the shoulder anchor [base ingredient]

[*] the shoulder anchor    [a.k.a ‘shoulder push-down’, artist formerly known as ‘shoulder depression’] [base ingredient]

Let us turn our attention, on this here Day of the Moon, to a real ‘crowd pleaser’ of a stretch.. at least in its basic form.

The ‘shoulder push-down’; performed with one partner assisting from behind with two hands [not shown here]; baring down mass through straight arms and relaxed hands – is a extremely popular stretching posture from the art of Stretch Therapy.  

At lot of the effect in the basic form is targeted and produced via the relaxation and repatterning of the trapezius muscle [specifically the upper fibres, thereof]. This one is like garlic, salt or oil. You can have it every day and never get sick of it.

The trapezius muscle is curious in that it [along with the sternocleidomastoid ‘SCM’] draws enervation from the eleventh cranial nerve;  not from the spinal nerves as most muscles do.  Perhaps this – or perhaps other factors to do with character armour, somatic storing of anger and stresses of life, or something else entirely – has to do with its profound ability to relax the system.

Whatever the reasoning, this stretch is a very simple posture for eliciting relaxation in people. It is also one of the premier postures for teaching a cycle of contract-relax to a beginner.

It can be done at the end of a session [even a strength session] as a ‘finisher’; throughout the day as a standalone exercise for the desk-bound; as a ‘state induction’ exercise to begin a stretching session [sort of wiping the slate clean of the days ambient stress and dropping the person ‘into tha body’].  All fine uses!

It has some more powerful expressions, too, hence why I have group them under the name ‘the shoulder anchor’. The basic set-up remains the same [anchor shoulder girdle], whilst what happens after is determined by the cuisine and the spices and herbs added.

Once the body has acclimatized to the posture and cleared the basic tension of the day, one can take a number of lines of work from this posture.

The ‘anchorage’ can be applied to one or both shoulders. This can feel strong but safe for some people, particular those who have had serious neck injuries in the past [possible not fully rehabbed ones, especially].  The support of the partners leg [the soft part, not the shin bone] on the back provides a extra dimensionality to the ‘locked in’ feel, that is very comforting and relaxation facilitating.

If one elects to utilize the one-handed anchorage, there are a number of exceptional additions featured in [K]’s stretching books and the ST video products.  The one that targets levator scap is exceptionally potent.. just not ‘pleasant’ for most for a very long time, indeed!

I crafted a series of strong seated versions that are enhanced via the ‘spice of mass’.  One of the common complaints in this posture is that after one gets used to it, one always wants ‘more massss!!‘.
Sitting on the shoulder with a cushion got partially around this, but again the traps are very strong in leverage. This being said there is a ratio of mass-to-ability-to-yield-and-melt-to-mass that for some these seated versions passed a crucial threshold.

The version shown in the photographs above is the ‘Straight-jacket’ shoulder anchor exercise. This one, via ‘catching’ and ‘drawing the sinews’ of the arms down, greatly enhances a number of aspects of the posture. There are two-, three- and even four-partner versions of this. This elicits some of the ‘sea of proprioception’ effects that the Body Tessellation order stretches are designed to emphasize.

If we pause and look at the anatomy for a moment, we can see that this setup allows – in time, and with practice – access to a huge array of muscles and soft tissues.

I have found work on the splenius group from this posture to be exceptional.  Later one can get into the semispinalis and all those other sinewy 4th layer spine muscles.  And for alchemical purposes, we do want to do this – in time and in a digestible fashion, of course.

But first one starts on the outside layer of the onion.

The one-handed/one-sided-seated versions offer a powerful bonus effect related to the insertion of the muscles being pinned, whilst he origin is made to move.  This was a hidden principle of stretching that [K] introduced me to. A lot of the best postures, IMHO, possess this quality. These are the ones that are usually best for repatterning purposes, whereas the others still hold flexibility and motion unlocking benefits.

There we have it – another versatile ‘base ingredient’, that can be used in a number of differing cuisines.

[D]

 

[anatomical imagery is from Gray’s Anatomy]

the human crossbow [base ingredient]

I remember receiving a message from a very excited [K] about a ‘fantastic new pec stretch’, whilst he was overseas [japan?] teaching workshops.  The stretch was – of course – the stretch that would go on to become known as ‘the human crossbow’ [or ‘the crossbow’*].

There is a certain point of development on the physical intuition spectrum in regards to repatterning stretching where the body just goes ‘yes.‘ when it sees a posture it hasn’t done before.

It already knows.

This was vividly one of these times. When [K] finally arrived back from his sojourn, we – of course – dived straight into heavily playing around with this amazing stretch.

Although the position may appear extreme or uncomfortable to the untrained eye; paradoxically, it becomes one of the most comfortable and ‘evaporatory of frozen tension’ postures around [when auspiciously cued, that is].

I do not believe I have ever had anyone who could not get into at least a modified version of this posture [even ‘rigor mortis level’ stiff students]. Which, given that it looks to many to be one of those exercises ‘you need to already be flexible to get into’,  is really something.

It is ‘a pec stretch’ – but it is also so, so much more. The pectoral component is, however, exceptional.  Some part because the ability to contract both pecs at once engages the ‘sinews’ across the sternum. Another part because you can shunt multiple novel contraction-relaxation cycles of both the pec-major and pec-minor together, on top of each other – in a wavelike manner.

Partially, too, because the mini-baby-whale [embryonic whale?] effect of the partners foot allows one to have a high degree of tailorability over the vertebral specificity of spinal extension – and because it provides something to ‘breath back into’ and a fulcrum to ‘wring out over’. After the pecs are remodelled enough, the next stage of this posture’s alchemical arrow is as a premier breathing apparatus exercise.  For which purposes it is phenomenal.

Adding in partner and multiple-partner tactile cues; tractioning;  bracing and guiding, takes this posture into a number of different dimensions at once.  Eventually it allows access to some arcane structures inside the thorax and in the pit of the throat [tissues around the voice box and thyroid, for instance, if one is so inclined**].

So, whilst it begins its life as ‘a pec stretch’, the Body Tessellation versions are too multifaceted to fit in this narrow bandwidth [and that’s without even adding in the ‘spice’ and cuisine layers].

Pairing this great posture with a hip flexor stretch is so effective in terms of targeting parasitic tension, armouring and other inauspicious physical accumulations that one can do just these two [the ‘deprawnification dyad’] and be done for stretching for days [whence one is far enough into the method].

In fact, I have taught two and a quarter hour classes where we did a triad of these two postures and a strong rotation [‘the exorcism’] – and that was the class done.

The human crossbow is one of the truly great physical exercises. Of any classification.  It is also highly illustrative of how a base posture [base ingredient] can yield to a gravity well of sensory richness and repatterning effects, without much deviation or variation.

Sure; there are ‘kinda variants’ like the ‘batwing crossbow’ – but these can be gone in and out of without changing the base set-up. As can the numerous modifiers and catalysts [herbs and spices].

I am very excited to begin teaching the Body Tessellation strength human crossbow syllabus in Canberra, soon.  100% of the humans I have seen in Canberra thus far, being back here for 8 months now, would derived great benefit from regular work on this posture.

[….]

[D]



*I was actually the one who coined the term ‘human crossbow’ for this stretch, though it was [K] who crafted the exercise for sure.  Later, people dropped the ‘human’ and it has become just the ‘crossbow stretch’.  Alas. 

**this is obviously only for the true delvers of the soma.. thankfully the body prevents access to these areas for sane repatterning, unless the embodied paradox capacity is of sufficient majesty. Of course, people foolish enough can unalchemically get into just about anything too..