If you haven’t watched my recent Tedx talk I suggest you watch it before reading the follow up.

There was a plan behind the talk.

The goal was to get as many people as possible to find themselves standing in the central balanced position by the end of it, whether they knew it or not.

Not everyone would get there.

That was obvious from the outset but I hoped everyone would at least find out some things about the way they used their body that they hadn’t noticed before.

That in itself would be success.

I follow this process with people often but truly didn’t know how it would go with a thousand cold start people at once. But the audience were wonderful and took it on full throttle and had fun. I think they were all ready for a bit of a stretch.

There are three key things that are always required to get someone out of their normal pattern and into the central balanced position.

These things are 1. Trunk Stability.  2. Pelvic balance and 3.  Balanced Base of Support.

I like to find these three key things in this order, which isn’t how they were discovered in the talk but we got there in the end.

Number 1. ‘Hallelujah’  –  Trunk stability is the muscular connection from above you hip joints to below your neck and inside your shoulder joints, your body, not just the core stability of your belly.

Trunk  stability is most affected by the amount of misalignment you have between your pelvis and your shoulders. Correction of this misalignment, which occurs in at least three directions at once, is beyond one single instruction so initially we use the most significant change available – Latissimus Dorsi muscle balancing.

Lat. Dorsi – ‘Lats’, are a pair of triangular  muscles that sweep diagonally down your back. Their name means lateral and back. These muscles start from the top front of your arm just below the shoulder, run back under your arm and down to your low back, spreading out like wings as they get lower.

They  continue their diagonal action down through the connective tissue of your low back to work with the opposite buttock. Working together they are the cross brace of your trunk – but most people only use one.

We aim to find and use both.

If you have one shoulder that lifts up and one that stays low then you’ll need to turn your ‘up’ shoulders arm out so that the ‘pits’ of both your elbow faces forward. Think of pulling that ‘up’ shoulder back around your body and down a bit with your arm turned out and pit of elbow forward.

Engaging both lats is what the ‘Hallelujah’ exercise was all about, finding lat dorsi, especially the one you hadn’t been using. Lat Dorsi is called the global stabiliser for a reason.  It’s essential for trunk stability.

With a stable trunk you can move through your pelvis and over your legs and feet in a balanced way.

That’s the goal of step one.