When pushing or pulling an object, we usually tighten muscles automatically. If you want to push something heavy, you compress, or ‘get ready’, or ‘gird your loins’, or ‘wind up’. In effect you tighten up, squeezing the body and limbs, and, temporarily compact yourself. If you want to pull something heavy, even though the act of pulling with your arms would theoretically pull the joints open, you do exactly the same but with different sets of muscles involved – in fact completely opposite-side-of-the-body ones to when you are pushing. This means that you over-tense certain groups of muscles.
Spread the effort For example, if you are pushing a heavy object, there is an inclination to tense the shoulders and the upper arms and often the neck. Although you might successfully push whatever it is that you are pushing, it’s at the expense of excess muscular tension in specific areas of the body. The ‘knack’ is to involve all the muscle groups required to do that task simultaneously.
When you tense a muscle, the ends of that muscle (origin & insertion) contract – in other words, the muscle gets shorter.
Not only that, the muscle stagnates and goes into a mild form of atrophy; it moves into a locked state and parts of it cease to function – pliability is lost in its contraction.
As an example, if you are pushing something, you attach yourself to that object, lock the upper body into it (wrists, arms, shoulders, possibly neck and upper back), and then you push off your rear leg; the only ‘mobile’ parts of you remaining are therefore the legs. It’s almost as though you lock your body to the object being pushed so that the body almost becomes a part of the object, and then you operate the lower part of the body to do the push. If you are not relaxed in the lumbar area of the spine (approx. waist and below), you are more likely to hurt your back.
Opening the joints
What we need to do when pushing or pulling, is to allow the joints to ‘open’ as we do the action. This is obvious in the arms during a pull – after all, you are pulling the joints open, but less obvious in a push which is more likely to contract the joints.
In a push (for example) it is more efficient to involve every muscle that is used in that push simultaneously, but with NO tension anywhere. So when pushing, this uses:-
the top of the foot (dorsum of foot),
the back of the calf (gastrocnemius),
the front of the thigh (quads),
the lower back (below the ribs),
the chest,
the triceps,
the back(s) of the hand(s).
As soon as only one muscle is contracted, that part stagnates; in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medical) terms, the flow of Qi is restricted in that area, and in fact the contraction reduces the flow of blood and lymph.
What to do about it? Don’t let the joints compress, thereby allowing the ends of the muscles to remain flexible. When you keep the joints ‘open’, the muscles can no longer shrink, contract, or stagnate. Therefore, that ‘line’ of
musculature from foot to hand stays liquid, mobile, and flexible.
All of a sudden you are no longer using individual muscles; the ‘fascia’ of the body – the net-like ‘stocking’ that encompasses groups of muscles (see previous blog for more description of fascia), comes into play, and the push starts to come from a different part of your body.
Exercise in how to ‘open’ a joint The only way to stop the two sides of a joint pulling together, is to relax and soften that area; it is only muscular tension that is going to draw the two sides together. You can try this out by putting your palms on a wall at home and act as though you are trying to push the wall over.
Tai Chi & Qigong When you start to apply this ‘opening of the joints’ to tai chi and qigong, movement becomes an entirely different game. Because the body is opening energetically, your blood flows better, the energy moves through the body, your posture improves (it has to because poor posture means there is tension in certain parts of the body), you feel lighter, even your coordination improves (because poor coordination implies inconsistencies in the simultaneous flow of energy equally around the body), and the movements become effortless and easy. You know that you’re getting it ‘right’!
___________________________________________________ James Drewe teaches Tai Chi and Qigong in both London and in Kent and online. Details of weekly classes both live and online can be found on the website, and there are classes for 2-person Tai Chi on one Saturday a month. You can also learn both tai chi & qigong through a monthly subscription, and there are also many free videos on YouTube.
CONTACT: http://www.taiji.co.uk https://www.qigonghealth.co.uk Email: taijiandqigong@gmail.com Phone: 07836-710281 ___________________________________________________
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