nerves

In my experience, people are often unaware that their posture has greatly contributed to their muscular problems and damage. 

In this blog post I would like to talk about a frequently injured group of muscles that attach the arm to the torso at the shoulder blade—the rotator cuff. The rotator cuff helps rotate the arm and lift it sideways and is also responsible for stabilizing the shoulder joint.

The four muscles of the rotator cuff are supraspinatus, infraspinatus, and teres minor, which lie on the back of the shoulder blade, and subscapularis which lies on the front.

Why we get rotator cuff problems

It’s common for people to be rounded forward in modern times. Many of us habitually adopt a closed, slumped posture with tight muscles across the chest, while the muscles of the upper back and shoulders are often overstretched and lacking in tone. This front-to-back imbalance goes with holding the arms too closely to the body, and too far forward. The muscles of the rotator cuff are mechanically disadvantaged by such postural distortion, and put under undue stress. 

The slumped shoulder posture common in today’s culture leaves the muscles of the rotator cuff prone to injury.

This painting from 1881 shows both women using the rotator cuff while their shoulders maintain a healthy posterior position. Detail from Mending the Nets by Winslow Homer.

Traditional cultures preserve healthy posture for the shoulders. The shoulder and arm of this village carpenter in Burkina Faso align with the back half of his body, not the front. This posterior shoulder position arranges the bones and muscles optimally for rotator cuff health and mechanical advantage.

Of the four muscles in the rotator cuff group, the one that suffers most frequently from poor postural habits is supraspinatus. Supraspinatus is the uppermost rotator cuff muscle. It lies along the top of the shoulder blade and passes through a narrow passage to attach to the humeral head (ball of the shoulder joint). 

Tears can happen through sudden trauma—perhaps due to a fall or a vigorous shoulder movement in sport—or through more gradual wear and tear that leaves the far portion of the muscle like a frayed rug. Depending on the injury, surgical repair may be necessary, followed by physical therapy for up to a year. 

The narrow passage of supraspinatus can lead to wear and tear if the shoulder joint is misaligned due to poor posture.

How the Gokhale Method helps restore rotator cuff health

The good news about your rotator cuff is that it can be improved and often fully healed by adopting natural, healthy posture. 

The local solution is to learn how to do a shoulder roll. This technique will take each shoulder home to its natural position, where it lived when you were a young child. 

The shoulder roll picks up all the bones that make up the shoulder—the upper arm, the collar bone, and the shoulder blade—and allows them to reposition and settle in better alignment with one another. This creates appropriate space for all the soft tissues in the area, including the muscles, bursae, blood vessels, and nerves, so they can function well. 

Shoulder rolls are a more effective and sustainable solution than simply pulling your shoulders back or “sitting up straight.” These common measures tend to create additional problems such as inflamed rhomboids and a swayed lower back.

To practice the Gokhale Method shoulder roll:

1. Relax your shoulder girdle
2. Glide one shoulder forward
3. Rotate your shoulder upward
4. Continue to rotate it back as far as is comfortable. Let it relax down.

Tip: Make sure the movement occurs in your shoulder. Resist the tendency to wave your arms, sway your back, or twist your torso or neck.

This gentle sequence of movement restores a healthy position for your shoulder joint and rotator cuff—one roll at a time.

Students often report that learning the shoulder roll has brought additional benefits such as a more open chest, improved breathing, and improved blood flow to the arms and hands. Over time, performing shoulder rolls counters thoracic kyphosis, or rounding. Its gentle “massaging” action feels pleasant, can relieve knotted muscle tension in the area, and ease neck tension and headaches. You can make a start on your shoulder roll with our free video here.

Happy shoulders are part of healthy posture

Your new healthier shoulder position will always work best in the wider context of your posture as a whole. A change in one place facilitates shifts elsewhere, and vice versa. For example, your shoulder alignment is affected by your head position, your breathing, the angle of your ribcage and pelvis, and even how you stand. The position of your pelvis in particular affects your shoulders and upper body.

