4 Ways to Meet Your Goals at The Vital Gaitway
Private Consultations—1 on 1 work with a Certified Restorative Exercise Specialist, live or via Skype
Group Classes—Gradually develop more beneficial movement patterns
Educational Workshops—Frequent workshops focused on a single topic provide in-depth information & additional correctives. Topics include: Breathing, High Blood Pressure, Core Skills & Strength, Osteoporosis, Pelvic Floor Disorder, Shoulder Girdle Restoration and MUCH MORE!
Massage—Zero Balancing available on-site every Friday
The Program
The Vital Gaitway is an educational wellness facility dedicated to teaching the Whole Body Alignment Principles of Restorative Exercise™ created by biomechanist, Katy Bowman. The program consists of exercises to restore motor skill, optimal muscle extensibility, and the use of objective alignment markers to gage muscle activity and overall health.
Correct Whole Body Alignment is essential to vitality. This system teaches how to use the human machine all of the time for optimal health and longevity.
The Best Explanation of the Importance of Alignment
Episode #106 of the Balanced Bites podcast (balancedbites.com) Features Katy Bowman. This podcast covers in a really complete and concise way, why alignment matters.
Listen here.
Fixing your Knees Without Surgery Part 2
When you feel like your body has failed you, maybe you should consider the notion that it might really be the other way around. In what way have we failed our knees? It mostly comes down to chairs and shoes, both of which make it impossible to move correctly.
Pain caused by movement in any joint means that joint is likely doing more work than it should. Why is it overworked? Because the muscles supporting the neighboring joints aren’t pulling their weight. Shoes inhibit movement of the foot to the detriment of the ankle and knee joints, while chairs inhibit the hip joint to the detriment of the knee and lumbar spine.
Let's talk about ankle mobility. A lever needs to rotate around the fulcrum and if there isn’t enough movement at the axis to accomplish this, then you'll have to compensate by moving differently.
The image below shows a goal for ankle range-of-motion. The plantar-flexed ankle is how the foot should look right before the "toe off" moment in the gait cycle. The axis of the ankle and the pulley system of the posterior leg muscles require a straight foot to generate the most force without friction.
Then there are the mechanics of the foot itself. Too often in a shoe-wearing population, the foot is no longer supple enough to conform to the ground, but stiff and chronically everted when bearing weight. This forces the subtalar joint (located below the ankle) to wobble side to side while walking.
The Movement You Need is on Your Shoulder
I really enjoy making music, and when I had children, I encouraged them to play from an early age. I strewed my house with instruments of every ilk, and placed little working miniatures of my favorites in their hands by age two. Then I noticed some troubling changes in their skeletal alignment. Of course, by the time I realized I was negatively influencing their physical development, they'd both realized they really like music.
Oops.
I’d never have thought that playing an instrument for fun could be anything but beneficial, yet progressive changes in skeletal alignment told a different story.