While I’m a big fan of a gluten free diet, we’ll be talking about living pain free, getting rid of our aches, and losing stress & stiffness as we successfully age using an approach noted as far back as 1680.

Blog Talk Radio – Women 4 Women Network

As the guy who lived with the so-called women’s disease (fibromyalgia), I’m grateful to be asked to be appear on the Women 4 Women Network. They are empowering women both in business and life.

3 Steps to Getting Out of Pain on Blog Talk Radio

I’ll share the 3 simple steps it takes to change those painful signals to ones of pleasure so you can get back to doing what you want again with your body.

You’ll learn some moves you can do. All you have to do is listen and follow along and feel yourself in the 3 step process of what is known as somatics exercises.

Blog Talk Radio and the Divorce Counselor for Stretching

When I was told to stretch to keep myself limber, little did I know I was actually taking myself backwards – even though I spent as much as 2 hours per day doing it, thinking this would help limber me up.

Whew, I had to come through the looking glass with regards to stretching and helping people find their way to aging gracefully. See you on Susan Rich’s blog talk radio show.

Head movements don’t have to be difficult

In fact, our neck, shoulders and head oughta move freely and easily.

If your head has been stuck by either tight neck muscles or tensed up shoulders, there is a natural way to release the built up muscular tension.

You can try the head movements below just for fun.

Fun head movements to try

See, that wasn’t so hard. Or was it difficult to keep your head facing forwards or not tweaking yourself.

When we’ve endured enough head and neck pain, that movement among others can prove to be difficult. I remember when my neck pain felt like a hard sore block that wouldn’t budge or let me move freely. Turning my neck seemed like it was one of the hardest things to do.

Yet when we consciously remind our body of the available movements that we can do, our brain can release neurochemicals of relaxation while we are regaining function so we can enjoy the mobility we richly deserve.

Not moving in a variety of directions begins to limit our body and perhaps our thinking too.

The head movements connection to the rest of our body is evident when we have to feel or sense our self not only at the movement of the head sliding along the surface… but how it relates with the rest of our body.

We are one piece, last I checked and the more we check-in, the far easier it is to self-correct naturally.

A somatics exercise class on head movements

When we move somatically, we can experience the freeing up of pain, stiffness and aches when we tune further and deeper into ourselves. This most natural act is what we did as babies, as a child and if we’re lucky… remember to do for a comfortable life.

Re-learning to move easily and effortlessly requires a quiet internal observance done in a specific slow manner. If you’re game to be more comfortable, you can learn some head movements to free up the neck, shoulders and more.

Please join me for an online class on head movements where all you’ll have to do is… listen, easily follow along… and notice whatever happens… usually the muscles, aches and pains let go. Isn’t it about time to live with easy head movements?

Some people keep on stretching and are wedded to the concept.

Look at this poor guy stretching

By attempting to stretch his hip flexor, he’s actually tightening his hamstrings, the muscles behind the leg.

He might be even contracting his back muscles to be able to get that foot to the buttocks.

Maybe he can still sit on his heels, but the point is… a stretch such as this is still done at professional levels and worse, high schools and even middle schools kids are being led down this lazy and counter-productive route.

Lazy on account of research moving on. Athletes do not need this to warm-up.

Divorce Counselor for Stretching

As a divorce counselor for stretching… you can rest easy, there are other ways to lengthen muscles and warm them up.



For instance, healthy vertebrate animals aren’t stretching either. It’s not what you think.

They consciously contract and then release themselves.

By refocusing your attention on what muscles are designed to do, that is to contract, we can reset them and ready them at the same time.

Stretching is Over

Leave it to the folks who’ll continue to argue about it saying it makes them feel good rather than understanding it’s a waste of time and we can use our intelligence to reset things rather than pulling us apart.

Even for us 50 year olds, stretching is over.

Letting go of tight, restricted, stiff, tense muscles is easier said than done.

