Happy Halloween! 👻 🎃
Please enjoy the video on pitching the head up and down. It should have most of the information that you need for today.
Why Did I Make This Video?!
Oftentimes when people come in for lessons, their neck is stiff and the full range of motion of the head on top of the neck doesn’t happen. Typically, this means that when someone looks down at their feet, they initiate the movement of looking down by ker-plopping their necks forward such that the head plops into dead weight.
Spoookyyyy 👻
On the flip side, when someone looks up towards the sky, they will typically NOT glide the skull backwards before pitching the head up. When this glide does not occur, you will probably get a lot of tension in the joints around the middle of the neck. This is also
Spoookyyyy 👻
In both cases, I would say that the timing of the movement will cause strain on the neck.
The Head Neck Joint Utilises a Fulcrum
In the video, you will see that I have drawn a green line with two dots on the skull. This line is teetering above the blue zone of the neck. I have drawn the skull in this way because the head will pitch with the greatest ease when these two green dots achieve balance over the blue dot.
The blue dot functions as the fulcrum for the green lever.
Looking Down
During a lesson, I will guide the student’s head through space very slowly. I’m looking to help the student with the timing of this teeter totter action so that the neck muscles can begin to free up. If the neck is stiff, pitching up will be significantly more challenging than pitching down.
In these cases, I tend to start a lesson with some quiet sitting and standing and very gradually and slowly explore that action of pitching down.
This is also why I like to use the game of rolling forward in the chair. When we roll forward in the chair, we have an opportunity to practice this pitching down before the rest of the spine moves to follow the head.
Looking Up
The real reason that I made today’s video is to demonstrate how the skull glides back before the head pitches up. This glide is absolutely critical for a free and easy feel to the neck. If you have a rushed / herky jerky movement up, the muscles that run from the base of the skull to the top of the spine will lock up and prevent the glide motion.
When these muscles lock up, you will feel a pinch of tension around the middle of your neck and it will HURT to look up.
Important Note! Once the head pitches up, the neck bones WILL move in support! If I can find the time to edit my drawings I will update the video accordingly!
So this begs the question, how the heck can you look up without jamming up your neck?
Remember my blog post titled, “How to Allow the Neck to Free”? You must have success with this exercise first. You must feel some sense of glacial melt in the top of the neck AND you must have a sense of the green lever/helicopter. If you have all of that happening, then you’ll likely have an easy-ish time of looking up IF you remember to actually look out for the Draculas1!
Please note that I did not animate the movement of the neck as the head pitches up even further2. You will want to feel every little bit of your neck moving someway / somehow to support the weight of the skull. It’s darn tricky and you’ll want to have your helicopter flying the entire time.
By this I mean I want you to see what is happening in the room. I do not want you going into zombie mode and focus all of your thoughts on feeling the neck. Try to keep a balance between seeing and your sense of feeling!
like looking at the FULL MOON 🌕
How to Pitch the Head