It would be another seven years before he got his first clients, and another 11 before he opened his first clinic in San Diego. Today, he has 30 clinics across the world, millions of clients (including an impressive roster of professional athletes) functioning pain-free, and six best-selling books to his credit, with a seventh due out this week, a revised and updated version of his first, Pain Free.

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But it was 50 years ago that he figured out why, despite a year of medical treatment for wounds incurred in Vietnam, he was still in pain and, with that knowledge, began developing the Egoscue Method by which he has helped so many, including himself, become pain-free.

As he writes in this latest book, indeed in all of his books, “Humans are designed as symmetrical bipeds.” Which means we should be symmetrical from side to side, that is, one shoulder or hip should not be higher than the other. We should also be aligned vertically, which is to say that in profile, there should be a straight line from our ears to our ankle bones that runs through the center of our shoulders, hips, and knees.

That is not the case with most of us, and it wasn’t the case with Egoscue 50 years ago. We have eight load-bearing joints—shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles—and he realized that when one of those joints is out of position, some other part of the body has to compensate to enable us to function, which led him to a major discovery that too many medical professionals today still ignore: The source of the pain is rarely the source of the problem.

Related: The At-Home Workout That Will Help You Live Pain-Free

For an event like a car accident or broken bone, yes, the source and site of the pain are the same, but for the chronic musculoskeletal pain that more than 50 percent of all Americans suffer from, the source and site are different and are the result of one part of the body compensating for what another part can no longer do. For instance, if you have back pain, it’s probably because your hip is out of alignment. And yet, most remedies for back pain treat the back, perhaps alleviating the symptom of pain but never addressing the actual source, and therefore never fixing the original problem.

That’s what Egoscue spent years figuring out how exactly to do. Knowing that “bones do what muscles tell them to do,” he experimented with an array of stretches and exercises designed to get our muscles to move our joints back into their proper position. Egoscue had learned that when our hips are where they’re supposed to be, our back stops hurting. Or when our ankles are functioning the way they’re designed to, our knees stop hurting. Or when our shoulder can move as it was intended, we no longer get tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome. It took time for him to learn how muscles move joints, but eventually he learned enough to develop the Egoscue Method, his revolutionary program to return our postures to their original design and thereby relieve ourselves of chronic pain.

Egoscue explores all of this anatomical and physiological information in his expansive new Pain Free, the revised and updated edition of his 1999 best-seller. The book is written in such engagingly accessible prose that one needn’t be a PhD in either field to readily grasp what he’s saying. But much of this information has been available since he wrote his first book decades ago. Why the revision?

“When I wrote my other six books,” he says, “we had a stronger tradition of self-reliance in our country. But we’ve lost a lot of that. We’re more isolated as individuals now than we’ve ever been before, and since the advent of social media, we’ve become more reliant upon the opinion of others in everything, including our pain. We’ve succumbed to this idea that somebody else knows more about our bodies than we do. That’s just not true. But we have to convince people now in ways we’ve never had to before that they really do have the capacity to relieve themselves of their pain.”

That gentle convincing explains, in part, the warmer tone in this updated version: less clinical, more consoling and encouraging.

But he also wrote this revision because, as a society, we are in a different place than we were when he first devised the Egoscue Method—and that place isn’t good. “Many Americans now are physically weak, and by weak, I mean they have lost the ability to remain upright,” Egoscue says. “It’s astonishing to me how many people cannot stand on one foot and, sadly, don’t even know they’re supposed to be able to. We have lost postural stability. Forty years ago, we could treat clients by focusing on strength because they were still stable. Now, we have to stabilize them first before we can strengthen them.” The culprit here is our sedentary lives.

Related: The Simplest Change You Can Make for Better Health

As Egoscue points out in the book, “In the 1920s, manual workers outnumbered knowledge workers by a ratio of 2:1. By 1980, that ratio was reversed.” All that sitting impacts our postures and leads to pain.

“Evolution didn’t stop once we got upright,” Egoscue explains. “It continues, and our evolving, or de-evolving, depends upon the stimulus of our environment.” Right now, for too many, that stimulus doesn’t involve movement. Sadly, that affects more than just our bodies, a mind-body relationship that Egoscue also explores in this book. “We know that exercise improves our endurance, strength, and cardiovascular health,” he writes, “but movement is also directly connected to feelings of hope, happiness, connection, and confidence.”

The book also contains testimonials from beneficiaries of the Egoscue Method, some famous, some not, including a wonderful foreword from NFL Hall-of-Famer John Lynch, who gives a share of the credit for his success to Egoscue. “Quite simply,” Lynch writes, “Egoscue is the most brilliant person I have ever encountered when it comes to the human body and unleashing its vast potential.” When Lynch was hired as general manager for the San Francisco 49ers, he immediately incorporated the Egoscue Method into the team’s fitness regimen.

And of course, the book incorporates menus of E-cises (Egoscue exercises) to address the issues in your feet, ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders that are causing pain elsewhere in your body or reducing its ability to function at its full potential. The menus come with pictures and detailed explanations to make sure you’re doing the E-cises correctly.

Egoscue is notoriously reluctant to discuss himself, but when asked to reflect on his accomplishments these past 50 years, he said that his favorite fact is that he’s created competition. “You can imagine the ridicule and scorn I endured when I started talking about posture as a source of most of our pain. But now that thinking permeates the healthcare world, and we have competitors, and I think that’s wonderful. We’re figuring it all out together, and in the end, that can only benefit us all.”

True enough. But it all started with Egoscue 50 years ago, and this newest edition of Pain Free (available on Amazon) is the ideal commemoration of how far we’ve come in our understanding of the relationship between our posture and our pain.

The post Pain-Free Reading: The (Updated) New Book from Pete Egoscue! appeared first on Sonima.

