Paradigm of the Pelvic Clock

Chapter 1

Introduction

Hi. Um, in this workshop we're going to be, um, trying to construct the pelvic clock, which we're very familiar with as a construct of what I planned to demonstrate is lumbar motion and meaning that it also demonstrates what we can and cannot do, especially as we work with the clock hours, the oblique clock hours I refer to, which are the four and five, seven and eight, 10 and 11, one and two. These are functional clock hours we do every day. Meaning it's when we walk, we need to be able to operate through those clock hours. Therefore, operate are for such joints. Therefore operate our synergistic slings to create that pelvic engine, spinal engine for locomotion. But also within the clock hours we'll discover where we'll have biases and inhibitions of static positioning, a posture of sitting, how we sit and what sitting bone we sit on what and we don't sit on and how that compromises the integrity of the stability of the lumbar spine. Why does this matter to me? Um, well, through my 30 years practice, uh, what do I normally see with somebody going from the fourth decade on?

I see pathology from anywhere from l three l four l four five five s one and this pathology is being generated because those are the segmental levels that are hyper mobile. They don't have stability and therefore they rest in a very default pattern of being very vulnerable. And I would like to convey through this module of how we can change that up, but the one thing I have found over my 30 years of experiences that we assume that we can achieve this six o'clock clock hour or the anterior pelvic tilt or the extension of the lower lumbar spine and we don't really get there. Those segments relatively stay stiff as we go into the clock hour, meaning they stay in their flexed positioning and we extend much further up the spine and in the upper lumbar. Now we'd like to change that up through this workshop.

Chapter 2

Axial Motion

Hi there. Um, I'm here at bodyworks San Francisco. Hopefully we're going to go through the a biomechanical model construct to help develop a more thorough understanding of what we've, most of us would probably have been utilizing for years. And as using the paradigm of the pelvic clock. Uh, first off, I just want to go over through a little bit of, uh, physics basics, talking about axes and what that means as far as what, uh, the axes does to movement. We have an axes here and this axes we're going to use, uh, to show where when it turns, something moves forward. When I turn it towards you, if it was four towards you. And then on the bottom it moves towards me. So there was an action reaction phenomenon that's happening with an axial motion and we're going to utilize these axes and many different ways conveying motion of the spine using the pelvis as the driver we're going to be referring to.

The tailbone is on this being the rudder of the leverage. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be utilizing the old bony landmark, which you can find using the bony landmark or the iliums call the posterior superior Iliac spine. Or it was often referred to with Epsi s and that brings you into the level of the s two segment. If you stay on the same horizontal plane and that's going to be the axes that's going to go through the body here, that will create that pivot. Then you'll have the axes going through here, which will create that pivot.

So this axes that I'm placing right now will be the axes in which we'll be creating a sagittal motion of fluxion and extension of the lumbar spine. This axes through the pelvis is going to be the axes for rotation. And then we're going to be working also with oblique axes and those are bleak axes. It's going to have create a tri planar motion of the spine where we'll be going into the oblique clock hours of one and two, seven and eight and four and five and 10 and 11. So now we're going to bring Margaret out our model to demonstrate some of the axes through the pelvis. So we're here,

Chapter 3

Coronal Motion

we have Margaret or model where now I'm placing my thumbs where I had the thumbs on the skeletal model, on the bony landmark of the PSI ss.

And then from there we'll go center to the, uh, the two thumbs and we'll find the s two segment or the second segment of the sacrum. And then we're going to do, was going to have Margaret turn profile to the right. And we want to keep that same horizontal plane in the front of the body. And this is the axes in which you can be pivoting off of. So as your tailbone arcs left, she's gonna create a side, any motion in the spine or the converse the other way. Okay. Now we have Margaret in the environment of the, um, where she's lying on a disc, uh, but we also have her lying on a platform cause it's very important that she's on the, her whole body's on the same horizontal plane because if we didn't do that, we'd be creating a Satchel, uh, influence on her spine, meaning flection or extension of the spine. And that's not our intention.

Now our, again, that center point of the disc is going to be that axes we've talked, which is here relative to her pelvis. So as Margaret Arcs or tailbone to the right, we're pivoting at that s two segment as the point of axial motion, and then she's going to arc or tailbone to the left and then she'll come back to a neutral position. Now remember I talked about the action reaction phenomenon. Now when she arcs her tailbone to the right, you should see the top of the ilium move left. It's a very important that you have that action reaction response.

Otherwise you're not getting the purity of the axial motion of the pelvis arc, your tailbone to the left and as again as she arcs her tailbone to the left, you should see the top of early added crest move, right? I transfer Tory emotion. And again, just dictating that kind of intention and having her tried to convey that in her leverage will have a huge impact on the neuromuscular synergy that she's organizing to create this coronal motion or what is known as side bending of the spine. So now that we've defined that axial motion,

Chapter 4

Sagittal Motion

what plane are we on? We're on the plane of the clock, so we're not really identifying clock hours. We're actually at the same horizontal plane, the clock that's superimposed on the pelvis. So now we're going to be going in through the axes that goes through the pelvis on this plane and this is the axes in which we create these sagittal motion of the spine, which is extension, inflection of the spine.

And again, we're going to use the tailbone as the way of initiating the leverage. But again, remember what we talked about is action reaction. So as Margaret Arcs or tailbone downward towards the table, we should see a rising of her asi es is moving up towards the ceiling, so do that. And again, we should see the converse. So as she moves into flection of her spine or leveraged their tailbone up towards the ceiling or Asi says should drop down towards the floor with cycle through that. One more time.

