sitting

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.  

I’m pleased to share my Gokhale Method experience with you. 
David Pickering, organist and Professor of Music at Kansas State University

I came home, got distracted, and didn't do much with what I’d learned. But increasingly I found that if I wanted to play challenging pieces, and practice the organ for long periods of time, I would feel discomfort—I was going to have to hurt myself, which I didn’t want, or change something. I decided to do some research on body posture at the organ at Kansas State University, where I teach organ and music theory.

I had always played with my pelvis tucked, inevitably resulting in my upper back and shoulders rounding forward. I’m shocked now when I see I used to sit in one big C-curve!

Initially I went to an organist with training as a massage therapist who had done some work with the Feldenkrais Method®. There were things that helped, but it was not the systematic training I was looking for. I decided to take the research back to the Gokhale Method, and was connected to Julie Johnson because of her piano background. I took the 18-lesson online Gokhale® Elements course with Julie, who lives in Germany.

Learning even the early steps, like stretchsitting, made a noticeable improvement to my posture—but the ultimate test for me would be my playing position.

The journey has not been what I thought it would be. For example, I had not realised how far from healthy my posture was! I have also come to realise that this is a journey, and I can’t just fix every ingrained habit in six months. 

In all my years as a musician, I had never seen anybody use a wedge to antevert their pelvis—it seemed such a foreign concept. The Gokhale® Wedge eventually became a firm favorite. At first, I couldn’t stay on the wedge; then I found myself stuck and immobilized on it.  At that point, I thought I would have to declare this a failure and give up.

Without a wedge my pelvis tucked, rounding my spine and upper back. My shoulders internally rotated, and my elbows winged out, all pulling on my upper back. Little wonder I was in pain! 

Thankfully I stayed with it, starting by using the wedge for playing in church, where I didn't have the pressure of a concert. The whole idea of sitting at the instrument became so different. Initially I made a few mistakes I wouldn’t otherwise have made. I started to experiment with carefully calibrated combinations of strips of yoga mat for extra non-slip as I played, plus the Gokhale® Wedge.

I used my preferred set-up in concert a couple of months ago, and I was just shocked. I played with the greatest freedom, the greatest musicality, with my mind in a better place than I had had in a long time. I particularly noticed that I had less upper back, neck, and shoulder pain, as I was not pulling my shoulders forward as I had been. Interestingly, I’ve received very few questions and little curiosity about this strange innovation to playing, although I explain to my students what I’m doing.

As an organist, there was nothing in my training (and there's virtually nothing out there) to help with physical challenges in playing. Now I’m thinking, what can I do with my students? There are certainly things I can try and pass on to my students, but I realise that for best results, they need to get the whole Gokhale package. For that, I would ideally like to train as a Gokhale Method teacher. The Gokhale Method is an established program with an established pedagogy. Its teachers are well trained to tell you why you’re hurting, and exactly what to do about it.

This video shows me exploring stacksitting during my Elements course. You can hear Julie coaching me as I play. Recording by Julie Johnson, GM

Some years ago I videoed myself playing and realised my upper body posture was problematic, but didn’t know how to address it from the pelvis upward. With the anteverted pelvis and J-spine I have had the best results for playing the organ, and it’s wonderful to feel I know where it should be. Luckily my wife is very observant and helps me to continue this posture journey into my daily life—getting me out of tucking on the sofa, and encouraging me to use my glutes when walking.

Ongoing and future learning

Rolling and resting my shoulders back is something I am aware I still need to pay attention to while playing, and I sometimes catch myself feeling “something’s off” if they drift forward. Learning how to find a long, tall neck has also been a godsend for reducing upper back pain and rounding. I also benefit from working on that area with a back roller for mobility, and working my rhomboids for good muscle tone. My inner corset strength is also progressing and I can now move better to use my feet across the pedals, though there is more to do there.

My posture is steadily improving. An anteverted pelvis is the foundation for healthy sitting. Image by Julie Johnson, GM

I also do a great deal of work at the computer—now, I know how to antevert my pelvis and am finding my J-spine with the Gokhale® Wedge.

I’ll be 54 years old shortly. I see how people around me are looking in their later decades, and how their posture is correlated with their aches and pains and immobility. I don’t want to go there, and I know how to get to a better, pain-free place. The journey continues!

Best next action steps 

If you would like help with a healthier working or playing position, get started by booking a consultation, online or in person, with one of our teachers. In addition to being a Gokhale Method Teacher, Sigrun Franzen is an experienced organist, harpsichordist, and piano teacher.

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

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.  

A back spasm is never welcome—but it is a signal we can act on—when we know how. Image by: Kampus Production

It’s true that time is a great healer—and that most back pain resolves itself without intervention—but there are also things we can do to accelerate the healing, that can help us feel better immediately, and protect us in the longer term. 

Should I take pain meds?

Pain meds (muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatories, and pain signal blockers) can be useful in allowing you to remain reasonably active, preserve your mental health, work, care for dependents, and more. They can also have negative side effects and create dependence. Using pain meds is a very individual decision to be made with your medical advisors, but if you do use meds, be sure you are using the relief they give you as a window of opportunity to address the root causes of your back pain.

Should I keep moving or rest up? 

There is research showing that for back pain, maintaining normal activities as tolerated gives a better outcome than bed rest. Maintaining gentle movement is nearly always advisable as it promotes healthy circulation and healing in the injured area. It also counters joint stiffness, muscle weakness, and loss of fitness. As the saying goes, “motion is lotion.” Maintaining regular activities as tolerated also helps you keep up with your friends, hobbies, and tasks, and staves off depression. 

In our experience doing normal activities with truly normal (healthy) posture gives an even better outcome.

Activities done with healthy posture are protective against back spasms and injuries.

Move like you are meant to

Unless it was a freak accident, think back to what caused this spasm. Going forward, what are you going to do differently to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Are there movements to avoid until you have learned what is truly healthy for your body, be that in bending, twisting, or reaching? Students have sometimes discovered that certain “healthy” exercises, such as cat-cow, or roll-downs, feel wonderful at the time, but that such alternating flexion and extension provokes their backs to stiffen up or spasm later. 

Poorly designed stretch and mobility exercises such as cat-cow actually push deeper into existing curves, provoking inflammation and stiffness. Images from Freepik 

Non-drug treatments 

Alternative or additional treatment for back spasms might include massage, physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, and osteopathy. It would be fair to say that while many of our students find one or more of these modalities helpful, they are seldom sufficient to get to the root cause of their back flare-ups and prevent them from recurring. When I was a practicing acupuncturist, I found that my patients responded better to treatment for back pain when I also helped them with their posture. Their bodies could heal and strengthen better when they stopped unwittingly reverting to poor bending, lifting, walking, sitting, and sleeping positions after their treatments.

Gokhale Method® solutions

I would like to offer two key Gokhale Method techniques that can accelerate your journey out of pain, plus get you started on creating the baseline conditions to keep your back healthy into the future. 

