the somatic connection in psychotherapy I'm a big supporter of psychotherapy. In fact, I just started my Master's Degree in Clinical...

Many of us learned how to hold our bodies from family or authority figures at a young age. "Pull your shoulders back!" "Don't slouch!," we were told. And so, we learned to stand, and sit, with our ribcage forward, and our shoulders "back." In the gym, we might sometimes hear "proud chest" as a cue not to slouch forward. We tend to think of this as "standing up straight," or having "good posture." But if we take a look at this image of a woman sitting in meditation, we can see

Despite its bad rap, tension isn't all bad. When we speak or hear about tension in the context of a yoga class or a massage treatment, we might think of tension as something to be eradicated, soothed away, released, dissolved. We’re encouraged to smooth our forehead, relax our jaw, soften our shoulders. The unspoken understanding is that tension is a problem. The truth is much more complicated. Not only do we tense (engage) our muscles in dynamic patterns to move our body int

One of the most important lessons I learned from yoga? That there are some things about myself that can't be changed-- and that's actually just fine. One of my earliest yoga experiences was with a local man, who we’ll call Ed (why not) . Ed taught a Saturday morning donation (pay-what-you-can) class outside by the community pool at his condo. I’ve written before about how magical yoga felt to me in those early days– like falling in love, or coming home, or having a curtain pu

and how can we use it to "read" what our body is saying? Like many of you, I have a morning ritual. I wake up, feed the dogs, make my...

One of the things that brings me joy, that makes me feel alive, powerful, and free, is physical training. I love to sweat, to move, to swing heavy things. It helps me to complete the stress cycle, reinforces my sense of agency and strength, and (because I am often outside), gives me a chance to soak in nature. Of course, I can’t do that every day. My muscles need a chance to rest and repair– and I also need to take into account everything else that I’ve done that day (trainin

a long, nerdy post about alignment in this classic shape Warrior 1: it sounds so fundamental, so simple, like, the most basic thing you...

My understanding of core work has changed over the years, but for a long time, I understood it as primarily a need to “strengthen the...

Have you ever finished a long day of work sitting at a desk, and felt like you were too tired to move- even though you barely moved your...