Acubody Therapy

As well as being mental health awareness weeks, May is also hypermobility EDS month!

And having recently re established a zazen practice for my own mental wellbeing and calm, I’ve also appreciated how mindfulness can help develop body awareness and proprioception.

Check in with your body, and just stand.
Just walk.
Just eat.
Get interested and explore what you are experiencing.
Just be.

See what happens ☯️☸️❤️

It’s mental health awareness week, so how are we feeling?

Anxiety, depression, anguish, disconnection, freeze, dissociation, stress, trauma?

We’re overstimulated all the time in this industrial culture.

It’s an old message, you’ll have read it before, but take some time to let things settle.
Quiet, peaceful time.
More sleep.
Go for a walk without your tech.
Be alone with your thoughts instead of distracting yourself.
Get regular exercise and natural movement
Fresh air and trees.

Honestly, it helps.

Rest is as important as activity for all sorts of reasons- time to heal, to grow, to get stronger, build muscle, assimilate new information, creativity.

But think about your nervous system. How switched on we are (in the industrial west anyway)- conditioned to go go go!

Bombarded by information as different players compete for our attention (they do not care for us)

And in the cities also dealing with the mass of other people, information, projected emotion, frustration.

Messages telling us we need to keep on achieve use an AI to fill your schedule to make it more efficient.

And feeling the need to promote rest. Downtime. Chill time. Nothing time. Time to move. Whatever works best for you.

Yin time.

If we are in Yang doing all the time we are out of balance. Will burn out.

Nourish yourself.

☯️ How do you resource yourself best? 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 comment below

Body awareness exercise

There’s something about spirals that really focuses the mind.

The way our bodies are put together, the muscle group coordination, the fascia, the biomechanics, there are a lot of spirals.

Next time you are walking pay attention to your foot and leg.

Notice how the forces travel through the limb to the centre of your body, and outward through the arms.

How many spirals can you notice?

Just had to share this pic!

You Rock!

Don’t forget it!

Important Cue Alert

When practising most disciplines on your feet, being aware of and balancing between all three points of the triangle is very useful.

In Qigong, many martial arts, most standing yoga poses, Pilates, feldenkrais, Alexander, foundation training, connecting through the feet well is essential.

If you see the triangle here and think about bisecting each angle at the corner- where the line meet is where your centre of gravity wants to be.

In order to be balanced active and engaged.
To move in any direction.
This is also in the area we call the midfoot
Just behind the balls of the toes.

Try it now, shift your weight and notice where you feel the muscles activate.

It’s not just good biomechanics, it also helps performance.

And if you focus on this in your Mindbody sessions rehab or strength work, you’ll get a more global neuromuscular stimulation.

Especially useful if you have hypermobility and dysfunction, to work on control and stability!

Let me know how you get on! 🙏🏼☯️🫡

Peter Deadmans new book on Qigong just arrived!

I shall enjoy digging into this, looks like another fine quality deep yet accessible publication.

Thanks Peter for spreading the word! 😁👍🏼☯️

Dao de jing 19 to think about.
Not sure what to take from this one?

Embrace the simple
Hold the unadorned
Remove selfishness
Reduce desire

Sharing this forward as there are a whole host of things people with hi connective tissue disorders can experience that may not be immediately obvious-

Postural orthostatic hypotension
Dysautonomia
Decreased proprioception
Increased sensory perception
Digestive disorders
Mast cell activation
Dizziness and vertigo
And more

Not just chronic pain and fibromyalgia.

So if you have a bunch of odd symptoms. And you’re hypermobile, they could be connected.

Yes indeed! Just speaking with a patient about this- post viral fatigue, after covid.

So much of modern life is hectic. Especially if you are based in a city.

But anywhere we aren’t ‘off the grid’ we are being sold messages about not being good enough, should be doing this, should be doing that.
Work harder
Get unstuck
Move the dial
Push yourself

Nothing against motivation or producing things, but be kind to yourself eh?
Give yourself time to rest
Time to sleep
Time to laugh
Time to move your body
Time to nourish yourself

My wife brought this home from a coffee guy at London Bridge yesterday. 🤣🤣🤣

I love that they recognise the unnecessary ness of having a complimentary biscuit with a coffee or tea.