You will use readily available surfaces—a mattress or an exercise mat, and the backrest of a chair—to put your back into mild traction. You will be able to use this surface to contact and gently stretch your skin, which stretches the flesh underneath and gently eases your vertebrae apart. This will gradually tease out tension and spasm, facilitate circulation and healing, and bring peace to the area. These techniques are useful for five minute “resets” during the day, or for hours at a time, as needed.

Caution: If your back pain is persistent or severe, we recommend you consult your medical team prior to using these techniques.

Technique 1: Stretchlying

Stretchlying can transform lying down into therapeutic traction and comfort—even as you sleep. You can get started with this video.

Technique 2: Stretchsitting

Stretchsitting can transform compressive sitting (and driving) into hours of therapeutic traction and comfort. You can get started with this video.

You can learn these techniques in greater detail, with modifications for your body, in our in-person Foundations Course and our online Gokhale Elements. My book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, has illustrated, step-by-step instructions. Our stretchsit® cushion is a handy tool to make poorly designed chairs more comfortable and healthy. Here you can find a video on how to attach it to just about any chair. We’ve put it on sale until April 1 for $54.90, discounted from $59.90, plus free domestic shipping.

The stretchsit® cushion not only creates a healthier shape for your backrest, its soft “sticky” nubs are specially designed to give comfortable traction. 

Doing things differently

Pain is nature's biofeedback mechanism—one which alerts us to the threat or occurrence of injury, which we should act on. Unfortunately our culture has not equipped us well to interpret our pain signals, nor to understand the systematic errors we may be making in our body use. 

Once we recognize that poor postural habits are the root cause of our back pain, the process of change can begin. A teacher’s experienced eye can be invaluable in assessing your individual postural patterns and issues, helping you to steer out of trouble and into a healthier relationship with your body.

The way we make every movement determines whether our back has length and support, or is vulnerable to damaging stress. Here I am guiding a student in glidewalking. 

Best next action steps 

If you would like to know how changing your posture can prevent your back pain, get started by booking a consultation, online, or in person with one of our teachers. 

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

When students first meet with a Gokhale Method® teacher they are sometimes surprised to learn that one of the reasons for their back pain is a tight psoas muscle. What does this little-known muscle, embedded deep within our bodies, have to do with back pain? And what do we need to do to have it recede in the background and leave our backs alone?

Get to know your psoas muscle 

Psoas major (pronounced so-as) is a deep-lying muscle with a downwards trajectory through the abdomen. There can be some individual variation, but it usually originates from T12-L4, and it inserts at the lesser trochanter of the femur. Its main job is to contract and pull the thigh up—as in walking, running, and climbing, for example. 

The psoas muscle lifts your thigh—or pulls on your lower back, depending on how it’s used.

For those who are not offended by meat analogies, this muscle is the filet mignon, or the tenderloin—it is meant to be lean, juicy, malleable, and stretchy. But in modern industrial populations, the psoas is often somewhat dry, tough, and short. The shortened length and tightness of the muscle can wreak havoc on the spine as it pulls forward on the lumbar spine, causing compression, wear and tear, and pain.

How do I know if I have a tight psoas?

There are various signs and symptoms associated with a tight psoas, including:

• A pronounced sway in the lumbar area
• Pain when going from sitting to standing
• Back pain either caused or eased by walking
• A sore insertion point on the thigh
• Feeling stiff and unable to straighten up, or “vulnerable” in the lower back, especially first thing in the morning  

Why did my psoas get tight?

• Sitting for extended periods without movement breaks is one reason that our psoas adapts to a shorter length because the muscle then spends a long time at the shorter end of the range of what it can do. 
• The shortening effect of sitting is made more likely when we sit poorly with our pelvis tucked. A modern issue with sitting is that we have poorly designed furniture, such as bucket seats and deep sofas, which encourage us to tuck and slouch. 

Most modern furniture is designed for aesthetic appeal rather than to enable us to sit well. Image from: Pexels

• Back pain patients are often recommended to use a chair with built in lumbar support, or to add a lumbar cushion. The extra curvature then reinforces a habit of swaying the lower back, which in turn enables the psoas to remain short and tight.

Most backrests follow the S-shaped spine paradigm and are designed to give “lumbar support.” This creates exaggerated curvature and compression in the lumbar spine. (Google, n.d.)

• A tight psoas can also have a psychosomatic cause, as this muscle is deeply linked to both chronic stress and trauma responses in the body. We see this response even in babies in the Moro or startle reflex.

Restoring length in your psoas 

A common remedy for a tight psoas is a lunge or other psoas stretch. Though effective, the problem with this approach is that it is not possible to do enough stretching to make a sustainable difference to the length of this muscle. The stretch feels good, but the muscle quickly goes back to its short resting length. For some people, if they have been stretching aggressively and the attachments of the muscle are inflamed, stretching can cause additional pain and dysfunction.

Another common approach is to get a gifted practitioner to “release” your psoas. This very intense maneuver can also be effective, but has the same problem as the stretching approach—it provides temporary relief, but does not sustainably reset the resting length of the muscle when poor daily posture is shortening it.  

The only sustainable way I know of resetting a tight psoas is to recruit Nature’s solution for keeping this muscle healthy, which is to learn how to walk naturally/skillfully/effectively. 

Our natural gait pattern is evident in our young children, our ancestors, and villagers in non-industrialized parts of the world. It gives the psoas muscle both the engagement and stretch it needs in a gentle and consistent way.
(central painting: Fisher Girl, Winslow Homer, 1894. Museum at Amherst College, Petegorsky/Gipe.) 

Nature’s built-in solution to stretching your psoas

To describe the action of healthy walking, we use the term glidewalking. With this pattern, every step becomes a psoas stretch. Refinements in walking like learning to contract your glutes with every step and leaving your rear heel down for an extended time, augment the psoas stretch. If, however, you don’t know how to maintain a long, stable lumbar spine, these same improvements in gait can be counterproductive and pull your spine into additional sway.

Our PostureTracker™ wearable enables you to monitor and maintain your rib anchor and a healthy, stable spine as you walk (shown in green), naturally stretching your psoas. Here I am on the Alumni Live Chat in December last year, demonstrating.

PostureTracker™ will tell you (shown in red) if you forget your healthy posture cues! Notice that I have let my back sway severely at the end of my stride.

Advanced Glidewalking Course for Alumni

If you are an alumnus, you are encouraged to join me in our Advanced Glidewalking Course. This course is a comprehensive deep-dive to both revisit the basics of healthy, natural walking, refine its many components, and learn advanced techniques that are not included in our beginner courses. Your psoas will thank you! Six weekly lessons start Wednesday, February 28, 11 a.m. (PST), 8 p.m. (CET). You can sign up here.

Best next action steps for newcomers

If you are new to the Gokhale Method, get started by booking a consultation, online, or in person with one of our teachers to find out how the Gokhale Method can help you.

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

The much-loved Gokhale® Pain-Free Chair was launched in 2012, celebrating the philosophy that sitting is a natural, healthy activity. This office chair was designed to facilitate stretchsitting and stacksitting, two key techniques of the Gokhale Method® that transform sitting into a comfortable activity that heals you rather than hurts you.

