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i have this thing that i do when i teach, where i talk about star trek because almost everyone on earth has seen something regarding original star trek.  sort of like how i haven’t seen logan’s run but i know the punch line because it’s referenced in tons of popular culture.  anyway, i have this habit of saying things like:

“okay so your pelvic floor is captain kirk and your hamstrings all the way into your arches are mister spock and your quads are the red shirted ensign that everyone knows is going to die before the first commercial break!”

along with this i have a habit when i work out myself of designating a place to work from that session.  sometimes it’s my pelvic floor, sometimes breath, sometimes one of the arches of my foot, sometimes the ends in and sometimes the ins out and so on.  just vary the routine so it stays interesting.

yesterday i was working from the pelvic floor, or perhaps i should say your actual center.

well then, what the heck is a center?

is it your belly button?

is it your kiri as the martial artists describe it?  something which is slightly lower in the abdomen but still above the pubic hair?  is it your solar plexus (also sometimes called the brain of the abdomen)? is it your breath or your mind?  is it your center of gravity?  is it center or centre?  how about that pelvic floor?

i tend to think of the pelvic floor as the mouth of your center.  oh dear, now i’m writing smut.  regardless, if you think of your pelvic floor as the power lifter for all your movement everything will start to come together.  your inner thighs will connect to the base of your big toes and you’ll feel your whole abdomen come into play as you go.

of course if you don’t do it well you’ll clench your butt and restrict movement in your lower spine, but that’s a story for another post.

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ages ago one of my teachers started a class by hooking us in to the metatarsal arch of our feet.  she took us through some exercises designed to bring our awareness into the soles of our feet and to harness them and teach them to work without clenching maniacally.

she spent like ten minutes on this one day and then started the class as usual with all the same exercises.  that day she kept drawing our attention back to our feet and to the connections we should be feeling up into our ham strings and the rest of our bodies.  every exercise came back to that point in the body.

i walked out transformed.

suddenly i could feel all sorts of connections and had new language for a pile of things i’d had trouble with with several clients.

so of course it became a thing in my own workouts, working from different places.

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so the other day i worked out from my pelvic floor and two days later i STILL hurt in muscles that usually find those exercises easy.  lovely.