fbpx Blog | Gokhale Method® - Primal Posture™ for a Pain-Free Life
Sign up for our Positive Stance™ Newsletter
CAPTCHA
To prove that you are a human, please answer the following question.

Blog

Sheila Bond’s Back Pain Journey

November, 2022
My name is Sheila Bond, and I am an artist, knit and jewelry designer, and an art teacher. I am also the mother of four sweet kids. In this blog post I would like to share with you my Gokhale Method® journey out of pain and despair. On May 6 2022 I severely herniated the spinal disc between my L4/L5 vertebrae. In addition I had developed bursitis in my left hip during the previous three months, I believe from sitting improperly teaching online classes. It happened on the Friday before Mother’s Day. By Saturday morning I could barely move and thought I might die or at the very least never recover. I ordered a TENS unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, a mild electrical current to give pain relief) from Walgreens, bought Salonpas patches too, and a walking cane. I took three Advil or two extra strength Tylenol alternating every six-hours hours. I had previously herniated my L4/L5 in 2015, and had a laminectomy (a surgical operation to remove part of the back of vertebrae, usually to relieve pressure on nerves.) That surgery had left me still in terrible pain. When I told the surgeon I was still in pain in my tailbone/sacrum area, he told me he could operate on my tailbone. I declined. Following surgery I also went to physical therapy for a year and a half. It gave me more pain than it took away. Read more

Join Lang’s New Gokhale Yoga Class

October, 2022

If we haven’t yet met, my name is Lang, I am a Gokhale Method® teacher, and I also teach Gokhale Yoga. I offer two Gokhale Yoga classes every week as part of our Gokhale Exercise program for subscribers on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 a.m. (Pacific Time).

In this blog post I am excited to tell you about four Yoga classes you can try from Tuesday, November 1 until Thursday, November 10, as part of our upcoming 10-day Gokhale Exercise Free Trial which includes 1-2-3 Move, Gokhale Fitness, Moving Meditation, with teachers Esther Gokhale, Eric Fernandez, Kathleen O'Donohue, Roberta Cooks and Sabina Blumauer. Read more

A New Perspective on the Neanderthal Spine

October, 2022
October 16 is World Spine Day, which makes this the perfect time to share with you a fascinating piece of recent research about the human spine.  In April I was contacted by Scott Williams PhD, Associate Professor at the Center for the study of Human Origins, Department of Anthropology, New York University. He and his team of anthropologists had recently published a scientific paper that concluded that understanding the spines of Neanderthals, a human ancestor, may explain the back pain experienced by humans today. Who were the Neanderthals? The Neanderthals populated Europe and Asia between about 400,00 and 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals became extinct, but are considered one of our most recent evolutionary ancestors. Research shows there is DNA evidence that they interbred with early human populations. Read more

Running: Part 6: Upper Body

September, 2022
Welcome to the sixth blog post in our series on running. My name is Michelle Ball, and I am a Gokhale Method® teacher living in Tasmania. I am also a lifelong runner and am passionate about sharing the benefits of healthy posture with the running community, be that beginners, seasoned runners, or anyone in between. Even if you walk rather than run, the posture principles outlined in this post can still help you to enjoy an active and pain-free body well into old age. Running with a well-positioned upper body In this post we will consider the upper body. Runners are inclined to pay far less attention to the upper half of the body than the lower half, as they focus on gait pattern, cadence, footwork, and propulsion. This is hardly surprising, but the lower body, while super-busy, really is just half the story.  Healthy posture in the upper body brings the following benefits: Protected spinal structures Improved biomechanics Unimpeded flow and momentum Support that makes the body feel lighter Athletic appearance Read more

Outer Corsets and Inner Corsets

September, 2022
I have often written about the elegance of people in bygone years. The women, sometimes corseted, show striking deportment. The excesses of nineteenth-century fashion understandably gave corsets a bad name. Extreme tight lacing had some terrible effects, imposing some drastic anatomical remodeling: The stomach and liver are crammed down, with the ribs compressing into drooping S-loops. The neural spines of each vertebra, the little projections that stick up from the central body of each bone, are also pushed out of place. Normally they stack nicely one atop the other in a neat midline ridge, but in long-term corset wearers these spindles of bone jut to this side or that. Science writer Brian Switek in Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone. Read more

The Best Way to Strengthen a Muscle

August, 2022
Using the word “eccentric” might sound like I’m about to write about muscles behaving in weird ways that are different from usual muscle behavior! But what I’m referring to, eccentric muscle contraction, is often pronounced ee-sen-trik, not ek-sen-trik. How muscles contract Eccentric muscle contraction is the reverse of the concentric contraction that we typically associate with muscle training. For example, the dumbbell curl that makespops up the bicep prominent as you lift the weight towards your shoulder is a concentric contraction. The muscle contracts and shortens. But lowering the dumbbell back down again, which requires the muscle to lengthen, also takes Read more