The principles and techniques that will help you to remodel your posture are taught in logical sequence and detail in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, and our online Elements course. If you have or are recovering from rotator cuff problems, the Gokhale Exercise program can help you to exercise in a way that is safe, therapeutic, and fun! 

Best next action steps for newcomers

If you would like insight on your posture, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online, or in person.

You can sign up below to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .

Do you suffer from neck tension, muscle knots, or tingling in your fingers? Do you get frequent headaches?

Or maybe your neck is fine most of the time, but seizes up periodically, leaving you unable to function normally in your job, family life, and recreational activities.

A soft cervical collar is a common prescription to alleviate neck pain. It can give welcome support in the short term, but doesn’t help to strengthen your neck or get to the source of the problem. Wikimedia Commons

Most neck pain involves compression. 

In modern cultures, the head often drifts forward as we slouch and crane our necks towards our computer screens. The weight of the head, (typically 11 lb. or 5 kg—think bowling ball), then requires the muscles at the back of the neck to contract strongly to keep the head up. This contraction compresses the relatively delicate tissues in the area. Not a recipe for a healthy, happy neck. If you have forward head carriage but are symptom-free so far, keep reading for tips that will prevent future problems with the discs, nerves, blood vessels, and bones in your neck.

In our culture slumped desk work posture and a degree of forward head carriage is common. Pexels

Restoring the natural length and position of your neck

Young children, ancestral populations, and people living in traditional societies around the world preserve a natural head carriage that stacks the neck well as part of a healthy J-spine. This allows the head to be balanced with only appropriate muscular effort, and the neck to be tall and free from compression. 

As young children we instinctively align our neck well over our body. Pexels

Restoring mobility in your neck

Perhaps you have experienced increased stiffness and reduced mobility in your neck over the years? Or unpleasant gritty sounds when you turn your head? Beware of exercises that include extreme flexion, extension, or head circles. These movements, taken to the end of your range of motion, can damage your discs and pinch your cervical nerves. If they are a part of your exercise regimen, consider reducing their range. 

There are many delicate and vital structures within the neck, so we first want to align it well. (front view). Wikipedia

In our experience it is best to focus on restoring the neck to a healthy baseline length and shape that centers your head well on your spine. The video below shows you how to proceed:

This gentle movement will help you to find a safe, natural trajectory to get started on gliding your head up and back.

If you have areas of long-standing rigidity or curvature in your neck, it is likely linked to your postural distortions elsewhere in your body, for example thoracic rigidity or a tucked pelvis. 

Expect this to take more time and training to change, for which you will be rewarded with additional benefits including comfort, improved circulation, and increased energy.

Finding your neck strength 

While many of the neck’s structures are delicate, they can also be strong. The deep muscles that are intended to support the neck and keep it tall tend not to get used very much in modern industrial culture and are often weak. Besides doing strengthening exercises, as is common in conventional approaches to neck problems, learning to carry weight on the head is extremely valuable. 

People in traditional societies preserve a taller, straighter neck, and more functional head posture. (Odisha, India)

Cultures that headload suffer much less neck pain than we do and can teach us much about how, where, and why to headload. Not only do these people have excellent neck health, but they also have excellent posture throughout their bodies, and move with elegance and efficiency. Students in our classes begin with light weights to sense the axis along which they need to stack their bones. Over time, the weight can be increased to further strengthen the longus colli, inner corset, and other muscles. 

The small extra weight of the Gokhale™Head Cushion enables students not only to strengthen the deep neck muscles and lengthen the neck, but also to better orient their entire skeleton. 

My book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back has many images of people throughout the world headloading. Healthy head carriage, as opposed to forward head carriage, is an important starting point for this activity. It is not possible to carry significant weight without both the healthy neck alignment and strength to avoid compressive forces.

A well-aligned head and neck is both highly functional—and elegant. 

