CHAPTER 3
Tools and Techniques to Align Your Body
“All parts of the body which have a function, if used in moderation and exercised in labors in which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy, well developed and age more slowly, but if unused they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly.”
—Hippocrates, regarded as the father of medicine
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR BODY
We all grew up learning about muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones, but few of us received much education on the stuff tying it all together: the fibrous connective tissue found throughout your body, more specifically the fascia. World-renowned anatomist and Align Podcast regular Gil Hedley has described fascia as “a three-dimensional network that gives us our shape and allows us to sense the world around us.”
For a long time, our eyes were thought to be the richest sensory organ, but recent research has deemed fascia to be the king of sensation, boasting more than 100 million sensory nerve endings. Your body can actually react and move in response to stimulus before sending the message all the way to the brain and back, which would be too slow to allow you to react when you suddenly slip on ice or step off a curb unknowingly. In fact, fascial pioneer Robert Schleip has demonstrated that fascia contains myofibroblasts, which allow smooth-muscle-like contraction to occur.1 This highly intelligent tissue is what anatomists used to throw away in dissection and refer to as the “packing peanuts” of the body.
Our brains are continually receiving an immense amount of information through the connective tissue, which is constantly forming a body schema of where your parts are in space. These sensory organs can determine the temperature of your surroundings, detect sound, send signals of pain to indicate danger or potential tissue damage, and are on the ready to relax, contract, or whatever needs to be done to keep that precious body of yours safe.2 Every stimulus is like a lesson for your nervous system. “Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. NOTHING is the worst thing that can happen to us,” said American novelist Richard Bach. Your nervous system grows and thrives on adaptation in the form of movement variation (including moving your senses). For this reason, a sedentary lifestyle or nothing at all is one of the worst things that can happen to the human organism.
PLUGGING BACK INTO THE GRID
Think of your body as an electrical grid. If you’ve ever flown in a plane over a city at night, you saw some homes or parts of the town lit up and others shrouded in darkness. The dark spots are locations of inactivity or perhaps even abandonment; we have similar “dark spots” in our bodies. Your movement awareness is what lights those dark spots through activity and introspection; if you’re having issues with balance, pain, or weakness in certain areas of your body, it may be because you need to reconnect those areas of your body to the power grid.
In order to get the lights back on in the dark sectors of town, we need to cultivate communication between everyone involved. The body may be getting bombarded by signals of distress due to chronic tissue dehydration, compression from imbalanced postural patterns, a lack of regular restorative movement, or a nervous system stuck in a “fight, flight, or freeze” state due to mental, emotional, and/or environmental signals. Upon beginning this process, your brain will likely have a lot of static to deal with. It will take some doing to light the place back up, but it can be done with awareness of some simple fundamentals and a splash of intention.
CHANGING YOUR SHAPE
I’ve heard it said that our muscles are slaves to our posture. You could also say they’re both slaves to the nervous system. The reality is these perspectives are all different ways of chopping up a continuous system; you cannot affect any part of your organism without impacting the whole in the very same moment. The good news, though, is that you have the power to impact all the systems via shifting your shape as though you’re chiseling a living sculpture. This is what Ida Rolf was referring to when she said, “We work with the body because it’s what we can get our hands on.” Perhaps the superpower of humans is our immense capacity for adaptation. For the most part, your environment is like an artist continually shaping your malleable muscles, bones, and connective tissue.
Literally every physical (and emotional) aspect of your day—your car seat, chairs, walking paths, shoes, clothing, bike, screens, job, and anything else you come in contact with—leaves a subtle imprint, just like a potter’s hands pressing into clay. This is what makes the modern mold of chair hunching and screen staring so dangerous: Our bodies literally become molded to these shapes.
In science speak, this is referred to as Davis’s law, which states your soft tissue re-forms itself based on the imposed demands of your life. With time, these subtle imprints become deep divots and possibly ruts that require work, intention, and know-how to rebalance and restore. That’s the good news: You can undo the forward head posture, rolled forward shoulders, hunched-over spine, imbalanced pelvis, collapsed knees, and flat feet that our modern environments have crafted so many of our bodies to become. These are all directly tied to the emotional states of feeling “depressed” or “down,” but you can rise above them and begin reshaping into an upright, flexible, strong, aligned version of yourself. As you do so, your mood will change for the better, too.
TENDING TO THE GARDEN
Your connective tissue could be likened to fast-growing bushes; our movement is the act of pruning, maintaining, and structuring the growth, like training the branches of a tree to fit your vision. In fact, it’s been shown that when an acupuncture needle penetrates the skin, collagen fibers coil around the needle literally like a living vine wrapping around a lattice. There’s a whole moving world inside of you, and you’re the orchestrator of the show based on how you inhabit your body (a lot of responsibility, I know). If you don’t regularly tend to your internal bushes (connective tissue), they begin to grow out of control and agglutinate (firmly stick together to form a mass) into unresponsive, dense, dehydrated tissue.
