Plug Into Power

#PilatesInJail: Awareness Jailbreak

image from freerangestock.com

I hold my #PilatesInJail class on the upper level of the laundry area where the heat is intense and there is just enough room for about 6 yoga mats.  The inmates say the thermostat must be broken because the furnace runs all the time and the pod (their living quarters) is really hot.  I think the dryers downstairs must vent directly into this room.  For exercise class, most of the women are allowed to wear shorts instead of the usual striped canvas pants.  This is quite a luxury for them and they are keen to strip the stripes off as soon as we get upstairs.

Early in the class, seated on our mats, I ask them to sense their weight, to feel their right and left sitbones pressing evenly into the thick yoga mat. We are working on weight transfer in our more advanced exercises and it's helpful to start with the simple and symmetrical.  Experienced Pilates and yoga students know that thoughtlessly flinging your weight from one leg or arm to the other will often land you in a humbled heap.  But we have to start somewhere! 

We take perhaps 30 seconds to balance the weight on our sitbones and I ask them how it feels.

"Grounded," Valerie replied. "Calmer."

This strikes me as an interesting place to take a right turn, so I do.  I ask, "What do you hope to get out of participating in this class?"

"Peace." she replies. "To lower my stress."

"What will 'peace' feel like?" I push her a little to draw from her own experiences.

She is puzzled but game. A short conversation results in the students agreeing that peace can be described fairly clearly with "My chest won't be tight, I won't clench my jaw, and I'll be grounded."

So I ask the group: "Is your chest tight right now?"

"No."

"Are you clenching your jaw?"

"Yeah, maybe a little."

"Relax your jaw. Massage your jawline, use your thumbs to push into the soft tissue underneath." We massage our jawlines, pressing firmly up into the soft tissue below the tongue, palpating the thin delicate edge of the mandible, and take a few seconds to close our eyes and appreciate the results.

I take care to speak slowly, pausing when appropriate, as I guide them around the body.  

"Sense your weight in your sitbones. The right sitbone has the same amount of pressure as the left sitbone. Feel the weight, you are grounded. You're not fighting against gravity, it supports you. Your jaw is relaxed. Your breath is soft and quiet."

I give them time to locate and identify each of these sensations before I bring them back into conversation.

"Valerie, would you say you feel peaceful right now?"

"Mmm. Yes." She certainly looks peaceful!

"How did you do that? What did you do to achieve your goal?"  We recap the simple physical awareness exercises we have done so far and we discuss how simple they are. How little time they take. How easy to implement. 

I am on a mission now. "Peace isn't something that's over there. It's not a goal that you have to go someplace to get.   Being at peace has a physical component to it. It's not just a mental or emotional state. It also has a very clear physical aspect to it.  For any person or animal at peace the jaw is relaxed, the breath is soft and quiet and they are in harmony with gravity.  These are all things that you can create for yourself out of nothing.  You don't have to travel anywhere, you don't even have to leave the pod.  You don't have to solve all your problems.  You can create it - instantly - by putting together the sensations of peace.  Your reptilian brain doesn't care how these sensations of peace came about.  All it knows is it is there." 

You know what? I think she really really got it. The expression on her face is hard to describe, but if you're a movement instructor you'll know what I'm talking about.  When you can provide a image that generates an authentic breakthrough moment for the student, you can feel it.  I was moved by her reaction.  She momentarily "walked" out of that jail and into the clear spring air, away from the smells and torrent of noise.  Me and my little class sat on our mats, high up on a stifling concrete balcony and realized we can be set free by our minds just as completely as the inmates are imprisoned by the state.

Some people are jailed by their minds

The jail where I volunteer-teach has an enormous, homemade wooden cart that I put the exercise mats into and lock with a padlock. (Apparently if you keep something useful or expensive in a jail, you must keep it under lock and key or it will wander off.) This sign is taped to the top of the cart and as you can see, someone has added their opinion. 

"Yoga, really?"

Yes you doofus. Yoga really. As opposed to that yoga imaginary or the yoga incorporeal. This indicates the degree to which people aren't used to changing the way they think about things. What puzzles me is who wrote it? An inmate doing laundry where the cart is kept? A guard who thinks incarceration shouldn't include rehabilitation?

If this was written by a staff-member, I'd like to say something.  Even if you believe jail should be a punishing experience, isn't there room to consider some inmates are going to go home at some point and they will be returning to society and (hopefully) choosing a new path? Where do you think they are going to learn those coping skills? How to make different choices? How to recognize that they ARE making choices every day?  Shall they learn this from their family? Gangster friends? The student psychology center? 

And if this was written by an inmate, I'd like to say something to that person too. The voice in your head is not telling you The Truth. It's just the machinery running itself and it's not interested in you doing something different, even if that something different is good for you. No, the voice in your head is just the voice of your past experiences.  And apparently, that past doesn't include yoga or Pilates or self-inquiry or meditation.  So you don't know what you don't know, but I challenge you to find out what is out there when you stop being distracted by that little voice in your head. 

PilatesInJail Round 2 Day 1

Written Jan 28, 2013, posted Feb 4

Today I met with the group of inmates at the county jail in V-Pod and we began another 6-week course in Pilates, imagery and mind-body techniques for managing stress, anxiety, depression and anger. The 6 women seemed very interested and glad to be there, they are from the general population, not from solitary confinement/lock-down, as was the last group I worked with.

Today's class plan was focused on goal-setting. Judging by what little I can detect about these women and their circumstances, it's pretty unlikely that they have been to a Pilates conference or a yoga retreat. They don't know how to set or reach a goal for wellness or peacefulness.

My classes begin and end with a minute of silent self-inquiry. This is how students can tell if a class made an impact or not. A vague or fleeting sense of "I feel good" isn't nearly good enough to effect a change in habits or thought processes. (Do you remember, in Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter is asked to recall a really good memory because it will shield him from a hostile creature known as a Dementor. His spell fails and Professor Lupin tells Harry the memory he chose wasn't "nearly good enough".)

It's sort of like that.

If your students never take the time and notice the change in physical experience is really something great, meaningful, helpful, enjoyable, change-making.... then your students are very unlikely to repeat it or stick with it. This is really the only way to block the real-life Dementor "Entropy".

PilatesInJail Day 1

I had to split the video into 2 pieces.  Sorry!

 

Whew! And then there's this....

 

Here are the statistics from my survey.  The maximum score is 5.0 on each domain, with 5.0 meaning the subject believes exercising/meditating can deliver the stated benefit.  A lower score means the subject does not agree that exercise/meditation can deliver the stated benefit.

Download EMI-jail

Joe Pilates would be proud

As the story goes, when Joe Pilates was a young man he joined a traveling circus and left Germany to see the world and earn a living.  He had a Greek statue act, where he powdered his body white and stood in classic postures, astonishing the ladies and impressing the fellows.  We can imagine a hale and hearty, physically beautiful athlete up on a ramshackle stage taking postures with names like "The Discus Thrower" and "The Wrestler". (A modern street entertainer business has a photo of one of their players here.)   Joe surely had a grand time, exulting in his strength and the sweetness of triumph over childhood illness.  Unfortunately, however, the circus was performing in England when World War I began and Joe was interned as a German enemy alien for the duration of the war. Think about that for a moment. The Great War lasted from July 1914 to November 1918 and trapped millions like Joe in its terrifying web; Joe Pilates was not yet 26 years old when he was sent to one of the British World War I  internment camps. He was held until he was  31.

World War I soldiers

Joe's most enduring characteristic, present and vibrant throughout his life is evidenced by his writings, interviews and witnesses: he never lost faith in himself or his message.  This youthful crisis of imprisonment and removal from his normal sphere of choice and liberty contributed to his charisma and determination to make a difference in other's fitness and vitality.  While he was imprisoned, he worked with his fellow internees as a nurse in the camp hospital, but it is apparent that his true calling was as a coach and teacher.  Those years were not lost years to Joe; he transformed them into a time of creativity and refinement of ideas and principles.  The Pilates method of exercise, what he called Contrology, was born. 

It's interesting to realize that some of these prisoners barely survived their imprisonment with their sanity intact. Surely, some were despondent for the duration and came out of the experience feeling their life had been put on hold for 52 months.  Joe used the time to reach out, to influence others toward health and vitality, loudly and insistently delivering a message of self-empowerment and responsibility.

To this end, I have volunteered at my county jail to teach a 6-week Pilates method program to the incarcerated women.  Although I can only hope to channel a small portion of Joe's faith and commitment to his method, I believe that I can make a difference in this way, and help influence a population that might benefit from wellness and vitality.  A prisoner is removed from their chosen (or merely inherited) environment and their relationships with friends and family, but their most fundamental relationship remains: that between the body and mind.  I find it extremely fulfilling to foster a deep and thoughtful conversation between body and mind for my clients, and I believe these women at the jail (and their families and children once they are released) will benefit from it too.  I plan to teach a bit of Franklin Method, with its emphasis on self-talk, positive imagery and anatomy.  I'm giving the prison library a copy of Joe's Return to Health, Thieme's Atlas of Anatomy, and Eric Franklin's Inner Focus/Outer Strength.  (I'm thinking of including a copy of Friedman and Eisen's The Pilates Method.)

