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    Intelligent Flexibility: A Playful Approach to Lifelong Flexibility and Fitness
    Intelligent Flexibility: A Playful Approach to Lifelong Flexibility and Fitness
    Intelligent Flexibility: A Playful Approach to Lifelong Flexibility and Fitness
    Ebook230 pages1 hour

    Intelligent Flexibility: A Playful Approach to Lifelong Flexibility and Fitness

    By Michael Rubano

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    About this ebook

    Intelligent flexibility is an art of natural movement. It’s a series of movement patterns that, when practiced, will open you to experience and understand how the parts of the body (the skeleton) are connected to the whole in a coordinated, effortless way. It’s a way of thinking, moving, and sensing that allows you to learn how to do whatever you do, with a greater sense of ease and grace in relationship to gravity and function. It’s an invitation to focus your attention on how your body moves and wants to move, thereby cultivating the ability to choose. This book is a step by step guide to working with your body’s natural intelligence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael Rubano
    Release dateOct 30, 2013
    ISBN9781940784038
    Intelligent Flexibility: A Playful Approach to Lifelong Flexibility and Fitness

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      Book preview

      Intelligent Flexibility - Michael Rubano

      The body has a natural intelligence. In this natural state of intelligence the body moves with a grace and ease, a strength and flexibility that are beautiful to experience and beautiful to behold.

      Intelligent flexibility is the name I give to my work, to honor the body's natural intelligence and bring to mind the human being's ability to make changes, exercise choice, and be flexible in mind and body.

      Intelligent flexibility is an art of natural movement. It’s a series of movement patterns that, when practiced, will open you to experience and understand how the parts of the body (the skeleton) are connected to the whole in a coordinated, effortless way. It’s a way of thinking, moving, and sensing that allows you to learn how to do whatever you do, with a greater sense of ease and grace in relationship to gravity and function. It’s an invitation to focus your attention on how your body moves and wants to move, thereby cultivating the ability to choose.

      For most people, the body is a vehicle they ride around in. Much like a car, they like it to look and feel good, but most of us don’t really know much about how it works, or how to really take care of it. When something goes wrong we take it someplace to get fixed.

      I’ve been working as a massage therapist for over 25 years. Every day people come and lay their body on my table, wanting me to fix this discomfort or that pain. They want me to make them feel better. My treatments include moving the body around and giving people the experience of how movement helps to free the body. This idea and experience is new and exciting to many people: movement heals. What I’m offering is movement education. In addition to my hands-on work, I offer lessons in movement that help my clients get to know their bodies better, and therefore to move more freely with less chance of injury. In truth, there’s nothing that can replace hands-on treatment, but the purpose of this book is to help give people back their bodies. Sometimes a person is too tight here or there, or too out of touch to experience the subtle connection and flow of movement through their body. In this case, the combination of hands-on work and their own practice with movement is important. I find that someone who practices these exercises regularly is easier to work on.

      I give people the same movements that I play with to keep my body strong and reliable. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not like to do things the hard way—life is hard enough. My grandfather supported my natural inclinations by giving me some very simple advice (over and over again!)—Mige, (that’s Mike with a ‘g’ instead of a ‘k’) he would say:

      "Takea your time, goa easy, watcha you step, and doa gooda job."

      I have been trying to live up to his words.

      The Body's Natural Playfulness

      I’ve learned that staying fit and flexible does not have to be hard work, and need not involve demanding disciplines that push the body through discomfort or pain. I love having a strong, reliable body; I need it for my work. I run and ride a bike around the neighborhood, play with light weights, and do exercises to strengthen my belly. I play tennis, Frisbee, some golf, and basketball when I feel like it. I generally have fun and, for the most part, remain injury-free. But the most beneficial exercise that I do regularly is to roll around on the floor or against the wall. I am convinced, from my own experience and the feedback given by clients, that this rolling around on the floor is both treatment and prevention for sprain and injury, while helping to bring conscious attention to daily movement activities. It seems to me that fitness is built on flexibility. My clientele runs the gamut from people who are very much into their bodies (including professional athletes, advanced yoga practitioners, and Pilates students) to those who experience anything below the neck as foreign territory. These exercises have helped elite athletes, granny golfers, and teenage athletes alike. Awareness and playfulness are the keys to the exercises I teach. These do not depend on age or athletic ability, only on the willingness to invest one's attention and time towards learning new ways to move.

      I want to acknowledge the four disciplines that have influenced my work and understanding over the 25 years that I have been practicing massage and movement education. These are Pilates, Tai Chi (with Chi Kung), Yoga and Feldenkrais. Many of the exercises I’ll present to you are based on the Feldenkrais work. All my exercises have this in common: they are done slowly (Takea your time), they are meant to be comfortable and strain-free (Goa easy), they ask that you bring your awareness to each movement (Watcha you step), and hopefully, they allow you to perform whatever movement your sport or daily activity requires of you in a more graceful and efficient manner (Doa gooda job). Now that's pretty amazing! I don't think my grandfather knew how complete his advice to me really was—or maybe he did, and I have finally become aware of it! Essentially, what I’m offering is to share my grandfather's wisdom with you. If you don’t feel that you can really do what I’m trying to teach here, or it’s just not for you, then you can follow my grandfather’s supreme teaching: Don na worry, bea you owna boss, eh dat’s all.

      The Body's Natural Intelligence

      The goal is to use your body's intelligence to move in a more effective way so that you can do all kinds of ordinary activities better.

      —Frank Wildeman

      The body's intelligence can be seen in a child’s natural, uninhibited innocence and ease of movement. We see it in the gait and gestures of simple people living close to nature, who are unburdened by the complexities of modern life. They both sit and stand with a wonderful uprightness. Their bodies move in a naturally efficient and beautiful way.

      There is no disconnect between their minds and their bodies; they are united with what they are doing. I have watched women in Thailand and Guatemala carry heavy loads on their heads, Vietnamese workers carry long wooden beams while walking with exquisite balance along narrow planks, wood carvers in Bali sit for hours on the ground carving beautiful sculptures, all with a grace and apparent ease that I have not witnessed in this country or Europe.

      Of course, our bodies are no longer young and flexible like a child's, and our lives are often complicated. Even so, if we wish to uncover the body’s natural intelligence, it’s possible, by exploring different ways of moving and by bringing conscious attention to our movement. This conscious attention awakens and develops the body’s natural intelligence.

      Many of us don’t pay attention to how we’re living in our body at any particular moment or during any particular activity. Mostly, we simply do what we do because that’s how we’ve always done it. And it seems to work well enough. Common movements like walking, reaching for something, picking up and carrying something, sitting, or getting up, are done automatically, without much awareness. We get locked into a particular way of doing an activity and are unaware of the many other possibilities of movement available to us. So why is this a problem? For some, it is not. But a lot of people experience unnecessary pain and rigidity.

      We live in a world that’s fast paced, technologically rich, and out of sync with natural rhythms and natural forms. The world of machines, concrete, and modern architecture is imprinted in our bodies and affects the way we move. We hold the stress of our lives inside our bodies. Our lives are crazy, extremely complex, and full of so many unknowns. We experience all of this as stress in the body. When we’re under stress, our nervous systems rely on these habitual holding patterns of movement. Because of this, we have to do something to counter the unconscious and the habitual; the way stress makes our bodies rigid and inflexible. Attention and playfulness, awareness and spontaneity, counter the unconscious

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