stability

In our culture a loss of up to 50% of the height of the discs as we age from our twenties to our fifties is considered normal. It follows that the herniations, nerve pain, and arthritic change that accompanies this chronic degeneration of our discs is also not seen as unusual. Pain and reduced ability to function is normalized.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In the Bhil tribe in central India, the average disc height of the discs of people in their fifties was discovered to be the same as those in people in their twenties¹, as detailed in Esther’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. It is their habit to actively maintain the length of their spines whenever they do anything that might otherwise compress their discs.

The human spine is able to carry considerable loads without damage—when length is actively maintained.

Maintaining healthy discs requires a healthy J-spine and the engagement of a matrix of muscles—which we refer to in the Gokhale Method as the inner corset. This muscle recruitment and more is taught in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, our online Elements course, plus our Gokhale Active program. The inner corset performs two main actions: a strong engagement of the deepest spinal muscles, and a strong engagement of the deeper layers of abdominal muscles. Together they create length and stability in and around the spine, thus preserving the height of each disc and protecting them against wear and tear. When we make recruitment of our inner corset a habit, every time the spine would otherwise be challenged and damaged, the spine is strengthened and made more resilient.

The effect of engaging the deep abdominal muscles is easy to understand. It’s similar to wearing an external corset, or weightlifting belt, that makes our torso a thinner cylinder. We are mostly made of water, which does not compress easily, so as we squeeze our torso it gets thinner and that fluid has to go somewhere—so it makes us taller, increasing or at least maintaining disc height.

As your torso gets more slender, it must get taller because its volume stays the same.

The action of the deep spinal muscles along the spine is however somewhat counter intuitive. When muscles engage, they contract, becoming shorter. How can that lengthen the spine?

The answer is tensegrity, a word coined from the phrase “tensional integrity”. This is a new word for something very old. If you have ever pitched a tent, that is, almost, a tensegrity structure. The poles are compressed and kept stable by a general tautness, or tension, of the tent fabric. If you leave the tent fabric loose, or leave a guy rope slack, the tent will easily fall down or blow over. But with good all-round tension the tent can resist gravity and additional forces.

In a true tensegrity structure the poles, or bones—whatever is being compressed—do not touch each other. They float as islands of compression in a sea of tension. The simplest example of this is the tower of string, demonstrated below in a short video.

Tensegrity offers an alternative model of structural support. The string is compressing the semicircular strips of plastic which are trying to straighten, putting the string under tension—now even a piece of string can stand up straight! 

 
This striking structure, Kenneth Snelson’s Rainbow Arch, is made from metal poles—islands of compression—and wire—the sea of tension. None of the poles touch each other, as with the bones in our bodies (in their natural healthy state).

 
The roof of the Denver airport uses fiberglass and steel cables in a tensegrity design to create a striking structure that is strong and lightweight, covers 300 x 1000 ft, and is evocative of First Nation teepees. It is modern, but native Americans have been pitching teepees using this principle for millennia.

The human spine is a sophisticated tensegrity structure, or more accurately, a biotensegrity structure, part of a living organism. The wood and fine string model in the video below shows how the bones and deepest muscles use the biotensegrity effect. Engaging the muscles increases the biotensegrity effect and the bones actively “float” apart, increasing space for each disc, the overall length of the spine, and its ability to bear load.

This simple wood and string model demonstrates the tensegrity principle, showing how the tendons and muscles can suspend the bones of the spine.

An electromyographic study of the rotatores muscles, the deepest on the spine, confirms this. The rotatores run the length of the spine connecting each vertebra to the next on both sides of the spine. If you engage the rotatores on one side, they assist in spinal rotation. Engage the rotatores on both sides, and the spine lengthens.

The rotatores muscles—small, deep muscles which attach each vertebra to the next—
were thought to be the main rotators of the spine. Their larger role in fine movement, stabilization, and extending the spine is now better understood. 

Our bodies have many fluid-filled spaces contained in “bags” or pockets of elastic material, fascia, where fluid pressure works with healthy tension in the tissues. We also have various “guy ropes” among our fascia, muscles, and tendons, and some are self-tensioning. This makes biotensegrity very elegant and dynamic.

Though it can be difficult to imagine biotensegrity, instruction from a Gokhale Method® teacher makes learning the inner corset very doable. You can lengthen and protect your spine in any number of situations: carrying shopping, running, cycling on rough ground, high-diving, being on a bumpy car ride—the list is almost endless—as are the benefits for your body.

