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In her book, “Life and Death in Shanghai”, Nien Cheng describes her
life in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Because she and her
late husband had worked for a foreign firm, her home and all her
possessions were confiscated by the Red Guard, her daughter was
tortured and then killed, and she was imprisoned and held in solitary
confinement for six years. Ms Cheng was in her fifties when all this
happened.
Conditions in prison were terrible and several times she came close to
death. Describing one on her lowest points, when she barely had the
strength to stand, she writes:
“...I thought that if I was going to survive the Cultural Revolution, I
must discipline myself with physical and mental exercise. Inspired by
my own resolution, I stood up rather abruptly. Dark shadows almost
blinded me, and I had to sit down again. But from that day onward, I
devised a series of exercises that moved every part of my body from my
head to my toes, and did them twice a day. At first the exercise
exhausted me, and I had to interrupt it with frequent periods of rest.
Also I had to avoid the prying eyes of the guards, as exercise other
than a few minutes of walking in the cell after meals was forbidden.
Nevertheless, I managed to exercise each day and after a few months
recovered my physical strength somewhat, as well as my feeling of
well-being.”
Several years later, the political situation in China shifted and Ms.
Cheng was released from prison. Despite all the hardships she had been
through, her health quickly improved. Her friends commented that she
looked much younger than her actual age. Eventually she moved to the
United States.
It was fascinating for me to read about Ms Cheng’s system of movement
exercises because it closely parallels a procedure described in the
book “How to Learn the Alexander Technique - A Manual for Students” by
Barbara and William Conable. This book emphasizes a procedure the
Canables have named “body-mapping” - essentially a systematic process
of exploring on your own body precisely how the major joints and muscle
groups work.
This is not the sort of study one usually associates with anatomy -
what I think of as “anatomy at a distance”, that is learning about the
human body without relating it to the body of the student who is doing
the learning. Nor is it at all like the detailed study of cadavers done
in medical schools.
Body-mapping is all about the practical application of basic anatomical
knowledge to yourself as a living organism, learning about how you
function at rest and in movement.
In their book, the Conables write:
“In recent years some (Alexander Technique) students have expressed a
longing to do flexibility work but have assumed they couldn’t devote
enough time to it. To one of these students I said one day, ‘Well, you
could do worse than simply put your joints through their range of
movement each day.’ He came back a week later and said, ‘I did what you
suggested and it was amazing.’ “What was that?’ I asked. ‘Put my joints
through their range of motion each day.’ He showed me how much
flexibility he had gained in a week doing that, and we began to
systematically play with the idea. Sure enough, it works like magic and
takes only about five minutes a day, with no necessity that the five
minutes be consecutive. The student simply begins with the joint of the
head and the spine...rotating the head and tilting, then moves on the
the jaw...then on to the ribs, moving them at their joints with the
vertebrae by taking a good breath. Then the student moves all four
joints of the arm structure and the hand joints. Then the spine,
bending forward, backward, to each side, spiraling, and twisting. Then
the hip joint, knee, and ankle and the foot joints. That’s it. Done
correctly this routine increases flexibility faster than anything I
know, and I have wondered and wondered why. I now think two factors
contribute, first the quality of attention brought to the movement,
which is the kind of attention that makes it possible for the body to
learn from each movement. Second, some of the movements are ones that
many people rarely make, like rotation at the upper arm joint with the
shoulder blade and rotation at the hip joint. The body seems to delight
in these movements and the availability seems to free the joint.”
If you’d like to become more flexible, the experiences of Ms Cheng and
of Baraba Connable’s students point to a simple, efficient and
effective way to achieve that goal.
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“Life and Death in Shanghai” by Nien Cheng was first published by Grove
Press, New York, 1986. It is currently available in a paperback
edition. The quote cited above is found on page 203.
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