Conscious proprioception.
"The ability to sense the position of your body in space and being aware of where you should be able to move."
Conscious proprioception
- An awareness of the sensory feedback your body provides about the position of your body.
- Feeling the relative position, motion and equilibrium of each of your main muscles of movement. (Pelvic floor, rectus abdominis, gluteus maximus, rectus femoris, trapezius.)
- Feeling the relative alignment of the anatomical structures on the median plane. (Linea alba, supraspinous and nuchal ligaments.)
- Feeling where your natural range of movement should be able to take you.
- Being able to see/sense/visualise your presence in space.
- The connection between body and mind.
Developing your sense of conscious proprioception: Technique tips
From sparkles to Qi: My body-mind connection.
The basic idea:
Throughout the body, various 'sensors' produce sensory feedback (information) that is sent to the brain (via our nerves).
The brain processes the feedback about our position and movement for the sense known as proprioception. (PRO-pree-oh-SEPt-shun)
Proprioception: "The ability to sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium of your body."
Your sense of proprioception will be running in the background, as your body subconsciously makes adjustments in order to maintain a 'functional posture'.
Conscious proprioception is when we are aware of this proprioceptive information our body and brain have for us. When we can consciously sense/feel:
- The position of the parts of our body.
- The motion of our body, and where we should be able to move (rom).
- Our equilibrium - whether the body is balanced or not.
Your Base-Line muscles and conscious proprioception.
- To describe the position of something you need a reference.
- To describe a motion (a change in position) a reference is also needed.
- To be in equilibrium means to be balanced, but balanced around what?
→ The position of the rest of your body is relative to your Base-Line.
→ All movement should originate from your Base-Line.
→ Balance either side of the median plane.
According to Base-Line theory:
We have a 3-D map of the body stored in our brain. This map is based on our body when it has a full range of movement - our potential rather than what we can currently achieve.
Proprioceptive sensory information from the whole body should be applied to this map, giving us a mental image of the layout and relative positions of our head and limbs extending from our Base-Line.
Starting from nothing to seeing the full map: My body-mind connection.
Sensory feedback from the pelvic floor provides the Base starting point for reading the map accurately.
The anatomical structures on the median plane (our midline) provide the guides to orientate the map in the right direction, beginning with the linea alba. Sensory feedback from the rectus abdominis muscles that lie either side of the linea alba provide the sensory information about the position of our central Line.
Alignment - what does it mean?
We can experience the whole map when there are no physical restrictions to block the proprioceptive signals on the way to the brain.
The map in the brain can become skewed. The map maintains its approximate shape but becomes misaligned on the body. If the map is misaligned, motor signals (commands from the brain to muscles) go to the wrong place, causing imbalances and increased stress on our muscular system as other areas of muscle rather than the main muscles of movement are activated as we move.
What happens if I don't use my main muscles of movement correctly?
Sense the sparkles. Feel your alignment.