Again, [inaudible] the agonists leverage is to tell them moving down into the floor, creating extension of the spine and you should see a converse reaction of the Asi is rising up towards the ceiling or the top of the o attic crest. And we move into fluxion of the spine. As the tailbone lifts up, the top of the [inaudible] should move downward and back to neutral. Okay, so this the, this is the clock hours of six and 12 we'll define six as the extension of the spine or the leverage where we have the tailbone moving down into the floor. But again we're thinking of also the Asi s is or the top Eola crest moving up towards the ceiling. Okay.

And as we go into 12 that's still leverage of when the tailbone lifts away from the floor and the ILIAC crest drop down into the floor and come back to neutral.

Chapter 5

Rotation of the Pelvis

So now we're going to present the axes for rotation. Rotation is working too, the clock hours of three and nine. That axes is this axes. And again, we began, we still wanted to find the action reaction of the spine were or the pelvis. So as we generate rotation, we want to think one side of the pelvis moving up towards the ceiling of the opposite side of the pelvis. Moving down towards the floor.

We want to see the the whole pelvis on either side, taking that leverage so that there's no other planar motion to the spine. Through that axes, we're going to be going through what is known as rotation of the pelvis and we're going to define that as the where the front of the pelvis is going to be facing. So first I'm going to have Margaret turn her pelvis to the left. You mean the front of the pelvis? Faces left and through that leverage, as she turns the front of her pelvis to face left, she's gaining space on the right side of her spine, meaning the fossette joints are gapping. Conversely, on the left side of the spine, the facet joints are closing.

Now she'll come back to neutral. So now we're going to have Margaret turn her pelvis to turn right the front of her pelvis facing right. So the left side of your pelvis lifts up towards the ceiling or right side of the pelvis drops down into the floor is very important that you have equalness to that leverage of dropping down, lifting up. That's the way you'll create the axial motion and through this turn of her pelvis, she's again, she's creating space as a facet joints on the left side for spine closing down the space of the set joints on the right side of the spine and the transverse plane and back to neutral. Now this motion is not only a motion of the spine, but it's also a motion of the pelvis relative to the femoral heads.

So if we want to contain the motion primarily to the trunk, even though we will get some hip motion leveraged to generate that intention, I can cue Margaret Ware as she turns the front of her pelvis to face, right, that she maintains weight on the outside of her left foot, the inside of a right as she generates that leverage. So now we've demonstrated the rotation of the pelvis. I want to backtrack a little bit because since we're rotating from the bottom up and our intentions motherly in the lumbar spine, we don't have that much roast dictation in the lumbar spine, there's only eight to 10 degrees of freedom. So we want to respect that because otherwise we're not containing the rotation in the lumbar spine. We're moving further up the spine. I mean, that could be our intention, but it's not our intention within this model. So now we're gonna revisit the rotation, but now we're going to look at what that really means as far as parameter of range of motion. So again, we're going to have Margaret Turner Pelvis to face left, and when she does that, she's going to pay attention. When she faces left, she keeps weight on the inside of her left foot weight on the outside of her right foot. Again, she's going into the clock hour of three, coming back to neutral. And again, as she moves towards nine, she keeping weight on the inside or right foot outside of her left and she's also containing the range so it's not excessive and back to neutral. Again, I can't over reiterate the importance that when you're creating a rotary motion around these axes, it's very important that you have that action reaction phenomenon of the pelvis.

Chapter 6

Defining the Axes for the Oblique Clock

Okay. Now we're going to be defining the axes for the what I call the oblique clock hours. And again, those are the clock hours of [inaudible] seven and eight, four and five, 10 and 11 and one and two. So for working with the clock hours of four and five and 10 and 11, the axes is going to go through the body this way and again we want to see again the action reaction. So as we add weight to the left side of the bottom of the pelvis, the top of the right side of the pelvis is going to lift up and conversely you'll have the opposite happening when you're working with the clock hours ad, um, seven and eight and one and two. Now the way we're going to cue these clock hours is we're going to be, this is a tri planar motion, so it incorrect encompasses three planes of motion and it's both rotary, it's coronal and sagittal.

Remember the sagittal plane is the fluxion extension component. The coronal motion is the side bending and the transverse plane is the rotation. And each one of those clock hours we just defined out has the tri planar built into that, those hours. So now as we go into the clock, hour of Seven and eight, I'm first going to give Margaret the command of arking, her tailbone to the left. So that's the coronal plane. And again, remember the axes for the coronal plane is here. Now we're going to go into the rotary component or the axes here.

Where are we going to have her turn her pelvis to face, right the front of her pelvis. So the left side of her pelvis lifts up the right of repel VUS drops down. Then the other axes or the axes for the sagittal component, which is here, is we're going to have her weight, her tailbone on the right side. That's the clock hour of seven and eight. Now if we go into the clock, hour of one and two, she's gonna come back to neutral.

She's going to arch your tailbone to the right. And again, we're going to pause there. So if we Arker tailbone to the right, the uh right side of the pelvis is lifting up the left side of her pelvis is dropping down and then from there she's going to turn the front of her pelvis. The face left, so the right side rear pelvis is lifting up towards the ceiling, less cyber pelvises dropping down and then she's going to leverage the right side of her tailbone up towards the ceiling. And there we're going to just define the clock hour of one and two and come back to neutral. Now we're going to operate on the other axes or the axes for the clock hour of four and five and 10 and 11 and that axes goes through here. Again, we're first going to go in through the coronal plane where we're going to arc the tailbone to the right.

