Author: Eric Goodman

Topics: Movement, developmental, breathing

All information is attributed to the author. Except in the case where we may have misunderstood a concept and summarized incorrectly. These notes are only for reference and we always suggest reading from the original source.

Part I: Off Your Form and Under Pressure

One: A Day in the Life of a Twenty-First-Century Body

Issues with the modernized desk-faring body

When sitting down at a desk your legs don’t hold you up, so your back becomes the weight-bearing center instead, causing it to weaken. Forward head posture (anterior head carriage) occurs and neck tension may become present. The occiput shortens, placing strain on the neck. It is common to suffer from headaches. Ribcage droops downward under the force of gravity and presses against the pelvis, shortening the torso, and bending the lower back muscles out of shape.

A compressed ribcage prevents full lung expansion and contraction, breathing is diminished, less O2 in and less CO2 out. This can have an effect on all the systems in the body by limiting the metabolic efficiency, worsening chronic pain, the immune system, etc.

Digestion is affected and so is the enteric nervous system itself.

The posterior chain (quadratus lumborum, glutes, hams, calves) is compressed and affects force transfer. Also makes it hard to stabilize during forward movements like lifting something up. The joints and spine have to stiffen up to take the pressure.

As the spine is compressed, the motor response becomes less efficient, as well as the follow-up sensory input. Digestion, coordination, balance, elimination, respiration, immunity, energy, etc., are all affected downstream.

The vagus nerve commands involuntary bodily processes like the heart rate, muscle movement for breathing, and chemical levels in the digestive system. Anterior head carriage puts pressure on it.

By exercising and putting weight on a broken structure, you will weaken it further until it breaks down. Strengthening anterior muscles when the posterior is weak further exacerbates the issues.

Medical Response

Each ache and pain are looked at in isolation and the patient is provided relief rather than rehabilitation.

Two: Designed for Efficient Movement

Pleistocene people were upright and on the move for most daylight hours, walking and/or running from five to ten miles per day. Their posture fitted that need:

• Movement was initiated at the hip joint, the body’s natural pivot point and therefore the most efficient and effective way to launch oneself into action; torsos were extended and sternums high to accommodate the breathing that filled the lungs sufficiently to power the needed movement; and the body was elongated so these hunter-gatherers could see as far as possible from atop long, straight necks while being supported from the arches of their feet upward.

The body is one living, interconnected network:

• A frame of bones connected in ways that enable movement, muscles that carry energy and convert it into power to both move the frame and hold it still, connective tissue, and an enveloping biological fabric, the fascia—within which numerous related organic systems execute the essential processes of life.

Axial and appendicular bones are not opposed to one another; rather, they are and should always be in a state of what we might call competitive tension.

• As the sternum lifts and expands outwardly, the action expands the shoulders as well, an expansion that consists in the shoulders rotating externally in the shoulder joints—the left and right glenohumeral joints. It’s a subtle, gentle rotation; in a sense, the front of the shoulder moves expansively while the back of the shoulder contracts.
• The two parts of the body’s skeletal framework need one another: To provide tethering support successfully, the appendicular skeleton needs an expansive axial skeleton; to expand sternum and shoulders, the axial skeleton requires a strongly anchored appendicular skeleton. Lift and resistance, expansion and contraction, inward against outward rotation: The push-pull tension between the two parts of the framework keeps all of the moving parts of the body in the right place, keeps us upright, keeps us stable enough not to fall over.

The pubic symphysis is the anchoring core point (where the axial and appendicular meet) and is also our body’s’ center of gravity.

Part II: Return to Form

Three: Decompress

When decompression breathing, the occiput must be positioned so it is lifted off the neck (back and up). This frees the nerves up for better neural transmission. When the occiput falls onto the neck, the angle of the shoulders shifts and they droop downwards, squeezing the ribcage and clavicles. We usually assume that tight pec minors pull the shoulders in, but it can also be the shoulders that contract the pec minor instead.

