On Breathing Patterns

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On Breathing Patterns

Thanks to a reader of The New Rules, for inciting me to write again about breathing. It’s a HUGE topic, so this post is a distillation. Here’s my reader’s query:  Here in Germany, singers, yogis, and tai chi practitioners are hotly debating the possibility of two types of people with different body organization. The focus lies on differences in breathing: exhalers and inhalers. In my understanding, their spatial organization corresponds to what you call earth-orienting and space-orienting, respectively. In everyday breathing…

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Body Literacy: The Sound of Your Heart

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Body Literacy: The Sound of Your Heart

Not long ago Katy Fox, an artist and yoga instructor in San Francisco, contacted me because she had found The New Rules of Posture useful in her work. She also wanted to share her own vision with me. Katy has a huge vision–nothing less than the re-embodiment of our culture.Sensibly, she’s starting small. The week following our conversation she launched her first embodied public space: Soundscape of the Human Heart. She was pretty jazzed about this when we spoke…

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Heal Your Posture at Tax Time

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Heal Your Posture at Tax Time

I love my accountant.  The walls of his office display a 40-year collection of IRS cartoons, and he does everything he can to keep our yearly meeting light.  But there’s nothing like an hour’s contemplation of tax code intricacies to make your head spin and put kinks in your center line.  Money, when you have to part with it, compresses the body.  Which is how I walked out of the office…

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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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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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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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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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Relaxation: What IS it?

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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.  

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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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