Working on a horse’s saddle

Alexander Technique working on horse's saddle image

Alexander Technique working on horse's saddle image

Why use a saddle?

Once someone has had a few lessons, we may look at saddle work on a specially made wooden trestle.

The body can often balance more easily on the saddle so it is useful to explore tightness in the legs and hip joints. And if someone hitches up their back and shoulders to be upright, they can discover this is not necessary.

You don’t need to be a horse rider to benefit from saddle work. Office workers often love it as it can be more comfortable than sitting on a chair. And horse riders have often achieved remarkable improvements in their riding.

Origins of saddle work

This way of working originated in 1955 from a four year old girl with spina bifida. She didn’t have the use of her legs so couldn’t stand and sitting was difficult.

My old teacher, Walter Carrington, started working with her on a toy donkey. It was fun for a little girl and easier for him to work with her to build up her strength and balance. As she grew bigger, he eventually moved on to the horse’s saddle and wooden horse. Her upper body became quite strong and she was able to walk using callipers and crutches and the way was freer to lead an independent life.

Head Neck Balance – Part 3

Side view of skull - drawing

Side view of skull. Occipital condyles are 'rockers' for head neck balance.

Let’s have a think about the head neck balance. The skull has two dents on its base that sit on the top vertebra. They can be thought of as two rockers that sit in the two cups of the vertebra. The drawing above shows the rocker from the side. The rockers are called occiptal condyles. A condyle is a rounded protruberance. The occiput is the bone at the base of the skull. Latin: ob – against; caput – head.

Base of Skull. Occipital condyles shown for head neck balance.

Here, at the base of the skull, we can see where they are situated. They are just in front and a bit to the sides of the foramen magnum (Latin for great hole). This is a hole in the skull through which the spinal cord passes.

Let’s now look at the top vertebra. This is called the atlas. Atlas was a Greek mythological character who is often represented as a human figure bearing the globe on his shoulders.

Drawing of atlas - top vertebra - to illustrate head neck balance

Here we are looking down at the atlas. The foramen magnum is shown in the middle. The ‘cups’ for the rockers are called facets. They are either side of the foramen magnum. The rockers sitting in the cups enable a small nodding movement. It’s a very slight movement. Any bigger nodding movements involve the bones further down the neck.

It can be helpful to think of keeping this head neck joint unlocked. We need the rockers to sit freely in the cups and not to be clamped tightly. It’s important to free up the muscles around the head neck area and we do this through thinking rather than trying to make something happen. One thought to play with is to imagine olive oil lubricating the head neck joint.

This head neck joint, the atlato-occipital joint, is located between the ears. An earlier blog post has one of my drawings showing this. As our heads weigh around 4-5 kg or 10-12 lb, Head Balance – Part 2 explains the importance of not fixing the head-neck joint.

Night night sleep tight or tension and insomnia?

3 pillows

Sleep - photo of 3 pillows

Do you get a good night’s sleep? ‘Night night sleep tight’ is OK if it means sleeping well but if tight means holding tension, then it’s not such a great phrase.

Sleeping positions

I am asked regularly about the best positions for sleeping and so I’d like to draw your attention an earlier  blog post about sleeping positions. This has suggestions for different set ups whether sleeping on your back, side or front. My view is that it’s best to get a good night’s sleep and to not worry about trying to find the perfect position. However, there are suggestions for pillow arrangements that may help.

Body Scans to aid sleep

Of course, it’s also worth some Alexander Technique ‘thought support’ to help free up any tension from the day. A body scan starting can address this, freeing up the neck, jaw, back and limbs. Thinking from brain to body helps us to become aware of where we hold tension so that we can free it up. Once we’re asleep we can’t act on this but we can think things through before we drop off to sleep or if we wake in the night.

Our minds can be pre-occupied and so running thoughts through the body bring us into the present moment, quietening down the mind chatter.

Insomnia

Having suffered from insomnia on and off over the years, I’ve tried out a few things that have helped:

  • We have daytime thinking and night-time thinking. Daytime thinking can be more logical and is often about planning things or working things out. Dreamlike thinking can be quite random and even surreal. If you can’t sleep and you’re thinking daytime style have a go at having some more random thinking. I either try to get back into my dream or to get into random thoughts that have nothing to do with my everyday life, eg zoo animals, colours floating through my mind, to see if this takes my mind elsewhere.
  • Some people like music or white noise. The best thing for me is to plug myself into some podcasts. It’s a good idea to tuck the headphone cords above the head to avoid getting strangled. Either I have an interesting listen or I drift in and out of sleep.
  • Not worrying about not sleeping. A book on sleeping advised that we all wake in the night a few times and that’s normal. The problem is when we can’t get back to sleep. Knowing that it was normal to wake really helped so that I stopped getting into a pickle about having insomnia and relaxed more.

