hiking

Before I settle in to recount my back pain story, let me fetch my Gokhale Pain-Free™Chair. This is the chair I now use for all my writing, and that’s important, as I am an author of mystery short stories, and spend many hours composing at my desk. Pain-free, I’m now glad to say.

Since retiring from over four decades as a trial lawyer, I write about The Sleuthing Silvers, Barb and Bernie. This image is from my website, sporting my detective shades. www.thesleuthingsilvers.com

I’ve had back problems for many years and coped with it by going to any number of orthopedists, chiropractors, physical therapists, and neurologists. In my experience, doctors (general physicians) can’t do much for ordinary mechanical back pain, other than advise on painkillers.

That management worked for some 25 years, and then I started having chronic pain that wouldn’t respond to my usual formula and go away. I was becoming somewhat desperate as it affected my whole life. I was grumpy enough by nature before the pain started, but became much more grumpy after! 

My rheumatologist, who I’d seen many times, said, “Well, you might want to read this book.” I had never read a self-help book for my health—I just generally don’t believe in them—but I was so desperate that I went ahead and bought Esther’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

I actually liked the subtitle, “Remember When It Didn’t Hurt.”  You do remember how when you were younger, even if you had back pain, it would be a little bit better each day. You could count on it being better tomorrow, and then soon you would be fine. That certainly wasn’t happening.

Esther’s Book was the only self-help book I ever bought—reluctantly.

I was cynical going into this work, and admit I had a very negative attitude. I had already made some of the arguments against working with my posture that were anticipated in the book—you’re too old for this, it’s too far gone…Yet I have come around to endorsing all the amazing testimonials I read in the book. Because I live in the same location as Esther, I actually know many of the doctors and patients quoted in the book who experienced transformational results with the Gokhale Method.

So I read the introduction. That’s what really did it for me—it’s so persuasive, and it’s so simple—it’s something you then want to do. So I started to antevert my pelvis. After months of pain, I woke up the next day and felt noticeably better. I thought, well, this must be a mistake. The following day I was substantially better, and the next day after that I was pain-free and have been ever since. 

I was just blown away by this, and so read the whole book that explains the Gokhale Method. Esther focuses on her subject like a laser beam. I got the impression she knows the spine as well as anyone on earth. I wanted to meet Esther Gokhale, and as we both live in Palo Alto, I was able to do that and take the six Gokhale Method Foundation's Course lessons. 

The in-person  Gokhale Method Foundations' Course originated in Palo Alto and is now taught by teachers in many parts of the globe. Our online Elements course makes the Gokhale Method accessible to students the world over. www.maps.google.com

When we met, even Esther was surprised by my body’s rapid positive response to the Gokhale Method. She explained to me that I had actually been lucky to have gotten positive results having immediately anteverted my pelvis. Attempting to antevert the pelvis to start with is not recommended as most people have some stiffness at the L5-S1 joint and are therefore likely to sway higher in their lumbar spine as they try to get their behinds behind them, creating even more compression in that area. Alternative techniques, designed to first bring healthy length into the lower spine, are advised as an initial phase. It seems I was lucky—one of a small percentage of people with sufficient protective stiffness in my lumbar area to avoid any sway and additional damage.

(a.)                                           (b.)

Most people will inadvertently sway their backs when trying to stand or sit upright with their behinds behind them (a.). This tightens lower back muscles and compresses the lumbar vertebrae and discs. To avoid this, the Gokhale Method first teaches techniques to elongate and stabilize the spine (b.). 

Anteverting my pelvis made a huge difference to me. I had been doing all the wrong things to my spine, such as sleeping in a fetal position, but soon I learned how to sleep, sit, stand, and walk without compressing my spine. In fact, I could now decompress my problematic area around L5-S1. I came to understand how much of our modern furniture puts us into compressive shapes that tuck the pelvis under, pinching the L5-S1 disc and causing it to bulge back toward the nerves. 

An anteverted pelvis preserves the wedge-shaped L5-S1 disc (a.). A tucked pelvis cannot accommodate this and the lower discs will suffer undue pressure and bulge toward the nerve roots (b.).

