Gokhale Method

As a student and teacher of yoga and practitioner of the Gokhale Method, I choose yoga poses that make good use of my time. “Chair pose” is well worth the time investment. In fact, it has become one of my favorite strength-building postures. It is useful for cultivating a J-shaped spine. It helps increase gluteal tone. It helps to pattern healthy hip movement. It is strengthening for the legs and spinal stabilizers. And, last but not least, it allows a yoga practitioner to smoothly transition between a standing forward fold and mountain pose — without compression of the intervertebral discs.

Cecily Frederick in chair pose with J-spine visible, overlaid with SpineTracker™ snapshot.

   
Detail of Cecily Frederick’s spinal shape in chair pose, overlaid with SpineTracker snapshot.

SpineTracker snapshot of Cecily Frederick’s spinal shape in chair pose.

Chair pose is also Esther Gokhale's favorite way to cultivate strength in all the muscles needed to tallstand well. She recommends it to students who tend to park in their joints (locking the knees and groin, flattening the feet, arching the back and introducing extra curves throughout the spine). After practicing chair pose, the small amount of muscular effort it takes to stand well becomes easy to access.

To practice chair pose, stand with your feet about hip-width apart and kidney bean shape your feet. Reach your arms forward and up as you simultaneously bend your knees, hips and ankles as if you were sitting down and back into a chair. Hold for a few seconds and then press down through your feet (and especially through your heels) to come back to standing while lowering your arms.  

A couple of practice sequences you could consider: 

• Transition from tallstanding (“mountain pose” or Tadasana) to chair pose and back to tallstanding 4-6 times.

• Transition from tallstanding to chair pose to an upward forward fold (Urdhva Uttanasana) to chair pose (Utkatasana) to tallstanding 4-6 times.

Cecily Frederick in upward forward fold (Urdhva Uttanasana or hip-hinge).

Five refinement tips

1. Strengthen your butt / spare your knees
To help develop gluteal strength and avoid knee strain, don’t let your knees come forward over your toes as your knees bend. Think about pulling your butt back behind you. Consider using a stool that you position in front of your shins while standing, and don’t let yourself push it forward as you move into chair pose.

Cecily Frederick using a stool to cue chair pose, with help from a friend.

2. Save your discs
To help avoid swaying the back and compressing upper lumbar discs, don’t reach your arms up vertically. Instead let them reach forward. 

3. Settle your pelvis
To help the pelvis to settle well, you might not want the feet and knees too close together. Experiment with different widths between your feet. Remember what you learned in the Foundations Course or Pop-up Course about hip-hinging.

4. Less is more
Don’t force yourself into a deep knee, hip, or ankle bend. Allow your chair pose to begin where it begins. Less is often more in a yoga practice. 

5. Break it down
If you have an injured shoulder you can lower your arms, bring them to your hips or press the palms together in prayer position in front of the sternum.

Pop-up Courses ensure an excellent teacher:student ratio for lots of direct attention.

Our newly-crafted Pop-up Course fills a gap in our group class offerings. After many years of experimentation, we are excited about this format as it enables more people to benefit from the Gokhale Method.

Why a Pop-up Course?

• Our highly successful Foundations Course typically takes place over 2-3 days, or longer. Some students struggle to fit its 6 lessons into their schedule. The Pop-up Course takes just one day (plus a 30-minute online private follow-up appointment), thus reducing the time required and keeping scheduling simple.

• It’s easier to work in with travel plans, family demands, or taking time out from work.

• Corporations, universities, and other hosting organizations favor one-day offerings, because of their simplicity and because their workers are busy!

You cover a lot of material in your courses. How do you keep students from feeling overwhelmed in the Pop-up Course?

One of the reasons it took so long to craft this course is precisely the challenge of how to teach all the basics needed to make a big impact (imprint new posture habits, reduce / eliminate aches and pains, etc.) without exhausting and overwhelming our students. The solution includes the following:

• Layers: we vary the topic frequently, switching easily from sitting to standing to walking to sitting to walking and so on…. We don’t belabor any one technique to a point of mental or physical fatigue. Students revisit these everyday positions with ever-widening context and layers of experience.

• Variety: we frequently change the “channel” or teaching mode: we go back and forth using images, explanation, technology, and hands-on cues, while weaving in snippets of research, anthropology, and historical data to back up the practical endeavor. In this way we engage all types of learners and give students many ways to get inspired, enjoy themselves, and recall the principles.

