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Tag Archives: stretch therapy

Active brand protection and franchising of Stretch Therapy

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by kitlaughlin in General, Stretch Therapy

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Imre Lakatos, stretch therapy

We have had calls from people involved in our work about what the next stage of development might look like; many ideas are being floated—all this is good. So, in a brief post today, I wanted to air an idea or two, to spark reactions and to foment discussion.

While I am alive, there will be no active brand protection for Stretch Therapy and no franchise models for using our work, beyond attending workshops. The short story is that if my attention, or Olivia’s, is directed to “protecting our borders”, then creativity switches off. I have more ideas per day than I can possibly implement. ST will stay ahead of the curve (and hence be pre-eminent in the field) by being the best, and being recognised and spoken about as the best. Whether this is a slow, or fast, process is out of our control, it seems to me. For this reason, we will be devoting our energy to improving ourselves, our offerings, and the way we teach them.

Regarding the franchising model, I have never heard a franchisee speak a pleasant word about it: too many strictures from ‘head office’; too onerous accounting to calculate the fees and too much talk about what counts as a ‘legitimate’ expense—overall, too much energy in a small business needing to go to accountability overheads. No to franchising. Other models need to be developed if, indeed, they need to be developed at all. In our present thinking, we say we need to see a practising teacher show up at one of the cognate workshops within any three-year period to stay on the current teacher listings on our main site. This is how students find a teacher. As well, we make Vimeo on Demand inexpensive download products, and we sell books (print and PDF); teachers recommend these to their students, and the enterprise ticks along. I should say that making money is not my objective, nor Olivia’s; but living in a capitalist culture, we need to pay bills. A holiday would be nice.

A philosopher whose work I admire, Imre Lakatos, wrote of “degenerating paradigms”: these are knowledge gathering systems who spend their energy protecting their boundaries in preference to creating new aspects to their work; many schools of body work who claim to teach an “original system” fall into this category—failing to realise THE most important aspect of learning, which is embodiment. All originators of all systems departed from what they were taught in order to set up their ‘new’ systems; without fail, they changed the original teaching in the process. This will happen to our work, and should happen. (An aside: I once said to one of the senior teachers that, in the future when I am no longer around, if I hear anyone saying “do it like this because Kit said this is how it must be done” I will strike him down with a bolt of lightning!). I want experimentation and practical empirical research—which anyone can do—to happen, with all present being clear about why this technique is held on to, or why this new thing is better. What I am trying to develop is the most efficient method of tinkering—the fact that we use stretching techniques as the method of exploring this field is due to my own personal history—equally we could be discussing ping pong. All teachers of this system need to see themselves as inveterate tinkerers. Only a fool thinks he knows all that is needed.

Many practitioners fall into a similar category: the worst massages I have received have been from massage therapists with postgraduate training; in the limit case, they end up knowing all about their subject from an academic perspective, but being distanced from the in-the-present activity itself in the process, and not being able to do it well. Where your attention goes, you become.

Anyone can take our work and incorporate it into what they do; this is what’s been happening over the last ten years, and we have noticed that very few teachers of our work position themselves as “Stretch Therapy teachers”. There are many reasons for this, no doubt, but we feel (when I say “we” I mean Olivia and I, as the two core people in this system), that we want to get better, not bigger. This is already happening as more people like all the excellent people on the Forums take up, and contribute to, what we do. What we want to do now, with the ten or so years’ of experience of teaching Stretch Teacher workshops behind us, is concentrate more on how to get better. We have some clear ideas about what that will entail, and some not-so-clear ones, and this is what we need the Forums and the workshops for: to clarify and select the best directions for everyone involved in what we do. When I make any decision, the heuristic I use is simple: ‘What is the decision that will bring about the greatest good for the largest number of people involved?”

Getting back to Lakatos for a moment (and I wrote extensively about this in my Master’s thesis, and it was a central idea in my PhD research in talking about lean learning systems), if you are not creating, growing internally and externally, and if you are not constantly re-specifying your objectives and trying news ways of reaching those objectives, then you are dying. Of course, we all share that fate, but many are dead before this event occurs. We don’t want that.

This is why I am suffering through the 45 day ‘ballistic stretching protocol’ (many hundreds of dynamic repetitions of both loaded and unloaded stretching: how else can I know what effect this approach will have on me? This is “conscious suffering”. Something will have been learned, and embodied, by the end of this period. There is no other way of getting this knowledge.

It might be worth reading these posts before engaging with what I write above:

http://wp.me/p1QR8D-kI (Where are the wise?)

and

http://wp.me/p1QR8D-jb (The genie is out of the bottle, and she ain’t going back any time soon)

and

https://kitlaughlin.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/the-90-day-blog-challenge-and-the-50-year-test/ (short one that ends with the “50-year test”)

There is so much more to say on this, but short story is no border protection, and no franchises.

Thanks to dog for the correction to the last link.

What use is stretching?

