The human body is designed to function like a magnificent orchestra—every instrument is essential to create the beautiful melody of a vibrant life. If one instrument is not properly tuned or plays out of rhythm, the entire symphony is disrupted. When we have muscle atrophy or imbalances, blockages in connective tissue, joint damage, or other causes of chronic pain, the beautiful melodies of life become completely discordant.
Luckily we are the conductors of this orchestra, and we have the power to restore harmony within our bodies. By following the gentle exercises in this book for 20 to 30 minutes a day, we can help the systems of our body play together beautifully. Essentrics was designed to fine-tune every instrument in the human body, allowing our muscles, bones, joints, and tissues to play as they should. The result for us is increased mobility, flexibility, and pain-free living.
Before we get into the details of the program, let’s take a closer look at why this type of approach is so effective.
The Goldilocks Balance: Equal Strength and Flexibility
Soon after Classical Stretch went national on the PBS network in 1999, I started receiving emails from fans who told me that their chronic pain had disappeared and they no longer needed to take their pain medication. I was thrilled, of course, but at that point I didn’t fully understand this unintended side effect of the program—I didn’t yet realize its full potential for healing. In fact, at the time, I was still brainwashed by the prevailing “no pain, no gain” philosophy of the fitness industry, under the delusion that all exercise should cause some amount of pain or discomfort—indeed, that pain was a signal you were doing it right, that you were working hard and pushing yourself to full capacity.
How wrong I was!
Now I know that the definition of a healthy body is a just-right balance between strength and flexibility—the Goldilocks balance. To make movement easy and effortless, muscles must be as strong as they are flexible. Pain-free movement, by necessity, involves both healthy joints and healthy muscles. A healthy joint must be able to bend or rotate, just as the glassy head on each adjoining bone slides or glides over a well-lubricated surface. Healthy muscles must be capable of easily, efficiently, and smoothly moving the joints. Any interference with these smoothly moving joints will lead to pain.
How does your current exercise program make you feel? Essentrics instructors pride themselves on the fact that, even after an hour-long class, none of our students are in pain, either during the class or hours later. What they feel instead is stronger, more flexible, and more energetic. This is how you should always feel after exercising. If you are in pain, remember that that’s a warning sign from the body that something isn’t right! Ignoring or “powering through” your pain simply sets you up for more pain down the line.
Essentrics will help you pay attention to the subtle signals your body is sending you, helping you realign your spine, rebalance your muscle groups, and release long-standing blockages in your soft tissue. And, as a bonus, not only will it help relieve your pain, it will also help you achieve the long, lean, and toned look that you might have been trying to develop in more dangerous, less effective ways.
Two Types of Strengthening: Concentric and Eccentric
Every muscle is made up of tens of thousands of fibers, or filaments, that shorten or lengthen each time we move. These fibers are designed to be strong and mobile, the true yin-yang of our musculature. Two types of exercise techniques strengthen the muscles: concentric and eccentric. Concentric training, the most common type, shortens these fibers as they are being strengthened. Eccentric training, the kind featured in Essentrics, lengthens the fibers while strengthening them.
Both concentric and eccentric movements are part of our everyday lives. Getting out of bed requires us to bend our knees and lean forward (concentric) as we stand upright (eccentric). We do concentric movements when we lift heavy loads: groceries, books, briefcases, heavy purses, and so on.
If we’re not careful about getting an equal amount of eccentric movement to offset the concentric movement, we can end up with two very different and very serious problems: semi-immobilized connective tissue and compressed joints.
In addition to the functional concentric movements in our daily lives, there’s also the more concentrated concentric movements we engage in when we exercise. In sports and fitness, most joint damage is the result of exercise programs that focus on concentric movements. Weight lifting, running, racket sports, and high-impact or interval training all use concentric movement. Every time you lift a weight, do a push-up or chin-up, or hold a static pose in yoga, you are shortening your muscles.
When a fitness program isn’t balanced with eccentric training, the muscles will shorten and become less and less flexible. The shortening of muscles around joints squeezes the joints tightly together, leading to joint damage and pain. Overstrengthened, shortened muscles have little to zero flexibility, making them (and the attached tendons) prone to injury. This is the primary reason why millions of athletes, from casual to professional, suffer from knee, hip, and foot pain, and have shin splints and torn meniscuses, ACLs, and groin muscles.
Inside our muscle cells, thousands of muscle fibers are constantly stretching and recoiling. Repeated concentric training compresses the muscle fibers in their shortened position, limiting their ability to stretch. When our cells cannot effortlessly glide in and out of their protective sheaths, the connective tissue surrounding them begins to congeal. As I noted in chapter 2, this hardening of the connective tissue leads to muscle immobility, cell death, and pain—not good at all.
