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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Being grounded

Meerkats in the Kalahari Desert

Do you sometimes wish you could fly? Hovering over London, soaring over hills and valleys, avoiding traffic jams and cutting travel times down by going 'as the crow flies' would make life quite extraordinary. Well, there are probably some scientists working on how we might manage to do it, but for the time being we're well and truly restricted as land creatures, apart from the odd sojourn by aircraft or boat.

So here we are standing on two feet and coping with the effect of gravity by balancing as best we can. And being fairly tall for the size of our feet (even the largest foot-size is still relatively small) we have a real potential for getting off balance. Toddler children could show us a thing or two about balance that's for sure, as they don't yet have any postural habits that interfere with their natural poise.

Being 'grounded' is an ideal state to be in, as it helps with so many aspects of life, both physically and emotionally. It can mean different things, rather than roller-coasting emotionally up and down, being flighty in demeanour or scatterbrained, we can be grounded, calm, centred and rational. Being grounded physically is often seen as being well earthed, stable, well balanced, rooted to the ground and not 'in fly-away' mode, or coming off the heels. But how separate are these emotional and physical aspects? I see them as inextricably linked.

Our mind and body work as a whole as I've discussed in a previous blog on posture and emotions. One affects the other; if we're emotionally up it helps our poise, if we collapse in stature it's not easy being happy, energetic or confident. Better posture can help us feel physically and emotionally on top of the world, and the Alexander Technique provides a means of doing that. By improving your balance you can release physical tensions, become more upright and feel more emotionally centred as well as physically grounded.

While the Alexander Technique helps us eliminate unnecessary tension it also encourages a quality of expansiveness. We learn to think of 'going upwards', leading with our head, so that we lengthen and widen in stature. However it must be said that we are never trying to 'take off' or fly away. Our feet remain firmly on the floor and indeed we become more grounded as we release unnecessary tensions in our legs and feet. Lengthening does not happen unless we accept the ground underneath our feet; in other words, not bracing against the ground. Some people are bracing themselves so much they are picking half their foot off the ground.

To lengthen we need something solid to come up from, hence squashy sofas or chairs are not so great for poise while sitting as we do not 'ground' in them but continue to sink. On examination of vertebrate creatures, cats, dogs, and also children, we can see they are all grounded but none are 'going down' or collapsing or sinking into the floor or ground. Animals are all going up or lengthening in stature to be tall to see into the distance looking out for predators, as the meerkat in my blog heading shows us. The instinctive need to be tall activates the postural muscles from the soles of the feet upwards. It's an anti-gravity reflex. As vertebrates, we humans also function in a similar way, There is no sense of effort when this is working well as we're activating the white muscle fibres that are intended to provide the support tirelessly, allowing us to be free, tall and expansive at the same time. Trouble occurs when we brace ourselves against the floor or release everything downwards disengaging the supportive muscles, causing collapse.

'Going up' is an expression of expansiveness. We can 'go up' with every pore of our skin from the feet upwards. It means expanding upwards and outwards. The ankles can 'go up' and we can also come up 'out of the ankles' while still being grounded. This is how it works in nature, just that it's happening instinctively without consideration or thought. F.M. Alexander found a way of recreating that by conscious thought.

If someone said to you, that you should ground yourself, what is it that you would do? Grounding occurs on a physical level when we are in good balance and not bracing ourselves against the ground. We cannot 'do' grounding, as such. It happens indirectly as a consequence of attending to postural considerations such as releasing unnecessary tension and coming into better balance.

It's a common tendency due to postural habits for people to collapse within themselves, then brace and stiffen to compensate. Where there is such excessive effort it's helpful to release, but to counteract any possible collapse we also need to direct ourselves upwards; the appropriate muscles will be activated without any need for stiffening. Of course muscles will be working, that's their job. But they will do so in a co-ordinated way with the minimum of effort if the body has appropriate 'direction'. As we have postural habits, we can bring our conscious attention to our situation to help, so we must intend to be 'going up', then let our instincts, our postural reflex and coordination 'take us up' to our full height. When we use the Alexander Technique we tap into our inherent instinct and postural mechanism by sending conscious messages to activate the anti-gravity mechanism.

We are at our healthiest when we are truly in balance, allowing the weight to go down through our heels to be grounded, but also tall and expansive too. Lengthening happens when two opposite ends are going away from one another, so it can be seen that we need to allow our heels to be going down and not lifting them off the floor by leaning forwards. We should accept the ground under our feet, or the chair under our bottom, while also intending ourselves to be going up to our full height. If we repeat the 'directions' or thoughts regularly, it gradually becomes a way of life, so we're more often than not, well balanced, grounded, free and expansive. The awareness and the skill to achieve this is what the Alexander Technique promotes and as we come into more physical balance, we can also feel more emotionally centred and physically grounded. It can make a huge difference in how we feel and function.

Posted by Noël on June 13, 2007 9:12 AM | Permalink