Gordon Hewes

There are minimal health benefits to sitting (repeatedly) in a chair, and yet, as Katy Bowman describes in her new book Move Your DNA, the typical childhood is spent making chair sitting a fine art. 

“after a couple of years, sitting still in your chair would be your most-practiced skill, trumping time spent reading, writing, playing games, and physical education in school. Like a ninja of sitting, you practiced sitting still in a chair more than any other activity, with hours and hours in training, with no other learned activity even coming close in time spent practicing.”

--Katy Bowman in "Move Your DNA"

It’s time to start thinking outside the chair and practicing new positions. In her work, Katy cites physical anthropology professor Gordon W. Hewes study, World Distribution of Certain PosturalHabits. Hewes examined 100 different resting postures from all around the world.  As fate would have it, most of these positions don’t involve chairs.
Inspiration!

Alternatives to sitting in a chair. From Hewes "World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits"
Notice how nobody's at a standing desk. (Here is what Katy says about that...)


But before you get rid of all your sofas, make sure you are working within your actual joint range. Work with progressions and load your new found freedom slowly by using bolsters/blankets/cushions to help make your new floor office comfortable.

Phrases

I've been thinking a lot about transitions in my own practice recently, like really really precise foot work when climbing and noticing the subtle shifts in weight when doing floor work, and how important awareness in those small linking movements improve the quality of the shapes with bigger demands on the body.

It's been a really nice theme for my classes this week too. To prepare for class I've been making little 'movement riddles' for my self. I'll start with a particular asana or pattern (I think of it as a phrase) and then break that phrase down to the most basic elements try it with pauses, linked with more fluid movement,  then reversed and maybe inverted...I end up holding acres of movement in my head, what I'm going to teach always starts like a broken jigsaw. In getting students to use these phrases to inquire about their own movement we learn together. I love that. 

 

Movement Research

a well ordered nervous system indeed...
Really interested in transitions at the moment in whatever form my movement practice takes each day. Where I can I'm trying to practice making my movements flow efficiently without looking fragmented and disjointed.  It's an art!