Episode 009 – The Franklin Method, Pilates and Shiatsu Therapy

Episode 009In this episode we speak to Amanda Erlank about the ‘art and science of beautiful movement’. We talk about all things movement, from an eastern philosophical point of view, from a Pilates point of view and from the point of view of the Franklin method. We discuss the importance of visual learning, efficiency in movement and I am sure you will agree that the wisdom Amanda brings to movement is outstanding and we are so lucky to be able to learn from her experiences!

Show Notes

Franklin Method = Eric Franklin (the founder of the Franklin Method) is, as Amanda explains, all about helping you understand exactly whats going on from a joint perspective, muscle perspective and overall bio-mechanical perspective. Connect with Amanda on facebook to stay in the loop with her up-coming Franklin Method workshops.

Pilates = Amanda is a Polestar Pilates principal educator and her advice for up and coming Pilates instructors is;

  • Do it because you have a PASSION for movement and for helping people (not for the money!)
  • Create a work – life balance
  • Continue to practice in your own body, take classes yourself, follow people who inspire you
  • You believe in something bigger than yourself
  • Realise you will get back so much more than just helping people, it’s a way of life!

Visual Learning = weather we know it or not we all have an element of ‘visual’ in our toolbox of learning. Amanda explains how there are many learning styles, but when it comes to movement, the visual sphere is a big one!

A little bit about Amanda and Kinected Pilates Studio

Amanda (a principal educator for Polestar Pilates) and owner of Kinected Pilates Studio, does an amazing job of blending her love of eastern philosophy, movement, Pilates and touch to help her students ‘Move Beautiful’. You can follow Amanda on YouTube or on facebook, especially if you are not local to her studio!

You can part-take in her next ’40 days of bliss challenge’ here

Episode 008 – Rotation

Episode 008Rotation, Rotation, Rotation! I’ll give you one guess what this episode focuses on! Yep … ROTATION and ‘rotational centers’, what they are, where they are, why they are important for movement, and how to implement more rotations into your movement practice.

What You Will Learn In This Episode

If your asking yourself, when is rotation necessary? The answer is ALWAYS, reaching behind to get something out of the back of the car, golf, tennis, swimming, running, walking …. There is basically no task we do in daily life that does not have some element of rotation in it!

Rotational Centers

There are however areas of the body, we call them centres of rotation, which rotate a lot! These include … and heads up here the anatomy gets a bit involved.

  • OC1
  • Thorax – yes many people still think of the thorax as being stiff and immobile, but Dr LJ Lee’s work in thorax busts this myth!)
  • Pelvis
  • Hips / femoral heads
  • Subtalar joint

Slings / Lines – Tom Myers and Anatomy Trains 

The Lateral Line

Peroneal muscles > ITB > TFL/Glute max > External/Internal Oblique & deep QL > Internal/External intercostals > Splenius cervicis/iliocostalis cervis/SCM/Scalenes

The Spiral Line

Splenius Capitis > Rhomboids (opposite side to splenius capitis) > serratus anterior > External/internal oblique > TFL (opposite side of obliques) > ITB > Anterior tibialis > Peroneus longus > biceps femoris >sacrotuberous ligament > sacral fascia > erector spinae

Thank you for listening to episode 008 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 007 – How To Get Abs

PlayPlay

Episode 007This episode focuses on abs! But not abs in the way you might think. We break down the barriers, stop repeating and rehashing the same old tips and tricks and truly, as I always aim to do, give you a thought provoking and inspiring conversation. We discuss the deep and superficial muscle system, discover for yourself which is better, strong, flat or efficient abs, as well as demystify the word ‘core’ once and for all. Of course there will be your favorite part some home play to enjoy in your own body and the bodies of the people you work with.

What You Will Learn In This Episode

Abdominal Muscles are located between the ribs and the pelvis on the front of the body. They allow movement, support the trunk and hold the organs in place through the regulation of intra abdominal pressure.

