This summer, Gokhale Method® teacher Donna Alden stepped in for Lang Lui and brought a unique and enriching twist to our daily 1-2-3 Move program. Drawing on her expertise in traditional Middle Eastern dance, Donna treated us to a beautiful blend of cultural movement and posture wisdom. It’s no coincidence that many traditional dance forms are rooted in healthy, natural posture—and Middle Eastern dance is no exception.
Home Exercises Part 2: Crunches
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 the muscles of the rectus abdominis and the obliques to repeatedly raise and lower the upper body.
Crunches are well named—they crunch your discs and crunch your nerves. Lifting the