Kick With The Legs

On the inhale draw both legs up against your body. Start the exhale with a shout and kicking the legs straight down the bed. Finish the exhale normally.

Figure 129

This exercise sounds easy and is easy except for the errors that are commonly made.

Breathing

Often the breathing is abbreviated because of the focus on the legs. The student spends his thought on the coming kick and in doing so shortens the inhale so that he can get to the shout and kick on the exhale.

The inhale should be a full normal inhale. The legs are drawn up during the inhale but it does not matter if you bring the legs up slowly during the whole of the inhale or rapidly at the beginning of the inhale.

Kicking

The common error on this exercise is that the kick is up and out rather than only out. What do I mean by that?

In Figure 130 on page 298 the photograph on the left shows the legs going up and out while the photograph on the right shows the legs only going out. On the left, if you could draw a line in space to follow the feet as they moved the line would look something like the shell of an elongated egg.

Figure 130

This movement of the legs is difficult for most people to get so just do your best. The problem is that it is difficult to feel if your legs are going up and out as opposed to just out.

The exercise is not wasted if the legs do go up and out, it is just not as effective that way.

Remember that the exhale starts with a shout. This shout is one of vehemence as opposed to anger. You might think of the sound as the kind of sound one makes if one is swinging a sledge hammer. The shout is usually done with an 'ha' sound as opposed to the 'ah' normal exhale sound, but again that is not a critical element of the exercise.

Slam Kick (Fast)

This exercise is very similar to the swim kick. Again the breathing and the leg movement are independent of each other. The speed, however, of the slam kick is slightly slower than the swim kick. If the swim kick is about 60 per minute, this is about 40 per minute. This slower speed is so that each slam is deliberate and has all the vehemence in it that you can muster.

Figure 131

Here the leg is lifted about 2 feet above the bed and then is slammed down (hard and vehement) rather than dropped as in the swim kick. Think of each slam as though you were trying to break the bed with your foot and leg. The knees are still locked so that it is a straight leg raising and a straight leg slamming.

If you have the impulse to do it, you can change the 'ah' sound to something more forceful. This change of sound is used only when it seems to be natural and appropriate. Don't force it. Also recognize that you are doing several slams per exhale so there are several forceful sounds per single exhale. If you find that you can't do that, then it is all right to do one slam per small inhale.

This exercise can bring on significant feelings of anger, resentment, rage, futility, or anxiety. These feelings are OK, except don't push it. We are not after feelings for their own sake. We are after change in your character. It is better to stop the exercise too soon than to let it run too long. If some anger, for example, is still tied to the legs there is no harm. It will still be there the next time. Neither the presence nor the absence of any feeling is any indicator of progress. Whether any feeling arises or does not arise, the exercise is still doing its work.

Footnote 33. To repeat, the relationship of an emotion to a part of the body is only statistical. That means the emotion(s) is only more common in that part of the body but need not be there and any other emotion can be psychologically related to that body part.

Slam Kick (Slow)

There are several major differences between this exercise and the slam kick fast exercise.

First, here the leg is brought all the way up. If you are not limber, you may be able to come up only to about 60 degrees. If you are hyper-limber you may be able to bring you legs up to well over 90 degrees to the body. For this exercise, 90 degree is enough if you can do that.

Figure 132

It is not easy, nor is it a major issue, but try to raise the one leg without pressing the other leg into the bed. We tend to press the un-raised leg into the bed in order to tense the abdominal muscles. But we want this exercise to use only the quadriceps muscles of the leg and so tensing the abdomen is inappropriate.

Next, the raising is done with the inhale. It is not a slow raise nor is it a jerk. Simply raise the legs up as you inhale and continue to do the full inhale. Since this leg raise and slam is done with the breathing, its speed is the normal approximately 12 breaths (slams) per minute.

Start the exhale with a shout and as you shout slam the raised legs against the bed as though to break the bed. The more vehemence the better.

If it feels right, you can speed up the breath/slam sequence.

Here the breath would be shallow (due to the speed) but the shout and kick should be no less violent.

This exercise can be rapidly tiring so only continue as long as it feels productive. When you are first starting to do this exercise it will feel mechanical, just an exercise. As you learn to deal with anger, bitterness, resentment, etc. this exercise will become more productive. As with all the work, don't overdo it. Continue only to tolerance or only as long as it is being productive.