Hiking Feeds Body, Mind and Spirit

Deer Springs Trail, Idyllwild

Tenaja Falls

Santa Rosa Plateau at Dusk

Stepping out into nature can provide great exercise, respite from the stresses of daily life and time to reconnect with a friend, a mate, God, the Universe, and your higher self.  Depending on where you live, access to large parks or preserves may or may not be easily reached in a reasonable amount of time.  If not, a local neighborhood park, or any place with some open space and some “living things” can do the trick.  Just stepping out of our everyday environment can give us the chance for some deep breathing and sighs of relief.  Allowing time for these kinds of breaks often provides the opening for creative thought—a new idea, or a solution to a problem you didn’t see before.



Water Holes Canyon



Suicide Rock, Idyllwild

Last summer Dave and I hiked in several locations in Riverside County in Southern California, and in Page AZ near Lake Powell.  We visited the Santa Rosa Plateau on a late afternoon and early evening with a full moon rising, and on another occasion, hiked to Tenaja Falls and sat on the rocks surrounding a pool that collects the cascading water.  

 



Horseshoe Bend

On Labor Day weekend, we hiked Deer Springs Trail to Suicide Rock in Idyllwild, among some magnificent trees and enjoyed stunning views from the edge of the cliffs.  Later in September on a house boating trip to Lake Powell we had the opportunity to visit Antelope Canyon, and to hike in Water Holes Canyon, and to an overlook of Horseshoe Bend in the Grand Canyon.  The red rock formations carved out by moving water over many millenniums are absolutely exquisite!



Ridge Line on Camelback Mountain

Superstition Mountains

Since moving to Arizona almost two months ago, I have had the opportunity to hike in various places around the Phoenix/Mesa area.  I had no idea how many options were available within about a 30 mile radius!  I have now been to the Superstition Mountains to the east, Camelback Mountain to the West, the South Mountains (I think you can guess the direction), and the McDowell Sonoran Preserve to the north.  Each is unique in the type of terrain it offers and there are trails of varying lengths and difficulty, so it is easy to find something that suits your mood, energy levels, and ability.



McDowell Sonoran Preserve

McDowell Sonoran Perserve

In April Dave and I are planning weekend trips to Sedona and the Grand Canyon.  Stay tuned for details and photos!

Make plans to take a hike or a walk in nature and enjoy its many benefits!  Your Health is in Your Hands!

Suzanne

Consumerism At Its Finest

Body Parts for Sale

Medical procedures that should be reserved for last resort situations have become commonplace “solutions” to musculoskeletal pain.  Physicians in a rush to embrace new technology have forgotten what country doctors knew intuitively, that the design of the human body is not flawed; Given the opportunity the body can, in most cases, heal itself.  Patients, in a hurry to eliminate pain, would prefer to take a pill or undergo surgery rather than make necessary lifestyle changes that would allow the body to heal itself.  The shoulder hurts, the knee hurts, the hip hurts:  Remove the appropriate joint and bolt on another.  But what if the source of the pain was not at the site of the pain?  What if the shoulder hurt because the hips were misaligned?  Will the pain return somewhere else?  What body part will you replace next? Pete Egoscue says that of the hundreds of patients he sees in his clinic who have had joint replacements, ALL of them would have been better off with a less traumatic, alternative treatment, with the single exception of accident victims whose joints were DESTROYED.

Loss of cartilage is often the rationale used to justify joint replacement.  Yet the body is not given a fixed amount of cartilage that when used up will not be replaced.  Given a chance, the body will replace the cartilage scraped away by misalignment.  We grow hair and fingernails and replace dead cells throughout our bodies everyday.  “The only reason to think that cartilage is permanently lost is that the dysfunction  that wears away the tissue in the first place is allowed to be permanent.”  The cartilage does not regenerate because it continues to be worn down faster than it is being built up.  Removing the dysfunction, restoring lost functions and maintaining them with prescribed exercises done each day will give the body the chance it needs.  Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it?  But artificial knees and hips and shoulder joints are state-of-the-art medicine with high price tags, so they must be a better solution, right?  Wrong.

So, how did we get here, to this place where the majority of us willingly accept and believe that replacing one of our joints with man-made materials is the only solution?  The answer is not a simple one but if we don’t at least start exploring it, human beings as a species are in serious trouble.  The technological advancements that have taken place in the last 100 years have changed our lives dramatically.  Everywhere you look there are new laborsaving devices, which we welcome as things that will make life “easier”.  What we have failed to notice is that our bodies are crying out to us for more motion, the motion that allowed us to not only survive for a few million years, but to successfully multiply and prosper.  The cries may be fatigue, anxiety, sleeplessness, headaches, leg cramps, stiffness and eventually pain.  Disconnected from our bodies, unable to understand the messages being communicated, we take a pill or look for some immediate way to silence the alarm, rather than solve the real problem, lack of adequate motion.   We have allowed ourselves to be lulled into a belief that the same human design that got us to 2012 is now “too frail to withstand the punishing onslaught of a desk chair without the benefit of drugs, surgery, or machines.”

 

Good health is not a product you can buy.  It requires personal responsibility that begins with learning to listen to your body, and identifying the dysfunctions and compensations that are present.  This knowledge and a daily dose of proper motion provided by Egoscue Method “e-cises” will set you on a path to a pain free, motion filled life.

YOUR HEALTH IS IN YOUR HANDS!