While the advice to just let go sounds like a good idea, our muscles may have
forgotten how to relieve the tension and remain tight as a drum.

It’s possible our muscles have forgotten the art of letting go.

Letting go of muscular tension

When we were young we could easily bound down a hill. Today, as an adult so many of us brace our way down the hill or stairs instead of easily letting go.

When we begin an activity from a place of already being contracted, we accumulate more contractions and move further away from letting go of the muscular tension we’ve added.

When we are in pain, we are often wary. If we happen to stretch a contracted area, then the brain will send a message to re-contract afterwards. Things tighten up once again and letting go doesn’t happen.

Even in a traction device, our muscles will re-contract afterwards so hanging upside down to lengthen muscles may feel temporarily good, yet the brain will do what it does to reset the muscular tension levels back to its set points.

Instead, if we consider our self as a self-adjusting organism, we don’t need any contraptions or devices, just our self and gravity since this is the field we happened to have things go awry in.

In the practice of somatics, we aren’t necessarily focusing on the muscles, we are working with the lines of communication from the brain to the muscles. The pathways or information from brain to muscle is where we play and change both the brain and body.

When we experience a painful signal – this can be our greatest teacher since we can locate a movement above, below, to the right or left or forwards/back of it – which we can release by being careful.

Regaining the ability of letting go

If you believe you can improve yourself, we know today from neural plasticity, the brain and thus the body can change itself.

With a little know-how we can relearn the lost art of letting go.

By easing our way into greater range of motion rather than force, we’ll end up being stronger simply by letting go. If we push it, our brain will naturally re-contract the muscles.

To go easy is like untying a knot gently. If you tug too tightly, the knot will tighten.

Please join me in an online class which offers you the simple art of letting go with easy, fun, simple moves done in a different way of focusing on movement and using the brain to reset our self naturally.

Feeling well in our body is satisfying when have useful tools which allows us to move more freely and easily.

A daily exercise workout plan

Before we think about exercising, we ought to consider what sets us up for exercise in the first place.

When we get up, we are naturally stiffer since our muscles shorten overnight.

Oh what to do? Start with an exercise workout plan.

Instead of traditional stretching, which we know harms us, we can move ourself simply.

Simple, easy movements to articulate our joints primes the muscles for our larger movements throughout the day. After all, you won’t see Fido stretching nor hitting the weights in his exercise workout plan.

Instead, Fido reprograms the muscles first.

The most important exercise workout plan

According to Mel Siff, who wrote the book, “Facts and Fallacies of Fitness”… the most important exercise is reprogramming the central nervous system. He considered this to be more important than strength training and aerobics.

This makes obvious sense. The brain, which can reset our muscles, needs a continual updating of its movement software.

We’ve got to take out any stiffness and tension we accrue.

This is why healthy vertebrate animals naturally reset themselves periodically throughout the day.

When we naturally reprogram our muscles, they are left more functional and ready to be used since they’ve been given the cue to let go of any residual holding tension.

Muscles which are less tense, move far easier than the ones which keep us bound up, throwing our parts around like we’re a hobbling zombie.

Our brain’s cortex can do the job to reset the muscles. This is why we can use the un-exercise approach of somatics exercises anytime to feel better.

Exercise workout plan class

There exists a delightful set of somatics exercises which are known as either the cat stretch or daily maintenance routine.

This exercise workout plan sets the body up for movement for the day.

This week, I’ll be teaching a version of that particular exercise workout plan.

By modifying certain elements, the very exercise routine we accustom our self to, becomes enhanced.

Join our somatics exercise online class. This set of movements can be quite the useful exercise workout plan.

Groin stretch no more

In spite of what we know about stretching, many people and especially athletes lamely attend to the muscles which pull the leg inwards or keep the thighs rotated inwards.

Groin stretch, the other side of the coin

Our attempts are most often futile since pushing on a tight area actually causes the brain to send a message to re-contract and tighten the tissues.