‘Core Muscles’ I would like to argue that we have ‘core muscles’ all over our body, this is called the deep system and its there to balance out the forces that act across our joints! This means that although you do have deep system muscles in your abdominal region, you also have them elsewhere in your spine, neck, hips, knees, shoulders …. You get my point! Anywhere there is a joint, there is a group of muscles which function to provide stability to ensure a different group of muscles can provide movement, strength, speed and power! You can think of them like team A and team B. Neither one is more important but without both teams working together the game of movement is no fun for anyone!

I think of these two systems as needing to work together like opposite sides of a seesaw. On one side of the seesaw you have your superficial system which is responsible for lifting loads, propelling your body through space and maintaining the endurance necessary for a variety of long hold positions. on the other side of the sea saw you have the deep system which is responsible for aligning and balancing the forces around a particular joint, enabling its movement to be both efficient and effective. Neither system in my eyes is more important than the other, your superficial system doesn’t work well without an equally effective deep system, but similarly having a well orchestrated deep system is not much use if your superficial system is not strong enough to do the tasks required of it .

Home Play

Superficial System Ab Exercise = Crunches (Watch how to here)

Deep System Ab Exercise = Pilates Bridging (Watch how to here)

Thank you for listening to episode 007 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 006 – Movement For Life

Episode 006This episode focuses on Movement for Life rather than on Movement for Results! We talk about how movement could be thought of as an opportunity and how this might assist us to motivate others to move, how the noise around movement principals might actually be harming our ability to encourage joyful movement and of course we wrap things up with some home play giving you the opportunity to mix up your movement experiences and the experiences of movement you give to others.

What You Will Learn In This Episode

This episode doesn’t have many show notes, although I will direct you to our article on ‘Why Pilates?’ if you haven’t already read it here as it continues our discussion on why we move and what it is about movement that we as ‘moving people’ love!

Home Play

Thank you for listening to episode 006 of the Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 005 – Pelvic Floor Exercises

Episode 005More on this is future podcast episodes, but for now, here is an introduction to your pelvic floor! We talk about how intra-abdominal pressure affects pelvic floor recruitment, what the best position to practice your pelvic floor lift is, what can be do about ‘LBL’ (Light Bladder Leakage) and of course we wrap things up with some home play.

In This Episode You Will Learn

As promised here is a better visual or your pelvic floor muscles,

pelvic floor musclesIf you haven’t already read our article on ‘how the pelvic floor and lower tummy are connected‘ that is a great place to start! Nevertheless a quick recap is always good. The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that act like a sling at the base of the pelvis to support the bladder, bowel and pelvis structure as a whole. I think it’s helpful to have this image in your mind as you begin to start your practice, as a lot of what you are doing when you recruit you practice pelvic floor exercises is internal and you need to have a good mental picture of what is going on down there. I like to think of them like a sling or a draw string bag that can gently tighten as you close the draw string around the neck of the bladder and bowel.

Alright now for the good stuff, I will break these exercises down into male and female as the cuing and explanations change slightly for each. Sometimes what works for men doesn’t work for women and vice versa, it takes sense our anatomy down there is fairly different!

  1. Pelvic Floor Exercises – Visualisation for Women

When attempting to recruit your pelvic floor the following mental pictures may work for you. When practising visualisation and internal recruitment it best to be in a quiet calm place away from any interruptions. It is also helpful to make sure you are sitting or lying in a comfortable position so you won’t be distracted by any other feelings of discomfort or pain in your body.

– Imagine you are sitting on the toilet urinating and all of a sudden you need to stop the flow, what muscles would you need to use to achieve this?

– Image a rock being thrown into a pond, and the ripples that spread out after it hits the water. Now imagine what that scene looks like in reverse a the ripples draw together and the rock is pulled back up out of the water. How could you make your pelvic floor muscles feel as though they are lifting as gently, controlled and equal as that rock?

– Imagine you have a straw inserted into your vagina canal, and what it would feel like to try and suck water up through the straw, what muscles would you need to use this?

– Imagine you are (or actually do it) sitting on the floor crossed legged. On the floor is a small velvet handkerchief, what would the handkerchief look like if you used a pincer grip and gently picked it up from the centre, allowing the rest of the fabric to fall away from the middle. How would you need to use your pelvic floor muscles to mimic this gentle movement of the fabric with your pelvic floor?