Before we reveal how our bear crawl differs from others, first, a quick anatomy lesson. The body has eight load-bearing joints—the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. When those load-bearing joints are in alignment both vertically and horizontally, the body is symmetrical and functions the way it was designed to. However, when one of those joints gets out of alignment, the body begins to compensate in other areas, leading to postural dysfunction. This can lead to many unwanted consequences, including a limited range of motion in your other joints. Most bodies become out of alignment largely because of our sedentary lifestyles. I won’t claim sitting is the new smoking, but I do see it as a sport that we need to train our bodies for. (If you prepare for the chair, sitting can burn calories and create energy. Here’s how!)

One very common unwanted consequence of a compromised posture is pelvic dysfunction, and this has an unfortunate effect on the psoas muscle. The psoas is a major, complex set of three muscles that extend from the lower middle spine down to the top of the thighs, or femurs, and includes something commonly called the hip flexor. In its original design, the body uses the psoas and hip flexor for a great number of activities, including walking, running, standing up, and sitting down. But for many of us, that hip flexor—and the psoas in general—has gone long underused, and the pelvis has grown so accustomed to never having to engage the hip flexor that, in many instances, it simply doesn’t anymore.

Related: The Muscle You’ve Never Heard of But Need to Know

That’s amazing, right? I never cease to marvel at how incredible the human body is in its ability to work for us even when it’s not functioning properly. That said, we are healthier when it is fully functional.

Now, back to the bear crawl. When most people do the bear crawl, they do so with the pelvis up higher than the head and in trunk flexion, which means the back is humped up. I will refer to this as the traditional bear crawl, and it looks like this:

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Our modified version of the bear crawl in Elev8d Fitness anticipates and counteracts pelvic dysfunction. The move starts in the same position as the traditional bear crawl on your hands and feet. Next, focus on keeping your hips on the same plane as your head so that your back resembles a table top—flat and un-arching. Lastly, drag the hips back to your heels, creating a straight line through the shoulders, hips, and knees. It looks like this:

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In this position, the psoas is engaged, and that has major benefits: It causes the big posture muscles in the front and back of your body to activate the eight load joints throughout this exercise in a range that they’re designed to achieve. Thus, it becomes a total-body exercise so that you are getting twice the workout in half the time. You are now maximizing the efficiency of the exercise.

What’s more, when done correctly, our bear crawl is fatiguing, and in a good way. You emerge from doing it feeling more energized, and that’s neither an illusion nor a fluke. Engaging the entire body—especially parts that have been long dormant like the psoas—facilitates a utilization of glucose through all of your cells and promotes a huge upsurge in blood oxygen. In other words, the Elev8d bear crawl gives you a natural sugar high and oxygen high.

While most people perform this exercise in only one direction, Elev8d challenges you to move backward and sideways too, kicking one leg out wide and using the hands to move you to that leg before you bring the other along. Aim to pinch your shoulder blades together throughout the movement to achieve the best form.

By doing Elev8d’s bear crawl correctly in all directions, you are overcoming any inherent postural dysfunction, engaging the psoas, and compelling your joints and limbs to have full range of motion as the body was intended to move. The exercise, then, is an unbelievably demanding total-body activity. As you’ll see in our Elev8d Fitness workouts, it is incorporated with other exercises in a very specific sequence to help align your body and maximize your effort in minimal time. But don’t wait. Start practicing Elev8d bear crawls now—in your living room or at your gym—and start reaping the rewards of this game-changer.

Photography by Hailey Wist

Discover how efficient and effective Elev8d Fitness workouts are! Try the 8-Minute Weight-Loss Workout Series and the Total-Body At-Home Workout Series.

The post Master the Bear Crawl, Change Your Body appeared first on Sonima.

When most people exercise, they are not utilizing a full range of motion. For example, when you go for a run, walk, or bike ride, your hips move in only one direction (forward), while your shoulders generally don’t move at all. Or at the gym, you may do an array of exercises and a multitude of reps, yet how often do you lift your arms above your head or rotate your torso in either direction or move your body sideways?

If you are not using a full range of motion when you exercise, your body will work in a compensatory fashion: Rather than recruiting the major muscles originally designed to do the work, it will call upon only the smaller muscles that don’t require as much energy to function. For instance, when most people perform push-ups, they rely on their biceps and forearms to do the work. However, when you’re properly aligned, push-ups are a great total-body exercise that engages larger muscles, especially your abs, which in turn expends much more energy.

Having more than 40 years of experience in the fitness world (much of it working with some of the world’s top athletes), I also know that how you work out impacts what you eat and how much you drink. When you put those bigger muscles to work, you alter the body’s cravings for fuel. Your muscles need protein, nutrients found in fruits and vegetables, and water to recover. So if you find yourself wanting more lean meats and salads and less chips and soda when you move more, that’s why.

Related: Why a Dehydrated Person Might Not Get Thirsty

The Fun, Quick, and Effective Workout You Need

I want everyone to achieve optimal fitness in less time. So I’m excited to announce that I teamed up with Sonima to create Elev8d Fitness. This program is for everyone, including the super busy and non-busy, those with aches and without, and longtime fitness junkies as well as folks just starting out with exercise or coming back after a long hiatus.

Elev8d is based on eight core movements that compel a full range of motion. The exercises in the eight-, 16-, and 24-minute workouts are arranged in a very specific order, which helps align your body. These short, fun routines will improve your fitness, no matter your current level, and they can be used as a warm-up to other activity.

The only requirement is that you do an Elev8d routine at least four times a week. That might sound like a lot, but remember, each workout is short, and a body responds to the stimulus it’s provided. If the body is going to respond effectively to a new routine that involves a full range of motion, then that routine needs to happen regularly, thereby, convincing the body that there’s a change to the daily stimulus pattern it receives.

Elev8d is also based on fun. I have long said that two essential ingredients to fitness are full range of motion and fun. I am extremely excited about the advent of Elev8d Fitness and hope you are too. Fitness really can be more enjoyable and less time-consuming than we’ve come to think. Just wait and see!

Transform your body in less time with these popular Elev8d Fitness workouts and programs!

8-Minute Sculpted Butt and Hips Workout
16-Minute Core Stability and Strength Workout
8-Minute Strength Workout Series
Flat Belly Workout Series
Total-Body At-Home Workout Series

The post Your Workouts Really Don’t Need to Be That Long appeared first on Sonima.