Because about one in three adults are affected by neck pain every year¹, we introduce techniques for the neck early on in our in-person Foundations course (Lesson 1 of 6), in our one-day Pop-up course, and our online Elements course (Lesson 4 of 18). Here students learn in detail the gentle techniques that gradually return the neck towards the length and pain-free position we all enjoyed as infants. Whatever your age, your neck is something you can learn to once again stack in your favor.

References: 

1. Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), “Neck Pain: Overview,” InformedHealth.org, last modified February 14, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338120/.

Best next action steps for newcomers

If you would like insight on your posture, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online, or in person.

You can sign up below to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .

I am an acupuncturist and massage therapist who specializes in assisting individuals with chronic pain. Over my 30 years in the profession I had been exposed to hundreds of continuing education classes but had never heard of the Gokhale Method®. 

I suffered with cervical stenosis, multiple herniations, and bone spurs

My battle with cervical stenosis (a narrowing of the neural canal in the neck, causing compression of the nerves), multiple cervical herniations, and osteophytes (bone spurs) began 40 years ago, all of which progressively worsened over time. 

As you can see in this photograph, I had become used to hunching and compressing my neck. I believe this was the cause of my neck problems.

My life had become restricted due to the increasing pain in my head, neck, tingling in my arms and hands, and the severe migraines which I suffered if I moved my neck too much or tried to look down or carry packages. I took migraine medications in order to function, which I was grateful for even though I didn’t want to take them. It’s no exaggeration to say that pain had closed my life down.

It had been years since I worked a normal patient load; one or two patients every other day allowed me to do what I loved while I did my best to manage my symptoms. I consulted two neurosurgeons five years ago and after serious consideration I chose against a recommended fusion of three cervical vertebrae. This was because I had seen many patients after a fusion and observed firsthand the difficulties they endured. According to my observations usually one or more discs above or below the fusion would end up herniating due to the rigidity of the fusion. Neck mobility was often severely decreased, and headaches, tingling, and numbness were common. Certain patients were referred to me if they got nauseous with physical therapy. It was often a long haul for them to get better.

Many of the therapies I tried for my neck problems made my pain worse; few helped me at all. I have spent the last 40 years learning to support myself and advising those sent to me on how to live in a body that experiences various levels of pain on a constant basis.

Me as a baby in 1955. As an adult I could barely remember what it was like to be free of neck pain. How had it crept up on me? Where did the problem begin? I wanted to wind the clock back to the beginning!

As a 10-year-old I enjoyed physical games and happily let my behind behind me and kept my shoulders back, though perhaps I was beginning to sway my back. . .

Me with my Aunt Tilde (left) when I graduated from massage school. It was 1990 and I was 36 years old. I can see that my head is forward and that my legs internally rotate. In my twenties I had learned tai chi in a style that taught me to tuck my pelvis. I now realize this encouraged a poor biomechanical position for bending over my massage clients.

Treating pain as a massage therapist

My focus in treating patients in severe, acute, and chronic pain evolved when I realized massage treatments were a somewhat temporary fix—people experienced relief for a while, but the same aches returned. After a year of practice, I branched out to include craniosacral therapy and was blessed to study with Dr. John E. Upledger, the developer of CST. Over ten years I took a half dozen seminars and began incorporating the techniques into my treatments with much greater success. I also began doing the techniques on myself, getting some relief from the migraine episodes I suffered. Many times I was able to alleviate the nausea and severe pain through the gentle guiding and “unwinding” of my cranial bones and the sacral joint.  

In 1993 I was excited to begin acupuncture school. Acupuncture gave additional assistance to my patients on their healing journey. One of the great benefits of acupuncture is the opening of stagnant energy pathways which have become blocked due to physical and emotional trauma. The release of neurotransmitters (endorphins) from the insertion of needles begins the process of pain reduction and allows the fascia to begin to “unwind.” I always thought the major advantage of acupuncture over acupressure was its ability to affect many points at the same time, allowing the body to unwind in ways that do not occur using just our two hands. While the needles are doing their work, I begin the CST work as well as manual traction.

