Standing Up with PD
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An online presentation to my local Parkinson’s Disease support group. There’s information in it that’s useful for anyone, not just people living with PD.
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How to Sit in Your Car
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Car designers seem to devise seats to support the lowest common denominator of posture, believing that people need soft seats that cradle the derriere, and backrests that ignore the capacity of your spine to support itself.
Read MoreUse Your Toes to Protect Your Knees
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When there’s a problem in the knee, there are probably imbalances in the feet. My friend had no complaints about her feet, but when I watched her move I could see that, especially on the side of her knee surgery, she wasn’t using the full articulation of her foot.
Read MoreWake Up Your Feet!
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If you’re thinking that feet are my favorite subject, you could be right. I definitely think that adaptable, responsive feet are a vital component in healthy posture. By adaptable, I mean feet that are able to move--not just to take steps, but also to spread and clasp, to wriggle and writhe and bounce. They can sense the ground and respond to it…
Read MoreFoot Support for Artistic Expression
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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.
Read MoreFoot Massage
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That may not be true for everyone, but for sure, foot problems stop you in your tracks. As a Rolfer® and movement coach, I’ve seen too many miserable feet and the problems they’ve transmitted to the bodies above. So I’m motivated to share anything I come across that might help my readers care for their own precious gravity negotiators. Feet, with their 26 bones and 33 joints and countless soft tissue springs and pulleys, are perfectly designed to negotiate uneven surfaces. When they don’t get to do that—when they’re constantly shod and subjected to flat, hard surfaces…
Read MoreSpine Decompression Exercise
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For some time I’ve wanted to share an alternate version of an exercise in Lesson 7 of Heal Your Posture, my DVD workshop. The exercise on the DVD is similar to the yoga “cat stretch” but with added special imagery. The image is that each vertebra has its own vector, its own potential direction of movement. For the flexion part of the exercise (the cat), the spinal vectors aim each vertebra into the space behind the body. Envisioning each vertebra to have its own trajectory and attempting to move them one by one helps decompress the spine…
Read MoreShoulder Pain and Sitar Playing
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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…
Read MoreHelical Spine Stretch
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The attached video is a holiday gift to my subscribers—a de-stressor practice. But it actually has a further purpose. When we walk, our spines are designed to move in two counter-rotating helical patterns. This movement is the basis of our contralateral walking gait; it’s why our arms and legs swing oppositely when we walk…
Read MoreFree Your Head
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In my last several posts, I’ve been drawing your awareness to the front of your spine. Releasing the tensions we hold within our bodies at this depth can restore mobility, ease and freedom we didn’t know were missing. Upper-cervical-facet-jointsIn this video you’ll practice a movement meditation that can restore mobility at the joint between the top of your neck and your cranium. This area so often expresses stress as rigidity, and is exacerbated by long hours spent in front of computer screens…
Read MoreGrounding Practice
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If we can really let our bodies accept support from the ground and simultaneously widen our perspective to include our surroundings, then that balanced perceptual field automatically optimizes posture—as well as doing a lot of nice things for our mental outlook…
Read MoreShoulder Release
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This video blog shows shares a way to relieve upper shoulder and neck tension by resting your arm over a ball. The one I used is a dryer ball, but I first learned this exercise with a tennis ball. Any small ball that fits comfortably into your armpit will work…
Read MoreFluff Your Fascia
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In previous posts, I’ve written about re-framing our fitness regimes to target fascial conditioning. I haven’t meant to imply that stretching, strength-building or cardio approaches to fitness are not worthwhile, but rather to emphasize that the type of movement that specifically restores dehydrated tendon and other tight regions of fascia requires a specific approach. Fascia needs to stretch and rebound—to bounce; that’s what keeps it juicy and healthy…
Read MoreShoulder Stretch and Release
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The video below accompanies the last several blog entries in which I wrote about how the “corocoid corner” affects the stability of our shoulders and arms, and about the relationship between our arms and our hearts. The tissues that clasp the corocoid process need to be pliable in order for the upper arms to seat properly in the gleno-humeral fossa (the shoulder socket). When pectoralis minor and biceps brachii are chronically shortened and glued down around the corocoid, the humeral heads (tops of the upper arms) slip forward in the sockets. While this capacity of the shoulder joint lets us reach out for things, the position should be part of a temporary gesture. For stability of arm and shoulder, the humeral heads should rest back into the socket as deeply as possible. The video shows one way to open up the corocoid area…
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