anxiety

The Gokhale Method® is designed to be, well, methodical. But although the process of learning healthy posture is mostly systematic and progressive, it is also usually punctuated by “aha moments”. These glimpses of intellectual, visual, and kinesthetic understanding of the body can arrive like the warm glow of returning to home ground, or they can be seismic shifts that change your life forever…

Having an aha moment makes most people’s posture journey exciting, and sometimes profound. This blog post shares some student experiences and reflections on their discoveries.

David Samuels got out of constant sciatic pain while taking Gokhale Foundations with teacher Amy Smith. For David, learning to bend well was a revelation. 

Aha! The moment when the mind relaxes…

With aha moments we are often talking about cognition that differs from the slow burn of incremental learning. It’s a flash of insight—somewhat like a lightbulb coming on. In “The Power of Now,” Eckhart Tolle’s bestselling book on meditation, he describes how his mind finally shifted out of a period of intensely stressed and anxious overthinking. His mind finally gave way one day to a state of peace, clarity, and insight.

Stress and anxiety are not intended to be a part of our learning process, but I think a similar mechanism sometimes plays out. Students are often very conscientious and expect to master a lot of  material in a short time—this expectation can overwhelm the mind. The mind loves to learn with firm foundations and linear, logical steps, but it can get overloaded. When it lets go, it can sometimes make connections spontaneously. Aha.

Nancy Sullivan was amazed to learn she could resolve her lifelong headaches herself with Gokhale Method teacher Aurelia Vaicekauskas.
 

Eminent violinist Kala Ramnath could scarcely believe her back pain had really gone after years of suffering.

Embracing change for the better

Heike Eschbach is a retired midwife and lives in Germany. She had suffered with back pain and sciatica for many years, and, while taking the Foundations course with Julie Johnson, was able to reduce her pain medication by two-thirds. 

Learning about the benefits of a J-spine, a well-positioned pelvis, and external rotation in her hips, have been just some of the posture principles that are bringing healthy changes to Heike’s body. For her, learning how to relax and read in comfort was a breakthrough—the realization that healthy posture holds the key to resolving her pain. Heike wrote to us:

The new movement patterns I’ve learned integrate wonderfully into my everyday life. I am now also noticing improvement in my cervical spine and shoulders. I'm very happy about that.

Aha moments can be profoundly relaxed and comfortable—it just takes know-how to get there. Heike is embodying numerous posture principles that arrange her spine and body well as she relaxes on the sofa to read.

Posture breakthroughs are a state of mind, as well as body

It is not surprising that the majority of our students are delighted to find solutions to physical issues, whether that be to address pain, improve appearance, or more generally for self-optimization and future-proofing. But they often find, at some point, that changing their posture also impacts the way they feel about themselves and the world around them.  

Below is a heartfelt account from a British student, Lavinia, from Milton Keynes, who wrote:

My whole life has been blighted by BIG bosoms! To the extent that I have become excessively round shouldered and as soon as I am in a new environment with people all around me, the shoulders come forward and my tortoise shell envelops me in order to hide those which I detest!

Well, I read the book, listened to Esther online, and attended a Foundations class. What bosoms? I’m so busy perfecting a lovely straight back I have forgotten all about them. Who cares anyway? My neighbour has noticed my back is so much straighter, things are changing for the better. I intend to keep up the good work. I feel like a new woman! 

Finding our natural uprightness and height in a relaxed and comfortable way not only gives us the space our spine and other structures crave, it often liberates our personality and self-confidence too. 

Professional cellist Katie Rietman discovered greater freedom through learning the Gokhale Method with Julie Johnson, both in her neck, and her confidence. 

Aha moments can turn students into teachers

Most Gokhale Method teachers can clearly recall their first aha moments too! Clare Chapman, a teacher in the UK, tells how she initially encountered the Gokhale Method through my book: 

One of my yoga students, who knew I was interested in solutions to back pain, lent me 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. As she handed me the book, to be honest, being a somewhat sceptical Brit, I thought this was probably just another “easy steps” self-help book that would promise the earth and fall far short. But within a few pages I was compelled to read more. 

The next few days and chapters brought repeated aha moments. My understanding of the body, back pain, and posture, shifted into a new paradigm. Within weeks I knew I wanted to learn more and teach these principles. My aha moments may have slowed down a bit, but are still happening 14 years on…

Self-help steps, principles that challenge the conventional wisdom on back pain, and hundreds of compelling illustrations, bring aha moments for many readers.

Best next action steps 

If you would like to discover your aha posture moments, 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…

According to Dr. Tammy Chen’s NY Times column, dental patients are suffering from an “epidemic of cracked teeth” due in part to posture. How can we avoid a similar fate? Image courtesy Engin Akyurt on Unsplash.

I recently came across a New York Times column by Tammy Chen, DDS, a prosthodontist with a practice in Manhattan, describing the “epidemic of cracked teeth” she’s seen in her patients during the COVID pandemic. Dr. Chen names two suspected culprits: the slumped posture many people adopt while working from home with improvised furniture, and excessive anxiety and stress. Both of these culprits lead to jaw clenching and tooth grinding.

This man’s C-spine — an intensely rounded upper back and tucked pelvis — are all too common in people working from home and on laptops. As Dr. Chen pointed out, such postural habits can have deleterious effects on the jaw.