The Gokhale® Pain-Free Chair has many features that facilitate the therapeutic techniques of stretchsitting and stacksitting once their principles are understood.

The need for an executive chair design breakthrough 

But some of our students, alumni, and members of the public asked us for recommendations for an equally comfortable executive chair—one that allows for leaning back with neck support. We gave our best guidance on what features to look for, and which to avoid. I also offered Live Chats on sitting and written blog posts about seating options—two examples being How to Choose a Backrest, and Comparing and Contrasting the Herman Miller Aeron Chair and the Gokhale Pain-Free™ Chair.

The Herman Miller Aeron Chair (top left) is a market leader, and there are a myriad of other brands, designs, and specifications to choose from. Images from: The Herman Miller Aeron Chair, The Leap Chair, Litfad Executive Chair, Laporta Executive Chair

The features we consider healthy in an executive chair are rarely all available in one package. Many common features, like lumbar curves which distort the spine, bolsters that round the shoulders forward, and head rests that crane the head forward, are problematic and difficult to work around. 

We are now delighted to be able to offer our own Gokhale® Executive Chair solution.

The Gokhale® Executive Chair

About the Gokhale® Executive Chair

Our regular Gokhale Pain-Free chair works well as a home or office chair, but for a professional working long hours, a well-designed executive chair offers additional, relevant features. For example, it isn’t always practical for a busy executive to take a walk outdoors, lie down on the floor, or relax in a nearby cafe. But they still need to reflect, reset, and refresh.

The Gokhale® Executive Chair provides this. At the pull of a lever, the backrest smoothly angles back and even rocks a little for a profoundly relaxing pause or deep-thinking time.

The reclining function of our chair combines particularly well with cutaways which allow your shoulders to rest back, the stretchsit nubs on the backrest that enable you to gently traction your back, and a headrest that helps to elongate your neck.

We decided to make the Gokhale® Executive Chair a high-end offering. It is crafted in luxurious Italian leather (also available in high-quality fabric) and quality materials for comfort and durability. It has an adjustable headrest, adjustable back height, cutaways in the shoulder area, and my favorite recline function. 

The guiding principles of Gokhale Method design

This chair blends form and function attentively. Its contemporary look belies the fact that its design is based on the timeless principles of healthy human posture. Its purpose is to not only allow you to sit elegantly and comfortably for as long as you wish, but also to bestow all the therapeutic benefits of time spent sitting well.

Most of the executive chairs on the market are designed to appeal primarily to the dictates of fashion. There is a parallel situation with shoe design; fashion does not always respect what is compatible with our structure. Additionally, from a Gokhale Method perspective, chair design often reflects conventional ideas on how to sit, which is also at odds with our natural structure.

Many designers—and consumers—are constrained by well-intentioned but misguided ergonomic principles like the S-spine paradigm. This is why almost all adjustable chairs come with excessive lumbar and neck curvature. Our chair is different because it is shaped by our knowledge of the body’s natural J-spine architecture to provide exceptional comfort and healing. No other executive chair that we know of has a J-spine paradigm informing its design. The Gokhale® Executive Chair is also uniquely compatible with all the posture principles and techniques taught in our comprehensive Gokhale Method courses (the in-person Foundations course, or one-day Pop-up course, or our online Elements course).

Let’s take a close-up look at the posture-enhancing features that enable users to sit in ways that are comfortable and therapeutic.

The Gokhale® Executive Chair works for you so that you can work in comfort.

In the video below Gokhale Method Teacher Sabina Blumauer gives her first impressions of the Gokhale® Executive Chair.

You can order your Gokhale® Executive Chair here.

Best next action steps for newcomers

If you would like to know which posture changes will help you be pain-free and functional, schedule an Initial Consultation, online, or in person.

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

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. 

Learning to stand well has been transformational for me. You can see that I used to park my hips forward and sway back, pressuring on my lower spine and sending my neck forward—little wonder I was in so much pain. Though still a work in progress, I know how to align my weight better throughout my whole body.

I have always enjoyed exercise, movement, and body work, including hiking, Qigong, and yoga. I now have a healthy standing point from which to do all these activities.

When walking, for the first few steps I might omit to squeeze my glutes and check through the other things I know to do…but it is becoming more habitual so my muscle memory soon kicks in. Or I recall my favorite prompt of Esther’s, “if your glutes snooze, you lose.” 

The J-spine concept was entirely new to me. I had tucked my pelvis under (as you saw in the above “Before” photo) all my life as far as I can recall. Consequently, I believe, the place that hurts for me is around L5-S1 at the very bottom of my spine, so I have to be accurate to squeeze my glutes from a relaxed pelvic position and not to sway and compress my lower back trying to make it happen with the wrong muscles. A single follow-up lesson on this was really useful to help me relax my pelvis back even more.

A healthy L5-S1 angle (J-spine) permits the wedge-space disc there the space that it needs (a.). Learning the Gokhale Method finally enabled me to stop tucking my pelvis and sacrum, and damaging my L5-S1 disc (b.).

Due to my scoliosis I have to be extra careful about how I do things, and with poor bending form, I would always ache—or have a more acute disaster. Now I understand why. I use the hip-hinging technique as I’ve been taught (plus putting my hands on my hips) and I can bend comfortably—it amazes me! I don’t straighten my legs like some of the pictures we see, as I don’t have the hamstring length, but I can follow the principles involved. 

Since learning to hip-hinge I can bend without distorting my back and without pain. There are many principles to learn that contribute to healthy bending, which comes later in the course, but it has been well worth it.

Since 2005 I have been playing the harp, for which being in the right position is important. I pull the harp towards me more now, and when I bend, I bend at the hips, not rounding my back. When sitting with a backrest I have found using the Stretchsit® Cushion makes a good deal of difference to my comfort—I have one in the car, and in fact I’m sitting with one in this interview right now to reduce the pressure on my lower back.

The gentle traction you can get in your lumbar area by using a Stretchsit® Cushion reduces compression and asymmetry in your spine.  

Since a hysterectomy in 1995, I have lost bone density and three inches in height. I am working nightly with stretchlying to lengthen my spine and reduce my scoliosis. I am confident that stretchlying at night and using my inner corset to support my spine during the day will prevent any further height loss and increase in my scoliosis, as I have already seen such improvement in my posture. These two measures may well enable me to regain some of the height in my spine that I have lost.

In October I had an eye surgery, a partial cornea transplant, and to make sure that it stayed in place, for three days following the operation I had to keep my head still and remain on my back. I practiced stretchlying carefully leading up to the operation and found I could lie there all night comfortably; stretchlying is the best!

Come morning I have the option of switching to stretchlying on my side, which I also learned in the course. Again, I found a follow-up lesson on stretchlying on the side helpful as it involves a little more technical precision, especially with anteverting the pelvis, to work its magic.

For me the biggest help for my upper body was learning the shoulder roll…and I feel like my neck automatically gets into the right place after I’ve positioned my shoulders well. It also positions me better in sitting and standing, and helps me do more of the things I care deeply about.

