The Superficial Back Line – Our Postural Support

Karin Locher 2010

Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains www.anatomytrains.com has brought the myofascial (connective tissue) ‘network’ to our attention.  A fascial web that is interconnected through out the body so that a continuous tension network exists and functions, creating and operating the body as a biotensegrity structure rather than the common western ‘post and lintel’ model image we have been used to. This fascial web envelops, interconnects and communicates to the muscles, bones, joints, organs and more throughout the body. The Superficial Back Line (SBL) is one of the continuous myofascial lines within the fascial network.

The Superficial Back Line (SBL) runs from the very bottom of the foot, around the heel, up past the knee to your sitting bones; on past the sacrum, along the spine all the way to the occipital ridge, then over the top of your head to your frontal bone, wrapping over your head like a helmet. Quite literally connecting our toes to our eyebrows, it maintains the body’s extended position.

The SBL is our postural line, that which stops us falling down towards the floor. It supported us when we first stood up when we were ready to take our hands off the surface and stand alone; then in communication and connection to the other lines it aided our first perfect steps from behind; developing as the body started to walk as we fell and we fell again perhaps a hundred times only to stand up again, strengthening the connections to carry us forward.

The ‘downfall’ of the Superficial Back Line

The postural role of these slow twitch endurance muscles is all too often taken away and given to the chairs we sit on. When we stand up to walk away, we leave it inactively forgotten on the seat behind us. We walk off with our now ‘shortened from sitting’ Superficial Front Line (SFL), the muscles which run up the front of the body, in a ‘balance chaos’ to continue our day. With our standing support ‘line’ still sitting on the chair we left behind, the neuromuscular standing team need to be compensated and the body’s imbalances set up. The myofascia having obliged us in our seated position, is now set up to the tensional formation of our chair and we continue our day in a myofascial ‘seated’ postion.

The SBL is often not only just ‘lost’ to our seats, but often not of healthy ‘elasticity’ and often restricted in a ‘bundled’ and ‘traumatised’ state. When blocked or ‘clenched’ the fascia takes on a density, a bundling, a thickening, which strangles and inhibits both the muscle underneath and restricts the flow of connectivity and communication throughout the body. This results in the connections ‘short circuiting’ leaving vast areas disconnected and in time becomes amnesic, compressed and dysfunctional, a perfect breading ground for stagnation, dis-ease and decay. On standing this can result in a pull up or down the body, like having a helmet on your head with weights tied down to the floor at the back; resulting in  the military postures, spinal compressions, jammed pelvis’s, sacroiliac issues;  the tight or lost  hamstrings so often seen, sometimes already set up from the age of 6 when we start to sit for hours in school loosing the  postural upright ‘request’ to the body.

With specific neuromuscular application through placement awareness, touch, and movement an interconnection to and through the ‘stations’ of the SBL can be made and the lines of myofascia linking these stations can communicate again as a whole. With our full support ‘back there’ reconnected and restored, the inherent balance and support between the front and back of our body is re-established, and we can once again be in the body’s own balanced rhythm.

Evoking and renegotiating the SBL

By simply adjusting our centre of balance by adjusting our standing stance, sometimes initially to an over exaggerated position to get a wake up response, we can get the attention of the SBL to take back its standing support roll and stop you falling over. Once the SBL is back in action the SFL responds by releasing its ‘hold’ and ‘grip’ and the extra work it had taken on, and instantly interplay between the two can be felt and a balance can be and re-established.

In the Contrology Studio environment

It is not a wonder that the first thing we need to do when somebody walks into the Studio is connect the SBL to take on its postural and supporting role again. 

In the Contrology Studio the connection and communication of the SBL is fundamental to our work; it is part of the design of both the Work and the apparatus and it is in the order of the repertoire to do so.

As the springs take away the need for our fast twitch Superficial Front Line (SFL) to act, it allows us to call on and ‘wake up’ the SBL to start performing again, thus immediately starting to integrate movement patterns between the SBL, and the SFL bringing a team of work between them.

The design and intent of the Controlgy Method progressively and ingeniously interconnects all the fascial lines, thus building the natural ‘uniformly developed’ body and mind that was Joseph Pilates’ vision. The springs help us to identify the lines of fascia, through ‘feeling from doing’, so that once alone unaided on the mat or more importantly out in life, you can feel these for yourself, and know how and what to ‘ask’ of the body.

With this awareness and this applied intent you have the tools to both achieve the Pilates Method empowering the work beyond measure, but more importantly you are rebalancing and reconnecting the myofascial web that communicates our body systems as one. We then exist as a structure of tensegrity, with space for all the body systems to reside in harmony, free from gravitational pull and compression. (Even when we are upside down lifting up off from our back arm lines sending our legs skyward in a Jack knife).

The body says YES

The body will always say YES, it is most obliging, what ever we ask of it, it says yes, so we have to be very aware of what we are asking, but can use this to our great advantage.  If we sit slouched over for hours on end, the body takes the position on and the tension through the fascia adapts to that seated slouched position and continues that way until we ask something different from it, which in some cases we never do! Lolita San Miguel, one of only two teachers to be certified by Pilates himself, would say, if you curl up like pretzel all night that’s what you’ll get in the morning, a pretzel, so you can spend your day as a pretzel (many do) or you can stand up tall and stretch up tall requiring your body to be upright, tall and lifted preparing it for the day and it will be. Ever noticed how when your cat or dog wake up they will always stretch out fully, even their face and tongue, before trotting off to start their day.

The Whole Team

I wonder in marvel that the body holds us up and moves us at all with often so little connection ‘back there’, how can we walk without the back of our legs operating, when they are designed to push us forward? With only a few players playing there is a lot of strain to only a few of the ‘team’ and the rest are sitting out on the bench. Nobody should get to sit on the bench! if all players hold their ‘tensional’ role and play their part, movement is easy, its energy efficient, smooth, nobody gets too tired, nobody gets strained and nobody gets hurt. 

So how can we bring our SBL into a consistent connection?  By asking it, anatomically requiring it, by intercommunicating with it and by our full awareness of ’back there’.

The SBL and our subconscious

However, it is not only our hours of sitting that disconnects us from the SBL. Positioned ‘back there’ it holds our subconscious mind. All that exists and operates in the mind beyond our consciousness, the mental processes and motivations governing our actions of which we are not aware; penetrating even an awareness to that mystical blind spot is difficult, maintaining a connection to it is even more difficult as it is not a part of our daily consciousness.

Our life goes on ‘out front’ all that we do and see is out front, and unless we are a dancer an actor or have studied spatial dynamics our spatial awareness our world happens out front. Being in full awareness of ‘back there’ brings a quality of full presence, of self-confidence an owning and a knowing of your multi-dimensional self. Reconnect to ‘back there’ and you will be tapping your subconscious, you will be stunned at what you find there.

Karin Locher 2010