This is literally happening right now as you read this. Take a quick scan of your body—is there anything that you want to move? Those signals you feel to twist, turn, stretch, stand up, squat, etc., are all built-in mechanisms (for a healthy person) telling you where to trim next.
An aligned body has all its parts in order to allow fluids to circulate, tissues to heal, and dis-ease to resolve like organizing the pipes within a town’s sewage and irrigation systems to remove stagnation and permit growth. Andrew Taylor Still, founder of osteopathy, pioneered many of these ideas. He wrote in his book Philosophy of Osteopathy, “The osteopath seeks first physiological perfection of form, by normally adjusting the osseous framework, so that all arteries may deliver blood to nourish and construct all parts. Also, that the veins may carry away all impurities, dependent upon them for renovation. Also, that the nerves of all classes may be free and unobstructed while applying the powers of life and motion to all divisions, and the whole system of nature’s laboratory.”3
This idea is a core foundational principle to grasp as we begin this journey together. As you begin reconnecting different parts of your body to the power grid through daily postural awareness, your body can grow healthier with time instead of giving in to the commonly accepted belief of gradual collapse. Each day is a choice to take an active role in aligning and restoring your structure; the alternative is chaos.
INTERNAL INTELLIGENCE
The basic principles outlined below are sculpting tools to take back control of your form. Each one is powerful and, like any tool, becomes more potent as you learn to wield it correctly. The most powerful tool you have at your disposal is your own internal intelligence—the awareness of your own body and the meaning of its many messages. The way to cultivate control of the happenings within your body is to simply begin paying attention.
One form of this is awareness is referred to as “interoception,” which loosely translates to your perception of the internal state of your body, such as organ function. In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk describes it as our awareness of our inner body–based feelings. He suggests that with greater awareness, we have greater potential to gain control of our lives and that knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way.4 Cultivating awareness of your own internal landscape is like spending time in the metaphoric garden mentioned above, learning what’s planted where and how to tend to the various flora and fauna inhabiting the space. In literal terms, this includes mindfulness, breath work, self-care techniques, manual therapy, and movement practice to develop your body’s internal senses.
Then we have “neuroception,” a term coined by the distinguished university professor Dr. Stephen Porges. In his book The Polyvagal Theory, he defines neuroception as “how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous or life threatening.” At a sub-cognitive level, we are continually making judgments about our surroundings to determine whether we should fight, flee, freeze, or socially engage with the world around us. The coming chapters offer tools on how to successfully navigate this neurophysiological ladder. Side note: I think this may have been what Rumi was referring to when he said, “The moment you entered this world, a ladder was placed in front of you that you might transcend.”
Finally, there is “proprioception,” your sense of the relative position of your own body parts in space, and the strength of effort employed in movement. Such introspective awareness is a sixth sense and a missing link in the healthcare of modern humans, leading to greater risk of injury, diminished cognitive function, and a loss of confidence in one’s ability to feel powerful and confident in their own mind and body. This book is about turning your sixth sense back on!
ALIGNMENT TOOLS
Throughout the rest of the book, I’m going to share with you the exercises, practices, and tools you can use to develop internal intelligence and craft your body based on its individual needs. I’m going to introduce you to some fundamental movement practices and lifestyle shifts to boost your productivity, creativity, and overall energy levels. Before we begin, there are some simple self-care tools that I’ve found immensely helpful over the years. There’s no absolute need to have any of them to take advantage of the advice in this book. That being said, they’re all affordable and game changers for your quality of movement.
Yoga Block
This is exactly what it sounds like, a rectangular block made of cork, wood, or foam typically acting as a support by raising the ground in specific areas to assist in bringing your body into better alignment during yoga (or any movement practice, including just sitting on the floor). Blocks are often used to adjust the height of your hips for proper alignment, but their uses stretch far beyond this. Grab a couple of differently sized cushions and blocks—they’ll come in handy. If you don’t have a block handy, a stack of books will do just fine!
Kettlebell
A kettlebell looks a bit like a cannonball with a handle or a heavy teakettle (hence the name). Kettlebells were used originally several hundred years ago in Russia as counterweights to weigh dry goods on market scales until, like so many amazing inventions, people began to play with them. These little fellas certainly pack a punch for strengthening but also can be used as self-care tools by laying their weight into stuck tissue and using the techniques described in this chapter to rehydrate the area. If you have limited space, a few kettlebells of varying sizes will go a long way for at-home functional movement training. If you don’t have a kettlebell handy, you could get away with a few dumbbells.