If you start from a place of self-judgment, then you carry it with you everywhere you go, including to the gym. It’s nearly impossible to truly get healthy if you live under the cloud of criticism. It is fear-based and, simply, not good for you, mentally or physically. To live in fear is to crush your spirit, and a crushed spirit will not sustain you over the long haul toward improved fitness.

Fear is also bad for you physically. It is harmful to your body’s natural supply of melatonin, which is vital for the regulation of sleep patterns and serotonin, which is a brain chemical that plays a crucial role in many of your bodily functions. Fear can make it difficult to do something as instinctive as breathing. Ever seen those professional athletes who, early in a game or match, cannot catch their breath? These athletes are in phenomenal shape; it’s way too early for them to be that tired. It’s fear that is making them struggle for oxygen.

Related: Are You Subconsciously Holding Your Breath?

Granted, the fear that informs self-judgment may not be as acute as the fear we feel when performing in front of 40,000 fans, but the general rule still applies: Fear is bad for the body and the soul, and it’s a horrible impetus to improve health. You simply cannot hold onto the energy of judgment for protracted amounts of time. That’s why people, who go to the gym motivated by fear, stop going a few months, or even weeks, later. Or that’s one reason, at least. A key one.

Resolutions work better when they come from a place of stimulation and wonder. For instance, rather than begin the New Year by saying, “I’m not very smart, so I am going to commit to reading 50 books this year,” instead say, “I know a lot of terrific things, but this year I want to commit to learning more about sharks, the Founding Fathers, and film noir because those topics fascinate me.” It may seem like a trick with words, but the difference in the underlying attitudes makes sustained success possible.

It’s the same with nutrition. Rather than resolving, “I eat terribly, and I need to eat better this year,” which is an attitude of negative and harsh judgment, try a resolution like this instead: “I’m going to pick some different foods to try this year, things that I’ve been curious about for a while.” That resolution could include anything at all—main courses, side dishes, exotic breakfast sandwiches, juices, even desserts. The result will be that you stimulate the palate, leading you to eat a wider variety of foods. It will make the act of eating a more conscious and joyful experience, and, ultimately, more satisfying, which will be better for your body and better for you.

Regarding your fitness goals, try not to make a resolution that suggests you aren’t good enough (because you already are, really). Instead, make a resolution to do something this year that could be fun. Replace “I have to go to the gym three times a week,” with “I want to learn how to play squash.” It doesn’t even have to be that complex. It could be, “This year, whenever I drive past a terrific hill, I’m going to stop the car and run down it.” Or maybe resolve to climb trees again, just like you did when you were a kid. Or go outside and dance around every time it rains hard. That kind of stuff actually improves your fitness.

Or maybe just resolve to implement more fun movements into your life this year. Instead of promising to lose 20 pounds or to run six miles every other day, both of which require large commitments, decide to get down on the ground and exercise on your hands and knees a few times each week, like you did as a child, or that you’re going to jump up and down more, simply, because it’s so fun.

I know it sounds too simple to be effective, but think about it: How many times did you jump this past year? Probably not much at all for many of you. Do you really think it won’t be fantastic for your body to jump a lot more often this year? Or get up and down off of the ground more frequently? We know it’s a tiring and useful exercise because we see so many drills for professional athletes that include it. So do you really think it won’t make a difference for you? Or moving sideways, either out on a walk with your dog or playing with your grandchildren or whenever.

Bottom line: It’s all about intention. When your intention is based on joy and fun, effort comes easily and naturally, but when your intention is based on self-judgment and fear, actions become a chore, a duty, a grind. Everybody who reads that sentence knows exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve all experienced it. So for this New Year’s resolution, don’t focus on changing yourself or your actions. Focus, instead, on changing your intentions to include more fun and joy. You’ll likely have far better results.

The post The Only Way to Achieve Your Fitness Goals in the New Year appeared first on Sonima.

It’s not that they don’t notice. They do. They just don’t know what to do about it. In fact, here’s what most people do to fix their slouching: They tell themselves “sit up straight” or “head up, shoulders back” all day long.

The problem with that approach: It doesn’t work.

“It won’t hold,” says Pete Egoscue, Sonima’s pain and anatomy advisor. “The big muscles in charge of your position when you sit are in your pelvis. They’re not in your upper back.”

Imagine trying to straighten the Leaning Tower of Pisa. If you tried to push just the top part up and back, the building would crack in half. To make that building perpendicular to the ground again, you would have to start at the foundation.

The same is true for you and your torso when you sit. To get it upright, you need to start at your own foundation: the hips and pelvis. Their position depends on a lot of muscles you rarely think about: back erectors, the psoas, and your adductors. These three have a domino-like effect on one another. The adductors are responsible for bringing the leg inward toward the body. (You may know them as the inner thigh muscles that scream when you try to do a split or frog pose.)

Related: The Muscle You’ve Never Heard of But Need to Know

When those inner thigh muscles are out to lunch, their absence, or lack of engagement, impacts the position of your pelvis, which is attached to your psoas. Here’s what else your psoas is attached to: your lower back. It’s the only muscle in your body that directly connects your legs to your spine. When the psoas is short and tight, it places extra stress on your lower back, which then limits how you can move your entire torso.

The good news? This domino effect also works in reverse. If you engage the adductors, it restores the position of your pelvis, which re-engages your psoas, and can take that pressure off your lower back and help you sit (and stand) taller. Even better news? Doing this is way easier than you think.

Sitting Knee Pillow Squeezes

Here’s an exercise that will bring your adductors back online and improve your seated posture in the process. At Egoscue’s clinics, the move is taught with a pillow, but he says that just about anything will work.

“Put your briefcase or a block between your knees and just squeeze,” Egoscue says.

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To set up for the move, while you’re seated at your desk, grab a pillow, a book, or whatever you have handy (even a water bottle will do). Wedge that object between your thighs. Keep your feet pointing straight ahead.

Next, roll your pelvis forward so you’re sitting up taller, then squeeze the object between your legs. It’s not a big movement; you don’t have to go all Suzanne Somers Thighmaster style here. Quick “squeeze-and-release” pulses are all you need to do.

