Flat Stomach Improved Vitality, Anti-Gravitational Reconnection, External Connections

 

頭部，身軀，腿足，為天地人三盤

Head, torso and legs, the heaven, earth and human plates

三盤一軸

Three plates, one axle

三盤對天

The three plates face the sky

Some martial art schools use the three plates theory, and the first two quotes are pretty common. As far as verticality is concerned the plates can be extended to any part of the body, the idea being that a vertical alignment means a horizontal one (the third quote and the concept of crosses in training). The best known one is the book on the head. In the search of verticality, it is the fascias and how they make an axle which is the important issue for the torso and the head. The legs follow another dynamic, they should form a rounded arch.

I. Axle and Torso 

As far as old practices are concerned, the need to create an axle from the lower back to the head is often mentioned. If some schools naturally emphasise on the backbone, others may stress on the necessity to erect a line inside the body. 

The idea of lines of fascias is quite widespread, from Traditional Chinese Medicine to nowadays modern Western one. If it is a very good introduction to the concept and the various uses one can make of it, it is just that and actually not accurate. Surely, fascias are not lines, certainly not straight and not bidimensional. Fascias are tangibly more webs of connective tissues. Pulling and pressing from different points a tennis softball made of foam and looking at the diverse shapes and tense parts it creates may help to understand what is sought. Indeed, what we stretch, and with which intensity, will strengthen the connectivity along the stretched web of fascias. With young students, it is most of the time a question of reinforcing a web connectivity, with adults, recreating such connectivity may be needed.

In our particular case, the aim is to fortify (or recreate with grownups), a vertical connectivity which starts at the crotch to end up all the way to the fontanelle and can be delimited by three ‘lines’: along the backbone, along the middle of the front of the torso and inside the body from the crotch to the fontanelle. Another way to tackle the issue is to consider that a mainly hard axle made of the backbone and its surrounding fascias is matched by a mainly soft one of similar size inside the torso up to the head. A third approach is the ‘sewing method’ which contemplates the connection of the annulus fibrosus surrounding the intervertebral disks and their close-by fascias web in the rest of the body. 

Whatever method is used the aim is to create a centre pilar half backbone, half fascia web, which will support the head and the torso and keep it vertically aligned most of the time when standing, walking and sitting.

The legs also play their part in the fight against gravity.

II. Arch and Legs

One of the aims of old practices is to redirect any pressure and weight all the way down to the feet. The issues surrounding the training of the feet have already been mentioned in this blog. With a correct alignment legs will bring more support and help to sheath the middle and upper parts of the body.

The concept of the ‘rounded crotch’ describes the idea of vertical tibias and slightly rounded thighs making an arch supporting the torso. In this pattern, the crotch is the actual keystone linking not only the legs together but also those with the pelvic floor. If whether kids in good health naturally have such connection is a question hard to answer, but what is certain is that creating or strengthening it is not a simple task. Furthermore, losing is a wrong alignment in terms of millimetres… A right alignment will have the knees naturally push outside and locked so that they would not easily be pressed inside. In terms of fascias, this follows the webs inside the legs, which will be linked with the ones forming the axle described earlier.

Legs also, by being part of webs that start from them all the way to the head, help to sheath the body on its sides. Here, the connecting points are the tips of the hips. As far as the flat stomach issue is concerned, the idea is to maintain or recreate the pressure on both sides of the body to recover a tiny waist, towards what is sometimes called a wasp waist.

Finally, one has to realise that it is most common and very easy to lose the connection between the legs and the torso. Indeed, most of the time, this just a matter of very small alignments, most of them inside the body. Furthermore, sitting most of the day with incorrect alignments disconnecting totally the lower limbs from the rest of the body will inevitably lead to the same state even when standing. Hence, most of the adults, more and more as they age, end up with a body where the legs and the rest of the body move as they should but are hardly connected.

There are other webs of fascias one will find in the search of anti-gravity as one’s understanding progresses. Still, since connection through elasticity is what is at the end mainly sought, above alignment and coordination, tiny parts inside the body become crucial. The next post will deal with this issue.