During the first session with a patient I would advise, “We accept all miracles, but healing is usually a process—sometimes a longer and more multidimensional process than we initially anticipate.” Of course, patients referred to me were very relieved that they could become pain-free for periods of time; but I was still frustrated that their treatment was more of a Band-Aid—a better Band-Aid, but still not a solution to the cause of their problem. At that time my patients and I did not realize that they had work to do in this healing process too. I now believe that healthy posture is the “missing piece” that not only enables the benefits of therapeutic treatments to be preserved, but also allows the body to heal itself. I wish I had known of the Gokhale Method all those years ago.

Finding the Gokhale Method

Thankfully, my local paper printed an interview a couple of years ago with Joan Baez (longtime peace activist and folk song writer/singer). Joan was asked the secret of her ability to continue performing concerts around the world at 77 years of age. She responded that she studies with Esther Gokhale and consistently uses the principles of good posture taught in the Gokhale Method. 

Joan Baez in Esther Gokhale’s garden, preparing to pick some calendula with a deep, healthy hip-hinge and her behind well behind. You can read more about Joan Baez learning the Gokhale Method here.

I immediately searched “Gokhale Method” and became very encouraged and excited. I ordered Esther’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, the DVD, and subscribed to the newsletter, Positive Stance. 

The pandemic prevented me from attending a Gokhale Method Foundations Course scheduled for March 2020, but later that year, I revisited all the instructional materials I had and began active self-directed study. Once again I felt a sense of hope.  

Beginning my journey home

During the pandemic I was thrilled to see Esther was offering numerous Online Free Workshops. You could improve your posture by working on your stance, ribcage position, neck strength, and glutes. (Who doesn’t want a tighter bum, right?). I quickly signed up and began my journey home. I say home because you learn to return to a place of comfort in your body that was there naturally for you as a child.

At about seven years old, I still had a nice open chest and outward facing feet. Both these things changed as I became an adult.

Each workshop built upon the last with wonderful, simple insights. In November 2020 I also joined the 123 Move Gokhale Exercise Program which remains incredibly healing. Awakening each day I look forward to improving how I move through simple, healthy dance moves (I even learned the Samba). I saw improvement in my posture—I could look in a mirror and see noticeable changes to the hunching in my shoulders and the forward protrusion of my neck. 

As a 32-year-old office worker, look how forward my head and shoulders are as I hunch my back!

I continue to learn from the questions students ask as well as the clear explanations and demonstrations by the teacher. If I can’t watch live, no problem—there is always a catch-up available until the next class. And I just love when I get an added bonus—learning new dance moves is apparently as beneficial for the brain as learning a new language, and there is music to enjoy from all around the world. There is also Esther’s generous sharing of her vast knowledge of diverse cultures and their artifacts. 

My neck pain reduced within months of starting the Gokhale Method

Within a month or so of practicing the Gokhale Method, I began having less pain. I immediately felt a difference when sitting and using a wedge to antevert my pelvis, so no more tucking my tail under. This is called stacksitting. I now could sit for prolonged periods of time with NO neck pain. I could physically do more and psychologically was significantly less depressed. I saw a future with fewer restrictions and life seemed filled with endless possibilities.

My 2020 Christmas list consisted of an Online Initial Consultation with Gokhale Method teacher Kathleen O’Donohue. I prepared with photos of myself in a few positions so Kathleen could evaluate how best to help me before our meeting. We worked on a couple of key points and I was astonished and very excited to see how simple tasks could be done with no pain.

Taking the online Elements course

During the pandemic I was initially skeptical about navigating my way online through the Gokhale Method Elements course. Could I set the camera up well enough for the teacher to be able to see and correct the details of each technique? Would I be able to make the postural corrections without the touch of a teacher’s hand guiding me through the experience? I had so many questions before I felt able to make this significant commitment. I had several more online consultations with Kathleen and was amazed as she picked up the smallest detail and guided me to healthy posture. 