I went to a talk recently on the neuroscience of sleep. The main pieces of advice are to try to go to bed at a similar time each night and to ensure that the bedroom is as dark as possible. These all help with melatonin levels. Light from TVs and electronic devices can also be problematical for some in getting to sleep and low level lighting before bedtime is a good idea.

Good posture when breastfeeding – bottle feeding too!

Woman breastfeeding

Woman breastfeedingFeeding a baby can take up a fair proportion of a parent’s day and so it’s important to be comfortable both for yourself and for your baby. Whether breastfeeding or bottle feeding, it’s easy to focus more on the baby than yourself and this is where back pain can set in. Here are some top tips for looking after your posture for comfortable breastfeeding:

  • Back support: You need support for your upper back, ideally between the shoulder blades. It’s important that your back is upright rather than slouched. If the seat is deep, such as on a sofa, you may need 2 or 3 cushions to support your upper back.
  • Neck pain prevention: When looking at your baby, either to see if he has latched on or if you are looking in her eyes, think about what is going on with your head and neck. Use your eyes more to look down and if you need to tilt your head, nod your head from the head-neck balancing joint between the ears rather than shoving your head down from a lower point in the neck.
  • Shoulder pain: Are your shoulders up by your ears? Ensure the baby is supported well, especially with a newborn. You can raise the baby’s height by putting cushions underneath so the baby is brought up to the breast, rather than breast to baby. This will also help over-curving your back.
  • Leg tension: When sitting, are you on tiptoes? Try putting something under your feet so that your legs can relax. If the baby is too low, see the tip above on using cushions.
  • Anxiety: Feeding doesn’t come easily to everyone and can be a time that is fraught with anxiety. Taking your time to make yourself comfortable will quieten your body that will feed through to the baby and can also help calm your mind.

It is a great pleasure for me to work with a mum who is feeding her baby. Helping her to get a sense of comfort, often for the first time, shows with a smile in her face and a peacefulness in the room that is almost tangible. As well as showing her how to set herself up when at home or out and about, I also work hands on to help build relaxation in her body.

Perfection Schmerfection

marking chalk and wooden ruler

marking chalk and wooden ruler

One of the many thought-provoking pieces of advice that I was given by my Alexander Teacher, Lizzie Atkinson, was:

Perfection is a stick to beat yourself up with

If you look for a perfection, to be perfect in something, you may need to wait a lifetime or several lifetimes. So let’s give ourselves a break and allow ourselves to be less than perfect. We will never be perfectly symmetrical, have perfect posture, some people may never be completely free of their pain. But we can work towards that and learn an awful lot along the way.

A fulfilled life is about giving things a go and trying things out without having to get it right. Allowing yourself to be wrong is a great gift. There’s so much to learn from that.

My Alexander students can be surprised when they get up from a chair in a way that is unbalanced and unstable and yet I am happy about it. It’s usually because they’ve let go of a familiar habit and gone into the unknown. It might be a bit messy and it’s work in progress but we’re getting somewhere. Getting things ‘right’ can be accidental. Getting things ‘wrong’ gives us something to work with, something understood of an old habit or a new avenue of insight and thinking to explore.

I’m currently making some curtains. The old part of me – the more academic and mathematical side from my school years – wants to analyse it all, make thorough measurements and work it out beforehand. But that means that the material sits for months and years in a sewing pile.

 

 

The new part of me recognises myself as a creative person. One who can take some more casual measurements and then work things out as I go along. It’s not perfect but at least there will be a pair of curtains fairly soon to keep out the winter cold. And I’ll be learning along the way so that my next sewing project will be better and will take on board all this experience. Am I going to win the Great British Sewing Bee? No. Am I going to sell my amazing curtains and cushion covers and make a new career? No. Am I going to have fun and feel creative and satisfied as I listen to Desert Island Discs and The Life Scientific podcasts and the sewing machine whirrs along? Yes. And it’s so enjoyable and so generous for me and so much more gentle than trying to be perfect.