Walk with Your Butt Out

It is important in both standing and walking to stick your butt out. This simple statement seems to go against the grain of what many people want to think and believe is correct. As a culture we love to tuck our pelvis. Maybe you hurt your back and a physical therapist told you to tuck under to lengthen your low spine; or you’ve done too many bad fitness classes at the gym, or you simply think your butt is too big. For whatever of the many reasons the vast majority of people allow the weight of the spine to fall backwards through the sacrum tucking the pelvis under and taking the femur (thigh) bones forward with it.

Standing up straight, and proper posture really is as simple as that, requires a skeletal adjustment to allow your thighs to move underneath your pelvis. This sticking out of the buttocks is actually meant to relax these muscles and help us find deeper core muscles to hold us up. We are truly a tight assed people. We grip our butts in tension and frustration, which is a natural reaction but as with everything we tend to over do it. The femur bones falling forward in space results in a constant engagement of the butt and thigh muscles (quadriceps).

When standing the quads and glutes should be working as little as possible to let important core muscles function properly. When we walk the big buttock muscle gluteus maximus works as the back leg extends backwards but it doesn’t or shouldn’t need to hold us up. Butt gripping is one of modern man’s great dilemmas.

The release of the butt goes hand in hand with a shifting of the pelvis. The effects of this shift are far reaching. As the thighs move back and under the pelvis your legs will release differently in walking and you will feel a more even distribution of energy through the foot with every step. The shift of the pelvis into proper alignment accesses the correct curve of your lower back bringing instant support to all the bones of the spine. Your shoulders will lift up and back naturally and the head will find greater support at the top of the spine.

Release your butt and embrace a whole new realm of energetic possibilities.

Errol Morris Essay

The link below is for an essay from todays Time's. I have always been a big fan of Errol Morris and now I'm really interested in the work of Paul Ekman. This covers a lot of painful and interesting ground.

The Most Curious Thing

How can walking help with Stress?

The quality of balance within an individual’s nervous system determines a great deal of that person’s character and mood. Everyone knows someone who is angry, or fearful, or bold. These traits are all manifestations of the endless dance of the nervous system as it tries to help us find center or homeostasis. The nervous system is housed in the skull and the spine taking the form of the brain and the spinal cord. The hypothesis of the FitzGordon Method is simple. Lengthen and align the spine and skull and free the nervous system to work at peak efficiency.

A balanced and aligned body relieves stress in a number of ways.

• When the body has core tone, you will be less fatigued at the end of the day.
• When the muscles of the pelvis and abdomen are properly stabilizing the spine and trunk, your nerve pathways are at their most open and free.

A great deal of the brains “nutrition” passes through the cervical spine (the neck). When the head sits properly atop the spine the front and back of the neck are even in length and tone, the brain feasts with every breath.

The Psoas Minor

The psoas minor is an interesting muscle, if it is in your body at all. Most anatomy books refer to this muscle as devolving and claim that only fifty percent of people have one.

But a few years back while attending a workshop with one of my favorite teachers Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (bodymindcentering.com) she said that in forty years of working with people she had never met anyone who didn’t have a psoas minor. That was good enough for me and I proceeded to teach accordingly often referring to the dichotomy between what Bonnie said and what the books said.

Fast-forward a bit to another workshop with Bonnie. While doing a partner exercise with one of her teachers we began talking about the psoas minor. She had had the exact response as I did when Bonnie said that everyone had a psoas minor until she went to a cadaver workshop where she mentioned this to the instructor. They checked all thirty-nine cadavers and only one had a psoas minor.

This again threw me for a loop until I was reading something by Tom Myers (anatomytrains.net) that referred to a fascial connection through the diaphragm, iliopsoas, piriformis and the obturators. He mentions how this connection would be responsible for the energetic feeling of the psoas minor being present and this is likely what Bonnie was referring to.

It is all so fascinating and confusing isn’t it?

Walking Wrong

You Walk Wrong

Here is a link to an interesting article in New York Magazine. While it has some good things to say it fails in many ways to get at the crux of the issue it is discussing. Shoes per se are not bad -- it is walking badly in them that is the problem. The genius of the MBT shoes that are referred to in the piece is that Karl Muller, their inventor, looked to the Masai tribe for inspiration. What is truly inspiring about the Masai is their extraordinary posture. Energy moves effortlessly through their bones because of their skeletal efficiency. I would hazard that they would walk as well in just about any shoes.

When people find themselves with pain in their heels while walking, it is less about the foot than it is a result of poor weight transfer through the bones of the entire skeleton. If our posture doesn’t translate weight and energy efficiently through our entire body, then walking barefoot or wearing shoes is not going to make a difference.

The feet are the all important base of our bodies, but they are often unable to do their job properly due to what is going on above them, not because of what is wrapped around them. And believe me, I am no fan of shoes. As a yoga teacher and creator of the FitzGordon Method Core Walking Program (www.fitzgordonmethod.com), I am barefoot as often as possible and always wear high quality sensible shoes. But so do countless people who suffer with terrible foot and joint pain.

Sternbergh refers to an article that reports “natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person." I would respectfully disagree. Most of us don’t walk well because we have never really been taught how to walk. There is no question that we can walk well in shoes. Check the bottoms of yours. If you walk well, they will wear out on the outer heel and the inner ball of the foot. If they are, like most people, worn on the outer heel and outer ball of the foot, it has nothing to do with the shoes themselves. You simply need to learn how to walk.

Walking is Falling

Walking is a nervous system response to falling. It’s way less active than we make it. A body in the flow of gravity is constantly falling through space and being caught repeatedly by the firing of the psoas muscle with every step. It is a beautiful dance that occurs deep in the core of a healthy body. As the body pushes off of the big toe to complete the footfall the brain registers that you are about to fall forward and basically tells the psoas to catch you.

Preventative Medicine

Over the last twenty years mind/body practices and alternative therapies have moved closer and closer to the mainstream. Today, yoga centers rival gyms for membership. Walk past many parks in the early morning and you are likely to see groups of people doing tai chi with its beautiful flowing patterns. Disciplines that integrate these practices into our daily lives have paved the way for a new field of integrative health. Better self-awareness is a key to the future as we confront an ever more certain health care crisis. At The FitzGordon Method we offer people the message that the more we know our bodies and the way they work, the easier it will be to stay out of the doctor’s office. A taste for softer and more reflective exercise has fueled this interest. As our health care costs soar and the crisis looms larger upon us, preventative medicine must become the paradigm for the next century.