• Tight pec minors may result in numbness and tingling in the hands, diminished pulse when the arms are lifted over the head, weakness in the upper body, even trouble in the jaw, because a jutting-forward head must constantly look up to find the horizon, and that affects the angle of the jaw.

The diaphragm initiates the expansion of the breathing process, contracting to enlarge the ribcage and thus increase the volume of the thoracic cavity, the great chamber of the body containing the heart and lungs, so that air can be drawn into the lungs during inhalation. Then comes exhalation, when the diaphragm relaxes. But in a body compressed by gravity, the muscle supporting that relaxing action, the serratus posterior, tends simply to collapse. Relaxation of the diaphragm is necessary, and it is the job of the serratus to enable it, but compression has swung the pendulum too far in the direction of relaxation—all the way to slump.

A compressed and therefore shortened abdomen shifts the body’s center of gravity, shortening the spine and changing the biomechanics between the spine and the hip joint. Simply put, the shortened spine takes on the job the hip joint is supposed to do, namely, absorb the pressure of gravity. That makes for less effective muscle contraction throughout the body; it also typically makes for pain.

• A shortened spine causes the hip joints to rotate externally; they more or less spin the appendicular skeleton away from the axial skeleton, making space for the axial skeleton to collapse into—and thereby compress and shorten the abdomen.
• Tight as it may look or feel, that shortened, weakened abdomen actually prevents the body from using the muscles at the hip joint that maintain the center of gravity.

Decompression Breathing

• Standing tall with hips slightly hinged.
• It helps to visualize your lungs inside your ribcage: a pair of bellows-like sacs ready to be filled to the maximum with the air you bring to them.
• Start by making sure your head is lifted off the neck and is positioned for space at the back of the skull. To make it happen, mentally stretch a long line from your skull to your tailbone, holding your chin in and elongating your neck.
• Place your thumbs on the lowest rib you can feel on the ribcage and place your pinky finger on the upper rim of your pelvis. The space between pinky and thumb should increase with every breath.
• Inhale. Don’t shrug or hike up your shoulders; instead, raise your sternum, letting the breath of the inhalation lift your ribcage upward from the hips as you press your abdomen in toward the navel. Bring the air into your lung as your ribcage expands evenly front, back, and sides—all around, not neglecting the lower back portion of the ribcage.
• Exhale. Pull your abdomen in tight and maintain the expansion and elevation of the ribcage as long as you can as you let the breath out. Hold on to the tension in all those muscles you’ve elongated during the inhalation and let the lungs deflate step by step, from the top of the ribcage to the bottom.
• The minimum for doing the decompression breath is three repetitions.

1. Standing Decompression

• Stand with your feet parallel—big toes touching one another and heels separated by one to two inches—and with your weight on your heels. Keep your arms at your sides, elbows slightly bent, palms forward, and with your thumbs externally rotated so that your chest and shoulders are open. From this planted position, the aim is to make yourself tall through breathing.
• Begin by inhaling a decompression breath, raising and broadening your ribcage as expansively as possible, keeping the head positioned for space at the back of the skull, holding the chin in and the neck long. Maintain the expansion as you exhale, pressing your abdomen in toward your navel. Try to get taller with each repetition.
• Each full decompression breath, combining inhale and exhale should take 10 to 15 seconds.
• Added: Lift the arms without straining your neck. Push the crown of your head back and up as the arms lift. Expand the torso and press the ball of the big toe into the ground.

2. Lunge Decompression

• Step forward on the right leg and step the left leg back; you are now in a standing lunge. The distance of the lunge is immaterial—short or long—so long as both feet face straight ahead and your hips are squared. The front foot should be flat on the floor, while the heel of your back foot should be raised, toes gripping the floor.
• Raise both arms straight up high over your head and touch fingertips. Press your feet into the floor. Do a decompression breath for 30 seconds while holding your stance. Then do two more 30-second breaths. With every inhalation, expand your ribcage more expansively and try to stand taller—that is, taller and more expansive on the second breath than on the first, taller and more expansive than that on the third breath. Remain tall and maintain the expansion on the exhale.
• After three breaths, lower your arms, and from a normal standing position, reverse the position of the standing lunge.