• SpineTracker™: after lunch the class gets a fresh energy boost — all students use SpineTracker, our unique 5-sensor wearable with an iDevice. We first record baseline readings of the student’s sitting, standing, and bending postures. Later, we record their learned stacksitting, tallstanding, and hip-hinging postures. Students can then practice to match, master, and even surpass these improved targets. SpineTracker is really pretty cool. Students get inspired by seeing their spinal shapes improve as they implement their newly learned posture techniques. The technology also enables students to track future progress.

• Fun! We weave in active exercises to make the endeavor more fun and energizing. These Posture Pauses also serve as practical suggestions on how to break up a long work day.

Students enjoy seeing their progress with the help of SpineTracker, our proprietary wearable technology.

There’s only so much anyone can learn in a day. Is there student support after the Pop-up Course?

• Absolutely! We’ve discovered that the 30-minute, one-on-one online follow-up session — a private video call, using either a computer or a smartphone, between the student and one of our qualified Gokhale Method teachers — is an important part of the Pop-up Course. It encourages people to read or re-read 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back (included with the course), watch the DVD (also included), gather their questions, and generally keep the techniques on their radar. Having had hands-on guidance in class and experienced the techniques, the book and DVD are so much more meaningful than otherwise. Against this backdrop, it’s striking how much can be covered / refined / revisited in a 30-minute, one-on-one Zoom video consultation.

• For all students, no matter which Gokhale Method training they have had, we encourage a maintenance program. We offer a subscription-based Online University program for alumni of our Pop-up Courses and Foundations Courses that includes regular online group instruction and Q&As with me, as well as an extensive collection of videos on all sorts of topics including workouts, yoga, dance, daily activities, parts of the body, general posture education, and more — all with a Gokhale Method filter. I’m currently leading a live, daily Exercise Challenge for the New Year, which is included with Online University membership. Our local teachers also offer affordable classes for small groups of alumni as well as private follow-up sessions.

A glimpse into our well-developed Online University offerings.

• In addition to the book and DVD becoming especially good resources after the course, the Stretchsit® Cushion (provided to each registered participant of the Pop-up Course) enables stretchsitting while also serving as a reminder to do the technique. Some students buy our Gokhale™ Head Cushion and/or Gokhale Pain-Free™ Chair to serve the same dual role of reminding and enabling students to use good posture.

The Stretchsit cushion, included in the price of the Pop-up Course, serves the dual role of reminding and enabling healthy stretchsitting posture.

• Students often find Posture Buddies in the Pop-up Course to practice with after the course is over. Sometimes students bring a good friend / colleague / family member to the course with them. We encourage this because these students have shared experience and posture reminders built into their lives, which is a great help.

• Our Institute sends our Positive Stance newsletter every 2 weeks to teach or remind all subscribers, including our alumni, of different aspects of posture. Each newsletter includes a new blog post on a posture topic, as well as a special promotion. Subscribers are also invited to free online teleseminars, as well as special video discussions I have from time to time with other thought leaders. Until the day when we are all surrounded by healthy posture and implements, as is the case for the model populations we derive inspiration from, we do our best to remind our subscribers and students to improve the way they move in the world.

The group format of the Pop-up Course builds camaraderie and is perfect for bringing a Posture Buddy to learn with.

What is the cost of the Pop-up Course?

The Pop-up Course costs $495 per person and includes 6 hours of group instruction, a lunch hour with posture discussion, a 30-minute online 1:1 Zoom video follow-up session, a PDF of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, our DVD program Back Pain: The Primal Posture Solution (streaming), and a Stretchsit Cushion.

How can I bring the Pop-up Course to my city?

It takes a largish room and some eager students for a Pop-up Course to be successful. The course is delivered by two expert teachers; at present I am the lead teacher for all Pop-up Courses. If you already have 10 or more committed people, or can spread the word effectively, that makes it easier for us to schedule a course. If you would like a Pop-up Course in your company or city, please let us know here.

We look forward to hearing from you!

“I would do anything for Esther. She’s the epitome of goodness.” Like many Gokhale Method students local to the Bay Area, Cynthia deeply values her personal relationship with Esther. Cynthia is 72 years old and a native Californian. Her husband, Charlie, is also a native Californian, and they love their home state.

