Where does life suck in your body

I've been working at improving my personal biomechanics for many years.  Those of you who have been around me for the last couple of decades might know that my left knee started acting up in the early 90s [probably talking to me long before that ] finally locking up in the mid-90s and STILL I managed to ignore it.

Now, no one would call getting rear-ended on the freeway good-fortune, yet in hind sight it most certainly was: it lead me to chiropractor and a physical therapist, neither of which i'd ever seen before in life.  During these encounters I came understand what was going on with some of my muscles and my knee.  Oh yes, and I was introduced to a homeopathic arnica gel concoction [a great thing to know about].

I'd studied pilates earlier in life and after the accident I took it up once again with a vengance.  It worked wonders for me.  My knee started working again.  I told everyone how to fix their physical problems through core conditioning!  I certified.  I taught others so my friends could be left in peace (well, once my student teaching hours were completed).  Skip down the road (well I could almost skip) a decade and while a well-conditioned core is a really good thing to have, I had to study Alignment/Restorative Exercise to get my knee back to a place where I can skip down the road [and I can].  I've been at the alignment thing for a little more than a year.

While I am pretty physical and do a lot of stuff, I am also pretty lazy.  It's precisely because I'm lazy that I love both my alignment practice and core conditioning:  because once you're on board with these concepts, life in general becomes easier and makes it possible to really enjoy all the rest of the time I'm alive in this body.

Life's better when your body works.  Can I get an amen?  No one likes doing the "100s" (well I don't know anyone who does).  And the first time one stretches muscle that's been ignored for longer than overnight, a uniformly pleasant experience it's not :o) In a relatively short period of time (my 500-hr. pilates certification took longer) I have come a long way toward being completely happy in my body and I'm in my sixties.  I'm not perfect and I don't even care how much farther I have to go, I'm so happy.  OK.  I'll shut up already about how happy I am.

Life's been trying lately.  I've lost my Mother recently. Other stuff.  And I realize that I deal with my emotional issues energetically [in my body].  A month ago I walked all the time.  Lately I fit this activity in if I can manage to push this immobilization out of the way.  It's as if I have been possessed by evil spirits who keep me playing sudoku for hours on end (I know, I could be eating ice cream, too).  Calf stretching?  Who has time?  All this to say:  when you find yourself in times of trouble, how do you react?  (as I type this I realize I could be walking instead of typing)

I'm back.  Ordinarily I'd edit this out of a blog BUT THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT of what I'm saying (and maybe just to myself).  We're meant to move. When you're not busy moving around, maintaining the goldilocks length of your muscles, they're tightening up, getting pulled out of alignment, gravity is deforming you, and it's not as much fun to be in one's skin.  (if you had a standing workstation right now you could be aligned and even stretching your calves while reading). And maybe you are but even if you aren't, thanks for reading. :o)  Think about the happiest times of your life, and I'll bet they're when you were doing cool stuff.  It's hard to sit still in enthusiasm.

And so we all go through stuff that bums us out.  I seem like a cool customer (I was raised in NYC where it's good to put on a united front) but when the going gets tough, my digestion slows way down, and my tight places get tighter.  Where are your tight places?  Are you into your 2nd hour gazing into a lighted screen?  Maybe it's time for a stroll.  At the very least, time to stand and stretch.  There.  That feels better, no? 

Life is sweeter when I'm able to be aware and in touch with myself in life's largest terms.  I go for a walk by the water's edge (SF Bay nearby) and I become aware of my place in this present earthly configuration.  Breathing's bigger and easier.  Oh, yes.  Body:  temple of the soul?  The nearer I get to the goldilocks place, the more sense that makes.

So how's your temple today?  Ribcage mobilizing as you breathe?  Calves got that long look and easy feeling?  The goldilocks thing all starts from the soles of your feet and works its way up.   Think I'll take a little walk.   Check the mail and my reciprocal arm swing.  :o) For the time being, I'm using any excuse.

And if you don't know anything about the aforementioned goldilocks thing, alignment, or restorative exercise (but would like to have more fun in your body) there is a bunch of great information available @ alignedandwell.com and a lot of great instruction available @ bodywisdomstudio.net.  Come on over to Point Richmond for a class, or ask me to locate a REx practitioner near you.

Think you're doing nothing?

Yeah.  You've read your email.  Checked your FB, your G+, who knows, maybe you tumble and tweet [I don't even know what the last two ARE] maybe you've played a half hour [or more] worth of games online, and NOW you're looking at my blog about alignment.  OK.  I'll try to be quick, so we can all log OUT and go for a walk.

While you're vegging (or perhaps you have a standing workstation for your computer-time which would be SO smart of you) at the computer and think it's only your brain and eyeballs and fingers that are working right now.

Well, surprise! You're always tearing down & building up your body's cells.  So even when you appear to be doing nothing, there's a whole lot of important stuff going on.  Your job (your real job) is to replicate every cell in your body, perfectly.  There are no ancient cells in your body.  You replace them every 7 years.   By the time you were 20 you'd done that successfully several times already.  As you're reading this you've probably done this many more since then.  Many cells are replaced faster, and you're mostly water anyhow (taking a sip, now) so you'll want to keep that supply pure and plentiful, no?

So what do you think?  When you were a kid, you had a lot of fun, learned new things, danced and swam, skipped and climbed (well, maybe you paddled a canoe), what I'm getting to is this:  maybe you have to move around a WHOLE LOT (get lots of blood circulating to ALL your tissues) on a regular basis to get that job done (the re-making of you) perfectly.  You did it just fine as a young person and let's face it, you weren't all that learned then, you just moved around a lot.  So maybe aging could be looked as: cells being replaced by one whose movement/circulation isn't sufficient to get the cells copied perfectly.  Maybe it's not just time on the clock, but how you're behaving as the clock is ticking.

It just may be how and how much you are in the habit of moving (lately; like over the last seven years) that determines how successful your cell re-creation (wouldn't want to call it recreation:  that makes it sound like fun :o) can be.  And even when you're old as me, moving all over can be a pleasure and as simple as going for a walk (& especially if you employ reciprocal arm motion).  Check back for the next installment:  the magic of reciprocal arm motion!!

I've been inching myself [for the last year or so] into better and better alignment.  My muscles are VERY happy to becoming ever-closer to their optimal length.  I'm getting dangerously close to standing up with legs absolutely straight and I'll be darned if I don't feel like playing and dancing and surfing (OK, I don't actually know how to surf) but I feel like I could [well, if the water were warmer hereabouts].

What I keep finding a complicated to say:  the better my alignment is, the more fun I find it to be in my body.  Core strength alone was not enough:  even getting pretty-darned-close to good alignment's made all the difference.  And if I could happen upon this starting my alignment adventure at age 60, imagine how easy it can be for you.

Come see me in at Body Wisdom Studio in Pt. Richmond for a class:  there are many.  Katy's coming soon:  check the A&W website!  I have colleagues around the world, and you can find one near you, here: AlignedandWell.com.  If you live on a mountaintop, there are a line of DVDs, a really good book, Katy's blog, plenty of resources to get you started on the road to feeling so good you'll want to run and jump, too.  Cartwheel.  Surf.  Shuffle off to Buffalo.

Enough.  I'm going for a walk and I'll probably do a cartwheel or two.  I may turn heads.  I'm an actor and I'm used to people watching me, I think I can handle that.  It's the blogging I find challenging!

Falling, Yes, I Am Falling......

Feel a song coming on?  Yeah.  Me too.  Good times :o)

My colleagues and I have put a lot of time and effort into studying how to achieve perfect alignment (because one's muscles think it is SO FUN). We observe ourselves and our clients before mirrors seeing a great many things:  there are so many different ways to hold unnecessary tension in the body and only ONE way to absolutely relax (and I'm not talking about vodka).

Being in natural alignment means you are not having to grip anything much at all:  everything's in it's natural placement and ready for you to make your next move.  And few of us (in affluent cultures) are there or anywhere near where you could see it with field glasses.

So you've read the book (and if you haven't, it's time) click here, you're stretching your calves and everything else that's tight and that's GREAT.  You rock :o)  Looking in the mirror:  weight's in my heels, check. Pelvis, shoulders, and head backed up and all stacked up perfectly.  Yay!  I've finally made it!  Whoo Hoo.  Too bad you're stuck in front of the mirror, cause when you get your shoes on (your minimalist shoes on) and take your act on the road, the tension's back. "I'm back :o)"

Let this be an amusement to you, but all this alignment study and stretching is pointing toward you being able to arrange yourself naturally and move through life that way.  Which may be a whole lot different from being able to arrange yourself successfully before a mirror....

We often hear reports that the old AND feeble complain their balance isn't good and they're afraid they're going to fall down.   I'd like to give them a shout out to validate their awareness of themselves and what's going on in their universe, because they are falling down.  What's different is they don't catch themselves as reliably as they once did.

Everywhere there's gravity, the act of walking [forward] is driven by posterior leg muscles.  (equal and opposite reaction, right?)  The same all over.  In Venice, the gondolier generates force back to move you forward. 

Paddling your own canoe, you push your paddle back to move you forward.  Well, walking is no different.  You stick your straight leg down on the ground and push back to move you forward.  Oh, no, wait.  You don't walk that way:  you kick your foot out in front of you and you fall on it AND your knee's bent when you hit .  Well, it gets us down the road, but at the expense of our delicate tissues.

If you were very clever, you'd stop falling and start locomoting.  For this to happen, you put your pole (leg) down on the ground and "pole back."  This moves all of you ahead where the inactive leg is dangling (ever so briefly) right beneath you.  You receive your body's weight on that straight leg which is at a right angle to the pull of gravity and you repeat the process on the other side.  Neither foot ever gets out in front of you and you are not at any time in the process, falling down.  This is especially because you swing the passive side's arm back to balance you out. (one day soon: link to a little movie right here)

This process depends on none of you getting ahead of any other part of you, which means for 'fallers' [like you]: quit leaning into it, get your weight back over the front of the heels (right where the bony bump on your ankle is-- which is why you want your weight there, btw) and for maximum enjoyment, supporting the body's weight on straight legs.  You think your legs are straight.  They're not.

If you were all aligned and un-grippy (well, BEING aligned means that all of you is un-grippy) you could walk across the Bering Straits, or the Iberian Peninsula, or a really long way (and our ancestors certainly did).  You'd maximize your output as you'd use your body as the designer intended.  You wouldn't dream of hauling composting cow manure in this, would you?

Or pee here:

Of course you wouldn't.  :o)

So now that you know it's un-clever to be falling instead of locomoting (and/or tooling around in your Tesla roadster), it's time to straighten up and fly right (& I don't mean in an air-chaise like in WALL-E).  


There's a long list of tissue damage that occurs when one's falling which doesn't occur when one's locomoting.  I was keenly aware  my knees weren't happy with me anymore as I had been falling-not-walking for six decades.  In the year or so I've been working on walking-not-falling through life I can testify that my body is a whole lot happier with my ever more natural alignment.  It might be an easier trip for you, but even if it's longer and more arduous, the reward will be the same:  a healthy body ready to respond to whatever your next move is....  tap dancing, anyone?

Betcha Ginger did a LOT of calf-stretching in her time....

For Princesses of all ages :o)

A colleague's post on foot discoveries with her daughter
a true story

Princess Feet

A good friend introduced me to Katy Bowman's work on biomechanics and body alignment a couple of months ago, and I've found her work to be fascinating and incredibly helpful, not just for my own issues, but as a healthcare provider. Many of her posts on the importance of healthy body alignment and the effects of one part on the entire system compliment my own interest in the importance of  breathing technique and body position in working with issues such as pain, anxiety and decreased oxygenation, especially during recovery and physiological stress.

One of the subjects which Bowman talks about frequently is the importance of walking, squatting and the cascade of problems which positive heeled shoes can cause. I was never a big fan of heels, and have been carefully considering the angle of my shoes ever since. But my fashion sense has always been decidedly...unfashionable. I cannot say the same for Anya, and preschool girls have some very particular ideas about what to wear.

The Princess Years

Yesterday morning, my 4-year old daughter wobbled into the room wearing a princess tutu, a princess tiara and one of the 6 pairs of cheap plastic princess heels she was given for Christmas last year. I had thought she forgot about them when I buried them in the costume box, quarantining them from the real shoes. I have socio-political issues with girls and princess culture. My kids know that I hate princesses, know that I dislike that princesses rarely save themselves in stories, are considered special simply by the circumstances of their birth or because of their beauty. When I explained the problems of a monarchy vs. a democracy, Anya was the first to chime in that the people should decide who the leaders are. And yet. The princess culture in the preschool set is overwhelming, infectious, and all-consuming. The fixation with prettiness is problematic but workable; the conflation of "pretty" and "fancy" with "princess", and "princess" with the requirement of pretty above all else!!!1!- that is the spiral of death by pink for me.

When Anya wobbled in in that outfit, all smiles and pride in how pretty she was, I knew I had to pick my battle; all out War, Mom vs Princess was asking for an epic loss. I told her how beautiful the dress was, how impressed I was that she had created a whole costume for herself, and how beautiful she was when she was pretending to be a princess AND when she was being regular Anya. She asked what I thought of the shoes. I told her that I didn't like high heel shoes because the heels were no good for running and no good for the muscles, bones and the whole body.

She twirled for me a couple of times, then wobbled her way out.

Be free!

A minute later she wobbled back in and said, "Why are my pretty shoes not good for my body?" I know what to do with that kind of soft pitch! I leapt up and showed her where her hamstrings are, showed her how to feel them stretch, pointed out where they attached to the skeleton- we did a great activity using a little movable guy with rubber bands attached to his bones to represent muscles and how they move bone, which I'm just realizing I never blogged about- and she was fascinated. Then we lay down and held up our legs to look at the angle of our feet and how a pointed toe shortened the length of our hamstrings. I talked to her about how walking like that and never stretching them out would make the muscles get tighter and shorter, till it was so bad that our feet couldn't even get into a neutral position without some effort on the part of our muscles. And, by the way, our lesson on simple machines has totally come in handy- the kids now often differentiate between things that take work from our muscles and things that don't!

Next, I did some silly poses to try to show her how the whole body has to compensate for the forward lean of the body standing on heels. Katy Bowman's illustrations are better than my clowning around, but when your audience is 4, a little mama slapstick goes a long way towards remembering a complex lesson!

Anya wobbled back out to the living room, then returned, without the heels and said, in the most woeful voice ever, "But how can I have princess shoes if they are bad for my body?" I took her out to examine her shoe collection and tried to push the hot pink, turquoise glittered light up sneakers as sufficiently fancy for a princess. Anya was not impressed.

Then I had an awesome idea.

Princess Feet

"I think that princess FEET are even cooler than princess shoes, don't you?" She looked doubtfully at her feet. "I can make your feet extra fancy and special!"

I collected up red, pink and purple markers, a washable glue stick, gold glitter, and two colors of nail polish. I painted her nails and drew suns, hearts, flowers and swirls all over the tops of her feet, then rubbed some glue stick over the top and went to town with the glitter. She was beyond thrilled.

We went outside to test out her new princess feet. It turns out that not only are princess feet cool-looking and fun to create, but you can run in them way better than in high heeled princess shoes.

 We also did some careful scientific tests of climbing, playing, skipping and hammock pushing. Princess feet outshone princess high heels in all the categories!

Esteemed Colleague's excellent blogpost on alignment

Thanks, Jillian!

The Path You Take

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Don't just stand there! How are you *actually* supposed to stand?

There's a lot of talk in the media these days about how standing is way better for you than sitting, but did you know there's actually a "right" way to stand?  Here it is: space your feet pelvis width apart, line up the outside edges of your feet, fully straighten your legs, relax your quads, and carry your weight in your heels (get your hips directly above your heels).  This advice may be different from what you've heard over the years, like "keep your knees soft (slightly bent)", or "tuck your pelvis under to engage your core".  So who's right?  How do you know which advice to follow?  In my opinion, you should follow the advice that doesn't do damage to any of your body parts.  Read on, you'll see what I mean. 

First image: hips forward, loading the feet.  Second image, knees bent, loading the knees and the feet.      Third image, hips over heels, loading the posterior muscles.

Let's start with the feet.  Your feet are like your hands, your toes are like your fingers.  If you did a handstand, you probably wouldn't let your body go forward and put your weight on your fingers, you'd keep it in the heel of your hand, closest to your wrist.  The rules are the same for the foot.  Your feet actually house 25% of your body's bones and muscles, and are packed full of nerves.  The fact that your feet are capable of an infinite number of positions and are so sensitive to pressure, shape and texture suggests that they are made to read information from the environment.

A nice, flexible foot will be able to form to the surface you are walking on, giving you greater stability.  If your foot can't move to accommodate a rock or a hole in the ground, or a rogue Lego, some other joint will have to (sprained ankle, knee), or you fall over and break a hip.

The side of my foot can come up over the block so I don't have to fling my whole body to the floor to avoid getting hurt.  If I carried my weight in my toes, this would be very painful.

When you carry your weight on your toes, your foot has to contract and grip the ground all the time to hold you up.  This puts a significant amount of strain on the small muscles and soft tissues of your feet, makes the muscle stiff and unyielding, and actually cuts off blood flow to your foot.  Your poor foot loses its fantastic range of motion and will be in pain and may even start to deform from the strain (bunions, hammer toes, flat feet, etc.)

The size of muscles and bones can give us a clue to their intended function.  Bigger muscles and bones should be doing heavy load bearing work.  Smaller muscle and bone is more for proprioception and other functions, like the delicate task of capturing nose goblins from a sleeping 2 year old.  When you carry your weight back in your heels and turn OFF your quads, you allow the large muscles on the back of your leg and your butt to hold your weight, rather than the teeny tiny bits and pieces that make up your feet. 

Another thing to look at is the effect of a contracted muscle on other parts of your body.  When you use the back of your legs and your butt to hold you up, your butt muscles gently tug your tailbone outward, which maintains a healthy tone to your pelvic floor ( it is attached to your tailbone).  Cool!  When you use your quads to hold you up, either by having your hips shoved forward or having your knees bent, it pulls your kneecap up and into the knee joint, grinding through the cartilage, creating lots of friction and inflammation, leading to chronic pain/disease, eventually knee replacement.  Uh-oh.  Also, you lose any toning effect on the pelvic floor.  Dang.

The last thing I'll mention is the effect that the placement of your weight has on your bones.  In order for your hip bones (femoral heads) to develop and maintain their proper density, your legs MUST be vertical.  Your leg bone is triggered to grow (ie, NOT degenerate over time) through the compression it gets between the ground and gravity. 

A tilted leg bone, as in hips forward OR knees bent, is not getting the right amount of compression, which means your bones are not as strong as they have to be for your weight.  If I weigh 100 lbs, I want my bones to be able to handle that weight when I'm walking, or if I have to jump to avoid getting hit by a bus, or if I'm going downstairs and I think there's another step but there's not and I land hard on my leg and get that jolt that reverberates through my skull (we've all done it) .  If I don't bear my weight on my bones properly, that means that maybe they'll only be able to handle 85% of my weight, which is bad news for me in the above scenarios.  I don't know about you, but I'd REALLY rather have my bones strong enough to hold me up, since I have an aversion to chronic pain and osteoporosis and hip fracture.

(A side note, this is why time spent sitting is such a big factor in the development of osteoporosis.  Those hours you spend sitting in a chair are hours that you're telling your bones to go on vacation.  A horizontal bone isn't getting ANY compression from gravity, so it isn't getting ANY signal to replenish!)


So there's my case for standing with your weight in your heels, and for learning how to relax your quads when you stand around.   Makes sense, doesn't it?

The best things in life are free :o)

Stressful times.  If you’re not already rich, your net worth has likely taken a beating in the last little while.  Dang, Jim.  For most of us, enriching one’s existence will likely be headed in the “inward” direction, not in the acquisition of cool toys.  My Tesla will just have to wait for me.  And that’s not entirely a bad thing.  What the greed heads don’t want you to know (or feel) because when you do, then you don’t need to buy anything:

The Best Things in Life are Free  :o)

(I feel a song coming on) A genuine smile shared, holding your baby in your arms, a moment to reflect, taking a walk in the sunshine OR on a rainy day and jumping in puddles, or __________(your good and free thing goes here).

For the moment, oxygen is free, so take a deep breath and notice:  are you creating downward pressure on your Pelvic Floor in so doing?  If you move your ribcage to bring air in, make the cavity larger-changing the air pressure-outside air rushes in, downward pressure doesn’t happen.  Huh?

If you ride a horse, the next time you dismount:  notice that their entire ribcage expands as they breathe, it’s not just their belly reaching down to the ground and back up again.  If you toss a stick or a ball to your dog, once they’ve fetched it back to you and set it down, check it out: their entire rib cage grows all over for respiration. The ribcage is a moveable affair.

Put your hands on your own ribcage and see if you can give them a ride away from each other when breathing in deeply.  Breathe into those hands:  booyah!  See?  You can "ride" your hands in and out using the muscles in and around your ribcage. 

Soon, we’ll see swimmers race in the Olympics.  Their ability to compete successfully has a great deal to do with how much oxygen they can take in repeatedly:  the ability to move their rib cages.  After the race is over and they’re hanging poolside or on the ropes, check them out:  their backs are big – the ribcage goes all the way around.

Maybe you don’t partake in competitive sport.  You may take something else seriously, encounter other daily stresses.  In a stressful time [or when you’d like to remain separate from one] give your hands a little ride:  a couple of good, deep breaths.  It’s so relaxing.  And relaxed is where you do your best stuff:  like dancing or singing in the shower or ____________ (your best stuff goes here). 

Adult diapers: are you in? (know someone who is)

I think it's pretty clear that anyone who's outgrown them, does not want to return to wearing diapers.  Yet there are football and tv stars advertising them on tv in primetime:  expensive time.  That means the market for this item is BIG.

So many of us spend lives with our butt permatucked (a technical term) and it ain't natural.  Gentlemen and women, influenced by a 'civilized' culture, that sticking your bottom out isn't done, "tuck" them and in so doing set off a chain reaction of tension traveling throughout the body.  Think: tossing a pebble in pond.

Sitting for long periods of time [all day?] [got an hour commute to add to that on either end] exacerbates the situation.  Your hamstrings are way tight, (another technical term) from being asked to do nothing all day long, and while seated, the weight of your torso is jamming that sacrum in from the bottom. We're designed to sit on our ischial tuberosities, where the sacrum can assume its natural position.

So you say, "what's the big deal, I'll do my downward dog, and stretch those hamstrings, all right already."  Sure.  But your pelvic floor is muscle and it's the only thing keeping your guts up inside you and not falling out on the floor. Your PF is attached to different spots in the pelvis, one of which moves: the sacrum.  If it's jammed in on the bottom, there's slack in the PF muscles created only by the narrowing the obstetric conjugate (the shape is slightly different in men, but is the functionally the same). The PF muscle which used to be serviceable is now hanging like a hammock.  The muscles shorten and tighten in an effort to remain structurally useful, yet if the angle is extreme, you're out of control.

Your doctor (who's likely forgotten any of the biomechanics he/she may have studied in college) recommends kegels to you, so you can strengthen your pelvic floor, failing to realize that the tissues are weak not because they're lazy, but because they are not physically able to shorten any more than they already have.   Not too loose: too tight! 

Your entire body is amazing and it moves just as you ask it to.   Were we a people who squatted for toilet affairs we would not have these issues.  The places in the world where people still squat for eliminations have no need of diapers.  And they're definitely not tucked, as the tucked squatter sends their business between their feet (and those desiring to leave some items behind will be UNtucking their pelvis, no?) 

Developing your ability to squat and stick your tail out (and one ought to be able to maintain this position for as long as is necessary) will restore their obstetric conjugate to its natural ratio/relationship to the rest of the pelvis and your pelvic floor will (magically) be able to function normally once again.

Surgery doesn't work for long, so if you're dealing with pelvic floor issues your choice is simple.  Start asking your rear end to behave naturally or start shopping for diapers.

And if I've piqued your interest in restoring your body to its natural vibrant state, come see me or my colleagues in lovely Pt. Richmond for classes in Restorative Exercise.  And if you're not nearby, don't worry.  There is much instruction available on line, a line of DVDs, a great book on Fixing your Feet (they're where the rubber meets the road) all available at www.alignedandwell.com.