So the first exercise then looking at awareness, you've got two awareness exercises. And one awareness exercise is going to be looking at the idea of engaging the core. Now, like I said previously, I was recently in the cadaver labs working with some specialists there. And it was really amazing to see the core and how it works and I want to share a little viewpoint is it's really just like a corset that wraps all the way around the body. And one thing that blew my mind seeing it in the labs is it's really quite thin. It's almost like two three bits of tissue thick, and I know it's more of a dehydrated body, and it doesn't have the blood and the water and all the rest of it.

But I used to think of the core as being this big strong. I mean, it is a big strong tissue but thickness wise, but what are we need to think about the core is a corset that wraps from the front of the body in through here. This is why I have this cylindrical shape that is wrapping from the back all the way into the front. So it kind of needs in and ties in through the back here as it wraps around. So its goal is to stabilize this whole area, I say to my clients, it doesn't have a rib cage on it. But I said the evolutionary wise it kind of makes sense that really our rib cage should have extended all the way down into our hips to protect all this visceral area.

We're one of the few animals that decided to stand upright and expose all this material here that's easy, accessible, visceral, everyone else's kind of protected on on all fours. So in theory, you think that we would have a skeleton here to protect us but we done so in my mind where evolution is created is the strong core. It's almost like having a dynamic rib cage that allows us to be wherever you are today. Which is questionable at anyone who points. So think of the core is this area that's wrapping all the way around. They're not the rectus abdominus, which is kind of the point of the awareness exercise.

The rectus abdominus is what we see the nice kind of six pack abs images on the front of Health magazine that that's the old idea of health, which I'm really trying to work towards to eradicate that from people. But the rectus abdominus is connecting from the bottom of the ribcage here, rather than the sternum down into the top of the pubis. And what that does is that helps us crunch forward. Now what I find with a lot of people with this old paradigm concept of fitness, do 100 sit ups. Now I'm going to be nice and fit and active. All you're doing is really as you're strengthening this rectus abdominus muscle, which is great.

But remember I said the problem that's going on these days is that we're all rounded forward like this. So all this tissue gets short and tight. So what are you doing? When you do crunches? Well, you're shortening This tissue even more. And in fact, you're increasing this rounding if you're not balancing it with strengthening in through the posterior component that.

So very important that we start to move away from this old concept of strength through the abdominal areas. If you look at an image of rectus abdominus, it really is just a sheet that sits on the, on the front of the body. Then, again, you can't really see it here, but up in this up in this top corner here, you can see that it's a thin sheet, the rectus abdominus running in through there, I want you to start thinking more about this core, the wrapping all the way around and tucking in. And if you slightly draw the name Berlin, then that's what engages it. But the awareness exercise, the first one that you're going to go through, is covering that and then the second one is getting a better understanding about what's going on with your hips here, whether you're rounded outwards, or whether you're tilting forward.

Now I used to just tell people to tilt your pelvis back. And that was how you meant to correct it. But the problem with that is that is the cognitive brain trying to tell the human body something to do when in theory the body knows best. So, what you're doing in that awareness exercise is I'm having you move your pelvis forwards and backwards so that you can start to reengage with appropriate receptive system regains with the body, on what's actually going on with the hips here, so that you can find out where that neutral is. Now, the mistake that people make is when you tell someone that their hips are too far forward, what they do is they tell them the hips back out again this way, and they're doing it because the brain is saying, hey, you're too far forward. Now you need to go back, but then we overcompensate.

And we're putting pressure in through the lumbar spine. So we're meant to have a level of arching through the lumbar spine. That's what gives it its strength. Right is that is that shape, that sky that that S shape that we've got through there? So we don't want to get rid of that. But what we do want to be thinking about is are we tilting too far forwards anteriorly are we talking to Bob posteriorly.

And it might be different depending on your sitting situation, your standing situation, you might be doing both. And I asked my clients to imagine if you were your lumbar spine, if you were those lower vertebrae on a day to day basis, how would you feel how happy How would you feel? What would your life be like? And a lot of people who say, well, pretty miserable, because we're in this kind of one extreme or another. Okay, enjoy the two awareness exercises. Take your time with it.

A lot of you that aren't used to being in the body. You're not necessarily going to get it straight away. So I have a couple of shots at it.