In contrast to concentric training, eccentric training maintains the full range of motion of all muscles. Also, no joint damage can occur where the muscles are strong within their length, comfortably preventing joint compression. Healthy muscles have flexibility built into their strength so that their smoothly sliding movements can continue into our golden years. The combination of these optimal conditions is called eccentric strength, in which the power is imbedded within the flexibility.
The goal is to build muscles that have the same type of strength that you see in a flexible tree branch. Consider this: A five-foot tree branch can withstand much more pressure than a five-foot piece of wood of the same diameter. If you could fix a five-foot tree branch between two points and smash down on the branch with a baseball bat—what do you think would happen? Chances are, the branch would bend but not break. But if you were to fix a five-foot piece of solid, inflexible wood between two points and with equal force smash it with a baseball bat, what do you think would happen? I’ll tell you—it would definitely break.
Flexibility is part of the strength of the branch, protecting it from nature’s forces. Depending on the type of training you do, your muscles will react similarly to the branch or the long stick. With concentric training, they tear from rigidity. With eccentric training, they yield to force and rebound intact.
How Essentrics Heals the Whole Body
Remember: When we stretch, we are stretching not only muscle but also connective tissue. Fascia, the component of the connective tissue system that comprises much of the human body, forms a continuous tensional network, covering and connecting every organ, muscle, and muscle fiber. This network imparts a continuous tension to the system—any pressure applied to the body is distributed equally throughout the system, which allows us to withstand tremendous force instead of absorbing it in one local area.
Rather than being composed of simple sheets of biological tissue draped over our bones and muscles and stuffed between our organs, fascia is flexible and rich in collagen, the substance that gives our youthful skin its glow. Fascia is like a fabulously dynamic and responsive bodysuit! Long-term and regular practice of eccentric stretching has a positive impact on the architecture of the fascia, helping maintain its youthful elasticity and improving the connections and the communication among all of our bodily systems.
Slow, dynamic stretching is especially effective in the hydration and renewal of fascia, which is made up of free-moving and bound water molecules. The human body is awash in fluids—water comprises about 60 percent of our total body mass. Just as the squeezing of a damp sponge moves the moisture from one place to another, the strain of stretching pushes fascial liquid from areas where it may have congealed out into the network, dispersing the fluids, keeping the connective tissue moist and pliable, and refreshing other neglected areas that don’t have adequate hydration. The dynamic stretching found in Essentrics reaches into parts of the body not targeted by everyday movement or by most other exercise programs.
Essentrics focuses on large, full-body movements—the kind of movements that work on all planes, somewhat similar to tai chi sequences. The scientific term for these movements is isotonic. In contrast to static isometric exercises, in which the angle of the joints and the length of the muscles do not change during the contraction, isotonic movements mimic everyday life and are widely accepted as the safest and most effective way to train the human body. They are so easy to do that literally anyone at any age and any level of fitness can do them. They have been scientifically designed to stretch and strengthen, stimulating a biochemical reaction that combats cell death and atrophy in every muscle and joint chain in the body.
Large weight-free full-body movements are the most effective method to stretch and strengthen the entire musculature while stimulating connective tissue that covers, envelopes, and surrounds our cells. The movements in Essentrics engage all 650 muscles, from fingers to toes and everything in between. No one muscle group is developed more than the others. All muscles are trained to do equal work so that no imbalance injuries can occur.
For most of human history, up until quite recently, we have engaged in these types of movements without giving them a second thought. Our mothers and grandmothers certainly got plenty of eccentric exercise—activities like gardening, hanging laundry on a clothesline, or washing windows and floors. These simple daily chores were full-body eccentric movements. But our lifestyles have changed to the point where many of these activities have become obsolete, completed by machines, or are outsourced to others—so we no longer have the daily opportunity to simultaneously stretch and strengthen our muscles. Because we are no longer required to move to the extent we once were, it is therefore vital for us to consciously create opportunities for full-body movement. If we don’t, we risk overusing some parts of our bodies while barely using other parts. Over time, these imbalances translate into hip, shoulder, back, and foot pain.
Every cell in our body directly or indirectly affects every other cell. The brain talks to every cell, and the blood circulates to every cell. The digestive system nourishes every cell, and the endocrine system regulates every cell. Our body is a single human unit.
This is one of the major reasons why large, full-body movements are so beneficial for our health and well-being. When you do a full-body movement, such as picking up a box from the floor and putting it in a high cupboard, almost every cell in your body has been stimulated. These full-body movements keep the inter- and intracellular communication channels activated, open, and clear.