06 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by kitlaughlin in General, Stretch Therapy

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

flexibility, stretch therapy, stretching, why stretch

On the eve of releasing the new Stretch Therapy products I find myself reflecting on how this material may be used and who it best be used by. In the making of these programs I have realised that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what ‘stretching’ is and what it might be used for. Adding to my perception of the need for clarity is the recent increase in interest in something which is generally referred to as ‘movement’, as an activity of its own, and the lack of general understanding of the relationships that exist between ‘range of movement’ (ROM) and movement itself, with its additional skills of timing and precision.

Speaking most generally, many of our students want to acquire new movement patterns (like going to pole dance classes or they begin to study a martial art) but they find they simply can’t put themselves into the required starting positions. For example, suppose a movement pattern begins in the full squat, and you can’t actually do a full squat keeping your feet flat on the floor, what do you do? So one way of looking at our stretching work is to see it as a series of graded solutions to an infinite number of movement challenges of this type. Another good example is a movement pattern that begins in the full bridge position: if you can’t do a full bridge then you can’t even begin. There are hundreds of other examples.

And all of this became very clear in the filming of the new products because in each of the products (Master the full squat, Master the forward bend, and Master legs apart, for example) we needed to begin at the beginning. So let us talk about the full squat for a moment: ankle and hip ROMs (and leg muscles that are simply holding too much tension for the knee joint to fully close) are the limitations to being able to squat all the way down with your feet flat on the floor. The question then becomes, ‘in order to get into the starting position, how can we loosen the ankles, hips and the lower back’ so that the starting position becomes possible? This is why I referred to stretching and range of movement: just to start to learn a new movement pattern assumes that the capacity to put oneself in any starting position is there. Very often it is not.

And exactly the same constraints apply to learning any kind of gymnastics or other strength training: is there sufficient range of movement available? To put it another way, if you cannot get yourself into the starting position, how can you acquire the strength that is necessary to complete the movement? Well, what most people do is they cheat; if you get away with the cheat you’re good to go but many people force themselves in the process, trying to speed up the process. Think of the overhead squat position (where one is in the full squat holding a weighted bar overhead). This position requires the range of movement for the full squat but, in addition to the flexion movement in the shoulders and the extension that required in this thoracic spine all at the same time. How are you going to get that? Unless you are already close to being able to do this practising the OHS by itself will not be the most direct route to the ROMs you need.

If I may say one of the great attributes of the Stretch Therapy system is that you can find a solution to any range of movement problem you find yourself in. The ST system explicitly spans rehabilitation for problems like neck and back pain all the way through to someone trying to refine the full side splits—and everything in between.

Movement as an activity has become extremely popular in the last five years or so. It is also the case that ST has incorporated a huge amount of additional movement into its system because we have been working with movement teachers ourselves (plus many of our teachers are also teach movement). The ST system explicitly fosters this kind of cross-fertilisation. I also want to say that we were doing many similar things a long time ago, too (consider the ‘Unnumbered Lesson in Stretching & Flexibility, and all the ‘warm-ups’ in the same book), and we were hardly the first. We have excellent movement teachers here in Australia; Craig Mallett and Simon Thakur are two who I know personally and work with regularly.

If you want to start moving like these guys can, you will need the fundamental tools that allow your own body to firstly acquire the range of movement that these activities require and this will mean removing any restrictions to that range of movement. This is exactly the point at which you’ll need our work. I have worked with many tens of thousands of students over the last 30 years. I cannot recall a single one that did not have a restriction in his or her body at some place. Removing the restrictions is exactly what the ST system is all about. Once a restriction is removed the body can be positioned bio-mechanically optimally and then new movement patterns and whatever strength is required to support these can be learned safely and efficiently.

Now I realise in describing things in these terms I am generalising and glossing over many, possibly great, chasms; this is the nature of discursive discussion. But we have been paying very close attention over these last few years to the problems that many people have had in trying to acquire specific kinds of strength, whether it be in the Olympic lifting world or whether it be in the men’s gymnastics world. Very shortly we will be releasing the program Master the full back bend. And the last item in this program is a brilliant exposition by Olivia on our approach to how to perform a very common exercise (in gymnastics, it’s called the arch body hold and in other systems has other names, like Shalabhasana in Yoga). And the critical difference between our approach and most others is the development of the capacity to feel precisely what’s happening in the body and which parts of the body are involved in whatever one is doing. Once this awareness has been developed it is then used to a particular purpose. Let me illustrate.

The arch body hold for many people is felt only in the lower back, in a cramping or spasming kind of way. This is because of two main factors: one, there is insufficient extension, or backwards-bending ROM, in the whole body (and so all the posterior chain of muscles are having to work much harder than they need to and hence the muscles involved are much closer to their failure point than an analysis of the weight of the body parts suggests), and two, the glutes (as the main extensors of the legs in relation to the spine) are simply asleep. Effective cueing is about waking up this connection and is more important for many people than any other single factor. We have cued literally hundreds of beginners in the arch body hold and none of them have experienced any lower back pain. But it is not just about cueing: it is about effective breaking down of a whole body exercise into its component parts which are themselves related to range of movement and specific activation patterns.