If you would like to help this Pilates in the Jail program, I do need something.  I need 9 more thick Pilates mats. I need thick ones because we will be working outside on a concrete patio and if you've ever done Rolling Like a Ball on a thin yoga sticky mat on concrete you will understand why I need thick mats.  If you could send me a used one you no longer need, I would be so grateful. If you are so inclined, a new one costs about $35 and can be ordered here.  The mats can be sent to the Monterey County Jail, Attention: Sergeant Olguin, 1410 Natividad Road, Salinas, CA 93906.  If the shipper wants a phone number use the main jail phone (831-647-7782) and the chaplain's e-mail which is 39cmont27 at sbcglobal dot net.

The Sergeant and the Jail Chaplain have each told me that the women are very excited about this program.  The more mats I have, the more women can participate. I'm afraid I don't have time in my week to teach multiple sessions each day. We're planning on Monday and Wednesdays at 1:30 (after the guard shifts change) and I pick up my boy from school at 3.  So... the more mats I have = the more participants. 

I'm certain that anyone who had the benefit of being in Joseph Pilates' sphere of influence would have remembered him to the end of their days.  I hope that I can continue to channel this influence through his work.

Operation: Pilates in the Jail

"Then I invented someone and became her"  

 -Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

 

About 10 years ago, I invented myself again and I took on a mission statement to fulfill, a possibility to live into. The foundation on which I stand and operate is the balance and flowering of body, mind and spirit.  I'm a stand for an extraordinary world.

I've been teaching Pilates for 15 years, mostly to educated and somewhat privileged middle-class and upper-middle-class Californians. Concentrating on unifying body and mind has been easy, fulfilling.  For myself, I became a movement educator, danced, and finished my Master's degree in Kinesiology. For my professional self, I've completed multiple certifications in different modalities, outfitted and ran a Pilates and Gyrotonic studio, wrote a Pilates teacher training program and graduated 200 students. I kind of feel like I've done all that and I don't need or want another degree or another certification. It's time to focus on incorporating the spiritual.  I'm a stand for an extraordinary personal journey.

My neighbor and deacon is the chaplain at the county jail and she often shares stories of the women she counsels, their sadness, shame and struggles; disempowered and their lives on hold.  Yes, surely some of them are in jail deservedly. It's not supposed to be a tropical vacation. But I firmly believe it will be in everyone's interest (society, the individuals and their children to whom they will eventually be reunited) if these women develop a healthy relationship between body and mind.

Joe Pilates was incarcerated too.  No, it was not a jail in the normal sense of the word, but he was imprisoned and prevented from returning to his home, his family and his life plans for 5 years.  His development of Contrology was a lifeline of creativity, service, physical expression and artistry and it transformed his imprisonment into the opportunity to become extraordinary. Here is an opportunity for me to be that stand for the extraordinary in my own life and the life of my community.  

I called Chaplain Cynthia and asked if a Pilates mat class might be helpful at the jail. She proposed the idea to the Sergeant, who gladly welcomed the idea and enthusiastically invited me to come.  I'm scheduled to begin classes on September 10, 2012. I went to assess the facility and pick a location for the class and quickly found it's not the health club, nor the ballet studio, nor the school gymnasium, nor the community rec center. It is prison:  all concrete, booming with noise, loud echoes bouncing off the concrete floors, walls and ceilings and slamming doors that make you jump.  Chairs and tables are bolted to the floor and cannot be moved. The laundry area has room for maybe 6 mats on the floor, but someone's head is going to be underneath a stainless steel table and well you know what's going to happen when we do Rolling Like a Ball or Open Leg Rocker.

The Sergeant showed me an outdoor concrete patio with an open roof. It will be cold but it will be quieter than inside. Hopefully they'll be able to hear me. Plus I have room for 20 students instead of just 6. I intend to teach a 6-week course, 2x/week to the women in the general population and then - gulp - repeat it for the women kept in lock-up.

So this brings me to the next phase: getting my little tools pulled together. I've got therabands, playground balls and tennis balls. But the mats.  The mats.  Because this will be outside on a cold concrete patio, I think we need the thicker style mats instead of the thin yoga sticky-mats. OPTP.com has a nice thick mat, and they offer special pricing to Pilates professionals (OPTP.com, Item #439, $39.50 regular price, $33.95 for Pilates or Fitness professionals.)

I'm so touched and inspired by the Pilates professionals who have already donated a mat to this program (start following @MaryAscension IMMEDIATELY!) If you'd like to donate a mat you can order it from OPTP and have it sent to Monterey County Jail, Attention: Sgt Olguin, 1410 Natividad Road, Salinas CA 93906. If the shipper wants a phone number use the main jail phone (831-647-7782) and the chaplain's e-mail which is 39cmont27 at sbcglobal dot net.   I will take my big black Sharpie and write your name on your mat and I will get you a photo of my class using your mat.  Won't that be fun to put on your bulletin board?

