Saturday, July 24, 2010

Day 3. Notions on the Arch and Curl

Hello Giration Nation,
Yes i know there is an article by this name in "Alternative Medicine", great article.

I thought it would be nice to put down here some descriptors for Ocean Breath which came up as I was teaching some intermediate Gyrotonic clients today. Please feel free to add your own.

Temperature:
Warm.

Humidity Level:
Moist. Enough to fog a mirror.

Origin:
From the back of the throat as opposed to the front of the mouth. Of course the lungs precede this, but I am talking about the mouth cavity in particular.

Intensity:
It's a crescendo just like the name connotes. Like an ocean wave, it seeps out of the back of the mouth slowly with the suspended and held opposition at the top of the Arch, then intensifies into a squeeze at the end of the curl, creating a crescendo of both volume and intensity.

I notice that people who have a tendency to whip their heads downward and go very low in the Arch and Curl tend to do the same sudden release in their breath during the transition from Arch to Curl. By just asking my client to become aware of the sound they were making, it helped them to correct their head so that it could have more delay into the final curl position.

Here is a question for you:
Have you ever had a client who was so cifotic (hunched forward) and so tight in the Hamstrings that they couldn't sit up straight to begin with and had trouble doing Arch and Curl?
What did you do?
The Gyrotonic method has guidelines, but I know we cannot fit every single client into this and that's why they are called guidelines.
I'd like to hear from you.
Signing off,
Alesia

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