3. Supine Decompression

• Lie on your back, feet parallel and touching, with the tops of the feet flexed and pulled toward the shins. Bend your knees just enough to be able to squeeze your inner thighs together. Begin the decompression breath, lengthening your torso away from your hips as you expand your ribcage and as your sternum rises on the breath. Maintain the expansion as you exhale.

4. Prone Decompression

• Lie on your front, feet parallel and touching, with your toes tucked and curled under, giving the arch a good stretch. Again, squeeze the knees and inner thighs together.
• With your arms out in front of you, press your fingertips into the ground or floor and lift your forehead and nose off the ground as you elevate your chest, making sure to position your head for space at the base of the skull.
• Breathe. Expand the ribcage and lengthen it away from the hips as you inhale, and maintain the expansion as you exhale, keeping the abdomen tight. Do the decompression breath four times, and with each breath, stretch and press a little more: Press the fingertips into the floor and squeeze the knees harder; position the head with chin pulled back and neck lengthened even further; stretch the feet a little longer. Four breaths constitute one repetition.

5. Kneeling Decompression

• Bring your body to a kneeling position. Maintain weight through your knees with a pad or rolled-up mat between your kneecaps and the floor. Your knees should be hip-width apart. Position yourself as tall as possible with your feet directly behind you. Point your heels toward the sky by contracting your shin muscles.
• Make sure that all of your body weight is over your knees, not on the feet; if the weight goes through your feet, you will be contracting your abdomen and hip flexors harder than your posterior chain muscles.
• Take a deep decompression breath, and slowly hinge your hips back until you feel the muscles of the back and hips supporting the weight of your torso.

6. Seated Decompression

• Sit forward on the seat, away from the backrest, as tall as you can with your weight directly on your sit bones. Extend your legs if you can, but keep your heels on the floor and pull your toes back toward your shins. Squeeze your knees together. If possible, use a prop that makes this action more effective: a water bottle, rolled-up sweater, book, even a wad of paper placed between the knees.
• Position your head for space at the back of the skull—chin drawn in, neck long. Place your hands on either side of your body, ready to measure between little finger and thumb the distance, when you are at the top of the breath inhalation, between the top of your pelvis and the bottom of your ribcage. Begin the decompression breath, expanding the ribcage and elongating the torso as your sternum rises on the breath. Measure the top of-pelvis to bottom-of-ribcage distance on both hands, then begin your exhalation. Brace your abdomen; try to maintain the same measured distance on the exhale that you achieved with the inhale. And of course, with each repetition, try for more expansiveness, higher lift, and tighter control of the abdomen on the exhale.

7. Shoulder Tracing

• In this exercise, you trace the path of your shoulder’s natural rotation, and in so doing, you begin to correct the breakdown that has occurred in the joint through too much internal rotation.
• Stand with feet apart, arms at your sides with palms facing backward and your elbows bent so that your thumbs are touching the exact midpoint of each side. Hinge back at the hip.
• Use your thumbs as pointers to trace each side of your body upward as your elbows bend increasingly outward from your sides and away from one another. Be sure to keep your arms in the same plane as your torso, neither ahead of it nor behind it, and keep the wrists straight. When your thumbs reach your armpits, stop tracing with the thumbs but keep raising your elbows up, up, up toward the sky and diagonally away from your sternum, so that the backs of your hands are near the sides of your face.
• Once the elbows are as high as they can go, slowly bring the hands up the back of the head until they can reach up and forward as tall as they can be. Again, do not strain your neck to do this.

Four: Get Anchored

From the pelvis down to the toes, the anchoring power of the appendicular skeleton gives the axial skeleton something stable to pull against. It rounds out the job of keeping the body’s frame expansive. This chapter provides exercises that strengthen and lengthen the muscles that do that anchoring. They are the muscles that attach the lower limbs of the appendicular skeleton to the pelvic platform—in particular, the gluteal, hamstring, iliacus, and adductor muscles. These are the muscles that hold us upright and, as the movers of the hip joint, propel us—via rotation, extension, and flexion—in all sorts of directions through various planes and axes. They are at their optimum mechanical advantage when they pull the base of the pelvis and the thighbone toward one another.

