Practical things to try

Hello everyone. So today I have the great pleasure of having Lisa Clughen, joining us in moving together and also showing that all of these movements can be done seated. So we have the option to stand when you can, or continue seated as you like. We discussed the different types of movement that we work with, with the Center for Embodied Learning and the Center for Kinesthetic Education. They are movement to recuperate and refocus, movement to make transitions from one thing to the next, whether it’s a class or a different interaction that you’re gonna be having with different people. We also have movement for really enhancing emotional expression and communication, and also for joy and aesthetic development. And finally, there can be movement that reinforces a lesson.

So sometimes as an educator you might say, well, what does this look like in action? How would I as an educator know what movement to do when? So hopefully these will give you some guides, but also feel free to explore on your own or be in dialogue about it with others, including us. In particular, how do you start conversations with students to help them understand what will be happening with movement? So I’ll guide that a little bit too.

As we begin with recuperation, you might just say, are you feeling tense at all? If you’re feeling some tension, how about just wiggling your shoulders? And actually sometimes, and there’s a lot of research on this for trauma recovery, just shaking out is what most animals do after an accident, for instance. So just shaking out. As an educator, you need to welcome that, because it’s not usual educational classroom behavior. Although you might see little kids wiggling, you don’t often see it in the university. So you have to say, it’s important to shake out. You can brush, you can shake, all right. Then to get focused after all of that, ’cause that can feel liberating. But also a little, maybe even discombobulating, we wanna get focused again. So we’re gonna recall, relax to focus. And you’re gonna see me do it standing and Lisa seated.

So let’s begin with our breathing. And you can feel the diaphragm going down by placing your hand on your belly or keeping the movement of your hands as a kind of image of the diaphragm. Breathing into your lower back, calming your system. Then let the breathing in fill you so that you expand and you get a nice stretch if you like. And then let’s deflate. And whatever that means to you is a metaphor. Maybe becoming more humble, maybe just letting go of any tension and being relaxed. One more time, inflating, finding the confident you and then just releasing any tight areas. Beautiful. Now, as babies, we’re getting nourishment through our navel. It goes out to all parts of the body. And then we need to learn to control our spines.

So take a moment now to really feel your spine. You can arch it, and you can curl it, you can twist it, rotate, you can laterally bend. So do whatever feels good to you with your spine. But now add in looking around, using your eyes, reaching back from your hips and waking up your spine. So this is less about the arms and really isolating your spine so that you get stronger. This is core support. Now we’re gonna add in the arms. And first, the first way we use our arms is symmetrically. And this helps bring our focus of our two eyes and our two ears. So again, this is an opportunity to really press into your hands and feel your midline. Then we’re gonna feel our right side and our left side. And play a little bit with balance. If you’re sitting, you can press into your chair and lift one arm and leg. If you’re standing, you can play with balance a little bit more. If you’ve done yoga, you can play with the tree. So whatever helps you.

And notice your vision. Again, use your eyes to intensify your focus. And then we’re gonna end with a countdown from eight. And we’re gonna cross the midline. We’re gonna go 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And the kids will say, blast off. You can say, I’m ready. So see how you feel having started with the breath and now having moved through all of those coordination patterns. Are you ready to pay attention again? Do you feel some blood circulating through you? Do you feel like your shape has changed through different points of emotional expression? So that ‘Relax to focus’ exercise is on Vimeo, it’s here for you. You can use it any time you want or you can learn it. And remember, breath, whole body, spinal wake up, symmetrical movement, right, left discernment, and then crossing the midline and see how you feel. Thank you. And thank you, Lisa.

But we can also rest our eyes, and that’s called palming. And it also comes from eastern yogic traditions. It’s a chance to check in with your posture. I’m just placing the heel of my hand on my cheekbones. I can rest my elbows on the desk in front of me or hold them up myself or have a pillow on my lap. And then all you need to do is notice the darkness and allow the visual pigment of your retina, the back of your visual screen, the back of your eye, to take in the darkness, because it helps the health and vitality of the retina to alternate darkness and light just as happened much more naturally in our life when there was less electricity, right?

So basically there was a natural alternation of lots of light and lots of darkness. Through the seasons, of course, it changes, but generally much more darkness. So taking time for darkness is so healthy for your eyes. You can also take time here to recall content that you need to learn. Perhaps you’ve just read something, you can think about it, you can remember it, you can apply it in your imagination. All of this will help your learning and relax your eyes. And then if on top of that, you also exhale deeply and release your spine, your body will benefit as you’re studying. So I hope you’re enjoying palming. The way I pause the palming is to keep my eyelids down and then move my hands away. Notice any natural or artificial light coming through your closed eyelids. Take in that light, and then very lightly, flutter your eyelids open and look around and just notice your perception, has it changed at all? So thank you again, this is such a pleasure, and please let us know how it’s going.

Now, what about content area? Let’s pick one that dovetails, that works together, which is, let’s learn about the immune system. We have lymph nodes in our neck, in our armpits, in the hip, groin region. And so what pumps the fluid, the white blood cells that fight off toxins and viruses? It happens to be movement. It happens to be movement of our feet. So right now I’m just lifting up onto my toes and down again, which is what we do when we walk with a stride, when we really push up our feet, but we can also squeeze our hands, which is great also for keyboarding and letting go. So here we go. Claw fist and spill, and pull, and push. This is one that you can make up and do differently, or you can turn on the video and do it with me.

So I’ll say it again. Claw fist, spill. And if you wanna stretch your full arm and thumbs, that’s great. Pull, coming in, and pushing away. Now, with the immune system, the metaphor, which is part of embodied cognition, the metaphor is getting rid of what you don’t need. Pushing away is really great for that. So let’s tap the thymus, which is another part of the immune system, which is just under the top of the breastbone, the manubrium bone. And we’ve already kind of rubbed a little bit or squeezed the armpits.

So when you breathe in and squeeze, that’s the opposite of what we did before, so we’re getting tension inside, and then we’re gonna stretch and let the vessels release the fluid from the periphery back to the center core of the body, the cisterns of the lymphatic ducts. So again, squeeze your hands and if you wanna, claw fist, spill, pull, and push, that’s great. If you wanna tap, that’s another way. If you wanna bounce on your feet a little more, and now we’re gonna breathe in, squeeze those armpit nodes and get the internal lymphatic system of your torso kind of moving. And then let it drain back to the center of your chest.