For example it will be simply impossible to cue the glutes in a strong extension movement if, at the same time, the hip flexors are already under stretch; this is “simple” neurophysiology. The nexus is something called the reciprocal inhibition reflex (Sherrington’s second law): that a muscle cannot be activated voluntarily if its opposite (or antagonist) has reached the end of its range of movement. The solution is to increase the range of movement of the antagonist before attempting to cue the action you want. Almost all of the ST exercises use a combination of reflexes to maximise their effectiveness. I have written about this extensively elsewhere but I will mention simply that each exercise uses the reciprocal inhibition reflex; every exercise is organised to reduce the apprehension reflex to a minimum; and we use the post-contraction inhibition reflex to momentarily increase range of movement. All are well documented and have sound scientific bases.

But it also must be said at this point in the discussion that not all is happy in science-land. The rise of the scientific method in routine discourse and the rise of evidence-based medicine in our nation’s health systems has led to the presumption that scientific understanding is actually necessary for best practice. This is very rarely the case because, in my experience, best practice is usually years ahead of scientific understanding. Just because there is no scientific evidence or justification for something is no argument against its potential usefulness. Asking for this kind of evidence before embarking on a course of action, with the sub-text that this is necessary in order to begin practising something, will lead you far astray. Before scientific understanding (causal /analytic) is the empirical method; empirical is a fancy way of saying ‘suck it and see’. In other words, experience and observation usually come before causal understanding; this has been so for the entire history of science and is unlikely to change any time soon. My feeling is that the motive behind needing a scientific reason to do something—over the direct experience of trying something—is more about one’s attitude to uncertainty than anything else.

And, because of this misplaced reliance, we have a small body of unimpressive research into stretching, and which has allowed people to make all sorts of bogus claims ‘like stretching will not affect one’s propensity for injury’ or that ‘stretching will not reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)’, for example. It is absolutely accurate to say there is no scientific evidence to support these claims but it is also accurate to say that there’s no scientific evidence that supports the counter claim: the fact is that research has simply not been done and, speaking properly, science therefore has nothing useful to say on those subjects.

When I say “the research hasn’t been done yet” what I really refer to is the time periods of the existing studies (usually a university semester; way too short to be able to have any meaningful conclusions) and the actual methods used in the research itself (research design; the ‘stretching’ techniques used, etc.) And on that latter point, I mean that very little of this research is in any way specific about exactly what sort of stretching was used and how the stretching was varied to suit the particularities of each of the individuals in the study. I have never seen a single reference to this critical point in any paper I have read on this subject.

I mention this last point because we have found that adapting a stretch to the actual in-the-moment experience of the individual is simply the most important determinant of whether or not a stretch is going to be effective. And this is precisely the reason why a sets and reps approach to stretching is always going to be ineffective when compared to a system like ST. In this system, the quality of, and the depth of, the experience in the moment is the key focus.

So getting back to the forthcoming Stretch Therapy products. A program like Master the full backbend which will have an extreme backbend as its end pose, begins at the beginning as all systems must do. The full pose is broken down into what I call a vocabulary of flexibility which initially is based around single joints. To illustrate, loosening the hip flexors is absolutely fundamental to any decent backbend. In fact, tight hip flexors are the cause of most of the cramping and pain that people experience when they first tried to do spinal extension movements; this is because the muscles on the inside of the curve being made by the spine have a tendency to go into spasm (just like when you point your foot); we have found that the general rule is that any muscle asked to do work at the contracted end of its range of movement is liable to spasm; something that we demonstrate on every workshop we run. This is not a design fault by the way; it is simply the way the body is organised. Add to this tendency the hip flexors’ inhibition of the glutes, and you begin to understand why so many people have problems with backward bending. What follows is a brief meditation on other aspects of ‘stretching’.

To start, the acquisition of flexibility by adults is a completely different problem set than with children. Adults, by definition, have experienced their second growth spurts, usually (but not always) in their late teens. There are many reason for this critically important difference, and these can be canvassed below if anyone’s interested.

The key point here is that standard methods (like “hold a stretch for 30”) will not be effective in changing any present patterns that adults have. This is because to a considerable extent, these patterns have become ‘set’ in an adult; this is completely different to the conditions in a child’s body.

For adults, a different approach is required. I can say that I have tried every approach that has been written about, and many that have not. What I want to share with you here I have not written about (apart from oblique references in my past books) but personally have found to be of the deepest importance. What follows are the core conditions for an adult to change his/her body–mind in a way that observers would describe as “he/she has become more flexible”.

One’s pattern of flexibility is actually one’s “self”: one’s personality, self-beliefs, fears, and so on. One’s emotional self is precisely this pattern. When we talk of body language, this complex patterning is what we refer to. The way a body is held, in any moment, communicates this internal state to the person with whom one is interacting (or observing).

