:  with your fingers, gently poke into your side, into the soft of the waist between the top of your hip crest and the bottom of your rib cage. 

Make sure that you are pressing in far enough back that you can feel the base of the bottom rib.  Now, see how much space there is in terms of finger width.  Can you fit in one, two, two and a half fingers?  Ideally, there should be a three fingers-width worth of space between your rib cage and your hip though often we encounter much less. 

This is because between the ribs and hips (with the exception of the spine), there are only soft muscles that can chronically tighten over time.  Unlike in the upper torso where ribs create and maintain space between the vertebrae, the waist relies on a healthy tonus of the waist muscles to keep the proper length in the spine.  And by healthy, I don’t mean tight six-pack-abs.  I mean healthy, flexible, mobile muscles that can help you do all of the things that a healthy waist should. 

Let’s talk a little about what these waist muscles are designed to do.  The waist muscles allow a wide range of motion: they allow us to bend forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally and can turn the upper body while the hips are facing forwards  - an important safe-driving skill. 

When the waist muscles get really tight, they pull down the rib cage towards the hips, compromising the ideal length in this area.  This action compresses the lower lumbar region of the spine, which can impinge nerves, cause a great deal of pain, and compromise the integrity of the spinal disks.  While the spinal disks are made to take a lot of compression, they are built to withstand this natural stress only if it is not chronic. 

The muscles of the waist also have a lot to do the mechanics of walking:  orchestrating and mediating the cross-lateral movement between the hips and pelvis, arms and legs that occurs in a normal gait.  How much these muscles lengthen also determines how far you are able to reach into that upper cabinet.  Over time, a chronic shortening of the waist leads to a loss of hip mobility that results in wear and tear on hip, knee and ankle joints.  We start to move like cardboard boxes rather than the sleek animals we were designed to be. 

If you’re not impressed yet, listen to this:  the muscles of the waist also help maintain your natural height.  Most people find that over the years they lose a little of their height – sometimes as much as a few inches.  Well, you may have guessed it – the compression of the waist is the source of this loss of height.  I regularly have clients report after their yearly physical that they’ve gotten taller! 

And what about slimness?  When the waist shortens, all the skin, muscle and other tissue in this area tend to bulge out to the sides - easily corrected by regaining the vertical length.  Another thing worth mentioning is that digestion and organ function can also improve as more space is available for movement and circulation in this vital area, so reclaim your three-fingers’ worth!

If you have any questions about your particular condition, please feel free to contact us at Ahimsa Bodywork, (510) 495-4449.

, which includes the calves, hamstrings, as well as the muscles of the back and neck are engaging and life-affirming.  They make it possible to push off into a step, look up at the sky and open your arms to welcome someone into a hug. In a baby’s development, learning to use these muscles is one of the most exciting accomplishments.  When these muscles are used, the baby can lift the head, choose what to look at as well as gain the spinal support necessary for locomotion; crawling and later walking.

The back muscles engage when we are needed and when we have the intention to engage in an activity.  With all of our adult responsibilities, we tend to engage these muscles a lot – to the point where chronic tension can develop resulting in constant, nagging back pain: tight shoulders, neck pain, lower back pain.  Essentially, these overused muscles tire and hurt.  As far as low back pain is concerned these chronically contracted muscles keep the spinal disks compressed which in the long-run can compromise their integrity. 

In concert with the contraction of the back muscles and the back of the legs, there is almost always tightness in the muscles along the side of the legs (IT band) and of the gluteal muscles (buttocks).  This can cause a pain that goes down the leg, sometimes also paired with a distinct pain in the gluteals – a veritable pain in the butt!  This pain, sometimes referred to as Piriformis Syndrome, is due to the piriformis muscle squeezing and irritating the sciatic nerve that travels down the leg.  By releasing the tight muscles, relief from pain is immediate. 

A qualified bodyworker can accomplish this release manually.   Additionally, by learning how to better control these muscles yourself through somatic exercises, it is possible to relax them when they are not being used, allowing the muscles to rejuvenate and preventing any pain from occurring. 

