Take A Deep Breath
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A great many well-meaning teachers, psychotherapists, gurus, and friends have suggested to me or to others that when we’re under stress we need to take a deep breath.
I don’t agree.
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Psoas Power
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In my DVD, I speak several times about the importance of propelling the body forward with the back leg and foot, allowing toe-off to be complete. It’s common, in places where space is at a premium (e.g. crowded sidewalks, corridors between work cubicles, small kitchens) for us to pull ourselves forward with the leg that swings forward, rather than propelling our bodies forward from the back leg. When the body is drawn forward from the forward heel, the hamstring muscles don’t complete their potential for movement which is to extend the hip enough to take the leg behind the body. When the hip doesn’t fully extend, the hamstrings are robbed of the opportunity to let go during the swing phase of the walk. This is the scenario of perpetually tight hamstrings…
Lifting a Box
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Recently, coming home from a walk, I was confronted with eight heavy boxes stacked up at the base of the steps to my house. They were not my boxes, not my responsibility, and without going into all the details, carrying them up the steps was not my idea of fun. I had walked a long time and was ready to rest. It was beginning to rain, and these boxes that were not mine would become a far worse inconvenience were they to become drenched. So I schlepped them up the stairs, one by one…
Posture As A Practice
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If you read between the lines, you probably sense that under the banner of “The New Rules of Posture,” I’m actually sharing a somatic practice–a physical path to self-knowledge. Here’s what I wrote in The New Rules: to improve your posture you need to 1) “create new sense memories for what feels balanced and stable…” and 2) view “your posture as an ongoing perceptual process by which you orient yourself to gravity and to your relationship with the people, objects and events in your world.” Not something you do once and forget about. It’s a practice…
Read MoreYour Posture's Event Horizon
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Posted below is Pack Matthews’ TEDx talk. He talks about the health offascia, the “sitting is the new smoking” research, and the research linking longevity to one’s ability to sit and rise from the floor without using hands or knees–and gives a great demo of this! Pack is the inventor of the Soul Seat™, a great option for people whose work requires that they sit all day. The design invites you to squirm and stretch while you sit. I’m putting one on my next letter to Santa!
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 MorePosture, Perception and People
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To “heal your posture” I always invite you to practice perceptions rather than positions. I don’t advise you about the set of your shoulders or the placement of your head, but rather try to help you discover an internal sense of balance, and presence with a capital P…
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 MoreStop Chasing Pain Interview
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Here's the podcast conversation I had with Dr. Perry Nickelson of stopchasingpain.com. What a congenial host and interviewer! I really enjoyed speaking with him and felt free to go off on tangents, which seems to be my way of attempting to paint the whole picture…
Read MoreFascia: Your Natural Posturizer
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You may have gathered that I like Pilates, yoga and dancing for my personal fitness and posture maintenance. But here’s the thing–both yoga and Pilates train muscle tone and muscle flexibility, but don’t directly address the fascial system. Scientists have only recently become interested in fascia, so there’s much learn about keeping this pervasive part of our bodies healthy and resilient enough to last a lifetime…
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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Dancing Fascia
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The idea for this post came to me while I was dancing. It also grew out of a conversation I’d had a few hours earlier with one of my spiritual mentors, Dunya, about a workshop given by Robert Schleip that I had recently attended. Robert is one of the foremost researchers on the nature of fascia…
Read MoreHeart Support for Heart Opening
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Consider the relationship between support and openness–how does that work in your life in general? Think about a situation in which you were vulnerable—your metaphorical heart opened–but you lacked backing… My guess is that it wasn’t your favorite experience.
Our physical hearts, too, need support, and what I shared in the last blog about the corocoid corner can shed light on what I mean…
Read MoreSecrets of Your Shoulders
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Because I entitled this video blog “Secrets of the Shoulders”, I don’t want to just tell you what the secrets are. Watch the video to be introduced to bits of your anatomy you may not know you have: your corocoid processes. You’ll find out where those are, and what you can do with them. It’s a little tip that I’ve found useful and hope you will too. Once you get the feeling of letting your “corocoid eyes” look forward into the world, see how it feels to walk around with that feeling…
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