Cynthia has always valued being in good shape and pursuing outdoor activities. She started backpacking after she got her undergraduate degree in Spanish. She continued backpacking while teaching Spanish, and during a backpacking trip in the Canadian Rockies, she realized she actually wanted to be a geologist. She had with her a book on local geology, and says that “the exposure of the sedimentary, folded, metamorphosed strata in the Rockies would make anyone into a geologist.” She returned to school for a geology degree and began working at the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
 

The Canadian Rockies, where Cynthia first fell in love with geology. Image courtesy Matt Thomason on Unsplash.

As a young geologist in the mid-1970s, Cynthia spent long summers over 3 years doing fieldwork in remote locations in the Alaskan wilderness. She backpacked for recreation in California and also for fieldwork in Alaska with her boss: she was very strong, especially in her legs.

Cynthia doing geologic mapping in Alaska in the 1970s. Image supplied.
 

Earlier in her life, posture had been something Cynthia’s parents always stressed. She remembers her dad telling her to imagine a wire lifting her chest skyward. After working with Esther, she realized her lower back was swayed, probably as a result of sticking her chest out and pulling her shoulders back for so many years.

Cynthia first heard about Esther from her husband Charlie, who was referred to Esther for lower back pain by his physician. Cynthia decided to begin working with Esther for problems related to a severe accident, in which she was badly mauled by a black bear.
 

A sudden transition and new priorities
The harrowing attack occurred during geological fieldwork in the Alaskan wilderness, and left Cynthia with only 6 inches of her left arm below the shoulder. Nothing remained of her right arm. Thankfully, Cynthia was able to survive and heal from the bear attack and various follow-up operations, including amputations and debriding.

The bear attack meant that Cynthia had to learn a whole new relationship with her body. She needed different physical strengths than those she had before the accident. She initially had physical therapy for limberness and flexibility and subsequently developed a regimen of daily strengthening and stretching exercises. Cynthia thinks her problems with her lower back — which has inoperable disc problems, including degeneration and stenosis — and neck are a result of having lost her arms and having to wear artificial arms, which together weigh seven pounds and are connected by several straps behind her neck.

Another of Cynthia’s particular challenges derives from overuse of the parts of her body used to compensate for not having arms. She does a lot with her feet: for example, to open a door, she will often do a high kick and use her foot to turn the doorknob. While her husband was off doing his own fieldwork over nearly 40 summers, she used a high, raised barstool and leaned back to use her feet for tasks like cutting up her food and doing dishes. This contributed to her back strain.
 

For years, Cynthia used a modified barstool to reach the kitchen counter and used her feet for a variety of daily tasks. This resulted in a tucked pelvis. Image supplied.

Cynthia uses her feet and a pencil eraser to turn pages in a book too heavy to be held by her artificial arms. Image supplied.

A particularly unique aspect of Cynthia’s posture is asymmetry in her glutes, which results from having to frequently raise her right leg to do things in daily life. Although she was left-handed before her accident, it turns out she is strongly right-footed. This led to a pattern of frequently tucking her left buttock in order to lift her right leg higher.

Before the accident, Cynthia played Latin American and flamenco guitar, but the harmonica turned out to be the only instrument she could play without arms. She grew up loving the jazz standards her multi-instrumentalist dad introduced her to, and she now plays these same tunes with the band she manages and performs with. “It’s a real joy” to play the harmonica. Playing harmonica also contributes to her posture situation: while playing, Cynthia must frequently move her head side to side and up and down (for sharps and flats) to play her modified hands-free chromatic 12-hole harmonica. This translates to lots of neck work while playing, and can lead to strain.

Cynthia playing her modified 12-hole chromatic harmonica with her band. Image supplied.

A closer look at a different style of hands-free harmonica rack. Image courtesy Steven Wright on Pixabay.

Playing harmonica without posture instruction can lead to neck strain for any musician. Image courtesy Matt Seymour on Unsplash.

Support for her unique physiological needs is what Cynthia has been working on with Esther. Although their acquaintance stretches back decades, within the past year, Cynthia signed up for a series of six private lessons with Esther to focus on her particular problems.