One of those things is artwork, and I am now much more aware of my body while I’m doing it. For example, I’m standing straighter, and if I start to slouch—oops—I can feel it. 

I love the poetry of combining imagery and words in my artwork.

I’m also at the computer writing books, including a biography, children’s books, and poetry. As I spend a good deal of time sitting, it’s important to do it well. 

These are four of the numerous books I've published. I have illustrated the three books shown along the top here. Seven Meditations for Children I have recorded as an audiobook—see how the child is sitting with a nice straight back!

My husband had an eminent career in public health which took us all over the world. Rather than take a lucrative post as an Obstetrics and Gynecology trained MD, he chose instead to work for the poor and underserved of the world, becoming Founder-Director of the Center for Population and Family Health, 1975–86. He was then Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, 1986–2008, and honored while alive with the naming of the Allan Rosenfield Building and after his passing by the Tribute Wall I fundraised for. The first year of our marriage was spent in Nigeria, and we were in Thailand for six years. I must have seen a lot of examples of elegant posture in the rural areas of those countries, but back then I didn’t recognize how important it was.

Here is a photo of the Tribute Wall to my husband—there we are together, bottom left. My husband served in Korea as an Air Force doctor. You can see people headloading in Nigeria (left hand panel, photo top right).

I have six grandchildren, three boys and three girls, aged 12–23. When I’m with them I try to help them with their posture—they spend so much time hunched over. I guess it’s hard for children to envisage they are statistically likely to have back pain down the line, but at least I can sow the seeds for them to think about posture, and set as healthy an example as I can. I’m so glad that the Gokhale Method is there to help all generations—and especially the young—to rediscover their healthy posture heritage.

I’m known to my grandchildren as “the Nana who raps instead of naps!” Here is a rap I would like to share with you:

IT'S TIME WE VOW TO SPEAK RIGHT NOW
 

It's time we vow to speak right now

our vow to share a peace we dare

to live and keep and not let sleep

In mere intentions while old conventions

Toot horns of war. No more, no more,

We shout out loud, no more to shroud

Our depths of heart. It's time to start,

Yes, twenty-four seven, on Earth bring Heaven,

So one, two, three, it's you and me

To take a dive in what's alive,

Our YES to fate before too late

To emanate our LOVE not wait,

to one and all, the world enthrall

So they will see that all we be

One family! Yes all we be

One FAMILY!

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. . .

It has been over 60 years since Eastern schools of meditation became widely known in the U.S. and Europe, and meditation became widely practiced, with over 14% of Americans having meditated at least once. If we include those practicing mindfulness techniques, using meditation apps, and attending yoga classes with a meditation component, this figure goes far higher.

The effects of sitting in meditation

The potential benefits of meditation are well known, and include a calmer, clearer mind, lower levels of stress, better sleep, improved relationships with others, and better mental health. 

From a posture perspective, whether you sit in meditation regularly or are just getting started, you want the experience to be as healthy for your body as it is for your mind. 

Tradition and seated meditation

This North Indian Buddha figure shows healthy form. He has a well-stacked spine, open shoulders, and an elongated neck. (Post Gupta period, 7th–8th century C.E..)

Westerners often try to be “authentic” in their meditation by sitting cross-legged on the floor, as is portrayed in most traditions. This is particularly difficult for people who have not grown up regularly sitting this way. It may be that practitioners manage to cross their legs, but then their pelvis is not able to tip forward. Their hip joints will not have developed in childhood and ossified in their teens for unaided cross-legged sitting to be a truly comfortable and biomechanically available option. 

Common problems in upright seated meditation

With the pelvis tucked, meditators have two options, both of them unhealthy:

1. Sitting on their tail bones in a relaxed but slumped position, which will put their spines into a C-shape that overstretches the ligaments of the SI joints and spine, and compresses the spinal discs and nerves. Such collapsed posture restricts the lungs, stomach, and other organs. It also deconditions the deep inner corset muscles that are there to regulate spinal alignment “in the background” during healthy sitting. 
2. Sitting tucked but holding themselves upright by tensing the back muscles. Many meditators and yoga practitioners are so familiar with this effortful solution to being upright that they don’t realize that they are doing it, or recognize it as poor posture. 

It takes freedom in the hip socket to allow the pelvis a good range of motion, rotating forward (anteverting) around the head of the femurs—then the spine can articulate at L5-S1 to stack upright and the back muscles can relax. You can read more about healthy pelvic anteversion here. 

The man’s notably tucked pelvis is sending his spine into a C-shape. Their upper backs are rounded, compressing the base of the neck and lifting the chin to face forward. Pexels

This man is holding himself up with tension in his back muscles. He can learn to antevert his pelvis to find its natural L5-S1 angle, allowing his back to be upright and relaxed. To get there we recommend a suitable wedge along with some posture know-how. Pexels

This woman is getting some anteverting benefit from the slope of the beach, but is used to swaying her lumbar area rather than having a healthy angle lower down at L5-S1. Unsplash

This Chinese Buddha figure shows surprisingly slumped posture. Note the forward head, absence of a stacked spine, and tucked pelvis. With a tucked pelvis slumping is the only relaxed option for sitting.

The hunched figure above is the oldest Chinese Buddha figure that has survived into modern times. The inscription on its base dates it to 338 C.E., 500 years after Buddhism came to China from India. Why does the hunched posture of the Chinese figure compare so poorly with the Indian figure (top)? It is reasonable to suppose that while crossed legged sitting was the norm in India, a warm country where much of the population sits on the floor to gather, eat, socialize, and more, in China, with its generally cooler climate, sitting crossed legged was consciously adopted for meditation but was not a widely used sitting position.   

Here I am stacksitting on the Gokhale™ Pain-Free Chair—my pelvis is anteverted so my spine stacks upright and relaxed, with a healthy angle at L5-S1. This way of sitting enables you to sit in meditation comfortably for prolonged periods if required, and to breathe well. Like all students on the path of postural improvement, I am a work in progress. . .

Appropriate furniture, props, and seating solutions

Most Zen and yoga centers in the West have become more enlightened about the difficulty many people have in sitting on the floor, providing chairs, meditation stools, and cushions for meditators’ comfort. Some more recently established schools, such as Transcendental Meditation, have always encouraged practitioners to use chairs and sofas rather than wrangle with the difficulties of sitting on the floor and working through the resultant aches and pains. 

That said, seeking comfort and back support from soft and poorly contoured modern furniture can also promote slumping, or lead to problematic remedies such as using lumbar cushions which sway the back. You can read more on finding a healthy back rest here, as well as about gentle traction from our Stretchsit® Cushion.

Traditional and potentially effective solutions to help meditators sit without a backrest include the Japanese Zafu cushion, a high, round cushion that can help the thighs and pelvis to angle down, and a low wooden meditation stool used in a kneeling position. The Gokhale™ Wedge is a modern solution to support stacksitting. In all cases, it is important that the practitioner knows how to anchor their rib cage to resist any tendency to sway, and how to find articulation at the lower L5-S1 junction. 

