My Blog is Moving

Dear Followers,

I am so thankful to all of you who follow my blogs regularly.  During these first few months several of you have had some difficulties with the Blogger sight and this concerns me.  I want "tuning in" to be easy and leaving me comments and getting a reply in return to be even easier.  To this end, we have decided to move my blog to Word Press.  

My new Blog address is http://loveinmotionme.wordpress.com/.  When you go to this site, at the top of the page on the right side is a place to type in your email address and click on "Follow".  It is that simple to sign up to follow the new blog!  All of the articles that I have written to date have already been posted here, so you won't miss out on anything you may want to refer back to or read again.  You can also access the new blog from my website at http://loveinmotion.me/, by clicking on the button at the bottom of the home page that says "Follow Suzanne on her Blog".

Thanks again for taking this journey with me.  See you at http://loveinmotionme.wordpress.com/ !

Your Health is in Your Hands

Suzanne

Use It or Lose It

Skiing is a sport that I was introduced to as a child, back when skis were made of wood and boots came just above the ankles and laced up.  As a young teen, my Dad, my sister and I would drive from the San Francisco Bay area where we lived to Sierra Mountain Resorts to ski for the day, several times a year.  After I graduated from college, I moved to Lake Tahoe with the intention of staying for a ski season and ended up staying for 3 years.  I waited tables (so much for a college education) and had a weekday ski pass for Alpine Meadows Ski Resort.  Life was good!  Then I moved to Southern California, got married, had kids, and skied a lot less frequently.  But like riding a bike, once your body has developed the muscle memory, your ability to pick up where you left off stays with you for life—if you stay functional.

Recently, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do some downhill skiing in Colorado.  I hadn’t been skiing in 17 years!  In my mind’s eye I knew I would remember how to ski, but I was very nervous about how well I would ski, how much endurance I would have, and how badly I would hurt the next day.  After all, I am 58 years old now!  Well, I have to report that I may not have pushed it as hard as I did when I was 25, but my form was as good as it had ever been, my stamina at least as good as it was 17 years ago, and recovery time wasn't even an issue. It was truly amazing to me how well my body engaged, endured, and renewed itself, and testimony to the way I have taken care of myself over the last 12 years.  The same could not be said for my equipment—the plastic heel plate on one of my boots (which were relatively new when I wore them last) broke in the ski shop as they were being fitted to a pair of skis and the elastic strap on my goggles broke as I tried to stretch it over the ski helmet I was renting!

The Egoscue Method® gets most of the credit for my ability to return to skiing with a functional body, although I do not want to minimize the contributions of The Blood Type Diet® or the mental and spiritual advances I have made toward personal serenity and Whole Body Wellness.  I have been a daily devotee to my Egoscue exercise routines for 5 years now.  As I have discussed in several of my earlier blogs, “Dysfunction” is the new “normal” in a culture that views motion as something to eliminate whenever possible.  The latest and greatest laborsaving devices are everywhere.  The only problem is we require motion to continue to live and grow, without it we decline and die. 

  Our bodies were designed with perfect vertical and horizontal alignment of all load-bearing joints to provide strength, resiliency, and minimal wear and tear.  Our “dysfunctions” show up as heads forward, misaligned shoulders, hips tipped too far forward or back, bowed or knock knees, everted (duck) feet, and other deviations from our design form with its perfect vertical and horizontal alignment of all load-bearing joints.  The cause of the dysfunctions—lack of adequate motion to maintain muscular balance.  Without the physical demands faced by our Hunter/Gatherer ancestors or even those who lived 100 years ago, very few of us get enough balanced exercise from our normal daily activities to maintain our design form.

