Before I knew about Body Mapping, I had moments of brilliance in my singing when everything seemed to work effortlessly. Often that ease and fluidity would desert me the next day. I thought I was doing everything the same, but the result proved otherwise. Body mapping has helped me become consistent.
I now know how all my parts relate together to make sound. I don’t have to micromanage them. Instead, because I have worked so hard on mapping the structure and function of all the parts of me that contribute to making music, I can trust them to respond to my artistic impulses. I still spend a lot of time exploring the movements I need to create the effects I want, but once I identify those movements, I can make them again and again to achieve the same result, or choose to vary them slightly according to the inspiration and circumstances of the moment.
Because I have worked so hard on mapping the structure and function of all the parts of me that contribute to making music, I can trust them to respond to my artistic impulses.
Here is one of the movement explorations I find helpful to map the relationship between the lower spine, the pelvis, and the legs: Sit on your hands with your palms facing up. Wiggle around and adjust the location of your hands until you feel your sit bones at the base of the pelvis. Arch your lower back and notice the sit bones rotating backwards as your weight shifts onto your thighs. Then slump and feel your sit bones rotating forward as your weight shifts to your tailbone. Keep playing with these movements, bringing your attention to your lower spine in relationship to your pelvis.
You could also bring your breathing into your awareness and notice how the changes at the base of your torso affect the breath. When the weight of your torso delivers straight down through your sit bones to the chair, you can trust your skeletal structure to bear and deliver your weight so that your muscles can release.
I have been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. Clear gives simple, expert guidance about building the habits you want to acquire. Check out his blog to see if this book is for you: https://jamesclear.com/
"weight bearing" and "weight delivery" used to be the hardest notion for me to translate in my native French... until I felt what you describe Melissa, weight traveling through my spine into the chair, and as a result the freeing of my arm movements... Thank you!
Thank you for this! I find many of my patients have lost faith in their bony structure's ability to bear weight, let alone orient their weight properly through the spine, especially when they've received a diagnosis such as severe arthrosis, oseoporosis or herniated discs ... whereas research clearly shows the necessity of weight bearing (which is augmented when we walk or run) for healthy bones. Such an exercise can be part of regaining that confidence!