The front of her pelvis is going to face left and then she's going to wait the left side of her tailbone into the floor and back to neutral. And then as we go into the clock hour of 10 and 11 she's going to arc her tailbone to the left. The Front of repel was it's going to face right and she's going to put her attention to the left side of her tailbone, lifting up towards the ceiling as she goes into the clock, hour 10 and 11 and back to neutral [inaudible]. The whole purpose of using the clock model is as we go through the different clock hours, it helps us identify what the facet joints and the lumbar spine are capable of doing and not doing. And this is very important because all these different clock hours are necessary for functional motions like walking or gait or even, uh, identifying some of the official sitting positions we get in when we are at our desk stations and we're mousing, we tend to favor different clock hours.

So hopefully this will help identify some of those biases. So we can cross train some of the, um, functional environments that we're operating in for many hours.

Chapter 7

Monitoring the Rib Cage

Okay. Now when we're working with the, um, the coronal motion or side bending of the spine and we're working through this axes, remember this axes, the axes going through her body at the s two segment. Okay. And we're thinking of that action reaction.

So if I cue Margaret to rudder her tailbone to the right, we should have a reaction of her top of her pelvis moving left and come back to neutral. But W we also want to monitor that there might be a little sneakiness through the body that instead of the top of the ILIAC crest moving left or it might be moving less, but also there might be another component or one of the ribs [inaudible] at the different segments of the thoracic spine moving left along with that. And we want to localize the leverage in the lumbar spine. We do not want the thoracic spine to take on that reaction to the tailbone rhetoric. So now if we ride or the tailbone to the right, we want to monitor that the rib stay quiet, they don't translate left and back. And we can do that at different regions.

Oh, the reds. And then conversely, if we read her the tailbone to the left, we want to monitor that the ribs don't translate right. And again, as the person who's going through this leverage, I can have market place her own hand down at the lowest rib or rib 12 placing the heel of her hand on the lateral side of her rib cage. Not to push or to stabilize, but just to monitor. So then when she rudders her tailbone to the right, those ribs stay quiet.

They don't translate left and back. Then she said, move her hand a little higher up to come to another region of the rib cage, and again, she's going to read her right, making sure her ribs stay quiet again, her hand is strictly a listening hand. It's not pushing or stabilizing. It's listening so she can understand if there's any compromise to her thoracic spine or a leverage that we don't want to occur. Now, as she places her hand on the right side of the rib cage and she rudders or tailbone to the left again, we want to see the top of her iliac crest move right as she, renters or telephones left and her ribs stay quiet and back. Come up a little higher. Again, the hands strictly a listening hand ready or tailbone left and back to neutral. So when we go into the oblique clock hours, we want to create this same type of monitoring through the rib cage at three different regions, three different pal patients. This as a listening hand to make sure that the ribs are not doing that reaction leverage, but it's mainly the top of the pelvis is doing the reaction.

Okay. Now we're going to come up to a seated sitting posture to look at the integrity of the orientation of the pelvis. Therefore, the orientation of lumbar spine.

Chapter 8

Interspinous Space

So here we are in a seat environment. I have Margaret sitting, I have her legs in a comfortable position, so as her hips are not too flexed or extended that she can rest with the ease of placing your pelvis on this, uh, support. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna place my thumb right at the interspace between the l five and a swan and to see whether my, I can actually go into that space. Now if Margaret worked or slump, propel us back a little bit right there and that's not desirable. That means that she's in a relatively flex position or unstable position, lacking congruency of the fossette joints.

So I'm going to have her go back to what she felt comfortable and there I can still have my thumb go into the interspace and I can actually push forward or generate a back the front pressure or a PA pressure. And there's a spring as ideally what you want. Now I'm gonna bring my thumb up to the segment above or between four and three and do the same thing and there's a spring and then go up above between three and two. So that's one thing we want to look at. Posturally again, we're looking at that again through the axes. It goes horizontally through her body creating that sagittal component of fluxion extension.

But the other planar motion we want to look at is what sitting bone is she sitting on or she sitting on the sitting bones evenly. So I'm going to, she's going to be passive and I'm this going to add a little more shift to one sitting bone and the other and seeing how her body adapts to that. And ideally, um, you would like to see evenness where there's ease. They're going from one sitting bone to the other. And also as you're assessing that, you also want to look for the rib cage at the rib cage is not generating that weight bearing position on the sitting bone, but it's happening through the leverage of the pelvis and creating the, um, weight bearing on one sitting bone or the other. Okay. Now we're gonna, um, have it, we're going to have Margaret user, oh motor control of the create the same leverage.

It's the same levers we saw on the Lazy Susan where she's going to have the leverage of arching your tailbone for one direction or the other. And then we're gonna have the converse shift of the top of the pelvis moving from left to right or right to left and the ribs stay quiet. So I'm gonna place my hands on her ribs just to give her feedback, not to use that as a component of the leverage as I give her the command of creating more weight on her left sitting bone or arguing your tailbone right and back to neutral and then arching your tailbone left and back to neutral. And as a practitioner, it gives you feedback of what you need to pay attention to later on as far as what her biases. Again, shift her weight to your less sitting bone or your tailbone. Right. Otherwise thank you. And back to neutral and arc.

Your tailbone left are placing more weight on your right sitting bone as you all right, clap and back to neutral.

Chapter 9

Single Leg Stretch

So here we're revisiting the environment where we're having Margaret lie on the Lazy Susan. They can replacement on the Lazy Susan as far as her pelvis relative to this is we're putting her, um, functional access or that axis that goes through her pelvis on the same horizontal plane is the s two segment is this axis. And we're sh we show how coronal motion of our pelvis, therefore coronal motion of her spine, therefore side bending of the spine. And again, I just want to revisit that. When she arcs her tailbone to the left, her top of repel with is moving right.

