Janus

—the ancient Roman god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. The namesake of our start to the year reminds us to reflect on the lessons learned in the year past, plan hopefully for the future, and to embrace the change this annual transition brings.

Superficial Back Line

This, is all one thing.

Though humans have studied it by slicing it into components and labeling them as isolated parts, this unified whole is how those “parts” actually exist while we are still alive and using them.

This one “rubber band” encompasses structures from the underside of our toes all the way up to the ridge of our eyebrows. (Plantar fascia, gastrocnemius/achilles tendon, hamstrings, sacrolumbar fascia, erector spinae, muscles at the back of the neck and skull, and galea aponeurotica/ epicraneal fascia.)

Meet the Superficial Back Line.

The SBL is basically our postural support line. It holds us upright all day long, so it makes sense that it is made up of a higher proportion of slow twitch, endurance muscle fibers and extra heavy sheets/bands of fascia like the achilles tendon or sacrolumbar fascia.

We can feel this line fully lengthen in a forward fold, and we can feel it shorten in movements like the “cobra”.

Poise

“You’re not like those other guys are you?

—I can tell by the way you carry yourself.”

I suspect genuine compliments “hit different” (as my good friend would say), because that one planted a seed in my early 20s that is still bearing fruit a stone’s throw from 40. I didn’t really know what that meant at the time, so I immediately looked it up:

…The idiom “carry oneself” is a common expression in English that refers to how a person presents themselves, both physically and emotionally. The origins of this phrase can be traced back to ancient times when body language was an essential means of communication. In medieval Europe, nobility were expected to carry themselves with poise and grace, as their posture and demeanor reflected their social status…

I loved that.

That compliment made two things clear to me; 1) The way in which I move matters, and 2) how I move myself is a choice. Obviously variables like congenital conditions, injuries, etc. can impact the degree of choice, but the principle stands. Throughout the majority of our waking hours, the way we sit, stand and move through space is as poised or haphazard as we decide it to be. These movement choices in turn, do the majority of talking for us. So this then begs the question; do we really know what we’ve been saying?

A neuroscientist whom I very much appreciate, once said that when scanning new people the first two checks our brains runs are “threat/ non-threat?” and “competent/ not competent?” This is accomplished in seconds or less often without our awareness by simply watching eyes and body language. This means our bodies are often participating in conversations we don’t even realize we’re a part of.

Our society is obsessively hyper focused on attention, but by zooming out just a bit, we can create room for an ongoing awareness of our positions and movement. Using the cuing around us, from catching ourselves in reflections to the little discomforts that creep in through the workday, we can take agency to choose something other than “whatever shape gravity can squish me into”. Making better movement choices directly improves how we feel physically and emotionally, and how competently we convey ourselves to the rest of the world.