How often should I do CANTIENICA® training?
Benita Cantieni is happy to answer that: 24/7.
Seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
What this means is: The principles of the CANTIENICA® method should gradually become second nature.
While sitting. While walking. While brushing your teeth. While working. While climbing stairs. While lifting, carrying, and waiting.
So the actual training doesn’t end with the lesson on the mat. That’s where we learn and refine our precise alignment. We apply it in our daily lives.
Everyday life is a training ground
In a CANTIENICA® class, you’ll gain a precise understanding of the principles. You’ll explore your bones, joints, and deep muscle connections. You’ll refine your awareness and discover how everything is interconnected.
In everyday life, this knowledge gradually becomes a part of your life.
You align your feet while waiting. You stretch your spine while sitting at your desk. You use the pressure points on your sit bones to help you stand up and sit down. You mobilize your pelvic bones while walking.
In this way, conscious learning and practice give rise to a new sense of naturalness.
Habit Leads to Sustainability
CANTIENICA® training works at a deep level. Many of these stimuli remain invisible to the outside eye. You can apply them anywhere and access them at any time.
Over time, small inner images are often enough. A thought of the points at the heels. An invitation to the crown of the head. A subtle impulse between the ischial tuberosities.
The body reacts. It remembers. It returns to its natural posture.
7/24 means: You develop the ability to reorganize yourself at any time.
This ability is yours. You can refine it, deepen it, and use it more and more naturally.
Straightening Up Is Easy
Benita Cantieni has been writing for many years about how crucial it is to apply these principles in everyday life.
Her book , *Staying Flexible and Strong for Life with a Tiger’s Spirit*, is full of ideas for everyday situations.
Your body is in motion all day long:
- when getting up
- when getting dressed
- while working
- while cooking
- while walking
- when wearing
- while playing sports
- while relaxing
Each of these movements can be performed consciously and with good posture. It takes just as much time as getting up in a slumped position or brushing your teeth with a hunched back. Doing it the CANTIENICA® way supports your posture, your joints, and your deep muscles.
The following ideas invite you to give them a try.
Sit as light as a feather
Sit on the edge of a stool. Align your knees over your heels, with your feet hip-width apart and in a V-shape. Align your pelvis exactly over the center of your sitting bones, keeping your pubic bone and tailbone vertical and elongated. Lift your chest away from your pelvis, pointing the crown of your head toward the ceiling. Rest the backs of your hands on your thighs and relax; draw your shoulder blades toward your back. Using the base of your big toes and the center of your heels, “suck dewdrops from the ground.” The sitting bones move toward each other in a pulsating motion. 10 times. Alternately draw the right and left sitting bones toward the perineum, 10 times each.
Thinking Long-Term
Cross your arms over your chest. Relax your upper arm muscles toward your armpits. Visualize your sternum extending forward. Breathe diagonally: from your left ischial tuberosity to the right head of your humerus. From your right ischial tuberosity to the left head of your humerus. 10 times. Lengthen with each breath. Inhale between the ischial tuberosities and stretch the vertebrae apart from the bottom up. 5 times.
Flexible Thoracic Spine
Cross your forearms in front of your chest. Spread your upper arms wide apart. Pull your shoulder blades flat against your back. Inhale as you press into your right sitting bone, and exhale as you press into your left armpit. Repeat on the other side. Rotate your upper body from the thoracic spine (at bra-clasp level) alternately to the left and right. Caution: Do not move your head; fix your gaze on a point in the distance to stabilize the cervical spine. At the same time as rotating your upper body, lift the foot on the “rotating side” off the floor as lightly as a feather: rotate to the right, right foot; rotate to the left, left foot. 10 times.
Small moments can change the whole day
Choose specific moments that remind you to stand up straight:
- while brushing your teeth,
- when the phone rings,
- when opening the laptop,
- while waiting for the coffee,
- when stepping onto a staircase,
- when boarding a train or getting into a car,
- while looking at a smartphone.
Link a CANTIENICA® movement to an activity that’s already part of your daily routine. This way, the new routine will become a natural part of your body.
You straighten up.
You create space.
You allow your spine to lengthen.
You align your bones.
You activate your deep muscles.
You discover new ways to move.
This language enhances your awareness and your own competence.
You hear an invitation. Your body responds to it. You feel the effect and use it to develop your own personal experience of movement.
That’s how learning becomes a positive experience.
From Conscious Practice to Body Intelligence
At first, you focus your attention specifically on individual areas.
You feel your feet. You become aware of your sitting bones. You align the crown of your head. You let your spine lengthen.
With each repetition, your body makes these connections more subtle.
Posture becomes more natural. Movements become clearer. The body finds its natural alignment more and more quickly.
Perception gives rise to experience. Experience gives rise to habit. Habit fosters bodily intelligence.
Classroom instruction and daily life reinforce each other
In the CANTIENICA® class, you’ll deepen your awareness. You’ll discover new movements, refine your alignment, and receive precise feedback.
In your daily life, you make room for these impulses.
You repeat them in many small moments. You gain experience. You sense what’s good for you and which organization supports you.
That’s how each lesson has an impact far beyond the training session. 7 days. 24 hours.
Your body. Your awareness. Your skills.
Do you want to truly understand the basics and apply them with confidence?
In the CANTIENICA® Basics workshop, we take plenty of time to explore the basic positions and principles of the method. You’ll learn them in detail, practice them, and then find it easier and easier to incorporate them into your daily life.
That’s how exercise gradually becomes a new way for you to move.
CANTIENICA® Basics in Zurich or online.