And the converse, when she arched her tailbone to the right, the top of your pelvis is moving left. Now we've set up that observation. We're going to have her go into the movement of single leg stretch and her goal was can I try to maintain the tailbone position so that it's staying still as she alternates from one leg to the other. Cycle through that one more time and then coming out of that position. So now we're going to set up a case where we're going to actually animate an asymmetry so that typically the side that you're bringing the knee towards your chest to tell bone will want to arch if you have enough stability to that direction. So for a left knee, he's coming towards your chest, her tailbone will arc right, arc left. Excuse me.

Okay, good. Then come out of that position. So we know that the arking left when she brings her left knee towards your chest. Uh, that could be a clock hour of seven and eight or 10 or 11, depending on whether she's flexed or extended within that sagittal plane. So in this case where we saw when Margaret brought her lefty to her chest and she arched her tailbone to the left and she translated her pelvis top of her pelvis to the right. This indicated issue is creating a sigh flection leftover lumbar spine and therefore she was losing the congruency of her for set joints on the right side of his resting position. So the corrective, uh, I would put her attention to is that she would think the converse or were thinking of the tailbone arcane to the right pelvis, translating left, taking that as a primary focus that would help her fire up the synergistic muscles that necessary to maintain the pelvis still. So she's maximizing the degree of freedom of flection of her left hip, not moving up to the spine.

So now we're going to take away the Lazy Susan and put her in the environment of a normal mat table to see whether she can transpose what she learned from the Lazy Susan as far as that axial motion that we saw through the sagittal plane, creating the side bending of the spine and see whether kinesthetically this had an effect. So now we've removed the disc and the platform. We have her on a paid environment of just a flat mat. So we're going to do as a preface before she goes back into the single leg stretch, she's going to place her hand on the left side of her pelvis at the top of the erotic crest. And then she's going to arc her tailbone to the right and feel that translation of her pelvis into her hand. Just a small sense of it. Then from there, she's going to slowly start her single leg stretch by bringing her right knee or left knee towards her chest, extend her right leg, keeping that stability, and then actually going into the dynamics of the exercise.

Good. And coming back down to a resting position. Okay,

Chapter 10

Single Leg Circle

so now we're going to go into the movement of single legs circle. Single leg circle is an environment where we have a lot of perturbation in the transverse plane, meaning her pelvis is going to be challenged on it's facing of the pelvis, whether it faces right or left, where it stays central facing the ceiling and the axis as we discussed earlier is this axis. And so if she turns her pelvis to face, right, that's right, facing of the pelvis as she turns her pelvis to face left this left facing pelvis and back. So if we go into the open leg circle where she's using her right leg at peds, a lot of the man on her maintaining or pelvis from not going into a rife facing pelvis. How reversing.

Good now the other side now reversing good and coming down. And then exercise. You saw a lot of demand of the pelvis maintaining is facing towards the ceiling and again if her pelvis faces right, that is compromise of the left set joints not maintaining congruent. C as for pelvis faces left as compromise of the right facet joints, not maintaining their congruency. Now what clock hours could we go into that would arouse that support so that she would have more stability as she went into the exercise. So she kept the intention more in the hip joint. Well, if we go into the clock hour of four and five, and again, the way we are going to sequence says that we're going to arc the tailbone to the right, turn the pelvis, the face left and wait to tell bone.

That's four and five. But we're going to remove that one plane and that's waiting the tailbone, that sagittal component, we're gonna bring our tailbone back to a neutral position and we're gonna maintain that four and five positioning without the third plane or that plane of waiting, the tailbone, the sagittal plane as we go into the open leg circle with her right leg. Now reverse it. Good. And coming back to our rescue musician. And of course we can then transpose that where if we lose her left leg, she would go to the seven and eight hour without going into the third plane or the Satchel component where she's maintaining a neutral Pavela pelvis where it's neither flex nor extended, but she's moving towards that clock hour where she's arguing the tailbone to the left or again, if she's arguing to tell bone to the left of top of the pelvis shifts, right?

And then she goes into a right facing pelvis as a start position so that it can arouse or rev the nervous system to gain that support as she goes into that perturbation of that leg swing or the torque.

Chapter 11

Plank Bridge

So here we're going to go into the movement, what I would call the plank bridge, where we're not going into an articular bridge where we're maintaining a plank position of the pelvis and spine. So it stays neutral as you articulate the hips and knees and ankles to create the height of the pelvis. And basically what we're going to look at first is just the path of the pelvis and talk about the path and what that means as far as um, what muscles or what joint is the primary driver of the leverage, so we're going to have Margaret go into the plank bridge watching the path of the pelvis and as we're doing this, we're extending the knee, we're extending the hip and come down, but we're also looking at as we're looking at where the weight is on the feet, because if the weight goes into the heels and the path of the pelvis moves towards the shoulders, that's going to be an indication that the leverage is primarily happening through the knee as the primary driver. The hip is the secondary driver, so we're going to see that task that's going to keep the four foot down great, perfect and down again. We're going to see which of those two joints as the primary driver. We're watching the path of the pelvis as she were animating the path of the pelvis where she's driving the leverage through the heels and she's taken the path of the pelvis towards her shoulders and that would be indicative of the knee as being the primary driver of the leverage.

