Sitting, why we should do it more, but not on the couch.

This week I heard a great interview with Daniel Lieberman on his new book, Exercised, which is about why humans did not evolve to exercise but nonetheless it is healthy for us to do. The interview is about 30 minutes and he brings up great stuff on movement, why treadmills are kind of weird and not a natural way to walk, sitting and when chairs started to have backs on them and how that is linked to back pain. His years of research is congruent to many of the same concepts I talk to all of you about and what many of my own teachers have taught me.

My two cents on sitting. Dr. Lieberman gives an interesting history on when chair backs became a household item and a point he makes is that in indigenous cultures where he has done research, many of these people sit as long as we might. What he does NOT talk about is HOW these indigenous groups sit and WHAT they sit on. Most likely these people don't have access to our cushy couches and recliners. (In fact, as I write this, I just changed my position from writing on my couch to sitting on the floor with my laptop on the coffee table).

Anyway. HOW you sit for 6-8 hours can significantly affect your body. Seat backs allow us to RELAX out back muscles. Sitting without a seat back makes us USE our back muscles more. (Lieberman does a great explanation of back pain you can hear in the podcast. What I assume about these cultures Lieberman studies in remote parts of the world, is that they are sitting on the ground, maybe with pillows or the like for cushioning. What sitting on the ground does is make us MOVE more. Here in the states, we might sit for 6-8 hours and barely change positions because we are so cushioned and padded in our comfortable chairs. But think about times you have sat on the ground. Do you notice how "fidgety" you get? Sitting on the ground in fact STRENGTHENS our joints and muscles because we have to USE them to sit there and we have use to them to get up and down off the ground.

In his book Muscles and Meridians, Philip Beach writes that "Erecting ourselves from the floor is an essential tonic exercise that is a direct challenge to gravity." Beach writes that we spent our childhood learning to stand up against gravity. In our current lives, with our comfy chairs, our beds, and all the objects where we now find repose, we are only ever about halfway down to the ground. So we lose that extra strength it would have taken us to get up and down off the ground all day long, before these comforts were added to our lives.

Now I am not saying GET RID OF ALL YOUR FURNITURE AND SLEEP ON THE FLOOR! But if you are interested in transition to that type of lifestyle, Katy Bowman and Nutritious Movement have you covered. Much of what she teaches, and what I am trying to say here, is that just getting up out of our chairs, opting for sitting on the ground for a little while (use pillows and blankets and things! Doesn't have to just be sitting on the ground without padding), or practicing getting up and down off the ground (or even just practicing getting up and down from a chair, using the strength in your legs, if the floor seems too intimidating) is essential to keeping our bodies strong. Taking off our shoes, wiggling our toes more so our feet can FEEL the floor can help our entire body get stronger so we can FEEL more underneath us.

It's those little decisions throughout the day that can help us start to feel a little better, and start to help us feel stronger. So this week, if you find yourself sitting for a long time, just simply chose to get up more often, do that stretch you know you need, if the floor is accessible, sit on the floor, with pillows and things for a little while. You don't need to get rid of your furniture. We just have to chose to find new postures throughout our day.

On top of that, I don't want you to feel intimidated or bad about your own choices at home. What I hope we all can do is find ways to move that make us happy and not hurt so much. I hope that our work together can help you continue to do the things that make you happy. And choosing to wiggle around at home is a great way for us to continue to move and stay healthy!

If you want to start a transition to being able to sit on the ground more (and get back up off the ground), I can help you with techniques to get that to happen!

(Ps, now I’m on the floor on my stomach with a pillow, under my hips propped on my elbows typing). ;)

Listen to Podcast HERE

Let’s talk about Feet... Part 1

I am no doctor, but if one thing is tight in one area, you probably have something going on in a neighborhood nearby.

Ida Rolf would infamously say: “Where you think it is, it ain’t.”

So many times where pain shows up in our body has to do with a complex system of events that led to that pain. This week I want get to the root, the base, the bottom if it all…

OUR FEET!

Our feet have a direct correlation to what is happening above them.

Now, take a look at the shoes you tend to wear. Are they higher in the back? Yeah, of course heels are gonna be high. And they are gonna be cute. But look at your OTHER shoes. Your athletic shoes. your sandals. What kind of heel do they have on them?

ANY amount of lift at your heel is going to ask your muscles to adapt to the situation presented to them. Here are two examples:

See how this athletic shoe has an incline? It’s basically a more supportive version of the kitten heel seen to the right!

Kitten heel. Cute? Sure. Good for your feet after walking around for hours at an event? Not so much…

I think one of the benefits of us having to work more from home is not having to wear shoes as often. Wearing shoes all the time is like having to wear a really stiff leather mitten all day long. It might protect our feet, especially in an environment where we need to not step on glass, or nails or whatever is in the street. BUT what it does NOT allow is for our hand (in this scenario) to be able to move as intricately as it could. Imagine trying to type, trying to write, or pick up something with a big mitten on all day. You would probably end up using more muscles in your forearm and lose a lot of muscle tone in your hands. Your hands would get stiff over the years. They might be tingly, achey, sore, swollen. And do we just chalk that up to “getting old”?

