2. !Purpose:Practitioners in many therapeutic fields have
witnessed generationsperforming various forms of fitness regimes
and we have watchedand oftentimes experienced ourselves, as we age,
how we haveactually caused injuries. The intention of course is to
create flexibilityand have the use of our spine, pain free
forever.As a yoga teacher trained in the BKS Iyengarmethod, I have
witnessed over the course of 38years in the field working with
hundreds of bodies,a disconnect between the intention to
createspace, alignment and freedom of movement withthe actual
results; bodies out of balance,alignment, injured and in pain. A
2008 poll commissioned by Yoga Journal and announced in theNew York
Times concluded that the number of people performingyoga is up to
15.8 million. And the majority of these practitioners areperforming
the poses at an intensity of movement that would neverallow the
student to align the spine and pelvic floor to create theoptimum
balance and stretch.Why are there more and more hip replacements
occurring youngerand younger?Of course this does not pertain to
just practitioners of yoga. With theawareness that exercise will
keep us young and prevent injury came just the opposite for many.
Running, biking, playing sports, dancing professionally have all
taken their toll on the body. After years of living in distortion
and exercising in distortion, chronic pain develops: pelvic, sacral
and lumbar, sciatica, referring up and down the spine intothe neck,
legs, and arms. We see more and more elders stoopedover walkers
because they do not have the ability to stand evenly onboth legs.
They have lost the use of their spinal muscles, the psoasand
ultimately the lumbar spine. Performing yoga or any otherexercise
modality without addressing and unraveling the distortion
3. at the source of the initial collapse, at the site of the
perineum, willcontinue to exacerbate the misalignment.Relevance:
Most exercise and fitness programs and disciplines areperformed
with fast movement and an out-of-aligned asymmetricpelvic floor,
causing strain and injury. The movements in all exercisemodalities
(e.g. tennis, running, biking, yoga, dance, etc.) canexacerbate a
pattern of mis-use that may have begun with the firststep taken as
a child, perhaps having favored one side and collapsedonto one leg.
This seemingly innocent first step creates the pattern ofsubsequent
use. The initial imbalance, coupled with the pelvis beingtilted too
far posteriorly or anteriorly, results in the inability to
optimallyaccess the psoas muscles and to allow extension of the
spinalmuscles to function properly to provide space in the sacral
andlumbar areas. The collapse into one side of the body causes
themuscles to be stretched across the pelvic bowl and ileum,
ultimatelycreating distortion that includes the muscles on the
femur bones asthey spiral and pull the structure out ofalignment.
The progression and result of theinitial collapse causes further
injury, pain,micro tearing in the lumbar fascia, which
areunderlying causes of chronic and low backpain. More than 80
percent of Americans at some time in their livesexperience episodic
back pain that costs $100 billion annually, withtwo-thirds of that
due to decreased wages and productivity. Thisimbalance and
progression oftentimes leads to hip deterioration andreplacement.
Researchers found that by 2011 more than 50 percentof patients
needing hip replacements will be under the age of 65.Consider the
cost of this on the health care system.Methods: Structural
ReAlignment Integration provides the mapand the tools to awaken,
transform and increase proprioception, toenliven the nervous system
and feel areas that have previously hadno awareness. When the
pelvis finds its correct alignment, musclesrelease their hold,
their tension on the bones, muscle tone isnormalized and perception
changes. Releasing the distortion in themusculature changes the
messages firing between the muscle fiber
4. cells. The correction needs to be made in the fascia and if
the fascialpathways are blocked with muscles that are literally
wound up, therecan be no undoing of the story created in the muscle
fibers. Studieshave shown that cells communicate via
mini-projections on the cells.These become deformed through over
use, exercise, an aging bodyout of alignment, injuries that cause
us to compensate in the way weattempt to hold the structure
upright. The resultant muscularimbalance does not allow healthy
cellular communication. Living withthe physical muscular response
over time creates what we considerour new baseline, our new story,
which is not the one we want tochoose to live with. The integrity
in the core is compromised and it ishere that Structural
ReAlignment Integration begins.Results: The process of Structural
ReAlignment Integrationimproves cellular function creating pathways
that are open andthrough which organ systems are fed. Through a
guided program intothe core of the distortion, at the site of the
perineum, we are able toteach our own anatomy to unravel, becoming
informed responsibleparticipants in our own well-being. We discover
how to release thedistortions, muscles spiraled around the bones of
the pelvic floor,across the pelvis and around the femur bones. The
goal is to standbalanced on our bones, to extend our leg bones deep
into the earth,allowing our structure to be supported by the
musculature. The focusof this teaching is on the sacred geometry of
the body through whichspace is created to open energetic pathways
for healing, allowing thestructure to be the support it is meant to
be and allow freedom ofmovement for a life time, pain free.
Conclusion: Our intended goal is to be balanced in body and energy,
standing evenly on two legs, freeing up the pelvic floor to allow
the flow of energy from thebase of the spinal cord to every organ
system. In essence we havetwo separate bodies and must unravel the
distortion to createfreedom throughout the entire pelvic and lumbar
region. Years ofpelvic misalignment and the resultant pain and
discomfort that arisecreates a false navigation system with a
distorted baseline for our
5. proprioception whereby we are not able to recognize whether
or notwe are standing evenly on two legs, engaging back
musclesappropriately. Recognition and awareness of the imbalance in
thepelvic floor and where the distortion begins at the site of the
perineumis essential to free the low back pain and to create space
andextension of the pelvis and spine. Held prisoner in a misaligned
pelvicstructure with muscles spiraled, torqued, and raveled around
bonescontinuing to pull the skeleton out of alignment, with poor
cues as tospatial awareness, leads to more injury and pain.
Implications: It is the hypothesis of this practitioner that
creating space in the collapsed side beginning at the site of the
perineum, unraveling the distortion from this core place, creates
the freedom we need to literally grow out of the pelvic floor, have
the optimal use of the psoas muscles, create extension of the
spinal muscles and stand on our leg bones, not distorted
musculature. We are an energysystem and when the flow is blocked or
limited we create dysfunctionand illness. Only from alignment in
our core muscles can we createhealthy movement and exercise safely,
preventing injury and allowingour energy to flow freely.Ginny
NadlerStructural ReAlignment Integration:A Revolutionary Approach
to Pain FreeMovement by Ginny Nadler is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
License.Contact Ginny Nadler, [email protected], for more
information.Photo of walker used with permission of
thisisbroken.comArtwork by Rose Cassano, rosecassano.comUpdated,
February, 2010!