The essential conditions for flexibility to change have two parts. One is the exploration of new ranges of movement, and the other is how this can be ’embodied’ (retained in the body and incorporated in the activity in question).

There are environmental conditions that one must consider, too. When stretching, heat needs to be kept in the body: the work of remodelling fascia is best done by slowing the rate of heat loss. All one needs is tights and tracksuit pants. Ambient heat is no help here: the human body is expert at shedding heat (the result is that no matter what exercise is being done, or what the ambient temperature is, the human body core temperature hovers around 98.6 F, unless something goes wrong, like rhabdomyolysis).

Only a very narrow window of increased temperature is required to open the window to changing one’s patterns (2 degrees Celsius). To put this in perspective, a lukewarm bath is 40 degrees C (a fraction above body temperature) and a scalding hot bath that you could not immerse yourself in is only 44 degrees. The point is that the reactions that we are trying to influence in the body change radically over very small temperature variations. This ‘window’ can be opened by slowing the body’s normally very effective temperature shedding strategies by wearing the recommended gear, and worn on the bottom half of the body only. Presently, the mechanisms behind these changes remains unknown; what we can say, experientially, is that warmth in the muscles works.

A side note: when using the Contract–Relax approach to increase ROM, as long as additional contractions can be performed, and new ROM explored, we are working on the somatosensory cortex and what tension it believes is necessary or useful. We are remapping what the unconscious part of the brain believes is the appropriate length-tension relationship in the various body parts. But when no more improvement in ROM can be achieved, we are now up against restrictions in the fascial structures themselves. Maintaining as much heat as possible in the body allows gentle and slow fascial remodelling. The way this is done is to back off slightly from the maximum ROM end position, and wait—minutes, for some muscle groups (this requirement depends on relative muscle size). Subtle movements (“pulsations”) at the end of the range of movement can help you become familiar with the new position; you will find that this can help you relax more deeply in it, too.

The second and equally important point is that flexibility cannot be achieved by force or by intensity. I know this is counterintuitive to a degree, because we have to exert some force to provoke any change (in strength training or in any other) and in flexibility work, effort is needed. But, and this is a huge but, the force is used only to make, or re-make, the connection to that part of the body. Once the force has been applied, the body has to be brought to a state where it’s willing to let this protective tension go. All humans have perfect flexibility while under anaesthetic; as they regain consciousness, though, individual patterns re-manifest. The point is that force cannot change the pattern: the trigger to change this is not consciously available to us.

In fact, in the ST system, we use the bones, muscles, and fascia only to remap the brain; this is what provokes the changes we regard as “becoming more flexible” in the short term. Further, heat allows the fascia to be remodelled once the elongation is experienced. Both are necessary. Effort is only required to the extent needed to provide the proprioceptive feedback to that part of the brain that decides how much tension to maintain in any body part, and its pattern around the body. As well, the degree of force that is required to bring this change about cannot be known ahead of time. Personally, now, I need 80–100% contraction force; other students need only 10%, and any level above 50% in these students actually has the opposite effect (the body experiences the force in the stretch as a direct threat, and literally creates additional tension to ensure the elongation does not happen). The capacity to tolerate more tension (hence stronger intensity of the stretching experience) can be learned; but it cannot be imposed: it has to be allowed, and can only be experienced, and embodied.

To achieve this goal of knowing ‘how much’, each individual’s attention has to be turned inwards. No teacher can do this part of the process. Unless the brain and sensory being is directly involved in the experience of stretching, it will not be effective. The most important questions for the acquisition of flexibility: What does that feel like; where do you feel it; and how can you relax further into it?

Only an individual can answer that question and—critically—determine the time it takes to relax into the beginning of a stretch; the most effective contraction time, and how long to spend in the re-stretch. Each will unique to the individual. It can only be experienced, then learned, by each person individually; it cannot be reduced to a formula of number of seconds, or number of reps, or percentage of maximum strength in the contraction. This does not come naturally to anyone with a ’sets and reps’ approach.

As an aside, this is the hardest point to get across: there is no formula for adults; only an approach. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it! This uniqueness of response is also the reason why the research into stretching has provided so little illumination: all modern research relies on statistical analysis of groups. Such research has nothing to say about the individuals comprising such groups. Our method begins, and stays with, each individual.

