Feeling a little stiff in my neck, I headed to Pat Guyton’s Pilates Studio in Boulder, CO, on Saturday afternoon for a Franklin Method Workshop on “Imagery for A Healthy Spine,” thinking of improving my 9-5 M-F life that is spent primarily chair-bound staring at a glowing rectangle.
I had experienced Franklin Method work through a series of 3 classes taught by Pat Guyton earlier in the spring and was blown away by the immediate shift in my way of being in the world with new, positive body imagery and by learning how the feet, ankle and hips worked biomechanically. After the Psoas class, my mind had been sufficiently blown in every amazing way possible and started each day with Franklin Method exercises for the ultimate grounding (pre-, post- or in lieu of morning yoga). So, when the opportunity to spend an afternoon experiencing the splendid spine with Eric Franklin himself, I jumped at the chance.
Like all the Franklin classes I’d been to, we began the class by standing and ‘noticing the self.’ This consisted of simply that: standing in silence for one minute noticing our body, our experience, the space of our beingness and how that was feeling.
Eric Franklin believes in the plasticity of the mind and the ability/agility we have to change our thoughts and the way we move and feel in our bodies. In every aspect: you are what you think. If our embodied experience is not one of ease and fluidity, Eric would ask us not to believe everything we think. Changing your thought patterns is not just a mental change since biological changes occur as well.
“You are the result of your practice,” he said. “If you are not OK, change your thoughts. Change your mind about how you feel. Don’t get stuck on your pain – there is another way to be.”
If this sounds like brainwashing, it clearly is. But positive brainwashing undoes all of the negative brainwashing that we’ve let pervade our body-minds for as long as we’ve learned to be human. Positive brainwashing is expansive and pushes us to be the best experience of ourselves. Why would we want anything less? Why remain insistent on being in pain? In the name of Human Excellence, let’s think bigger about this and imagine the immanent potential to feel amazing.
Eric’s work doesn’t invalidate one’s experience of pain, but simply acknowledges it and doesn’t let those thoughts limit another experience – one of ease and freedom of movement. This requires a shift in perspective from someone experiencing pain in that they have to be open to and acknowledge that there is another way of being.
This is powerful stuff to mind. If a team of medical and bodywork professionals treat all the ailments and conditions of a person in pain, but that person still insists on being in pain and lives in that mindset, they will continue to experience what ails them. In every Franklin Method experience, the teacher is merely the guide to help shift one’s embodied experience through new imagery about how to be.
So before you begin, ask yourself this: “How do I feel today? Does my body feel at ease, relaxed and centered? Is there room for improvement?” Your choice is the first step to open to those new possibilities to experience how you want to feel.
As we learned how the spine and all of its parts work, we also experienced the movement of the spine with simple exercises that flowed through the full range of motion. Eric also guided us through the counter images so we could feel how ill-fitting images create resistance in the body and inherently don’t feel ‘right.’
Resistance results when what you are thinking [images] isn’t matching what you are acting/what you are trying to experience or move towards. In other words, if the image of how your spine ‘is supposed to move’ isn’t resulting in that experience while you are doing a movement, then you need to become a bit of an iconoclast and re-think what’s happening in the thought-to-body-movement-transmission.
For example, in a spinal twist, the spine doesn’t lengthen – it compresses. (How many spinal twists are cued by lengthening imagery in yoga classes?) I know with my seated twists, when I imagine lengthening the spine, my range of motion feels limited.
The sheer beauty of having positive images that are grounded in how the body moves and functions creates the fullness of movement that is necessary for a healthy body and metabolism. In the case of spinal twists, the full range of movement – and therefore more lengthening – is the result. And, that makes your spine happy.
At the end of the session, we noticed ourselves again. There was a calm, centered, blissed out buzz in the studio amongst the workshop participants. Eric concluded by noting that when we are in this state of being calm, centered and fully embodied, it is as if we are immune to negative or problematic thoughts. I had never thought about it that way before - and that alone was worth the price of admission.
[...] what I’ve learned via the Franklin Method, changing how you envision the functionality of your body will directly affect how you feel and [...]
[...] before I do another round of yoga teacher training, I will become certified in the 3 levels of the Franklin Method, first. Promise. This practice re-imagines what ever image you feel is the operating stressor in [...]