Hi
@stellaluna Sorry to not get back to you sooner, busy day with OS check up and more x-rays (part of check up but I wasn't told to have them done before hand...OS said he'd call me if he had any concerns with the xrays, said he certainly he isn't expecting any!). Will do a seperate report maybe tomorrow. Life is busy with hubby away!
So for the 6 point walking, you are lying on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor. When you simultaneously and gently lift your diagonal pair shoulder and hip, it isn't a big movement but the hip will tend to lift slightly up and slightly forward and maybe even slightly inward in the movement, as if you were walking, so you will get a very very slight stretch in the top of your quad and a very slight tightening of the glute on that side. It would be the beginning of what your hip should do in walking forward when standing. It is a very small movement.
My biggest thing with somatics was to stop thinking of it an "athletic" exercise that one would do in an exercise class, but think of the movement as slow, gentle and mindful. I was very much of the thought process of harder and faster was better to begin with! Somatics is about retraining the mental process from the sensory motor "amnesia" that happens with our changed movement from a reaction to pain in our body (we learn to move a certain way to try and avoid pain, so change our gait pattern for example, without even knowing it consciously, until our physio points it out to us or our body starts to have other issues), to moving our body correctly again, and the re-training of same.
For me as a rider, my psoas has to be able to relax but my core muscles, transverse abdominis and the (what I call crisscross abdominals...it is late and I can't think of their name right now) have to be firm but flexible. I find pilates great for the core, but yoga great for flexibility. The somatic work has helped me learn to turn muscles on and off in isolation and together, prior to surgery, so the reason why I want this to be part of my rehab. When riding I have to be able to turn the glutes "off" and "on" separately from the core muscles. Horses are flight animal and wired to run first when scared, and not think about why. If they had time to reason in the wild, and not run first, they'd be eaten! Anyway, when a horse is scared, one has to not turn on the glutes, but keep the core strong, as if one's glutes are on when the horse is really fearful, this translates tension in the rider to the horse, who interprets that glute tension as fear in the rider, which in turn makes the horse more fearful in the already fearful situation!! One rides with the core "on" at about 30% as a base line all the time, maintaining positive tension, but can be relaxed in that tension, as one would relax into a yoga pose, if that makes any sense...you don't give up positive tension in the pose, but you breath through the pose and are not tense in the true sense of the word. All this has been/is very helpful for learning to walk correctly again, but it makes me so tired!! I went to physio on Friday at 2:30 PM and then went to a 6:55 PM movie (Mary Poppins Returns!) with my 28 year old daughter. I was so mentally and physically tired from physio that I slept through a good half of the movie!!! Hopefully this week will be better!!! Let me know if my comments re: the somatics have helped.