My understanding and experience of astrology is that it works 100% of the time. 

The only time when it appears not to comes as a direct result of our limited comprehension of the subject. 

I see my role in the astrological world as someone who tries to prove this truth. But as a consequence of this I have to equally question every single astrological technique and assumption and only accept and use the ones that been proven to work consistently.

And some of these assumptions are very widely held and strongly defended by those who hold them.

I have increasingly found this also to be the case in other areas of mind, body and spirit.

One of these is the so called core.

It’s not that I deny its existence, more that I question the commonly held assumption of where it is.

And if we are thinking about our core in the wrong place we have to also question any exercises or techniques that are supposedly designed to strengthen it. 

If you ask most people where their core is they will probably point to an area below their navel.

From there we have different approaches in terms of knowing what to do with this core.

Modern exercise culture would focus on tightening the muscles around it, with the assumption that this would make it (and therefore us) stronger. 

Older meditative cultures would probably suggest relaxing these muscles and breathing into this area for presumably the same result.

But if we have something that could be described as a core, why should it be there anyway?

If we think of an apple, its core runs right through it, from top to bottom.

The nearest thing that would correlate with that in the human body would be the spine.

This makes a great deal more sense because the spine is the structure around which the whole body is coordinated.

The ribcage, the pelvis, the arms and legs all owe their place to the spine. All of our internal organs do as well.

If the alignment of the spine is correct, then everything else will be operating in the right place and the organs will have enough space to do their job properly.

If the spine is misaligned, then there is a knock on effect where all of these organs will be pushed into places where they cannot work so effectively.

So if we have a core, it has to be the spine.

How can we make our core longer and stronger? 

The simple answer is we can’t. 

People come up with all kinds of exercises to supposedly stretch the spine, but none of them work, indeed many will have the opposite effect.

Most of these exercises are designed around stretching the front of the body. But these will not lengthen the spine.

The reason for that statement is that the spine is largely at the back of the cylinder that we call our body, so if we stretch the front of it, we are actually shortening in relative terms the back of it.

So it is not possible to do something to lengthen or strengthen our core, the spine.

What we can do is stop doing the things that make it weaker. 

When you see a small child, sitting naturally, perfectly erect without any effort whatsoever, you see the spine supporting the body on its own.

The back of their body is exceptionally wide and operating as one whole piece, allowing so much space for the lungs to expand and contract and for breathing to be as deep as naturally possible without any effort.

The question we have to ask and no-one actually does is why and how do we lose that quality. If we don’t ask that question, but just blindly do some exercises that someone else told us will strengthen us, they are unlikely to work, and could even be exacerbating the problem.

We have to conceive of the back as one piece, including the back of the shoulders, and the pelvic area.

Attached to this back are five things, two arms, two legs and a head.

The only thing that can compromise this system is contracting those five things in towards the back, so squashing it from all directions. This would force it to be pulled out of shape and all our internal organs would be put under more strain, because they would not have the space to function properly.

This is particularly true of our breathing.

The deepest part of the lungs are in the back of the body. If we are contracting and narrowing our back, there is not enough room for our lungs to expand naturally.

If this is the case, it doesn’t matter if we try to breathe deeper, we won’t be able to because there isn’t the room to do it.

So what can we do to improve our core?

The answer is nothing. But we can stop doing the things that weaken it. If we stop contracting our neck, shoulders and hip muscles, our back will naturally release into a more lengthened and widened state, and there will be more room for everything to work as it should.

How does an apple protect its core? 

It doesn’t have to, apart from not letting people take bites out of it. 

So just sit there, allow your back to widen and don’t let other people take bites out of you.

And don’t eat yourself either.