If you don’t need it, you don’t have to take it.
And if you do take it, you don’t have to eat it straight away.

Yo are in control of what you put on your body!

And genius marketing 🫡

Even if we don’t eat it I’ll remember it!

This doesn’t just apply to generalised hypermobility but it does apply.

Not everyone will inevitably get these extra problems developing but there is a higher risk of it.

So what can we do about it?

1- autoregulation: pay attention to your body and how you feel in different ranges and loads so that you can avoid injury.

2- stay strong: keep moving and using your body so your muscle tissue has the extra capacity to compensate, and so that fascia and other connective tissue get the signals to strengthen

3- train body awareness: proprioception is super important to not only avoid injury but also to clear up ‘muddy’ areas of your sense so you can find more functional ways of being.

4- move smooth: Learn to move softly and slowly to release tension and also reduce pain

5- give the nervous system good news: anything that doesn’t reinforce a pain pattern is good. Keep exploring, don’t give up or hide a bubble- that only makes things worse.

There are many methods out there to work on this. We use a blend of neuromuscular exercises , Pilates, and some special qigong methods for conditioning, coordination and control

Sometimes being ‘right’ is not important.

Sometimes there is no ‘right’ answer.

Apologies for the meme- too good not to share!

Balance and base of support

It can be great for training to challenge your base of support

But for balance and advanced skills you want centre of gravity within your base of support

Think about it when you’re doing your thang!

It applies to everything.

👇🏽how does it make sense to your sport or practice?？👇🏽

Home baking this week, Wednesday banana bread by Mrs and Sourdough by myself.

Yes there’s an argument that we should always use our time optimally and leave baking to the experts.

But it’s good for the soul. It feels good to craft something.

Something that will nourish you and your loved ones.

And it feels good to improve at a skill, to hone, develop, grow and learn.

Comment: what are you learning/ practising at the moment? 👇🏽

Good for thought- Another slightly perplexing one from the Tao te ching…

Every journey starts with a single step…

Where do you want to get to with your body?

What would you like to still be doing in 10, 15, 20 years time?

How are you going to prepare for that?

When are you going to take that first step in a different direction?

👇🏽comment your thoughts, seriously, I’ll answer👍🏼

Learning to relax in ourselves, in our movement is an essential counterpoint to the work, the stresses of life, and also any intense exercise we do.

Be who you are where you are.
Make progress from there.
Go with the flow

Every journey begins with the first step. Where ever you need to get to- start moving toward it now. 🛣️

Make today yesterdays tomorrow 🧐
‘Cos tomorrow never comes 😉

London: saw this picture tableaux of London at the Globe theatre last week when we took the kids the during half term.

It really made me think how much London is the same.

Yes it’s changed a lot, but you can still see many of the landmarks that are on this picture from before the great fire 🔥.

St Paul’s is different, London Bridge is different. There are more people rowing on the river then.

But the churches and roads are largely the same.

You can make out a church that’s still there just up the road from the clinic location in Holborn.

Consistency even with centuries of change.

Mad really.

What do you think of nothing?

Answers on a Postcard

I know I do!

And I appreciate the irony of putting this out there on the very media and with the very device…

But seriously, we need space as well. Our bodies need move and our minds need quiet.

With that, signing out, time for quiet in my time zone!

✅☯️♥️🤫💎🧠

Some problems are simple. We often get the complex cases, many injuries, multiple conditions, Co morbidities and people who haven’t responded well to conventional therapy.

That has also included a lot of hypermobile people over the years.

Some of them knowing, some of them never having been diagnosed.

Sometimes it just clicks and people realise why they kept getting injured, had bouts of fatigue, clumsiness, even IBS and anxiety can be increased.

So we always take the time to figure through with people where their issues come from and what their experience of the body is.

Follow for more tips and support!