healthy posture

Ah, Thanksgiving. For many of us, it’s a time for gratitude and connection. It’s also a time when many people’s minds turn to exercise to offset the rich and abundant food on the menu. How can we make that extra push, enjoy it, and not injure ourselves in the process? Due to the pandemic, more and more of us are working out at home, without our usual exercise partners or in-person access to recreational facilities. Now’s the perfect time to learn to work out smarter, rather than harder.

Neck and/or shoulder pain is a common ailment even experienced cyclists regularly encounter, but posture can help! It takes awareness and muscular engagement while cycling to not allow gravity to further pull the head forward and down and round or hunch the shoulders, a posture problem that is already prevalent in our modern culture. However, the payoff is worth it! You will be able to ride pain-free for longer, and will also be patterning a healthy upper body position regardless of your activities and movements. You will also strengthen and develop baseline tone in stabilizing muscles, and they will become more accustomed to doing the job of maintaining shoulders back, back of the neck tall and straight, and head lined up over the body.

I lost my voice completely 5 years ago after singing a full out concert of Brahms’ Requiem. My voice came back, but never with the same resonance. I couldn’t sing for long without having a sore throat. My speaking voice became raspy very easily. I couldn’t sing through a phrase without gasping for air. An Alexander Technique teacher told me: "Elenore, it's not your voice, it's your neck." I tried that and many other approaches: acupuncture, chiropractic, reflexology — nothing helped for long. But I knew that if it was my neck and posture, there had to be something out there that would work for me. Lots of women my age would just quit choir and singing, saying they must be too old. I was determined to show that a 67-year-old could still sing! I’d found the Gokhale Method online, ordered the book and tried following the instructions, but couldn’t seem to get it. After a free class with Esther, I was infected by her enthusiasm, convinced by her statistics, and decided to bite the bullet. Thank Goddess I did! I did the initial consultation with Esther and then the Elements class with Sheelagh Tobin. The results speak for themselves…

I’m a longtime cyclist, former elite-level mountain bike racer, and Gokhale Method teacher. Learning and applying Gokhale Method techniques helped me reduce lumbar strain caused by unhelpful posture habits I used to employ while riding. I continue riding to this day, along with my whole family — now free of lower back pain. In my humble opinion, bikes are the most perfect exercise equipment of all time. This is especially true for the COVID era! The wheel base between two bicycles is around 6 feet, so riding with others can be done safely. Add Gokhale Method techniques to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for full-body health.

A general tenet of the Gokhale Method approach is that micro-level adjustments can lead to macro-level results. Like the world we live in, the human body is a complex, interconnected system. So it is not surprising that attainable tweaks in how we use our bodies can have beneficial effects on our function and well-being. Yoga is no different. If you have an established yoga practice, you’ve probably discovered for yourself that small adjustments are not so small in the aggregate! Learn the specifics of why I make this particular adjustment to Warrior I Pose (Virabhadrasana I) in my latest blog post.

Neck pain is extremely widespread. It doesn’t help that most ergonomic furniture is not only unhelpful, but even counterproductive (the Herman Miller Aeron chair won the “cool” race in corporate America, and it’s my least favorite of all). We’re also surrounded by people who model poor (usually slumpy) posture with forward head — and whether we know it or not, it’s in our DNA to mimic what’s around. And last, but not least, our lay and medical experts have adopted a particularly counterproductive set of posture guidelines, including “chin up,” “chest out,” “stand up straight,” do crunches, tuck your pelvis — all of which harm the neck among other parts of the body. How can we learn to prevent neck pain?

Whether you are on the road, in a campground, or just stuck at home during quarantine, you can always exercise. I’ve been dancing since I was a young child, so I have a very strong bias for dance as a way of exercising, but I also like to change it up with other types of exercise. It turns out that we have a lot of options, even when we can’t access the gym. Chair Pose (Utkatasana in Sanskrit) is a great example of an at-home, equipment-free exercise which can strengthen a variety of muscles in very little time. You don’t have to spend forever and a day in Chair Pose to reap its benefits. This makes it a perfect fit for our busy lives.

If you’ve been participating in our ongoing Posture 1-2-3 Challenge for alumni, chances are you’ve seen my longtime student, Joan Baez, who regularly joins in. At age 79, she’s sturdy and beautiful, with shapely legs, toned arms, and a peachy, perky butt. Although we’ve all enjoyed her bodacious pipes for many decades, she hasn’t always been such a well-rounded posture student. In her 20s and 30s, her boombox was highly functional, but her booty was lacking. Learn how a posture upgrade helped Joan develop her glutes, and how you can develop yours, too -- regardless of age!

How are you faring? Here in California, we’re still squarely in shelter-in-place mode, settling into “normal-for-now.” Some people, whose professions allow it, are still acclimating to the experience of working from home. How can we optimize our home work environments? I recently had a discussion with a full-time writer. Steve decided to have a new writing desk built to specs, and was curious to get my take on how to make sure his new desk, and home working environment more generally, is supportive of healthy posture. Read on to learn more!

Everyone in this 1957 photograph reflects effortless elegance and poise. Their shoulders rest toward the back of their torsos, and their necks and backs are elongated. My mom and dad are on the left. Despite recent complaints of leg and knee pain at night, my mom resisted Gokhale Method instruction. At 95 years old, she said she was too old to change. However, I could see that certain activities increased her pain. In the end, she consented to instruction — and subsequently reported diminished leg pain and increased stability in walking.