Archive for the ‘Healthy Posture’ Category
An article from the New York Times from January 5, 2012 has been hotly debated in the yoga community. It’s called “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” by William J. Broad, and it describes injuries from yoga practice to the lower back, shoulders, knees, neck, and ribs, and even hip replacements and strokes believed to [...]
Can practicing yoga help relieve your back pain? An interesting study was published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine (for more information, see http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/236902.php#post) It showed that Iyengar style yoga was helpful for chronic lower back pain – more helpful than only conventional medical treatment. The study was done in the UK and [...]
Do you suffer from painful hands, knees or hips? If so, you may have osteoarthritis (OA), a condition characterized by pain and stiffness in the joints. OA is distinct from rheumatoid arthritis, which is an auto-immune disease also affecting the joints, which can lead to redness and swelling of the joints. What Causes Osteoarthritis? Causes [...]
Lots of people ask me if I have any suggestions for leg cramps. These tend to occur in the calf, the hamstrings or the quadriceps muscles. The hamstrings are on the back of your thighs, and go from your sitz bones (what you sit on) down to your knee. Your quadriceps muscles are on the [...]
Check out these historical photos from Belle Isle, an island in the Detroit River. The pictures are from 1901 up to 1982. You can see how posture has changed over the years. Photos 2, 3, and 5 are great examples of healthy posture. Photos 56 and 61 show the modern, not-so-healthy posture. http://multimedia.detnews.com/pix/photogalleries/historygallery/BelleIsleHistoric/index.html
I often get asked, “What is the best kind of chair to sit on at my desk?” Lots of people ask me about sitting on exercise balls while working at their computer. The theory is that back pain is caused by weak muscles and that if we work our back muscles all day long at [...]
Summer is here and I’m enjoying the hot weather we’ve been having lately in Sonoma County. It’s so wonderful to be able to walk around outdoors at night without a jacket, and my muscles are more relaxed in the heat. Summer is a great time to bring some more relaxation into your life. Children have [...]
On April 25, 2011, National Public Radio did a story on how sitting is bad for your health. The conclusion of a study by epidemiologist Steven Blair was that men who had more sedentary lifestyles (time spent doing things like sitting, driving, and watching TV) had a higher risk of dying from heart disease. The [...]
Here’s another video to help you get started with relaxed, comfortable standing. Standing is a bit more challenging to learn than sitting, so take it easy and practice for shorter amounts of time, until it feels more natural. It should feel strange at first!
Sometimes when people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them that I teach posture classes to relieve back pain, they say, “Oh, I don’t have back pain.” Actually, I didn’t think I had back pain either! When I first met Jean Couch, author of The Runner’s Yoga Book, and started [...]