The author thanks Dave Wardman for comments and vulgarities! And he suggests further reading:

Neurobiology of Fascia – http://www.rolfingtaichilondon.com/ARTICLES/fascial%20plasticity%20schleip.pdf

How and why we do things in Stretch Therapy the way we do

06 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by kitlaughlin in General, Stretch Therapy

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

copyright, gedanken, kit laughlin youtube channel, making decisions, stretch therapy, the 50 year test, what's best for all concerned

We have a completely open system in Stretch Therapy. By ‘open’ I mean it that we set no boundaries around our work and we encourage our students and our teachers to study with whomever they wish, and to teach our material to whomever they wish. All we ask is that any new techniques they learn that might be able to be pressed into the service of Stretch Therapy be brought back into our system. As most of you know we have 100 videos now up on YouTube where we give away many of our ‘innermost secrets’! ‘Innermost secrets’ in inverted commas here to signify ironic use: the fact is that we do not have any inner secrets. We want our little bit of knowledge to get out there, and get traction on real-world problems, as soon as it can. Personally I do not enjoy YouTube clips that are 100% commercial promotions for the business being advertised. We try to include useful information in all of our clips, including our promotional ones.

I want to talk for a moment about why we have completely porous boundaries around our work. A very famous philosopher called Lakatos once coined the phrase “degenerating paradigms”. What he was talking about is what happens when the creator of any system tries to protect the content of that system too vigorously. The result is that the system becomes protective and inward looking and, most importantly, defensive. The deep problem in adopting this stance is that it pretty much kills the originator’s creativity. But that’s not all. By adopting a protective stance one is inward looking, rather than outward looking, by necessity. This is the antithesis of the Stretch Therapy philosophy.

We are outward looking—we are trying to find new ways and new techniques of doing what we already do. We will share our information with anyone who is interested. Anyone who wants to teach our system will be given all possible support. For example, anyone who repeats one of our workshops does it for 50% of the cost of the original one, and if they wish to repeat again it drops to 25% and so on. What we have found is that anyone who repeats our workshop eventually contributes more than what they take away the second and third times around. And in fact, on the figures that Olivia keeps, a huge percentage of people do repeat workshops, some a large number of times. We love this and they become friends too.

We don’t control the teaching approach of someone who teaches our system. In saying this I mean we have assembled a body of knowledge and we do wish that body of knowledge to be taught as effectively and as accurately as possible, but we never specify to our teachers how they are to teach that material. The results of this is that each teacher interprets and presents the material in their own way and in the process their own personality is uniquely reflected. They develop a unique voice. This is our principle of embodiment: making the work your own. In the process of embodiment, new and interesting details are learned; and we benefit. And many new techniques have been created in the embodiment process.

In the process of not controlling the dissemination of knowledge a wonderful teaching atmosphere is created. It might surprise readers to know that some of the best exercises that we teach were taught to us by students in beginner’s classes. When the teaching atmosphere is open and free the creativity flows brilliantly. And because each of our classes is a mini-workshop of its own all students feel free to contribute anything that they feel might be useful in the moment—this is where some of our best techniques have come from. If your students simply follow orders you’re missing out on this incredibly fertile source of new ideas.

One of the reasons why people want to control the teaching process is they feel it’s too easy for them to lose control if the class or the workshop becomes a free-for-all. Of course this is true but it’s a very simple matter to limit that aspect and bring the focus back to the larger task at hand. Many times I’ve been asked a number of questions by an attendee on a workshop and I always indulge the first few, but if I feel that the dialogue is becoming too much about them as an individual I’ll simply say, ‘let us talk about that later’, or ‘I’ll come back to that’ once we do whatever it is that we are about to do. This aspect of control is simply a function of the skill and experience of the presenter or teacher.

As for trying to control the copyright of one’s material, that is trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Because of the internet, the genie is already out of the bottle. So the best you can do I feel is to encourage the accurate sharing of what the genie has to offer and stay far enough ahead of the rest of the pack so that people want to work with you personally in the workshop situation. As well, if you are a leader in your field, people will want to buy your products and read your books and talk about the work that you do. This of course is not why you do it, but it is simply the outcome of always doing the best you can and trying to nurture the incredible group of people who always assemble themselves around individuals who are trying to do something well.

If you are following our YouTube channel you may have noticed that we always use a Creative Commons license system which only requires an attribution of the source of any idea. In Australia copyright comes into existence as soon as any new idea comes into form, be it a YouTube clip or a book or an audio recording. The situation is different in other countries we understand. One of the reasons I put many of our new techniques up on YouTube free is to help associate these new ideas with the brand Stretch Therapy and to show the world ST’s capacity to innovate. Now, time will tell, but so far the putting up of information which in other systems you would have to pay for has meant that our workshops are always full.

In the first draft of this post, I had written “I don’t want to be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week; Olivia and I simply want a lifestyle that is an enjoyable one and where we make enough money to pay the bills!” This assessment is not accurate, and I am grateful to Dave for pointing this out. We are living our lives; this is not a phase. Philosophers do gedanken (this is a German term meaning ‘thought experiments’; these are free, quick and often remarkably revealing), so let’s do one now: if we won the lottery, and had more money than Croesus, what would change? We both think that we’d fly first class instead of economy, but would not change much else. We would program in real sabbaticals, and would make them a priority in the annual schedule. We would hire more people to help us (for example, I need a red-hot FCPX editor, and soon). This way, only the scope and magnitude of what we are trying to do would change; and change in such a way as to assist the basic project, which is to get the information out there.