Internal leg tracing challenges the breakdown of the hips’ internal rotation, tightening the muscles on the inside of the leg in order to produce the natural reciprocal reaction to that, which is for the muscles along the outside of the hips to lengthen and strengthen. This primes the whole appendicular skeleton for the anchoring exercises that follow and positions the body for squeezing full effectiveness from each of the exercises you do.

Toes can and should grip as they curl and flex; the muscles of the arch store energy, act as springs, and protect us from musculoskeletal damage; the muscles of the sole move the toes and support the arch and deserve to be planted firmly.

Each of these anchoring exercises should be held for the length of from five to seven breaths, which should take from 30 to 60 seconds, and should be repeated three times a day. Along with the internal leg tracing that begins the sequence and primes the body for getting the most out of the exercises, the full complement of this anchoring “workout” amounts to perhaps 5 or 6 minutes.

1. Internal Leg Tracing

• Too much sitting, a fact of life for just about every single one of us, shortens the gluteal muscles that are necessary to support proper hip rotation, so this tracing focuses on the iliacus and the adductor, the muscles on the inside of the thigh that “oppose” the glutes.
• Lie on your back, arms at your sides, palms down. Feet are dorsiflexed—that is, bent dorsally, toward their upper surface. Curl your toes and point your feet together till the big toes are touching as you bend your knees up, raising them slightly off the floor.
• Lift one leg, internally rotate it from the hip to the big toe and then place that heel on top of the opposite shin.
• Trace the heel of the top leg all the way up the shin until you reach the kneecap or slightly above the kneecap. Maintain internal rotation.
• Press the palm of the opposite hand against the inside of the knee. Ten pounds of pressure should do the trick. The anchoring muscles along the inner leg should begin to fatigue. Maintain the same steady internal rotation as you trace the heel all the way back down the shin and repeat on the other side.
• Raise both arms straight up, fingertips of the two hands tented and touching, and pull your arms back till they are over your face. Hold this position for 5 seconds, then lower your arms to your sides, palms down on the floor.
• Trace the heel back down the opposing leg until it is back to where it began, with the foot still dorsiflexed and toes curled.

2. Getting Anchored

• Start on your feet. They should be a comfortable distance apart—about hip width from one another—but with the outside lines of the feet parallel.
• Unlock your knees, and shift your weight onto your heels. Now lift the toes of both feet simultaneously. Spread the toes out as wide as you can, then lower them back to the floor.
• To get it right, you’ll need to convince yourself that your arches are being pulled upward away from the ground, not simply lifting up. Add a somewhat symmetrical inward pull. Extend the arms out in front of you and create tension by externally rotating the opposing fingertips together.
• The succeeding anchoring exercises in this chapter all need to be done in this anchored way, with legs together to strengthen the muscles from arches to thighs, and making sure the knees don’t cave in.
• 1 rep x 3 a day

3. Anchored Bridge

• Lie down on your back, with your big toes touching so that your outside arches are parallel. Pull the tops of your feet back toward your shins as you bend the knees just enough for your inner thighs to touch. You should feel your thighbones rolling inward as you draw your inner thighs together.
• Squeeze your inner thighs tighter as you bend your knees until they are anywhere from eight inches to a foot above the floor. Extend the arms out in front of you, with fingertips connected.
• Press your heels and the backs of your arms into the floor or ground surface and pull your hips up. Keep your heels ground into the floor, the thighs tight together, and the back of your neck long as you practice decompression breathing in this posture.
• 1 rep x 3 a day

4. Anchored Back Extension

• In this extension, your anchoring muscles sustain the grip that pulls the pelvis away from the ribcage.
• Lie on your front, feet parallel and touching with your toes curled under, head down so you’re looking at the floor. Bend your elbows and hold them close to your sides with your hands under your shoulders.
• Bend your knees just enough to lift your toes off the ground as you squeeze your inner thighs together and lift your arms, head, and chest up from the ground.
• Pull your chin back and elongate the back of your neck as you inhale a decompression breath and maintain the lift on exhalation.
• 1 x 3 a day

Five: The Wrap-Up Quartet

Spend time with the movements and postures of Chapters 3 and 4, but round out and reinforce what you’re trying to accomplish with the four exercises of this wrap-up.

