fbpx Blog | Gokhale Method® - Primal Posture™ for a Pain-Free Life
Sign up for our Positive Stance™ Newsletter
Shop Login Free Resources

Blog

Surprising Secret Sauce in the Journey to Pain-Free

Esther Gokhale
May, 2018

After students complete the Foundations Course, we solicit feedback in order to learn from our students and make the course better. Here is select feedback from Marcie, who took the Group Foundations Course with Esther, punctuated by commentary from Esther.

 

I move easier. When I experience pain, I use it as information to make changes in what I am doing.

Our body is a very intricate 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and when we restore each piece back to its home, the parts fit together better.  Pain is a very sophisticated feedback mechanism that has evolved; pain is usually trying to tell us we need to be doing something differently.  

It's not been linear. Lower back pain decreased, upper back/shoulder pain increased. (That might be my standing desk and increased awareness, though.) I have body awareness but not always useful body awareness. A lot of the time, my awareness is... Read more

Man’s Best Friend for Posture, Part I

Esther Gokhale
May, 2018

One of the great strengths of the Gokhale Method is that you learn it doing practical activities, like sitting and walking; you then practice it during your day-to-day life. Regular tasks like driving the car and household chores, and leisure activities like gardening and playing sports, become not only safe and comfortable, but actually therapeutic. If you are fortunate enough to live with a dog, you have a very special opportunity to hone your posture skills.

 


Daily dog walks are great training for your posture! Photo courtesy Pixabay.

 

Firstly, you will probably be walking your dog every day — maybe twice or even three times a day. The regular nature of this activity is a huge boon for establishing good postural habits. The assured minimal frequency of 1-3 times a day is... Read more

Tags: 
Hip-hinging
walking

Lessons I Learned from My Travels: Brazil

Esther Gokhale
May, 2018

SALVADOR, BRAZIL

Salvador, Bahia in the Northeast of Brazil throbs with a pulse that is African and Brazilian all at once. In spite of the particularly brutal conditions of slavery in Brazil, the African immigrants kept their musical and dance traditions alive. Salvador, Bahia is where the Afro roots of Brazilian culture are most in evidence. I visited two times and those visits reawakened something in me from way, way back — from when my ancestors drummed and danced in Africa 60,000+ years ago. There’s nothing that gets to my gut the way African / Afro-Brazilian drumming and dancing does. Here follow some posture lessons I brought home from that magical place.

 

Healthy posture is sexy


Bathing beauty in Salvador, Bahia.... Read more

Tags: 
travel
brazil
samba
dance

How to Do a Plank Correctly

Monisha White and Esther Gokhale
April, 2018

Good posture is so important for any workout or athletic endeavor. Exercise of the day: planks!

People often lose their structural integrity by dropping their hips and letting their lower back arch, or by tucking their pelvis, rounding their back, and pushing their shoulders forward.


Left: Poor form marked by dropped hips and arched back. Right: Poor form marked by rounded back and forward shoulders.

 

It does take more work for your abdominal muscles, particularly your internal obliques, to maintain proper form...but when you're planking, isn't that what you're going for?? Don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a better workout by doing a longer plank with bad form!

... Read more

Tags: 
exercise
plank

Hip-hinges: 4 exercises in 1. Time spent: 0 seconds

Esther Gokhale
April, 2018

I sometimes tell my students that if you bend well you are unlikely to have a back problem, and if you bend poorly you are almost certainly going to have a back problem. It’s almost that simple. Of course there are other important techniques to learn, like how to sit, stand, sleep, and walk, but bending is a particularly important technique, and learning to bend well constitutes a major milestone in our Gokhale Method Foundations course.

Most of us do many bends a day — each bend is an opportunity to benefit your structure, or destroy it. Turn each bend into a hip-hinge! You will preserve your discs, spinal ligaments, and knees instead of wearing and tearing them. You also get the following exercises taken care of:

  1. Stretch your hamstrings

    2. ... Read more

The 'Myth' of Good Posture — REALLY?!

Esther Gokhale
March, 2018

A recent Guardian article and BBC program (13:30–20:30 minutes) discussed the “myth of good posture,” and two main takeaways from these pieces were that comfort trumps posture and that good posture includes an S-shaped spine. We’d like to respond.

Our culture is confused about posture. When you have back pain you want to navigate to the best solution quickly. What you don’t want is to get lost in a landscape of incomplete and conflicting information, poor advice, bias, and historical baggage.

Over time, experience and good research will generally clarify matters. A good example of this is the sweeping change in the advice given to people recovering from heart disease. Back in the 1930s, the standard advice following a heart attack was 6 weeks of lying... Read more

Tags: 
posture myths
Syndicate content