Ep. 67 Top down or bottom up?

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis welcoming you to podcast number 67. Our last podcast talked a whole load about toes curling your toes and the effect that this can have going way up into your torso. Now, long after I got much, much better at not curling my toes and it became an occasional event, I still had trouble organising my body from the bottom up. I did a much better job organizing it from the top down and from the pelvis into the thigh and the pelvis up towards the ribs and the shoulder girdle. But I didn't do a good job starting from my feet or lower legs. They were so wibbly, wobbly, if you like, unstuffed, lacking tone. My feet I can remember really not feeling clearly at all and going through a phase of really trying to focus on the bones in my foot just to try and get a sense of there being something solid down there. So the next exercise we're going to do builds on what we did last time and organizes the body from the bottom up. And in the process of doing that, is going to teach you how to activate your core in a way you might not have thought of and which can be incredibly productive. This is one of those exercises where practising it and getting good at it off horse prepares your body for what will be maybe at a significantly deeper layer of the onion than you're currently riding at, but in a way that can make that layer become more accessible much more quickly, and that has huge value for you. I owe a huge amount in this exercise to Tom Myers and his anatomy train schema, which has informed my riding learning and coaching in the most wonderful and which explains so, so much. And also to Meredith Stevens, who's an American pt that's physiotherapist and a teacher of anatomy trains and a fabulous body worker in her own right. So realize, first of all that there are two ways of thinking about the core. In Pilates, it's thought of really as the kind of canister that has the diaphragm, your breathing diaphragm at the top, your pelvic floor at the bottom, and all the muscles that go around your torso between the two, and make a kind of canister that is thought of as your core. Now, in this version, we're thinking of your core rather more like the core of an apple. If you cut an apple from the stalk down through to the other end and look at the inside of the half that you've cut, you'll see a thin line that bulges at the core and becomes a thin line to the other end of the apple. And we're thinking about the human core in rather the same way. In other words, going all the way from the soles of your foot to your head. Sometimes that is called the grounded core and the Pilates version is called the neurocore. And they're just two different ways, two different models, which both have value. When we teach you bearing down of pull your tummy in to make the wall, push your guts against the wall, we're really teaching you more Pilates version of the core rather than what we're going to do now, which is the grounded core. So this is a standing exercise. It's not going to work driving your car. Hopefully, if you are, you will find time to do it when you get home, because I think it's immensely valuable. So we're going to start standing in an on horse position. That means your knees are bent a little bit, your legs apart a little bit, and we want your body to be a good box with the front of you matching the back of you. And first of all, just notice where your weight is taken on your feet and how much your toes are bearing weight. So all of us are living probably a pretty fast paced life. And I think riders are often more proactive than a lot of people packing things in so they can get to their horse. Getting, as it were, ahead of ourselves and leaning too far forward in the way we stand with too much weight on our toes, like we're ready to go. So lift your toes off the floor and feel your weight rebalance over your foot, between the ball of your foot and your heel. And when you put your toes back on the floor again, just rest them. And if you find yourself beginning to lean forward again, maybe just do it to notice the difference. Your weight goes onto your toes. You're already, as it were, in action. Lift your toes again. You'll be more centred, more grounded, more here and now, rather than mentally or physically rushing off. So to get you really good and neutral, I want you to think of your torso like the top half of an hourglass. And the hole in the hourglass that the sand would come out of is in the middle of your pelvic floor. And we're going to identify exactly where that is. So if you thought of a line that joined the middle of your pubic bone to your tailbone and a line that went crossways between your seat bones, they cross in the middle of your pelvic floor in a part known as the perineal body, it's the strongest part of the pelvic floor. And if you're a woman, you have an orifice in front of that and an orifice behind that. But if that strong middle part of the pelvic floor were the hole in the hourglass and sand came out from there, it should land between your ankle nobbles. So if you do a few experiments, if you lean forward and get weight on your toes again, you're going to send the sand back. If you hollow your back, you're going to send the sand back even more. Even if you're more neutral with your toes, but you're hollow backed, the sand is going to land on the ground somewhere, even possibly behind your ankles. If you really tuck your tailbone and shorten your pelvic floor and round your back, you might be able to send the sand more to towards your toes. But can you arrange yourself so the sand would land between your ankle bones? So that's a great way to ascertain that you're neutral. And it's something you could do just standing in the supermarket pew waiting to check out, no one would notice. They won't think you're weird. So here you are in that neutral. And now we're going to start thinking about your diaphragm. And you have more than one diaphragm, so you're aware of your