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Christine
May 28, 2012 - 12:35pm
Permalink
sitting at the cello
Hello MsNightingale,
In the WW work, we're mindful to walk with feet pointing straight ahead, yet we exercise using hip turnout. This builds strength in the muscles surrounding the hip joints, which are often quite atrophied in women. Intraabdominal pressure works to either pin the organs toward the front of the body, or push them toward the back - depending on lumbar curvature. This is a total body posture that never "tries" to curve the lumbar spine but, as you suggest, allows it to expand on its own by how we lift the chest and hold the head and shoulders. Please see my blog posts on the neutral pelvis to understand more about this important difference.
I can see that playing the cello could offer an opportunity for deep WW postural work if you were playing
more like this, yet be very hard on your pelvic anatomy and your spine if you play in
this kind of posture.
There are also images of women who exhibit more turnout in their knees and feet than in their hip joints, which must be stressful on the knee joints. External rotation should come solely from the hips, with the alignment of thigh, knee, ankle and foot exactly the same as parallel.
Without being able to see you, it's impossible to know what postural factors may be causing your hip pain. All I can hope is that through this work you can learn what proper alignment is and self-correct from there. Whole Woman Yoga - The First Wheel dvd provides good information on this subject.
If I played the cello I would sit more like the first image, with my chest lifted, chin tucked, shoulders down (shoulder blades never pulled together), upper back flat and broad, lower belly relaxed over my thighs (not simply flopped out because the abdominal wall is lifted with the chest) and hips widely turned out. The knees would be as turned out as the hips and over the second and third toes. This straddle position provides for good lumbar curvature.
Place a pillow between your knees while sleeping and take the work very slowly. It is the lumbar curve that properly places the torso over your hips so that the joints are fully covered. I imagine you are experiencing both prolapse and pain because you have not been keeping either adequate turnout or full lumbar curvature.
Good luck and please let us hear of your progress.
Wishing you well,
Christine
MsNightingale
May 28, 2012 - 1:22pm
Permalink
thank you
Thank you so much for these comments. I will read this many times with care and appreciate these thoughts. I am excited to try the hips turned out with cello position as this indeed is something I have never done or ever heard done from my various teachers. Maybe through all of this we will also find a much healthier position for the music making that we do with cello! Thank you. I will study also the First Wheel now. I am ever so grateful.