Here I am in my current massaging stance, which is healthier for my feet, glutes, hips, back, shoulders and neck. Applying the Gokhale Method techniques, I can continue to tease out residual sway and rounding in my spine as I massage my clients!

The online experience had several advantages for me. It allowed me flexibility scheduling and pacing my lessons and individualized attention. Another feature is that Elements allows you to learn over 18 lessons of bite-sized information, rather than a weekend immersion. I can see advantages to both, but for me, learning one move at a time, or even a part of an activity, such as walking, registers in my brain significantly more easily. I worked hard to learn each step before I moved forward. Luckily, absolute mastery is not required! 

My nerve pain and hyperreflexia are all but gone

I have come to a point where if I am not in healthy posture, I notice the discomfort and immediately want to pause and reset. The nausea I lived with every day is a rare occurrence only experienced momentarily these days if I am doing some very taxing activity. As soon as I correct my stance, I am relieved of any pain or nerve sensation. Life has become a dance with increased strength and grace, rather than a challenge.

One of my neurological problems had been hyperreflexia, which meant that my reflexes were overactive. I was looking forward to seeing how my reflexes checked out when I saw my neurologist a few months ago. (I had seen her six months previously, when they tested significantly better, but still hyper). To our amazement they were normal.

Here I am working on tallstanding. In daily life I can take a more relaxed stance but checking in with points to attend to boosts my progress. You can learn about tallstanding in Esther Gokhale’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, Lesson 6.

As an Alumna of the Elements course, I am a member of the Gokhale Online University (and will be forever!), where I get ongoing support and continue my progress. I am thoroughly amazed at how much Esther shares with us. I just LOVE it all. It is such a rich resource. Even though I practiced tai chi and qigong for almost forty years, Kathleen and Roberta’s Moving Meditation has enhanced my understanding significantly. The forms they teach incorporate the Gokhale principles beautifully and I am enthused to be doing it once again. A wonderful way to begin and end each day; energizing, or relaxing and meditative.

Eric's Gokhale Fitness class is challenging and insightful. His calm nature sets the stage as he provides several ways to perform each exercise depending on one’s aptitude. Gentle breathing techniques have provided a new focus for me and are very effective in reducing stress in our structure. The Gokhale principles are always emphasized, so it is a great review. I notice increased strength and vitality as the weeks go by.

When I first came to the Gokhale Method I had a very rounded upper back when bending. 

Over time I have improved my form in bending. Here I am practicing the cues I have learned to make bending health-promoting rather than harmful. 

I am forever grateful to Esther and all the teachers for my continued progress and for proving we are never too old to learn new tricks and grow in our understanding of moving in healthy ways. I am looking forward to continuing my posture journey—standing taller as I age gracefully. Hope lights the way.

Namaste,

Felicia Grimke

This blog post explains how some common yoga injuries occur and how applying the principles of healthy posture to yoga postures replaces this scenario with movements that are good for your body.

Yoga postures and back pain

Growing up in Mumbai, India, my Dutch mother was a student of BKS Iyengar and the Satyananda yogis, and keen for me also to learn yoga asanas, or postures. I practiced, and, being reasonably athletic as a child and already trained in Indian classical dance (Bharata Natyam), did not find it particularly difficult to choreograph the back bends, forward bends, and twists that were asked of me. I became a yoga model, demonstrating postures alongside visiting swamis’ presentations to induce the audience to sign up for upcoming yoga courses.

This photograph shows me teaching yoga as best as I knew how in 1979, standing with a sway in my back (and putting excess flexion into my student's neck).

Aged 15, I came to the United States as an exchange student and proceeded to go to college here. It was while doing a yoga pose in college that I first experienced a significant back episode with severe spasms. A few years later I injured my back while windsurfing; this time it took five days of bed rest to recover. I did weight training to strengthen my back, and returned to normal activity. 

