MIND · BODY · SPIRIT
The
Art of Somatic Education
The Wetzig Body Operating System
How your body/mind system organizes movement
Somatic Education
What do I mean by somatic education? Probably, when you learned to drive,
you were both unsafe and awkward until operating a car became automatic,
done without thinking. I find this a fascinating, if obvious, observation
about physical learning. Clearly, skills like driving, walking, athletics,
dancing, bodywork, or swimming are best organized by a nonconscious, operational
part of your body/mind. A practical question: how can your thinking, analytical
mind most usefully interact with your nonconscious functional body/mind
as you move in your life?
Life is movement. Each of us has a relationship with our body and our functional mind. Somatic education starts at birth (or before) and one of its most active expressions is the exploratory play of children. Those who practice athletics, music, dance, qi gong, yoga, t'ai chi, and computer games develop and use somatic skills, as do students of F. M. Alexander, Milton Trager, or Moshe Feldenkrais. Optimally, somatic education leads to grace, ease, comfort, and physical skill. Positive somatic learning can reverse the holding and loss of movement that result from abuse, pain, or trauma (negative somatic learning).
Wetzig
This article describes the insights of a person I've learned a lot from
during the last couple of years. Elizabeth Wetzig, dancer, choreographer,
and body-use expert, has given me a perspective on body-mind interaction
fully as useful and fascinating as the Meyers-Briggs personality profile
or the Enneagram are to psychological interactions. Wetzig has built on
the results of earlier physiologic experiments to formulate practical
insights into how our bodies organize to do what we want to do. She calls
her workshops Coordination Pattern Training for Full Potential Movement.
For me, she helps answer basic questions: How does my body-mind organize
what I do? How can my doing feel better and work better?
BOS
I refer to BOS, body operating system, by analogy with DOS, disc operating
system. My computer's disc operating system selects different specific
programs for different tasks, like word processing, handling data, drawing,
communication, or games. Similarly, for different tasks, our BOS selects
centers and patterns of body organization. Another similarity is that
most computer operations are done in background, just as most body operations
are nonconscious. With a computer, our ability to do what we want depends
on knowing what programs are available, what they can do, and how to direct
what they do. In your body, by contrast, although knowledge can help us
learn or coach, conscious control usually interferes with actions, as
Moorehouse discusses in his chapter on paralysis through analysis in "Maximum
Performance."
The Patterns
Wetzig sees four basic patterns of body/mind organization, each of which
all of us use. She calls them shape, swing, thrust, and hang. Each pattern
organizes from a different physical center within the body. Most of us
have a style of body operation with a dominant pattern and a subdominant
pattern. We are most relaxed in our dominant pattern, least relaxed in
our least dominant. One pattern is not better or worse, just different.
Each is useful and we all use all four. For example, the four in basketball:
Shape up to shoot accurately, but if you land in shape you hurt your knees.
Swing has bounce or rebound, and organizes repeated jumps. Hang is needed
to easily run the court and float for jams. Thrust changes direction suddenly,
drives, and sets picks. The patterns are briefly listed below, with some
typical features.
Actions may "feel good" to us because they match our home, most relaxed, pattern or because they use a pattern we need to develop, like the one furthest from home. We function best when all patterns are fully available as needed.
Finding and feeling the centers
Shape: Balance, symmetry, and order. Managing, shaping up. Yoga, ballet, classical music. -- Feeling: Put your hand over the tip of your breastbone, between belly and chest and between lower ribs. Imagine this center connected back to your spine and with some lift, drop the hand. Focus on this center, shape your body as though marching in a formal wedding, walk. With bent elbows, straight wrists, lift to expand your breath. OM sound comes from this center.
Swing: Bounce, rocking, rhythm. Sales, relationships. Swing music, hula dancing. -- Feeling: Put your hand on your belly above the navel, connect this center to your spine, and let it lift, drop hand. Stand and move your body so your arms swing around you, like ropes with knots where your hands are or like an empty jacket over your shoulders. Your arms ride the swing and wrap before swinging back. Feel your hands. Or put on some 60s music and do the twist. Sound could be bouncy Santa's Ho Ho Ho Ho.
Thrust: Focus, directed energy, asymmetry. Technical work, computers. Karate, weight work, disco dances. -- Feeling: Focus at the base of your belly, centered, just above the pubic bone, connect to spine, with some lift. Put one foot forward. Without stress, thrust forward on crossing diagonal with pelvis, back hand, and breath, all together. Find a deep grunt that comes from that spot, add to thrust.