The dangers of a C-spine
While working remotely, people are slumping and hunching at their computers more than ever before. For many unaware of how to sit healthfully, lack of access to office workspaces (and in some cases, ergonomic furniture) has been difficult to adjust to. Anyone plagued by a C-spine — with an intensely tucked pelvis below rounded, hunched shoulders — is doing themself some real damage if they don’t learn new ways of using their body. I’m always calling out the unhealthy stresses this puts on discs, nerves, bones, and ligaments in the back and neck, but the consequences of poor posture don't stop there.

Gaming posture also often tends toward a C-spine, to the detriment of gamers’ long-term spinal health, as well as jaw health.

As Dr. Chen points out, nerves passing through the neck and shoulder lead directly to the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). TMJ dysfunction is a widespread problem in our culture and can lead to pain, clicking, and popping in the jaw. So it stands to reason (and I’ve seen in my decades teaching) that hunched, slumped posture in the upper body, including the neck and shoulders through which nerves pass, has detrimental effects on the jaw.

The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) connects the jaw to the skull. Original image courtesy Wikipedia user Jmarchn under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Healthier posture = healthier teeth
Thankfully, learning new and healthful ways of using the upper body while sitting and sleeping is within all of our reach. When sitting, the alternative to collapsing into a C-spine is to first fix the foundation of the spine, which is the pelvis. When the pelvis is tucked under, it provides a wonky base for the spine to rest on. Like a building with poor foundations, the spine is then distorted as a consequence, rounding out the back to then cantilever forward with the upper body. This obliges the muscles in the neck and shoulders to do overtime supporting the substantial weight of the head, creating tension and compression all the way through to the jaw.

The remedy is to learn to position the pelvis well by stretchsitting or stacksitting — so named because they either allow the spine to stretch out straight (stretchsitting), or for the bones of the spine to stack upright and relaxed (stacksitting). Both enable sustainable shoulder placement, and a well positioned neck and head. Bingo! Their harmonious arrangement of bones and soft tissues gives our nerves the space and pathways they need to function happily.

Our jaws and teeth are among the body parts where anxiety and stress most noticeably take their toll. Image courtesy Nhia Moua on Unsplash.

Anxiety and stress affect the jaw
Jaw clenching and tooth grinding at night while sleeping are typically the result of anxiety and stress, both of which are increasingly common in 2020. This added pressure and friction on the dental surfaces are another factor Dr. Chen suspects in the high number of cracked teeth she’s seen in her practice since June. How can posture help here?

Learning stretchlying brings our students a level of comfort and rest many have never experienced before. Image courtesy Minnie Zhou on Unsplash.

The luxuriously comfortable and relaxed postures we teach for sleep help relieve tension all throughout the body and improve sleep quality. Better, deeper sleep gives us a more stable footing on which to meet the day, even in stressful settings, and can help our mental health considerably. Why not take steps to improve our sleep quality if it can help our health, both mental and dental?

We recommend stretchlying on the back because it supports and gently tractions the body in ways that allow muscles that have been overworking to finally relax, releasing their grip on the back, the neck and, yes, the jaw. It may seem surprising to link healthy posture and dental health, but it actually makes perfect sense that jaw tension and teeth grinding can have positional causes.

If you’d like to revamp your understanding of comfort and perhaps invest in something other than your dentist’s next vacation, try an Online Initial Consultation with one of our online teachers. We also have a new Free Online Workshop all about how you can use posture to relieve stress! We look forward to supporting you (and your pearly whites) in these challenging times.

In the branch of Yoga called Pranayama (Prana = breath, life; Yama = discipline) there is a technique called Nadi Shodhan Pranayama. I learned this technique from my yoga mentors in Bombay and in an ashram in Rajnandagaon in Central India. It’s the best way I know to quiet my mind when I feel agitated. I have taught the technique to many students and patients over the years as a way to address obsessive thoughts, anxiety, and 'blah' feelings.

This Yogini is practicing Nadi Shodhan Pranayama, a style of meditative breathing

You place the tips of your middle and pointer finger of the right hand between your eyebrows and use your thumb and ring finger to open and close your nostrils. Now follow this pattern:

1.    Inhale through one nostril for four counts,

2.    Hold (with both ring finger and thumb closing the nostrils) for eight counts

3.    Exhale through the other nostril for eight counts.

Here you can see the hand position used for this breathing practice 

Now you try. Inhale left (4), hold (8), exhale right (8), inhale right (4), hold (8), exhale left (8). After a few rounds of this, the inhalations become quite dramatic (especially in a room full of people practicing during the cold season) and the exhales are harder to slow. I always remind my students that breathing is a priority (!) and that they should do whatever is necessary to get the breath they need. If you have a stuffy nose, for example, this might mean breathing through the mouth.

This is an alternate hand position used for Nadi Shodhan Pranayama

Since starting to work with primal posture, I have realized some new uses for Nadi Shodhan Pranayama. Most of us have shallow breath. With muscle tension in our backs and chests, typically brought on by poor posture, it is difficult for the lungs to fully expand. We end up breathing enough to not die - and that’s about it! Even after we learn to restructure ourselves and melt away unnecessary muscle tensions, this shallow breathing pattern often remains out of habit. Nadi Shodhan Pranayama helps change that. You breathe more deeply than usual doing this technique – and also after. It’s as though you have primed the pump.

Muscles all around the spine and rib cage are gently stretched and massaged through deep breathing, which can be therapeutic and relaxing for the entire system

You will discover that deep breathing alongside healthy structure induces the tissues around your torso to move constantly. You have now found your inner massage therapist and an important key to self-healing. Your back muscles get a gentle stretch, your discs rehydrate, and the circulation around your spinal tissues improves - simply by breathing more deeply. As you adopt this habit, you will breathe your way to a healthier life.

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