When nine months pregnant with my first child, my back problem resurfaced with an onset of sciatica. After my baby’s birth, it grew worse, leading to surgery for a large disc herniation at L5-S1 a year later. Within another year the pain had returned. I declined a second surgery, and instead deepened my quest to understand the causes of back pain and how best to resolve it. 

An MRI scan done in 1987 revealed the cause of my sciatica and severe back pain—a large herniation at L5-S1.

Yoga postures require healthy posture

I learned from my life experience, as well as that of key teachers such as Noelle Perez, that in the industrialized world we do not use our bodies well. As our posture has deteriorated, traditional ways of performing everyday tasks in sitting, standing, and bending positions have become distorted. These damaging postural patterns are now deeply embedded in our culture and have even been unwittingly carried through into therapeutic activities such as yoga. 

How is it that yoga asanas, developed to bring strength, flexibility, and relaxation to the body, are now causing frequent injury? This question has been the subject of much media coverage in recent decades, including the provocative New York Times article in 2012, How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body¹. From a Gokhale Method® perspective, the primary problem is that poor posture in the population at large, including yoga students, combined with misguided conventional wisdom shared by yoga teachers about what constitutes good posture, has created a perfect storm. 

I came to realize that much of the flexibility I had as a young yoga model came from the wrong places—it was achieved at the expense of my lumbar discs and nerves as I compressed them to sway back, round forward, and twist. Let’s take a look at how yogis are likely to be causing themselves injuries and how using the Gokhale Method to apply the principles of healthy posture will avoid them:

Back bends

A large group of yoga postures are backbends. Bending backwards is something that is generally done extremely poorly in our culture, with most of the bend occuring around waist level. This puts a great deal of pressure on discs, nerves, and soft tissue in an area of the lumbar spine already compressed by tight erector spinae (long back muscles). This shortened baseline length is due to poor posture and furniture, part of our culture’s paradigm shift away from a healthy spine shape. You can read more about spine shape in my blog post What Shape is Your Spine? 

Many versions of Warrior pose, or Virabhadrasana in Sanskrit, are taught with a significant bend in the upper lumbar spine or thoraco-lumbar junction. This is especially a problem when one or both arms are lifted, encouraging the ribs to pop up. Pixabay

Even mild sways perpetuate tight muscles in the lumbar area and correspond with a lack of healthy articulation at L5-S1, the lumbosacral junction. Pexels

Gokhale Method teacher Lang Liu shows how anchoring your rib cage prevents swaying and encourages healthy articulation at L5-S1. You can read more about our approach to this pose in my blog post Why Keep the Body forward in Warrior I 

Forward bends

Many yoga postures contain some form of forward bend. This can be standing, sitting, symmetrical or asymmetrical, with the legs together or wide apart. Regardless of these permutations, from a Gokhale Method perspective, the key point is to make bending healthy and avoid the damage that comes with rounding the back, distending the spinal ligaments, and pinching the front of the discs.

Standing forward bends (Uttanasana) are often taught with legs straight. This leaves most students in our culture, who have tight hamstrings, straining towards the ground with their shoulders pulled forward. It also rounds the back, distending the spinal ligaments and pinching the front of the discs. Hanging off the lower back is also aggravating for the sacro-iliac joints and soft tissue in the area. Pexels

Bending the knees softens tight hamstrings allowing a lower bend to the floor—but this student is still rounding her torso to reach over her pelvis and legs to reach the floor. Pexels

This man is using blocks to reach the floor. He is still rounding his back, and severely compressing his neck to try and look ahead. Pexels

Unfortunately this well-meaning mother is teaching her daughter poor bending form. This is especially regrettable as young children naturally tend to bend healthily by hip-hinging. Pexels

In seated forward bends yoga students often hunch forward. This compounds any rounding already established in the upper back, and forward rounding of the shoulders. Her head also strains forward, chin up, compressing the back of the neck. Pexels

Gokhale Method teacher Cecily Frederick hip-hinges in a standing forward bend. Her pelvis rotates forward around the femoral heads (tops of the thigh bones that form part of the hip joints). Her spine remains long, rather than rounding. 

