Body Alignment Series - Stand Up & Take Notice
Hey pilates people! WELCOME to my series on alignment. I love alignment in the body. Well, alignment in all things is pretty amazing. I’m a Virgo so I’m OBSESSED with alignment in ALL of life. Yep, I'm working on that perfection thing! You? Maybe you are a Virgo too, but you’ve worked it out - read all the self-help books, done all the self-actualization, so you’ve found alignment with your obsessive alignment? Ha! I genuinely hope so!
Alignment in the body is soooo important. When you have alignment, meaning your bones are stacked one on top of the other, you are in harmony with gravity - you are no longer fighting against it. It’s easier to stand when we aren’t fighting gravity!
My last blog was on the feet and standing “into” them. It is the first step in alignment. You want to start with the feet before moving up the body. You can’t find alignment until you are standing evenly in your feet otherwise the rest of the body has no way of being “stacked”.
As we go up the body, we are now going to focus on your legs and how they are aligned over your feet. Let’s start with the hip joint and find it together. The hip joint is where there is a crease when you sit down. Stand up and place your fingers in the middle of that crease above each leg. If you are in the middle, that is where your femur (thigh bone) sits in the hip socket. Start there and look down to your knee. Is the center of your knee straight underneath your hip joint (again in the middle of the leg, not at the side of your legs where people think of their hips)? Then, look down further, is the center of your ankle straight under your knee? There should be a straight line through your hip joint, knee, ankle, and between your first and second toe as you can see by looking at the photo on the left. Look at both legs, are they the same or different? Are they in alignment?
No? Are your feet in parallel? Are you falling into your arches or lifting up out of them? Are your knees pointed out < > or are they pointed in > < ? Look at your body without any judgment. Judgment doesn’t do you any good! It’s information for you about your body. Maybe some muscles are weak which are forcing your knees in. Maybe you need to work on wrapping your thigh muscles out. Or maybe you need to work on not sinking into your arches. Or, maybe the opposite of all of these…..
Give this a try and tell me what you think in the comments below. What did you notice about your legs and feet? Need some help? Let me know in the comments or send me an email! I’m happy to answer your questions and/or assist you with your alignment.
Remember, a body out of alignment is a body with back pain, neck and/or should pain, foot discomfort, pelvic slips, weaknesses, etc., etc. Let’s get your body in alignment! Thank you for working on this with me!
Joyfully,
Jenny