Four props for healthy sitting (top left to bottom right): a Japanese Zafu cushion, the Gokhale™ Wedge, a kneeling meditation stool, and the Gokhale Stretchsit® Cushion

Healthy sitting makes for healthy breathing

Given that controlled or mindful breathing is part of many meditation practices, it’s surprising how little attention is given to the link between breathing well and sitting well.

Some meditation traditions have mimicked teachers and icons with slumped posture, and teach that the associated abdominal breathing is part and parcel of spiritual practice. This type of breathing, however, results in a soft, expanded belly with low muscle tone, an underdeveloped chest, and inadequate use of the diaphragm and lungs.

Equally problematic is tensing the back to remain upright, which tightens the erector spinae muscles and restricts the diaphragm and ribs at the back. It takes stacksitting with a J-spine to let the breath work its magic—bringing a natural massage to your spine, better circulation, and length, strength, and flexibility to the musculoskeletal parts of the torso.

Chop wood, carry water, preserve your posture

There is a traditional Zen Buddhist koan (puzzle/story): 

The novice says to the master, "What does one do before enlightenment?"

"Chop wood. Carry water," replies the master.

The novice asks, "What, then, does one do after enlightenment?"

"Chop wood. Carry water."

Chopping wood and carrying is part of everyday life for millions of people in traditional communities—and it is done with healthy posture.

Of course there are various interpretations of this koan, including that the most pedestrian of activities are also the most sacred. From a posture teacher perspective, the koan reminds us that in the pursuit of spiritual (or mental) development, we should continue to engage with the physical foundations of life. Not only are the body, mind and spirit intertwined, but a healthy body can also help support our other endeavors.

Breaking free from old habits

Meditators often come to work with us because they are frustrated by their pain and struggle to be comfortable. In our experience, though meditators are extensively trained in matters of the mind, the training of the body lags behind. Our teachers have expertise in identifying and solving systemic postural errors in meditation and other activities, and are ready to support you on your meditation and life journey.  

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.

There are so many things in my life that I feel thankful for, and Thanksgiving gives an opportunity to reflect on these feelings of gratitude. For our newsletter I wanted to share the deep gratitude I have for my personal journey out of back pain, and for how that journey continues as a growing ability to support and empower others in this direction. 

When I came to write this blog post, I quickly realized that this is a daunting task! The truth is that so many people have played invaluable parts, both great and small, in helping me to create the Gokhale Method® that it’s impossible to pay tribute to everyone in a short piece of writing. So I decided there will be other posts of gratitude, including to my teachers, to the people around the globe on whom this work is based, and to our team of dedicated teachers and staff. But on this National Day of Thanksgiving, I’d like to focus on things related to living and working in the US.

The settling of people from all over the world in North and South America has brought innovation and enthusiasm for new ideas. This is Sebastian Münster’s Map of the New World, published in 1540. Wikipedia

The US has a uniquely multifaceted heritage

I feel grateful to live in the salad bowl that is the US. At its best, the US benefits from embracing ideas and traditions from all over the world. It has a track record of weaving together influences that enhance the richness of life and result in vibrant, new, and exciting ways of solving problems. 

One of the ways in which the Gokhale Method® is quintessentially American is that it draws on healthy inputs from different cultures, theories, technologies, and more. We actively search out kinesthetic traditions of people all over the world, past and present, and learn from the best of what works. Since so many people visit and settle in the US, studying other movement and bodywork traditions becomes especially accessible, whether we are looking at massage, dance, or gardening.

Nirmala, a baby masseur from India visiting friends in California, prepares to massage a baby on her lap.

Gokhale Method alumna Joan Baez dancing in her kitchen with her friend Jesus Morales (better known as Chuy), who hails from Mexico. He has typically excellent form—his behind stays behind, his back is upright, and his shoulders remain back.

American “can do” can help to solve back pain 

Americans have some qualities in common with teenagers—a boldness to experiment and reinvent ourselves, and a willingness to put ourselves out there without necessarily having the training or experience to get the job done. A can-do mentality with readiness to learn along the way doesn’t guarantee success (according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 35% of new businesses survive for 10 years), but the businesses that do survive often couldn’t have gotten off the ground at all through more conventional progression and do provide valuable services and products to society. 

I don’t have an MBA, and I started the Gokhale Method 30 years ago with no idea of how to launch a business, manage staff, or use an Excel spreadsheet. Many mistakes happened along the way, and yet our small raft of a company became seaworthy, is still afloat, and continues to set sail in new waters to bring relief to an increasing number of people. 

We have evolved a highly efficient and effective solution to back pain and other debilitating musculoskeletal problems—15,000 people have taken our courses to date, and over 250,000 copies of 8 Steps to a Pain Free Back have sold. There’s much more to be done, though—back pain remains the number one cause of disability globally, and 80% of people in the US alone are expected to experience a significant back problem during their lives. The Gokhale Method mission “to make back pain rare” continues. 

Each statistic represents a personal story of pain, disability, and often financial stress. www.thegoodbody.com

Innovation is recognized and valued in the US 

I’ve been promoting the J-spine paradigm for over three decades now. (You can read more about spine shape here.) It’s a radical departure from conventional wisdom’s S-spine paradigm, but based on compelling arguments and a growing body of evidence, the Gokhale Method has been welcomed into physician training courses, retreats, and conferences, and will now be the subject of a randomized control trial (RCT) at a major university. This level of openness and acceptance of disruptive approaches is more common in the US than in many other societies. 

Americans love new ideas—even when they’re old ideas!

Back in the 1990s I was studying posture in Portugal, because the average posture in southern Europe was still notably healthier than in the US. While I was carrying my baby on my back, using an African wrap, concerned people who saw me would give well-meaning advice on how to carry a baby properly. Of course, this came from their best intentions to help me take care of my baby, but still, back in the US, I found people around me much more amenable to incorporating such techniques. Here I encounter people wanting to learn this traditional skill I had originally learned from an African friend. 

I am carrying my youngest daughter on my back. This way of carrying infants encourages healthy posture in both mother and child. 

Philanthropy and support

For most of my time in the US I have lived in the Bay area, which happens to have one of the highest densities of philanthropic donors in the US. Innumerable students from the Bay Area and elsewhere in the US over the years have stepped up in a variety of ways to offer support to our organization by way of legal advice, mentorship, business strategy, and funding for research. In 2020 we managed to raise enough money in donations for the randomized control trial (RCT) that is happening in a major university next year, from students who wanted to see the benefits they received from this work extended to a wider public.

Of course it’s natural to have the largest following, and therefore the largest number of supporters, locally. In fact, in spite of the distances, people from all over the globe have stepped up to offer a variety of kinds of support—back pain is truly a global problem.

Our company continues to receive much “behind the scenes” help. Often these supporters stepped up without me asking. A number of people eminent in their field, including musician, artist, and activist Joan Baez, have been extremely generous with their endorsement of our method. We have also received donations—of antique photographs and artifacts showing healthy posture—to the Gokhale Method Institute’s collection. People have come forward and offered us accommodation and venues. There is truly no way that our organization could have reached its current level without all this help.