If you suffer from chronic back pain, it is not enough to take a pain-killer and mask the symptoms.  When over-done, this practice can lead to serious structural problems.  Through bodywork and neuro-muscular education you can restore balance to your spine and muscles.

If you have questions about your particular condition, please feel free to call us at (510) 495-4449. 

Slumping the shoulders forward, sinking the chest, having a slight bend at the elbows and wrists, and perhaps even finding it difficult to completely straighten the legs are all symptoms of what we in Hanna Somatics identify as a dominance of the "red light reflex."  Just as a red light tells you to stop your car, the “red light reflex” is a stop and withdraw mechanism that is triggered when we are startled.  It is a reflex that is programmed so deeply into our nervous systems that we are born with it. 

It’s easy to notice this reflex action where there is a sudden loud noise and we instinctively hunker down, bend the knees and elbows, compress the abdomen and duck our heads.  Less obvious is also a knocking of the knees together and a drawing of the arms into the body.  (A scientific way to describe this whole-body jerk is a coordinated whole body flexion response.)  What is very interesting about this is that the whole body participates in one big coordinated effort, the point of which is to protect us: minimize our presence, hide our soft belly parts, pull in the limbs and draw down the head.  That way, we expose our less vulnerable side, the back. 

But this whole-body response doesn't just happen when there is fear of a physical threat; it also happens when we are internally threatened or overwhelmed and would like to withdraw emotionally.  People's bodies engage the red light reflex in cases of depression, anxiety, verbal abuse and the like.  I for one have never seen an individual suffering from depression walking with his or her shoulders back, head held high. 

If the red light reflex is triggered a lot or we put our bodies its pattern through activities like excessive sitting, our body’s posture can become habituated to this mode so that we always slump.  In a sense, it’s as though our bodies have “forgotten” how to straighten up. 

What’s happening is that the flexor muscles associated with the red light reflex become perpetually contracted to some degree, literally pulling us down, resisting and overpowering the other set of muscles called extensors that would otherwise help us to stay upright.  The more time that we spend with our bodies in this coordinated reflex pattern, the more the muscles get used to staying that way; they become habituated and chronically contracted, holding the position to some extent all the time.  This is why when we try to stand up straight, it's difficult or even impossible - not because the back muscles are weak, but because the front (flexor) muscles won't let go and oppose our efforts.  Worst of all, because reflexes are governed by the unconscious parts of our brains, when a reflex starts to dominate our posture, we can’t help doing it and usually don’t know why.

Whatever the cause of our chronic red light symptoms, there is a chicken and egg situation.  The more we stay in it, the more the body does this spontaneously.  The more the body is in the red light mode, the more we feel depressed, anxious and the like.  The body posture itself tells the mind it is depressed, anxious and threatened in some way and likewise, because we are prompted to feel this way, we are also more likely to slump. 

The good news is that we can correct postural problems that are rooted in habituations to reflex patterns by the intelligent use of our higher brains.  When we do slow, deliberate movements, we activate the sensory-motor cortex, a highly evolved part of the brain that helps us to learn new movements and can overcome unconscious reflex-based actions.  This is what Hanna Somatic exercises and hands-on sessions are designed to do. 

If you find that your body is habituated in the red light (flexion) reflex, it’s very important to deal with this it because in addition to affecting one's posture, a chronic state of the red light reflex is linked to other symptoms: a shuffling back-weighted walk, digestive difficulties, shallow breathing, high blood pressure and reduced cardiac output (which can lead to a heart-attack).  These latter four are related to the effects of a collapsed chest and contracted abdomen.  When the chronic tension in the flexor muscles is released, better posture is effortless, and there is often an improvement in our moods and energy levels, decreased fear and anxiety, better digestion and a normalizing of blood pressure.

Chronic muscular tension comes from two sources, trauma and habituation.  Both of these result in pain, decreased range of motion, and are often accompanied by emotional distress. 

