“Russell and I recently resumed evening walks and love the benefits. We suggested to Simone and Thorsten Kopitzki, students and Harbor Point neighbors, that they try it. ‘Walking every night is a good way to balance my stressful office work,’ Simone said. ‘I’ve improved my balance and my fitness. I’m less short on breath than I was before. Being overweight, walking is not stressful on my body, and I’ve lost weight.’
“Boosting your metabolism is one of the many benefits of walking after dinner.Gastric emptying of the meal is accelerated leading to better digestion and better sleep. Even a 15-minute walk lowers blood levels of fat and enhances blood circulation. Blood sugar, which can spike after a meal, gets used up through activity. Bowels move better helping you eliminate more frequently and regularly. Plan the length of your walk accordingly!
“Walking morning, noon or night yields great results. Adding a second exercise session in the evening, especially Dynamic Walking, rebalances your bodymind and erases stress from he day. Add 3 minutes of barre stretches when you return, the best dessert for a good night’s sleep.
“Early evening is a magical time to walk. Follow the sun as it dips over the horizon. Watch the clouds shimmer in luminous light. Listen to the hush spread as it mutes the day. . Smell the night blooming planets call their insect lovers. Watch the stars and planets wink on and the silvery moon gain in brilliance. Walking in the evening is like a meditation, a time for peace and contentment.
“The hardest part of the evening walking is getting off the cozy couch or turning off the TV or computer (whose blue light decreases the melatonin production you need for falling asleep). Set your intention and prepare. A partner or a dog helps (even a neighbors’s dog), and so does reminding yourself how much better you will feel and sleep. So Just Do It – give yourself the luxury of winding down, of intimate time, alone or with another, and with nature. Wait to walk at least 45 minutes after dinner. Then drink some water, dress for comfort, be safe, and delight in the night.”
LIFELONG LEGS
A 2-hour introductory training to Dynamic Walking
led by Dr. Suki and Russell Munsell, dedicated teachers
who bring 90 years of combined experience to their work with you.
“Dynamic Walking is the ambulatory equivalent of flossing.”
Learn to refine your gait, improve balance and walk with effortless ease.
Don’t miss your chance to grow Lifelong Legs!
Saturday, September 30th, 1-3 pm
Healus Neuro Rehab Center
655 Redwood Hwy Ste 225
Mill Valley, California
Dynamic Walking WILL Change Your Walk & Change Your Life
Ever wonder why the relaxation from a vacation disappears so quickly? Your everyday habits of posture and stride reinforce tension in body and mind. But you can change your walk and change your life…
The Secret Right Under Your Nose – Four Swinging Pendulums
Your body has four swinging pendulums: two arms and two legs. When you learn to allow them to swing passively (not try to swing them), your body relaxes, your mood lifts and you reset a new balance in your body and mind.
Dissolve Tension
Gait Analysis describes the phases of walking as the stance phase and the swing phase. By allowing each leg to swing, instead of lifting it to step forward, as most people do, you can release habitual, sometimes painful, tension in your legs, hips, pelvis and low back. “I thought I was walking O.K.,” reported a student. “I didn’t realize how tension in my legs was causing knee pain.”
Your arms are also pendulums. By releasing to gravity and allowing them to swing passively, your breathing relaxes, spinal tension decreases and circulation of breath and fluids increases.
“I am breathing so much fuller, without thinking about it,” said a student, “and my jaw is relaxed.”
Lift Your Mood
From a mind-body perspective, when you surrender your legs and arms to gravity you release control. You signal your personality to let go, to let nature take her course. A profound shift in your nervous system occurs, from fight or flight to the relaxation response with its cascade of ‘feel good’ endorphins. You enhance blood flow for recovery and performance. Anatomically, your arms and legs are designed to be used as pendulums but busyness, haste, and cultural imprinting have conspired to limit this gift. “I feel like the walk is walking me,” said a student. “This is easy.”
Practice beside the water at Healus
Reset a New Balance
Life gets you bent out of shape. However, allowing your arms and legs to swing passively rebalances your tension patterns. Here’s how. Your arms, right to left, are approximately the same weight, as are your legs. The momentum of their weight, swinging passively, creates a balanced, gentle, and repetitive action on your neuromuscular, skeletal and fascial systems.
Uneven stresses can occur from a stronger right leg push-off, for example, or muscular compensation from an old injury. This can torque your spine unevenly with each of the 6,000 to 8,000 steps you take daily which, left uncorrected, results in repetitive stress injuries. A balanced walk is a healthy walk. “I couldn’t walk more than 10 minutes without pain,” reported one student. “I learned to balance out my stride. After just one class, I can now walk for an hour or longer, pain free!”
The Benefits of Coaching
Your muscular compensations tighten over a life-time as your body tries to function the best way it knows how. This happens in all sports and activities of daily living, which is the best reason to identify and eliminate compensations in your most repetitive activity — walking. You can go out for a walk to release tension patterns, but since you’ve never been trained to identify and correct your imbalances, they will persist. As you age, you rigidify, lose flexibility, balance and vitality. Dynamic WalkingRM coaching helps keep this from happening.
Join our next training to…
Enhance vitality, conditioning and performance
Heal and prevent injuries that could limit mobility and independence
De-stress your life daily with an effortlessly easeful walking stride
Keep your Lifelong Legs walking
When: One two-hour training: Saturday, April 29th
Time: 1-3 p.m.