Now I am not saying THROW OUT YOUR SHOES!! GO BAREFOOT ALL DAY!! (but if you do that, cool!!!) What I am asking is for you to start to notice what you tend to put on the bottom of your foot. Our bodies are so incredibly adaptable. Wearing heels out to a restaurant where you are sitting is maybe a better option than at an event when you know you will be standing for long periods of time. (Of course “events” seem like a thing of the past these days…)

Guys, dudes, men!! This goes for you, too. Look at your dress shoes, how much of a heel is on them? That is going to affect your body as well!

One thing we can do to counteract the tightness we tend to feel after wearing shoes with heels is to simply stretch the backs of our legs. That includes our calves, hamstrings, and the soles of our feet.

I love a calf stretch at the bottom of my steps, but here is another option: Grab a towel or roll up your yoga mat (pictured here is a half foam roller, aka half dome, which is also convenient as it is about the height we want to get a pretty good stretch at the back of the calf at about 2-3 inches high.

Side view with a half dome. Try this with a rolled up bath towel at home. No fancy equipment required!

Front view. Make sure your second toes are pointing straight ahead of you. Can you still wiggle your toes on the side you are stretching?

Place the ball of one foot at the top of your towel or half dome. Bring the other foot beside the dome on the floor. Try to stand up straight without a banana back or tilting forward. Make sure your head is ontop of your shoulders, imagine your lungs are right over your hips, and your hips are right over the center of your feet, not behind or in front of them (refer to my previous blog post for your body alignment tips).

Next, see if you can step your other foot forward without compensating your alignment. And then do a test: Can you wiggle your toes of your foot on the dome? Can you stand up straight, like a describe above? If NOT, back up your other foot until you can. Basically we are finding the place where we start to feel the stretch. This is where we want to hang out. This ALSO tells you what the true length of your walking stride is without other stuff trying to help!! Pretty enlightening right?

As you can see here, my real walking stride is like 1 inch in front of my other foot!! Some of you may even have a NEGATIVE stance (the foot you aren’t stretching is BEHIND the one you are stretching). If your walking stride is short, that means your shins, your hip flexors and your low back are probably doing a lot to try to make up for the tightness in your calves and ankles to get you to go forward into the world. Your glutes may not be firing well to help propel you forward in space, and then we are basically just sort of falling forward and catching ourselves with every step! That’s Ok, just start to take your shoes off and do this stretch more!

It takes our muscles about 90 seconds-2 minutes to get the message that we want to change their length and normal patterning. So set a timer and see if you can stay in this stretch for at least 90 seconds on each leg. You can do this stretch multiple times per day. Use it as an excuse to get up out of your office chair (or your makeshift home office)!

Lastly, while you stretch, remember to breathe!!! Deeply and slowly!!

Bonus stretch:

Tops of your feet.

If the back of your calf is tight, that probably means the FRONT of your shin is doing a lot of work to get your foot to flex to strike your heel in front of you. Those poor shins and the top of your foot are probably tight. If you have had shin splints you KNOW what this feels like. But often we are walking around with tight shins and don’t even realize it!

Soooo. That means we should stretch the top of your foot too!

Start here to stretch the top of your foot. (You can multitask at your desk!!!)

For a more advanced version, you can try it standing with the “stretching” side knee bent.

Need MORE fun? Try it with both legs straight!

Start seated in a chair, place the top of your foot on the floor, aiming to get all your toe nails on the ground. Make sure you don’t roll out onto your pinky toes with your heel out to the side, See if you can get on top of the big toe with your heel in line with your leg.

Try it standing, with the same idea, try to keep weight over your big toe and second toe. The tendency most likely will be to go over to that pinky toe because it’s easier there!

In the second picture you will see that my knee is still bent when I am standing. To make this even more advanced you can straighten the leg further back behind you, like the last picture to the right.

Let me know how it goes and tune in for my next post when I show you some self massage work you can do for your feet, calves and shins to begin to gain mobility back into your lower limbs!

Three ways to improve your posture and eliminate pain!

Hey everyone! If you have landed here, you have probably been THINKING about taking Pilates classes, or getting in some extra cardio, or been curious what exactly is Roll Model Method® self massage. Well that curiosity probably came from some types of pains you have been having in your body and you feel it’s hard to find the right kind of exercise that works for you. I feel you. I have tried, and not stuck with, plenty of fad exercises over the years and I have dealt with LOTS of chronic pain starting from the age of ten.

Yep. You read that right. TEN YEARS OLD.

That’s a long time to be dealing with chronic pain. If you have chronic pain you probably feel like you get injured easily or you hurt MORE after a workout. You might feel like you need to hold back in class to protect yourself. Maybe you were feeling good and giving it your all in a workout class and but something still hurt. Then a couple days later you really felt sore. And not that good sore feeling, but that feeling of UGH!!! My body is not right.

Chances are you have some habits going on in your body that probably need to be addressed!

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Did you know 98% of all pain is from moving in a bad position or having lack of mobility somewhere in your body? That means we can start to doing things RIGHT NOW to begin to alleviate our aches and pains.

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Here are 3 things you can do RIGHT NOW. EVERYDAY.