Let's look at the first cause: trauma.   When there is a sudden shock – either physical or emotional – our bodies initiate an instinctive protective response, which helps us to guard the site of the injury.  If we stub a toe, we suddenly withdraw the foot and our hands immediately go to touch the hurt, and if that toe keeps throbbing we hobble a little to avoid the pain.  In a more serious case such as a car accident or recovery from surgery, our bodies completely reorganize in order to support the healing process.  This is generally accomplished by tightening the muscles around the injury and immobilizing the site.  As a result of this new restriction, we also make changes in the way we walk, breathe and accomplish day-to-day tasks such as reaching for things, or doing dishes – all to avoid aggravating the trauma. 

Within a short while, we get so used to these ‘minor’ compensations that they become habits incorporated into our day-to day lives and we no longer realize that we are moving in limited and unnatural ways.  At this point, the brain has learned and fully accepted a new way of organizing movement that works better than the previous way: not because it is fundamentally better but because it better serves the needs at hand.  Unfortunately, because these habits and compensations become so thoroughly incorporated into our day-to-day lives, they tend to persist long after the healing is complete and because there is no automatic mechanism that tells the brain, “It’s all better now, please go back to how I moved before the injury,” these compensations can persist even years after the initial trauma.  Furthermore, because these ways of moving don’t correspond with how the body is built to move, we create strain on our own muscles and joints that after a time shows up as tension, pain, and inflammation, followed in turn by more compensatory patterns, and so on.

Although trauma is often implicated in chronic pain and tightness, there is another way that these problems can develop, namely habituation.  The movements that you do a lot, whether it be driving, typing, or a hobby like golf, require your muscles to operate in specific ways.  After some practice, these movements become “easy.”  Essentially, the movements have been learned so well that they have been taken over by subconscious control.   For example, you can type without looking or have a conversation while driving.  But again, the problem with too much subconscious control is that we end up instilling hard-wired patterns of use that have other, unwanted consequences.  One problem is that habitually over-used muscles forget how to relax completely and always hold some degree of tension like the all-too-common knotted shoulders.  At that point, no matter how much we beg them to relax, the stubborn knots hold out on us, held in their contracted state by that subconscious habituation.   

Our brains simply do not discriminate between helpful patterns or hurtful patterns, they just help us in the present to do those things that we habitually do with as much ease as possible. The problem with habitual movement and tension patterns is that they become so deeply ingrained and subconsciously hard-wired that they persist without your conscious control. 

Similar to the effects of trauma, these areas of habitual tension and immobility, lead to compensations in other parts of the body and voila, we're no longer using the body in the ways that it is designed to work which creates strain and other problems later on; tight shoulders can turn into frozen shoulders, which can in turn impair proper hip and knee function.

The good news is that much like one easily, and rather spontaneously, learns all of the bad habits and compensations that contribute to the pain and tension one may be experiencing, with a little effort, one can unlearn these and regain proper movement and body function.  The brain will just as easily accept and re-learn healthy ways of moving.  Human beings are by far the most adaptable species on the planet.  We rely much more on what we learn than what is genetically hard-wired.  We can replace compensatory learning with intelligent learning and intelligent movement.  Furthermore, we can learn very quickly, especially when there is a deliberate and conscious learning process involved, so that the correct habits can be learned in a fraction of the time it took us to adopt all of the negatives.

This re-learning can be accomplished through Hanna Somatics, a type of functional movement education developed by Thomas Hanna, in the tradition of Moshe Feldenkreis.  Hanna Somatics consists of intelligent, gentle, and comfortable movements that re-instate our natural movement possibilities and give us back conscious control of our muscles.  Often, the benefits of Somatics can be gained more quickly with the help of a trained professional, a Hanna Somatic Educator, who can teach correct movement and do hands-on sessions.  

If the tissues themselves are very stuck or the posture has been badly distorted over many years of misuse, a regiment of structural integration therapy, such as Zen Bodytherapy (a type of Rolfing), can help to break up stuck tissues and re-organize fascia, thereby reinstating proper posture and making unrestricted, pain-free movement a reality. 

If you have any questions about your particular condition, please feel free to contact us at Ahimsa Bodywork, (510) 495-4449.