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Posture Journey: Travis Dunn

September, 2013
At the end of his rope after chiropractic, physical therapy, massage and surgery, a Transportation Planning Consultant finds relief with Gokhale Method Foundations Course. Travis Dunn, PhD, remembers clearly the onset of his excruciating back pain. He was all of 24 years old. “It first appeared while I was on vacation in June 2005,” he recalls. “There was no specific, major incident that precipitated the pain, but it grew sharper and more debilitating over the course of a week or so, including occasional sciatica.” He would start each day with his back pain registering “one or two” on a scale of ten, he recalls. As soon as he sat, the pain would grow worse. “If I were to remain seated, I’d be at seven or eight within a half hour. When I stood up, I would be like a hunchback.” Read more

How not to Hunch like your Parent and Grandparent

April, 2022

Hunching over or rounding the upper back is often regarded as a hereditary characteristic. I frequently hear people say, “my back is stooped just like my mother, and her mother had it too.”

Is a hunched back Nature or Nurture?
I agree that hunching is certainly a family trait—but it is largely a learned one, not inherited.
We mostly learn our posture from our parents and family members. As we grow up, the role models around us in wider society also hold sway. Unfortunately, in our culture, these are usually pretty poor examples to follow. Our relationship to healthy posture has steadily been eroded over the past one hundred years, as I explain in my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. Read more

Home Exercises Part 2: Crunches

July, 2021

This is our second blog post in the series where we put popular exercises under scrutiny to examine how they stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture. Here we are looking at crunches, a common abdominal exercise.


Crunches are often seen as a better targeted and safer 
abdominal exercise than sit-ups—but there is still a downside.

Crunches are done lying down on the floor, face up, knees bent with feet on the floor, and with the hands placed behind or to the side of the head. They involve using... Read more

Gokhale Method Success Story: Michael Ram

October, 2021

I developed excruciating lower back pain in 2001. I was a tennis player, downhill skier, and a marathon runner. I was also under a lot of financial pressure in a stressful job as a consumer class action lawyer. 
My doctor diagnosed me with a  herniated disc at L4-L5. He said that a piece of my disc was sitting on the nerve. I tried everything to stop my pain but nothing worked. In January 2002 I underwent a  laminectomy which removed some of the vertebral bone next to the herniation to make room for the nerve root. Read more

Sheila Bond’s Back Pain Journey

November, 2022
My name is Sheila Bond, and I am an artist, knit and jewelry designer, and an art teacher. I am also the mother of four sweet kids. In this blog post I would like to share with you my Gokhale Method® journey out of pain and despair. On May 6 2022 I severely herniated the spinal disc between my L4/L5 vertebrae. In addition I had developed bursitis in my left hip during the previous three months, I believe from sitting improperly teaching online classes. It happened on the Friday before Mother’s Day. By Saturday morning I could barely move and thought I might die or at the very least never recover. I ordered a TENS unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, a mild electrical current to give pain relief) from Walgreens, bought Salonpas patches too, and a walking cane. I took three Advil or two extra strength Tylenol alternating every six-hours hours. I had previously herniated my L4/L5 in 2015, and had a laminectomy (a surgical operation to remove part of the back of vertebrae, usually to relieve pressure on nerves.) That surgery had left me still in terrible pain. When I told the surgeon I was still in pain in my tailbone/sacrum area, he told me he could operate on my tailbone. I declined. Following surgery I also went to physical therapy for a year and a half. It gave me more pain than it took away. Read more