Moving Your Shoulders Back and Down so you can Center --
Does it work? Short answer: No. Longer
answer: No; of course not.
Why not? Gravity doesn't work that way. Body's
don't work that way. That's simply not how it works.
I'm reminded of the woman telling her friends that
putting pictures on the wall isn't the same thing as
'posting on the wall.' It's kind of like that.
Hopefully, here's some illustrations that can help. The blue ball is the
head. The yellow oval is the body. The green
oval is the upper arm / thigh. The orange ball is the
hara.
On the left we have the alignment of ears, shoulders,
hips and the center is low. Next to that is someone
whose center is high. They still have the alignment
of ears, shoulders, and hips, it's just that their center
is high. This happens a lot when folks are
nervous. You know that 'my stomach is in my throat'
feeling? That's your center way up high, which is
really common, but I wanted to make the drawings a little
easier.
|
ear/shoulder/hip/heel
aligned, center low |
ear/shoulder/hip/heel
aligned, center high |
off balance to back, held
upright by tension |
balance, tension in upper
back |
So - let's say the person has the alignment of ears,
shoulders, and hips, it's just that their center is
high. They are told, put your shoulders back.
So, let's say a body is 50 pounds and a head is 10 and an
arm is 10 each. They used to have half their weight
in front of them and half their weight behind them but now
they've put 20 pounds behind the plumb line. They are
off balance and the lizard brain is sounding the alarm
'DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!'
What to do? If they have any self preservation
instinct they will either grip with their legs or their
stomach or both. The result of this will be that they
cannot follow the movement of the horse. (Because the
joints are no longer free because the muscles are
gripping.) They will then bounce a bit.
And a bit more. A bit higher. They will grip
more. Then will bounce a bit more. A bit
higher. They will grip more .... You see where this
is going?
Let's say someone says, 'put your hands
forward!' This has the potential to restore the
balance issue by putting half the weight in front and half
in back - yay! BUT, it also puts tension into the
system at the top of the rib cage. (Boo.)
You can find out
for yourself. Put your hands out in front of you so
there's an inch or two of space between your elbows and
your body. Now, hang out here for a little bit.
Bear in mind, most folks ride for thirty minutes
anyhow. So, keep it up for a few minutes.
Notice what's going on in your upper back. Now let
your elbows come back to match the seams of your shirt and
pants. How has it changed in your upper back?
Generally, people can recognize that when they hold their
elbows ahead of their body, they have to do so with
muscles.
Does any of this lower the center? No.
What has been accomplished? It
does change the balance front to back when the arm is
behind the plumb line, and the seat may
feel heavier because there's more weight floating
unsupported, but it doesn't inherently move the center.
Very often the center (or the legs or both) simply moves
forward to offset the weight that moved
backwards. Even if it's only the hands and
elbows that have gone forward, tension is introduced into
the upper back.
Very often when folks are told to put their shoulders
back, a lot of other things happen. One of the really
common things is that they simply lean back. (And
just in defense of everyone who does this, I see them
coached into it quit routinely. They do 'things'
until the coach is no longer telling them to put their
shoulders back, and that's very often when they are leaning
back.) Now they've lost their equal parts ahead of
and behind the plumb line and have put not only the weight
of their arms but a substantial amount of the weight in
their body behind the plumb line. If the lizard brain
was alarmed before, it's even more panicked now. So
with the fictional body of 50 pounds and a head of 10 and an
arm of 10 each, we now have two arms, a head, and a lot of
the body hanging out in space behind the plum line.
30+ pounds let's say.
The solutions here get worse.
One the first survival instincts is to throw the legs
and the head forward. If you've put 30+ pounds behind
you, your body's higher math says, I need to find 30+
pounds and put it in front of me before I die.
(Lizard brains see everything as life and death!) The
head and legs are pretty quick to help out.
So now there's muscle holding the person on the horse
which is never going to turn out well, bouncing and all,
but there is also another problem in that the line of ear,
shoulder, hip is really off and the horse is still
(hopefully) moving forward with gusto. This means
there's an upward force traveling though the body, but not
along the lines of support - not along the lines of
structural integrity in the body. The hips are
getting pushed forward and up ahead of the chest and the
lower back is getting hammered as it tries to keep the top
and bottom halves of the body together with muscle --
instead of allowing the skeletal alignment to work with
gravity to dissipate the movement of the horse
harmlessly. Usually, in defense, the arms will come
forward as well and bring the shoulder blades with them,
having exactly the opposite effect to the desired
outcome. Riders usually suffer in the neck, in the
upper back, in the lower back, and in the hips sockets from
this configuration of riding. (Chances are the center
has moved up above the chest, but I didn't draw
that.) This is, structurally, a very precarious way
of riding.
Another element which often creeps in, which I
haven't illustrated, is that the back becomes either
rounded or arched. Very few people have the strength
to hold the plumb line at a tilt and they resolve this by
collapsing 'inward' around their stomach or 'outward' by
leaning back and arching. Both of these solutions are
devastating to the back.
Again, I think there's a misunderstanding of what is
happening. Yes, 'technically' the center is closer to
the ground, so you might feel more 'centered.' But
the way it got there is similar to what happens when you
lay down. Everything is closer to the ground.
But the person is not more centered. Their center is
not lower inside of them.
The true solution to lowering the center is to: (wait
for it) lower the center.
While hunched forward shoulders often accompany a
high center, they are a result of the high center.
Moving them around doesn't change where the center
is. They are the flag on the mail box (remember
those?!) telling you the center is out of kilter.
They are the symptom. Putting the flag down isn't the
same as reading the mail. Marking the message read
isn't the same as reading the message. Erasing
the symptom isn't the same as addressing the cause.
Taking pain killers let's you marshal on, but it doesn't
fix what created the pain.
And similarly, moving the shoulders back and down
doesn't do anything for the center. It does introduce
a lot of problems. And that's just these two
scenarios and I haven't even really talked about how the
center usually gets even more out of whack. The body
compensates. It hangs on for dear life.
Eventually it runs out of body parts to put in other places
and then puts the center way outside the body in a
desperate attempt not to die. (yes - that sounds melodramatic
but the lizard brain is cut and dry like that.)
(Also, you may notice I also didn't get into how detrimental
this is for your horse's ability to perform. That's
because there's plenty going wrong in the rider's body!)
On the other hand, moving the center down, eventually
the shoulder blades move to the back of the body allowing
the shoulder socket to line up on the plumb line of ear,
shoulder, hip, heel.
This is because the upper body is now light and will
(almost) automatically find the plumb line.
The hard part is overcoming all the past coaching.
I was recently at a clinic where the clinician kept saying
'It's important to be centered' (Yay!) Then she
would say 'To become centered, put your shoulders down and
back' and she would illustrate. (Yay for providing a
visual!) And then she would stand there unbalanced
and un-centered telling everyone it was all
better. Not yay.
Cheers!
L
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