Like many other teachers of Mat Pilates classes I like to have a theme for my classes each week. The inspiration for the themes could be from something I have read, an interesting lecture or workshop. Often it is just one element, a phrase or movement, which appeals to me and I expand it to be a theme not only for the mat class but into the studio as well, the challenge is to apply the theme to all the different bodies I see during the week adding variety and interest to the sessions. This theme develops as the week progresses and my creative side gets going. I'm always thinking that I should write it down these ideas for re-cycling at another time or as inspiration for other teachers.
Last week I was at my Tai Chi Class on Monday morning, it's such a lovely way to start the week, especially if I have been away training all weekend. We were going through the 'form'( a set series of moves), taking instruction from our teacher, Mike, who is so patient with those of us who struggle to remember the precise movements from one week to the next! Sometimes Mike reads from a translation of the original teachers instructions and the way of describing the feel of the movements is often very beautiful and insightful. On Monday the instruction to make our legs feel empty or full depending on whether we had our weight in them or not struck a cord and I played with this idea all week.
Before I give you some ideas on how I took this theme into a class, I just wanted to look at the idea that the teacher was describing how the move felt to the mover. I think that this ancient teacher was describing the feeling or emotion the moves might evoke. I wondered if this could be encouraging interoception. This may be a new word to many of you. We have all heard of proprioception, which is a sense of where your body is in space. Placing a hand on someone's back as they are moving gives them proprioceptive feedback as to how they are moving. The machines are constantly providing proprioceptive feedback, using small equipment in a mat class also trains this sense.
Interoception is defined as a sense of the physiological condition of the body, including, for example muscular effort. They are almost always attached to an emotion. The sensations are triggered by stimulation of free nerve endings, most of which are found in fascial tissues throughout the human body. Proprioception and interoception however are organised differently in the human brain. Anxiety, depression or irritable bowel syndrome have been described as interoceptive disorders. Robert Schleip and Heike Jager provide a very full description of interoception in the book Fascia (Elsevier 2012), providing full references for their research.
Put simply Interoception is how your body feels or is perceived by you.
In last week's class I asked my participants to firstly understand the idea of empty and full, considering their body, their arms, legs and head as a containers which is either full or empty. To each of us the words full and empty has a different meaning, I used all kinds of imagery to evoke this feeling. Something which is empty is light and airy, cool, something which is full is heavy and warm. Changing an angle changes the way their containers ( their arms and legs etc) feel, smooth changes of leg,arm positions required a smooth transfer of weight and content. Different body positions created new challenges, rolling like a ball meant a feeling of momentum caused by the contents of the container moving from one end of the body to the other. Sitting or standing made the head light ( describing it as empty brought a burst of giggling!) the feet/pelvis heavy or full. To keep the pelvis level, when in neutral for instance, I used the image of a bowl half full of liquid. Bringing this self awareness of how the inside of the body feels, makes it interoceptive in nature.
I also encouraged my class members to enjoy the feeling of their body moving, no discomfort or pain should be experienced, again this is subjective, listening to the body, how it feels today is very important, particularly in a class when the instructor has so many body's to watch, if a class member can feel and enjoy the movement, it becomes a safe movement.
I believe that as instructors we can encourage awareness and build the senses of interoception and proprioception of our class participants. A manual therapist can use touch to stimulate the fascia to encourage proprioception and interoception, as movement teachers we can use movement, the power of imagery and gently well placed manual cueing to do the same.
This was a fun theme to play with, it worked well keeping the movement smooth and rhythmic - no sudden, jerky moves. The class members enjoyed the challenge of the theme. The only down side is that as an instructor it involves a lot of talking, so take a drink into class and remember to warm up your voice beforehand and rest it after.
Tracey x
(c) November 2012