References: 

1.   Fahrni, W. Harry and Trueman, Gordon E. (1965): Comparative Radiological Study of the Spines of a Primitive Population with North Americans and Northern Europeans, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 47-B (3): 552. 

Best next action steps 

If you would like help integrating your structure through healthy posture, 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…

In surveys of what people find physically attractive in a partner, a shapely butt is often highly rated. Perhaps it’s no surprise, but if you want, there are even apps to help! So, are good-looking glutes all about sex appeal and filling out our clothing in a flattering fashion? While these concerns may be valid, it is also true that well-toned glutes have many other, profound, but less widely recognized attributes. 

This blog post takes a look at the bigger picture of glute function. You may be surprised to find out just how much your glutes can contribute to healthy posture and a pain-free body.  

Glorious glutes—not just a “nice to have”

Your glutes potentially form the largest muscle group and have the largest impact. Most of us realize at some point in our lives, perhaps due to overdone squats or steep hill climbing, that the glutes are major players in sports and exercise. But if we don’t need them for competitive sports or challenging hiking, is it still worth investing in them for better returns? Let’s take a look at the dividends.

Reduce stress on your lower back

Glutes have a crucial role in offloading stress from the lower back and sacroiliac joints. When the glutes are weak, the lower back muscles work harder to try and stabilize the pelvis and trunk, leading to overuse and pain. When the glutes are strong, along with the inner corset, they steady the pelvis and lower back. This reduces the risk of wear and tear to discs and bones, nerve pain, and muscle spasm in the area.

Vigorous and/or repetitive movement, without the gluteal strength and pelvic stability shown here, leaves the back and spine more vulnerable to damage. (Photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, 1872–​​1885)

Avoid sciatica and piriformis syndrome 

True sciatica occurs when there is pressure on the sciatic nerve, usually from a herniated disc or degenerative changes in the spinal joints. The symptoms may be numbness, tingling, burning and/or electrical shock-like pain. It usually extends from the buttock down the leg, and sometimes the foot, on one side. The Gokhale Method helps by restoring the anteverted position of the pelvis, and decompressing the lumbar spine where the sciatic nerve roots exit. We call the resulting natural alignment a J-spine.

Piriformis Syndrome is a condition characterized by pain, tingling, or numbness in the buttocks and often down the leg. It occurs when the piriformis muscle compresses or irritates the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve passes under (or, in some individuals, through) the piriformis muscle, and is particularly prone to overwork and disturb the sciatic nerve if its neighbor, gluteus medius, is not doing its duty. The Gokhale Method encourages healthy pelvic positioning and gluteal function to allow the sciatic nerve free passage through the area. 

The profile view (right) shows swayed, leaning back posture, which causes problematic tightening in the posterior chain muscles and compresses the lower spine, including its discs and nerves. 

Make your movement strong, flexible, and stable

Your glutes are the powerhouse muscles that propel you in climbing, squatting, running, jumping, and more. They also work to control those movements, and are key to maintaining your balance. But glutes are not just for vigorous exercise…

In walking, it is your glutes that enable you to correctly achieve forward motion, rather than relying overly on your psoas and quads, shuffling, or falling forward. Glute activation brings a natural smoothness and grace to walking that we call glidewalking. Glidewalking allows your front foot to meet the ground deliberately but lightly, which is gentle on your joints; it also stretches your psoas with every step. 

Long jumper Khaddi Sagnia of Sweden uses her glutes to power the run up and propel her amazing jumping…and also to glidewalk away.

Muscles support a healthy metabolism 

The muscular system plays an integral role in our body’s metabolism. Well-used muscles will be larger, helping to burn calories rather than store them. This can help to keep insulin levels low in the blood and can contribute to a healthy metabolism and weight range. 

Well-toned glutes contribute to a healthy muscular and metabolic system. Man at His Bath by Gustave Caillebotte, 1884.

The foremost antiaging strategy—beautiful buttocks!

Never mind face yoga, cosmetic lifts, or surgical implants. Rather than costly interventions that do nothing to stop you losing your balance, strength, and mobility, embrace the art and science of how to rejuvenate your body by learning to move as you are meant to. Healthy posture can greatly improve your body’s architecture, self-confidence, health span—and your appearance as a bonus!

 
As infants (left) we instinctively align ourselves well, making good use of our muscles. In our society, adopting poor postural habits as we go through life results in lack of healthy muscle tone, like “glute amnesia”—flat, wasted muscles that have forgotten how to work (right).