While performing this exercise, look out for one common compensation: Don’t let your abs do all the work. In fact, your abs shouldn’t be involved at all, Egoscue warns. If you feel tension in your stomach, stop, relax, and then try and focus on pulsing with just your inner thighs.

“You’ll feel your hip change position,” as you do the move, Egoscue says. “It will start to put an arch in your lower back. Your psoas and lower back muscles start to work when you activate your adductors.”

Perform two sets of 20 squeezes once an hour for every hour you’re seated. While that may sound like a lot, completing each set won’t take much more than a minute (if that). It’s a small investment to make to avoid the shoulder and neck pain that goes along with slumping over at the desk. Let’s keep Quasimodo where he belongs—in Victor Hugo novels and Disney movies; not at your office.

Photography by Hailey Wist.

The post How to Sit Smarter appeared first on Sonima.

At the fifth annual Robin Hood Investors Conference in New York City this October, posture and movement expert Pete Egoscue took the stage to discuss the Egoscue Method, a fitness and alignment program designed to promote pain-free living without the use of drugs, surgery or manipulation. In this exclusive video, shared only with Sonima, you can learn more about how Egoscue approaches problem-solving chronic pain in theory and in practice.

“You want to solve the problem. You don’t want to treat the symptom,” Egosue says. “Don’t treat the parts. Treat the body as a unit. That’s why pain management doesn’t work. Even if you manage to mitigate the symptom with drug therapy or some other technique, it always comes back because you’re not asking why.”

Watch this 25-minute video to learn more about asking the right questions to get to the source of the problem in order to really solve it and start living a pain-free life.

Related: The #1 Move to Do for a Pain-Free Body

>>This footage is courtesy of the Robin Hood, one of the world’s largest, most effective organizations in fighting poverty.

The post The Simple Solution to End Chronic Pain appeared first on Sonima.

Scientists from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine examined data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which is designed to offer a picture of health behaviors across all age groups and demographics in the U.S.

During two non-consecutive years in the early 2000’s, the NHANES required participants to wear an accelerometer that tracked how much they moved throughout the week. Using this data, the Johns Hopkins team analyzed a sample size of 12,529 people across five age groups: children aged 6-11, teens aged 12-19, adults age 20-30 and 31-59 as well as older adults 60 or older. The staggering finding? The teens proved roughly as active as seniors.

Labeling these young folks as “lazy” may be tempting and easy, but it’s not necessarily correct. Sonima’s pain and anatomy advisor, Pete Egoscue, suggests the problem may be physical dysfunction.

What Is Physical Dysfunction?

“Broadly speaking, humans are designed to be symmetrical bipeds—standing on two feet, vertically aligned, with the load-bearing joints, including ankles, knees, hips and shoulders, stacked,” Egoscue says. “That’s the design of posture.”

Deviations from that design are sources of physical dysfunction. If you walk around a busy street or office, you’ll see such deviations everywhere, Egoscue says. Some common examples include when the…

…head is held in front rather than on top of the torso.
…shoulders are rounded forward―a common problem for those who sit at a desk.
…pelvic tilts, which is when the pelvis either “slumps” forward (creating an exaggerated J-Lo booty look) or “dumps” backward (making the back look like a “C”).
…feet point to the sides (think 10 and 2 o’clock) rather than straight ahead when standing still.

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When the body is properly aligned, it can generate energy more efficiently. “The exchange of nutrients and waste between the cells can occur more quickly. The veins in your legs, which rely on movement to help them fight gravity and return blood to your heart, are able to do their jobs more effectively,” Egoscue says. “When you are structurally sound, these processes aren’t restricted. They don’t have to compensate.”

The Trouble with Modern Living

But here’s the thing. Our bodies are moving less thanks to our modern lifestyles. As anyone in fitness knows, when it comes to the body and its abilities, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So what we’re seeing, Egoscue says, are people becoming less and less able to move, work, and do things that were once common just a few generations ago.

“You have humans becoming incapable thanks to a society that more or less allows us to be sedentary,” explains Egoscue, creator of the Egoscue Method, an exercise therapy program designed to heal chronic pain. “The unthinkable result is that—for the majority of those below a certain age in the U.S. right now—movement hurts.”

By “hurts,” Egoscue isn’t just talking about physical pain. Teens may not feel anything like an injury when they move. Instead, the hurt that they experience may be more emotionally based. Physical movements may drain their energy, leaving them feeling fatigued, and therefore, may not be worth the effort.

“Hurt has an emotional component. We’re not going to do things that don’t make us feel good. Where you or I might go out for a run, hike, swim, or surf because we feel good, [many teens] don’t because their bodies aren’t as capable as they once were,” Egoscue says.

In other words, a teen’s day-to-day may not ask them to do much in terms of moving. But they don’t know that. So they do what’s required of them on most days. And when they go to do something physical, they may find it far more challenging than they expected. As a result, the teen may find the activity more frustrating than enjoyable.

The Trend Toward Less Movement

And while it’s easy to say that this is a problem with today’s kids, the truth is that our society has been trending this way for a long time, Egoscue says. For proof, he points to two seemingly recent developments that have roots that go far deeper.

1. Labor shortages

“Most farmers have more work than they know what to do with. They can’t find people willing to do it,” Egoscue says. That fact has been true for years, even as wages for farm workers have risen substantially. The situation is grim enough that many farms in California are racing to use more robotic harvesters lest their food rot in the fields. Similarly, 80 percent of construction businesses have reported having a hard time finding skilled laborers, too. A leading trade organization concluded that “we have likely only seen the beginning of the construction labor shortage.”

2. The rise of e-sports

Kids want to watch other kids play…video games. That may sound ridiculous, but it’s a reality and a booming business. Sports Illustrated reports that video game tournaments are now selling out major arenas across the U.S. Egoscue sees a direct connection between how kids are raised in their earliest years to how an increasing number of them recreate now. “When kids are young, parents are using things, like Baby Einstein, to try and make them smarter with computers and flashing lights,” Egoscue says. “Now think about the stimulation at a video game tournament. It’s all visual.” But remember: These sort of tournaments have been around since the 1980s. There was even a movie about them featuring Fred Savage. So what we’re seeing isn’t anything new. It’s just far bigger.

