[Tango-L] Women's technique

[Konstantin Zahariev]

On 7/16/07, Trini y Sean (PATangoS) <patangos at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
[...]
> Keith's error is in thinking and teaching that
> disassociation is created when "you twist at the waist".
> Movement of the body occurs at joints. There is no waist
> joint. Disassociation of the hips and ribs is only possible
> by twisting the spine, particularly the lumbar spine. This
> is not a pointless semantic distinction. When you think of
> twisting the spine instead of the waist, it becomes
> immediately apparent that creating tension in the back is
> counterproductive.


It may be better to _say_ it that way if it invokes the appropriate
muscles as an intuitive response (don't know if this is true or not
but I can take your word for it). However you are not really
spine-twisting to dissociate. There is no waist joint, true, but there
are specific muscles that generally go between your hips and your
ribcage and accomplish the twisting by contraction.

My understanding is that if you twist only your upper body so that
your right shoulder rotates forward and to the left (from your POV),
or, equivalently, when you twist only your lower body so that your
left knee/leg rotates forward and to the right, you involve mainly the
right external oblique, the left internal oblique, and to a smaller
degree the rectus abdominis and the left spinal erectors. So the main
movers are nowhere near the spine, and the spine errectors do not
twist it, even though the spine may get a twist in it as a
_consequence_ of the contraction of the obliques.

With best regards,

Konstantin
Victoria, Canada