While on the slopes, I saw several injured skiers being tended by ski patrolmen and carried down the mountain on sleds designed for this purpose.  It was a reminder that such events are commonplace; in fact, it would be rare to spend the day skiing and not see someone injured.  Is skiing just a dangerous sport, or did these individuals hurt themselves because a dysfunctional hip prevented them from turning when needed, or their skis separated because their leg muscles were unaccustomed to keeping their knees and feet pointed straight ahead?  One look at the skier’s posture would give you the answer, and I’m betting that the danger lies not with the sport, but with the dysfunction the athlete brings to it.

For more information on The Egoscue Method®, The Blood Type Diet®, or other aspects of Whole Body Wellness, visit my website at http://loveinmotion.me/, or leave me a Comment on the link below and I will get back to you.

Your Health is in Your Hands!

Suzanne

It’s the Position Not the Condition

Today’s blog title is a line you will hear frequently from anyone who teaches the Egoscue Method® of Health Through Motion.  Many of the physical “Conditions” individuals are diagnosed with today are really a result of faulty postural alignment.  Two of the Conditions that have become commonplace in our current cultural environment are Rotator Cuff Tears and Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.  Both are related to the same dysfunctional Position of shoulders locked forward.  Both are also considered “Repetitive Motion” injuries.

Before I address each of these Conditions, I want to challenge the widely adopted view that doing some kind of motion over and over again will somehow wear out the body parts that are involved in that motion.  The problem is not in the repetitive motion itself but in its restrictive nature.  Pete Egoscue says in Pain Free at Your PC, “If you replace the word repetitive with restricted, it’s a more accurate label for these common injuries.  By limiting movement to just a few of the same moves that occur over and over again, we are creating musculoskeletal imbalances.”  The answer is not to further limit the already restricted motion, but to augment it with a variety of motion that supports the otherwise inactive muscles.  We are not born with a certain number of times we can rotate our shoulders, bend our knees, or flex our wrists before they wear out.  It is the resulting imbalance that is the problem, not the motion itself.

Rotator cuff tears are regarded today as an inevitable occurrence for those who play tennis, golf, baseball or any other sport that requires “repetitive” rotational motion of the shoulder.   The most common solutions to this injury are to surgically repair the damage or to shave down the head of the humerus (the upper arm bone).  The problem is that the actual cause of the injury has not been addressed.  The reason the rotator cuff function was impaired is that the shoulder is locked in a forward hinge position.  With the shoulder forward, the rotator cuff muscles cannot rotate the head of the humerus the way they are supposed to.  Without the designed range of motion, the muscles tear as they are forced to try to complete the desired task.  Sadly, the surgery may relieve the pain for a while, but the underlying dysfunction has not been addressed.  The pain will return here or at some other “link” in the kinetic chain, like the elbow or wrist.

Carpel Tunnel Syndrome has become a wide spread “work related injury” for those sitting at a computer for a large part of their day.  The resulting restriction in the wrist and accompanying pain or numbness send thousands of people to surgeons who remove a tendon that was designed to move muscles in the forearms, as well as the wrists and fingers, to make more “space”.  Well it turns out the lack of “space” in the carpel tunnel was caused by faulty positioning of the wrist as a result of guess what—forward rounded shoulders.  Removing the tendon may allow relief for a while, but the pain will return unless the posture is addressed.  And, re-engineering the body is very likely to create a new problem down the road.  Some people try using braces to restrict the motion in the affected wrist.  It may provide relief while worn, but without addressing the underlying dysfunction of the shoulders (and likely the spine), the pain will return when the brace is removed.

Take a look at yourself in a full-length mirror in your normal standing position.  Where are your hands?  Can you see most of your fingers and the backs of your hands, or do you only see your thumbs and a side view of your fingers stacked one in front of the other?  If you see the backs of your hands, your shoulders are locked in a forward position.   The good news is this is correctable with an Egoscue Method® routine that specifically targets the muscles that will realign those shoulders and address any additional dysfunctions. 

Contact me for your evaluation today!  Your Health is in Your Hands!

Suzanne

*Based on Pete Egoscue’s books, The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion and Pain Free at Your PC