Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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How's your co-ordination?
Co-ordination is something we all take for granted. We can walk a straight line (sometimes), make a coffee without spilling it (usually) or hand-write a letter (If we haven't forgotten since we started blogging). But threading a needle can be trickier, playing the violin can be the devil's own curse and doing anything with the 'wrong' hand can be challenging beyond belief.
But there are very few of us who are blessed with good co-ordination, even if we had it better in childhood, we probably aren't as good now we are older. Postural habits such as slouching, stooping and stiffening put us off balance and also detrimentally affect our co-ordination. We are no longer as accurate as we may have once been.
Try this little experiment with your hands...
Bring your hands up in front of your chest and straighten your forefingers so that they are pointing, and line them up to point towards each other, tip to tip. In a moment, close your eyes and move your hands away from each other, whilst still pointing a straight forefinger, so they are as far apart from each other as your shoulders. Then bring them together so that the tips of your forefingers meet exactly tip to tip. Remember to keep your eyes closed.
Move them apart again then bring them together exactly as before. Can you make them touch accurately each time or do you miss? Open your eyes and see how far you missed by. Now close them again and do the same thing vertically, one fingertip coming downwards towards the other. Do it repeatedly. Can you also do it diagonally? Can you do it behind your back? How accurate are you? How is your co-ordination?
If you managed to get them to touch exactly tip to tip each time, then you've got pretty good co-ordination. I'll let you pour me a drink any day! If you missed, how far away were you? Were you fingers just a few millimeters apart or several centimeters? If you're anything like me, you've had your fingers and hands all your life, and it's incredible we can't find them without our eyes being open!
Co-ordination can be improved by firstly helping your posture, by improving your balance, releasing tension in your neck, shoulders and arms. Freeing your neck of tension is probably one of the most significant things you can do to help your overall co-ordination as your whole nervous system passes through your neck and the brain stem, into your brain.
if you're going to improve your performance at anything,.....and I do mean anything.....then free your neck first and see how little effort you can use in the process. If you don't succeed, try and release tensions throughout your body and make even less effort. The important thing is, don't try harder as trying harder causes more tension! Make less effort. That's the way to do it.
:-)
