discs

In Spring last year we launched the Gokhale® Wedge. For years, our students have been requesting a convenient, ready-made wedge for upright sitting without a backrest, one that doesn’t require folding blankets and other makeshift (pun intended) measures. The requests also specified an attractive item to enjoy around the home or office, and that it be of durable quality, keeping its shape and good looks with daily use.

Many sitting wedges on the market provide a shallow, even slope that simply does not help you antevert your pelvis—at no place do they offer the steep incline that it takes to tip the pelvis forward “over a cliff,” so to speak. Worse, they are often too soft, allowing the bottom, which after all transmits most of the body’s weight to the wedge, to sink in too deeply, sometimes resulting in a reverse wedge! Some commercial wedges are simply too hard to be comfortable, and at best provide only one choice of angle for tipping the pelvis forward.

As infants we all sat easily with our behinds behind us, and our pelvis anteverted. A wedge helps us to regain this healthy angle. Image from Pexels

To implement the Gokhale Method technique of stacksitting, students require a firm but comfortable wedge with a choice of angles to tip the pelvis just the right amount for their particular body. This is required to be able to sit upright and relaxed, rather than the common back and forth between upright and tense, and relaxed but slumped. Stacksitting enables you to avoid compression on delicate spinal nerves, discs, and tissues, and encourages healthy breathing and organ function.

Your pelvis is the foundation for your spine and upper body. With the pelvis anteverted and a J-spine arising from a healthy L5-S1 angle and well-stacked vertebrae, the upper body can be upright and relaxed (a). Without a wedge, most people sit either relaxed but slumped (b), or upright but tense (c).

Simplicity can take longer

It’s astonishing to me how long it took to pare a design for a Gokhale wedge down to its essential elements. We’ve been working on this for over a decade. We’ve hired professional design consultants, graduate students in Product Design at Stanford, and discussed the matter amongst our teachers. After discarding dozens of designs that included sophisticated mechanisms for adjusting the slope of the wedge, or replicated the front edge of chairs from the period of Louis XIV, we finally came to a wedge that is beyond simple by comparison. 

Our wedge, which only saw the light of day in March last year, is the simplest of all the designs we came up with—it’s a simple piece of foam, with a simple covering, and a simple zipper to close it up. Admittedly, the foam has a special shape—though that is not immediately obvious—and is of a high quality, resilient spec. It has just the right amount of give to be comfortable yet firm. 

Meeting needs and expectations

Above all, our students need a wedge designed to translate healthy posture principles into action. And rather than being a one-size-fits-all, this posture-friendly wedge works even as the user’s J-spine and L5-S1 angle progresses. 

Based on eighteen months of user feedback, we can say that the Gokhale® Wedge is serving people extremely well. It has been a great inclusion with the online Elements course bundles, ensuring students are always best equipped to efficiently learn to stacksit. Our students don’t hesitate to let us know what is working well for them…

…and what can still be improved. We have listened to user suggestions and recently applied a few innovations that we hope will make you like our wedge even more.

New features of the Gokhale Wedge 2.0

The original wedge (left) and its updated version (right) perform the same functions, assisting your pelvis and spine to be optimally positioned in sitting. The new Gokhale® Wedge has some innovations that we think you will like even better.

Sitting on the flat side: Our wedge has both a flat and a convex, rounded side. Using it flat side up, as shown below, it behaves like a teeter totter and gives varied options for the angle of its slope. This enables lighter people, and people with less L5-S1 angle, to tilt the wedge forward only as much as they want, and to sit on it higher or lower down, to find just the right amount of angle for them. It can give a gentle introduction to pelvic anteversion for those with sciatic pain, sacroiliac joint issues, or stiffness at the L5-S1 junction. As I already have a good bit of built in wedge in my third decade of stacksitting, glidewalking, etc.), this way around also suits me just fine. 

Sitting on the flat side of your wedge gives you a wide choice of height and angle.

To make sitting on the flat side smoother and even more comfortable, we have moved the zip of the washable cover from the center of the flat side to the edge of the new wedge.

Sitting on the convex side: We have introduced a new non-slip PU leather on the flat side, giving users a non-slip base on slippery surfaces such as some wooden chairs and benches. As before, one of its rounded edges is slightly lower and less steep than the other, giving you nuanced choices of angle whichever way around you choose to use your wedge.

