “Not Somewhere Else, But Here” (by Unitarian Universalist minister Dr. Rev. Rebecca Parker).

2. Engage in facilitated group work.

While learning can take place informally, we encourage you to enter into some kind of facilitated group process.

White Affinity groups: We highly recommend that white teachers and practitioners find ways to organize themselves into ongoing learning communities. There is a need for all-white spaces that prioritize our process as we gain new awareness, confront the social training we have received as members of a dominant group, and support one another in our commitment to ongoing inquiry. We encourage you to consider developing and maintaining white affinity groups (self facilitated or facilitated by a trainer you trust), and commit ourselves to this practice as well. Whiteawake.org is a strong support to white affinity group process.

Within our Dharma communities there are talented, committed trainers who integrate various elements of Dharma practice directly into this work.

• Teacher Ruth King offers her “Mindful of Race Retreat: a Stimulus for Social Healing and Leadership” to groups and organizations upon request
• Teacher Arinna Weisman has long served the Dharma community with workshops and teachings that focus on healing the suffering of racial privilege
• Practitioner Eleanor Hancock (primary author of this “Call”) is working in collaboration with teachers and practitioners of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW) to bring forward a body of work called White Awake: an integration of mindfulness and white affinity group work
• Teacher Mushim Patricia Ikeda is a diversity consultant and meditation center community coordinator whose clients include Spirit Rock and San Francisco Zen Center
• This list is not exhaustive!

There are many well-established traini

Supposing it didn't. Winnie and Piglet

Makko Ho meridian stretches

http://www.sohoshiatsu.com/Exercises.html

sensory breaks

http://lemonlimeadventures.com/sensory-break-ideas-for-kids/

40 Simple Sensory Brain Break Ideas

• Jumping Jacks
• Jumping on a mini trampoline or large outdoor trampoline
• Heavy work activities
• Crawling through tunnels or under objects
• Wall or chair Pushes
• Animal Crawls (can you crawl like a bear? crab? frogs? seals?)
• Ball Pass (Stand back to back and pass a ball by turning to the side in one direction, than reverse)
• Ball Pits (make your own by filling up a small swimming pool with balls)
• Reading in a bean bag chair
• Biking
• Climbing trees or on a jungle gym
• Use fidget toys (such as the Wacky Tracks Hand Fidget, Wood Fidget Puzzle, DoGo Putty, Tangle Therapy Hand Fidget)
• Chewing toys or tools such a Chewable Jewelry (suggested Chewable Jewelry Options here OR Chewable Desk Buddy)
• Crashing mat
• Play with a parachute
• Popcorn jumps (jumping from a squat position and then landing back in a squat position)
• Wheelbarrow walking
• Obstacle course
• Passing weighted balls back and forth
• Scooter board activities
• Resistance bands
• Bouncing on a therapy or exercise ball
• Listening to upbeat OR calming music
• Swinging
• Going outside for a walk or hike
• Jumping jacks
• Skipping
• Running
• Bean bag squeezes
• Drinking water through a water bottle with a Bite Valve
• Chewing gum (all natural chewing gum option)
• Using a weighted blanket or vest
• Lifting light weights
• Yoga moves
• Swimming
• Tummy Time
• Headphones to block out unnecessary noise
• Roller blade or skating
• Visit the playground