The most obvious changes Cynthia has seen since beginning the Gokhale Method are improvements to her bodily symmetry, strength, and functionality. Cynthia is happy to report that she has “completely corrected” her gluteal asymmetry with glidewalking and strengthening exercises. Her private lessons and SpineTracker™have taught her how to anchor her ribs and to leave her imaginary tail behind her. Those techniques, along with hip-hinging, stacksitting, and tallstanding, have helped reduce her overuse injuries. With the addition of swimming and hiking, also done with good form, she keeps her back and body strong. Though her structural problems are such that she's not totally free of pain, it is definitely reduced and less frequent.
 

Multi-faceted woman
Cynthia is now a geologist emerita volunteer at the USGS. She hasn’t done any field work since 2010, but has a large number of geological samples from many years of collecting, to work with and to write research papers on. She continues to collaborate with other geologists in the US, especially in Alaska, and in Canada.

Along with playing harmonica, hiking remains one of Cynthia’s longtime passions. She recently traveled with her husband to view the famed California wildflower blooms. She’s now reconnected with friends from elementary and high school — some of whom she’s known since kindergarten — to do a weekly hike. Hiking and walking are very important to Cynthia’s well-being. So is swimming for nearly an hour at a time, three times a week. Both swimming and hiking are done without her artificial arms on — "back to my core body," as she puts it. Both activities are opportunities for her to use Gokhale Method techniques to stretch, which really keeps her back from hurting.
 

A poppy superbloom in southern California. Image courtesy Mike Ostrovsky on Unsplash.

Without her “unbelievably fantastic husband,” Cynthia insists she couldn’t do any of these things. He helps her out of the pool, pulling her up by what remains of her left arm, and is her roadie for harmonica gigs, carrying her microphone, amplifier, and music stand and keeps her harmonica clean and functioning. She says, “I’m as lucky as I was unlucky…to have found my perfect soul mate.” Other than having lost her arms and the typical discomforts she has from getting older, “everything else couldn’t be better” in her life.
 

Cynthia and her husband, Charlie, doing geological fieldwork in the Alaska Range. Image supplied.

Increased functionality and reduced pain for young and old alike
In Cynthia’s opinion, the most helpful thing about Gokhale Method techniques is their daily utility in life. She feels strongly that if younger people can learn the Gokhale Method “before they’re old and hurting,” it will function as preventative care to help them avoid degeneration as they age. She plans to introduce her son and daughter-in-law to the Gokhale Method by taking a DVD copy of Back Pain: The Primal Posture Solution with her when she goes to visit them in Pittsburgh this summer. Cynthia wants to help them keep from falling prey to the posture problems so common in today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings: the habitually slouched and tucked posture of the laptop-and-cell-phone generation.

She also considers it “so important” to be able to counteract the unhealthy ergonomic design found all around us: backward-tilted car seats, forward-jutting headrests, airline seats, auditorium seats, and on and on. All of these, in Cynthia’s words, are “fighting against good posture,” and she wishes Esther could have been consulted during the design stage. Thankfully, for now, the Gokhale Method is available to help Cynthia — and all of us — navigate a human-made world not designed for healthful posture.

Our new and exciting SpineTracker wearable is available for use! Our participating teachers use this technology to help you:

1. Store baselines of the shape of your spine in sitting, standing, and bending

2. Understand the connection between your movements and changes in the shape of your spine

3. Establish a target shape for you to aim for in training your posture

4. Discover techniques, exercises, and activities to help you improve your target shape

5. Track your changes over time, using graphics and quantitative measurements of the curves in your lower back
    

Our test students love SpineTracker and have gotten great benefit from it—we’re now ready to share these benefits with all our students!

What drove you to create this device?

Kinesthetic learning is difficult for most of our students. We learn more easily with our heads than with our bodies. Students often express this by saying things like, “Can I take you home with me?” after we’ve placed them in new and strange configurations. Though the logic of the posture shifts is compelling, and the new positions look perfectly acceptable (and even elegant) in a mirror, they feel very foreign at first (a slight bend at the hips can feel Neanderthal or ape-like!) and are therefore difficult to accept and return to. SpineTracker lets people practice the new postures repeatedly with visual confirmation of their position, until it no longer feels strange. Being able to see with their own eyes that their spine is upright although it feels leaning helps students accept the ideals.

What were some of the difficulties in creating this device?