So the issue isn’t that today’s teens are some type of lazy outlier. What we’re seeing, Egoscue says, is more of a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger as it goes. So how do you stop its momentum and help young people get moving again?

Improve Alignment to Boost Activity

“If you want a kid to have better health, you can’t just tell them, ‘Oh, you gotta do something else besides sit behind that computer screen,’ because all that is going to do is cause conflict,” Egoscue says. “Instead, you have to meet them where they are. Use their own values and vocabularies to help them realize the problem, and see the solution.”

Egoscue suggests starting with what is perhaps the biggest, and most common, dysfunction among young people: Forward head posture.

Related: An Active Alignment Sequence to Correct Head and Neck Posture

Sitting in school chairs, on sofas, and at computers, misshapes kids’ bodies, Egoscue says. The resulting “swayback” position, where the head juts forward of the shoulders, while the middle spine sways backward, causes a myriad of problems, including inhibited breathing and chronic pain. Thankfully, you can start correcting the issue today. All you need is a wall—and the ability to get a teenager to listen to you.

This simple exercise reminds the body what it’s like to truly be upright. Here’s what you need to do: Stand with your heels, butt, upper back and head up against a wall. Make sure your feet are pointing straight ahead. Once in place, hold the position for five minutes, relaxing your stomach muscles and arms so that your palms are facing your sides. Now ask your teen to do the same thing. Yeah, sure, they can watch TV while they complete the exercise.

The post Why Today’s Teens Are So “Lazy” appeared first on Sonima.

Once an athlete pulls a hamstring, he or she can be knocked out of commission for anywhere from two weeks to two months, depending on the severity of the damage. That is why many athletes go to great lengths to avoid this injury, incorporating a detailed and protracted regimen of stretching. Unfortunately, no amount of stretching will prevent this problem for one simple reason: The crux of the matter lies in the hips, not the hamstrings.

I’ve said it thousands of times, but it bears repeating: barring recent trauma, such as a car accident, the source of the pain is never the source of the problem. Hamstring pulls are really the result of a dysfunctional posture and an imbalanced body. To prevent this injury, athletes must bring proper alignment to their postures so that their bodies can work as a unit.

First, let’s cover some anatomical specifics. What is commonly referred to as the hamstring is actually three muscle groups: 1) the semitendinosus muscle and tendon, 2) the semimembranosus muscle and tendon, and 3) the biceps femoris, short and long. Those muscles run from the pelvis to the knee and are attached by the tendon to the bone. When people pull their hamstrings, it’s often in one of the muscles, however, the more severe strains that take longer to heal occur in the tendon. Regardless of whether the pull is in a muscle or a tendon, the underlying problem is the inability of the tendons and muscles of the hamstring to work in a synchronized fashion.

Related: Taking the First Steps Toward Pain-Free Living

When we break into a sprint, the muscle spindles in our hamstrings contract. In a properly aligned, fully functioning body that contraction is flawless. The tendons at the knee and hip work simultaneously to allow that muscle to correctly engage. However, if the hamstring tendons at the hip don’t work in synchronicity with those at the knee, the body, in its wisdom, puts an immediate halt to the contraction in that hamstring muscle. While the body instinctively commands that muscle to stop, the rest of you doesn’t get the memo so you continue to full-on sprint. In that split second, you may experience a pulled hamstring. (Note: I am speaking here about the most overwhelmingly common cause of hamstring pulls.)

So, you can see, the problem is not the hamstring, but rather the inability of the tendons at the hip to work in concert with the tendons at the knee and in accordance with the muscle. Pain is the body’s way of communicating to you that something is wrong. A common misconception is that you can stretch that muscle back into alignment. But the truth is, stretching or isolating it by intensely strengthening the muscles around it will not remedy the underlying issue. Yes, the hamstring will eventually feel better, but that’s the result of time allowing the body to heal itself.

Moving the hip back to the appropriate position is what will best prevent hamstring pulls. No one is more aware of this than Elliot Williams, the director of Functional Performance for the San Francisco 49ers. Elliot was recently hired by my old friend, John Lynch, the new General Manager for the 49ers. I have worked with John on his posture and fitness since he was a teenager, and because he is such a staunch supporter of postural alignment, he immediately brought on Elliot, an Egoscue Method-trained therapist, to work with the NFL team on their alignment, too. Given the prevalence of hamstring injuries among athletes, Elliot spends a great deal of time working to counter their occurrence.

“When it comes to hamstrings,” Elliot says, “the actual compensation is almost always upper-body driven. That is, if the hip isn’t in its proper place and working as it was intended, it’s something in the upper body that gives me that clue.” For instance, if a player is in the weight room, and he does a series of squats, Elliot looks at the position of his arms when he is finished.

“If those arms are spread wide and distant from their sides, as if he’d just worked his trap muscles, then I know there’s a big problem with the hips. Squats are a hip-driven exercise. But if that hip-driven exercise caused his arms to move out as if he’d just done a back-driven exercise, that means the back did actually do too much work, and that’s because the hips couldn’t. The back was compensating for a hip that’s so dysfunctional, it’s in danger of not being able to work properly for a sprint.”

The upper body is always a dead-giveaway if there’s a misalignment that could hurt the hamstrings, Elliot continues. For example, when a player sprints, his arms will move freely back and forth if the hip is properly aligned. But when the player’s hands don’t move very far from the body mid-sprint, then that’s a sign the shoulders aren’t enabling the arms to swing. In this case, the shoulders are working too hard to compensate for a hip not doing its job to allow the body to run. Sometimes, the compensation will be so extreme that the hands actually chug sideways, crossing perpendicular across the center line of the spine. That’s another sign of someone who is about to pop his hamstring.

Elliott also pays attention to the legs. “If I see someone’s stride has noticeably shortened, that’s a sign of a compromised hip.”