It especially touches my heart when students are courageous and willing to share their story, be that by talking to others, writing a blog post, or giving a testimonial. This is never an expectation, but another gift for which I am truly thankful as it inspires others to have realistic hope that they too can learn the Gokhale Method and live without pain.

Many of our students generously share their stories. Here is Sheila Bond, who was featured in our most recent blog post.

Americans are at the frontier of wearable tech 

Over the last seven years, we’ve developed ground-breaking wearables, including our user-friendly PostureTracker™. No door was ever closed to us for lack of formal training in technology or tech enterprise. We learned as we went along and persisted through to the finish line and now have a unique and sophisticated tool to assist our students in transforming their posture education into posture habits. PostureTracker is now available as an add-on to our in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, our online Elements course, as well our in-person and online Alumni offerings. Our next deep-dive online Alumni PostureTracker Course starts on January 11 next year.

This clip from our Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting DVD shows students using our PostureTracker wearable.

Being positive is cool in the US

Positive reinforcement as a teaching style, as well as a tenet of company culture, is a data-supported choice that has been widely embraced in the US. I was raised with some degree of the Calvinistic notion that a little negativity is a necessary part of being real. And my own posture training included spurs like, “How can you stand to be so ugly?” (To many of us this will be surprising, but as part of “old school” pedagogy, it’s nowhere near caning school children, which used to be a common practice). So I’m grateful I got to see that authentic positive reinforcement works, works really well, and leaves no scars behind.  

I believe a positive approach is especially important in the field of posture because posture has historically been laced with negative reinforcement, ridicule, and even racism. Posture is a very personal matter for most people, so it is important that people feel safe, embraced, and encouraged as they go about their journey of improving themselves. It is an integral part of our teacher training that a positive stance is woven into our teaching, our touch, and our vision, and I feel grateful for my 45+ years in the US for supporting this. 

Julie and I celebrate with our most recently trained teachers—this time in Germany! (Left to right: Michal, Ines, Julie, Me, and Johanna.)

If you would like guidance on any aspect of your posture and spine shape, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online or in person, with a Gokhale Method teacher.

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. . .

Welcome to the second blog post in which I am delighted to tell you more about our exciting recent TV project. If you missed it, you can read The Secrets of Pain-Free Sitting, Part 1: The Inspiration behind a New TV Show here.

Getting the Gokhale Method out there

People are sitting poorly and continue to blame sitting for their back pain. And so we created Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting, a pledge show that the Gokhale Institute made with producer Frank Zamacona for American Public Television (APT). The solution to back pain has never been so urgently needed—and now, with our new 45-minute show, so available. 

Here I am with the stars of the show! We are, from left to right, Susan Van Niekerk, Esther Gokhale,
Dennis Bennet, and Eric Fernandez. Go team! 

We have a high prevalence of back pain in our culture and a low level of effective solutions. The Gokhale Institute’s mission “to make back pain rare” through postural reeducation has been embraced by “early adopters” and those for whom our anthropological and historical approach to ending back pain resonates. 

The Gokhale Method teaches the posture principles you see in antique photographs and artworks, in children, and in traditional societies, where healthy posture has been handed down uninterrupted through generations. 

Our students are wonderful ambassadors, and are often keen to share their success stories with friends, family, and particularly generously, via our blog posts and testimonials. However, making our message super-accessible, and getting the word out far and wide, has been a challenge for a small company such as ours. 

My book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, which continues to be in demand in 12 languages, and also the DVD, Back Pain: The Primal Posture™ Solution, have certainly been key ways for many people to encounter and learn the Gokhale Method®. Yet to make it easier for people to discover our approach, and to see what it can do for them, we wanted to make our solution to back pain available in every American home. This goal became a reality when our pledge program was picked up by APT, who saw that its content was of increasing relevance to the public.

A place to make the show 

For some time the show felt a long way from happening, as we tried and failed on landing a suitable location for filming, this being made much more challenging by COVID. Eventually I made an appeal on a local social media platform. I was delighted when I was contacted by the owners of a beautiful and spacious home on Skyline Boulevard, nestled in the hills of Woodside, CA.

The stunning venue we were offered enabled the project to become a reality. It was an inspirational setting for everyone involved. 

Readying our venue for filming required a surprising amount of work, both inside and out. Control of the light levels inside was essential, and so some blackouts had to be erected over the windows of the room where we were filming.

Controlling the light levels by rigging blackouts was another physical task for the TV crew.

Our hosts were gracious and generous. Their home worked as a venue on so many levels, and not just for us, but for the family too. They homeschool their kids, some of whom watched the show take shape in real time, learning about film making and about posture simultaneously. It also turned out that one of their daughters had amazing posture (possibly the subject of an upcoming blog post!) 

Whatever job you do, posture can hurt or heal

Our very first feedback about the show came from the people engaged in producing and shooting it. The TV crew were pleased, indeed grateful, to have learned this information about sitting. They had various issues with their posture and were surprised and delighted to find this assignment so relevant to the professional demands on them. Dan Friedman, the cameraman, emailed Susan, my personal assistant, saying, “BTW, the lessons came in VERY handy with transcontinental flights and a TON of sitting around chatting with family. So simple, so therapeutic. Now to stacksit and stretchsit my way through the edit!

As you can see, some of the TV crew’s tasks are physically challenging, especially to sustain for longer periods. Here, Jermaine Battle holds a heavy boom pole.

The boom operator shown in the photo above models an excellent example of stacksitting adapted to a physically challenging situation. Jermaine sits with a wide stance, his feet and legs externally rotated, astride the ladder in a well balanced position. He holds the boom close to his body with his shoulders back so that its weight is held by the larger muscles of his arms and upper back, supported by his spine and inner corset—it does not pull him into a swayed backward or a rounded forward position. Meanwhile, his neck remains tall, adding to his poise. 

Even in this hi-tech age, I was struck by the physical bulk of the equipment needed in the making of this, production-wise, relatively modest undertaking—ladders, boxes, lights, tripods, and what seemed like miles of heavy electric cables. 

Here is a glimpse of just some of the equipment that had to be carried to, assembled, and moved around the set. 

Make-up artist Jenny Zielon arrived on set with heavy cases full of the tools of her trade. Her job involved a lot of lifting, carrying, and standing, as well as fine control and expertise with the make up.

Producer Frank Zamacona and I discuss the next segment that the filming schedule will jump to…
You can see my teleprompter beside Frank. 

New experiences along the way

One completely new experience for me was using a teleprompter. Previously when teaching and presenting, even for the DVD, I had always worked from memory. But my friend and Indian classical violinist, Kala Ramnath, had shared with me how much easier it had been to work with a teleprompter for the instructional videos on her website. (where you can also enjoy her wonderful playing!) Frank was agreeable to letting me use a teleprompter for this shoot and it was indeed painless by comparison with memorizing a show’s worth of content.  