Twists

In twisting postures (Parivrtti), it is especially important that your movement is not concentrated at a particular level of the spine, but is well distributed. Levering into a twist by pushing or pulling with the arms or legs can cause a twist to concentrate at any vulnerable point. Typically people will twist most in the mid-spine at T12-L1. Here the more axially mobile thoracic spine meets the lumbar area, where the orientation of the facet joints limit rotation. This is likely to result in disc bulging or even herniation at this junction, pinching of the nerves, and undue stress on the bony spine.

This woman is twisting mostly at the waist. Pexels

This seated twist shows tucking of the pelvis. There is considerable rotation at the base of the shoulder blades as the yogini levers with her arms against a fixed pelvis and legs. Wikimedia

A lying twist with one knee reaching the floor and the opposite shoulder remaining there is an extreme rotation for most people. It will often compromise healthy posture. In this case the woman is using her forearm and tucking her pelvis slightly to get her knees down. It is better to prioritize  healthy movement over achieving the “correct” shape. Pexels

Gokhale Method teacher Clare Chapman in a lying twist. Allowing the pelvis to rest back and the thighs to separate avoids tucking and encourages more rotation in the hips. 

We recommend that you initiate twists using the muscles of the torso’s inner corset, especially the obliques. The inner corset is explained in detail in Lesson 5 of my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. Using these muscles means that the lumbar spine is protected while the muscles originating in the thoracic area and connecting to the pelvis power the rotation. Engaging the inner corset also lengthens the spine avoiding the common pitfall of imposing rotation on top of flexion (rounding) or extension (swaying) or any other kind of compression. 

Twists should mainly occur and be appropriately distributed in the joints best designed for them—the ankles (standing twists), hips, the thoracic spine, and the neck. Small amounts of rotation can contribute from elsewhere, but pushing beyond natural limits anywhere by applying force is a recipe for injury and pain.

Before executing yoga bends or twists, we recommend that you first learn the basics of the Gokhale Method® in our in-person Foundations Course, Pop-Up courses, or online Elements. These courses teach you how to bend back without swaying, and how to bend forward in a way that profoundly benefits rather than damages your body. The Gokhale Method Online University has many offerings for Alumni which explore additional movements such as shearing and twisting in ways that are healthy.

If you are a yoga practitioner who suffers from recurrent bouts of back pain or strain, have stopped practicing due to injury, or have been put off even trying yoga, then a solution is at hand! 

It has long been my ambition to offer yoga classes with healthy posture. I am delighted that one of our most experienced and accomplished teachers, Lang Liu, will offer regular Tuesday and Thursday Gokhale Yoga classes, ​​7:00 am (Pacific Time), starting April 21, as part of our Alumni Gokhale Exercise program. 

We look forward to seeing you there.

Gokhale Method teacher Lang Liu looks forward to seeing you in the Gokhale Yoga class.

References:

¹ William Broad, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body”, New York Times Magazine, Jan. 5, 2012,
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html 

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…

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 weight of the head—which at around 11 lb. or 5 kg is the weight of an average bowling ball—can put considerable strain on your neck and threaten its delicate structures. It also encourages rounding of the back and shoulders, as you can see in the above photo. We recommend against this exercise.

Doing poorly designed exercises and overtraining the “six-pack” muscles will encourage a tucked pelvis
and a rounded upper spine. Freepik

Why are crunches so popular?

People in our culture are conditioned to feel more attractive when they have a flat stomach and an impressive six-pack, and so may turn to all manner of treatments, diet regimens, and abdominal exercises to target this area. People who have experienced an episode of debilitating back pain also want, quite understandably, to strengthen their abs and core in order to protect their back. 

