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Video & Article

Please enjoy the following video and article. When you watch the session video below,  pay attention to what Jen is reading in Casey’s body and how that leads her verbal and tactile cues. Pay attention to how Jen cues the vertebrae on both the roll down into child’s pose and the roll back up to seated. These strategies will be very valuable and informative to the bodies you will teach.

RELEASE WORK: The Prerequisite for Movement

by Casey Marie Herdt

We are consistently asked questions about how to bring about lasting change in our clients and in ourselves. This is our core objective as movement facilitators. Most teachers and clients alike look to strengthening exercises to bring balance to the body, and hope that cueing the breath will bring the body back to homeostasis. Unfortunately, with societal pressures putting priorities on careers, being “super-parents,” or—quite frankly—over-exercising, most people who walk into the studio will have a greater need for release work as their primary focus, rather than strength work. The truth of the matter is that if the bones do not fall in the optimal placement in relation to gravity, the pain that the client feels will be chronic, and the movement patterns that they walk in with will continue to be habitual.

Often when addressing release work, most teachers go to what I call the “Holy Grail” stretches. We all know them: Hamstring, IT Band, and some sort of quadriceps stretch like Eve’s Lunge. And don’t get me wrong, these are great stretches! But why stretch? What are you looking for from this movement? How do you know that it is “working” or that it is even the appropriate choice for your client? Please do not confuse this: stretching is not release work. It can be, but it isn’t always. Stretching is an active movement, cued just like any strengthening exercises.

What we hope to gain from these stretches is release. Unfortunately, when stretching the body you are working with the client’s end ranges where it is inherently difficult for them to maintain their form and alignment. It is very easy for the body to go into its mainline grip and holding patterns to perform these moves. So you may be “opening up” your client’s hamstrings, but at what cost? What has over-activated in the body’s mechanical systems to make that range of motion possible in the hip joint, for instance?

Now, for some movers, this is no big deal. They can handle this load easily in the body and can find release in the moments of stretching. But those clients that appear to need stretching the most—our tight, type A, chronic-cardio crowd—are not these people. They need something more stable, more grounded, and with less range. They need moments of pause to focus on the breath and notice how that helps the body find its own unwinding process. They need to feel the difference between gripping the bones versus feeling as if the bones in the body are floating in connective tissue and muscle. This process is most effectively done in a range that is more like standing, sitting, or lying down with props put in specific places on the body, rather than making the client feel like they are bending over backwards to find an aligned stretch.

You can use a variety of different release modalities. The foam roller is immensely useful in opening up and releasing the legs and spine, as well as introducing balance challenges that call the body to rethink its movement impulses. I also love to use a small spikey ball or tennis ball to open the feet while standing. These small balls work simply and most effectively up against a wall where the client can open up the glutes, hips, back, and shoulders. I describe this as moving like a bear scratching its back against a tree.

There is always shock and awe when we get to this part of the session, because most people have zero awareness of the tightness that they carry throughout their day. But as they start to feel and sense a connectedness between their tightness, they begin to view it more holistically. Through this heightened awareness of the body as a whole, they can begin to put together the puzzle pieces of their imbalances. This is the perfect place to get their attention, and to start to talk to them about a better, easier way to move and be fit—that what is tight now can lead to more serious problems later, and how they can be proactive in changing this grip dynamic in their lives. My clients almost always walk out of the studio with a spikey ball or two!

Release is defined in the dictionary as follows:

• To free from confinement, bondage, obligation, or pain.
• To let go.
• To free from anything that restrains or fastens.

I believe that everyone benefits from what is described above. And I cannot think of a better gift that we can give to our clients and to ourselves.

Make sure to initial and date that you have completed Session 5 in your Master Log.