Enliven Your Spine, Part 2

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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…

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Enliven Your Spine, Part 1

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Enliven Your Spine, Part 1

When you think about your spine, it’s likely your awareness goes to your back.  Perhaps you visualize the bumpy projections of the vertebrae you feel if you lie down on a hard surface. But your spine has a front surface too. It’s composed of the bodies of your vertebrae. These are round and thick, each one cushioned above and below by discs. Your spine has depth–the front surfaces of the vertebral bodies project 1/4 to 1/3 of the way forward into your trunk (2/3 of the way inside your body from the front surface). Located just behind your vital organs, the front of your spine can be an emotionally vulnerable area…

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Psoas Power

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Psoas Power

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…
 

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Grounding Practice

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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…

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Lifting a Box

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Lifting a Box

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…
 

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Posture As A Practice

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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…

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Your Posture's Event Horizon

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Your Posture's Event Horizon

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!

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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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Posture, Perception and People

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Posture, Perception and People

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…

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Forward Head: Where Does It Begin?

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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…

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More About Fascia

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More About Fascia

Here’s an amazingly well-produced television story about the latest research on fascia.  Robert Schleip is in it and Rolfing is well represented.  The graphics are incredible–you really get a sense of the fascia living inside you and a sense of awe for its role in your life.  The video is in German, but the subtitles are clear…

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Fluff Your Fascia

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Fluff Your Fascia

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…

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Stop Chasing Pain Interview

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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…

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