This wedge is positioned ready for stacksitting, rounded side up. This way around can give the most anteversion by encouraging the pelvis to drop forward. The front edge as it is positioned here is slightly lower and has a gentler curve than the back edge. 

A change of fabric: The wedge is now in the same, slightly darker burgundy fabric that we use for our Gokhale® Head Cushion. It’s not only a nice aesthetic match, but its slightly coarser weave fabric also gives a better grip.

A well-designed wedge helps you to rediscover sitting comfort. It helps create healthy J-spine muscle memory for standing and walking too.

If you want to find out more about using our wedge, you can read our introductory blog post The Gokhale® Wedge for Relaxed, Upright Sitting, and view a video of me using it:

Here I am demonstrating how to sit on the Gokhale Wedge. Several postural principles combine to make stacksitting especially beneficial for our structure.

Your Gokhale® Wedge is backed up with know-how

No matter how well-designed, a wedge for sitting is best supported by training. This is true of all  our products, but perhaps especially so for our wedge, because stacksitting is a big departure from most people’s sitting form. You can learn about stacksitting in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, our online Elements course, plus our Gokhale Exercise program. These offerings, along with our DVD Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting, all teach the skills that enable you to enjoy your wedge optimally in daily life. 

Our students also appreciate being able to integrate using the wedge with our wearable PostureTracker™, which has settings that can track the degree of your L5-S1 angle, and the stack of your spine. Consider the Gokhale® Wedge a part of your toolkit as you improve your posture, and musculoskeletal health. 

Best next action steps for newcomers

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

You can sign up below to join any 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.

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

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

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

Why we get rotator cuff problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the Gokhale Method helps restore rotator cuff health

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

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

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

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

To practice the Gokhale Method shoulder roll:

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

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

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

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

Happy shoulders are part of healthy posture

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

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

Best next action steps for newcomers

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

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

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

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

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

Most neck pain involves compression. 

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

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

Restoring the natural length and position of your neck

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

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

Restoring mobility in your neck

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding your neck strength 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References: 

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

Best next action steps for newcomers

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

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

The healthy posture and positive change that antique images can bring to modern people are potentially transformational. In Part 1 of this series we looked at how learning from old photographs can benefit our upper body posture and in Part 2 the lower body.

Here we are going to focus on what antique portraits can teach us about small bends. The historical paintings for this post come from collections associated with Leland and Jane Stanford, famous for their business acumen, political influence, railroad building, and later, philanthropy as founders of Stanford University in California. 

Leland Stanford c. 1870. His open chest and posterior shoulder position are typical of the fine posture of his day. Wikipedia

How much do small bends really matter? After all, it is the deeper bends, perhaps with lifting involved, that pose a bigger threat to our spine. Here are three reasons to pay attention to small bends:

1. The start of a bend usually sets its trajectory. If you have a problematic start to your bend, it will likely continue that way.
2. Small bends are done more often. Any systematic error in your form can therefore create a significant amount of cumulative damage. They also present more opportunities for training in healthy posture habits.
3. Some people’s backs “go out” even with small bends.

Living on the Stanford campus for decades, I was a frequent visitor and admirer of many of the artefacts in the Cantor Arts Center (formally Stanford University Museum). Many of its artefacts represent the human story from foreign lands and ancient periods of history. But within the museum there is also a collection documenting the lives of the Stanford family, which represents a homegrown heritage that teaches us much of what we need to know about healthy posture. 

Let’s start with a painting of the Stanford family at leisure, celebrating the 10th birthday of Leland Stanford Jr. . .  

“Palo Alto Spring” by Thomas Hill, 1879, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University. Kiddle

A girl playing croquet bends forward slightly (detail, right foreground). Kiddle

The girl playing croquet is an example of a small bend done pretty well. Notice how she angles forward almost exclusively at her hips, rather than at her waist, and also maintains an elegantly elongated spine. By angling forward at the hip joint, where the pelvis pivots around the top of the thigh bones, her hip joints get to enjoy the rotational movement they are designed for. Her spine follows her pelvis, with her back muscles and inner corset both gently working to keep her entire torso as one piece. 

When the pelvis and torso remain aligned, bending brings beneficial work for the hips,
 deep abdominal muscles, and back muscles (fig a.). 

