Blog
Enliven Your Spine, Part 2
Begin in a seated position as you did in Part 1 of this exploration. Imagine that each of your vertebral bodies contains a light source. When you inhale, the lights brighten; when you exhale, they dim. Imagine that the 24 vertebrae and sacrum can each project a distinct beam onto a wall a few feet in front of you. Each time you breathe in, your spine subtly extends, and that makes the light beams on the wall spread slightly apart from each other—visualize that happening. Breathe slowly and steadily. After every exhalation take a second to sense the weight of your body on the chair and your feet on the floor…
Grounding Practice
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…
Posture As A Practice
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…
Forward Head: Where Does It Begin?
I recently did a movement/posture coaching session with a woman who came to me complaining of pain in her shoulder. She pointed to the spot and said that all her stress “always goes right here.” Hmm, I thought…
Stop Chasing Pain Interview
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…
Posture and Politics
What are you doing with your body when you find yourself at an edge? Are there places in your life where your body defaults to a curl or twist? Concealed at those same edges may be opportunities for changing habits, postural or otherwise….
Relaxation: What IS it?
Most of us rely on something outside of ourselves to achieve a state of relaxation: a long walk, a hard workout, a massage, a substance, a person, a meditative practice, a TV show. But, by understanding what that state consists of, we empower ourselves to achieve it without a crutch, and to incorporate it into our daily living.
Computer Neck Pain: A Prescription
You’d think, having spent the better part of 30 years teaching people about posture, that my own would have paragon status. It’s pretty good, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t stop me from being unconscious about my body use in certain situations. Like sitting at my computer and getting lost in a project…
The Passenger Seat
What’s the rule? A car length for every 10 mph? I don’t always follow that rule, but my friend drives way closer to the car ahead than I like. We’re in freeway traffic that is crowded but moving. Several times the brakes are necessary when our lane unexpectedly slows. I sense myself applying brakes of my own, griping my calf and digging my heel into the floorboard. I’m gripping a phantom steering wheel as well–my traps (upper shoulder muscles) clenched in an effort to gain control. My tongue presses back into my throat in a half-swallow. My mother was a nervous passenger, too…
How to Avoid Holiday Shoulder Tension
This time of year, as many of us step onto a holiday roller coaster, tension along the tops of our shoulders becomes almost epidemic. Necks ache, shoulders are tender and the holidays begin to promise more chores than cheer.
If you’re lucky enough to have someone in your household who gives good shoulder rubs, you know that a ten minute session under those hands can give you a new lease on life. What you may not have noticed is that when you stand up after the massage, your posture is better. Not only that, but it’s easier to breathe and your holiday to-do list looks less overwhelming…
On Feet
It doesn’t take long to lose the joy… Sitting on the subway I sense my toes curling, gripping inside my shoes, as I think about the upcoming hospital visit. My intent to stay open in my body has chased the tension down into the farthest corner. But I don’t want to hide; I want to feel. Yes, toes, it’s true: I feel anxious and afraid…
The Best Way to Walk
The waiting one does at airports is a good opportunity for blog writing. This time I’m people-watching at Bob Hope Airport (Burbank, CA). There is such a variety of ways to put one leg in front of another–the pregnant airport security guard, the woman with exaggerated movement in her hip joints, the men with none at all. I want to train other movement professionals to observe and intervene in clients’ walking patterns. How do I teach them to communicate effectively to someone who says, “You mean I have to learn how to walk all over again?”
A Day at Dallas/Ft. Worth
It’s not always easy to walk my talk. The truth is that my current situation here in Dallas challenges my own sage advice to replace compressive, destructive, teeth-gnashing tension with sincere and steady shifts in perception