breathing diaphragm that separates your lungs and your heart, which lie above it, from your guts that lie below it. Every in breath, that diaphragm is drawn down. Think of it like the cap of a mushroom, kind of lowering a little bit. And at the same time as that happens, your pelvic floor lowers a little bit and then on the in breath, your diaphragm comes back up and your pelvic floor comes a little up. And they should work in sync. Your pelvic floor is also considered as a diaphragm. And there are other diaphragms too, because the word is the word for any cross membrane in the body. So the soles of your feet are diaphragms, what's known as the tibial plateau at the top of your calf bones. So that forms the bottom of your knee joint with your thigh coming down and your kneecap and the tibial plateau, and those are encased in the joint capsule. But the tibial plateau is a very wide, flat piece of bone. So we've got the soles of your feet, the tibial plateau, your pelvic diaphragm, your breathing diaphragm, the tops of your lungs, just under your shoulders, under your collarbone, considered a diaphragm, it may well be that your lungs come up much further than you'd imagined. Your chin could be thought of as a diaphragm and the roof of your mouth. And in your brain, there's a membrane that separates the top of your brain or the upper layer from the lower layer, and that, too, is a diaphragm. So that gives us feet, tibial plateau, pelvic floor, breathing, diaphragm, top of the lungs, chin, top of the mouth, membrane in the brain. So that gives us eight diaphragms, and we're going to kind of link them all together, although we might just leave the brain one. So imagine that you could draw up your arches in your feet. And as you draw up the arches, the connection of the narrow part of the apple core, as it were, goes from your arches to the deep muscles in your calf that you can't touch. They're under the big calf muscles at the back, kind of between the two bones that constitute your calf, coming up to the tibial plateau. From there, your inside thigh muscles bring you up to your pelvic floor. So can you feel that as you lift your arches, you draw your pelvic floor up a little and then let your arches drop and your pelvic floor drop. So let's do it again. You lift your arches, you think deep in the calf, tip your plateau, thigh muscles, inside, thigh muscles to pelvic floor. Can you draw up your pelvic floor? Let that go one more time, Arches, tibial plateau beneath your kneecaps into your pelvic floor, and you get, as it were, a little taller with a positive tension coming up through your legs and into your pelvic floor, and let that go again. So the next layer of this happens via your psoas muscles. Now, some of you may have heard of those, certainly if you've listened to my previous podcasts, you have your greater trochanter that you can touch as a bony novel on your panty line at the top of your thigh. Don't think up by the point of your hips. We're talking the top of your thigh. And underneath, the bony novel of the greater trochanter is the lesser trochanter, which you can't feel. And that's where your psoas muscles begin. And they come from there, sort of deep in your thigh, over the front of your body, on each side of your pubic bone, and then in an inverted V shape up towards your sternum, but actually going back through you diagonally to end up at your spine, behind your sternum, where your diaphragm inserts into your spine, so they make a diagonal from the bottom front to the top back on each side. I got really excited last year after having had an MRI scan. When I sat looking at the results with my consultant and there were my psoas muscles, I was, like, seeing the most hidden, deep, important part of me that we never, ever get to see without pictures of our innards. And I found myself asking him questions like, are they stronger than you'd expect in a woman of my age? Do you think they're more symmetrical than the average person? And we sat looking at these together and he was quite excited by my excitement, I think. And this went on for a while until I really realized that, given our National Health Service, I shouldn't really be taking up his time doing this. And I took photographs of his photographs and went on my merry way. So we're now going to go from your arches, which draw up. You might find your toes coming up as you do that, and that's a good thing. Deep in your calf tibial plateau, inside thighs, your pelvic floor draws up as your arches draw up. And maybe use the side of your hand to trace the diagonal up towards your sternum, realising that it's actually going diagonally back to your spine, connecting into the vertebra of your spine at the level where your diaphragm is also connected in. So we've now got a little lift in your torso as it comes up to your diaphragm and let all of that go and you can probably feel yourself bloop down a little bit. Now, if you have one foot that's flatter than the other, and maybe with both feet, you're having to imagine your arches lifting rather than actually really lifting them. The side that is harder to lift, your pelvic floor might be a bit blur and low tone on that side, and your diaphragm might be too. If you can get these membranes to work at these different levels and connect together and be more similar left to right, that has some good bearings on your athleticism and your longevity as well as your riding. So we're going again from soles of your feet, you'd lift your arches, lift your toes to help you deepen your calf. The plateau that your knee joint rests on or your thigh bone almost rests on, up through your inside thighs, pelvic floor draws up a little bit. Your psoas muscles trace the inverted V up to your diaphragm. Your diaphragm draws up a little bit. You might find as you do that, that you're bearing down a little and then let that go. Now, next time round, we're going to go up a little higher than your diaphragm and the line comes up into your trachea or your windpipe. So you're