1. Founder

• Primary recruiter of the posterior chain of muscles, the key to ensuring that the body hinges at the hip, and a core movement for decompression. A fast track to spinal stability, hip mobility, and a body in better balance.
• Stand with your feet facing forward as much as three feet apart, with the outside lines of the feet parallel to one another and your weight on your heels. Get anchored, lifting the toes of both feet, then lowering them to the floor. Stand tall, with your chest up and your sternum raised.
• Unlock your hips, hinge them backward, and pull them out behind your heels, making sure your abdomen stays long. Knees bend slightly but stay well behind the toes.
• As you feel tension in the lower back, unscrew the shoulders by opening the hands, separating the fingers wide, and turning the thumbs outward. From this position, move your arms forward touching the hands together at the fingertips as you counterbalance the backward-hinging hip movement.
• Reach forward with your arms, pull back with your hips—simultaneously—while keeping your chest high and your weight pressed into your heels. Hold the posture as you breathe a high, wide, full decompression breath and maintain the expansion on the exhale.
• 1 x 3 per day

2. Woodpecker

• Stand with your feet parallel and your hips square, arms open and turned out at your sides. Take a high, wide, full decompression inhalation and hinge at the hips with one leg stepping forward; then pull the hip back.
• The front foot is flat on the floor and the front knee is behind the ankle; the foot of the back leg is raised at the heel for the added leverage. Bring the arms forward for counterbalance, the hands touching at the fingertips.
• Do several decompression breaths in this position, then return to a standing position: feet parallel and hips square, arms open and turned out at the sides.
• Repeat with the other leg. 1 x 3 per day

3. Woodpecker Rotation

• This exercise adds a rotational move to the woodpecker posture in order to force the gluteal and adductor muscles actively to support the whole weight of the torso. The aim is to make the glutes the strongest part of the body, as they should be.
• From the top of the posture—that is, hinged at the hip with one leg forward and its foot flat on the floor, knee behind the ankle, with the back foot raised at the heel, and with arms stretched out in front of you, fingertips touching—begin rotating your pelvis in the direction of the front leg.
• Keeping all of your weight on that leg, and with the front heel gripping the floor, let your torso and arms follow the pelvis in its rotation till the entire upper body has pivoted about ten inches and no more than twelve inches.
• Rotate back inward, maintaining the contraction in the gluteal muscles and the pressure in the front heel.
• Do three rotations, then return to a standing position and begin the posture with the other leg forward.

4. Integrated Hinges

• These graduated hinging movements remind the body that movement originates in the core and that the hip is not just the body’s great shaker but also its main mover—and that the right movement is a hinge, especially, for example, when you are lifting something.
• Stand with the feet shoulder-width apart and parallel, your weight on the heels and your toes gripping the floor. Bend your elbows and hold them close to your sides with your hands in front of and just below the shoulders (cactus).
• Decompress: Breathe high, wide, and fully and anchor the lower body, pressing your weight onto your heels, raising and spreading your toes, and tensing your inner thighs.
• Unlock the knees, keep your weight in your heels, and without moving your spine, hinge slightly at the hip, pulling the hips back behind the heels. Pull the hips farther and farther back, in stages. Drive your weight into your heels and push against the floor as you lift your torso, also in stages, and return to a neutral position.
• Try to perform 5 to 10 integrated hinges for each rep.

Part III: Sustained Pain Relief and Everyday Fitness

Six: Day by Day

Moving Mindfully to Move Right

There’s no other way except to preplan the intention to focus and carry it forward—and when it gets dropped, as it invariably will, simply to pick it up again without self-recriminations.