Best next action steps

We invite you to join us for a themed Free Online Workshop: Wake Up Your Glutes, They Snooze, You Lose, on Friday, September 6 at 12:30 pm PST, in which you will learn how to make every step a rep! A replay will be available over the weekend if you cannot join live. So sign up, and you will also receive a special offer.

This workshop launches our 21-day Strong Glutes, Strong Body Gokhale Fitness challenge, which will run from Sept 9–29, to help you continue to build strength and improve your posture.

Are you beginning to wonder if you will need to set up your bed in the living room? Do you think twice about visiting places with stairs? Do you have a friend or older relative facing this kind of challenge? 

Welcome to our second post on navigating steps and stairs. Our first post looked at how to power yourself up stairs—this one talks about how to come down stairs. This kind of “life exercise,” done skillfully, can be transformative and gives many benefits beyond getting you to where you want to go.

Going down stairs is a functional exercise that doesn’t need a gym. Freepik

Walking downstairs gets you fitter than walking upstairs! 

Dr Michael Mosley, a well-known BBC health journalist, has a favorite study that had people walk either up or down the stairs of a 10-story building twice a week, using the elevator in the other direction. Both groups saw improvements in many health outcomes—but those walking down the stairs—perhaps surprisingly—did better. They were fitter, had a lower resting heart rate despite doing less cardiovascular exercise, lower insulin sensitivity, lower blood fat levels, better bone density, superior balance, and twice the improvement in muscle strength. You can read more about the benefits of eccentric rather than concentric muscle action here.

Safety first

Whatever your fitness and mobility level, follow these measures to use steps and stairs safely:

• Use a handrail if appropriate
• Watch out for slippery or unsound surfaces and trip hazards 
• Wear well-fitting, non-slip shoes

Start with your stance

When descending stairs, it’s especially important to maintain a well-balanced stance from start to finish. You want to position your body in a shallow zigzag squat, or “ready position.” We teach this stance in detail in our in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, and our online Elements course. As the name suggests, this stance makes us available for action and quick reaction.

A zigzag stance or “ready position” readies us for dance, sport, or stairs. Martina Navratilova ready for the ball, ECM Prague Open, 2006. Wikimedia

The benefits of a zigzag stance for walking down stairs

Having your behind behind with your torso angled forward from the hip joint while descending stairs has several benefits:

• It keeps your center of gravity further back so you are less likely to fall. By contrast, if you tuck your pelvis, your center of gravity goes further forward, making it more likely you will slip. This is familiar to anyone who has been on a ski slope.
• Your head aligns over your feet, allowing you to see where you are placing your feet more clearly. 
• It makes it easier to antevert your pelvis and direct body weight through your knees in a healthy way. 
• It is good practice for other activities like bending, sitting, squatting, and more. 

Gokhale Method teacher Eric Fernandez descends steps maintaining a zigzag stance.

Your glutes help you keep your balance

In coming down steps and stairs your glutes contribute to the important job of stabilizing your hips, pelvis, and sacroiliac joints. Together with other muscles they play a key role in keeping you balanced over your standing leg as the other one is smoothly lowered to the next step. The importance of our glutes for achieving stability through the hips and pelvis is one of the areas of convergence between conventional advice and the Gokhale Method®. Having your behind behind you in a zigzag stance enables the glutes to work optimally.

Try hovering in your zigzag stance for a while on one leg—you will soon feel your glutes working. Be sure not to tuck your pelvis, as this interferes with the glutes’ stabilizing ability.

Knowing where your buttock muscles are situated can help you visualize them working: gluteus maximus (left) and, underneath it, gluteus medius (right). 

The quadriceps lower you down—as well as take you up

When descending stairs, the back leg quadriceps work eccentrically to lower you with control as your front foot approaches the step below.

The “quads” are four muscles on the front of the thigh that insert at the knee. Wikipedia

Notice the quads of the supporting back leg working to lower the body’s weight.

Externally rotated feet v. internally rotated feet

Another important ingredient in coming down stairs is external rotation of the feet and legs. This is the natural angle for the feet, and encourages optimal alignment of the knees, hips, and pelvis. 

The feet of this woman in Odisha, India, have retained a healthy angle outward.

Externally rotated feet are also preferable to feet straight ahead as this enables more of your standing foot to contact the step securely while you lower your other leg. 