Also in terms of trying to protect copyright I made a decision a long time ago that I did not want to spend my life being a policeman. I am an ex-academic and plagiarism is pretty much the only crime in academia. As a result I have the habit of acknowledging all of my sources and I’m delighted to do that and I have the same approach to all of the teachers that I’ve been fortunate enough to work with. There have been a few examples of people taking my work and incorporating it into a book and marketing it as their own work and there’s nothing I can do about that. Of course I could take them to court on the basis of breach of copyright, and I have the documentary evidence to support that, but the point is that that approach is antithetical to the larger project which is about creating and being as open as possible.

Finally, in terms of being concerned about protecting ideas or protecting copyright, or any other ‘problem’ or ‘dilemma’, or anything I think is important or worrisome, I apply what I call “the 50 year test” to determine its true nature. The test is this: ‘Who will give a fuck in 50 years?‘ So far, no apparent dilemma or ‘important’ decision that I’ve been presented with has actually passed this test.

And, as a dear friend said only yesterday, ‘Any experienced resistance is, and can only ever be, the mind’. Once that is recognised, I fall back on the ‘second order’ decision process which is to come up with a solution that is the best for all concerned. My sense is that the direction we are on in this life will have wheels for some years to come.

 

5 x 10″ free handstands today: a watershed, and thanks Yuri and Charm!

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Monkey Gym, Stretch Therapy

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

handstand drills, handstands, kitlaughlin.com, Monkey Gym, stretch therapy, Yuri Marmerstein

I wandered down the street looking for a kids’ playground here in Atlanta today. The two men I asked directions from seemed both friendly and suspicious; and they did tell me where the park could be found. I wonder if the ‘stranger-danger’ POV has tipped too far in the direction that the rest of the US seems to be in these days (able to be experienced at any airport): the state of high alert?

Anyhow, I found a lovely park under a railway line; clean air, grass, wood chips, and ladder bars: everything the non-gym junkie needs for a workout. Today, though, it was all about “HS”, to use Coach’s terminology: the free handstand. I had planned to repeat the series Olivia, Robin and I learned from Yuri at the last workshop in C’ville, but there was not a suitable wall (or tree) to be found, so having had a few days off from the 90-day HS challenge (so, for me the count restarts today), I decided to try to kick up into free HSs.

Before I describe today’s events, though, let me describe the drills that we had practised with Yuri. Many of you will be familiar with the chest to the wall preparation element that Coach teaches: for me, the hardest part is the pulling down of the ribs (lat tension pulls them away from the body in this position), and maintaining the essential hollow and all glute and leg contractions.

But it was Yuri’s approach to the back to the wall version of the same preparation element that has had the most effect on my understanding of how to achieve balance in a handstand. The rule sounds like simplicity itself: simply have your fingertips a few inches away from the wall and kick up into a full handstand. Then concentrate on all the usual cues: pressing the hands strongly away from you into the floor; squeeze the glutes; tuck the tail; and extending the legs up towards the ceiling in the plane of the wall and thereby lengthen the entire line. Once in that position though, Yuri’s approach is then used.

He told us not to try taking one leg at a time away from the wall or even to try to bounce both legs together away at the same time but use a different approach. Once in one’s best, straightest and tightest position, Yuri recommended simply pressing the fingers into the floor while keeping the entire body tight, and using the finger–hand–forearm strength to press the insteps away from the wall, pivoting around the wrists. And if you pay attention in the same position you can simply tilt yourself back into the wall support by pressing the heel of the palm into the floor. This simple technique teaches the body–mind exactly how to use the strength in your forearm to control the critical forwards–backwards whole–body movements when in the air.

It works: I kicked myself up into a handstand using the method I favour (which is to have the shoulders well in front of the fingertips in the kick up position). After a few attempts I got to the balance point and immediately squeezed my glutes and reached my legs up into the air with everything held tight. For the first time ever I was able to move my whole body forwards and backwards and I stayed up in the air I guess somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds—but not by accident; I was feeling as though I was actually controlling the movement for the first time.

A number of things amazed me in this first attempt. The first was that, of course, compare to someone experienced like Yuri, my corrections required much more strength and of course the timing of them was nowhere near accurate enough so I used too much strength backwards and forwards many times (so, too much correction and over-correction). I remembered Yuri mentioning that (just like when one is shooting a rifle or pistol) there is no such thing as a still fixed balance position; there are only more and more subtle movements around the balance point. I competed in the Olympic pistol event over a number of years and this was my experience with the sight picture perfectly: no matter how good you become the pistol is always moving. The better you get, the circle simply become smaller and smaller, exactly like the handstand.

