4 Pillars of Spirals and Waves

Principle Two :

The Tongue and Jaws

The tongue and jaws are a massively underrated training point that can make a huge, long term, difference how you aesthetically develop, breathe and recover. It might seem irrelevant at first, but the function and strength of the tongue plays a considerable role in how we function as human beings. Along with the size of the jaws, how we bite is also very important. Spirals and Waves trains the bite to create a healthy balance of how we chew, strengthen the muscles of the jaw, grow the jaws forwards and outwards, create room for teeth, open the airway, strengthen the neck, improve posture, which in turn improves our movement mechanics.

The tongue is a very important muscle that has huge implications on many aspects of the body. The positioning of your tongue when it is resting, directly influences; whether or not you are biasing mouth/nasal breathing, the width/narrowness of your palate, whether or not your upper and lower jaws are growing or recessing, your level of sleep quality (sleep apnea), neck/head posture, the openness of the airway in your nasal cavities /neck, lymph (waste) drainage of the cranium, breathing mechanics, diaphragm health, vagus nerve stimulation, cranial nerve health and most of all the health of your nervous system. The stronger and more tones your tongue is, the easier and more efficiently/effectively you’ll breathe and sleep. Correcting tongue posture is something anyone can do to have almost immediate positive effects on their health. Spirals and Waves believes that strengthening the tongue is a day 1 priority, that connects and influences every other piece of training we do. Aside from the health benefits, it has aesthetic implications as well.

It’s a common saying that health is beauty and beauty is health. When it comes to jaw size and facial structure, this is especially true. A huge percentage of the population has underdeveloped tongues, jaws, facial structure and skulls in general. Our ancestors that lived under a thousand years ago had jaws, palates and skulls that were nearly 50% larger than a modern day skull. Our modern sedentary lifestyles of eating soft, processed food has negatively impacted how our skulls develop. Somebody who has weak, low tongue posture will have a facial structure more like the person on the left in the image below. It is very likely that this person will have trouble with breathing mechanics, crooked teeth, trouble sleeping, blood/lymph stagnation, trouble balancing their nervous system, controlling stress and will likely have a low CO2 tolerance. The person on the right definitely has a stronger tongue, a large airway, and their skin and bodily tissues in general are more saturated with oxygen. They likely have straight teeth, probably have more access to their diaphragm and are probably more athletic and healthy. Society sees this person as aesthetically more attractive than the person on the left.

Principle three :

MovMed/Sensory

MovMed is, in my opinion, the most complete “health and fitness” system in the industry. MovMed theory and philosophy is at the very root of essentially every exercise we train at Spirals and Waves. A huge shoutout to Nathan Nussbaum for creating MovMed and significantly progressing my perspective on how to train the body and mind as a whole. To summarize, MovMed is applied neurology. It is a system that restores the connection between the mind and the body to create kinaesthetic coherence. It is unique because it has a 3 dimensional approach that balances Sympathetic and Parasympathetic nervous system tone, cultivates physical strength and endurance, improves breathing mechanics, reduces stress/anxiety, improves healthy reflexive movement and takes into consideration how our social tendencies are a reflection of our physiology. Simply said, MovMed wakes up the brain to body sensory pathways that have been numbed by emotional trauma, physical trauma and other factors. It is a full body system for regulation of dysfunction that helps you preform better and improve stress capacity. Along with all that, it improves the “pump” quality through your muscle/bones/fascia/tissues that translates to increasing size and movement quality.

Principle Four :

Movement Mechanics/Patterns

Movement is the essence of life. It’s the culmination of everything we are physically and neurologically. The reason why Spirals and Waves prioritizes breathing, the tongue/jaw/bite and the nervous system over movement is because without a healthy baseline of these principles, movement will happen in a compensated manner. The internal environment of our organs and nervous system directly controls how our musculoskeletal structure orients itself. Once we can stop trying to intellectualize and conceptualize what needs to be contextualized, (meaning learning how to listen to our kinaesthetic language of feeling in order to truly start trusting our bodies to move subconsciously/reflexively) we can achieve a neurological state where we aren’t thinking about how we move. Rather, our brain can process inputs efficiently and produce the best output for the situation. Training specific joint movements and joint sequencing, along with everything else, can re-program these innate patterns with a parasympathetic dominant nervous system that absorbs inputs efficiently and creates subconscious, reflexive movement behaviour.

If you’re interested in leaning more you can:

• Book a free 20 minute consultation

• Book a 60 minute session

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If you have any questions please feel free to reach out on Instagram - @spirals.and.waves, Facebook - AJ De Melo/Spirals and Waves, or Email - spiralsandwaves@gmail.com.