Now we're going to animate where she's weight's going to be more towards her forefoot or towards the front of the foot as she takes the path of her pelvis towards her toes. Again, the whole time she's maintaining a neutral pelvis neutral spinal position or what I call a plank bridge. And we'll have you do that one more time. Again, the animation is she's going to bring the weight forward towards her forefoot. Her Palace is going to take the path towards her toes as she bridges upward. The reason why I was demonstrating these two animated versions is to said, I, I want your intention to be clear of what you're trying to, uh, convey with your client as far as, uh, strengthening and leverage. So again, just to, uh, rewind, if we're pressing through the heels and the pelvis is moving towards the shoulders, that's making the knee joint or the quadricep more, the primary driver along with the hips, there's, you're not separating the two, but there's this one's more primary.

And again, if you direct the attention more towards the forefoot as the palace translates towards the toes, the hip muscles are more the primary driver in the knees, secondary driver or the quadriceps.

Chapter 12

Swan Prep

Yeah. So here we're in the environment where you have the Margaret facedown or what's known as prone position to to perform the, um, movement of a swan prep. And we really want the [inaudible] prep to take the extension number, that sagittal motion, the axes is here, and we really want to take that swan prep all the way down to the l five s one juncture. So we're going to have Margaret press up to see where she thinks that extension should finalize.

And what I wanna do is I'm gonna place my thumb, not like, oh, I did in seated where I can actually feel the spinus process of five kissing the base of the sacrum and then coming down, I'm going to have her perform the task again and I'm going to give her the instructions of maintaining or the front of her pelvis on the, uh, platform as she presses up. So we're keeping indirectly the sacred still. We reassess by putting my thumb there. Now she's there. And the important thing here is people tend to avoid this extension this far down because what has happened as market comes down is that if the tailbone were to be arch to the right, so we're gonna animate that just a little bit to the right. Okay? Right there. If we do that, that's going to put the fossette joints on the left side at a disadvantage and it's not going to line up and there's gonna be a graded feeling. So she's going to avoid that.

Now she arcs to tailbone to the other direction or to the left. The converse is going to happen. It's going to pit the facet joints on the right side in a very compromised position, and it's going to feel uncomfortable. So ideally you want your tailbone or your rudder central or neutral. Therefore, the s one, the sets are in a neutral position for five to glide down onto as she presses up.

But I must indicate that this a is not desirable for the population that has any anterior law thesis or stenotic changes at those levels of three, four, four, five, five as one this has done for repopulation population, it does not have that profile. So now we're going to demonstrate or animate a case study. So we're going to have Margaret press up going down to where she's creating extension of four five five s one then I'm going to palpation the thickness of the soft tissue from both sides of the spine. And let's say I feel less thickness on the right side of her spine. That's gonna be a possibility that she could possibly have here. Telephone arc to the left and her policy is translated right, creating side flection left of the spine or lack of congruence assay of the fossette joints on the right side.

So my corrective would be I would have her arch her tailbone to the right and I'll put pressure on the lateral side of the left side of her hip that she has that action reaction as she presses up so that I can arouse or per debate the system so that the soft tissue on the right side of her spine or they can ruin any of the facet joints of the right side of the spine will be resolved and back down. So now we're going to move to the environment of the movement of the soul within the plot of repertory a. This will be a great indicator to see how well her spine can move into the clock hours of both one and two and 10 and 11.

Chapter 13

Saw

Here we have a Margaret in the environment where we're going to be doing the a plot [inaudible] repertory known as the Saul. And assault is a, has a huge demand where we're creating a side flection with flection of the spine. So we have the side flection, which is that coronal plane motion. We also have fluxion of the spine, you know, which is that sagittal plane motion.

So here we are going to have Margaret Prep herself in the start position for the Saul and she's gonna Sol, her left leg. So she's going to go into a left rotation as she solves her left leg. And we're going to observe how that side bending fluxion is graded through her spine. No, she's going to go to the right or Sol, her right leg. And before we go into the next round of repetitions, we are going to put her attention into the foundation, which is again the rendering of the tailbone. So we really want to maintain the, um, pelvic stability so that she's really getting fossette motion in her lower lumbar. So we're going to have, we're going to have her arc or telephone to the left, but along with that, again, at the top of the crest of the pelvis are just translating. Right.

She's going to set that as a foundation as she goes into this movement. Demand. Yeah. Before she saws her right leg, she's going to arch your tail bone to the right or translator pelvis to the left. The top of her pelvis. Yeah. She solves her right leg. And that will change the whole synergistic or motor control to the leverage and arms can come down. Again. This motion was not unlike what I had done previous when we are in the seated position where we had Margaret slump and veer to one sitting bone and then to the other.

It's the clock hours of both 10 and 11 and one and two. So through the repetitions and through Margaret self-report, she said that she had trouble solving her left leg and maintaining the foundation or the foundation of keeping her right sitting bone on the table. So what we're gonna do is we're going to set up now like we did in a seated, is we're going to take the magic circle. I'm going to hand this to her on the right side cause she's going to place the magic circle on the top. Everybody had a crest on the right side so that when she arcs to tell bone to the left, she's going to have that reaction of the crest moving into the magic circle and back. And again, she's going to do this with minimal ribcage shift.

So it's strictly going to be the motion of the pelvis on the spine and not the ribcage shifting right to mean to create that right sitting bone foundation. Say she's going to learn how to disassociate the thorax from the pelvis as she elicits this leverage of arguing the tailbone to the left or shifting the top of their pelvis to the right to create that rotary component. She's going to do that three to five times. Again, really paying attention to the ribs are not shifting right as she creates that weight bearing position on her right sitting bone. Good.

And then I'll take the magic circle and she'll perform the task on that side to see whether that changed the leverage or the dynamics, how she performed the skill. And again, you can do this to the other side with the same type of sequencing.

