Why is back pain epidemic in our culture? Could our posture have anything to do with it? And what does it mean that even health care providers don’t recognize harmful posture when they see it? You tell me. This photo of young girls taking part in “healthy” outdoor activity under adult supervision …
At first they seem an unlikely pairing. Georgia LeConte, the world’s most expert teacher of Aplomb/Spinefulness, is elegant and refined, commanding when she’s teaching, quiet and low-key when she’s not. James Brown is the Godfather of Soul (aaooww!). What could they possibly have in common? True, they are both in natural balance. Check out this video …
Read more Keeping it on the one: Spinefulness lessons from James Brown and Georgia LeConte
Any casual observer, seated on a park bench, watching people walk by, might begin to ask: where did all the buttocks go? Why are our cabooses so often so flat? It seems that the gluteus muscles, the biggest in the human body, have gone into hiding. They’re the source of our forward propulsion in walking and upward …
Read more The case of the missing buttocks – it’s not all mum bum
If learning Spinefulness has a downside, it’s this: once you can see out of balance posture, you can’t un-see it. Sit on a park bench to people-watch, and you’ll see a pain parade. Yes, there’s the occasional delight of someone walking with ease and grace, but for the most part, old and young, it’s a …
Read more They stagger, they fall, but they move better than we do
I know shamefully little of 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Ask me to free-associate on his name, and I will come up with the Monty Python drinking song, not the Critique of Pure Reason. But ever since I saw the photo above, in Sander L. Gilman’s Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture, Kant has been on my mind. …
Read more Annals of Catastrophic Posture: Immaneul Kant edition
Ever since Newton watched the apple drop, gravity has been getting a bad rap. From Newton’s insight – masses attract each other, and larger masses pull smaller masses toward them – we’ve created a tragedy. In upright cultures like our own, we have, after all, a duty to resist the downward pull. The plot is David and …
I’m back from New Zealand and looking forward to starting a new session of Spineful Yoga on Sunday mornings at 10 am and Mondays at 5:30 pm. Apart from the reassurance that summer does exist, somewhere on the planet, the trip gave me an unexpected gift of perspective. Slow and steady change can be hard to …
Read more Best thing I learned on my holidays? Long car rides don’t hurt any more
Do you believe that your back pain is normal? That the pain you feel when you get out of bed in the morning is just a sign of aging? Or that your pain while sitting is caused by sitting itself? If so, you’re wrong, but you’re not alone. I was reminded of this when I read …
Read more Do you think your back pain is normal? Think again.
Fashion photography always exaggerates. That’s why the pages of fashion magazines are filled with models in catastrophic posture, like the one above, from a 2018 Elle magazine. When I chanced upon it, I was in my ophthalmologist’s waiting room, and I swear it made my eyes hurt. I have a pretty good idea what she …
Are you familiar with Gretchen Rubin, author of wildly successful self-help book, The Happiness Project? One of her “secrets of adulthood” goes like this: what you do every day is more important than what you do once in a while. It makes sense. Anyone who plays a musical instrument has learned that 15 minutes of …