How to stretchsit in a car

I would like to share with you a short but extremely practical tip from the show. It explains why sitting in a car can be especially bad for your back, and how to rectify it—in fact, how to change your seat into a therapeutic posture tool to help you become pain-free. 

In this excerpt from the show Gokhale Method teacher Eric Fernandez shows how to make car seats comfortable and healthy for your back.

How to watch Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting

Hopefully that clip has whet your appetite for more! The pledge program is aired seasonally—the first round was aired on 32 networks from June, with over 125 broadcasts. There are still some broadcasts to come this month, and we expect more in Aug/Sept and Nov/Dec. You can find dates already scheduled here. To request for Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting to be shown in your area, you can email your local PBS Station Programming Department. If you need help finding the contact details for local stations, you can find them here. We hope you will enjoy watching the show and recommend it to your friends and family. 

To complement the TV show, we are offering a special online workshop on July 24, where you will be coached in 5 Top Tips for Sitting Well. In this bespoke workshop a Gokhale Method teacher will be helping me to give you personal attention and answer your questions.

If you would like to get started on your posture journey right now, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online or in person, with a Gokhale Method teacher.

Our Free Online Workshop program continues as usual:

Cycling has been a passionate sport and hobby of mine for decades. I am no longer a professional bike racer; I am now a mother and Gokhale Method® teacher. As a result, I have become more observant of what can “go wrong,” posturally speaking, when riding a bicycle. And I work to improve my posture as I pedal. For example, it takes vigilance to keep my shoulders back and my head aligned with my torso. I now know how cycling can enhance my form, and vice versa. I also enjoy modeling key posture principles to guide my daughters and partner so that they too can be comfortable and healthy on a bicycle.

Cycling is a part of family life

In this blog post I would like to share with you some of the cycling activities and posture tips that have benefitted us as a family. Prior to parenthood, my partner and I raced and trained together for many years, traveling to quite a few states and even abroad to indulge our passion. When our daughters were born, we decided that, at least in our busy city, Somerville, MA (the most densely populated city on the Eastern Seaboard, USA!), we would get about with them on bicycles instead of driving. 

Here I am supporting a customized cruiser with our daughter, Willa, aged two, in a car seat on the back. My partner, Skip, sits on a customized tandem with Coco, aged five. Car seats worked well as carriers and even allowed Willa to nap during our outings. Can you make out the second car seat on the front of my cruiser?   

Of necessity, we hauled our young daughters around on homemade bicycle “carrier-cruisers,” with car seats attached. Both bikes offered comfortable arrangements for young children—and great exercise for us parents! These days, there are so many choices of bicycles made for transporting children, it might feel overwhelming and hard to know where to start. Bike shops are now a terrific resource, happy to offer guidance and expertise, help with fittings and even track down special equipment if needed. With so many options out there, including information on the internet, you won’t have to customize your own bicycle unless you want to. 

Cycling makes a better world for our children

We know it’s better for our environment to cycle than to drive everywhere. Some people choose to live car-free, and that certainly saves money, as well as the planet! We are thankful for the bike lanes that are becoming a more prevalent part of the infrastructure in cities and suburbs alike. As bike lanes make cycling more accessible, you’ll find more people of all ages pedaling instead of driving, which in turn makes it safer for everyone. 

Charity rides or fundraisers are a great way to enjoy family time together while also supporting good causes. These benefit rides are usually closed to traffic, or directed by officials, which makes the ride casual and relaxed. Varied routes are offered, making the event open to a wider range of ability and fitness levels. 

Here we are doing a kids Pan-Mass Challenge, raising money for cancer research and treatment. Coco, aged five, is leading the pack on this 10K ride.

Notice the two photographers’ interest in Skip’s bicycle arrangement, with the little bike attached by bungees to the front so that Willa, aged two and a half, could ride a bit of the course too.

The Graves family has just completed the D2R2 (The Deerfield Dirt Road Randonée) fundraiser ride. They chose the moderate, yet challenging, 48.6-mile route, and will celebrate with a refreshing plunge in the river, and a BBQ for a refuel. Their son is just nine years old—the family that rides together, has fun together! 

Here is Lloyd Graves aged seven, getting ready to bike to school with his dad. Studies¹ have shown that children who walk or ride their bicycle to school are more engaged and ready to learn than those who have been driven to school. Their circulatory system is boosted, and also their executive functioning is activated and neural pathways have been firing, both being used to make decisions before even entering the classroom. 

Now that my daughters are 15 and 12, they’re ready to explore the world on their own to a degree. By cycling they now have the skills and self-confidence to ferry themselves around our city to meet up with friends or attend their extracurricular activities. 

We all need bikes that fit our bodies! 

You can consider bicycles as an extension of the human body, and both adults and children need bikes that fit them, for efficiency, safety, and enjoyment. Most often an ill-fitting bicycle is too small, which forces hunching and rounding of the shoulders and compression of the whole spine—neither of which are helpful for your posture or body mechanics. As kids grow so quickly it is especially important to watch out for this. With the right size, and sometimes even type of bicycle, it is possible to enjoy all the benefits of cycling from being very young until well into old age. 

›
Rachel Holt on tricycle, Dummer, New Hampshire, about 1927. This is a charming portrait. From a cycling perspective, Rachel could do with a bigger bike, so that her thighs can drop down and she no longer has to tuck her pelvis and round her back. She will also be able to pedal a lot more efficiently! Jim Griffin

A bicycle that is too big may have a child too stretched out to reach the handlebars comfortably, and/or bouncing on the saddle in an effort to reach the pedals, which stresses the hips. It can also be a challenge to maneuver, adding unnecessary strain and making it unsafe. 

This tricycle is still a little too big for its rider to reach the pedals and the ground—though she’ll soon grow into it! kenheyman.com

The benefits of balance bikes

We can begin bike riding at an early age, and even new walkers or soon-to-be walkers, can consider using a “balance bike.” They have some advantages over a tricycle. Balance bikes are built without pedals, so the novice rider can focus on balance and steering. (Pedals can also be taken off some bikes, then put back on when the child is ready.) With balance bikes, all the propulsion is with the feet actively pushing the ground away and behind, so there is a natural tendency for the body to adopt a position of biomechanical advantage by sitting with a tipped forward pelvis. This is an example of posture aiding our movement; when the feet go behind our hips, they can better push the ground away from us. This action comes readily since little children aren't fighting a tight psoas, or struggling with stiff joints. This is an action we would like our feet to do in walking, which is to actively engage with pushing on the ground beneath us. It is amazing how fast tiny children can propel themselves using just their feet to paddle along! 

Our daughter Willa, aged 11 months, scooting along on her Strider® balance bike. Notice how she keeps her shoulders back and leans slightly forward. Balance bikes encourage children to propel themselves with natural foot strength.

Another benefit to learning to ride without pedals is that, by definition, a child can easily reach the ground, so a parent is not pushing or guiding from behind or towing the handlebars in an effort to help the child maintain balance. This often sees the parent adopt a very compromised position, hunching over and distorting the back. Best to help the child learn to ride solo; take them to a grassy area or quiet, dead-end street or parking lot where they can let fly!   