Chapter 14

Pinwheel

So I want to do one more man exercise and this exercise is going to be called the pinwheel. And what is going to demonstrate is going to demonstrate a rotation from the top down and showing how if we don't pay attention, we can be compromising the rotary stability of the lumbar spine. A.

Here we have Margaret in a sideline position and we have our head supported so that her several spines on compromises, we're performing this task and what we're going to do and what the intention of this exercise is to show how we have to pay attention as we're generating rotation through a very heavy torque with lever the arm that we're not compromising the lumbar spine. This exercise is commonly known as the Pinwheel, but I'm sure you've heard other names, but first we're just going to have Margaret perform it without threatening any type of um, direction beyond that. As she lifts her arm up towards the ceiling, she's going to rotate her spine and watch which degrees of freedom of response is actually performing the task. Do this three times on one side. And ideally what you want to see is you want to see a sequential illness where she's rotating from the top down.

And also that she's really not starting the rotation by changing her position of her chest. So much as she's using the arm as the lead of the leverage because if she were to turn her chest to generate the leverage of the rotation. So we're going to animate that. We're immediately creating a lot of rotation in the lumbar spine and not creating any rotation within the thoracic spine. As we said earlier, that the architecture of the facet joints is not designed to promote rotation. So we will create a shearing force in the lumbar spine when we, our intention should really be in the thoracic spine. So then we're going to revisit nae animating with that intention.

But she's gonna lift her arm up towards the ceiling, let the weight of her arm change the chest position sequentially and also don't rotate as far cause it's very important not to bring the torque down in the lumbar spine because as I indicated, that will create a shearing and compromise the integrity of the profile. The disc. Now we're going to perform this on the other side. Again, CSUN performed the leverage of lifting her right arm up towards the ceiling, generating the right rotation, seeing the sequential illness, other rotation. But again, I don't want to over reiterate but it's very important that the leverage happens through the more peripherally through the hand and not through the chest. Turning is facing too soon cause I will create a huge rotary or demand on the lumbar spine and compromise the integrity of the transverse plane of that region of the spine. Okay.

Now we're going to go into a corrective mode and the way going to do this is we're going to actually incorporate the model of of what on both Diane Lee and Linda Joy Lee if had been integrating, but this actually goes back to my experience and probably several other senior practitioners experience of working with the master politics trainer, Eve Gentry, and she had this technique called imprinting into the table and in order to create right rotation, you have to translate your ribs to the left to generate that leverage. So what I'm going to ask Margaret to do is I want her to have this sensation that she's feeling contact of the ribs on the left side of a rib cage, sequentially moving from top to down as she goes into that leverage into the table. Again, in order to rotate the thorax to the right, it couples with what is known as side flection, right? In order to have site selection, right, you need translation left of the rib cage. So she's going to feel her ribs, each of the ribs, the top ribs, the middle ribs, the lower ribs sequentially move into the contact of the table to generate that rotation.

So now as you can see where observing there's a sequential illness, her chest is not immediately turning to face, right or creating a lot of excessive lumbar rotation to the right. And a lumbar is actually relatively quiet as she almost reaches the same end field of the leverage of the hand as she opens up into this pinwheel task. Again, not to over reiterate, we do not wanna over generate rotational demand. The lumbar spine, cause this is what we have a problem with. This is where pathology sets in and we want to be able to cross train and this is the way we're going to cross train or generate more lumbar stability is by Drake generating more thoracic mobility.

Chapter 15

Clock Hours 1-2 and 10-11

So, uh, here we have Margaret in the seated position.

Now we're going to perform the a task. We're going to be going into the clock hours of both 10 and 11, and one and two. Now remember when we go into the clock hours one and two the tailbone is going to be parking to the right, providing more weight on the left, sitting bone, less weight on the on the right seam and getting that action reaction phenomenon along as she, she's going into that sagittal component of fluxion of the spine, so I'm going to add a little bit of pressure downward to direct her as she slowly slumps back with her pelvis, but veers towards her left hip and coming back up to neutral and now we'll do the converse. We'll do the other side or go to the clock. Hours of 10 and 11 with your tailbone. Arking left to the right. Sitting bone is having more weight to lifting. Gluons having less and coming back to neutral, so let's revisit that.

Now we're going to go into the clock hours of one and two so she could be arguing the telephone to the right. Now I'm going to give her the cue that she's going to generate that leverage, not by shifting her rib cage but shifting the top of her pelvis to the left as she arcs her tailbone to the right as she provides weight into that left sitting bone different and coming back to neutral. That will do the converse or she's an Arctic tailbone to the left or shift the top of her pelvis to the right, not a ribcage. That was beautiful and coming back to neutral. Very familiar on this side. So let's revisit the other side. We're going into the clock hours of one and two, but really pay attention and know not the rib cage creating the left shift but at the top of the pelvis and it's your architect bone, right? Excellent.

And coming back up to neutral. Okay, so now we're going to work with the situation where the clock hours of one and two are hard for the person to do or actually unable to develop the motor controls to create that intention. The intention with the one and two is the arc of the tailbone is going to be going to the right. The pelvis is going to be going to the left, the top of the pelvis, so how can we influence that without having a second party involved? We're going to use the prop of the magic circle and place it on the top of the alley. Chris Marker's can place her hand on the other handle. She's going to add a little compression causing that right to left translation. That needs to happen as their telephone moves opposite or moves from left to right as she generates the slump and arguing at the tailbone to the right, placing more weight on her left sitting bone, lightening the weight on her right sitting bone, and then she comes back up right?