I meet people who walk a lot, some even one to two hours a day. Walking is great exercise for the hips and maybe the cardiovascular system if the walking is fast enough and uphill—but it engages only about 50 percent of the body’s actual musculature. I have noticed that people who use walking as their exclusive exercise often have large tummies, weak core muscles, and underdeveloped arm muscles. That’s because their upper body doesn’t get any exercise from walking.
WHY NOT WEIGHTS?
In a gym setting, a trainer might recommend that you lift a three-, four-, or five-pound barbell to strengthen your muscles. Or in a yoga or Pilates class, you might be asked to hold poses until your form breaks. Weight training and holding are concentric exercises.
Most adults weigh between 130 and 200 pounds just standing on the ground. That’s already a lot of weight to be lifting and lowering, bending and twisting. What on earth will an extra 3 to 10 pounds do to strengthen the muscles? The answer is very little extra strengthening—however, after enough repetitions, your joints will become compressed and painful.
We forget that we are a weight—every part of our body weighs something. Even our baby finger weighs something! So unless you are planning to become a professional athlete, you don’t need to lift weights. You could spend hours doing isolated weight training and stretching and still not achieve the same well-balanced strength and flexibility that 20 minutes of full-body movements can provide. We can tone our muscles and become extremely strong just by doing large, full-body movements.
When I gently suggest this, some people blame their heavy bellies and weak upper bodies on the aging process. They’re convinced that their hours of walking are all the exercise they need to stay fit. But the human body doesn’t lie. If you don’t use some parts of your body, those unused parts will weaken and atrophy. Strong muscles give us our shape, and when our muscles weaken, our body shape changes. Aging is not the cause of weakness—disuse is. Remember: Use it or lose it. The only way to keep your entire body strong, fit, and pain-free is to engage every part of it on a regular basis.
Gentle Movement Heals Pain
You actually build strength much more quickly when you are not in pain than when you are—especially if you are recovering from an injury. But that doesn’t mean you should wait until you are pain-free to begin exercising. When you have an injury or are suffering from chronic pain, regular gentle exercise is essential to prevent atrophy while rebuilding healthy tissue.
Gentle exercise helps create new patterns in the brain, erasing the previous pain loop that we know is a key component of chronic pain. As we’ve discussed, chronic pain can be the function of a faulty pain-signaling system: the brain can continue to receive pain messages long after the major damage has been healed. This is not a psychological phenomenon—the pain signal is actually real, kept alive by the self-perpetuating biochemical loop, like a broken record that continues to skip. This type of pain is common among people who have ignored injuries throughout their lives. After they have ignored the messages for years, their brain becomes programmed to play only the pain message. The nervous system begins to act like an ignored child who throws a tantrum in order to get her parent’s attention!
Essentrics weaves many different methods of flexibility training into every workout to interrupt this loop and achieve pain relief. However, when we are trying to break the neurological pain loop, it is essential to practice all of the following techniques in a gentle, relaxed manner:
1. RELAXATION INTO DEEP ECCENTRIC FLEXIBILITY. Relaxing to release the tension while slowly moving is one of the most powerful ways to gently, safely, and rapidly increase flexibility and strength while reprogramming the pain loop. It is part of the eccentric school of exercises, as it strengthens while increasing flexibility.
2. BREATHING. Deep breathing is a powerful, natural way to help release tension in locked muscle fibers and fasciae. Deep breathing helps release tension and thus permits other forms of flexibility to take over, such as eccentric or passive stretching.
3. REBALANCING THE MUSCLES. You are only as loose as your tightest muscle. Your body is one large, interdependent unit of 650 muscles. Any unbalanced muscle will lead to other imbalances in seemingly unrelated parts of your body, and those imbalances, in turn, lead to potential damage, pain, and injury.
4. ECCENTRIC TRAINING: Lengthening the muscle fibers simultaneously increases both flexibility and strength, which decompresses joints.
5. PASSIVE FLEXIBILITY. When no strength is required, we can simply let our muscles slowly release their tension into deeper flexibility—such as in floor work, when we are lying on our back and pulling our leg toward our chest either with our hands or with the aid of a stretch band. The legs should be as relaxed as those of a rag doll as they are being passively stretched.
6. PNF FLEXIBILITY. Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) is a technique that works on the neurological system to trick the muscles into releasing tension. Most people unconsciously hold tension in their muscles, which makes the muscles difficult to stretch. Physical therapists often use PNF when helping clients recover from injury or surgery. It releases contracted muscles, enabling stiff muscles to be stretched. PNF is a four-step procedure of (1) contract the muscle, (2) release the contraction, (3) relax the muscle more, and (4) stretch the muscle. It is safe, achieves rapid results, and feels really good.
