Guns and Shoulder Tension

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Guns and Shoulder Tension

The anniversary of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT has made me think about guns and gunmen. It’s also brought to mind a client—a different sort of gunman–who wanted my advice about his chronic shoulder pain.  This man had worked for many years as a parole officer, and a requirement of his position had been a quarterly shooting evaluation. The pain in his shoulder dated back to that period in his life, and persisted despite his having been retired from law enforcement for several years…

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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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Subversive Postures

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Subversive Postures

My bare feet go flap-flap-flap on the kitchen floor before breakfast.  The sound of it rests along the back wall of my attention as I flick my mind over the tasks ahead for this day. And muse about how much nicer it would be to laze on the couch with a book instead. It’s been triple digit weather in Los Angeles for way too long, and such heat wears a body down!

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Posture Zones and Chakras

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Posture Zones and Chakras

A few years ago, yoga instructor David Thornton, asked me whether I’d been thinking about the chakras when I described the posture zones in The New Rules of Posture.  Here’s what I wrote to David:  I understand the chakras to be energy vortices located along the body’s central energy channel that affect all aspects of the person—body/mind/spirit.  The chakras have spiritual or emotional content that impedes the free flow of energy through the core of the being…

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Free Your Head

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Free Your Head

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…

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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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