  1. Pelvic Floor Exercises – Visualisation for Men

When attempting to recruit your pelvic floor the following mental pictures may work for you. When practising visualisation and internal recruitment it best to be in a quiet calm place away from any interruptions. It is also helpful to make sure you are sitting or lying in a comfortable position so you won’t be distracted by any other feelings of discomfort or pain in your body.

– Imagine you are standing at the toilet bowel urinating and all of a sudden you need to stop the flow, what muscles would you need to use to achieve this?

– Imagine you were wading out into freezing water, what would it feel like as your testes started to lift, what muscles would be doing this movement?

– Imagine you were retracting your penis, what muscles would make this movement? 

You might have found that one or two of those imagery cues made sense or worked well for you. Use your favorite cue, or try them all and see which one your prefer for the next stage of pelvic floor recruitment,which is … actually practicing it in your own body!

Thank you for listening to episode 005 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 004 – Stretching part 1

Episode 004I am super excited to bring you this double episode jam packed with a bunch of stretch related research, insights and home play! This topic actually goes over two podcasts because once I got my head into it I realized to properly do it justice and to truly give you all an accurate, thought provoking and practical discussion I needed more that my normal 20mins! So in part 1 we will discuss mostly why our current framework for understanding stretching is flawed, so that in part 2 we can come back with a new frame work and get into the nuts and bolts of what and why are we stretching as well as some homeplay for you all to practice and play around with in your own body or in the bodies of your patients!

In This Episode You Will Learn: 

Types of bodies. Now I know I just said every body is different and there is no such thing as prescriptions but to a certain extent we can use loose groupings of people who show similar features to better lead our clinical reasoning as we assess the body that’s in front of us. Bodies fall into one of three categories;

  1. Generally Stiff: these bodies have very little range of motion at any joint in the body. They globally feel tight and no matter how much they hold a stretch often they experience very little prolonged benefit.

  2. Generally Floppy: these bodies have a large ROM at almost every joint in the body. They often feels as if they don’t need to stretch and in fact if they do stretch often find they don’t feel much tension or stretch despite seemingly moving into quiet deep range.

  3. Mix: so as I said not everyone fits into these two perfect boxes, some people have particular areas which have limited range of motion and other areas with seemingly excessive ranges of motion. Meaning they have a mix of stiff and floppy segments throughout their body.

Resources

Dr Steven Levin

Tom Meyrs

Home Play

You will have to wait for part 2 for this!

Thank you for listening to episode 002 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 004 – Stretching part 2

Episode 004So here we go, part 2 of the 2 part Stretching podcast. Todays podcast is the second part of a two part podcast dedicated to stretching! If you haven’t already listened to Episode 004 part 1, then I suggest you go back and start there. In part 1 we discussed why our current framework for understanding stretching is flawed, how our bodies do not adhere to the laws of Newtonian physics as we might think, and how this flawed belief has affected our understanding of stretching. We began to introduce a new framework which provides us with a more accurate paradigm to discuss what we are stretching, why we are stretching and how we are stretching and when we should stretch. This new paradigm considers our bodies like silly putty, which changes properties depending on speed, temperature, surface areas etc rather than like sky scrapers which when you think about it, don’t make very good representations of the human body!

In This Episode You Will Learn

The break down of a muscle, putting on our ‘Zoom In Glasses’

Muscle > Fascicle > Fasiculi > Myofibril > Sarcomere

Other Structures involved, putting on our ‘Zoom Out Glasses’

Connective Tissue

Neuromuscular Junction

CNS (or Nervous System for short)

Resources

Jules Mitchell – The Science of Stretching

Thank you for listening to episode 004 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 003 – Spine Extension

Episode 003Hi! Welcome back to the Move Beautiful Podcast, this episode focuses on the movement of spine extension. We talk about how spine extension influences your mood, is there such thing as ‘too much extension’ and my top three things to look out for when teaching and practicing spine extension.

In This Episode You Will Learn:

Things to watch out for during spine extension;

  • Osteoporosis: For anyone who has osteoporosis or osteopenia spine extension is great! Spine flexion is the movement to be wary of here, but spine extension is wonderful for people with osteoporotic spines. So move gently and slowly at first but by all means extend away!