This is a much healthier way to bend (fig a.) than fixing the pelvis in a tucked position and then rounding the spine to bend forward (fig b.). Rounding loads the discs, compressing them anteriorly and causing them to bulge posteriorly. With frequent repetition the microaggressions of even small bends take their toll on the discs. Rounding also overstretches the spinal ligaments, allowing for increasingly hunched posture. Even a small bend done in this way may be perceived by the brain as a threat and send the muscles into spasm, trying to prevent movement and protect against such misuse and damage. 

Rounding the back to bend squeezes the disc contents back, where they may bulge and impinge on the nerve roots  (fig b.).  

In the painting “The Last Spike” by Thomas Hill (below), you can see a small bend employed in a kneeling position. The two figures kneeling on either side of Stanford could be tucked and rounded, but instead, they are hinging at the hip joint and keeping their backs straight. The woman to their right, leaning on her parasol, also angles forward in a mild hip-hinge.

A late 19th century painting shows Stanford, one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, standing ready to hammer the golden and ceremonial “Last Spike” into the ground at Promontory Summit, Utah, in May 1869. Wikimedia

Small bends can be as subtle as a nod or tiny inclination forward. In the foreground of a different painting below, also entitled “The Last Spike,” the onlooker on the left rounds his upper back as he looks downward. I suspect that his desire or need to show deference, also suggested by his removal of his cap, has overridden the prevailing bending posture of the day. Societal expectations around status and hierarchy are responsible for substantial postural degradation throughout history. More about that in a future blog post.

An alternative composition of “The Last Spike,” showing a less healthy type of small bend. historyisnowmagazine.com

This small degree of rounding is what many people do numerous times in a day to pick things up—perhaps to grab our car keys from a table or move things from the counter to the sink. Any forward movement with the upper back and head will often result in counter-tension in the lower back and/or pelvis to hold you there. Rather than compromise our backs, it is far healthier to keep our necks tall and bend at the hip joint. 

If you would like to practise this important contribution to your back health, join me for a “small bends” Gokhale Exercise class on Friday, November 12 at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time). If you have not yet subscribed to the 1-2-3 Move program, sign up now for your 7-day Gokhale Exercise Free Trial.

1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther or guest teachers at 9:45 a.m. 
Gokhale Fitness with Eric runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 7–7:25 a.m.
(Pacific Time), and Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from 3–3:25 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Moving Meditation with Roberta is Mondays at 2 p.m. and with Kathleen is Wednesdays at 12 p.m. (Pacific Time)

This is our second blog post in the series where we put popular exercises under scrutiny to examine how they stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture. Here we are looking at crunches, a common abdominal exercise.

Crunches are often seen as a better targeted and safer 
abdominal exercise than sit-ups—but there is still a downside.

Crunches are done lying down on the floor, face up, knees bent with feet on the floor, and with the hands placed behind or to the side of the head. They involve using the muscles of the rectus abdominis and the obliques to repeatedly raise and lower the upper body. 

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

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

Why are crunches so popular?

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

Do most people need to strengthen their abs?

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

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

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

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

Are crunches a safer exercise than sit-ups?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effective ab exercises that are healthy for your posture

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

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

When doing this exercise:

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

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

Free Chapter of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

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

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

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

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

Opinions on what constitutes a pelvic problem abound. The term "forward pelvis" with its negative connotation, has come to be used for an assortment of pelvic / lumbar architectures, some of which, according to the Gokhale Method - are good, and some bad. 

Have you been diagnosed with “forward pelvis” (aka “anterior pelvic tilt”)? If so, you may be concerned about the Gokhale Method recommendation to antevert your pelvis, thinking that this will exacerbate the problem.

Your confusion is not unique. Very few professionals, whether doctors, trainers, or wellness practitioners, differentiate between “forward pelvis / anterior pelvic tilt” and healthy pelvic anteversion. This can lead to poor recommendations like tucking your pelvis or doing crunches.

A common approach to fixing pelvic problems in modern times is the pelvic tuck and crunches, both of which carry significant risks. The Gokhale Method has different (and we believe better) solutions to various pelvic or lumbar issues that students may have. 

Anterior rotation of the pelvis on its own is not the problem. It’s where else you rotate and how that marks the critical difference between a happy and an unhappy spine.

