3 Ways to Use the Wedge

This tutorial is different ways to use the wedge. So I've been in kind of my wedge era lately, where I've been using the wedge to discover different ways to move. The first way I'm gonna show you is a little bit, atypical, if you will. So I'm going to put the wedge down on the mat. My head's going to be at that end, and I hope you can see that the wedge is actually going downhill right here. So I'm gonna call this finding my anterior pelvic tilt. So as I take the my bottom on this wedge, I'm gonna I'm gonna maneuver it in such a way that kind of like I'm pouring if you will, my glute muscles or the cheeks of my bottom downward. What I am resisting is the urge to lift my chest. I'm resisting this.

If I just let it go, I would be kind of like that. So what I wanna do is I wanna feel the tone in my tummy, and I really, really want you to understand that if you drop your pelvis away that that's also a flexion moment at your hip. And all too often, I think the bodies are just driven by the spine going back and forth. But I want you to know that you can actually soften your hips and let your pubic bone drop down. And so that's a little more of a hip crease.

That's a little more of hip flexion. Then when I take a deep breath and expand, when I x tail, I can tone my tummy without moving, and then attract my heels to my bottom, and then add a little movement. And then as I release, I don't just let go, but I control the lengthening, letting go of my pelvic floor, letting it drip over. I'll hold my hand up here, so you can see. So I'm dripping it over the wedge.

And then when I exhale, I gently sink my belly. I tone the sides of my abdomen, and then I kinda turn my pelvis upward. It's just a smidge, but what I'm teaching my body is that my anterior tilt needs to be helped or assisted by my hips. Because this wedge is at the top part of my sacrum, that is giving my lumbar spine the extension force it needs so that I am getting deeply into the hip flexion part and then tilt my pelvis and come back. Okay. So go ahead and take that wedge out, and then let your bottom rest down. But in your brain, you're thinking I'm gonna let my tailbone fall over that wedge but I'm not gonna let my spine go with it. So I'm just allowing my spine to have its natural sip of air, I call it, or just a little cotton ball underneath the low back, just like there's a little piece under the neck.

And so now when I come back to this tiny little tip, it's actually even less in my spine and more in my hip. So doing that so so subtly helps to bring the hip awareness back into, how the pelvis works through that. So then when you come into something say, like a quadruped, and then you say, oh, remember when the wedge was there, and you let your tailbone come over the wedge. So so that you don't always feel like you're necessarily arching your back But you are indeed opening up the backside. So keeping the backside open and the hip joints open, is a really nice way to have access to the back of the hips.

And then since I just moved a quadruped, my other favorite way to use the wedge is here, so the angle of my hand goes down. And this is so that my wrist is not at such an acute angle because sometimes that bothers people's wrist. But I find that with over time, when people understand the shoulder connection to the wrist, they actually end up feeling better in their wrist. So again, having the wedge there pressing down into the wedge, having my fingers go down, it minimizes the angle. So it's not quite a right angle here. So that's a nice way, to use the wedge there.

The last way I like to use the wedge is underneath the heels. So when you put the wedge underneath the heels, and it lifts your heels up, and I usually put the balls of my feet down. My heels are underneath my hips roughly. I'm gonna put my hands in my hip joint And as I bend my knees and kind of squat this little squat position here, you'll see that the the sacral and my thoracic spine in my head. If you had a stick on my back, I hope they're roughly level. So whether I'm here and straight, or I bend my knees and start to flex my hip, even though, I'm going lower, the the the stick angle, if you will, is staying the same. So this allows me to keep my feet pressing down, and it allows me to go as deep into a squat that I can using the strength of my legs, maintaining the integrity of my spine so that in essence, a nice squat becomes a core engagement exercise itself, especially when you understand your spinal alignment.

So I'm gonna take it inhale at the top. And then as I exhale, I'm gonna go down to the distance that I can, and I'm gonna push the floor. Right? So I'm gonna go down to the distance I can. And then I'm gonna push the floor. So I'm not just gonna stand up, and you'll notice that my torso is not vertical.

My spine is in the same relative shape, front and back, It's my hips that are flexed, and that's what keeps the awareness in the spine. Then I'm going to do it in a pausing way. So I'm gonna go down. Pause, pause, press three times. Down, pause, pause, press.

What I want you to do in the pause is I want you to resist the urge to do this. Right? I need you to maintain the throat back, which maintains the trunk back, which stands you all the way up. So I hope you see the three things that I like to use the wedge for to get us connected to the body. The anterior pelvic tilt, the wrist position, and the squat. Thanks for joining me.