Developing internal tools to help you notice changes gives you the chance to change your behavior in order to reduce pain and improve your ability to function.
The first step in developing these internal tools is to tune in to the signal. Tuning in to the signal requires that you turn down the noise, light, and effort so that you can notice the differences that you don’t usually detect. When you do so, you will sense another body inside of yourself, and the experience is magical.
Once you learn how to tune in to the signals of your body, you can sense where you feel older inside and where you feel more youthful and then make changes to your movements accordingly to keep improving as you age.
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EXPLORATORY MOVEMENT
An exploratory movement is a movement you perform when you don’t know exactly what you are going to do so you have to think about it and feel your way through it. One example of exploratory movement is the kind of movement we all performed as babies trying to find where our hands, mouth, and feet were. Much more of your brain is used, and a far larger range of neurons are activated, when you’re exploring a movement. As you keep practicing what you already know—that is, doing performatory movements—you use fewer new neuromuscular connections.
I call this combination of simultaneously thinking and feeling as you move “flinking,” as a way to urge my students not to compartmentalize these mental and physical activities. As happened when you were a child, the greater the area of your brain that’s involved in your movements, the more fit your brain becomes and the more it retains and generates new neural connections. The more you use your body awareness, the more you integrate the body and mind and the more proficient your movements and actions become.
For example, imagine that you are preparing to do a dead lift—lifting a weight off the floor until you are standing. If you are like most people, you have one way of performing this action and think that, if you made your muscles stronger, you could lift more weight. However, a completely different and healthier approach would be to explore how many ways you can coordinate your pelvis, legs, arms, and shoulders as well as your balance, timing, and breathing—in other words, your whole body—to lift the weight. This approach would make you not only stronger but better able to bend down and pick up anything, because you would have expanded your neuromuscular repertoire for bending over to pick things up.The Change Your Age Program encourages the growth of your brain by having you use nonlinear movements like the ones you explored regularly when you were younger.
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NONLINEAR MOVEMENT AND LEARNING
Many of us are trapped in a rigid way of learning with our current fitness routines. Some of us fixate on targeting specific muscle areas (to get that hard-body look, for example) or on specific joint actions (perhaps to perfect a tennis serve) instead of paying attention to how the whole system works in an integrated manner. Proprioceptive awareness can fade into the background and become irrelevant to the way we exercise. Without this awareness, we lose out on the important information it delivers that could help us avoid pain, stiffness, and injuries.
Additionally, exercise equipment is designed in a way to make bodies move in a machine-like fashion: on a single plane of action, up and down or side to side. The nature of exercise on these machines becomes linear movement, which is very different from the nonlinear ways in which we normally move—for example, as we reach for things that are a little off to the side, or twist our trunk to turn toward a friend while walking. In fact, many people with strong backs injure themselves and get incapacitating back spasms because they do a simple movement—such as retrieving a dropped dinner napkin at an angle and with a spinal twist—that they have never explored while exercising!
EndFragmentStartFragmentWe rarely see twists, torques, and asymmetrical movements in exercise routines because, as people get older, they lose their ability to perform these kinds of movements. Older people who can spiral, twist, and move on strong diagonals always appear to be much younger than they are. Remember Tina Turner performing at her concerts when she was in her fifties? Or the Rolling Stones going on and on, performing nonlinear movements on-stage at an age when most people have retired?EndFragment
StartFragmentBecause of this tendency to practice movements that target only partial areas of muscles and strengthen only partial areas of the bones, ligaments, and tendons, adults often engage not just a narrow area of their bodies but also only a narrow portion of their neurons. Their ability to learn is limited.EndFragment
StartFragmentInfants and children, on the other hand, practice movement and learn in a very different way. Babies and young children exploring the environment reach and twist, shift and fall back. Those exploratory movements require the full use of the whole body, not just a good set of abs or a perfectly functioning shoulder joint.EndFragment
StartFragmentAs you age, it is crucial to return to moving like a child and learning like a child in this exploratory and nonlinear fashion. You don’t need to avoid linear movement—in fact, many common daily activities are linear movements—but if you want to expand the range and repertoire of your movements and feel real pleasure and sensuality in your movements, you’ll find it valuable to practice nonlinear and exploratory movements.EndFragment
It really is possible to regain youth and vitality through body awareness and movement. You don’t have to give up your exercise routines, but there are many valuable modifications you can make to help you get the most out of them.
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HIDDEN IN SLOW, SMALL MOVEMENTS—THE POTENTIAL FOR CHANGE
It is by paying attention that you can assess how young or old different parts of your body feel, determine the realistic and reasonable changes needed to make your movements more youthful, and measure your progress toward your goal of a more youthful self. Some of the changes required to reach your goal may be very small, but by quieting your environment and paying attention to your body, you can observe how these small changes lead to big adjustments.
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StartFragmentYou sense your environment and yourself in a variety of ways with five completely different types of senses: teleceptic, kinesthetic, proprioceptive, vestibular, and tactile.EndFragment
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Many of your senses are located primarily in your head and near your mouth: your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your nose to smell, and your mouth to taste. These are called teleceptors, meaning that they telescope external information from the environment, perhaps far from your body, so that you can see where you are going from a distance, hear a sound and know where it’s coming from, smell whether you would enjoy a restaurant’s food, or even distinguish friend from foe.
Your sense of taste is less telescopic because it’s usually related to chewing and swallowing, actions that are not teleceptic; they are kinesthetic or internal senses. Chewing and swallowing are a passage from your teleceptic to your internal senses, which are often less valued and not always understood. They include all the sensations of your organs, from your heart beating, to your stomach growling and digesting, to your liver developing a stitch after intense exercise, to the pleasure experienced from sex.
StartFragmentThe feedback of your contracting muscles, telling you how tight or relaxed they are, comes from your proprioceptive sense. Proprioception also tells you the position of your joints and where your body parts are in space.EndFragment
StartFragmentThe vestibular system is located inside the inner ear and gives you a sense of balance. Any disturbance to the vestibular system could lead you to fall down, to be dizzy, or to have feelings of nausea and disorientation, as in car or motion sickness. This finely tuned system that adjusts your head and sense of uprightness by tuning into gravitational pulls is a kind of cosmic sense deep inside your skull.EndFragment
StartFragmentYou also have a tactile sense, which gives you information at the surface of your body. For example, you register hot or cold, hard or soft, rough or smooth, the irritation of an itch or the satisfaction of scratching, with your tactile sense.EndFragment
You combine the information gathered by all these different types of senses to achieve complex actions. For example, if you play the piano, you must integrate your tactile feel for the keys with the teleceptor sense from your ears and with the proprioceptive sense of your muscles moving in your fingers and arms.
Since our culture, focused as it is on mirrors and photographs, is more oriented toward the teleceptors to provide feedback about the state of the body, you’ll find this state of the body lesson quite different from what you may be used to, because you’ll rely on all the internal senses to which you may not normally pay attention. The pressure of your body against the floor will serve the same function for your internal senses that a mirror serves for your visual sense of yourself through your eyes. This state of the body lesson allows you to capture extremely informative details about how you feel—more than your eyes can tell you about how you look. It takes a little practice, but you will notice things about yourself the first time you do this lesson that you probably have never been able to observe before and also could never see or hear or smell.
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THE STATE OF THE BODY SCAN: THE FLOOR AS MIRROR
This body awareness exercise, practiced consistently, balances the body and releases tightness in all the major muscle groups. It is a wonderful starting point for making changes in your fitness, wellness, and vitality. Lying on the floor, you’re able to observe the configuration and arrangement of your body in its most basic way—your posture when your body is most at rest. Imagine lying on firm, smooth sand. If you could be lifted from the sand and then could look down at the indentations you left in it, you would see a pattern in those indentations as unique as your signature. Most people don’t realize that, even though they share features in common with many other people, their posture is completely unique. This “postural signature” is more than a physical signature: It is also a record of how your brain maps the muscular state of your body and maintains the habits of your posture.
StartFragmentMany people confuse position with posture. There is continuity in your posture no matter what position you are in. Your posture is an ongoing dynamic process that expresses itself in the way you stand, sit, or lie on the floor. This is why people tend to have tension in the same muscle groups regardless of the position they’re in. Your postural habits have been set into your bones, muscles, and brain and reproduce themselves regardless of your position, but there are distinct advantages to discovering your personal posture by lying on the floor.EndFragment
StartFragmentWhen you lie on the floor, you get an opportunity to feel why certain parts of your body hold on and don’t let go, even when you’re lying down. Perhaps there are times when you think, “My neck keeps hurting on the right side,” or, “My lower back pinches in a certain place all the time,” and you don’t really know why. Lying down permits you to reduce the muscle tone and to remove much of the customary strain and preoccupation of your nervous system as it organizes your standing and sitting postures.EndFragment
StartFragmentLying on the floor also helps counter some of the habitual stimulation that reinforces bad and ineffective muscular habits. Your body’s unfelt twists, turns, and habits eventually present themselves in your regular activities, from cleaning the house to skiing, but it is hard to observe those movements when you are doing the activities.EndFragment
StartFragmentPerhaps the most important advantage to lying on the floor is that the floor provides you with so many points of contact; it gives you the opportunity to feel much more of the network of your interconnected bones and muscles than you would be able to feel standing or sitting.EndFragment
StartFragmentIn a way you have probably never experienced, this exercise will help you get a sense of what areas of your body need attention and what age you feel you are. You will learn to observe the previously unobservable.EndFragment
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Most people feel only a small amount of their posture. By practicing the State of the Body Scan, you will feel more of yourself. The lesson will also improve your posture and naturally relax your body. With more relaxed but greater attention over time, the Body Scan will improve your overall body awareness and lessen the slumping and scrunching that come from the habitual tensions that accelerate with aging.
Additionally, you will make your brain more flexible, which will help you to better retain what you learn and to maintain those changes for a longer period of time.
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SOME THINGS TO REMEMBER
Read through the entire exercise first. You may want to record yourself reading the steps and then play the recording while you do the exercise.
Make sure you are wearing loose, comfortable clothing and are in a calm, quiet environment. Environment is key: When noise and distractions are at a minimum, you can enter into a quiet meditative state and observe distinctions in your body. Make sure you have a towel or a book handy so that your head can comfortably rest on the floor without straining your neck.
The scan can take as long as you like, but try to set aside at least 15 minutes so that you can really get into your observations.
You may find it useful to take notes on your observations, but don’t get caught up in the details: It is more important to remember your sense of your body. Just as you don’t record how you look after looking in the mirror, you don’t need to record your observations as part of this scan.
I encourage you to use the floor as a kinesthetic mirror and to do a State of the Body Scan every day. In the same way that you look in the mirror to see what you look like, you can use the floor as a kinesthetic mirror to check in with how your body feels.
1. Lie down on your back, with your arms down by your sides, your legs extended but relaxed, and your knees straight. Feel your contact with the floor. The aim is to lie in a position that is as close as possible to your natural standing position—a position that approximates how you would stand if you were about to walk somewhere. Keep your arms long and make sure both legs are extended. After all, when you are standing or walking, you usually don’t keep your arms and legs crossed.
2. If this lying-down position is unfamiliar or uncomfortable for your back, modify it by bending your legs so that the bottoms of your feet are flat on the floor and you can balance your legs without leaning one against the other; your feet and ankles will be about a foot apart. If you find that your neck is strained, or if it feels too arched lying on your back, raise your head with a towel or book until you feel comfortable. A towel placed under a knee that feels strained when straight can also help, but first, lie down as instructed and check whether you need these supports. You don’t want to cushion yourself to the point where you cannot feel your postural signature. Once you are comfortable, feel your contact against the floor with your arms, shoulders, back, buttocks, and feet.
3. Observe your postural signature—how your body rests on the floor in the posture you have while lying there.
• Is there some part of your body that’s pushing a little heavily into the floor?
• Is there some part of your body that seems arched or high off the floor?
• Notice the spaces between your body and the floor wherever they are, particularly those under your lower back and under your knees. Also notice where the floor supports you.
• Are all of your muscles relaxed enough to allow as much support as possible from the floor?
• As you scan the inside of your body and feel your contact with the floor, do some parts of yourself feel younger than other parts? You might find that the upper part of your body feels younger than your lower half. You might find that one leg or your head and neck have feelings that you unconsciously associate with feeling younger—for example, a feeling of dexterity or suppleness or agility. You would be a rare person if your whole body and all of its actions were aging evenly.
• In this scan and throughout the program, you might find that the map of your body has many distinctions. Some parts of your body might feel twenty years younger than the rest of your body. It is common to notice how your body feels older or looks older, but it can be more helpful to notice what’s youthful about yourself. By thinking of which parts of yourself feel most youthful, you orient your brain to be more youthful in all of your movements.
4. Notice the “map” of the back surface of your body against the floor that is being made as you lie on the floor. For example, you might notice that there’s more weight or a feeling of greater mass on one side of yourself compared to the other. You might feel that the left side is larger than the right, or vice versa. You might notice that your right leg feels heavier, thicker, or longer. However your right leg feels, compare it to the left leg. Which of your legs do you think would be easier to lift an inch off the floor? Which leg feels younger?
As you follow the program, you will find that your body’s curvatures and sharp points of contact with the floor are changing. When your muscles are tight, your body curves more; this curvature decreases the points of contact between your body and the floor and makes each point carry more of the weight of your body. As your muscles relax, your body flattens itself more against the floor, creating more areas of contact, and the weight of your body is spread out.
At first, only 50 percent of the back surface of your body may actually be in contact with the floor if there is a large amount of space beneath the knees, the back, the neck, and the shoulders. As your muscles relax and get longer, these spaces shrink and a higher percentage of the back of your body will rest on the floor.
5. Notice how comfortable you are lying in this position. Are you at ease, or is your lower back hurting or starting to tighten? If you need to make your back more comfortable, remember that you can bend your knees and plant your feet on the floor with your legs far enough apart to be independently balanced.
6. Next, notice whether your neck is comfortable. Some people find that their neck is so arched that they’re almost facing the wall behind them. This position of the neck may make breathing a little difficult. If this is the case, take a minute to place a small pillow, a couple of towels, or a book underneath your head. Find the amount of elevation that makes it a little easier to breathe and allows your neck to be more comfortable.
7. Return your attention to your body’s pressure against the floor, which is also the floor’s pressure against you. Observe which side of your body feels larger. If you were divided in half down your midline, is more of your body mass on the left side or the right side?
Then imagine that you are lying on a balance beam. If you fell asleep on this balance beam, which way would you roll off?
Which side of yourself feels younger? Why? What associations do you have with that side of your body?
As you imagine lying on the balance beam, you might feel that your pelvis is rolling or turning one way and your head and neck are going another. You might find your chest turning one way, as if on its own. These tendencies reveal your rotation habits—how you turn your body and orient your body when you’re standing. These tendencies can be hard to feel when you’re upright, and that is the advantage of the floor. This kinesthetic mirror reveals some things about your body and its organization that otherwise you might not notice.
8. Now let your mind focus on determining which are the areas of greatest contact between your body and the floor. The back of your rib cage? Your pelvis? Your head or your heels? When you put your attention on these contact points, your body will reduce the sharpness of those pressure areas and distribute your weight more evenly on the floor.
Just making this observation of your contact with the floor, of your back against the floor, leads your mind to reorganize the way you are holding your body on the floor and to spread your body’s pressure from just a few areas to a more even distribution across your whole body. In other words, the awareness and observation of what you’re doing actually creates a change—and you become more relaxed.
9. Put your attention on the places that are in contact with the floor but only a little bit, such as your heels or your calf muscles. As you observe these areas, notice whether one of your legs is straighter than the other one. You might find that the back of one knee is closer to the floor compared to the other one, or that one leg is turned open, meaning that it’s rotated externally compared to the other one. One of your legs or a foot might be pointing straight up to the ceiling, which means that the muscles are working to hold the leg internally. You might be able to relate the sensation of your legs turning in or out to the sensation of which way your pelvis would roll if you were lying on a balance beam.
10. Finally, observe changes in the areas of pressure and your sense of position from the left to the right side of your body and note the percentage of your body that’s resting on the floor. You don’t need to move anything or adjust your body; just observe. This is a meditative and very practical way to relax.
The closer you get to the floor with your muscle tone, the more relaxed you are and the more your muscles unwind. If your muscles are wound up, they act like a bowstring. As you wind your muscles up (pulling back the bowstring), the bow of your body gets larger and your skeleton is higher off the floor. Unwinding your muscles allows your body to release into the floor.