The more you carry forward the intention to be mindful of how you hold yourself and move through the activities of daily living, the stronger and more flexible your body will become and the better you will feel. The pleasure you take in how you feel in time becomes the incentive to move right, and eventually, moving right becomes your new normal—habitual, automatic, and unconscious.

Starting Your Day

Slow down and pay attention to your body, to waking it up and giving it a good start by focusing on how you move, even while still in bed, how you get up from the bed, how you support yourself as you go through the morning’s ablutions, through the process of getting dressed, through all the small rituals and habits that are your way of preparing for the day.

When you wake up, do a a supine decompression. Zip your legs together so that your heels, toes, and knees touch one another, and reposition your body long in the spine. Now take about ten decompression breaths.

After those ten decompression breaths in the supine decompression posture, sit or stand, face your feet forward, and do ten more breaths either as seated decompression from a chair or from the side of the bed or as standing decompression.

You will have oxygenated your body, fired up your body’s metabolism, activated the muscles all around the torso to get them going on their support function, reminded the spine that it is free to focus on neural communication instead of having to hold you up, and stimulated your respiratory, cardiovascular, muscular, and digestive systems.

Seize the opportunity by spending 30 to 60 seconds of your face-washing time in the founder posture. Return to an upright position to towel off your face by all means, but position yourself in founder for another 30 to 60 seconds while you’re brushing your teeth. Stretch the hip joint back as far as you can, lengthening your spine and challenging your posterior chain with every splash of water or mouth rinsing.

The job of vacuuming is particularly suited to starting off in the woodpecker stance, then lunging forward as you push and pull the machine. The woodpecker rotation works great when you need to shift the cleaning head slightly to get into some tight spaces.

Commuting

Just consider: The right foot is pressing the gas pedal so that the foot and leg are always externally rotated. The hip flexors and chest are squashed. The ribcage is pressed down toward the pelvis, while the head is thrust into anterior head carriage. Such compression can have a seriously unhappy impact on the vagus nerve, and since the vagus nerve is responsible for keeping your heart rate constant and for the process of digestion, you really don’t want any kind of impact on it.

To whatever extent you can manage it, you will be doing yourself a favor when you press the back of your neck against the headrest.

And you should try to keep both feet facing forward and your knees turned toward one another as much as possible. In this posture, you are fighting both external rotation and anterior head carriage.

Driving or riding, whenever you can—and certainly if you are stuck in traffic or stopped at a light—do the decompression breath several times for anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. Similarly, when you can, contract every muscle in your body and hold the contraction for 10 to 15 seconds.

If you commute by bike, you are likely angled forward at about 45 degrees—maybe even less—which makes it natural for you to lean your body weight forward as well. That probably means your ribcage is scrunched inward and your chin jutted outward. You’re curled down; you’re probably uncomfortable; and the fact is that you are exerting a lot of effort to little effect.

• The key here is to make your hips the center and starting point of your movement. Start pedaling from the hips, not with the knees, not in the quads, not anywhere else. To do so, press each foot full-force into the pedals and keep your knees close together and close to the center of the bike—so close that they are almost kissing with each pedal stroke. This positioning, with the balls of your feet and your toes and knees all moving toward the center of the post, primes your gluteal muscles to lift your torso so you widen and lengthen your upper body.
• Expand your upper back, pull your neck long, extend your shoulders wide, pull your elbows away from each other. You don’t have to change your angle for any of this; just expand and elongate where you are. The idea is for your chest to be up and over the handlebar, so that when you look up, you are doing so with your chest, not your nose. “Break/bend the handlebars” with a isometric contraction.