This violation of the stretch reflex happens everyday and prevents the groin muscles from truly being reset back to comfortable levels with minimal tension.

The pains we feel are often reflected in higher than normal resting tension levels.

Some people will even lie down and attempt to do a groin stretch passively… afterwards the brain has to re-contract to get back to its set point.

While the set points serve us, they can be held in shortened positions. By pushing a shortened position, the brain sends messages to re-contract and pull back to the set point thus not effectively lengthening the muscles we are targeting.

Muscles respond to messages from the brain and even the spinal cord when we quickly and reflexively pull away. When we shift to using the brain’s cortex, our muscles can be reset through a cortical process which re-regulates tension in the muscles.

Instead of the groin stretch, we can use those groin muscles to gain not only length, we also remind our muscles of their function.

This way the muscles are ready to be used and have been reminded how to relax. A relaxed groin area is far more ready to be used than the tight, screaming groins that many people endure.

The not groin stretch class

So instead of a groin stretch, we can learn how to artfully move the inner leg muscles in a variety of ways which will allow us to feel better at any time.

Tight inner legs may cause us to feel a tight band feeling around our back and even assist turning “on” the burning sensations of sciatica.

However, muscles don’t move in isolation so we can play with coordination sequences which engage both the legs and upper body.

When we’ve been pulled out of alignment through high tension levels, we can reset other areas in our body to bring us back towards balance.

A groin stretch itself is not enough to regain lost function and improve how well we can move without discomfort. We need integrated patterns which takes us to the next level of using the brain’s cortex to reset our global movements.

By making little changes, we affect how we move as a whole, healthy being.

Please join our not groin stretch online class and learn how the brain improves brawn.

Simply paying attention to our breathing doesn’t seem like it could be of any significance or help.

Better Breathing Helps Us Relax Easy

Belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing is quite often beneficial. Taking a few moments to breathe deeply and easily gives us a respite from life’s busy activities.

Not paying attention to how we breath is a sure-fire way to limit our self unconsciously. Why bother when we have so much else to do?

Conscious Better Breathing

Many conscious methods focus on breath work with a variety of ways to play with our breath. These pursuits are enjoyable activities to explore adding to a chest of useful tools for healthy living.

On the other hand, somatics exercises are quite often the reverse of most approaches as we engage the brain and it’s bodily connections.

Through patterns of movement which are similar and slightly different, our brain thrives with new and distinct learning. Small differences gives us the ability to free our self where we would otherwise not consider and remain restricted.

Better Breathing Class

For instance, instead of focusing on better breathing, we can be better breathers by doing a simple movement which involves our diaphragm.

When we couple this pattern to the actions in our spine, ribs, shoulders and even our hips, we can actually “not breathe” and discover if better breathing results.

Join me in this week’s online class for better breathing by not breathing.

Each day our muscles respond to the demands or lack of demand we impose upon the muscles, even if we aren’t exercising.

Stress Relief, Use it or Stress

If your walking and crossing a street, you body will react to the hurtling speeding objects of a car by raising your shoulders up. Next time you go on a walk, feel if this happens. It may be a slight or imperceptible sense, yet this is how stress in our muscles add up.

Little by little, day by day, our muscles respond and add up frequent stress user points. Now if only we had a credit card which would take these stressful moments into account, we could all fly around the world many times over.

Yet with all the stress we accumulate, how often do we give ourself stress relief measures?

Stress Relief Made Easy

Instead of waiting till later, we can use a simple brain process the way healthy animals naturally take care of stress. After all, they have to deal with being eaten or work very hard to eat. Imagine how stressful that is.

Well animals use a stress relief method called a pandiculation. When our muscles tighten up and accumulate stress, we feel the associated stiffness and other noxious signals that comes with the territory of modern day living.

Vertebrate animals know how to bring muscles back to length, not by stretching as we once thought, they go about it by pandiculating their way to health.

They make stress relief look easy since they have to keep their muscles ready to be used in case they need to instantly flee.

We can use our brain and do the very act animals do to keep our muscles and feelings of tension and tightness at bay.

Stress relief is like a lost art. Did you know that most of us actually did this very animal act in our mother’s womb? Somewhere on the way to becoming an adult, we lost this healthy sense and process yet we can get it back on track with a little practice.

Stress Relief Online Class

Somatics exercises are used successfully to give us the ability to stress relief ourself at will.

When we feel the accumulation of stress, all we need to do is apply our lost sense and use our muscles in a way which will instantly create chemicals of relaxation.

This kind of stress relief is our natural way to self-adjust the overworked, stressed out muscles.

To remember how easy this is to do, please join us for an online stress relief class.

Stress relief is natural using the brain’s cortex so we can rest easy, rev up and relieve our ourself, again and again.

Fit Over 50

You can join our Fit Over 50 live phone call for free and find out:

• How to be confidently active
• Specific techniques successful athletes use
• Ways to be injury-free

Don interviewed and wrote, “50 Athletes Over 50″ and will share what he gained from that experience. He’s also the creator of the “21 Day, 7 Habits Program” which gives us the body and energy we need.

Getting out of physical pain and recovering quickly from injury is what I do as a seasoned Hanna Somatic Educator and recent gold medal winner at the Washington State Senior games. I’ll share with you specific things to do to remain agile, limber, pain-free and have the ability to move like a healthy animal any time you want.

Being Fit Over 50 is easy

To be fit, you have to have the know-how and use the tools we’re gonna share with you on this call.

We’ll give you the specific techniques that you can use to move well beyond 50 too.

Register for the Free Call for Fit Over 50

We’re going to rock the house, like 50 year olds still can.

We’ll even throw in a surprise when you sign up for the Fit Over 50 call, so sign up here.

Did you laugh at this coordination exercise?

Coordination exercise for natural flexibility

Things which look easy take a lot of coordinating actions and natural flexibility.

Developing this kind of flexibility can be achieved via a learning process using the brain’s intent to create movement patterns and experience them in novel ways which releases any holding or compensatory patterns we carry.

When we’re stiff and too contracted or not as mobile as we’d like, a movement like that coordination exercise may seem to take a lot of effort.

Coordination exercise to build strength

We can naturally and quickly develop the requisite strength by setting up the building blocks of movement so a coordination exercise such as the one in the video… becomes effortless.

Strength can be achieved in many ways. Somatics exercises lead us down this path as we need the requisite freedom in movement of our smaller muscles to move the larger ones.

Coordination Exercise Class

We’ll do more than just that particular movement you saw in the video in this week’s online class, though not on a table like you saw. We’ll give it a whirl on the ground instead.

You’ll get the chance to see and feel how your hamstrings and back will lengthen
by doing a simple test at the beginning and end of class.

What sets up our ability to do a coordination exercise easily and naturally is accomplished using the pandicular process which is at the heart of somatics exercises.

Please join me in this week’s online coordination exercise class for the hamstrings, back, knees and more.

Easing hip and knee pain

Was that an easy move for your hips, knees and your back? To ease hip and knee pain, the back needs to be supple and flexible.

While some people will argue the case for strengthening the core, we can find ways to ensure the middle of our self is loose enough to have the requisite mobility to move easily.

Hip and knee pain can often be alleviated when our middle, the spine, begins to unwind itself from holding patterns which prevents us from moving our hips and knees comfortably.

Better mobility lessens hip and knee pain

Hip and knee pain sometimes go hand in hand when the hips have lost their mobility as well as the spine. Our knees may continue to get pounded in the same manner day in, day out when our mobility is less than optimal.

To move the knee around comfortably is to regain the ability and mobility we once had. Since movement is a memory, we can refoster those memories by going back to the well – of youthful movement in the artful ways in which somatics exercises remind us to move easily and with the least effort.

Natural flexibility allows hip and knee pain to abate

Instead of hard work or over zealous exercising, somatics exercises offers us a reverse way into the brain by slowing things downs so our hip and knee pain gives as we regain our natural flexibility once our mobility returns.

This week, you can join me for an online somatics exercise class where you’ve already seen the last movement. Now all we have to do is do the steps before that so the hip and knee pain abates when our movement software is updated.

We can learn to our way back to getting out of hip and knee pain by regaining the mobility we had and rediscovering our natural flexibility…otherwise you can kiss your knees hello!

I lived with strange nerve and chronic pain while enduring sciatica, inflammation, tenderness, soreness and stiffness which all attributed to an ongoing state of unhappy muscles, nerves and limited painful movement. It even felt as if I couldn’t get enough breath into the muscles to move easily.

Chronic pain is a thing of the past

When I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, it was a relief to learn that the uncomfortable feelings I had been having in my 20′s and 30′s had a name to it.

As a kid, I remember looking at the muscle magazines learning what I needed to do to make this skinny kid into a muscular powerhouse. Even while living in chronic pain, I went to the gyms, stretched, lifted weights, thinking this would be a way out since exercise is usually considered a good thing.

Muscles and Chronic Pain Need Not Co-exist

Unfortunately, lifting weights and stretching didn’t solve the pains. Eventually, movement provided the key to getting the muscles and chronic pain to no longer co-exist in order to comfortably move.

There are many approaches to helping people naturally overcome chronic pain. You can find out about some of those in this month’s Max Sports & Fitness where yours truly has finally made it in a muscle magazine.

Living with Chronic Pain

Our brain and body can serve us naturally to ward off the stiffness, aches, and pains we feel in our muscles and elsewhere. Through a long series of trials and errors, I stumbled onto how animals naturally self-correct and move so well.

While I believe in a natural aproach of pandiculating, the process animals use. This has been systematized as somatics exercises which offers a key to un-lock muscular stiffness, improve mobility and take us to a place of natural flexibility.

There are other complimentary approaches which can take us a step closer to a life not full of chronic pain. Being free in our body and moving well is our birthright.

Sometimes we need a little help and a plan to get out of chronic pain with the desire we can return to all the fun activities life has to offer.

Can exercises for feet bring back the love?

Don’t you love your feet? As a soccer player, I’ve got no choice but to love the feet since I rely on them to create all the magical moments I get to experience.

While exercises for feet can have positive effects on the knees and hips…differentiating the movements leads to a more comfortable sense of walking… free of aches, stiffness and pain.

Do exercises for feet create lighter legs?

When we free up the feet, our knees tend to be more comfortable. When we use the brain which is what we do with somatics exercises, we are delving deep into our sensory-motor system to find out “if” we do indeed experience our self differently.

Describing our internal experiences is unique. At times, we don’t have the words to rightly describe the feelings and sensations we are aware of. Just as moving gracefully is art in motion, we can use mindful specific exercises for feet to get closer at noticing how we experience what the brain can do for us in a matter of minutes.

Using the brain for exercises for feet

Instead of the usual ways we exercise the feet, we can change how muscles respond using cortical pathways using our awareness to facilitate changes. We can feel those changes which will guide us towards more comfortable movement.

We can also self-correct using simple exercises for feet so the knees and hips don’t have to feel so heavy or restricted or leaden in some cases.

You can try a couple of somatics exercises in the video above… and you can spend a little more time exploring how quickly your brain can change the feelings of the feet, knees and legs, by getting this class on somatics exercises for feet.

Just as we did as children, if we can still reach the feet… we can love those feet with simple somatics exercises for feet.

A looser jaw helps if you’re a runner and exercises for face muscles may be something you haven’t considered.

Did you know that in some countries they actually target future runners by seeing who has the loosest jaw? If they only had some exercises for face muscles, maybe there would be a surge in competitors or at least, we could have freer jaws.

Somatics exercises, a different set of exercises for face muscles

Somatics exercises are usually the reverse of most approaches since we work with changing the brain’s output to the muscles.

By decreasing high levels of muscular tension, these special exercises for the face muscles work with 1/3 of the brain’s sensory-motor cortex.

Using the brain to change how muscles respond is naturally what we did as children through the process of what is known as a pandiculation.

Exercises for face muscles and then some more…

In this week’s online class, you also learn how to have a more mobile spine to go along with those exercises for face muscles.

Besides, you’ll learn 2 simple movements which will also help you sit more comfortably crossed-legged or in the lotus posture.

So please join us on Friday and find out if somatics exercises for face muscles can set you free.

Improve eyesight… free up the neck.

There are any number of eye exercises, diet considerations and things you can do for the eyes. Sometimes getting up and drinking some water is enough to take out the strain.

Sitting at a computer for longer periods of time is not a way to improve eyesight since our range of vision and motion is compromised into a smaller space. Unless of course, you are working on building shorter, more contracted eye muscles.

Simple neck mobilizations and moving the eyes just a little differently are enough to ward off hours of limited motion.

Improve eyesight in just a few minutes

Relaxing the tension from hours of using our eyes in a small space or holding our neck a certain way, takes just a few minutes. Yet how many of us are really going to spend the necessary few minutes to take care of it.

Don’t we usually wait until the jaw pain or neck immobility becomes too great before we act. Pain is a great teacher, but why wait for our body to get locked up and not be able to lessen the accumulated tension and muscular stress.

Just a few minutes of careful self awareness combined with releasing the tension as naturally as any animal will do, allows us to keep on doing the things we human animals think we need or want to do.

Healthy animals do things like yawn. Well they contract their jaw muscles so it looks like a yawn. Go ahead, give yourself a big yawn and pay attention to all the muscles in your neck your tightening up.

Somatics exercises improve eyesight

The way to let go of tension and improve eyesight is to do what animals do. Thank goodness we’ve systematized what animals do as somatics exercises.

We’ve borrowed the very same process which is done in movement, not a static hold and release for a certain period of time.

With periodic self-adjustments and self-corrections, our neck will be freer, our jaw will be looser and we can improve eyesight simply.

Why hold all the tension in place when we can consciously learn to let it go with a little simple practice of awareness and easy movement patterns.

If you want to learn more, please join me in this Friday’s somatics exercise class to improve eyesight, free the neck and ease a tight jaw.

Awhile back I had the pleasure of meeting Barefoot Ted and some of the tribe from the Exuberant Animals. A great group of physical educators who turned me onto a pair of great shoes that feel as if someone just put a warm glove on my feet.

Somatics Shoes… The no shoe shoe if you will.

It’s my understanding that the best shoe is one that has the flattest sole and gives us some protection from the elements. Shoes like the old PF flyers and Converse flat sole shoes are excellent examples.

The moccasin has been a favorite of many people. Another group of people, runners, are going at it in their bare feet.

Many people have told me that while at home, they enjoy the feelings they have being in their bare feet.

Vibram Five Fingers are definitely somatics shoes

Somatics which is defined as the body experience from within has met its match with the Vibram Five Finger Shoes that I call somatics shoes.

Imagine if you will putting glove liners and mittens on your hands all day. What do you think will happen to the function of your hands and arms? Wonder what is happening to our feet?

Somatics shoes fits like a glove, moves like an animal

If you want to move like an animal…try a pair and let me know if you can ever stand to wear another shoe again. Vibram has hit a home run with these somatics shoes.

I remember when I could barely walk 50 feet and my shoulders would sear in pain and my ongoing tight back… well it would simply stiffen more as I trudged my way through it like a trooper. Why oh why?

Good news is, I was moving. The bad news, it wasn’t getting better and so after some time I just learned to continue to move painfully and suck it up.

So what can we do about better walking?

To be able to facilitate better walking, just imagine those lost feelings we had of childlike, easy movement.

We all know how well a panther can move.

Setting up movement is what all healthy vertebrate animals do before they have to run away or go after the prey.

Walking with stiffness like a zombie scared a lot of us as kids. Why did we lose our childlike feelings of easy, effortless movement? Is this the reward of aging or forgetting to move like an animal.

Better Walking by Not Exercising

The other side of the coin is using our brain, the one big muscle, to facilitate better mobility, agility and flexibility naturally as all healthy vertebrate animals do.

Simply through the conscious act of a pandiculation which has been systematized as somatics exercises can we move more effectively.

Somatics is not exercise in the traditional manner since all we are doing is using the brain to decrease excessive muscular contraction levels.

By decreasing those levels, we can move more easily so better walking is accomplished through the release of held muscular positions that we consciously can’t let go off or those that we aren’t aware of in the moment.

So please join me this week, Friday, September 16th as I’ll be offering some ways to move which will afford you better walking in the days to come.

Do you use a hot tub? Do you use ice or ibuprofen to soothe your muscles?

Laurie and myself thought we were going to play in an over 45 co-ed soccer tournament last past weekend and found out it was over 40 instead. What are you going to do at our age?

Preparation & Recuperation

Good thing we both practiced our somatics exercises in preparation. We also did them in between and after the games all weekend.

This method of preparation and recuperation allows us to move more freely after engaging our bodies in an activity that is not normal in terms of our human development. All the cutting back and forth while wearing cleats is not what the natural design of the body has been used for over time.

Wearing our joints down with this un-natural and at times risky movement activity can exact a price. We’ve watched over time how many people struggle.

Even this weekend, we are watching how teenagers are barely making it through one game of soccer, in spite of all the training they are receiving.

Makes you wonder how much knowledge is applied when it comes to recuperation even at this young age.

In our age group, while others were doing some stretching, using tiger balm and downing ibuprofens… I kept a keen eye on who would make it through all the games without hearing the usual complaints of stiffness, soreness, aches, and over exertion that is very common not only in playing in adult leagues but the extra level it sometimes takes to make it through an entire weekend-warrior competition.

With our gray hairs, we both comfortably walked away with a 3rd place trophy. We were both happy how our bodies held up in the 90°+ heat in Yakima, WA at the aptly named Sunburn Tournament.

Our Preferred Method of Recuperation

Our preferred method of recuperation, using somatics exercises, allows us to be able to successfully compete and not have any of the usual stiffness afterwards. We had other weekend plans in store for the drive back.

On our way back, we drive through Mt. Rainer National Park.

The fresh air felt incredibly well to breathe. It was odd that only a couple of hours before we played in the heat of eastern Washington.

We didn’t have to traipse around at some 5400 feet, instead we comfortably ambled about enjoying the 5th National Park in the U.S.

Nature has a way of restoring one’s health even after grinding it out on the playing field. It’s as if our recuperation was fostered by hiking in the clean mountain air full of alpine flowers and snow in August.

The following night we headed over to our usual over 50 fun league to play a more recreational level of soccer and once again our bodies were well recuperated so that we could enjoy playing at the indoor arena.

The indoor game is a different type of game than the outdoor version. The movements are shorter and sometime quicker on account of the ball bouncing quickly off the boards and glass. Our quick reactions and the ability to respond without being hung-up is vital.

Laurie’s son accompanied us. He also got to play in a game. As we were leaving, all 3 of us were asked to just stay one more game, so we played with the younger 20’s somethings.

Now in between games, I thought I was done for the evening and would enjoy one of those malt filled beverages that many people use as a form of recuperation. Little did I know that I was about to play once again.

On our ride back, our teenager complained of being tired. Both Laurie and I heartily laughed as we compared the number of games we all had played. The old folks had him 5 to 2 (and 98 years to 15) and neither of one of us were sore, stiff, or aching as a result.

Even Grandma knows how to wield recuperation

I cannot rave enough about how amazing our recuperation powers are when we use the brain using the simple somatic movements.

While it’s of great help to have a positive mind-set, it’s fun to see how the body just keeps moving well along for the ride.

Even grandma, who missed the last step of getting off of the boat on their boating excursion to Canada, twisted her knee and asked Grandpa to show her some of those somatics exercises he diligently practices.

Grandma, like the rest of us, found how quickly her own powers of recuperation came to the fore when she used the somatics exercises which gets the brain to release held states of contraction while improving muscular function.

Brain based exercises like somatics take the edge off of the muscular tension, stiffness, and the stress we accumulate. Now had I only known this when I was living with fibromyalgia, I might have spared myself the many years of chronic pain.

No matter, to move well… can happen at least at age 50 and beyond for others. I’ll let you how it goes when I get to 60.

My hunch is… in the next decade I’ll probably learn a little more on re-balancing the nervous system and refreshing the body with somatics exercises.

All it takes is simple, easy movements which remind the nervous system to calm things down a notch. The powers of recuperation and moving comfortably lie well within us.

Somatics exercises uses the field of gravity so you can use the brain to get muscles to lose tension and relax more quickly. This is one way to act as your own bodyworker.

Doing a pandiculation, which is at the heart of somatics, is what we do when we do somatics exercises. When a trained somatic bodyworker works with your muscles this is called an assisted pandiculation.

Bodyworker and assisted pandiculations.

Hanna Somatic Educators are trained bodyworkers and movement experts who help people restore the function of muscles with either bodywork or specific exercises or a combination of both.

This training takes place over the course of three years since even for the so-called experts, there is a shift in learning how the body responds neurologically and well let’s face, the practitioner needs a lot of practice to fully understand the thousands of combinations we all move in and how we articulate ourselves.

In the last decade, I’ve noticed many shifts of internal organization as I too have learned my way out of compensatory habits and established newer, easier movement patterns which evolve and continue to surprise and delight me as I age.

A hands-on bodyworker in cooperation with a person has to figure out what needs to be released. By assisting a person with a pandiculation, both parties can sense a result taking place.

These assisted pandiculation often turn into the self-pandiculations that a person will do as the somatics exercises or homework to keep improving mobility, flexibility and the diminishment of panful signals.

Become your own bodyworker

As you become familiar with the somatics exercises, you can learn how to become your own bodyworker using gravity as the load or weight of resistance when you move yourself in the variety of movement patterns to restore function and improve coordination.

You can also use your own hands to provide the resistance with some of the somatics exercises. It’s best to be led by a Hanna Somatics Practitioner who can give you the idea or guide you along this path to help restore balance in the muscles.

When we use our own hands as a bodyworker on our self, we may be able to learn how to modulate our efforts with a little bit of practice.

Be your own Bodyworker Class

Reminding the movement system as to how it moves is what all healthy vertebrate animals do to keep themselves moving well. After all, what kind of bodyworker can they go to themselves?

For the most part, nature has set it up so all vertebrates can move well merely be reminding the nervous system to reset, or reboot if you will.

Fortunately, we can apply a systematic approach through the somatics exercises and use these tools to be our own bodyworker when needed.

This Friday, August 19th, I’ll be offering an online class in somatics exercises so you can do your own pandiculations in the field of gravity.

You’ll also learn how to use your own hands and be a bodyworker so you can do things like sit more comfortably crossed legged and free up your hips and hip flexors.

When we use our brain and neurology in novel ways, we can foster growth and education in the ways in which we move. We can actually move better as we age.

Now I’m only saying that when I compared myself to a group of 55 high school athletes and few if any had the hamstring flexibility of someone 3x their age.

Register for this Friday’s class. Find out for yourself how free you can be. Sign up and be your own bodyworker.