I would not have undertaken such an adventure without the expert support of an inventor.  I met Mark Leavitt at a Quantified Self conference where he expressed interest in creating a technological aid for Gokhale Method students. We explored many directions, such as a Smart Chair, and eventually settled on a device that would give a real-time read of the shape of a student's spine. We tried very hard to create a single flexible strip of sensors, but discovered that human skin, because it is so elastic, is extremely challenging to stick a long strip of electronics to. Also, the inaccuracies and climate sensitivities in the flex sensor readings undermined our efforts to create a precision instrument. We had much better results after switching to separated pods that stuck to the spine—each sensor has its own BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) module, battery, PCB board, and antenna, so the device is really a five-sensor device. What we gained from this is an incredibly accurate rendering of the shape of the wearer’s midline groove over the spine. Since there isn’t much muscle or fat on that part of the body (even on muscular or obese people), this approximates the shape of the vertebral column very well. It’s almost like having a mobile MRI unit!
 

How has SpienTracker been useful so far?

• Seeing one’s baseline shape. Students see the shape of their back, often realizing for the first time the contours that are with them daily. This is extremely useful information for someone who wants to improve his or her shape. Our teachers help capture baseline shapes on the student’s Gokhale Method account so future efforts can be compared against this baseline.

• Understanding tricky posture concepts. Some of what the Gokhale Method teaches is difficult to grasp, and even counterintuitive. For example, most people have been taught to stick out their chests via commands like “sit up straight” and “stand up straight,” so when we teach tucking the ribcage to eliminate a sway in the low back, this feels like the opposite of good posture. The SpineTracker app, especially the spine view, makes a compelling case for why this technique is crucial for good posture.

• Ideals set by the teacher allow the student to practice good posture over and over. It’s hard for students to know where they are in space once they’ve departed from their habitual posture. With the visual provided by the app, students can practice returning to exactly the right position, and continue to “recalibrate” their own sense of what is right. It can help overcome frequent comments and questions such as “Is this right,” “Am I doing the same thing you showed me,” and “I have no idea how I'll get back to this position if I move.”

• Quantifying subjective data. Gokhale Method teachers frequently talk about sways and tucks, but SpineTracker records hard data on the angle between every pair of sensors on your spine. This is useful for knowing how you stack up (pun intended). In fact, we hope our data will find its way into medical literature over time.

• Tracking progress over time. Since all ideals as well as snapshots along the way are stored in a student’s account, it allows students to track their progress over time. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for a student and their teacher to remember how exactly the student's back was months or years ago. SpineTracker keeps a tab on this in the student's account. This feature has already created lots of aha moments for our many test students.

• Comparisons across positions. The spine changes shape as we go from sitting to standing to bending. Some of the changes are normal and healthy; others indicated tight muscles, rigid joints, or other unhealthy situations. Within every student’s account it is easy to select several spine snaps for comparison, and identify patterns or problem areas that are more challenging for teachers to spot, such as swaying only during the act of standing up or sitting down.
   

How does SpienTracker differ from other posture training electronics for consumers?

• Healthy versus unhealthy targets / ideals. The ideals used in other posture training devices are set by the user. Since conventional wisdom about posture is misguided, the result is people training themselves to “sit up straight” and “stand up straight” with tense, counterproductive posture. With SpineTracker, the targets / ideals are set by a qualified Gokhale Method teacher—they help students grow beyond their mistaken or incomplete view of what constitutes healthy posture.

• A package that includes education and training. SpineTracker comes with education and training. It is currently only available for students working with a Gokhale Method teacher, and is specifically designed to complement our teachings.

• Positive versus negative feedback. SpineTracker use comes with a supportive, encouraging teacher, delighted by every bit of progress you make. The consumer devices on the market beep and buzz at you, often in frustrating, unproductive ways.

• Accuracy. Other products on the market cannot differentiate between you stooping and you leaning forward in a healthy position, such as resting on your elbows. With SpineTracker, what you see is what you have. There are no false positives and you never get inaccurate feedback.

• No hassle. All the hassles associated with charging units, applying sticky tape, removing sticky tape, positioning accurately, losing parts, returns, and more are managed by your friendly, hard-working teacher. You simply benefit from the technology and allow your teacher and our company to take care of the technology.

How can students have a chance to use SpineTracker?

Private lessons with participating teachers, all lessons with founder Esther Gokhale, and corporate offerings are the primary ways to be able to use SpineTracker yourself. Visit our SpineTracker page for complete information on our wearable, including a full list of participating teachers.