Do most people need to strengthen their abs?

   
Parking the pelvis forward is a common postural habit that pushes into the groins and compresses the lower back. It indicates that the deep abdominal muscles are not engaged and prevents them from fulfilling their postural role. Freepik

Most people in our culture sit, stand, bend, and walk in ways that actually discourage their abdominal muscles from working in their day-to-day lives. Those who either arch or round their backs are holding themselves upright with their back muscles or stressing their joints. With these poor posture habits the “inner corset” (deep muscles of the abdomen and lower back) is not recruited to perform its natural role and becomes progressively weaker. 

This woman in Burkina Faso and man in Brazil use their inner corset in their everyday tasks.

Learning healthy posture as taught in our online Elements course and in-person Gokhale [Go-clay]Method Foundations Course holistically addresses this problem. In the courses we teach specific, well-chosen exercises designed to jump-start weak muscles and awaken your inner corset. Some of these are illustrated in Appendix 1 of my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Are crunches a safer exercise than sit-ups?

Crunches are often regarded as a safer and better choice of abdominal exercise than sit-ups. And they are. The Canadian Armed Forces discontinued the use of sit-ups in training and physical-fitness tests due to the large numbers of injuries caused to their personnel. The U.S. military also has a plan to phase them out by 2021. Stuart McGill, Professor of Spine Biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a leading researcher on the subject, points to numerous studies that show that repeated sit-ups, which load the discs in a particularly dangerous direction, cause bulging, sequestrated, and herniated discs as well as spinal nerve damage. 

Neither of these people doing crunches have healthy form. Their necks are doing too much, and the man is also tucking his pelvis. Crello

Gym instructors often prefer crunches over sit-ups because they are safer and result in less tension in the psoas (hip flexors). But are they safe enough? 

In our view, classic rounded crunches are still a risky, disc-compressing exercise which encourage tension in the groin, while also training the body in poor postural form (tucking the pelvis and rounding the upper back and neck).

Doing a crunch twisting the head towards the knee encourages the neck to do too much and the pelvis to tuck. Crello

Rounded crunches are sometimes done with a twist at the waist to work the abs more obliquely. This is often done by bringing up the entire upper body and reaching one elbow towards the knee of the opposite leg. 

Effective ab exercises that are healthy for your posture

There are healthy alternatives to crunches that give your abdominal muscles a good workout! 

Our healthy and posture-positive version of this exercise keeps the head supported in the hands. The arm on the side to which you are turning continues to be supported on the ground. You can watch Gokhale Method Fitness teacher Eric Fernandez performing the exercise in this video. You will see that he maintains his spinal alignment throughout the exercise, rather than tucking and rounding his torso. 

When doing this exercise:

• Support your head in your hands and relax your neck 
• Rest your upper arm on the floor as you turn towards it, lifting the opposite arm and shoulder from the floor
• Do not pull your head forward
• Do not tuck your pelvis
• Aim for small, smooth, accurate movements

If your abdominal muscles are weak or you are currently or intermittently experiencing back pain, then we recommend that you start with a less challenging exercise. To correctly identify and safely bring your abdominal obliques and other upper abdominal muscles to a healthy baseline tone, we recommend first watching this Gokhale Method rib anchor exercise video, and then learning to use your inner corset. The inner corset is explained in detail in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Free Chapter of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

As a special gift to newsletter subscribers who have confirmed their subscription, we would like to send you the Inner Corset chapter from Esther's book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Please enter your email address in the field below and you will be sent an email with your Inner Corset chapter. You may receive a confirmation email to sign up to the Positive Stance newsletter first.

If you are looking for a way to exercise regularly that is healthy for your back and improves your posture, sign up for our Gokhale Exercise Free Trial:

1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Fitness with Eric runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 7–7:25 a.m.
(Pacific Time), and Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from 3–3:25 p.m. (Pacific Time)

Read our Home Exercises Part 1 blog post on Cobra here.