The bottom line: The body is a unit, and all of its many elements work in complete concert. You cannot isolate any one part from the rest. Too many people are pulling their hamstrings these days, and it’s causing untold hours of pain as well as disappointment on multiple levels. When a professional baseball player pulls his hamstring, the team loses his services for any number of weeks, perhaps diminishing the team’s chances of winning and certainly reducing the return on the owner’s investment. And when amateur athletes pull their hamstrings, they lose their ability to play that game of tennis or golf over the weekend, take that jog with their dog, or go for that moderately difficult hike with their kids.

Hamstring pulls can be prevented by aligning the body so that it is balanced and the hips are functional. Full postural alignment with a trained therapist is always best, but if that’s not immediately accessible to you, try this 15-minute exercise sequence to realign your hips so that they can help your hamstrings out when needed.

The post Why Hips Are Hurting Hamstrings appeared first on Sonima.

1) Your body tells you, “This is delicious!” The reward pathways in your body light up thanks to the mixture of sugar, salt, and fat—things that get demonized in our society, but that you would literally die without. And of course, your body is right: The cold, creamy, sweet mixture does taste great.

2) Your mind tells you, “This is bad for you! It’s going to make you chubby and clog your arteries. In fact, I can hear the fat bonding to your aorta right this minute. Oh, and your butt already looks bigger.”

That second thought—the judgmental one—causes far more harm than good. Truth is, the emotional baggage that you bring to the table isn’t helpful in any way. Not only can it ruin a positive experience, like enjoying dessert with friends or family, but also, it can make negative experiences a whole lot worse. Shame is one of the strongest predictors of disordered eating, reported a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Guilt over a food choice can lead to far greater eating disturbances, such as binge-eating or starvation, and depression, found another study published in Current Psychology.

You have been taught throughout your life that calories matter to your body. What many people don’t realize is that how you feel about those calories also matters—and not just because those emotions can affect your self-esteem and decision-making. Your feelings have far-reaching effects and can impact your body in surprising ways.

More than 75 years ago, two dermatologists—John H. Stokes and Donald M. Pillsbury—explained that acne and other skin conditions could result not from blocked pores, but from feeling nervous, anxious or depressed. Their theory was that negative emotions, stemming from the brain, could lead to disturbances in the digestive tract that triggered inflammation throughout the body. In the years since, their ideas about this gut-brain-skin connection have proven true.

“The body is a global system,” explains Sonima anatomy advisor Pete Egoscue. “Each part talks to the other. That’s why no matter what our brilliant minds do to try and look at one specific part, or fix one specific ailment, the entire body is impacted.”

Egoscue has used this whole-body approach for decades to help thousands of people escape chronic pain. He brings his philosophies with him to the dinner table as well.

“When I sit down to eat, and let’s say there’s a whole smorgasbord of things from vegetables to cherry pie to ice cream, the first thing I do is look at all and say, ‘Where’s the fuel for me?’ Not, ‘Where’s the food? Or, ‘What tastes good?’ But, ‘Where is the fuel?’” Egoscue says.

By this point in your life, you’ve probably heard and read plenty about what good fuel looks like, such as fruits and vegetables, leafy greens, like kale and spinach, and nuts and whole grains. You know the drill. So what happens if you’re going to opt for something that’s not on the list of the next great health superfoods? Egoscue has an answer for that too: Be present.

“If I choose something that tastes good, like a bowl of ice cream, I don’t say, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t eat this; this is bad for me.’ I say, ‘I’m choosing this because it tastes good and it’s going to give me pleasure in a moment.’” Egoscue says. He immerses himself in that moment, tries to silence that judgmental self-chatter, and fully embrace what’s happening in the right now. “I am mindful of the flavors and textures. Why? Well, because it is an experience in my life, so why would I skip it?”

Try Egoscue’s approach and you can flip guilt on it’s head. You’ll stop seeing the brain chatter as something that’s trying to talk you “in” to being healthy and start seeing it for what it is: Negative self-talk that’s taking you out of a moment. Simply put, it’s a disconnection between mind and body.

Related: The Fascinating Science of Why You’re So Hard on Yourself

“Our body may be here while our mind is somewhere else, perhaps regretting the past or worrying about the future. And this disconnect between mind and body is the crux of many weight problems,” writes Thich Nhat Hanh in Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life.

But here’s the good news: If you can silence that inane mental chit-chat, then guess what? You’re being mindful, which is a lovely way to experience good food in great company. So the next time you’re with friends and decide to share a dessert, do exactly that: Share in the dessert. Do it without guilt or self-judgment. If you find your mind slipping into self-talk, take a breath, and bring yourself back into the experience, noticing the tastes, textures, and smell of the food. Do that and you’ll be better able to observe your body’s signals, such as when your stomach tells you it’s full, and truly enjoy the company of those around you, while staying connected to what’s really happening right now.

The post Want to Let Go of Food Guilt? Try This Simple Trick appeared first on Sonima.

Our world has become all about measurement and data. Much to our detriment, many have come to believe that everything can be measured and, therefore, should be. Fitness has not escaped that trend, and working out has become an issue of external measurements. It’s about your body mass index. Or your heart rate. Or how many crunches you can do in two minutes. Or what weight you’re maxing out at on the bench press. Or how many steps you took today.

It’s as if going out for a terrific run doesn’t matter unless we achieve a pinpoint goal of how long we ran or how far we ran and how quickly we ran it. Or playing for an hour with your kids on the jungle gym doesn’t really matter because there’s really no way to measure the physical impact of that play.

There’s an even more insidious measurement of our fitness, and that’s our appearance. We do more and more sit-ups because we want those six-pack abs. We pound more and more miles on that treadmill because we’re trying to lose those flabby saddlebags at the base of our buttocks. We bike more and more miles to shed those love handles and get those chiseled calves. We don’t play soccer with our kids or friends because, well, we’re just not sure how many calories that will burn, and we know exactly the minimum of calories we need to burn each day if we want to look a certain way, so we do intervals around the track instead while they play on the field within.