going to think of it coming up into your windpipe, into your throat and into your mouth, where you may find yourself getting more aware of the floor of your mouth, the roof of your mouth and also your tongue, which is part of the line, too. So we go arches, draw up, probably toes as well. Deep calf muscles, knees, inside thigh, pelvic floor. Trace the inverted V of your psoas muscles. Think of them coming back into your spine and your diaphragm, continuing up your windpipe into your throat. So your windpipe lies in front of your neck vertebra. And then you may become more aware of the floor of your mouth, the roof of your mouth and your tongue. Maybe they feel just a little different or they're more alive to your feel sense and let it go. And when you let it go, you might feel that you just go bloop. And get a bit shorter and wider and soggier, generally more down, a little heavier on the floor. Let's do the same again. Arches, deep calves, the plateau of your knees into the inner thighs, your pelvic floor. The inverted view of your psoas going from each side of your pubic bone diagonally back to your spine, connecting in with your diaphragm and into your trachea, up into your throat, into your mouth, and keep doing that. Feel that elongation in your body. I like to think of the trachea. So if you think of it coming down from your mouth, through your neck, through your upper chest and splitting about probably the middle of your cleavage into a connection to your right lung and your left lung. I like to think of it having a little ring around it just before that connection that just tensions it a little bit. That's a feeling I'll tell you more about later and let everything go. And we're going to go again. Arches, toes, deep, calves via your knees to your inside thighs. Your pelvic floor draws up a little. Your psoas comes up in the inverted V. Helps your diaphragm draw up a little. The line then becomes your trachea, your windpipe coming into your throat, into your mouth. And feel how you stand when you're like this and breathe. Notice if you're Bearing down. Notice your toes are probably up and there's a really positive tension that you've put right now into your core and let it go again. Now, if you want to sit down and take a little break, you certainly can. But I'm just going to talk to you about some other muscles that are involved here that aren't part of the deep front line. In fact, this is somewhat controversial in the field, and the Danish vets who did the dissections on the myofascial lines in horses have found what they consider a deep back line, which Tom Myers would tell you people don't have. And maybe that's just the cost of standing on two legs and not having a tail. And maybe it's a controversy that will be aligned somehow as the theory develops over years. But the deep back line for the vets involves the little muscles in your spine that go from one vertebra to another. And I call these the Christmas tree muscles. And if you think of fir trees, fir trees have branches that might be horizontal or less than horizontal, and different fir trees have branches that go more or less out and down. And from the sticky out bit at the back of your vertebra, which you might be able to feel as a bony prominence if you're really skinny, there's a muscle on each side that goes down and out to the sideways sticky hellpits of the vertebrae below. And muscles go from one vertebra to the wider part of the next vertebra, and some go three vertebra down. So that's like a fir tree with branches. Some are closer to horizontal, but still down, and some go more down towards vertical. So we're going to think about these muscles as we redo drawing up your arches, thinking of the connection in the deep calf, the inside thigh, the pelvic floor, draws up the psoas muscles. Draw up your diaphragm a little bit into your trachea with its little ring around it. See if you can feel it kind of like narrowed in and tensioned a little bit into your throat, into your mouth. And meanwhile, those muscles between your little vertebra have elongated too. So another way I think of them is like a bottle brush. When you put the bottle brush in the bottle and you squished it around a bit and you go to draw it out of the bottle, its bristles get more towards vertical and less wide, more down. And that's what you've done with those little vessels between your spine or between your vertebra. Stand like this for a while. Notice your breathing. Notice you're bearing down and let it go. I'm going to torture you one last time. Arches, calves, knees, inner thighs, pelvic floor, draws up via the psoas muscles. Your diaphragm draws up your trachea into your mouth and through the bottle brush muscles as well. And what you're doing here is a very sophisticated understanding of the words I'm sure you've heard before, grow tall. But how many people would hear the words grow tall and do what we've built up in the last 15 or so minutes? So painstakingly, most people grow tall by lifting their chin, sticking their chest out, hollowing their back, all the things that grow tall isn't. But grow tall done like this, is a real activation of your core. Now, I really invite you to practice this and we're going to build on this because it's going to give you more longevity. People who are more athletic movers have this just as part of how they operate in life, but the average person doesn't. The average person is the more bleh, let go version. And weight comes down through your body in a much more compressing your joints kind of way when you do that. Practising this off horse really sets you up to be able to do it on horse in your riding and to reach the level where that is possible sooner. And I'm going to build on this in our next session to really show you another way of how to do this and transfer it to the saddle. But in the meanwhile, practise off horse. Have fun with it. It's all one big experiment. Enjoy riding your horses, enjoy figuring it out as you go along, and I will be with you again soon.