She's going a little more compression so she has to work against a resistance to come back up to neutral. This time we're going to make the motion a little smaller. He can. We want to really watch it. The ribs are not translating left, but it's the top of the pelvis translating left as the tailbone is translating to the right to create that rotary motion around that access is going through the sagittal plane and back to neutral. So again, you can transpose this to the other side, but you can see how a secondary prop can help assist the person to develop the motor control. Here we have Margaret in the environment of the uh,

Chapter 16

Side Bending on the Cadillac

trap table. We have the swing bar loaded with one spring from above. She's pulled the bar down initially so that, uh, if perturbing the system, meaning that, uh, as the swing bar where to release towards her, it's gonna translate a rib cage to the right relative to the pelvis and come back. And if she were to take that translation to a further degree, it would, uh, challenge the stability of her maintaining the weight of her left sitting bone on the table and come back to neutral.

So as she allows the bar to translator to the right first starting at the rib cage and then as her sitting bone. Do you remember that axis going through the sagittal plane through the [inaudible] segment. Now she's creating a full c curve or a c a side bending to the left of the entire spine. Now, if she were to maintain her thorax where it is, and then she thought of reducing your tailbone to the right as she directed her left sitting bone down into the table. So as she writers her tailbone to the right, she's sending the top of her left ilium towards the left to create that again, that force couple, the tailbone and the top of the pelvis moving in opposite directions to create that rotary motion. So we're gonna do that one more time. So she's gonna allow the bar to translate a rib cage to the right.

Then allow the pelvis to be a component of that. Therefor her lumbar spine, a component of it. Now she has a full side flection left from the lumbar spine up to the upper thoracic spine, but now we're going to reverse the side flection of the spine or come back to a a relatively more neutral position by having a rudder or tailbone to the right move the top of her pelvis to the left to create that rotary motion. And that's pitting alive the man on the soft tissue, on the rice cyber spine to create that [inaudible] tension. So now we have Margaret in the same environment, but our intention is going to change. Now she's not going to allow the bar to move because we want to localize our side flection only in the spine through the reitering of the pelvis. Again, the rhetoric you're talking about is we're going to arc the tailbone to the left as she moves the right side of your pelvis to the right turn, the front of the pelvis to face right now, here's the last component, which is a sagittal component, meaning the extension part of it, but we have to be very careful. This extension is localized.

So I'm gonna really be careful with my cuing that is going to be small methodic and slow where she's going to arc the tailbone behind her as she brings the top of her pelvis forward, creating the extension component to finalize the clock hour of seven and eight. Now she's going to maintain that clock hour as she translates her rib cage, her lowest rib cage to the left, not allowing that clock higher hour to be compromised. So it's putting more demand on her paraspinals on the, that side of her spine, the left side of her spine to maintain that clock hour position. And then coming back to neutral with your pelvis. The whole intention there was, we arouse the musculature on the left side of her spine from l three down to s one and we were creating maximum can grand Muncie or closed pack possession of the fossette joints.

And that's what's necessary when she does open leg circle with her right leg, which um, if it were to go with the path of resistance, her pelvis, we rotate to the right and then she would lose congruency or uh, the uh, contact of the fossette joints on the left side. Yeah, I said it'd be a set up so like you can say, oh, keep that left hip down or you're holding it and you can't get him to do it or anything. You do this as just like revs it up, revisit it and then boom, I was there cause she felt like that was a lot of work but it got her brain totally turned on. So I'm sure if we did open leg circles right down on the right side, she goes, oh, I know how to stabilize that. So now we have the environment similar that we had before, but our intention is going to change. Now we're going to um, maintainer sitting bones equal and uh, contact with a table and see how far she can translate her thoracic spine in that diagonal length of right armpit to left hip, getting that nice sequential c curve through the spine of the thoracic region. Then she's going to, but she's gonna maintain her left hip in contact with the table, and then she's going to slowly turn her chest to face left as she goes into left rotation. But as she does that, she's also going to feel her ribs backing up at a diagonal towards me, but bleakly as she turns good and now she's gonna maintain that turn position, that translation as she slowly pushes the bar more to the left.

So you're going to keep the turn position of your thorax and then you're gonna slowly side then to the left. Then from there we're going to add a little bit more left rotation. But as she does that, she's also going to translate more obliquely back and to the right. And as you can see fascially she's really expanding through the mid to upper thoracic, opening up the ribs here necessary for left rotation. And then from there she's going to unwind or rewind out of that sequencing and come back to neutral again.

What our intention is to restore more thoracic mobility, especially in that mid to upper thoracic. So that in turn, as we generate more mobility through the thoracic spine and the transfers plane or rotation, we create transfer plane or rotational stability in the lumbar spine. So the whole intention of performing this task, which is very demanding, is to really ah, arouse the brain to be very attentive of how they're rotating. And this can apply in the context when you rotate to look back in the back seat of your car. That's where we really get injured sometimes because we only rotate one way and uh, that asymmetrical functional motion, uh, can create havoc.

Chapter 17

Parakeet

So now we've got the environment of the trap table with her feet on the swing bar. Again, we're still spring-loaded from the top with one red. Uh, we're in the, uh, the movement which I've been heard is called the parakeet.