It is this focus on these external measurements, the numbers and the appearance, that’s leading to our fitness fatigue. Let me explain.

First, the numbers game. Part of the reason it’s impossible to judge fitness by numbers is that the numbers keep changing. The rules are never the same. To make my point, I turn first to nutrition. Some of you are old enough to remember the time that butter was bad for you, so we all ate margarine. Now, turns out, both butter and margarine have their pros and cons, or at least that’s the story this year. Then all fats were bad for you, except now there’s actually a good kind of fat. Or fruits are fine, but just don’t eat them in the morning or too much since they’re high in sugar. Or red meat is off-limits. No, wait, Paleo dieters love it, so actually it’s good. Frankly, I forget what it is these days.

It’s the same with all the numbers around fitness. We should all be walking 10,000 steps (just under 5 miles) per day, and we’ve even got little devices to count those steps. Once we hit 10,000, it was a good day for our body. Or we should all be doing 30 minutes of aerobic exercise four days a week, and if we do, we reduce our chances of a heart attack by 50 percent. Or was it 150 minutes of exercise per week, which is a half-hour five days a week, not four? No matter, next year, on New Year’s Day, when we get all those articles about fitness that coincide with the annual resolution to push for a new you, the standard of measurement will have changed. See what I mean by this madness of numbers? It’s very difficult to feel like you’re winning any game where the rules keep changing.

True fitness requires peace of mind, and if you’re entire routine of fitness is based on discipline, rigor, doing more and doing it harder, then you cannot achieve peace of mind as it relates to your fitness.

As for appearance, well, let’s start with the abs, which is a very common measure of looks. If you are going to the gym to achieve a washboard stomach, it’s safe to say you are unhappy with your appearance. If that’s the case, then it becomes almost impossible ever to be happy, no matter how taut and ripped those abs become. That level of self-judgment makes it almost unrealistic to ever approve of yourself in any form. We’ve all seen these people in the gyms and in our lives. Working out is about achieving perfection, and perfection is an unfeasible standard in everything, including fitness. What’s more, bodily perfection is driven by ego, and feeding the ego is like feeding any addiction: no matter how much you give it, it only wants more.

And so we keep going to the gym. And going to the gym. And going to the gym. Or we switch and start pedaling the bike. And pedaling the bike. And pedaling the bike. Or now we do routines with kettle bells, and more routines and more routines. But when does it end? When are you satisfied with your numbers or your appearance? For too many people, that satisfaction is an unattainable holy grail. But they keep going and going and going, and is it any wonder they’re fitness fatigued? We keep physically active to achieve goals that are either arbitrary or impracticable, and I believe much of the fatigue is borne of the subconscious knowledge that what we’re doing isn’t really working and isn’t any fun.

To avoid fitness fatigue, we need a new measurement for what it is to be fit, and for me, that measurement is internal. True fitness requires peace of mind, and if you’re entire routine of fitness is based on discipline, rigor, doing more and doing it harder, then you cannot achieve peace of mind as it relates to your fitness. Fitness is a calm sense of well-being. Now, that’s not to suggest that there are no physical components to fitness. Clearly, someone who is 70 pounds overweight is not fit, but then I have never met anyone who is obese or who thinks he’s overweight who exudes peace of mind. By the same token, I have met absolute physical specimens with nary an ounce of fat who live their lives in a state of agitation because those perfect bodies still aren’t what they want them to be. They are just as agitated as the person 70 pounds overweight.

The main remedy for fitness fatigue is fun. It’s spontaneous application of movement. It’s approaching your exercise not with the answer why, but the question, “Why not?” This way of thinking is the operative ethic behind Patch Fitness workouts. Yes, they compel the body to move in different directions across different planes to achieve a full range of motion for all joints, and there is definitely a physical benefit to that, but they also get your body on the ground and over logs and on top of benches and moving backwards or sideways and walking on all fours because it’s fun. When you get lost in the fun of a workout, you no longer care about numbers or specific goals. You just play. And the body reaps the benefits.

Related: The Most Important Element Missing From Your Workout

Believe me, I know many of the lords of fitness in today’s world are scoffing at what I’m saying here, but for a minute, just tune out all that they’ve said and listen to your heart on these questions: If the existing fitness industry were really offering you a viable solution to your fitness needs, why are there so many fitness fads? If you’re not having fun with that gym workout, how long do you really think you’re going to continue doing it? And how good is it for your body when you’ve essentially quit all forms of fitness because it became drudgery?

I don’t care who’s telling you how many steps you need to take today. If you’d rather spend the afternoon gardening, you should spend the afternoon gardening, and you’ll be more fit because of it. I don’t care what elevated heartrate you may achieve with a cardio workout, if you’d rather spend the next hour all over the playground with your child, then you should go to the playground, and you’ll actually be more fit because of it.

One more thing: If you’re tired today, skip that run and take a nap instead. It’s what your body is asking for. We have become so enamored with measuring things that we’ve come to believe that if something can’t be measured, it has no value. Therefore, we’ve come to believe that the only fitness that is worthwhile is that which can be measured externally. The fitness that matters most is gauged internally, where things can’t be measured.

The post Are You Suffering from Fitness Fatigue? appeared first on Sonima.

These days, I still like a good game of tennis, and I still work out a few times every week as much for my mind as my body: a good sweat can reduce the trials of this world back to a smaller and, therefore, more accurate and manageable perspective. As regards my body, I have continued all these years to work out basically for one reason: to reduce my limitations in what I choose to do. That sounds far more philosophically high-minded than it is, but the upshot is that if I were approached to go skiing or climb a mountain or mountain bike 20 miles with friends, or whatever, I didn’t want to have to say “no” because my body couldn’t pull it off.

That started to get harder the older I got; my body was breaking down, or so I thought. I believed it was the normal attrition of a former athlete, especially one stupid enough to play football. I remember the first time I tried to go out for a jog, but my knees wouldn’t let me. Literally, my right knee could not support me when I came down on that right foot. I was in my mid-thirties, and I was baffled and angry as much as anything. But the body, being the great vessel of adaptation that it is, found ways to enable me to do those physical things I wanted to do. There were trade-offs. I could go out and run six miles, but I wouldn’t be able to do much beyond walk the next day, and even that, not easily. I could play a couple hours of hard singles tennis, but the next two days were going to be a wash. Whatever, I thought. Just part of growing older.

