“Walk again,” I said. As he walked, I asked, “What kind of movement do you feel in your pelvis?”
He stopped, aghast. “My pelvis? Why, none!” He stared at me in disbelief, as if I had asked him to fly, then said, “Are youtrying to say my pelvis is supposed to move?”
The pelvis is like a bowl that contains everything polite society both obsesses over and would like to ignore: our sexual and reproductive organs, our bowels (one of the definitions of bowels is something deep inside something large), our sphincters. On one hand, pelvic power sells everything from music videos to cars. Undulating, thrusting, shimmying celebrities offer the unattainable with gyrating hips. But a different message is taught from childhood. Moving your hips is a bad thing. It means you’re loose, or low class. Many people have difficulty even speaking the word pelvis when referring to their own anatomy, especially as it relates to movement. While Western culture looks askance at disempowering traditions like the Chinese custom of foot binding, freezing the pelvis is an unspoken requirement of refinement and good breeding.
Yet we intuitively know its power. When Elvis “The Pelvis” turned American women into ecstatic Bacchae, he was both heralded as a shaman (or “the King”) and vilified as an emissary of the devil. Today Graceland is for some a holy pilgrimage site. There are essays, books and even cults deifying Elvis’ Dionysian charisma. We can’t seem to resist pop stars like Madonna and Michael Jackson, whose signature pelvic moves are even now performed by children who never even heard of them.
The geographical center of the body is located in the pelvis, a little below the belly button, not far from where the Hindus place the second chakra, which they call the sacral chakra or Swadhisthana. There are two chakras in the pelvis: The root chakra at the base of the spine relates both to security and human potentiality, and the sacral chakra governing creativity, control and joy.
The Japanese call this central point the Hara or Tanden. It is the navel Dan –Tien in China. (There are actually several dan-tiens or energy centers, some corresponding in location to the chakras) This dan-tien is the center of balance and gravity as well as governing life force and sexual energy.
While each culture uses the term slightly differently, they all are called “energy centers.” When I first began studying aikido, my teacher would periodically come over and lay his hands on my shoulders. “Down,” he would murmur, “You need to move from your center. You’re way up in your chest.” I had no idea what he was talking about. Yet, when I turned my attention to this point in my lower abdomen, I was able to more effectively respond to my opponent. It was as if the act of grounding increased my power. Martial artists consider the pelvic region the core of power and stress the action of moving ki (energy) from the hara. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais,who was also a black belt in judo, said, “The fullness of the abdomen makes the pelvis very nearly a spherical body, the center of which is the center of action. The first sacral vertebra is the point where all stresses in the body cross. This point must be allowed to move freely and is the representative point of the body in all action.”[1]
The word sacrum is derived from the Latin word for sacred. Many cultures, from ancient Greece to the Mayans called the bottom of the spine “sacred.” The reasons vary among cultures, but most associate the sacrum and/or the pelvis with God or immortality. Contemporary Mayans in the Chiapas area say we have two skulls, the head and pelvis, connected by the serpent (our spinal column). Mayan traditions included carving animal pelvic bones into masks, ritually connecting the two heads.[2
Instead of allowing the valuing the contents of the pelvis by celebrating its natural roundness, contemporary fashion has fetishized the flat belly. For most adults this requires sucking in around the hara and often tucking the sacred tailbone as well. . Karlfried Graf Durckheim in his book Hara, The Vital Center of Man says, “Nothing is more opposed to the modern Western ideal of beauty than the big belly. But, not content with rejecting the fat belly, we are prejudiced against any belly whatsoever. The ideal “good figure” – not only in the case of women – is flat bellied if not actually bellyless.” This tucked in, sucked in posture, exemplified by rail thin models and “ripped” male icons also imprisons the large muscles necessary for potent movement: the hip and back flexors, the core abdominals and the gluteal muscles, as well as the deeper muscles of the pelvic floor.
In addition, over the course of our lives, various experiences: education, trauma, socialization and parental influences, act to inhibit the free movement of the pelvis. Tight sphincters, gripping buttocks, and tense groin muscles as the result of unexpressed fears, performance anxiety, and even childhood habits impact these muscles of the pelvis, causing awkward stance and movement, jaw, neck and shoulder tension, and back pain. It’s interesting that current beauty standards reflect the very tension that disempowers. These “anxiety patterns,” as Feldenkrais terms them, result in compulsions, nervousness, impotence (both sexual and in action), and insecurity, belying what is ostensibly contained in the energy centers called chakras.