Externally rotated feet encourage healthy alignment of both the foot and leg.

Internally rotating your feet will, over time, collapse your arches, and create bunions and knee problems. You will also be more likely to trip over your toes. If you currently have this habit, adopt a mild turnout of about 5° to give your muscles and joints time to adapt to change. You can read more about foot angle here. 

Internally rotated feet are problematic for your structure, and your safety.

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. . .

This is the second post in our series on home exercise during shelter-in. For Part 1 on Chair Pose, click here!

The gluteus medius is an oft-overlooked muscle which supports healthy posture and attractive appearance. Thankfully, we can learn to tone and strengthen it through targeted exercise.

Exercise is wonderful not only for keeping us strong and healthy, but also for relieving stress and anxiety. Now that gyms are shut down again here in California, home exercise is even more important than ever before. In the first part of this series on home exercise for shelter-in, we focused on how to approach Chair Pose as a means to build strength and maintain healthy posture, no equipment necessary.

In today’s installment, we’ll focus on an exercise I’ve devised over the years designed to isolate and strengthen the oft-overlooked gluteus medius. This muscle is almost always underdeveloped in people who’ve been raised in industrialized cultures. But it is an important player in gait, running, and athletics. It also helps with balance and fall-prevention as we move through the world, no matter our age. And it’s “behind” all the peachy, perky behinds out there in the world!

Equipment needed: a chair.

Directions for each side:

1. Start with a bean-shaped foot and externally rotated legs so all the right muscles are getting strengthened and stretched. 
2. While maintaining external rotation in both legs, leave one leg on the floor, lean forward, and extend the other leg out behind you.
3. If you need help, by all means support yourself by holding on to the back of a chair. At this point, your gluteus medius will be strongly contracted.
4. If you don’t lean on a surface, you will be challenging gluteus medius on both sides. Glut med works to sustain the raised leg of the same side; the other is working to preserve a horizontal pelvis. If you don’t activate the gluteus medius on the standing leg, you’ll be sinking into the posture. It takes the glut med to keep the pelvis horizontal on the weight-bearing leg side.

Posture tips: 

• Make sure the lifted leg has the knee turned out (externally rotated). That isolates the glut med. 
• Don’t let your back sway. Use the internal oblique abdominals to prevent any sway in your lower back.
• Lean forward, but only as much as you need. 
• Remember that the back of your neck is part of your spine, so be sure to let it feel long, like a continuation of the spine.
• Don’t forget to do this exercise on both sides so both gluteus medii are strengthened and toned.

If you’re feeling especially zesty, and don’t need to stabilize with a chair back, you can give yourself another layer of challenge by slowly and carefully hopping in a backward circle on the standing leg. You can even add arms, which helps with balance while in motion and adds a dancelike element to the exercise. I love this variation.

For a deep dive into strengthening exercises you can do at home, plus a one-on-one live follow-up session with a Gokhale Method teacher, don’t miss tomorrow’s special Premium Workshop, Strengthening Exercises - The Gokhale Way! I look forward to showing you how to approach home exercise with healthy posture, improving your form and preventing injury.

What have you been doing to keep yourself strong during quarantine?

I like to exercise in the woods. There! I’ve said it. I’ve said it aloud too - so there’s no going back. Truth be told, I’m much happier here among the trees than the squeezing between the pec-decks and stationary bikes at my local globo gym. I even prefer it to pounding the streets or hiking through the fields. In fact I prefer it to pretty much everything.

There’s something primal about the woods. It’s not just the smells, the sounds of the whispering trees, the presence of birds and other wildlife, or the dappled sunlight effect that the forest canopy casts on the ground. I think it goes further than that.

It’s a place where human beings seem to instantly feel at home; an environment that at once welcomes and intrigues. For me, being in the woods puts humans back where they belong, back where we started before the first of our species walked out of the forest on two legs and into the African savannah.

Of course you could argue that other environments could be thought of as just as natural for humans - the desert or the mountains, for example. What’s different about the forest though is that you can’t see it all at once. Upon a mountain top, you can gaze out over acres of terrain at one glance. In the Sahara you can cast an eye over mile-upon-mile of undulating dunes if you stand on top of a high one. In a forest however, only as you walk through it are its secrets revealed to you. You stumble from one little discovery to the next with a surprise around every corner.

