Foot Support for Artistic Expression

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Foot Support for Artistic Expression

Finding the sensation of healthy support from his feet made a lovely difference in Eric’s life. In the accompanying video this musician/songwriter shows how his musical expression changes depending on how he lives in his feet.

Your body can move around in the world without your being fully present in it. You may have good body awareness in general but lack presence in specific parts or areas of your body. In the video, Eric speaks about “finding his cuboid.” He’s referring to finding awareness in a specific region of the foot that activates better organization of the entire lower extremity. For more about foot organization, see Know Your Feet, my online workshop.

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Celebrity Spine

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Celebrity Spine

Vince Vaughn hasn’t signed up for online coaching with me, but if he does, I’ll be ready! This actor is frequently cast as an unconscious oaf who goes through a humanizing rite of passage. He’s good at it, and his fine serious talent shines through all the silliness. The other day I rented “Delivery Man.” Because Vaughn is in nearly every scene of this movie, it became impossible for me to ignore the way he moves. One could assume his lumbering gait is due to his 6’5” height, or is part of his characterization. But I think his  gait is an artifact of a spine that, lacking normal curvatures, doesn’t properly rotate…

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Core Support, Kneeling and Stiff Toes

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Core Support, Kneeling and Stiff Toes

What follows is my response to a letter from someone who had difficulty kneeling on a yoga block as shown in the abdominal core lesson of my DVD. I know that when someone raises a question, others are likely wondering the same thing…

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Shoulder Pain and Sitar Playing

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Shoulder Pain and Sitar Playing

Below is a video I made for one of my Skype coaching clients.  She’s a petite woman who is learning to play the sitar, a difficult and awkward instrument to tune as well as to play. I've been helping her with her sitting position, and with pain in her left shoulder that had become  severe enough for her to seek medical help. The exercise I shared in this video has helped her exchange upper shoulder tension for secure support that links her shoulders to her mid-back.  The video also includes a brief review of abdominal support and pelvic inclination. Many musicians—most anyone who plays a stringed instrument—could benefit from this exploration.  Not to mention non-musicians who simply have a habit of loading stress into the upper shoulder area…

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Low Back Pain and Substance Abuse

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Low Back Pain and Substance Abuse

A year ago I posted a piece about the relationship between joint pain and digestive abuse–an after-effect of  holiday cheer.  You’d think I’d learn, but guess what?  This year I’m fessing up again, with a different twist. Beginning in December I experienced pain in my right hip, with radiating pain down my right leg and into my knee and low back stiffness. This was demoralizing because I’d been low back pain-free for three years, ever since becoming sincere about tending to my deep core strength. The pain was weirdly intermittent. A good Pilates class seemed to chase it away, but in a few  days, back it came…

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Important News About Your Pelvis

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Important News About Your Pelvis

Looking back at my recent video posts, I see that I’ve been focusing on the pelvis and hips.  That’s not so surprising, because experience has shown me that if your pelvis is balanced and adaptable, then many other aspects of good posture will follow.  In my book and DVD I call the pelvis “The Root of Posture.”

This video adds another detail to our pelvis investigations.  It introduces anatomical information that can help change the way you sit, the way you connect to your deep corset muscles, and the way you stand, walk and dance…

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Poor Posture: Arms Akimbo

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Poor Posture: Arms Akimbo

This post is a reply to a reader who expressed concern about her habit of standing with hands on hips.  Since the term, "arms akimbo," has been around since Chaucer’s day, I’m sure my correspondent is not alone in her curiosity about it. You can assume this posture in a variety of ways:  with the elbows thrust back and chest forward. or with the shoulders rolled forward and chest resting down and in.  Either of these positions can be varied further depending on the position of the neck and head.  The chin can be thrust forward or pulled back. Fingers may be spread, or fists closed.  Try on some of these options yourself and marvel at how expressive your body can be!

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The New Rules of Posture

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The New Rules of Posture

I like this illustration for The New Rules of Posture so much that I’ve begun using it as a logo for my work in general. It depicts one of the characters in my book as she cleans a chandelier. Here’s the story with its “posture moral” at the end.

What I’ve called “posture zones” are muscular and connective tissue structures that lie roughly perpendicular to the body’s vertical mid-line. When we’re under stress—even a pleasant stress like Alison’s excitement at discovering an Art Deco treasure in her new apartment—one or more of the posture zones tightens in order to keep the body stable. The posture zones are like valves whose closing deforms the body’s mid-line and in so doing distorts posture…

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Know Your Hips!

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Know Your Hips!

This started out to be a video blog about the way short, tight hamstrings impact your posture. But in order to stretch your hamstrings effectively,  you’ll need some information about your hips joints. So, first things first…

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Living in 3D

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Living in 3D

It is in the 70’s here this morning.  It’s the best time of year in Los Angeles because the sun makes a southerly arc that creates contrast and shadow and a sense of dimension to the world.  In summer, when the sun’s arc is overhead, places and things—buildings, trees, cars, even people–appear flatter.  But today, walking my familiar streets, I had a strong hit of the substance and texture of tree trunks, of the space between the lemons on a tree, and of my own physical presence passing through the leafy corridor of my favorite street.  It was easy to stay present in my body, in my movement, easy to be friendly to strangers…

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Coughing and Your Core

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Coughing and Your Core

On page 110 my book, The New Rules of Posture, there’s a sidebar about coughing. I’ll quote it here, to save you the trouble of looking it up. “The relationship between your diaphragm, pelvic floor, and core support is graphically demonstrated in the act of coughing (or laughing for that matter). If you cough with your pelvis rolled back, you’ll feel a tendency to puff out your belly and bear down into your pelvic floor. If you cough while sitting in a slight forward pelvic tilt, you won’t feel the same pressure on your bladder…

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On Pilates and Core Strength

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On Pilates and Core Strength

As the author of The New Rules of Posture, you might think I’d be a paragon of deep abdominal core strength. Sadly, not true. In fact, shortly after the book was published I was beset by an embarrassing bout of low back pain—a sure sign of low toned abs. And this wasn’t the first such episode—I’d been plagued by a back that “went out” pretty regularly for 15 years. Because I’ve been a proponent and practitioner of Rolfing© Structural Integration, I continued to assume that the pain was due to misalignment, and that more structural bodywork was what I needed. But I also saw the occasional chiropractor…

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Finding Support from Your Sacrum

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Finding Support from Your Sacrum

Today’s blog entry attempts to answer a reader’s question about sitting support while also sharing something from my current class.

Shawn’s question was about lumbar support for sitting and why I recommend the Zackback sitting strategy that advocates sacral support instead. My reply to Shawn went something like this: For sitting in the car I like to work my sacrum back into the corner between the seat and backrest and then place the Bucky “Baxter” just behind my diaphragm

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When to Build Good Posture

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When to Build Good Posture

When do you become most aware of your posture? When you’re checking out the fit of some new jeans? When walking into a new situation, uncertain as to how you might be received? You can be dressed to the nines, but if your posture projects shyness or uncertainty it sabotages the impression you want to convey. But by then, it’s too late to develop good posture…

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