I don't know whether people call it, but, um, basically we're gonna use this to, um, kind of have a continuation of what we were doing with the open leg stretch, single leg stretch. And what we're gonna have Margaret too, is we're gonna have her do a neutral bridge where she's gonna maintain her pelvis and spine in neutral. So we'll be more like a plank as she bilaterally extends both hips for near Pelvis up to a neutral hip position. And here's where the demand is going to be. So now as she removes her right foot, she has to pay attention to the facing of the pelvis that it maintains facing the ceiling. So it's not facing right with that leverage, you're taking the right foot off and the converse of the pelvis is facing straight ahead or not facing left as she takes the left at all and coming down. But the other thing we were talking about within the open legs on the single leg stretch is also the rendering of the tailbone or the coronal plane deviation.

So we want to be able to work through that. So the typical compensation is a, she removes her rife foot off the bar when she's in that neutral British position is the tailbone is going to want to arc, right? So we want her to think of it. King left first with a left facing pelvis before she moves to the right foot. So she has relatively still pelvic position, therefore a neutral lumbar position.

And then she's going to think of her tailbone arking right with our right facing pelvis as she removes her left foot and back. Good. And again, w anytime we're coaching the coronal motion, arguing the telephone, we want to look above the ribs to make sure that they're not translating. Because remember as you arc the tailbone to the right, the top of the pelvis should translate left and we don't want to see the next degrees of freedom or the ribs translating left with that demand. So let's cycle through that one more time, taking that observation so you can't, as she bridges upward, she's preaching up in a neutral position and she's going to preset that tailbone to arc left with the left facing pelvis. But again, she's not gonna allow her ribs to translate right as she removes her right foot and coming down. And we'll do that one more time. Setting up the mirror image of that leverage.

Yeah. And the preset, we're going to arc the tailbone, right? So the top of the public is going to translate less. There were no pay attention to the ribs. Don't translate left as she removes her left foot. Keeping that left right facing pelvis.

Okay. And coming down. So this is where we're transposing what we've done previous with the clock hours in directing the motor control through the rostering of the tailbone and whether they arguing in the tailbone, but also paying attention to thoracic stability while she generates lumbar stability.

Chapter 18

Going Up Front

So here she's in a position not unlike the um, single leg stretch where her left knee is coming towards her chest as she's extending her right leg when she was in supine and our previous movement. So now what we want to protect though is our lumbar, because if she were to take the path of least resistance or tailbone would arc left, the top of her pelvis would translate right like that. So we want to give her the opposite queuing, arguing your tailbone to the right or the top of her pelvis translating left.

But again, it's the pelvis, not the ribcage. Creating that intention as she steps up. Yeah, she steps down or reaches back down to the assisted pedal. She's thinking that intention to telephone arking right top of the pelvis translating left. Beautiful correction. Margaret [inaudible], Ashley Rhodes, that left help again in the start position before she steps up. And as she stepping up, you want to have the attention that as she's stepping up, she wants to maintain the integrity of her lower thoracic, not extending forward. Cause I'd be indicative of her, uh, sending the primary leverage into the knee instead of the hip. And again, we want to also focus on the integrity of the coronal position of the pelvis or maintaining the pelvis and where the tailbones pointing straight down. It's not arguing left or right.

Say that the left hip joint can performance leverage with, um, it's total potential. So I hope you enjoyed this workshop. Um,

Chapter 19

Conclusion

it's just my first time to be in the cloud. So now you know who I am and, um, the reason why I chose this paradigm or this module of the, uh, the pelvic clock is because it's an integral part in my work that I've been doing for the last 20 years. And being in residence in mill valley, my private practice, um, I have found that, um, that restoring thoracic mobility is very crucial and restoring lumbar stability, especially in the transverse plane. Um, I think a lot of the times, um, when we're working on core, uh, trying to utilize that, we bind down the Fascia that prevents us from rotating in the thoracic spine, uh, because the, um, bracing the planks or however you want to put it, puts things in a very static sense. And that's how it now how we function in life. And we rotate a lot and we need to rotate as much in our thoracic spine because our thoracic spine is designed to take on that task and there's 12 segments to do it. So we need to really restore that. The lumbar spine is not designed for that as very limited degrees of freedom. There's all kinds of, um, parameters by say, you know, anywhere between eight to 10 degrees be amongst all five segments.

So anything beyond that is going to create instability and therefore create a shearing, a compromise of the profile, that desk. We want to think about that. And also when you create axial motion of, uh, any segmental level level, the segments approximate each other, they can press. So was another way of generating disc compression because segments as you actually rotate the, when you twist them, twist the Fascia, the second is come together. That's true of any joint. So we want to pay attention to that. So that's why a lot of our focus was in the coronal plane, in the sagittal plane, which the lumbar spine, the facet joints had the capacity, mainly sagittal.

But we did a little bit of coronal and that's where the clock hours really have their value. They start to restore the motor control, start to arouse the intrinsic musculature to gain support so that yes, it moves, but it should move primarily in the sagittal, a little bit in the criminal but not the transverse plane. And um, and also the clock hours, especially the oblique axes, the, the four five, seven and eight, 10, 11 one and two, those are all functional motions of the pelvis. Therefore a lumbar spine that we do in Gait and walking from stride to stride. So it's very important to restore that because walking is very much of what I call the spinal engine. That's how we generate our energy through our gate. It's not just through the extremities, is through the twisting and untwisting of the spine that generates that potential energy of striding through. So I hope, I hope you find this valuable. Uh, we started very pedantically going through the clock hours, really defining of what the FA sets are doing. Um, and again, it was all designed to guide someone for motor control. It wasn't a defining any kind of muscular use, but we are developing synergistic pathways for those clock hours.

So therefore we are generating muscular strength. But I think, you know, it's really the motor control. It should be guided not by individual muscles firing statically. So I hope you enjoy this and thank you for the opportunity. Please anytime.