This beautiful illustration shows the mother maintaining a straight back as she bends forward to guide her child learning to ride. Most parents do not bend so well, causing cumulative damage to their spinal discs. Esté MacLeod

Modeling healthy posture for your children

One of the best ways a parent can encourage their children to maintain healthy posture on a bike is to model it themselves. For example, once you get used to sitting with the behind behind and the pelvis tipped forward rather than tucked under, it is not only comfortable, but, pretty soon, preferred. We teach a similar style of sitting in the Gokhale Method called stacksitting, for when you don’t have a backrest for support. You can learn how to stacksit here. 

Willa, aged four, sitting forward enough on her “banana” seat to comfortably reach the handlebars and maintain her shoulders back. See how she stacksits beautifully, with her back straight and behind behind.

On a bicycle you may also be sitting leaning forward, which, to do well, requires more inner corset activity and also the ability to hip-hinge, which are both explained in detail in Esther Gokhale’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Here Skip and I are both sitting angled forward. Skip is the leader in navigation, I’m leading in posture! My head, shoulders, and behind are further back, where we would like them to be. We’re enjoying quality time working in tandem! 

Even holding the handlebars in a relaxed way actually begins with relaxed shoulders that stay open and back. Just because you are reaching forward for something, does not mean the shoulders need to round forward. A tip I offer my children is to do a shoulder roll when we come to a stoplight. This allows the shoulders to “reset” if they have come forward a bit, or even a lot! We teach shoulder rolls in the Gokhale Method as a gentle way to open up the chest and allow the shoulders to rest back where they belong. Teaching this early on is good practice for other daily activities; if one can maintain shoulders back in place while using the arms out front on a bicycle, then keeping them back in place in other contexts, like at a computer, will be easier and become habitual. You can learn how to shoulder roll here. 

Willa, aged 12, helmet on and excited for a morning bicycle ride on the Cape Cod Rail Trail. One of the benefits of riding a bicycle at any age is the joyousness that comes from moving your body and exploring the world around you. 

In fact, nearly all the postural principles that we teach in our in-person Foundations course, Pop-up course, or online Elements course, can help your cycling to become more efficient, healthier, and more comfortable. If you would like expert help with your cycling posture, or to find out more about how our courses could help you with any activity, get started with an online or in-person Initial Consultation with any Gokhale Method® teacher. Or sign up for one of our free online workshops below. 

Reference:

¹ “Why Your Kids Should Walk or Bike to School This Year.” Saferoutes Utah. Accessed on July 5, 2022. https://saferoutes.utah.gov/why-your-kids-should-walk-or-bike-to-school-this-year/

People are sitting poorly and continue to blame sitting for their back pain. We believe the solution to this problem is more urgently needed than ever… and that the solution is now more readily available than ever, given one of the Gokhale Institute’s recent projects. I am excited to tell you about The Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting, a pledge show we made with producer Frank Zamacona for American Public Television (APT). 

The Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting TV show teaches techniques to sit comfortably, including using your backrest to give gentle traction to the spine. Here I am helping Susan van Niekerk, a key member of our admin team, to stretchsit. 

Gokhale Method teacher Eric Fernandez enjoys a reclined version of the highly therapeutic stretchsitting technique. 

Sitting has become a problem

In recent years people have become confused about and even afraid of sitting. Sitting is considered problematic in our society, both because it is associated with an unhealthy level of inactivity, and because it is generally done with poor posture, leading to discomfort and pain. 

In recent decades a range of books and audiobooks have given the impression that sitting is the enemy of movement. In truth, both are important and both need to be done well. 

Inactivity has been baked into aspects of our culture for many decades, caused by various factors including long hours of desk work, the design of our environment, and car use. I have long advocated frequent exercise breaks from sedentary work, as well as active recreation. We recently started Gokhale Exercise as a contribution to positive change in this area, and it’s already helping our Alumni community to get fitter, stronger, and more flexible while they continue to improve their posture. By learning good form while exercising, they are also reducing their risk of injury and wear and tear.

The pain and discomfort that many people experience when seated for any period of time understandably gives sitting a bad reputation. Given that the mission of the Gokhale Institute is “to make back pain rare,” should we be discouraging people from sitting? I don’t believe so. 

I prefer to celebrate the fact that sitting is a natural, universal, and important human activity. I would go so far as to say human civilization requires it. There are many tasks that benefit from the rest, stillness, and mental focus afforded by sitting. Imagine nursing a baby, playing the piano, writing a book, creating pottery, watching a movie, eating a meal, or taking a flight, without being able to sit!

Sitting has enabled human civilization to develop all manner of skills, talents, and ideas. Unsplash(bottom image)

The Gokhale Method® approach to preventing and healing back pain is based on observing traditional societies around the world where people report very low levels of back pain and few other musculoskeletal problems. People in these traditional societies have maintained healthy posture and also sit as part of their daily lives, sometimes for long periods doing crafts or preparing food. And they sit on all kinds of seats, not only on the floor or squatting. The key is that they sit well.

People in different traditional societies all over the world share the ability to sit well. Here you see people in Africa, Thailand, and India.

Gokhale Method students learn these natural posture principles, plus the techniques they need to implement them. They discover healthy ways to go about their daily tasks, work, sports, hobbies, and even sleep positions. This process builds strength and resilience in the body, minimizing compression, tension, and degeneration. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been reports of and also research into an increase in back pain¹. There are likely several reasons for this increase which are related to sitting poorly. Many people switched to working from home, hunching over laptops, rather than using their usual office workstations. There was also much more remote working in general as, where possible, activities that had been done in-person switched to online platforms. For example, the Gokhale Method, in addition to teaching in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, developed our online Elements course. 

This graph shows an increased number of tweets in the US about back pain in November 2020, during the pandemic, as against the lower number of such tweets the year before.¹ www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Years of experience assure me that not only can sitting be pain free, but that it can be done in ways that are positively therapeutic for the back and spine. This knowledge is exactly what we want to take into the American home with our 45-minute show. Below is a trailer to whet your appetite!

Enjoy this short preview of what’s in store with our Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting TV show.

The network uptake for Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting has already exceeded expectations. The show began airing on June 2, 2022, and as I write this, 32 networks have already screened the show. You can find the air dates for Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting in your area here. Should you need to request for it to be shown in your area, you can email APT at [email protected]. We hope you will enjoy watching it and recommend it to your friends and family. 

To complement the TV show, we are offering a number of special online workshops where you will be coached in 5 Top Tips for Sitting Well. In these bespoke workshops Gokhale Method teachers will be helping me to give you personal attention and answer your questions. I look forward to seeing you there! 

References:

¹ Krzysztof Fiok et al. “A Study of the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Experience of Back Pain Reported on Twitter ® in the United States: A Natural Language Processing Approach.” Int J Environ Res Public Health. May 2021; 18(9): 4543. PubMed (Apr 25 2021) doi: 10.3390/ijerph18094543

Our Free Online Workshop program continues as usual: