Are you harming your spine each time you stand up from a chair?
Unfortunately, most people in today's increasingly sedentary culture, get up from a chair in a way that reinforces poor posture and limits their breathing. Likewise, many people lower themselves into a chair by collapsing in such a way that creates harmful compression in the intervetebral joints all along the length of their spine.
As somatic movement educator Moshe Feldenkrais observed:
"Most people feel that the change from sitting to standing requires effort; without knowing it they gird themselves for this effort by contracting the muscles at the back of the neck, thereby drawing the head back and pointing the chin forward. This superfluous muscular effort stems from wanting to stiffen the chest for the effort to be made by the legs mainly in the extensors of the knees, the muscles that straighten the knees. We shall see this effort is also superfluous."
The reason people employ these harmful and "superfluous" efforts is that they simply don't know any better.
Feldenkrais again:
"If we attempt to carry out an action with awareness - that is, to follow it in detail - we soon discover that even the simplest and most common of actions, such as getting up from a chair, is a mystery, that we have no idea at all of how it is done..."
There's a better way!
There is no reason to remain in the dark about getting in and out of a chair - especially when improving this single action can have such a profoundly beneficial impact on your posture, your breathing, your balance - and even your mood.
That's why I'd like to invite you to experience my free class, "Gravity & Levity."
It's a playful exploration of getting in and out of a chair that will surprise and delight you. In less than hour, you will discover an entirely new potential in yourself that might just change your overall sense of what you are capable of.
During this class you will learn:
- How to rise from a chair to standing in one single action without the need to grunt, grimace or hold your breath
- How to sit down again without losing your balance or creating stress in your spine
- How to connect the support of the ground under your feet and the seat of your chair to the internal support of your skeleton
- Why there is an intimate relationship between your posture and your mood - you'll get an embodied experience of why being in a good mood feels like "walking on air"!
"I always find myself fortunate when teachers cross my path who show me the way to unlearning, the way to decondition from the clichés of the collective, and how I can learn for myself through my own experience rather than relying on information thrown at me by the outside world.
Seth is definitely one of them. I'd recommend his classes to everyone who's open to explore and dive into the unknown depths of the intelligence of this magical vehicle we call the human body."