Then I had a child. A son. Like many people these days, I got married after I was old enough to legally be President. For a multitude of reasons, my wife and I were biologically incapable of having children, which didn’t matter at all to me and barely did to her. There were plenty of kids coming into the world who needed a home, and we were happy to adopt. A far more compelling issue, at least to me, was my age. Again, I was 37, or so, by this time; I was having my first child at the same age my father had already had his sixth and final child, and while I wasn’t that old, my body felt old. I was honestly concerned over what I would be able to do with my son. I wanted to be able to do with him whatever he wanted me to do.

In those early years, the toddler years, he wanted me on the ground with him. He wanted me crawling around, being a bridge he could climb over or crawl under. He wanted me out on the playground, climbing the jungle gym with him, playing tag, pushing him on the swing then running under when he was at his highest. At the pool or a lake, he wanted me to throw him. I could usually do what he wanted, but often not easily. My body would ache and not easily go places it used to visit effortlessly all the time. What’s more, what he wanted me to do was unfailingly exhausting. I would often marvel at how tired I was by activities that technically were not that demanding. I worried about being the 50-year-old who couldn’t do diddly with his teenaged son because his body wouldn’t let him.

Then I met Pete Egoscue, the father of modern postural therapy.

This is the point at which this may start to sound like some fake religious testimony, but it is not that. Nor is this some crass advertisement. I repeat, I find the uber-fit folks kooky. I am firmly convinced there are a multitude of better ways to spend adulthood than reaching peak fitness. I happily smoke cigars, I scoff at people who actively cut caffeine from their lives, and no pig that has ended up on my plate as either sausage or bacon or anything else has died in vain. And yet, I am a father who didn’t want to miss out on an array of experiences with his son simply because I wasn’t physically capable. And I was well on the road to being physically incapable.

I started doing Pete’s method of postural realignment through basic exercises he developed, or what he calls “e-cises.” I pretty much followed what his method recommends, which is to do the e-cises almost every day and to get a new menu of them every two weeks or so. When I first began his method, the e-cises took maybe 45 minutes each day. Now, they take 20 to 30.

Here is what I’ve learned about my body, the human body. We are symmetrical bipeds, or at least are supposed to be. That means we are designed to be horizontally even, one shoulder or hip not higher than the other, and that we’re designed to be straight vertically, that is, it should be a straight line from the ankle through the knee, hip and shoulder. When our bodies aren’t balanced and straight, they compensate, and from such compensation comes pain. I couldn’t jog in my mid-thirties not because I played football. That had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t jog because my posture was so out of alignment and dysfunctional that I was asking my right knee to do more than it was ever designed to do. Some days, it could actually pull it off, but there was some hell to be paid later. Other days, it just cried, “Uncle.” Through the Egosuce Method, I got my body aligned, and now I can jog five days in a row if I want to, although I never want to.

The thinking behind it all is actually quite simple. Stupidly simple. I remember reading one of Pete’s first books on pain and the body, Pain Free, and when I was done I called and told him it reminded me of Thomas Huxley, the 19th Century scientist who was a friend of Darwin and was one of the bulldogs in Darwin’s corner. Darwin had sent Huxley a copy of what became his Origen of Species, and after Huxley read it, he said, “How utterly stupid not to have thought of that myself.” The Theory of Evolution through natural selection is simple, deceptively simple, and yet for thousands of years every scientist missed it. Pete’s understanding of the body is also simple. We hurt when our postures aren’t in the position they are designed to be, and we reduce pain when we realign our postures. It’s deceptively simple, and yet for decades, until Pete came along, many scientists and medical professionals missed it.

Related: “I Healed My Chronic Pain Naturally in 8 Weeks”

But once my body was better aligned and less dysfunctional, there was more fitness work to be done. While jogging can be an incredible cardiovascular exercise, its benefits are still limited. Jogging doesn’t help my body achieve a full range of motion. Our bodies are designed for us to be able to rotate around and look out the back window as we back out of the driveway. Too many of us can’t do that anymore; it doesn’t matter that, because of mirrors and cameras, we don’t have to. It matters that we can’t, and it shouldn’t be that way. The reason we can’t is that we don’t. And haven’t. So many parts of our body have lost their full range of motion because we haven’t been using that full range for too long. We haven’t asked our hips to move us sideways or to squat. We haven’t asked our shoulders to lift our hands over our head or behind us. And we’ve suffered the consequences.

That’s where Pete’s Patch Fitness comes in. It is a style of workout out that emphasizes our bodies to utilize a full range of motion. [hyperlink first Patch article]. It asks us to jump under things and go over things and move sideways and bend over and bear crawl and all kinds of activities that just get all of our parts moving in ways that they haven’t since we were children. Plus, it’s fun. For Pete, fitness is all about full range of motion and fun. And most of those Patch workouts take less than 20 minutes, like this 15-minute core workout.

When my son was a toddler, I was struggling to play with him some days because my body wasn’t cooperating; it wouldn’t let me. I had no idea I was limited by postural conditions that were eminently correctable through simple exercises and a different way of doing fitness. I was blessed to be shown that was the case. As a result, for many years, I’ve been able to say “yes” to everything my son, now age 11, has wanted me to do physically, which this past year has included wrestling on the ground, skiing for many hours, repelling down cliffs, jumping off of cliffs into pristine waters and rotating my body enough to turn around and give him a smile.

Pete defines fitness as having no limitations on our body’s range of motion, and it is through Patch Fitness that, barring some severe medical condition, we can all get there. I don’t care enough about fitness to argue if Pete’s definition is correct. But I do care about playing with my son. It’s probably my favorite thing to do. And so I continue to stay fit, by Pete’s definition, so that I can keep on doing it, now and for many Father’s Days long into the future.

The post A Father’s Freedom to Play appeared first on Sonima.