Where: Healus Neuro Rehab Center, 655 Redwood Hwy, Mill Valley, California
Cost: $35
Enroll: DynamicVitality.com
Dr. Suki Munsell holds certification as a Registered Somatic Therapist and Educator. She will be joined by her husband, Russell Munsell. They have co-taught Dynamic Walking since 1990. Training with them “you’ll gain the freedom to choose and the power to change.”
Learn about normal and paradoxical breathing, how the structure of your head can interfere with breathing, how to use your breath to calm down or generate more energy. Hear Facts, revelations, and engage in practices leading to mastery of your metabolism via your breathing patterns. Take part in a 4 part series on Breathing to Restore Resilience and Metabolic Health.
Breathe in silently through every pore of your skin.
Breathe out silently through every pore of your skin.
You are your breath. You came in with a breath. You go out with a breath.
Learning to Let Go Exercise…
Go to the bottom of your breath and don’t breathe at ALL (until you REALLY want to). It can be an incredible relief to NOT HAVE TO breathe. It can also restore your access to the relaxation response. Practice every night before you drop off to sleep.
Let Your Tongue Rest on the roof of your mouth….
Your tongue is the spacer for the cranial bones; it keeps your upper palate wide and the nasal passages open so you can breathe through your nose as we were designed to. Mouth breathing leads to hidden hyperventilation. People who breathe through their mouth will think they have to because the nasal passages are blocked. Breathing through your mouth CREATES blocked nasal passages. Asthma can be eliminated by correcting overbreathing and hidden hyperventilation. (Look up Eucapnic Buteyko Breathing.)
Breathe in and out normally and then, at the end of an exhale, don’t breathe in again until you absolutely have to…COUNT the seconds until you feel you absolutely HAVE to take another breath. You should be able to get to 35 seconds. If you can’t, you likely have hidden hyperventilation and need to come to our next client education class: It Begins with the Breath.
It all begins with the Breath. Breathing is fundamental to our metabolic efficiency. Abnormal breathing patterns produce abnormal metabolism and a host of conditions no one thinks to relate to breathing.
What does the breathing mechanism actually accomplish?
Sarah Young of Women of Movement FaceBook group sent me an amazing link on breathing by Roger Fiammetti, author of “Respire! Respiration Totale Pour Tous”. I want to share it here for all who are interested in the breathing mechanism in all it’s glory. It’s in French, but I think the pictures tell the whole story.
Translation
Total respiration allows for the restoration of the perfect balance of our bodies. It allows the mobilization of the different diaphragms. The most well-known being the Thoracic Diaphragm, but also the Cranial Diaphragm, the Cervical Diaphragm and the Pelvic Diaphragm. These different diaphragms are going to stimulate the various levels of the nervous plexus that appear on the screen.
These four diaphragms have an expansive ability to manage the cerebral flax and the tentorium. The cervical diaphragm is made up of the tongue and the muscles of the Sternocleidomastoid. The well-known thoracic diaphragm is a domed muscle that separates the abdomen from the thoracic cage. The Pelvic Diaphragm is a big basket of muscles that ties the sacrum to the bones of the iliac and the bones of the basin. These diaphragms work together in synergy and stimulate the circulatory system as well as stimulate the central nervous system.
The Thoracic Diaphragm is a very interesting and very important muscle that descends upon inspiration and ascends upon expiration. This mobilizes the viscera; the intestines, the liver, the pancreas, the bladder. These viscera will descend and ascend and will stimulate the pelvic diaphragm. This dynamic illustration shows the mobilization of the whole lumbar spine during respiration.
The diaphragms and respiration play a role in brewing the viscera. All the muscles go into action during respiration: the back muscles, the muscles at the level of the throat, the muscles at the level of the jaw, the muscles at the level of the neck. The ribs mobilize and expand during inspiration and retract during expiration. And during respiration, the muscles of the abdomen are not only important for forced expiration but also provide a certain resistance to the diaphragm. This allows you to breathe slowly into the stomach and the perineum.”
The Common Story of Back Pain Weakness in the back muscles causes the hips to tighten up to support upper body activities. Tight hips can cause sciatic pain and a twisted pelvis and knee pain, even shoulder pain. A Dysfunctional back muscles cause hip, knee, ankle. foot and even shoulder pain.
Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something isn’t working right. Muscles that are too tight are achey and painful. Muscles that are weak are sore, another kind of painful. Joints that don’t move correctly are painful. Â Correcting the motor patterns governing coordinated movement causes pain to diminish or disappear.
Exercise and conditioning alone will not strengthen a muscle that is inhibited or weak. Inhibited muscles do not receive neurological messages when they are sent. Exercising them develops good compensation patterns. It will help but not correct the problem.
What causes muscle inhibition? Anytime a muscle is tense or in spasm, it causes inhibition in other muscles involved with it. Overwork, repetitive motions, or past injuries can all result in chronic muscle inhibitions that keep you stuck in old pain patterns.
The best approach to strengthen weak muscles is: First: Reprogram the coordination to correct the biomechanics with NMR and Tullballz, then strengthen the muscles using conditioning activities. This is the best approach to correcting chronic and acute pain anywhere in your body.
NeuroMuscular Reprogramming NMR and the use of Tuballz will correct the movement coordination dysfunctions causing most low back and hip pain.