To address your pain.

1. Straighten out those feet!

   Ok here is what I want you to do. Turn around in a circle 3 times and then

   STOP!

   FREEZE!

   Don’t try to fix anything. Look down at your feet. How are they pointing? Straight ahead? Out like a duck? In like a pigeon?

   Are you a half duck/half pigeon? Now try to straighten out your feet. Place your feet under your hips with your SECOND TOE pointing straight ahead. Lots of yoga teachers in my past used to say make the outside edges of your feet parallel. That is actually a little TOO turned in. You will see the difference below.

   When the 2nd toe aims straight forward you are able to carry your weight over your feet better, it puts less stress on any hip/knee/ankle pain you might have. And it can even help low back pain!

   Pretend your 2nd toe and knees have headlights on them. Point them straight ahead.

   Now check yourself all day long. How are you feet pointing in the grocery store? How do they point when you are on a walk or run? How do they point in your squats or downward dogs? Can you make them straight?

Duck feet. (see how my 2nd toes are pointing away from each other

Straight feet! See how my toes and knees are pointing straight forward. Now that’s nice!

Pigeon Feet! See how my toes are pointing toward each other

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2. Drop your ribs!

Imagine if your mother told you to “STAND UP STRAIGHT!!!” What would you do? Would it look something like this? ——->

Hmmm looks a little like a military posture, right? Or like you are a human banana. Your low back and hip flexors are really not going to like that.

Military Posture Ribs out in front of my hip bones.

Now try this. Stand up straight, but NOT like your mother told you. Can you feel the front of your rib cage sticking out? It’s like you have rib boobs (and you want to only have one set of boobs, not two). Put your hands on those front ribs and then DROP those front ribs down. Feel how that makes your abs start to wake up? Feel how your back starts to lengthen out behind you? THAT’S BETTER!

Ribs dropped. No more rib boobs! Ribs right over my hips!

AHHHH your whole body is smiling at you! Here’s a video demonstrating how to do that!———>

Go from banana back to happy back!

3. Find your puppet string!

One last thing. When you dropped your ribs did you feel how your head came forward? WOAH! all of a sudden we REVEAL our forward head habit (all that driving and computer work we do, everything is in front of us, and our head goes toward all that stuff). So we lift our ribs to bring our head back. Now we know that lifting our ribs only gives up an extra set of boobs and probably an unhappy low back amongst other aches and pains.

A little double chin never hurt anyone!

So here is what I want you to do: Imagine you have a top knot or a puppet string on the crown of your head. feel like someone is gently pulling that string up to the ceiling while you make the gentlest of double chins. I mean gentle, like it’s a secret. No one will see it I promise. Now you should feel like you just grew an inch! If you had on long dangling earrings they would fall right on top of your shoulders instead of in front of them.

<——-Here’s a video!

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Let’s put it it all together.

Straighten out your feet so your 2nd toe aims forward then:

Let's get rid of that pain for good!

Drop your ribs, smile your collarbones, and roll your shoulders down your back

Feel a puppeteer gentling pulling your head up to the ceiling while you secretly make a double chin.

Try it out. Tell me how it goes in the comments!

If you are interested in my classes you can sign up here

Navigating the new normal

Thank you.

The night before I closed my business to the public I was wide awake in the middle of the night. I thought about as much as I claim to be introverted, social distancing was digging deep into my gut. I thrive off the energy of my students. I learn so much from you all I miss you all. When we are not allowed to see anyone, how desperately I wish to see my loved ones; especially with the severity of this pandemic and how many people it has already affected. It’s a double edged sword. I wish to see my loved ones, but for their safety I cannot. I know you all must be going through something similar. As this month has gone by, navigating this new normal has gotten maybe slightly easier in some ways, but it’s still exhausting, stressful, and unknown.

I can’t thank you all enough, those who have come to my streaming classes, those who have paid early for when we can see each other again in real life, those who are continuing to take private classes with me. You have helped me get through the next few weeks without as much worry. In no way do I want to press any one to work online who isn’t interested, who is too exhausted, or who financially cannot commit right now. I completely understand. I am in the same situation. I also feel so overwhelmed with online content right now, it’s difficult to even keep track sometimes. I think the most important thing I keep reminding myself is to support my local businesses in whatever way I can, as many of you have supported me.

As I have transitioned to teaching live streaming classes, the bumps for me are smoothing out a bit, although honestly, this is an exhausting process to get these types of classes off the ground. Online teaching is a whole new ballgame. I am grateful for the push in some ways. I have always thought about having more of an online presence for my content and this seems like it might be a start of that venture for me. Of course there is always the fear in the back of my head that the internet will get too glitchy, that no one will show up, that I will have forgotten to add someone to a list of classes. The silver lining is that I am grateful to be keeping busy, I don’t think I could watch The Great British Bake ALL DAY…but maybe I could…

Please remember to get outside. To stretch your hips, your feet, your upper back and neck! I am offering quick and simple exercises you can do at home right now, often from the very chair or couch from which you are sitting right now! I am posting those videos to my Instagram and YouTube pages. I hope you will follow me!

Again Thank you.

RIP John Prine