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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A Tactile Solution to Shoulder Tension

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A Tactile Solution to Shoulder Tension

When you grasp a steering wheel (or anything else) tightly, you’ll feel tension generated from your hands up into your elbows, shoulders, neck and jaw.  There are direct myofascial and neural connective trains between the hands and the head. Such muscle chain engagement delimits your steering movements, dulls your perception of the road, and contributes to your aching shoulders. Notice this woman’s eye and jaw tension as well as her too tightly gripping hands…

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Skin-deep Posture and Movement

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Skin-deep Posture and Movement

I recently recommended to a Skype coaching client that he read pages 131-132 in The New Rules of Posture–pages that describe what I nicknamed “skintelligence”.  One of this man’s goals was to improve his ballroom dancing. His partners had commented that they felt he was holding them rigidly, so I wanted to remind him of the surprising degree to which our tactile sense influences motor coordination.  I knew that turning on his skin could help him turn off excess muscle tension…

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Shoulder Release

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Shoulder Release

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…

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Shoulder Stretch and Release

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Shoulder Stretch and Release

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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Heart Support for Heart Opening

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Heart Support for Heart Opening

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…

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Secrets of Your Shoulders

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Secrets of Your Shoulders

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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Shoulder Support

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Shoulder Support

Thanks to my colleague and proud father, Charles, for sharing his time in the accompanying movie.  And for sharing his problem—I’m sure he’s not the only new dad who finds himself with unaccustomed aches and pains.  His problem is fairly universal too, so his  solutions can apply to your life, even if you aren’t rising to feed someone at 4 a.m.  It’s a matter of having the right support:  support from the pelvis for the spine, support from the spine for the shoulders, support from the shoulders for the hands and arms…

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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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Spatial Support for Your Posture

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Spatial Support for Your Posture

Sandra Blakeslee’s book, The Body Has A Mind of Its Own, explains the neuroscience of brain mapping—the way your brain is organized to run your body. Brain maps for sensation and movement, interwoven like figures in an intricate mandala, make is possible for you to scratch your nose when it itches instead of poking yourself in the eye…

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Computer Neck Pain: A Prescription

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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…

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The Passenger Seat

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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…

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How to Avoid Holiday Shoulder Tension

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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…

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New: 7 Week Workshop DVD

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New: 7 Week Workshop DVD

Since 2007, when The New Rules of Posture came out, I’ve had scores of requests for a video to assist readers in moving through the explorations and practices in the book.  We all take in information through various channels, but when it comes to body learning, there’s no good substitute for the senses.  Words, no matter how pictorial and evocative, have a hard time becoming flesh.After many months resisting the video project—I knew it would be a mountain–I finally jumped in.  The first step was to find a videographer—an easy task, you might think, here in Hollywood-land.  But I had a bite-sized budget and a yen for quality—two things that might be hard to match.  Eventually I found Ian Campbell, who, I learned after I’d hired him, studied yoga at my friend Mike Nalick’s studio.  (You’ll meet Mike in my DVD workshop.) This was the first of many good omens…

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