This blog was edited May 18, 2018 to update some of the language used. My opinion on the psoas is evoloving and I no longer agree with everything I state in the video or in this blog...
I recently taught a class called “Foot Gymnastics for Dynamic Aging”. The class was designed to introduce people to the importance of their feet (the foundation of support for the rest of you, major role in balance and agility, etc.), and explain how paying more attention to our feet and giving them some movement inputs daily can help prevent the loss in balance and mobility we have come to expect is a natural part of...
Although I’ve been teaching Restorative yoga for many years, in recent years, through studying with Judith Lasater, I’ve gained a much deeper appreciation for the Art & Science behind creating a Restorative yoga practice. Judith has been teaching for nearly 50 years, has written several books on yoga and is credited with popularizing Restorative yoga, which she learned by studying directly with its creator, BKS Iyengar. I recently had the opportunity to return to Judith’s...
If you’ve been to one of my workshops or classes you probably know that I pay a lot of attention to feet. They are the foundation that supports our entire body, our entire posture and if something is not functioning well in the feet it can have a ripple effect on e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. In the body, that is. I often compare this to your house. If there is a cracking or unstable foundation that results in a...
I’m not a fan of the “Kegel” as an all-purpose exercise to help strengthen the pelvic floor. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the work of Dr. Kegel, an American gynaecologist who in the 1940s and 50s took an interest in women’s health and demonstrated how pelvic floor exercises could be used to improve symptoms of incontinence for women after childbirth, introducing a non-surgical option for treatment. He was a pioneer and an...
In the last blog post I explained why pulling your shoulders back and lifting your chest is not good advice if you want to correct your hunched forward posture. In short, I explained how these postural cues hide the issue but don’t actually address it and can even make it worse. Instead I have three areas I work on in my own body and with clients that want to work on their hyperkyphosis. All of these...
We all want good posture. We want to be able to stand up straight and stay tall. Unfortunately there are many cultural posture cues that aren’t helpful if we truly want to align our body for good health. We may know that to have good posture we want our ears stacked over shoulders over hips, knees, and ankles. But HOW we get there is important. And there is a sneaky way to line up all these...
We’re all too busy. Our modern world and its technology have given us opportunities to get exponentially more done in less time than our ancestors were able to at any point in history, yet somehow we’ve filled that extra time with 1001 additional things to do and we still feel that we have no time! This trend can be seen both at work and at home and it’s even become so much a part of...
Recently I posted this picture about my kids and their new roll-up beds to the RePose (and my personal) Facebook page and it generated a lot of interest surrounding our family’s decision to transition (slowly) to a furniture-free home. CBC North picked up on the post and published this article. They also put a clip of our interview on TV and invited me in to our local morning radio show. And it was shared nationally via the...
As I mentioned in Part 1, I think there is a critical misunderstanding of the purpose of pregnancy-specific exercise. I’m going to state it up front: The purpose of pregnancy-specific exercise is to help the mind and body specifically adapt to the added load of late-stage pregnancy AND to adapt to what it is going to need to do in several months to birth baby out. If you are training for a marathon there is...