Here’s a question I’ve heard in Feldenkrais contexts many, many times, and just today someone asked me, too, again:

How does the hip rotate as you are going down?

20 years ago I was wondering about that myself. I was in a Feldenkrais session, and about to go from standing to sitting, when the Feldenkrais-trained physical therapist kept saying that my pelvis needs to rotate. I asked, “What do you mean by this?” But he just kept repeating the same phrase.

When I asked a 4th time, I saw some desperation creep into his face, so I let it go. For that session. But my jaws were already set. It wasn’t an easy question. Even with my background in medical engineering and biomechanics, it took me a couple of years to realise that I need to apply this knowledge, which was all theory, into my somatic movement practice, which was all experience, feeling, and sensing.

I needed to learn that noticing and naming need to go together. We are humans, we give names to living beings, and even to things. And also to thoughts and processes, to everything, really. This is one of our strengths, to name things.

So let me have my take on this. We need to answer two (2) questions. First:

 1. Just where is the hip?

With all that talk about the hips should move, everyone seems to assume that we all know what everyone is talking about. But what is it, the hips? We need to answer:

• Is it the area between the knees and the shoulders?
• Is it the two soft, rounded portions located in the lower behind regions?
• Or is it the posterior superior iliac spine, a palpable bony prominence at the back of the ilium?

What is it? What are we talking about? We need to know!

2. Rotate… in relation to what?

Numbers don’t make any sense as long as we don’t define what is zero (0). The number 300 doesn’t mean anything, as long as we don’t define what 1 or nothing is. 300 could be a lot, it could be nothing.

First of all, just shortly after the Mesopotamias, the Egyptians, about 5000 years ago, invented writing—by chiseling logographic symbols into temple walls, and painting them, and inking them on papyrus. That was about 2000 years before any Chinese etched anything into any bone. And the traders used that new invention, writing, to count goats and debts. And on that base our glorious Western alphabet came into existence. And a few thousand years later, some bright people, just a few hundred kilometers away from the great pyramids, defined basic maths.

And now we count rotation by degrees, from 0 to 360. But we need to know: What is rotating? And in relation to what?

• Is it the pelvic girdle rotating in relation to the shoulder girdle?
• Is it the humerus of the right leg rotating inwards, in relation to the rest of the body?
• Or is it the pelvis (and the entire body) rotating around a stable, well planted right leg?
• Or a combination of all of that?

If we don’t define what we mean by hip, if we don’t define what is rotating, and in relation to what, then it’s just like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” or “How tall is a stretch of time?”

For example, when you’re going down from standing straight to sitting back down onto a chair, then your hip… what is it… your pelvis, your pelvis is probably not rotating. Your pelvis is probably stable, stiff and fixed, and held tight, to support your upper body. There will be movement in your hip joints though, articulation, and rotation. And there will be movement with your eyes, in your neck, chest, in your ankles and the arches of your feet…

But this blog post is not about describing a movement. This blog post is to answer HOW TO ANSWER that question. It’s easy to answer in science, engineering and physics, but it’s not so obvious when it comes to ourselves. We’re often blind to ourselves. Maybe, we’re not allowed to feel ourselves, or maybe we’ve been told:

“Thou shalt not be aware,” as in the title of a book by Alice Miller. But we need to be aware. We need to know 1. what is moving, and 2. in relation to what. And then we can look at the movement, and at ourselves. And then we know. And this feels good. So good. So soothing. Healing. Closure.