Francois Delsarte, a 19th century pioneer in the study of body language, espoused a trinity approach to the self, with physical, mental and emotional centers. He further subdivided the body’s functions, labeling the pelvic region the “lower emotional center”, where primal emotions are expressed.[3] Terror, lust, sexual ecstasy and grief all affect the muscles and organs in the lower abdominal region. We void our bladders in shock and terror, the pelvic floor muscles contract and expand in orgasm. Likewise movement and inhibition in any part of the pelvis triggers emotions as well as impacting whole body function.
According to Feldenkrais, “No correct posture or acture is possible without the pelvis being able to move freely in an all its articulations; that is, in the hip joints and in the small of the back. As soon as one of the possible motions of the pelvis is restrained, the fluency of action is broken.” (Feldenkrais defined acture as one’s ability to move freely in any chosen direction from any position.)
How a person walks; which part of the pelvis, hips or sacral area is held or loose tells a story as unique as a fingerprint. Surveillance cameras can now identify people by their “gait DNA.” A potent walk has several planes of action all moving in harmony. We develop characteristic walks by freezing or exaggerating one or more of these planes, offering clues to personality. Rocking forward and back while walking presents the pelvis in what has come to be called “the pimp roll,” adopted mostly by men trying to advertise their potency. Rotation right and left, like doing the twist, is a coy, female device that tempts but stays inaccessible. Moving the pelvis simply using side flexion, a sideways rocking which sometimes includes a s bend of the ribs, presents a friendly, asexual and impotent fellow. Most walks combine at least two planes to offer more nuance, ranging from the extreme stiffness of my stick man, to the undulating roll of cinema temptresses. (A humorous look at some of these walks.)
When the power of the pelvis is unleashed, it can initially be accompanied by the emotions that first entrapped it. The first time my “stick man” student experienced movement in his pelvis, he careened across the room, his hips leading him in a giddy stagger as he cried, “What have you done? I’m out of control!” He revealed that as a child he was taunted for his effeminate walk and had purposely frozen his pelvis to look more “manly.” Our work had undone this rigidity, temporarily rocking his world. After he integrated the new experience into his movement, his shoulders and feet relaxed. He began to smile and say hello to the staff where previously, he had been unable to even make eye contact with people. His pelvic epiphany gave him the power to reclaim his life.
G.I. Gurdjieff said “The sex center plays a very great part in our life. Seventy-five percent of our thoughts come from this center, and they color all the rest.” [4] Feldenkrais postulated that without freedom of movement in the pelvis, both sexual and personal satisfaction become elusive. [5]
A woman came to see me with tremendous hip and lower back pain. It was clear to me that her center of gravity was up in her shoulders, which in turn were up by her ears. Even though she was tall, she took tiny steps, and usually spoke with her head tilted sideways, tucked into her raised left shoulder, as if she was hiding. As we worked together, there were small improvements, but I couldn’t find a way for her to connect her pelvis to her legs. One day as I worked with her legs, she kept taking over, moving them for me with taut leg muscles. When she tried to let go, her legs began to tremble. “Oh my god,” she said suddenly. “I just remembered.” She had “forgotten” a horrific rape at a frat party when she was in college. Since then, she had never really ever “allowed anybody in” even though she had been married and had several children. To our mutual delight, her pain and limitations gradually disappeared and she no longer “hides” her head in shame.
The chronic tension in the abdomen, buttocks and the sphincters requires energy that could serve a higher purpose. So much attention in contemporary mindfulness practice is given to sensing the feet, the hands, the breath, but I have yet to have a teacher tell me to pay attention to my butt cheeks or sphincters. Perhaps there is a hidden puritanism even in contemporary spiritual paths that has limited the potency of our inner work.
The apparent paradox, reclaim power by letting go, bears witness to the mysteries carried in the lower torso. By creating options for movement in the center of myself, I become more centered. This physical equilibrium can be a step towards inner balance. A liberated walk may indeed make for easier climbing on the path to self knowledge.
[1] M. Feldenkrais, The Potent Self, (San Francisco; Harper and Row,1985),p. 207
[2] B. Stross, The Mesoamerican Sacrum Bone: Doorway to the Other World, (University of Texas)
[3] G.Stebbins, The Delsarte System of Expression, (New York; Edgar S. Werner, 1902)
[4] G.I. Gurdjieff, Views From the Real World, (New York; E.F. Dutton, 1973), pp. 126-127
[5] The Potent Self