Relax Your Butt

All movement has an energetic pattern. Muscles are designed to move and work in specific ways, with each muscle having a directional flow that helps to guide us into proper alignment and allows for healthy movement. Unfortunately the opposite it true as well. Muscles that move in the wrong direction interrupt our ability to find proper form and mechanics.

In standing, our bones should bear a majority of the load with certain muscles helping to bring us into our bones so to speak. The bones hold us up and the muscles move us. The problem with most posture is that we get in the habit of using certain muscles to hold us up which tends to make those muscles very tight and often full of tension. Often when one muscle becomes dominant another muscle tends to become somewhat weaker or more lax. Specifically to what we are discussing here the buttocks muscle, which should be completely relaxed when standing up, tends to be engaged constantly and our pelvic floor, the foundation for all of our organs, tends to weaken.

The pelvis is in the middle of the body providing a center from which the legs move down and the spine moves up. The muscles of the legs and the trunk are designed to balance and enhance this separation.

Energetically, the buttock muscles should move down and the pelvic floor muscles should move up. Many people get this backwards; at least the butt part. Very often, due to poor abdominal tone our thighs move forward which forces our buttocks to engage to stop us from sinking too far forward. As a result our pelvic floor muscles tend to go get lax while the big gluteal muscle, gluteus maximus works overtime against its own best interest causing dysfunction in many muscles around it.

This big buttock muscle is what brought us to standing from all fours. If you imagine a four-legged animal, a dog or a cat for example, they have no butt because they don't have need of one. The gluteus maximus is an extensor muscle that, along with the hamstrings and others pulled the pelvis from horizontal to vertical. The energy of this extension is a downward pull into the legs and heels as the pelvis and spine is drawn upright. If you sink your thighs forward and feel what kind of tone that brings to the butt, you will likely feel it as an upward gripping action.

The muscles at the base of the pelvis also serve a different function in the quadruped than in the biped.. These muscles form a wall at the back of the body rather than a floor at the base of the spine. Upright posture is a radical and unprecedented shift. The pelvic floor muscles are called the levator ani, a group of three muscles that form a sling connecting all of the bony landmarks at the base of the pelvis; the tailbone, pubis and the two sit bones (ischial tuberosities). This sling or hammock supports the weight of the organs, helps to control urogenital functioning, and when properly toned helps to bring intrinsic support and stability to the base of the pelvis as the spine falls into the hips.

These imbalances, overworked butt and under worked pelvic floor, are at the heart of so much postural misalignment. We must learn to let go of our butts. If we can learn to retrain some of the conditioned patterns that have taken such a strong hold in the body, many physical, physiological and even psychological bonds can be loosened. Allowing the energy of the body to flow as it was designed is an easy way to bring big changes to your body and mind.

The Architecture of Healing

We must become the architects of our own healing. Life is traumatic. From the big trauma of being born and taking our first breath to the lesser traumas of day-to-day life we are here to be beaten up and to one degree or another develop an inner support system to heal. Like the pulsing of the heart and the ebb and flow of the tides, the body’s trauma/healing interplay is as natural as breathing.

Our world has moved in strange directions in the last half-century. Every year Americans are turning more and more to surgical fixes for their injuries and ailments. With every ache and pain we take an advil or alleve. We are a society of external fixes, in search of a magic blue pill that will fix what ails us. The shift must be towards self-care and a belief that no one knows your body better than you. Doctors, nurses and bodyworkers all serve a purpose. We need them to help facilitate our care and our health. But we have to take them off of the pedestal that we have created and become more pro-active in our own healing process.

What can and will fix us is easily found inside. We have a beautifully specific design that when embodied and enacted becomes a self-healing machine. Everyone knows what cancer is. Everyone knows what asthma is. Most people have heard of the word melanoma and can visualize a tumor but most people have not heard of the word psoas. Very few people know what the hyoid bone is. We are painfully familiar with external circumstances or things that work upon us when we’re really not all that familiar with the wonderful, magical body that we inhabit which can help us prevent so much of what ails us.

Our bones hold us up, our muscle move the bones after getting direction from the nerves. If the bones are aligned and the muscles toned, every movement you make will tone and stimulate all of your internal organs. Learn how your body works and discover that you are your best doctor. Cultivate a dialogue with your body that prioritizes instinct and trust. Get to know yourself. There is no better means to prevention. Be your own healer.