I don’t just walk in the forest though. That’s enjoyable enough but there’s so much more fun to be had. No, I use the forest as my gym. There’s far more to do there than there is at your local LA Fitness centre. You just need to know how to use it.

There’s no end of challenges when you learn how to spot them. Can I jump that log? Can I vault that broken stump? Can I balance on this branch – or hang underneath that one – or move hand-over-hand along it?

Now you might be wondering what any of this has to do with posture or the Gokhale Method? What’s easy to forget is that posture is just a snap shot of movement. If you can move successfully between a range of different but correct postures, we can say that you ‘move well’. The challenge of moving well only becomes real when we are asked to engage in real, complex and unique movement patterns.

Ok, so you’ve used the Gokhale Method to improve the way you stand, sit and lie down. Maybe your back pain has cleared up? Maybe you no longer feel like a hunchback when you look in the mirror? That’s great! But that’s not the end of the Gokhale Method or your quest to make the most of the body you’ve been given.

The next test is to use your new-found sense of balance, posture and grace in an increasing number of more challenging ways. And, to my mind, there’s nothing outside of the woods to beat this.

As you walk through a forest you’ll notice the floor beneath you is uneven. Can you keep your foot arches nicely intact and your ankles, knees and hips in alignment? Or do you allow your knees to pitch inwards, your shoulders to pull towards each and your head to be pushed out, grimly, in front of you? If you can learn to control your posture while moving in a complex environment like this, you’re well on the way to mastering your body. It’s both the training and the test. You’ll move with greater efficiency and grace, be protected from injury – and certainly enjoy yourself a whole lot more!

There’s something to look for with every step. When you notice you’re going to have to duck under a low branch, do you find yourself rounding your back and tucking your head into your shoulders? Or do you hinge neatly at the hips, while keeping your back straight and true?

Another example: try walking along a log. You’ll find you’re much more balanced if you engage your inner corset and ensure you’re using your rib anchor. In fact, the extra stability you gain from appropriate use of your abs and obliques will extend into every movement.

If you try to lift a sizable log from the ground but don’t do it from a healthy start and end posture, your body will tell you about it. You might get away with reaching for your toes badly under ordinary circumstances – but try it before lifting a heavy weight from the ground and suddenly all Esther’s teachings make sense. (In fact many powerlifters and strongman competitors unconsciously employ the skills and positions that Gokhale Method student practice – that’s what makes them so successful.)

Whether you’re jumping, crawling, climbing, lifting or carrying, these principles will all still apply. You can’t really break the rules. You can only break yourself against them.

When I take new clients into the forest to train I find there are two things that make them feel pretty darn stiff the next day, even if to my conventional gym goers it appears that they’ve only done a light workout.

Firstly their bodies go into positions that they would otherwise never find themselves in. Joints will go through a much wider range of motion that they are used to, making this excellent mobility work. (If you’ve tried taking a huge first step to get off the ground and onto the first branch of a tree, you’ll know what I mean.)

Secondly, every movement is unique. Because each inch of a wood is different, individuals must adapt their movement in complex and subtle ways each time. Every muscle and every joint has a part to play. There's no machine isolating muscle groups as there will be in your local LA Fitness center. Movement faults or postural issues have nowhere to hide.

The mind-body link has a large role to play here too. To respond to this environment fully, you must be highly alert: alert to the branch you might walk into; alert to the shifting terrain under your feet; alert to the position of your body in space; and alert to how you’re controlling your body in this ever changing landscape.

The overall benefits of a workout like this are entirely holistic. Because we never use sets and reps, improvements are harder to measure yet easier to feel. We’re simultaneously addressing mobility, strength, speed, stamina, balance, movement skills - and, of course, bodily awareness in the form of the Gokhale Method.

The better you apply your refined awareness skills the more quickly the other benefits will follow, all the while protected from injury by the balance, alignment and stability that the Gokhale Method confers. Twenty minutes on a stationary bike while staring at a LCD screen just doesn’t compare!

My hope is that one day we will all return to moving, standing and sitting as humans have for thousands of years (and as some indigenous people still do.) I hope also that we will reject the artificiality of gym exercise and get back to performing authentic human movement in the sort of environment in which our bodies and minds have evolved to thrive.

By Oliver Selway
Author of Instinctive Fitness

www.instinctive–fitness.com

www.woodland-workouts.co.uk

Book available from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2vPiIA8

Join us in an upcoming Free Workshop (online or in person).  

Find a Foundations Course in your area to get the full training on the Gokhale Method!  

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