At Work

At least every 30 minutes—every 20 minutes is preferable—stand up. Do a 3-minute decompression routine that will pull your torso up, anchor your pelvis from below, and decompress you:

1. A standing and/or lunge decompression
2. A founder and/or integrated hinges
3. A woodpecker and/or lunge decompression
4. 15 to 20 decompression breaths
5. Shoulder tracing

Around the House

Gardening: Get on your knees but positioned as tall as you can be, with your feet straight back behind you. Make sure all the weight is on the knees, not on the feet; if the weight goes through your feet and your feet grab the ground, that contracts the muscles on the front of your legs, and that, in turn, tightens the abdomen. Instead, keep the weight on the knees, take a deep decompression breath, and hinge your hips back. You’re now perfectly positioned for both decompressing and gardening.

Exercise and Sports

The better your body supports itself, the more efficiently it works and the less prone it will be to injury.

Too often warming up begins and ends with some sort of hustling move aimed solely at raising the heartbeat—and that simply isn’t enough. What your warm-up should do is turn on the right muscles and turn off the wrong ones; that means focusing on those movements that get the biggest muscles in the body equipped and ready to support the big movements your sport or workout will demand of you.

The Foundation Training Warm-up

FOR FITNESS WORKOUTS

Here’s a routine especially suited for yoga, Pilates, barre, dance, gyrotonics, or other similar practices that address the whole body. Do each exercise three times for 1 minute each time:

• Prone decompression
• Anchored extension
• Founder, with your legs as far apart as you can comfortably distance them, and focusing on being anchored

For practitioners of CrossFit and for weight lifters, whatever the style of weight lifting and whatever the form or size of the weights, do these four exercises twice each, taking from 30 seconds to 1 minute for each exercise:

• Internal leg tracing
• Anchored bridge
• Shoulder tracing in the founder posture
• Shoulder tracing in the woodpecker posture

FOR THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

Such a warm-up should include these five exercises done three times each for 1 minute apiece:

• Standing decompression
• Lunge decompression
• Internal leg tracing
• Woodpecker
• Founder

Ending Your Day

Before you turn in for the night, take time for the supine decompression, for in that posture you’re still asking your muscles to stabilize even though you’re “just” lying there. Hold the posture for 5 minutes while you breathe gently: Inhale through the nose for 5 seconds, exhale through the mouth for 6 seconds. The slightly longer exhalation has long been known in yoga and other Eastern health practices as a calming and destressing influence, and it is a great way to prime the body for a restful sleep.

Perpetual Awareness

When you’re walking, whether to get somewhere fast or out for a stroll, be aware of how you’re doing it. Don’t lead with your chin. Actively pull your sternum up and out. Keep your feet pointed straight ahead; that is, after all, where you want them to take you.

Seven: Moving Past the Pain

Mechanoreception blocks nocireception—in plainer English, movement blocks out pain.

Thomas Myers (Anatomy Trains) says, our nervous system translates the low spirits into tightened movement—what he calls “a recurrent pattern of contraction”—in the motor system. Over time, Myers goes on, the fascial system—the connective, stabilizing body sheath in which we are wrapped—begins to reflect this pattern; it too contracts, and therefore the body’s central cavity shrinks, squeezing all the organs within. This has the effect of lessening our breathing as well, and that of course changes the biochemistry within us, affecting the flow of blood, nutrients, hormones, and waste. Even if the depression ends or is successfully treated with drugs, it doesn’t really go away so long as the habit of movement remains unchanged, still stuck in the structure of the fascial system and in the pathways within the body.

If you re-pattern the body’s movements to unwrite the effects of compression, for example, the message of the re-patterning gets communicated to the other systems of the body—a rewrite that extends from the fascial wrapper to all those chemical pathways in the fluids to the zillion neurotransmitters flying across neural routes and junctions to the respiratory and digestive and immune systems and more. Once the messages of decompression have spread around the body, all the impacts of compression begin to dissipate, including the pain the compression caused.

Moving past pain is life-changing, but achieving it requires changes in your life—permanent changes in the way you hold yourself structurally, move muscularly, and think about caring for your body and yourself.

Eight: Little Bodies Become Big Bodies

From the get-go, children mimic their parents. What the adults around them do becomes the stimulus for their own development. So while the inherent instincts for right movement will unfold in little bodies, they can be moderated, modified, twisted, and turned as the little bodies copy the movement patterns exemplified in the big bodies around them.

