Walking is almost as essential for human health as drinking water and eating food is. The human body is designed to walk and walking helps maintain our physical, mental, and emotional health. Every movement a baby makes from birth to 1-year-old is to help prepare for walking. Walking is essential to for brain development, immune response, digestion, and circulation. Walking has been shown to lift our mood, boost creativity, increase metabolism, improve sleep, boost brain power, decrease pain, and decrease stress. Walking, like other exercise, can add up to seven years to our life and is considered a miracle drug because it helps prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and many other problems.
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This is part 2 of Understanding Human Psychology and Chronic Pain. Part 1, talked about the 4 classes of experiences and how engaging in less class 3 and 4 experiences and more 1 and 2 experiences will have a very positive impact on our health.
Part 2 is going to explain how everything we do in life is driven by the 6 Human Needs and how we can choose positive or negative ways to meet these needs which will determine whether they are an empowering or destructive force in our lives and on our physical health. After introducing the 6 human needs we will examine how these needs play into chronic pain and whether people are able to become pain free again. What are you imagining? If you are the typical person in pain, you are imagining the pain getting worse, limiting your ability to work, play (you might have already forgot what that is), and enjoy your life. You are imagining having to get that surgery you have been trying to avoid and imagining having the long hard recovery that you heard people have to go through to get better. You are imagining that your health will continue to get worse because of course you’re getting older and that’s what happens. But what if you chose to imagine something different? What if you chose to imagine your pain decreasing and going away? What if you chose to imagine being able to get well without needing surgery? What if you chose to imagine being able to resume a pain free and active life full of joy? What if you chose to then help others imagine the same for them? If Albert Einstein is right (and he usually is), then what you choose to imagine right now, and each moment from now on, is what you are going to experience. So the question is: What do you chose to imagine? For help imagining a pain free and active life, contact me for a free posture evaluation and consultation and I'll help you understand what you need to do to achieve your goal of living pain free and enjoying peace of mind. To truly understand why someone has chronic pain and why they are not enjoying better health, and to help them achieve a pain free active life and enjoy peace of mind, we must understand their psychology along with their physiology. Only addressing someone's physiology and ignoring their psychology is often why people lose 30 pounds only to gain it back 6 months later, or go in and out of episodes of back pain, or have repeated surgeries for chronic pain. One way to understand our own psychology is to look at why we do what we do. What are the driving forces behind the choices we make and how can we learn to make more positive choices?
The Wall Drop is an Egoscue e-cise that uses a Slant Board to create bilaterally symmetrical ankle dorsiflexion which creates a chain reaction throughout the body to improve postural alignment. How does the Wall Drop affect posture?
The Wall Drop takes advantage of gravity and uses the position your feet are in and the wall to cause reactions and postural changes throughout your body. When you position your feet hip width apart and straight you are creating symmetry and balance in your foot position and this will create a chain reaction up your legs, into your pelvis, up your spine, and affect every joint and muscle in your body. In this blog post I'm going to talk about the components of the successful exercise program. When I talk about successful, I'm not talking about helping you lose 15 pounds over a month or two, or helping you drop 2 dress sizes, or getting you in shape for your wedding. Successful to me is a lot less about short term visual goals and a lot more about long term health and wellness. If you're overweight, losing 15 pounds is great, but if you don't keep the weight off for good, it had little to no real benefit to your life.
Successful exercise programs help you: How can you make this your best year yet? I have 10 things you can do that I believe will help you make this your best year yet.
Nature designed a beautiful and fool-proof way for newborn infants to develop into strong and capable children and then adults. A newborn human baby goes from completely helpless to walking in the first year of life because of this beautiful process. During the first year of life, this process involves 10 sequential yet overlapping phases of physical development which I discussed here. When this process happens as nature intended it, we get healthy, strong, and happy toddlers. There are however 10 things that can hijack your baby's physical development which can mean your baby is not as healthy, happy, or strong as they could be. When this development is hijacked, your child might be more susceptible to injury, obesity, and chronic pain throughout life.
With 206 bones, over 300 joints, and over 600 muscles, the human body is designed to move. Movement is what keeps our bones, joints, and muscles healthy. When a joint stops moving things start to break down and get weaker. Bones lose density. Muscles lose strength and size. Cartilage thins. Bad things happen.
Yes, there are times when immobilization is helpful and a good idea. If you break your arm it's a good idea to get a cast to protect your arm as it heals. If you severely sprain your ankle it can be helpful to wear an ankle brace for a week or two. But most immobilization we experience is not that type, but rather body casts that we don't even think about. Anything that limits joint movement is a body cast and will have negative effects on the body. Here are examples of things that cast or hold the body in a certain position or limit movement: |
About Matt WhiteheadI'm an Egoscue Institute® certified Postural Alignment Specialist (PAS) and Advanced Exercise Therapist (AET), certified personal trainer, PatchFitness performer, ultra 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
June 2024
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