Suzanne

*Based on Pete Egoscue’s book, The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion

The Language of Love

 

Actually, there are 5 primary Love Languages, according to Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, The Secret to Love That Lasts.  My boyfriend, Dave, introduced me to this premise early in our dating relationship.  I must admit quite readily that, if it were not for the information in this book, our relationship might have been a very short one.  As it turns out with us, and I suspect for most couples, our primary Love Languages are not the same.  In fact, my Love Language is Quality Time, the thing most difficult for him to give, as a man whose professional life requires a lot of travel.  His primary Love Language is Words of Affirmation, something that I have never given with ease.  Making this realization and then consciously choosing to learn to speak your partner’s language is not easy, but it is definitely worth it if you want to give and receive love.  I know from experience that love given in a language that is not understood by the receiver “falls on deaf ears”.

Words of Affirmation

   The 5 Love Languages are:

Receiving Gifts

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

Quality Time

There is a quick and easy way to find out which of these Love Languages is your primary.  You can reach the 5 Love Languages website at http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/, for a quiz that will help you define your primary Love Language, and of course, you will want your partner to take the quiz too.  You can also simply give some thought to what you generally seek in your relationships and how you usually choose to express love to others.  The book is a valuable tool to help you learn how to speak your loved one’s language.

We all have a deep need for emotional love.  Often, when we give love in our own language and it is not received as it was intended, doubts about the depth of the love connection and about self-worth creep in.  These doubts and the hurt they cause start to erode both our own self-confidence and the quality of the relationship.  What Dave and I have both learned as we embraced the need to speak each other’s Love Language, is that we always get back more than we give.  When you give your partner love in his language, he not only hears you but he knows that you made a conscious decision to do so.  This gesture will create a feeling of love and gratitude that he will return to you as a gift in your language.  The desire to continue to please each other self-perpetuates itself if you remain conscious and CHOOSE LOVE!

Your health AND that of your relationships is in your hands!

 Happy Valentines Day,

Suzanne

Ergonomics:  Solution or Part of the Problem?

ergonomics--info.com

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to sit in on an Ergonomic Evaluation of my boyfriend’s home office setup.  He was required by his new employer to participate in this 30-minute online assessment of his equipment and his physical relationship to it.  They inquired about things like chair height relative to the angle created by his thighs and trunk, whether the inside of his knees touched the front of the seat or if there was space in between, and the shape of the chair back and his seated posture.  They also asked questions about the position of his computer screen related to line of sight and head angle, and the position of his arms and hands in relation to the keyboard, etc.  You get the idea.

My sense is that the employer wants to help its employees remain pain free in their work environment AND it also wants to cover its behind if the employee develops some “work related” syndrome and blames it on the work conditions and, of course, the employer.  It has become a modern cultural assumption that the chair, desk, computer, and phone, if not set up or addressed properly, are to blame for any ensuing discomfort, pain or injury to the individual using them.  The real problem is not the equipment and the way it is used, but the restriction of movement that limits the body’s use of its muscles.  The few active muscles strengthen and the inactive ones weaken, causing musculoskeletal imbalances.  Imbalance, or loss of design form, eventually causes pain and loss of function.

The only thing wrong with restricted movement is that it is restricted.  It should be augmented with a variety of motion that provides stimulus to the muscles that are not being used in the work environment.  The solution is not to restrict the restricted movement even further with Ergonomic reengineering and gadgetry.  This may bring temporary relief, but the pain will return until the underlying problem--lack of motion, and resulting dysfunctions, are addressed.

Most of the discomfort and pain that we experience while sitting at a computer, such as tightness in our shoulders and necks, pain in our wrists, even headaches and eye-strain, are actually symptoms of a improperly positioned hips.  Our spine was designed to be shaped like an “S”, but our lack of sufficient motion has tipped the pelvis backward flattening out the low back and changing the “S” into a “C”.  Because our body works as a unit, the change in the position of the pelvis then moves the shoulders and head forward to compensate.  Now, we have created a condition of “flexion” for our body from the hips on up, which means that the muscles in the low back, upper back, shoulders, and neck are under a lot of tension all day as they try to keep us from falling flat on our face.  The forward position of the shoulders affects the position of the wrists, causing them to flatten out and put strain on the Carpal Tunnel.

One of the things stressed, and rightly so, in the Ergonomics presentation, was maintaining the “S” curve of the spine.  The problem is that if the “C” curve already exists, and it is now prevalent in our sedentary society, a chair cannot fix your posture.  Posture is not voluntary.  To maintain an “S” curve requires functioning postural muscles.  The only way to acquire active, functional postural muscles is to provide them with adequate, functional motion.

In my last blog article, From Design to Dysfunction and Back Again, I pointed out the visible signs of dysfunction and compensation that demonstrate the result of inadequate motion.  The technological “advances” of the last 50 years have changed our environment forever.  At every turn some new piece of equipment removes yet another need for motion.  Our design, however, is hundreds of thousands of years old, and it requires motion to thrive.  Since our environment no longer encourages motion, getting an adequate supply of it requires a conscious decision to add functional movement to our daily routine.  The Egoscue Methodâ identifies dysfunction and provides personalized routines, or menus of “ecises” designed to reawaken the deep postural muscles in as little as 20 minutes a day.  Visit my website http://loveinmotion.me/, and send me an email to suzannelamarche@gmail.com or call me at 951 704-5965 to discuss your needs.  Return your body to its design form and experience well being you thought was gone forever.

YOUR HEALTH IS IN YOUR HANDS!

Suzanne

* Material based on  Pete Egoscue’s book, Pain Free at Your PC