“Forward pelvis” is vague terminology that is used to describe a variety of spinal architectures that share the common (and not very revealing) element that the pelvis is inclined forward relative to the ground. The term does not distinguish between curves that occur high in the lumbar spine, which are liable to cause pain and dysfunction, and the curve that happens at L5-S1 which is normal and healthy.

Healthy pelvic anteversion occurs only between the lowest of the free vertebrae in a human spine (known as L5), and the top of the sacrum (known as S1). If the L5-S1 angle is intact, it’s possible to stack the entire vertebral column with little effort.

With a "Forward pelvis”, the rotation is not necessarily isolated at L5-S1—in fact, there may be no rotation at all at that point—and usually there is rotation at one or more adjacent vertebrae.
 

In the Gokhale Method Foundations course, students work with a teacher to find a suitably shaped wedge to support their particular L5-S1 architecture. Once students learn how to sit with an appropriately rotated pelvis, they are often surprised by how effortlessly they can now remain upright. With the pelvis properly anteverted, the rest of the spine stacks and the back muscles can actually relax.

Student Travis Dunn’s Before and After sitting pictures. Taking the Gokhale Method Foundations course helped him find a sweet spot that got rid of his longstanding back problem.

Even though this is how you sat naturally when you were quite small, it can take some coaching to release the muscles previously needed to work to hold you upright!

Nathan White (left), 1993, and Monisha White (right), 1996, displaying the natural and healthy pelvic anteversion shared by all young children. Notice that their pelvises tip forward in isolation from the lumbar spine. 

What is unhealthy about most instances of “forward pelvis”? Let take a look at the physiology of the spine. Your vertebrae are cylindrical bones and in between each vertebra is an equally cylindrical disc that functions as a shock absorber.

Your spinal discs are shock absorbers. Most spinal discs are cylindrical in shape.

The L5-S1 disc at the bottom of the stack is unique among spinal discs in being wedge-shaped, with the broad edge of the wedge toward the front of the body. If you arch the spine, each cylindrical disc is forced into a wedge shape. Likewise, if the proper anteversion is not achieved at L5-S1, and there is some degree of tucking of the pelvis, the naturally wedge-shaped L5-S1 disc gets pinched into a more cylindrical form. After years of distorting discs in this way, you can expect degeneration, loss of disc height, and potential impingement of the corresponding spinal nerves.

       
When the cylindrical shape of the upper lumbar discs is not respected (left), or the wedge shape of the L5-S1 disc is not respected, there is compression, disc degeneration, and eventually pain and dysfunction.

With a return to correct anteversion of the pelvis (and a well-stacked spine), the cylindrical lumbar discs fit cleanly between the cylindrical vertebrae, and the wedge-shaped L5-S1 disc is given its own wedge-shaped space to call home. In this arrangement, the intervertebral discs can properly perform their shock absorber function while maintaining plenty of room for the segmental nerves to exit without compromise.

        
Well aligned vertebrae allow the spinal discs to perform their shock-absorbing function without compromise.

If you suffer from the variant of “forward pelvis” that includes problematic positioning of higher lumbar vertebrae, this can be caused by several things, each of which requires a different solution. If you are tensing the erector spine muscles (thrusting the buttocks backward or the chest forward), then the solution is to implement techniques to relax those muscles. Massage, stretching, and roller work are all good options. If the problem is a lack of tone in the abdominal wall, then you’ll want to seek out exercises to engage and strengthen the appropriate abdominal muscles.

It benefits pretty much everyone to find a healthy and natural curve at L5/S1 by sitting on a wedge to help tip the pelvis—and only the pelvis—forward, removing any counterproductive muscle tension. We have more detailed descriptions of how to properly “seat” your pelvis between your legs in our book, 8 Steps to a Pain Free Back.

It benefits almost everybody to use a wedge to help tip the pelvis - and only the pelvis - forward. This allows the vertebrae above to stack well without unhealthy muscle tension.

The lumbo-pelvic-hip-complex is made up of 15 bones and 29 muscles. With this many moving parts and a general lack of understanding about ideal human form, it’s no wonder that confusing and contradictory information abounds. Our aim is to shepherd you beyond non-specific descriptions of the pelvic area, and guide you towards healthy pelvic anteversion. This can go a long way toward resolving any low back pain and discomfort you have.

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!  

We also offer in person or online Initial Consultations with any of our qualified Gokhale Method teachers.