Got ten minutes? Of course you do! Do these posture exercises as a mid-day break to reenergize your mind and body. When this gets easy, contact us for more challenging workouts that will increase your fitness level, improve your posture, restore function, and be fun to do. Live, play, be...pain free!
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Do you have a gym partner? Looking for a way to connect with your significant other? Want to get your kids more active? Try this partner workout of posture exercises that is fun and functional at the same time. This can be used as a warmup before weight training, running, group exercise classes, or as a warmup and team building exercise for your high school, college, or recreational sports team. Want more partner or group exercises and workouts? Contact us and we can design whatever you need! What do you believe?
“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” H. Jackson Browne “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.” James F. Bymes “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Marcus Aurelius “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.” Don Miguel Ruiz "Fear appears in layers and is removed with LOVE not soap." Pete Egoscue “Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.” Dorothy Thompson "Fear is excitement hidden by negative beliefs." Matt Whitehead "We only fear what we don't understand." Unknown “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt “One of the first things a relationship therapist learns is that couples argue to burn up energy that could be used for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of using up energy, so that the couple do not have to take the courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough.” Gay Hendricks “You will fear the darkness only to the extent that you yourself are not providing light.” Marianne Williamson "An unbalanced body fears motion." Matt Whitehead "Suffering is optional, you have the power to choose between sickness and health, hope and fear." Pete Egoscue If you did not read my post about creating a new definition of fear, read it here. Sonia Jones credits Pete Egoscue with saving her life. Egoscue, a posture alignment expert and author of multiple books including Pain Free, first met Sonia after she had undergone back surgery and could barely walk. His revolutionary approach to fitness and alignment and the posture exercises she performed transformed her physical body and turned her on to yoga, one of her greatest passions. The Egoscue Method of Postural Alignment Therapy is what saved me personally from years of painful running injuries and I've used the posture exercises to help thousands of people end their cycle of chronic and episodic pain and return to a pain free and active life. Contact me today for a FREE posture evaluation where you will learn what the underlying cause of your pain is and how you can fix it. Challenge your body in a new way with this Egoscue arms and legs workout. These posture exercises engage your big posture muscles and helps restore balance to your body left to right and front to back. Without balanced posture, strength training or any other workout can cause more harm than good. Remember straighten then strengthen. Restore balance then go play!
Want more? Contact us for personalized workouts geared to restore your unique postural imbalances and your goals. We work with people in our beautiful Portland Oregon clinic and with people from around the world on Skype, FaceTime or email. Fear. It is something we are all familiar with. We have all felt fear at different times in our lives and for different reasons. Some fears are short lived and some are chronic and thus debilitating. I want to have you join me as we explore fear. What does Fear mean to you? If you look up the definition of fear, it is described as a distressing emotional response to threat. My friends at The Red Tomato Fitness had this to say about fear in a blog post: When I was a kid we used to make up all sorts of games. In particular, we would stand on the monkey bars at recess and jump and see how far we could land. Children are fearless when it comes to their physical limitations. When they see a challenge instead of saying, “Oh, I can’t jump that far”, they say “Lets see how far I can jump.” We have to learn to think like a child, we have to learn how to play again. So the 2nd part of this answer, which I have already touched on it a bit, is FEAR. Most of the time we let fear get in the way of us overcoming a physical challenge. As we grow older, and we haven’t done a particular task in a long time, we become scared. We have to learn to over come our fears of physical activity. I do not believe kids are fearless, but rather they have a different definition of fear than most adults. Think about the way kids view fear: they are on top of the monkey bars 6 feet in the air and they get excited and decide to jump! Most adults get scared and would quickly climb down. What is the difference? It comes down to belief and our working definition of fear. Adults believe fear is telling them to stop, slowly back away, and hide. Kids believe fear is telling them to get alert, excited, and ready to have fun. How would your life change if you adopted the kids belief system?
Kids believe FEAR means: Feeling Excited And Ready All the physiological responses to fear our body has are not to get us ready to run and hide but to get us ready to grow, expand, and soar like eagles. Excitement and passion are the source of life and fear with this new definition becomes a source of life rather than contraction and death. Today’s experiment: Adopt a kid’s belief in fear for a day, week, or month and see what happens. Have fun! Report back on how it went and what you learned in the comments below. We live in a quick fix society. Turn on the TV. Surf the internet. Walk into any store. Listen to any politician. Everything being sold is a magic bullet or quick fix. Why? Because we want everything yesterday. Why? Because we live in fear. Fear of things getting worse. Fear of there not being enough. Fear that there’s not enough time. Fear that there’s not enough money. Fear that we are not enough. Fear of death. Patience is an attitude that comes from living in the present moment and being ok with things as they are and knowing that there is always enough time, money, things, and that yours is on its way and that you are always enough. In our society of the 21st century true patience is rare and fear rules. Living in fear has created a pattern of thought that is depressing. The majority of this country is living with the glass half empty and expecting a big leak to develop at any time. It’s no wonder that over 30 million Americans take antidepressants (1 in 10). With many billions of dollars of these drugs sold a year, antidepressants are always among the best selling category of drugs in the US. Antidepressants sales took a hit after a Newsweek article in 2010 that showed the results of studies about the effectiveness of antidepressants. The cover says it all:  The cover story brings our quick fix society to its knees: “The Depressing News about Antidepressants: Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse.” (to understand how medical science got into this mess, read this: Why it’s better to have a mind than a brain part 1 and part 2.)
Why do we keep putting so much of our money into things that promise a quick fix but don’t deliver? Beliefs. Our society has developed a belief (or meme) unconsciously that has spread itself throughout every aspect of our society. (Read the intro to Virus of the Mind) This belief (self-destructive belief) that there is an easy, magic bullet, quick fix to everything is not only costing us billions of dollars a year, but is also costing us our health (because all quick fixes end up causing more problems in the long run than they solve). The only way to change this is to adopt a new belief (a new meme). A new belief that is self-supporting and start spreading this belief to everyone through every channel we have (create a positive meme or virus of the mind). This belief might sound like this:
The quick fix mentality applies to how we treat chronic pain, but research is showing us that these "fixes" often don't work, just like antidepressants don't work.
When suffering with chronic or episodic pain, instead of looking for a quick fix, you might be better off asking yourself these questions and adopting these beliefs:
Here's a fun testimonial from a client who dropped the idea of a quick fix, started asking better questions, and changed her beliefs to empowering. Do you suffer from tension headaches, migraine headaches, cluster headaches, sinus pressure or sinus pain?
Watch this video to learn how sinuses work, what causes sinus pressure and pain, and why forward head posture play a big role in sinus problems and headaches. Pete Egoscue leads Gloria through two simple Egoscue posture exercises (e-cises) and watch how her posture and pain quickly change! Start doing these two posture exercises today and contact us to find out what else you can do to end your headaches or sinus problems and return to living a pain free and active life. |
About Matt WhiteheadI'm an Egoscue Institute certified Postural Alignment Specialist (PAS) and Advanced Exercise Therapist (AET), certified personal trainer, PatchFitness performer, FiveFingers wearer, trail runner, mountain biker, dad, music lover, environmentalist, and wanna-be slam dunk champion. I will be providing you with the latest posture exercises to help you live, play, and be pain free. Archives
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