When I first showed up for the lessons, I explained that I thought the introductory chapters said it all, and that the rest of it was somewhat repetitive. But I was wrong. Every chapter will give you a little something that may look inconsequential, but the magic is in the detail! And even though I was doing very well with the book, the precision adjustments and personal coaching I got from having the lessons made a huge difference.

These things were so simple, made such sense, and worked. Even while I was so thrilled to have found this work, I also felt very angry that nobody else had been able to tell me these things. I have seen umpteen specialists over the years, and no one ever mentioned the Gokhale Method. The upcoming Randomized Control Trial that has apparently been funded entirely by satisfied students will hopefully put the Gokhale Method on their radar. I would like to see the Gokhale Method become a prominent part of every doctor’s prescription for back pain.

It makes sense that changing your posture can make a huge difference to structures as sensitive as your spinal nerves. Just a millimeter either way can determine whether you get agony, or relief from back pain. I also appreciate the wider health benefits of making these posture shifts. I’ve noticed that my organs work better, and my breathing is better. 

I now realize it’s not sitting that’s the problem. The issue is the furniture you choose and how you sit. The Gokhale Pain-Free Chair helps me to stretchsit, decompressing my lower spine.

My understanding of the relationship between breathing and the inner corset is much clearer from having had the lessons. Reading the book did not make it clear to me how muscle tone in the abdominal wall would act to resist any ballooning outward when breathing, and translate into healthy movement in my back with every breath. What Esther calls our “inner massage therapist.” Lessons enabled me to get that. 

I used to get tired and sore standing in line for just a few minutes. More recently, after about 10 minutes in that situation I thought, “Hey, something’s different, I should be tired by now,” and I realized that standing with my weight in my heels, my body aligned as I learned from the Gokhale Method, I felt fine! Cumulatively these details really work. 

Enjoying pain-free time with my granddaughter and her American Girl Tea Party puzzle.

When I first read the chapter on glidewalking, I thought I needed a PhD in mechanical engineering to understand it! But in the lessons, you get it bit by bit, and the teacher gives exactly what the student is ready for. When I was younger, before I had had so much back pain, I loved to walk—I would walk 40 minutes every day. Then I had a hip replacement in 2018, and since then I have had problems. Esther showed me how my left gluteus medius was weak, and had likely caused my piriformis (a deeper external hip rotator) to overwork and cause other problems. 

I’ve been keen to improve my walking. Here I am hiking in the Tahoe National Forest, California.

This is a quote I can relate to: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.” Anglo-American philosopher of law and social reformer Jeremy Bentham, 1748–1832. Portrait by Henry William Pickersgill (d. 1875). Wikipedia

I’m in the early days of my journey and I’ve only finished the course recently. I’m tempted to declare myself “cured” and move on—I can bike ride, swim, and ski without any pain. I’m hopeful that I’ve mastered and internalized what I need to know and keep doing to get on with my life. But I will stay in communication—I can set up an appointment anytime if I need to—all I want is to remain pain-free. I’m so grateful to the Gokhale Method and all who are associated with it. It has changed my life. 

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, sign up to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .

My passion for researching posture has taken me far and wide. I was in a village in Burkina Faso in western Africa when I first noticed how people there would track the conversation from speaker to speaker mainly by using their eyes, rather than by turning their heads. Along with their excellent body posture it contributed to a strikingly well-centered, dignified bearing.

This young man in Burkina Faso demonstrates the dignified bearing that comes with an appropriate amount of eye tracking.

Comparing what I saw in Burkina Faso with what I was used to seeing back home, I realized that in the US, and the wider industrialized world, we move our eyes a good deal less and our necks a good deal more. Why such a difference, I wondered, and what is its significance for our well-being?

In Paul Gauguin’s 1893 painting from one of his Tahiti trips, Woman Holding a Fruit, the unnamed subject shifts her gaze with her eyes, rather than by turning or twisting her neck. Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Babies and infants in all cultures track actively with their eyes, both when they are still, and when they turn or reach. One possibility why this changes for children of school age in the industrialized world is due to the amount of reading, writing, and screen time they experience. It seems we grow into a more restrictive, “ahead only” habit.

Infants in all cultures track very actively with their eyes, as my daughter Maya demonstrates here.

My son Nathan tracks with his eyes while reaching for a toy.

As adults, this trend can continue with desk jobs and other prolonged, forward-oriented activities, such as driving. Perhaps this is why, as we age, we develop a more fixed “tunnel vision,” which results in moving our necks rather than our eyes.

Computer and desk work are possible factors in reducing our range of eye movement. Original image courtesy Studio Republic on Unsplash.

Excessive dependence upon neck movement to reorient our visual field often contributes to soft tissue strain and wear and tear on the delicate discs and joints of the cervical vertebrae. Far better, then, to try to reduce this dependence and reintroduce eye tracking now and then.

Time spent in nature provides us a chance to practice our eye tracking. Follow that movement! Photo courtesy Nathan Anderson on Unsplash.

How can we reintroduce this ancient technique into our industrialized-world lives? I am a great advocate for getting out into nature whenever possible to literally expand our horizons. Time spent with young children, especially babies and toddlers, can give us an opportunity to mimic and mirror them — to their frequent delight!

This dancer in San Diego demonstrates beautiful eye tracking. Image courtesy Avnish Choudhary on Unsplash.

Many dance forms, including, but certainly not limited to, classical Indian Bharatnatyam and Kathak, also offer us ample opportunities to practice eye tracking, which lends our dance gestures and movements a depth of emotion. By allowing our eyes to track while on a walk or hike — perhaps while watching a darting squirrel or rabbit cross our path — or while watching a sports game from the stands, or while trying out a new dance style, we can provide ourselves a chance to relearn this method of respecting the neck and maintaining an especially dignified composure.

These elegant dancers in Trinidad and Tobago show the gravitas and depth that can come from skillfully-employed eye tracking. Image courtesy Isaiah McClean on Unsplash.

Mother and son in a tribal Orissan village demonstrating excellent walking form. Notice that their heels remain on the floor well into their stride.

Do you have tight psoas muscles? Do you suspect the cause is too much time spent sitting in your daily life? There’s a complementary activity that helps counterbalance the time we spend sitting: walking — or, more specifically, glidewalking. Glidewalking helps balance our sitting in numerous ways — walking is dynamic versus sitting which is static. Yang balances Yin, viewed in the framework of traditional Chinese medicine. One underappreciated way in which walking can balance sitting pertains to the psoas muscle.

The psoas muscle originates on the front of the sides of all the lumbar vertebrae and discs, and ends on the lesser trochanter of the femur.

This pathway is quite circuitous and runs adjacent to several pelvic organs. With long hours of sitting, the psoas can adapt to a short resting length. Original image courtesy Anatomography on Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 2.1 JP.

A short psoas pulls forward on the lumbar spine any time the legs are outstretched. This is why many people are uncomfortable lying on the back with outstretched legs, and why some people feel sciatic twinges when they stand and walk. The natural antidote for this tendency of the psoas muscle to shorten in sustained sitting is glidewalking. Glidewalking is really natural or primal walking given a special name because it is a rare thing in modern times and deserves to be celebrated with a special name! Every step done with proper form naturally stretches the psoas. That amounts to 5,000 mini psoas stretches on each side if you are glidewalking the recommended 10K steps a day. This will keep your psoas in a healthy, stretched out, pliable state!

This Orissan woman demonstrates beautiful walking form with her body in line with her back leg, her back leg straightened but not locked, and her back heel staying close the ground well into her stride.

The best way to get your psoas stretches, or resets, is to punctuate your day with glidewalking. No instance of glidewalking is insignificant: glidewalking to the bathroom, glidewalking to get a glass of water, and glidewalking in kinhin (walking meditation) all help. So are the longer, more obvious instances of glidewalking such as the daily constitutional and the weekend hike.

Orissan women carrying water on their heads. Notice how the woman in front propels herself off her rear heel. This additionally gives her a healthy psoas stretch with every step she takes.

It has become popular to consider that “sitting is the new smoking.” Poor form and long stretches of uninterrupted sitting do indeed have a deleterious effect on health, but I believe that a significant unknown contributor is that most people do not walk in a way that resets the psoas muscle after it shortens during extended sitting.

Apart from responding to extended sitting, the psoas muscle is also very responsive to psychological stress. We see this in the Moro reflex in babies when they respond to loud noises and traumatic stimuli such as real or perceived falling. Addressing psoas tension is at the core of certain body modalities, such as Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), and innovative developments in psychotherapy involving polyvagal theory.

This Rodin sculpture shows its subject well into a stride with the rear heel still down on the ground. This stance is a natural part of gait and stretches the psoas muscle.

It’s a tad complex to learn to stretch the psoas in glidewalking, but well worth the effort. It takes a combination of the following actions to do the job.

1. The rib cage needs to be anchored to stabilize the lumbar spine. Without this step, any other effort to stretch the psoas will result in arching the lower back. 

2. The back heel needs to stay on the ground a long time into a stride. Most people lift their heel up from the ground prematurely, losing the full extent of the psoas stretch that nature designed to be built into every step.

3. The gluteal muscles of the rear leg engage appropriately, further augmenting the psoas stretch.

Proper technique can help you avoid the cycle of tight psoas muscles, reduced activity, tighter psoas muscles, further-reduced activity…

How much have you succeeded in putting these pieces together? What helped the techniques coalesce? The book? The DVD? One of our courses? A topical workshop on glidewalking for our Gokhale Method Alumni? I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

Photo courtesy Norman Crawford.

Norm, a hydrologic analyst and author now 82 years of age, originally hails from Alberta, Canada. When Norm was 16 years old, he accepted a summer job in Lake Louise (also known as Lake of the Little Fishes by the local Stoney Nakoda people), a location in the Canadian Rockies so known for its rugged beauty that it is frequently included on lists of “Wonders of the World.” This breathtaking landscape formed the backdrop for Norm’s lifelong love affair with the outdoors. Decades later, Norm still speaks of Lake Louise with understated reverence.

Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, where Norm first fell in love with hiking. Photo courtesy Kevin Noble on Unsplash.

These days, Norm still loves spending time being active outdoors. When he’s home and not working on flood research or his novel, a favorite activity of Norm’s is walking the Stanford hills and campus. His family also owns a small cabin in the mountains near a lake he enjoys circumambulating daily. Perhaps it was his early exposure to the wilderness of Lake Louise which planted the seed of his passion for outdoor activity, a healthy and restorative passion he continues to feed.

Norm has been fortunate to enjoy “quite a bit” of mountain hiking in his life: here he is summiting Mt. McArthur. Photo courtesy Norman Crawford.

Challenges to walking and hiking

Not long ago, however, Norm’s treasured outdoor activity began to be interrupted by lower back and leg pain. After only 30 minutes of walking, he would be in enough pain to have to stop and stretch out his legs. He’d then be able to continue for another 5-10 minutes before needing to stop again. The pain was significant enough that he was starting to avoid walking even his usual Stanford route. At the mountain cabin, he noticed himself avoiding the routine, 2-hour “rocky walk” around the lake, fearing pain. To be suddenly unable to take this routine walk was quite a disruption. Norm was afraid he’d have to give up the mountain hiking he’d enjoyed since his teenage years. More than that: he was also afraid of consigning himself to a shorter life of poorer quality. He’d seen similar effects firsthand after his father experienced a severe pole-vaulting leg fracture at age 45, and didn’t want that for himself. Norm decided to do something about his pain, rather than settle for a life like his father’s had become after his injury. He also wanted to strengthen his core, behind, and legs.

As Norm puts it, “it’s troubling to get old,” but he also sees aging, in part, as a state of mind. “It’s not true to say that I’m still 20,” he says by way of example, but “there’s a way to do things that you have not done before and to expand what you know.” Norm’s willingness “to try out other things” than what might be strictly familiar speaks to his adventurous approach to life and clearly benefits his mindset. As a hydrologic researcher, he’s enjoyed visiting countries where he couldn’t even begin to read the language, let alone speak it. More recently, since he’s begun Gokhale Method lessons and Continuing Education, Norm’s interest in retooling habitual behavior has benefitted not only his posture, but his enjoyment of life.

One of the important lessons Norm learned was the sequence of muscular contractions and relaxations that constitute walking. The Orissan man above shows the beginning of the relaxation phase of a stride — his left posterior chain muscles relax as his right leg takes on a more active role. His left foot’s shape continues to hold its own at this instant.

The Gokhale Method supplies Norm with very specific ways to strengthen his back and other muscles, as well as new ways of moving and walking. These techniques are drawn from nonindustrialized, indigenous cultures —  cultures which Norm considers “less stressed” than ours. The specificity of the Gokhale Method techniques contrast with Norm’s earlier experience with the Alexander Technique, which he does not recall being as methodical and technique-oriented.

Our founder Esther Gokhale lives and teaches close to Norm, so he’s been “fortunate enough to take classes with the source,” and Norm holds her teaching expertise in high regard. Norm considers the lessons reasonably priced, particularly compared to the costs of MRIs and conventional medicine. He began lessons with Esther nearly a year and a half ago. Initially, Norm attended the lessons, listened to the instruction, and started working on the techniques, but admits he “didn’t really do things daily.” Eventually, he heard Esther say that if he wanted to gain more robust benefits, he’d have to perform the techniques daily. That shift from occasional to daily practice was when he began to see “major results.”

These before-and-after images and SpineTracker™ readings of Norm's hip-hinging indicate one way he has learned to protect his posture.

The benefits of adaptability

Since taking a Gokhale Method Foundations Course and Continuing Education, “what used to happen” to Norm in terms of pain “just doesn’t happen” anymore. That treasured 2-hour walk around the lake at the mountain cabin is something he wouldn’t hesitate to do now. Closer to home, he walks the same hour-plus Stanford routes he used to walk and doesn’t need to stop and doesn’t even feel uncomfortable. With a grin, Norm jokes that the results of treating his pain through posture seem to him like “black magic!”

Norm is living proof that, at any age, humans can learn and adapt to new situations, and can do things we’ve never done before. Rather than allowing himself to become “self-contained and narrow” in the way he does things as he ages, Norm prefers to change course and branch out, much like water does as it flows tirelessly around obstacles.

Like the water he’s researched for decades, Norm has found ways to respond and adapt to changing circumstances. Photo courtesy Ezra Comeau-Jeffrey on Unsplash.

In Norm’s own words:

When asked to say something about myself, my first impulse is self-aggrandizement, e.g. claiming I was born in a cabin I built myself. This impulse can’t survive the light of day, but if this text decamps and merges with late night camp-fire talk, beware. My work is hydrologic analysis and I have been fortunate to travel and work in many places in the world, including villages in the Amazon that have limited contact with the outside world.

I want to talk about teachers, and what we learn and don’t learn, and whether or not this changes with age. We do learn at an extraordinary rate between birth and age four; if you see a newborn and a four-year-old together, how could that transformation happen? College freshmen and graduates are different, but not that different. If you do reach seventy, or eighty, what then? Have you learned all that there is to learn?

People like these Orissan potters were the models for Norm’s posture transformation.

Specifics, my inner editor demands. OK. I’ve had the good fortune to meet teachers over my eighty-plus years and retain some of what they had to say; in high-school an English and a physics teacher. In college, still more – a mathematics professor (whose name I don’t remember) who said the increase in computational speed (then about five orders of magnitude) would change human life. The teachers I remember had discovered or realized truths and wanted to make these truths known.

So, what happens with age? Things I could do at sixty-five, eighteen-hour mountain climbs, become problematic. I would love to do those climbs but my body says, “You can’t be serious.” I have to deal with loss. My mother-in-law, who lived to 102, said, “Old age is not for wimps.”

This elderly Orissan woman’s presence in the marketplace communicates a peaceful approach to aging. She actively participates in everyday life — her biceps tone tells that story — even as she sits out the most arduous tasks.

Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night-” How can that be done? Esther Gokhale is a teacher. Listening to Esther, and learning finally that I had to work at the Gokhale Method, I found I could defeat sciatica. My expectation that ‘things get worse with age’ proved false.

Eighteen-hour mountain climbs? Not yet. Maybe next year.

As the summer sun mellows and fall approaches, this is my favorite time of year to go hiking. Hiking brings so many benefits, from lifting your spirits and relaxing in fature, to catching up with friends and spending quality time with family.

The physical health benefits of walking are well documented. Choose your terrain well, and hiking provides great cardiovascular exercise for all ages. If you have a sedentary job, walking around town can be an important part of what helps you to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

10,000 STEPS A DAY

If you like to track your progress, a pedometer to measure and increase your steps is a great fitness tool. Pedometer researcher Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke published a study in "Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise" in 2004, showing that men in the survey took an average of 7192 steps per day and the women an average of 5210. The research showed that a sedentary person however might average only 1,000 to 3,000 steps a day. For people in this category, gradually adding steps is the way to go.

A reasonable goal for most people is to increase average daily steps by 500 each week until you can easily average 10,000 per day.

MODERN KNEES HAVE ISSUES

Among the common problems that prevent people from walking very far are knee problems. Ironically, a common source of knee problems is a problematic gait. Moving less then compounds the problem with stiffness and weight gain, which puts even more stress on the knees, setting up a downward spiral.

In our culture we now have an epidemic of knee problems; most are not associated with any injury. Over half a million Americans a year are diagnosed with meniscus (cartilage) tears and bone spurs. They have sometimes suffered years of inflammation, pain and loss of mobility in the joint. Thankfully, surgical repairs can be pretty good at restoring knee function, but it's always best to prevent the damage, try to improve the situation simply if possible, and use surgery as a last resort.

Let’s look at the figures:

http://www.healthline.com/health/total-knee-replacement-surgery/statistics-infographic

• More than 4.5 million Americans are living with at least one total knee replacement. That is 4.7% of people aged 50 and over. By age 80+ the figure is 10% and rising

• Knee replacements increased by 84% from 1997 – 2009

• Osteoarthritis is the principal diagnosis of knee replacement recipients

http://www.healthline.com/health/total-knee-replacement-surgery/understanding-costs

• The average cost of knee replacement surgery is $49,500, plus in-patient charges of $7,500

• The average cost of knee arthroscopy surgery is $11,900

• An estimated 850,000 meniscus surgeries are performed each year

http://www.newchoicehealth.com/Directory/Procedure/130/Arthroscopic%20Knee%20Surgery

A SIMPLE PREVENTIVE POSTURE MEASURE FOR KNEES

If you observe young children’s gait, you will see that they land on a slightly bent front knee. You can also see this in people from non-industrial cultures. Bending the front knee provides extra shock absorption for the knee joint. By contrast, if you are in the habit of landing on a straight leg (a result of inappropriately using your quads to lengthen your stride) the knee cartilage will be subjected to a much greater force as your foot hits the ground.

Landing on a straight front leg is often accompanied by several other postural aberrations as listed below. Conversely, bending your front knee at landing can help induce some of the other aspects of a healthy gait like a stronger, more propulsive action in your back leg and buttocks.

TRY IT

Start from standing with your feet hip width apart in a relaxed micro-squat position (with your knee and hip joints softened). This will help antevert your pelvis. Now imagine you are walking up a hill. This will lean you slightly forward. Your back leg can now propel you forward and your front knee is more likely to be bent at the moment of impact. Squeeze the upper buttock muscles (gluteus medius) of your back leg as it propels you forward, and use this muscle to help slow the landing of your front foot. You should land heel first, but only by just a fraction ahead of the rest of your foot (avoid an extreme heel-toe one-two step). If you succeed in making your landing soft, you will be providing additional protection for the knee.

It may help to try walking barefoot, on dirt or grass if possible. When doing this, you will instrinctively land more softly to protect your feet, which are no longer over-protected by thick shoes.

A good general principle to keep in mind is to use your muscles and spare your joints.

In addition to being a healthier way to walk, you may experience that a lighter landing on a bent front leg is more pleasant than crashing to the ground with a rigid front leg.

Walking is one of the techniques where students most benefit from hands-on coaching. In our six-lesson Gokhale Method Foundations course, we introduce elements of walking in the first lesson and build on them with each successive lesson. This gives students a chance to digest, practice and refine their technique with feedback from the teacher.

Walking habits can be deeply ingrained in your muscle memory and even your psyche—after all, it’s part of who you are and has been a lifetime in the making! It often takes a lot of repetition and hands-on cueing to change these habits. Gokhale Method teachers are trained to help you learn good habits by logically breaking down walking into smaller moves and then linking the new moves together. We teach elements of walking in our Free Workshops, our Initial Consutations and, most comprehensively, in our six-lesson Gokhale Method Foundations course.

We hope to see you in person at one of these offerings!