Have you ever noticed when you are running and the terrain changes, or there is a loud noise, or a car drives by too close, that your whole body goes into what we call the “startle pattern or reflex”.  Try it now, think of being scared when someone jumps out at you!  Wow, you tightened your neck and your head pulled back toward your spine,  your arms and shoulders lifted towards your ears, you held your breathe, so your diaphragm stopped moving, and your hips, knees and ankles all locked up into an extreme tension pattern. So the bones that make up your joints were pulled into each other, which eventually will start a whisper of pain, and if not changed, will end up in screams or surgery, or the worse, no longer being able to run.

This “startle pattern” typically shows up any time you are surprised and/or stressed by worry, anticipation, fear and anger to name a few.  I am amazed to see people in cars on the freeway, actually driving in the “startle pattern”, it doesn’t seem like it would be that big a deal but if you are living in it most of your day, you joints will wear out, your breathing will be compromised, your jaw will be overly tight. Your entire body is effected in this pattern of extreme tension. Now, when you feel yourself going into or are in this pattern of tension and holding, just think to yourself, “this is too much, I can relax my neck, shoulders, hips, knees (if they are locked, same thing – excess tension on knees and low back), and ankles and let my breath out.”  Experiment with this new way of thinking and see what happens!

I have heard many people who suffer chronic back pain feel that they are being proactive in their care by taking pain meds and stretching here and there; however the pain returns? This gives temporary relief, and who knows what the meds are doing to your organs.

What if you could learn a daily set of principles that you could practice on your own that would give you “long term” relief from the pain?

i invite you to get to a committed “YES” and invest in your own health, this is success!

Sign up on my contact page, and the first practice is a free audio you can use now (The Conscious Resting Pose).

I had a great discovery this morning as I was taking my daily run.  I know that our head moves forward and up as we walk and run, my Alexander training has instilled that in my kinesthetic awareness.  However, I know this learning about my body through movement and discovering ease, flexibility and balance is a “practice” and just when we think we “have it”, we realize that the process is just evolving.  I think the awareness of my body as being in layers, and as I come to notice and be deeply connected to that layer, I learn something profound in how it relates to the whole and my movement; it then becomes my own. This morning when I let my head fall forward in this sort of relaxed way my pace picked up I became so much lighter my joints were open, my breath was easier…what a revelation! So now I have uncovered another layer to help me be more balanced in all that I do.  I could say it was unconscious and now is conscious and available to me.  These layers of deep tension and tightness come forward into your awareness over time, because they are unconscious habits, they hide below our consciousness until we decide to embark on the curiosity of discovering and changing. For me, there was an emotional piece, that somewhere in my psyche I thought if my head came forward that much (which was a miniscule amount), that I would fall forward, so I unknowingly tightened my neck muscles to keep from falling…what an absurd thought! As FM Alexander would say we don’t really know where we are in space we don’t know what our body is doing, this really gave me that awareness in a very deep way. I am beginning to think that the headrest in my new car may have given me a new awareness of the position of my head on my spine.  So change is good in that it brought me to a new way of relating my head to my spine, and that what I thought I knew was taking me to another layer of consciousness; and it showed up in my running.  I love this work, and being in my body with enhanced awareness of how I move in relation to the whole body is profound!