7. MOVING WITHIN A STRETCH. This method rebalances and engages all the muscles around a joint, as it helps all muscles to become equally stretched.
All these flexibility methods are helpful, and each is done for a specific purpose. When combined correctly, they work together synergistically, like the ingredients of a gourmet recipe, offering you perfect results.
Don’t Be Afraid to Move
In order to achieve lasting pain relief, you must unlock the healing potential within your cells through movement. Unfortunately, many chronic pain sufferers fear that moving will make their pain worse. It’s a legitimate concern, because it’s true—most of the time when they move, they do feel pain. This creates a natural dilemma: they’ve been told by their doctors to be more active, yet even a modest amount of activity causes pain. They don’t want to trigger the pain, so they don’t do the one thing that will get rid of the pain. I found myself in this dilemma after my own surgeries—so it’s no surprise to me that most people don’t know how to exercise when they are in pain.
The way out of this dilemma is to move slowly and to stop every time the pain starts. This disrupts the pain loop from the muscle to the brain. When you move yet stop just before you trigger the pain message, your brain will no longer connect that movement to pain. Note: This works only if the cause of pain has been totally healed but the pain message has not gone away. There will also probably be some areas where the pain persists—those are areas that still need to be healed.
Exercising in a pain-free state is possible as long as you are prepared to work like a rag doll, feeling as though you are being lazy. I call the fully relaxed, rag-doll state the “healing state.” The rag-doll state is the most powerful healing state you can use, as it is working in harmony with the neurological system. The rag-doll state stops all the natural protective reflexes from contracting the muscles; in doing so, it permits a flow of healing fluids into the pain-stricken region. Gentle, pain-free movement is healing movement. It heals the injuries and resets the broken pain loop.
If you are suffering from chronic pain, the only road to a pain-free body is correct, gentle, full-body rebalancing exercises. There is no pill you can take, no surgery you can undergo, and no amount of massages, hot baths, or passive treatments that will get rid of imbalanced muscles and poor alignment. Correct exercise is the only way to heal your body.
You have two choices: to remain in pain or to get out of pain. Getting out of pain requires a commitment to 30 minutes of daily exercise.
HOW TO BREAK THE PAIN LOOP
I have found this simple trick to be quite successful in helping many people break the pain loop: Stand with your legs in a comfortable stance, not too wide but not too close together. Hold your arms at your side, breathing easily while relaxing all your muscles. Wait until you are completely relaxed and pain-free before starting to move. Then start to slowly and gently sway your body from side to side. If you are still pain-free, add a slight rotation in both directions, twisting around the spine. The moment you feel even the slightest twinge of pain, stop and return to the beginning position, where you were pain-free. The trick in changing a neurological pain loop is not to permit your body to experience pain.
Some people experience pain the moment they move—but there is usually a place, as you begin to move, where you are pain-free. If that’s your case, move a tiny bit and stop before the pain triggers. Hold and relax in the pain-free point for a few seconds; this is generally long enough for the message that you are still pain-free at this spot to reach your brain. Then, start moving again. These incremental steps of stop and start within a pain-free zone take time. But once you have shown the brain that movement doesn’t automatically equate with danger, you will soon be able to move without pain.
We want the pain message to be triggered only when there is danger—and not trigger because of an endless loop. It takes patience to lay down a new pathway for the brain to follow. To reverse pain loops in all your daily activities, you might have to go through the motions of standing, sitting, walking, and getting out of a car slowly, retraining the brain to see that you are safe when you do them.
You may need to repeat this process a few times, but the amazing thing is that when you take the time to show your body that it’s not in danger when you move, the pain loop turns off rapidly.
NOTE: This trick works only if the original damage is actually healed but the pain message is stuck in a loop. If your body still has some real damage, the pain you feel will be real and this trick won’t work.
You’re Ready to Begin
I hope by now I’ve convinced you that correct, gentle movement is the best and fastest way to heal your chronic pain. Even if you remain skeptical, ask yourself: What do I really have to lose? Let’s get started with your workouts.
Before each sequence, it is essential to start with the basic warm-up presented in chapter 5. It will wake up your muscles and joints and get them ready to move comfortably. Once you’ve completed the brief warm-up, you can select from any of the nine workouts to address the area of your body that has been giving you the most pain. I give you my solemn promise: If you have been struggling with chronic pain of any kind, once you incorporate Essentrics into your daily life and stick with it for a few weeks, your pain will be either greatly diminished or completely gone.
Really!
Believe in yourself and see what your body can do!