Hang: Flow, extending limits. Entrepreneurs, hanging out. Fred Astaire going into space and his legs come after. Hang can go way out beyond limits and can get back. Conceptually, Einstein imagining himself in an accelerating elevator in outer space. The momentum center shifts, but not symmetrically out and back with neat limits. Hang has random motions, also may form circles or figure eights. -- Feeling: Hang has a moving center of momentum. Switch from shape center to thrust (OM sound to Thrust grunt), up and down. Then stand, arms hanging from shoulders, hands hanging from arms. With soft knees, find small moves of pelvis and sense resulting micromoves with hanging hand sensors. Or send energy out the fingers of one hand and let your hand and body follow that energy into random motions.
A Personal Full Potential Experience
Fascinating Wetzig connections about styles of body/mind learning, music,
song, and dance, as well as pattern overrides and how they affect function,
are not included here. Instead, following is a learning sequence simple
enough for you to explore from an outline. Below, why this body/mind experience
was powerful for me.
Do only if comfortable.
·- Stand in foundation doorway posture, ankles under knees under
hips. Knees unlocked,align your middle toes (not big toes) with ankles.
Centering middle toes enlivens the outside of the feet. Let your weight
be over the arch of your foot (not heel or ball) and keep it there during
the following actions.
·- Let your head get heavy and fold forward until your spine follows,
knees bend, and heels lift just a bit. Your head hangs comfortably near
your knees.
·- Slowly return to standing, noticing your thrust center (above
pubic bone), swing center (above navel), and shape center (tip of sternum).
A moving center of momentum is hang, so all four centers are invoked during
this simple movement. Repeat and notice.
·- The next time you come up, instead of pulling your shoulders
back, let them remain forward where they unfold to as your head comes
erect. Stand and notice, repeat.
·- Without pulling your shoulders back, rotate your hands out and
back to let them hang with palms facing your body. Stand and notice.
·- From this posture, taking your back with you, start a relaxed
walk. Notice.
Twice before, I'd felt the body alignment and awareness Wetzig led me to with this exercise. Nearly 20 years ago, a Feldenkrais class surrounded and supported me, lifted me in the air, carried me for a bit, and finally supported me into a standing posture that automatically aligned. This felt gift was particularly valued because I'm big enough that even groups don't often offer to carry me around. Then, 12 years ago at a Trager Beginning, after a transformative session from instructor Gary Brownlee, I fell into this posture, knees unlocked, shoulders forward, everything aligned automatically.
Why was this such a positive
experience? My conscious mind was the observer, enjoying without controlling,
while my functional mind created reflex, aligned standing. This feels
to me like where athletes go when "on" or "in the zone."
Also the state of self-trust Milton Trager calls Hook-up®. With the
learning game outlined above, Wetzig empowered me to explore and create
for myself this potent and pleasurable alignment whenever I choose.
A Style of Pattern Use
My dominant pattern is swing, as seen in my enjoyment of Trager® rocking
and connecting with clients and students. Wetzig found that I had a strong
shape subdominant. This surprised me a bit, because I don't keep an orderly
desk or work environment. Shape is involved in my writing and a knack
for details like proof-reading, I suppose. It may relate to my having
been a fearful child, trying to figure out and control inside and outside
to be safe. I believe hang was part of my ability to do research, as I
was willing to hang out with accumulated information until connections
surfaced and made sense. Of the four patterns, thrust, the precise delivery
of focused energy or intent, seems furthest from my home pattern. In recent
years, I've added regular weight work to my physical routine. Aikido,
or ki classes without the falls, would probably move me closer to full
potential.
Conclusion
This summary of some of what I've gotten from Wetzig is my own understanding.
To briefly address some of the questions asked above: Useful functions
for the conscious mind are to enjoy, observe, and trust the functional
mind. You can also use your conscious to practice awareness of BOS centers.
This gives your body/mind sensory signals to use in doing what you want
more easily, simply, and effectively.
Elizabeth Wetzig is from Allentown, PA. For her workshops contact Gene Miller, below.
Joe Lee Griffin is a Trager® practitioner, tutor, and workshop leader, who practices in Savannah, GA. Joe describes The Dry Land Swim Class, self-care games for computer users, and Trager® bodywork and self-help on the web at www.joeleegriffin.com
For Wetzig Coordination Patterns Workshops,
The Mind Body Collaborative Partnership
c/o Gene Miller
30 North Twelfth St.
Allentown, PA 18101
610-432-2641
Jean Hopkins, Trager Instructor, offers Wetzig-based classes with continuing education credit for members of The TRAGER Institute. In Albuquerque, NM. 505-256-7636.
This article is from the Fall, 1996 issue of Pathways, the DC area quarterly
magazine.