In the space of the next hour I repeated this hold, about six or seven times. In the last two I made myself say aloud the “one Alabama, two Alabama, etc., etc.” mantra out loud to make sure that I was actually breathing properly. I was able to get to ‘three Alabama’ or ‘four Alabama’ both times. How ever long the hold was (let us say around 10 seconds) the biggest lesson for me today was not the length of time held, but that for the first time in my own body I could feel how to balance, and felt the balance. What a rush!

And as I sit here looking at my hand I can see that the whole heel of the palm, from the base of the thumb to about halfway up the side of the palm, has been quite strongly abraded by the concrete I was working out on. Another thing that I have noticed is that the fingers and the palmar surface forearm muscles have had the most tremendous work out. And in a couple of the balances where I was just about to lose balance (going over backwards) I could feel that I was pressing my fingertips into the concrete with literally every gram of strength that I have. Now I understand part at least of why Yuri’s forearms are like Popeye’s!

As well as I was becoming a bit more tired I found that I was letting my elbows bend and yet I was still able to push myself up into a straighter handstand once I had achieved that critical balance and I could feel that the elbow bend is an emergency correction of the position as well.

Of course today could be a complete fluke and perhaps when I try again tomorrow I may find I can’t balance at all! If I do find this I will immediately go back to the to the wall drills that we have spent so much time on.

So closing today, may I simply publicly thank Yuri for his magnificent handstand tutorials during the last workshop we ran in Charlottesville and also thank Olivia for the hundreds of repetitions of the floor preparation drills that she has made me perform. It is all the floors drills that allow one to feel one’s body’s line once in the air; I am certain of this.

Stretch Therapy Paul Watson Interview, Tru Pilates, C’ville, VA

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Photography, Stretch Therapy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

kitlaughlin.com, Panasonic GX7, Paul Watson Transform Fitness NYC, Robin Truxel Tru Pilates, stretch therapy

Hello all; I am currently teaching in Studio Lotus, Atlanta, and today is the first off—the Into the Stretch experiential three-day has just finished.

So I have had time to edit and title an interview I shot in Robin Truxel’s lovely Tru Pilates studio in Charlottesville, Virginia. Miss O and I were presenting the new-format Stretch Teacher workshop: the first three days is Into the Stretch; the second three days is the Stretch Teacher part (how to teach what you have just learned).

There were two standout aspects of this six days, for me: one was being so ably assisted by Olivia, and the other was the presence of four of the Gymnastic Bodies graduates, the first is Paul (the interviewee) and the second is Yuri, the handbalancer (and who I learned the band shoulder mobility sequence, one of our YT videos), the third is Mike, and the fourth is Dymion (I am not sure of the spelling of his Russian first name). At every break, everyone was upside down, practising their handstands; this was fun for the participants and the presenters alike.

So, here is the Paul interview:

It’s hard to see just how big Paul is, because he is so beautifully proportioned—but big he is, and a lovely person, too. I am so pleased that our work is getting out to a larger audience as well.

A technical note: this was shot on the new Panasonic GX7; I am so happy with the stills and video output I have bought a second unit. The quality of the video using the mp4 720p/30 option is excellent (and the files sizes are much more manageable than the 1080p/30 options). I recorded the sound on a Sony PCM-10, using the built-in mics; and edited/titled in Final Cut Pro 7. I will be writing more about this setup in posts to com.

“Into the stretch”: Cri’s reworking of the introductory three-day workshop title

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Stretch Therapy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

kitlaughlin.com, Princess Bride, stretch therapy

I had to look this one up: there is a scene in Princess Bride where the already-dead Wesley describes what he’s about to do to the dastardly prince.

The prince challenges Wesley to a sword duel, with the standard opening challenge: “To the death!”. Wesley responds, “No: to the pain!”, and outlines his plans.

See the scene HERE.

And what does this have to do with today’s post subject line? Our host in Italy, Cristina Ferri (Studio38) has suggested that instead of “Intro. to Stretch” as the name for the introductory three-day workshop we are proposing as the entry point for someone interested in any of the streams of the work, it be renamed to Into the stretch.

Further, she has suggested the tagline:

Into the Stretch: a deep body and mind experience

Olivia’s take: Into the Stretch: a deep body experience

When I write the full description of the contents, a major theme will be ‘learn to feel your body again’, as so many have commented on this aspect recently.

What’s the relationship with Wesley’s statement? I’m not sure, but in the spirit of rendering stream of consciousness, on day two of The Darkness*, I post here.

I like the new name; comments please.

————-
*The Darkness: that time in Australia’s history when an opposition leader was able to dupe the majority of the populace with an entirely negative campaign, rendered in a policy vacuum (where their policies were hidden until the last moment and—when revealed—were the sitting government’s own policies, apart from the desire to get rid of the ‘carbon tax’, which was not a tax, either).

Final product title, and how workshops will be offered in 2014

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Stretch Therapy

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

kitlaughlin.com, Stretch Practitioner (Therapist), Stretch Teacher, stretch therapy

After much discussion, I have decided that this will be the new title and sub-title:

Stretch Therapy™
How to attain ease in the body and graceful movement

I will be grateful for final comments.

