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25 Apr

In my recent blog posts on tight muscles not needing to be stretched and lengthened and strength-training not shortening your muscles, I mentioned that increases in flexibility or passive range of motion resulting from yoga or passive stretching practices don’t stem from increases in resting muscle length but from the nervous system being able to tolerate the stretch better. This mechanism of the nervous system is known as stretch tolerance. To recap, when you hit your...

14:31 / Hips / Knees / Strength / Whole Body Movement / Yoga
13 Apr

We’ve established that a “tight” muscle is not a short or contracted muscle and that “tight” is a subjective sensation of the nervous system. If you missed that blog you can catch up here. So let’s continue and do away with another popular myth that states, “Strength training will contract your muscles and make their resting lengths shorter and therefore should be accompanied by stretching to lengthen them back out.” The previous blog described how stretching doesn’t...

11:24 / Whole Body Movement
13 Apr

I’m on a mission to bring newer lessons from scientific research into how we practice yoga and movement or fitness. I want these lessons to be understandable and applicable to everyday people, yoga practitioners, and other movers. First up is a series of perpetuated myths about “tight” muscles. There is an idea out there that when you feel that your muscle is “tight” or “stiff” that it means one or more of the following: Your tight...

10:00 / Hips / Shoulders
17 Jan

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...

21:53 / Feet / Whole Body Movement
09 Dec

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...

22:48 / Relaxation / Restorative Yoga
01 Nov

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...

09:00 / Feet / Whole Body Movement
19 Oct

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...

12:15 / Core Health / Healthy Back / Pelvic Floor / Postnatal / Pregnancy / Whole Body Movement
09 Oct

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...

23:32 / Core Health / Healthy Back / Psoas / Shoulders / Upper Body / Whole Body Movement
27 Sep

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...

14:49 / Core Health / Healthy Back / Psoas / Shoulders / Upper Body / Whole Body Movement