sitting

Esther Gokhale shows the benefits of stretchsitting to wellness and yoga host Lizzie Lasater in a clip from their YouTube video, Is Sitting Aging You?

There’s no doubt that dysfunction abounds when it comes to sitting. Most of us spend many hours on poorly designed chairs, in poor posture. As many people know all too well, poor sitting habits can definitely set you up for chronic back pain and tension. The good news? With just a little time and awareness, we can learn to sit well. There is real beauty and functionality in sitting done skilfully! When you do, sitting becomes not only comfortable, but also healthful and therapeutic.

Some things in life want to be “just right.”. There is a popular fairytale about the importance of this—the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The most well-known version features a young girl with golden hair who wanders into the woods and finds a house with no one home. It belongs to Papa, Mama, and Baby bear. The story goes that Goldilocks

I came upon the Gokhale Method® very much by chance. Years ago I worked with a pianist named Sheila Page who was trained in a technique which was founded by the American music teacher Dorothy Taubman. Taubman observed people with high levels of playing ability, found out what they did so well, codified it into a method and taught it. At a Taubman workshop I heard of Peter Egoscue, who had devised a therapeutic exercise program; I worked from his book when I hurt in places, and had some improvement with that. Doing further research for pain relief, I then encountered Esther Gokhale’s name. Not too long after, my son and I drove together to attend a one-day Immersion course Esther was teaching in Boulder, Colorado.

You’ve tweaked your back. It may be a stabbing pain that catches with certain movements, it may be that you cannot straighten up, or maybe it’s an electrical, nervy sensation in your buttock.  

In January and February this year I took the Gokhale Method Elements course, which consists of 18 brief (13 minute) but potent lessons. I would like to share my experience of the Gokhale Method with you in this blog post. My goals were to find out how to sit, stand, and walk well, so that I don’t overstress the scoliotic parts of my back. I was also in search of more comfortable and beneficial sleeping positions. I felt I needed guidance to help me develop a better sense of my body posture and alignment. To be able to do a one-on-one course online made this possible for me. It was only when I saw the difference between my “Before” and “After” pictures that I realized just how much change it was possible to make to my posture in such a relatively short period.