Motor skills problems can hold back a child’s physical and mental development in profound and lasting ways. Clearly, where such imbalances and incorrect movements are concerned, the more time that passes, the tougher it is to undo the pattern and replace it with correct movement.

Mostly, the personal training will consist of challenging and providing encouragement for the baby’s natural curiosity about the physical world. You almost can’t start this too early.

Of course, at every monthly checkup, your family pediatrician will be tracking the baby’s progress on the expected developmental milestones— rolling over, sitting up, head control, starting to walk, and so forth. What is equally essential is that the baby achieve key motor skills milestones by the time he or she becomes vertical, after which it becomes much more difficult to tease out any asymmetries or imbalances. Keep in mind that it is during this crucially important first year of life that the spine assumes its natural curve, and parents-as-personal-trainers can help with that by applying a mix of stretching, massage, positioning of their infants, and, above all, engaging with the infants in challenging ways so that the babies’ bodies recruit the muscles they need and develop those muscles as they should.

When placed on their bellies, babies lift their necks to peer around, igniting neck muscles, pulling the bones of the neck, and helping to build the natural s shape curve in the spine. Face, head, and neck development follows—and in due course, they’ll be able to raise their torso as they prop themselves up on their arms with the elbows bent. This develops arm muscles and strengthens the back muscles that hold the spine in its natural curve. It all means that by the time they are vertical, they are in balance, and the symmetry will persist as their muscles and bones lengthen as they mature.

Few things are more of a detriment to this development than parents overusing the car seat, the ubiquitous essential that seems to define contemporary parenthood, as a general carrying vehicle. The car seat was devised for a single purpose and should be reserved for that purpose only: travel. It keeps the baby propped up and safe in the car, but it also compresses the baby’s body and lets his or her head wobble.

So, are parents better off carrying their baby? Yes, and it even offers the opportunity for some resistance training as you lift and hold the bundle that is your child. Once the baby is walking, however, he or she should not be carried too much. Inconvenient as it may be to help a just-walking baby walk when you have chores to do, it’s a stimulating challenge to the baby. Every step, every view—whether he is gazing up, or looking at eye level, or examining the floor or path—ignites those sensory stimuli, and getting those stimuli charged while at the same time the baby is resisting gravity makes the walk, slow though it may be for the parent, a plus for the baby’s physiological foundation and mental acuity.

Kids in the early grades in school are forced to be sedentary for a good part of the day—unfortunately, at a time when their bodies are fine-tuning motor skills, coordination, endurance, and balance.

Nine: Returning to the Foundation

Right now, to one degree or another, complacent adaptation to the compression of your body under gravity’s pressure is adversely affecting processes in some or all of these physiological systems:

• Your respiratory system, because a compressed ribcage limits the lungs’ ability to expand and therefore diminishes your breathing, and diminished breathing can unleash a cascade of harmful consequences.
• Your digestive system, because squashed organs don’t function nearly as well as they should, and that burdens the body’s ability to gain nourishment from food.
• Your circulatory system, because squeezed blood vessels are not as efficient or as effective as they ought to be in transporting nutrients, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hormones, and blood cells to where they need to be transported in order for your body to fight disease and maintain internal stability.
• Your nervous system, because a compressed spinal cord and constricted neural pathways slow the progress of all those neurotransmitters trying to communicate from the periphery to the central nervous system—and back again—and can undermine the brain’s ability to coordinate and influence all the activities of your body.

High frequency practice is essential for change:

• MON, WED, FRI (x 3 rep each): Standing decompression, lunge decompression, woodpecker, internal leg tracing, anchored bridge, anchored back extension, kneeling decompression
• TUES, THUR, SAT (x 3 rep each): Supine decompression, prone decompression, founder, woodpecker, woodpecker rotation, integrated hinges.
• Add to these exercises any time there is prolonged sitting or before. Also, do as a warmup to exercise.
• 3 months should show reprogramming progress.