Quick Spinal Release - Part 3

Quick Spinal Release - Part 3

Opening the Heart:

The arms serve as an anchor to hold open the portal of the heart you opened drinking in the horizon. You will extend your presence along the horizontal dimension now, carrying or expressing into the world (through your arms), the energy flowing through the heart and central vertical channel (through the spine, head and legs).

There is a release of energy when the wave moves through the thoracic spine, making space between vertebrae. When you drink in the energy through your arms, the space in the armpits opens, floating the arms freely in space. As you channel it down through the elbows, wrists and fingers, the energy will flow unobstructed through both the horizontal and vertical channels. The arms will elongate, opening the joints, lengthening the muscles. Thus, the arms will hang more like pendulums rather than at foreshortened angles due to habitual tension.

Without this unobstructed flow, the space between the vertebrae that emerged in the wave of elongation will collapse back in on itself. It is this collapsing of the energy that densifies the structure. When the energy is able to flow unobstructed, the structure sheds its density.

Instructions: Right Arm

On the wave of your next breath, extend your presence through your right arm as described above. As the elongation moves down your arm, maintain the space in the armpit. Savor this for several breaths.

What did you notice as a result of this practice?

Does your right arm feel different than your left? What about the throat? Can you sense a difference between the right and left sides? If you make an open throated sound like an “A,” do you sense a difference in vibration from one side to another? Does your right eye and ear feel more open than your left? Does it feel lit up, like a monitor came on?

Left Arm: Repeat channeling the wave through the left arm. Then integrate both arms.

What did you notice as a result of this practice?

Do you will feel more openness in your chest? less density in your upper back? more energy flowing through your arms and hands?

Variation: Using Weights

Instruction: Placing a light weight (1–3 lbs) in each hand, repeat the elongation. The weight can vivify the anchoring through the hands, to help you sense the elongation along the entire length of the arm. If you have ever seen a salt-water taffy machine, you may remember how the weight at the bottom lengthens the taffy.

Now without the weights, repeat the elongation imagining invisible weights in your hands.

This series' was excerpted from the book, Awakening Somatic Intelligence by Dr. Risa Kaparo. (North Atlantic Books, 2012).

Videos were filmed by Richard Quinn  http://richardquinn.com/