Let's Muddle through this Friday Challenge :)

For this week’s challenge let’s work on the muddle. If this has a widely recognized name, I have not run across it, but my advanced students decided we should call it a muddle.


Let’s start with a basic interior circle pepper grinder. The interior hip circle is also known as the omi and involves hip lift, pelvic tuck, hip lift, pelvic release. The interior rib cage circle is sometimes called a torso rotation. I don’t generally teach it by itself in my classes as we usually use the flat/horizontal rib cage circle. The interior rib cage circle is like an omi with the rib cage, you contact the muscles in a circle around the base of the rib cage causing the rib cage to tilt to the side, forward, to the other side and back. The basic interior circle pepper grinder will use one interior hip circle followed by an interior rib cage circle.

Next, we are going to do a corkscrew aka the squishy. Do the omi and the interior rib cage circle at the same time with both circles traveling in the same direction and in the same position around the body at the same time, so both left, both front, both right both back. This will cause you to “squish” as you go around, hence the nick name “squishy”.

The third step for this challenge is a full interior circle pepper grinder. Here we are going to do the omi and interior rib cage circle at the same time, in the same direction, but at opposite points around the body, so when the hip is lifted on the left, the rib cage is tilted down on the right, during the pelvic tuck, the ribcage is tilted back, hip lift on the right with rib cage tilted down on the left and finally pelvis released to the back with the rib cage tilted forward. (You can try this with a regular horizontal rib cage circle first and then add the tilt once you have that figured out.)

The final version of this is the muddle. Here we are going to take the omi one direction and the rib cage the other direction. So for example, both are to the front (pelvic tuck, rib cage tilted forward), they then go to opposite sides (hips right, rib cage left) both to the back (pelvic release, rib cage tilted to the back) and then opposite sides (hips left, rib cage right). Again, try it with a horizontal rib cage circle first if the tilt on the rib cage is giving you trouble. Then go back and add the tilt once you can do it with a flat circle.

If you really want to take your mind for a loop, alternate between the squishy and the muddle by changing the direction of your rib cage rotation every time it reaches a certain point (ie the back).

I recommend starting with segmented versions of all of the above and work towards smoothing them out, start slow and gradually speedup as you gain proficiency. Also be sure to try all of the levels in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions