How to Lift the Head
An Interesting Exploration / Exercise
Greetings from the Tundra of Williamsburg!
I hope you found the video of Ted McNamara doing chair work with his student interesting. She really is a terrific ‘follower’ of Ted’s hands; always in the moment and exploring. While you see a ton of head lead/body follow stuff happening in that video, you will really see the attitude of exploration that is the foundation of learning.
How we learn is a skill; one that we can examine, refine, and slowly change over the course of our lives.
Last Month on the Bloggssss!
Over the last several weeks, I’ve written about the organization of the head and the very top of the spine. My hope is that these posts will give you a better sense of feeling for HOW your head and top of the neck relate. When you can better feel HOW (a sense you get from STOPPING and being in the HERE AND NOW), you can begin to slowly explore what movement beyond habit feels like.
One of these explorations was covered in the post How to Steer the Head. This post is critical for you because it contains a drawing of a Little Pirate on top of a psychedelic headship. Oh yeah… and there’s a video of me doing a very minor head steer.
Right… I guess the video of me is more useful. 🤷♂️
The other exploration covered occurred around Halloween with my post How to Pitch the Head. While I had fun making the little video in this post, I did not have the animation skills to fully demonstrate what the neck does when the head enters the act of looking up. I’m not sure today’s post will give you the illumination I’m after, but it may go some way towards giving you a sense of the difference between a strained look-up and a less strained look-up.
Lifting the Head
The purpose of this exploration is to better sense how the neck frees, the head leads, and the body follows. I think it can be tricky for students to experience the meaning of this phrase in a more complicated movement like a squat or a walk. In order to get at the heart of the matter, I’m going to ask that you find a comfortable way of lying down on your stomach with your arms resting near your head. From there you’ll be able to rest and see if you can very slowly and slightly move your head by about a single degree.
In the following video, I’m demonstrating a version of this head lift. I’ll ask you to watch this video and NOT completely copy what I’m doing in the video. Take a look and then I’ll cover some stuff AND things.
For starters, if you cannot lie comfortably on your stomach for whatever reason, then don’t bother with this activity. There are other ways to explore the dynamics of the head, neck, and upper bace. You could sit in a chair and look up/tilt the head back for example.
Second, this is absolutely not to be repeated like a traditional exercise. The instant that we think about repeating a movement, we all have a tendency to crash land our helicopter. The ability to do ‘reps’ in a traditional exercise takes a long time to build up if you’re looking to have a new sense of total coordination.1
Finally, the actual movement that I’m interested in doing is of such a small degree that it will not show on video. So to help you understand what I really care about, I’ll give you a written description…
The Setup
Start by simply lying on the ground as pictured in the video and see if you can be comfortable. You can see that I’ve placed a pillow under my chest. This is optional.
The arms should be placed more or less as depicted. This is so that as you begin to rise up off of the floor, you can explore how the arms DO NOT initiate the push up; the whole business is driven by the head.
Before you even THINK about making a movement, you want to first allow yourself to STOP and feel muscular and joint tension beginning to release. If this is not happening for you…if you’re reading this whole damned post because you’re trying to figure out WTF that means… fear not! I plan on writing much more about the torso, legs, arms, etc in the coming months.
The Exploration
As you begin to think about moving your head, you want to have a sense of the 5 landmarks. If you are starting with your head turned to one side, you will turn the head in one these ways:
The neck will stiffen up and attempt to push the head into a position.
The upper back will begin to jerk before the head has moved.
The lower back will brace.
The cranium will feel like it is leading the movement and the neck muscles follow along for the ride.
This last sensation is the one that I would call ‘correct’ Head Lead / Body Follow. But when I’m using the word correct, I’m intending it as FM Alexander intends it. I only care that you are tending to increase your understanding of what this phrase means.
Why is my bar of success so seemingly low?
My concern is that you rush right past the subtlety of this dynamism and find yourself operating in exercise and posture land. All too often, I have seen posture coaches recommend that people practice “tucking their chin” to alleviate tension at the base of the skull and build new muscular strength. Unfortunately, this motion can be done with a locked back and held breath. NOTHING will change in the individual in this case because:
Head Lead / Body Follow isn’t functioning
The chin is an appendage of the head. Thinking about moving the chin is a rather indirect way of moving your head.2
How Far Up Should I Move?
If your head leads, the sky is the limit. I mean… you’re not going to lie on the ground forever so at some point you’ll want to see if you can continue coming up off of the ground as I demonstrate in the video. You have the option of doing a backbend, coming up into a crawl position, or rolling onto your side so that the arms and legs have a different way of supporting you up.
Go slowly. Soft neck. Head Lead / Body Follow.
If you feel like your back is going to spasm from doing this PLEASE don’t hurt yourself. Ask for help!
Get In Touch
If you’re in NYC, you may learn more about my private teaching practice at johndalto.com.
If you’d like to book any lesson time with me, you can find my booking link here.
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This total coordination is a cousin of FM Alexander’s term “Use”.
Our jaws are INCREDIBLY flexible!!!!