Pull-Up Bar
This is such an amazing tool to have indoors if you don’t have regular access to gym or playground equipment. Grab one for your doorway today, and be sure to carefully follow the installation instructions. If you don’t have a pull-up bar nearby, go outside and find a tree branch to hang from. Your neighbors may think you’re a bit crazy, but it could also inspire them to save their shoulders and decompress their own spines!
Lacrosse Ball
My travel self-care bag is real simple: a ball and a band. They’re both super light, fit easily in a carry-on bag, and serve lots of different purposes. Avoid getting lots of specialized equipment and stick to the basics, as simple tools are the most dependable and versatile. Another great option for something a bit softer than a lacrosse ball is a set of Tune Up Fitness Balls from my friend and fascia queen, Jill Miller. If none of these options are available, you can get a lot of good self-care work done with a smooth rock or the edge of a couch.
Foam Roller
For rolling out at home, feel free to get foam rollers in a couple different densities to feel what is best for your tissue. I recommend the Melt Method Rollers for a softer option made by my other friend and fascial superhero, Sue Hitzmann. For travel, I recommend using a thick water bottle as a foam roller (Mobot is a solid option).
Align Band
My most frequently used tool with clients over the years has been a resistance band for both home and travel use to mobilize tissues and reorganize joints. The issue for clients using resistance bands for mobility is they typically don’t have a good place to attach the band—that’s why the Align Band includes a door anchor inside the travel case so you can hang it from any hotel, car, or closet door. Think of the resistance band as the sculptor’s chisel and the various techniques below as techniques for effectively reshaping your body. You can get a free complete video guide on how to effectively use resistance bands for self-care and functional movement at www.alignband.com.
Throughout the book, I’ll focus on how you can use the Align Band to steadily realign your body, mobilize your joints, and rehydrate your connective tissue.
FUNDAMENTAL MOBILITY TECHNIQUES
You can utilize the techniques below along with the self-care tools mentioned above with the help of a friend or by yourself. The techniques are universal for any body and are what I’ve most consistently used in my manual therapy practice for the last decade to help clients of all levels achieve their structural goals.
Contract-Relax
It’s very simple: As you’re stretching the desired muscle group, take your joint toward its comfortable end range of motion and contract with anywhere from 20 percent to 90 percent maximal tension for approximately five seconds. Then breathe out, release the contraction, and watch yourself stretch a bit further into the motion as if by magic. This technique takes advantage of the nervous system’s spinal cord reflexes that inhibit/relax your muscle tone and act as a great way to pump fluid into the cells of the targeted area for better tissue hydration.
The contraction activates your stretch reflex (which attempts to protect by shortening your muscles in danger) to temporarily take a vacation while you inch out new ranges of motion. This magical process is in part attributed to the Renshaw cells in the spinal cord sending the signal back to the muscle, explaining to it that your muscles are contracting already, and the stretch reflex can back off from contracting even more to protect you. You can use this technique anywhere you find yourself with some shortened muscles and watch your body literally begin to re-form before your eyes.
Pin and Stretch
This technique is one the most effective ways to unglue matted connective tissue and bring new hydration into previously dried-up tissues. Your body has 640-odd muscles (varying depending on the person) that work most effectively when they’re differentiated from each other and not all bound up from being squashed together with chronic chair sitting. Think of your movement like playing a piano. If you slam your hands down on all the keys at the same time, you will have earsplitting cacophony. That’s what it’s like for your body when the tissue is all stuck together in gunked-up slabs, instead of possessing the capacity to slide freely. This is what we’re achieving with these techniques—helping once sliding surfaces to slide again. Viva the sliding surface revolution!
The Pin and Stretch technique is just like it sounds: You’ll pin the targeted spot you’d like to work with down by pressing your weight into the band or whatever self-care tool you’re using. Once the tissue is “pinned,” you begin stretching by moving your joint in such a way to lengthen the targeted area. In the example to the right, the band is pinning down the trapezius muscles and you turn your neck to the opposite direction to create a pull through the connective tissue all the way down the neck and shoulder. Remember to focus on your ease of breath and try to make your exhalation a couple of seconds longer than your inhalation to help calm the nervous system and create more length and tissue relaxation. Breathe through your nose to amplify the positive effects.
Passive Mobility
I find working passively—meaning not adding active movement or contraction to the technique—to be helpful with people whose nervous systems are more tense or high-strung to begin with. You could use passive stretching with or without any self-care tools. An example of this would be a forward fold in yoga, in which you just relax and let your body fold while you breathe into the body parts you would like to target. You could also use the Align Band to assist in passive mobilizations by simply passing the band around the joint you are mobilizing. In the forward fold example, you’d wrap the band around your abdomen and fold over it. Once again, breathe into the band and use it as a feedback mechanism to relax your gut and lengthen the spine. In this particular position, you can place your hands under your feet for a deeper stretch and a little hand decompression as well. Enjoy!
