It’s a cornerstone of Cognitive Behavior Therapy that what you think determines how you feel, how you feel determines what you do, and what you do – no surprises here – determines your results. Your results then re-inforce your thoughts, and around it goes again. What does this have to do with posture in general, …
Read more Three myths about posture that you can’t afford to believe
If, 20 years from now, I’m asked: “what did you do in the pandemic?” like many of us, I will be honor-bound to answer: I made sourdough bread. And, again, like many of us, I turned inward. Literally. For the past nine weeks, I’ve been studying my diaphragm. Yes, I already knew the broad outlines: …
Read more You’ve met your sourdough starter . . . now meet your diaphragm
At the beginning of every Eight Weeks to a Longer Spine class, we sit in a circle and check in. I want to know how the past week went, what worked and what didn’t. The responses usually include at least one tally of days without pain, an insight or two, some new aches, and accounts …
Our first impulse, of course, is to look at the cat. Way cute! But let your eyes drift over to the boy, and things aren’t so good. He sits so far back on his buttocks that his lumbar spine, instead of going in, goes out. If you’re tempted to think: “he’s just a boy, …
Read more Annals of Catastrophic Posture: lumbar hump edition
I saw these two men perched on a bench outside Granville Island Public Market last July. The one on the left is demonstrating Spineful sitting. His friend is not. One sits on bone, the other doesn’t. One has a long straight back. The other sits in a slump that’s building a hump. No points awarded …
I missed out on Shirley Temple movies when I was a kid. Our family was late to get a television and my mother resisted cable, then $5 a month, on the prescient grounds that once you’d signed up, the price was only going to rise. So Alan records Ms. Temple’s oeuvre for me whenever the …
Read more Why watch Shirley Temple movies? You can see people, including Shirley, in natural posture
I don’t remember when Warrior I popped up in my first set of introductory yoga classes, but I do know that by the end of that eight-week session, we had met, and we weren’t friends. As years went by, I learned to tolerate the pose, but I never looked forward to it coming up in …
Read more How Spinefulness changed my Warrior I from fierce to friendly
Nothing conveys the vulnerability of a spine out of alignment quite like watching the vertebrae collapse. That’s why Jean Couch’s collapsing spine is one of my favorite demos of all time. Originally this riveting performance was only available on the Your Pain-Free Life DVD sold through the Balance Center. That meant you had to own the …
Catastrophic posture is all around us. Once you know what it looks like, you’re guaranteed to see something that makes your eyes hurt pretty much every time you go outside. And if you turn on the television or open a magazine, being inside isn’t so safe either. But then we hit October, the glory …
The first time I held a pelvis in my hands I was in Palo Alto, taking my first Spinefulness teacher training. I was also watching worlds collide. My teacher, Jean Couch, brought out a model of a female pelvis, and put it in balanced posture, with the pubic bones facing the floor. The hip bones …
Read more What I learned the first time I held a pelvis in my hands