  • Canal Stenosis: This is a condition causing narrowing of the spinal canal due to excess bone growth or tissue. In these cases extension should be avoided. By extending the spine you are often decreasing the space in the spinal canal and if it is already decreased due to bone or tissue growth you run the risk of impingement of the central spinal cord. It is worth mentioning though that many people who have canal stenosis only have it in sections of their spine, not throughout their whole spine. If this is the case and you know what levels the stenosis is present in you are able to block those levels and extend in other parts of the spine. This will often do them a lot of good as you are increasingly the available ranges of freedom at the levels above and below the stenosis.

  • Disc Bulges: This is really person and disc bulge dependant. Much of this has to do with where the disc bulge is, anterior vs posterior and how the person moves into spine extension. This is another topic for another podcast, but let’s just suffice to say spine extension is not generically good for all disc bulges!

Resources

Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk can be found here

Home Play

  1. Length before Height: The biggest tip I can give you when practising spinal extension is to think about length and decompression BEFORE you think about range and height! What I mean by this is, before you begin the movement of spine extension lengthen your spine by picturing the side waist’s opening up. This way you are less likely to push into ranges of compression and irritability for your spine!

  2. Pay Attention to your Neck: Tip number 2 is pay attention to your head and neck. Because this is an area of the spine which often has a lot of freedom in spine extension, it tends to over compensate and do all the work. Be sure your head and neck don’t over work. Rather, think of the head as an extension to the spine and allow the head to ride on the neck.

  3. Pay Attention to your Lower Back: Tip number three is pay attention to your lower back. Similar to tip number 2 the lumbar spine is also an area of the spine which often has a lot of freedom in spine extension, and so it to tends to over compensate and do all the work. To ensure it is not becoming excessively loaded, pay attention and spend some time before you move gently activating your lower core and pelvic floor muscles. These will help to bring stability to this section of your spine.

  4. Use your Eyes: Tip number four is to use your eyes. Where your eyes go your spine will follow. So if your eyes are focussed downwards its incredibly hard to activate your spinal muscles into extension. Rather, think about your eyes as the guide, they are tracing the path out first so your spinal segments can follow along as the path ahead has already been marked out!

  5. Use your Breath: Tip number five use your breathing! This is an interesting one and its one I cant give you a recipe for as everyone and everybody is different. Some people prefer to use an exhale as they move their spine into extension while other prefer an inhale! So try both and notice which works best for you! For someone you, you may find the exhale helps you to stabilse your lower spine allowing you to gain more extension in your mid and upper back, while for others you may feel like a inhale into your chest allows you more freedom of movement increasing your spinal extension to a range which an exhale breath just doesn’t allow!

Thank you for listening to episode 002 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Episode 002 – Breathing

Episode 002Hi! Welcome to episode 002 of the Move Beautiful podcast, where we are talking about all things breathing related!

This episode delves into breathing and breath work. We define various different types and directions of breathing, when to use them and we go through some practical home play to help you cultivating your breath work library.

In this episode you will learn:

Different types of breathing ;

  1. Diaphragmatic

  2. Thoracic

  3. Clavicular

  4. Paradoxical

Particular Yoga and Pilates breath work

  • Ujjaui Pranayama (breathing) – a gentle breath that is relaxed yet energizing. It is in and out through your nose, but on the exhale you should attempt to make the sound of the ocean in the back of your throat. Also used in Pilates … fogging up a mirror … has a great role in core and pelvic floor activation.

  • Kapalabhati Pranayama ‘Skull Shinning Breathing – deep inhale and forced exhale drawing the air out of your belly. Another deep inhale then you can actively draw the air out of your belly for 15-30 sharp exhales (taking in no air at this time). Also use in Pilates as a percussion breath

  • Alternate nostril breathing – to begin put your hand in the position as if you were about to hitch hike. Use your thumb to close off the right side nostril, inhale deeply through the left nostril and hold your breath. Now close off the left nostril and exhale through the right

  • Cooling Off Breathing – this has an immediate effect on your whole body temperature. Start by curling your tongue into a tube like passage, inhale through your mouth (keeping your tough like this), close your mouth and hold your breath for 5-10sec, exhale slowly through your nose

Thank you for listening to episode 002 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.