Active Mobility
If passive mobility means you’re not engaging muscles while lengthening them during a stretch, active means you are (you’re flabbergasted, I’m sure). This is a great way to create more control and intelligence in a joint instead of merely expanding range of motion without movement competence in the position, which could actually increase likelihood of injury. Dr. Andreo Spina of Functional Anatomy Seminars refers to this as “owning your range of motion.” Here’s what you do: While going through any of the mobility techniques mentioned in this book, actively contract the muscles you are lengthening against the resistance of the stretch. If you get to a point in the mobilization that you can’t actively contract the targeted muscles while stretching, you’ve reached the limit of your active mobilization. You can begin with contracting against the stretch with around 50 percent strength and slowly ramp it up to 90 percent as it feels safe for you. Take three to five slow, deep breaths through your nose while engaging in these end ranges of motion and, with control, slowly return the joint back to its original position. Repeat two to three times or as feels helpful. Avoid the “no pain, no gain” mantra in any form of mobility work—it should feel good.
Visualization
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
—Proverbs 29:18
It’s easy to dismiss something like visualization as being too “woo woo,” but you’ll hear time and time again of elite athletes describing the deep level of detail they go into pre-competition when visualizing exactly what they’re about to perform. Could there be something more to this than just psyching themselves up before an event? Could they literally be programming their muscles to function the way they would need to for the live situation they’re painting in the mind? Science says we can actually strengthen our muscles just by focusing our minds on a specific movement with no visible action at all. Yogis have been exploring this for years, placing their awareness into specific parts of the body during asana practice or meditation. Our minds and bodies have evolved together, and it appears there is less of a separation (if any at all) than most would expect. It is apparent you can induce change in your tissues by merely placing your mind into the targeted areas and visualizing your intended effects.
A study from Ohio University demonstrated this by recruiting twenty-nine volunteers and wrapping their wrists in surgical casts for a total of four weeks, asking half of them to think about exercising their immobilized wrists for eleven minutes a day, five days a week. They sat totally still and focused on mentally flexing their wrists during the mental training sessions. After the casts were removed, the subjects who visualized wrist exercises had double the wrist strength of those who had done nothing at all!5
A team at the University of Washington showed imaginary exercise to activate the same brain areas as those of actual movement-based exercise, and the Cleveland Clinic conducted a study showing that imaginary finger exercises strengthen finger muscles by 35 percent.6 It is becoming more and more abundantly clear that the mind is perhaps the most powerful tool in creating not just tissue change but change in the shape of your life. William James said, “The greatest discovery of my generation is people can alter their lives by altering their states of mind.” I would venture to say the greatest discovery of my career is that people can change the tonicity of their connective tissues and nervous system function by altering their states of mind and reciprocally alter their state via affecting the body. The mind and body are inextricably linked, like two sides of the same coin. It’s a little wordy, I know, but you get the point.
Whether you’re trying to mobilize a stuck joint, rehydrate gunky tissue, or activate inhibited muscles, visualize exactly what you’d like to achieve within your body. You could visualize cool ocean water pouring into the targeted tissue and each breath as the tide pulling fluid in and out, washing out the old stagnant fluid and refreshing with crystal clear water. If you want to activate an area, you could imagine electricity moving into the targeted muscle groups as you’re activating them. Then every time you initiate a contraction, it’s like a lightning bolt charging the tissue up. Do whatever works for you and play with visualizing more things in your life in general, as it’s more powerful than you may think.
The tools and movements in this chapter are some of the fundamentals of movement that can help get you in touch with your body. Try them out, see what feels good, pay attention to what feels uncomfortable, and see what your body begins to respond to. Throughout the rest of the book, I’ll be sharing with you specific exercises and techniques for releasing pain and building stability. You can think of floor sitting, hip hinging, and the other movement practices in this book as investing in a retirement plan. Every time you hang, for example, it’s like dropping a dollar into your long-term health fund. The added benefit of this fund is you start profiting from it immediately! Your health will be the most important thing to you at some point in your life, even if it isn’t at this moment. Before you hit a crisis point, you can start taking better care of yourself right now. Visualize yourself literally dropping money into your strength, flexibility, and overall vitality fund every time you activate any of the practices discussed in the book, and watch your portfolio grow. Eventually, your metaphoric money is working for you even while you sleep, and your health dividends grow by the manner in which you live.
Alignment Assignment
Start developing your interoceptive abilities with this simple exercise. Sit in a comfortable position and set a timer for one minute. Start the timer and count how many of your own heartbeats you can sense during the minute. Then, do it again by taking your pulse from either your neck or wrist and see how close the two counts are. With practice, you will find that the numbers begin getting closer and closer. This is a powerful tool to center and calm yourself anytime you feel a bit stressed!