And by all means, if you have a used thick mat you could send my way, that would be awesome. I would really appreciate it and so will the women at the jail.  Right now they have no mats at all. As a Pilates and Gyrokinesis teacher, I cannot fathom not having a mat for my stretches, strength training and meditation. Perhaps I am being silly -  millions of people didn't have mats for thousands of years.  It's true we can just sit on the floor.  But there's a message and a hope and a possibility that comes from being handed a mat. Here. Use this. It's for you so you can meet your body from within. You can develop a new conversation with yourself about what is possible.  And it will be extraordinary.

 

EDIT: Added jail phone number and contact e-mail.

Attention all hips!

If you've experienced tension in the hip joint, or if one of your clients has, here's a video for you! This is a great way to release the hip - and it just happens to feel really good.

 

If you're not a teacher and you want to just skip to the moves, watch this one instead. It jumps over the teacher advice.

 

"Hacking" your body?

In the NYTimes today, an article about diet restrictions read, 

Ms. Yayanos first dropped gluten, sugar and carbs on a friend’s advice after being mugged at gunpoint, a trauma that left her fending off panic attacks and depression. “Within 48 hours, it felt like a thick layer of gauze had been pulled off my brain,” she recalled. Now Ms. Yayanos revisits that diet whenever her mood drops. She’s noticed her friends experimenting with food, too, essentially “hacking” their bodies, tinkering with different fuels to reap feelings of clarity and energy.

"Hacking" your body? What a clever turn of phrase.... but I would call it simply making a change and then paying attention to how I feel, noticing the results of change and keeping, modifying or abandoning the adjustment. The metaphor of the hacker (the mind) vs the object being hacked (the body) has useful and not-so-useful imagery embedded in it.  Hacking seems (to me) to imply forcing your will onto an inanimate, complicated, mysterious, and inscrutable object. At the sime time, I like the image of the patient, clever, quirky hacker determined to figure out how to feel vital and well. Vitality and wellness is not as complicated as we make it out to be! You try something and then pay attention to how you feel. Keep what you like, jettison what you don't. And try to keep it fun, don't suck all the energy out of the room.

A sigh can release muscle tension

Imagery is most typically used in a visual format. Your personal trainer or dance teacher demonstrates a movement, you watch and then try to copy it. But imagery can include so many more options than just visual! You're familiar with auditory imagery, in the form of someone telling you, not demonstrating, what to do. You listen to the instructions and you try to execute them. But how about using non-traditional auditory imagery... like a sound. Not words and language-sounds, but the sound of a sigh.

Sigh out loud. Right now. Like a cartoon sigh. Or like the appreciative sigh of getting a massage. Or like the satisfied sigh of appreciating the sunset from a location you love.  

Do it again. How does a sigh feel? Never thought about it? That's ok, think about it now. Sigh again and sense the sigh with ALL of your senses. Your hearing, your skin, what does someone look like when they sigh in satisfaction and release.  Think about it for a moment and enjoy it as much as your dog does when he yawns.

Now touch your right shoulder, tap it with the fingertips of your left hand.  Lift your right shoulder up to your ear and as you lower it, perform your sigh. Theatrically, yes, but with an open query: can my shoulder sigh? I promise you, it can. Embody the sighing shoulder about 6x. Afterward, notice how your shoulders feel. Compare the right shoulder to the left. Does it feel different? How? Do you like it? Yeah, I know. Feels pretty good, doesn't it? Repeat this on your other shoulder.

Once you have done this little exercise about 8 or 10 times, over the span of 2 weeks or so, you will start to have a feeling for sighing shoulders. At that point, when you're at your computer and you realize your shoulders and neck are tense, you'll be able to do something about it immediately. You should have enough experience by then that you can mentally sigh your shoulders down and into relaxation. Take a breath in, exhale and hear the deep and satisfied sigh in your imagination as you feel your shoulder muscles relaxing.  By then, you won't need to make a sound; you will have the experience embedded in your nervous system and you'll be able to generate it at will.

P.S. I found this image of feet yawning. Now *there's* a visual image to go with your new auditory image!

Nature just keeps doing what works

As an anatomy geek, I was struck by this photograph of a cave. Look at the wall to the right. It looks just like a side view of the ilia, or the hip bone. Do you see the cave-ilium's

1) foramina for the obturator group

2) ischial tuberosity

3) lesser sciatic notch

4) ischial spine

Nature responds to the rules of nature and I guess this applies to the forces of wind and water as well as force and function.