Satori Center

 
 

 

For appointment: 512.869.7903
Amazon-Store
Old Favs ~ Books & Such

Resources

Tidbit

Horses lend us the wings we lack.

~ Pam Brown

Back ] Home ] Next ] [Previous]
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

Copyright © 02/07/15 Lynn S. Larson
Back ] Next ]
 

 

Back ] Next ]

BooksAmazon Assoc. / Old Favs

Links

  Books 

"The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities." 

~ James Allen