So, future workshops will flow from this decision, too:

Intro. to Stretch
The very first experience any new person will have of the ST method, this three-day workshop will be completely practical/experiential, and will include a relaxation session each day. Anyone, whether an individual wanting to have a ‘body sabbatical’, or a practitioner wanting to become a Stretch Teacher or a Stretch Practitioner (Therapist in some jurisdictions) will need to begin with this workshop. Someone who has done Intro. to Stretch may choose to go on to the Stretch Teacher or Stretch Practitioner streams.

Stretch Teacher
An additional three-day workshop will focus on teaching the attendees how to teach a decent stretch class: this includes all the staples such as essential functional anatomy, how to teach multiple variations of the same exercise at the same time, how to structure a class, and how to correct a student’s form. The additional three-day workshop may be done any time after the Intro. Completion of the six days entitles an attendee to attend a Stretch Teacher Certification examination, too.

Stretch Practitioner (Therapist)
A Stretch Practitioner will begin with the Intro. to Stretch, then takes a second, different, three-day workshop that focusses on how to treat common problems like neck and back pain, in the one-on-one rehab. or clinic situation. This includes the latest research into these problems, tests on how to distinguish structural from functional leg-length differences, the critical exercises to relieve low back and neck pain, and more. Completion of the SP six days allows an attendee to call themselves a Level One Stretch Practitioner.

Level Two Stretch Practitioner (Therapist)
This additional two-day workshop focusses on neural repatterning, muscle activation, and a full revision of all the key stretching and strengthening exercises. In addition, Level Two includes how to test and treat shoulder and arm problems, including RSI. On completion, an attendee may call themselves a Level Two Stretch Practitioner. We are in the process of designing and implement an SP certification scheme, too, but this has not been finalised. Please subscribe to our occasional newsletter to be kept informed of developments, HERE.

The ST system requires teachers and practitioners to engage in regular refresh and upskilling. This can be done every three years by attending any of the three-day workshops above. Heavy discounts apply to anyone repeating any workshop or attending the other stream’s workshops: we want you to be as good a teacher or practitioner as you can be. See the main site for details.

OK, here goes: how does this title grab you?

29 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Stretch Therapy

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Intro to stretch, kitlaughlin.com, stretch therapy

Stretch Therapy 
How to attain grace and ease in the body

Many people have commented; thank you so much for that. Liv, Dave, Cherie, and I have been looking at all the submissions, and the commentary this has created.

The suggested title, above, combines elements of all the postings, and (happily, if you all like it) we can keep the Stretch Therapy™ ‘umbrella’. I would like that, and the Italian crew have just released their two-DVD set with the same name. If we go with this choice, then the intro. workshop will be called:

Intro. to Stretch: this is the three day workshop that all people interested in the work, with whatever end goal, will do. For example, anyone who wants a “body holiday” (as one recent attendee called it) will attend this workshop, as will any potential Stretch Teacher or Stretch Practitioner. As well, these names allow the two acronyms ST and SP; a big improvement for us in trying to market these.

Further thoughts: The ‘therapy’ part of the name and the perceived negatives (that one has to have a problem before needing ‘therapy” can be changed by u promoting the therapeutic nature of stretching: that it can be an optimising force as well as a rehabilitating one. Your thoughts on this aspect too, please.

Don’t take any notice of the formatting or the layout of the name; I will ask a friend (Jon McD) to weave his magic typographic wand over the final version, so that it conveys what we want. In the way it’s written above, the word “Stretch” is not prominent; I want this to be what everyone ‘sees’ when they first look.

What do you think?

Kneeling side bend YouTube clip uploaded a few moments ago

04 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General, Stretch Therapy

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

99¢ download, kneeling side bend, pay per download, stretch therapy, unnumbered lesson

See HERE.

We now have over two thousand subscribers on YT.  The kneeling side bend, taught by Olivia, is the 90th clip we have put up on YouTube. It is just over six minutes, and is presented in ‘follow along’ format (that is, in contrast to the exercises shown on the two books’ DVD Updates, both sides of the body are presented, and there is an instructional audio track and sometimes on-screen cues as well).

Regarding the pay-per-download I mentioned in the last post—I would love your comments on proposed pricing. The two first downloads I am working on presently are a whole-body mobility sequence (head to toes), presented by Olivia, and shot live on two cameras during the recent Melbourne workshop, and it runs for almost half an hour (27:42, to be precise!).

The second is the ‘rolling around on the floor class‘ (really, it is one possible version of the Unnumbered lesson, from the book Stretching & Flexibility). This lesson, sitting in the middle of the book, is different to all the others: it requires no equipment nor a partner, and it is what modern body workers/movement teachers call “mobility”.

We call it “rolling around on the floor”: it is designed to let you know what needs further loosening; it provides a measure of how your current and recent past work is affecting the body, and it is the exemplar of our maxim that all exercises are both diagnosis and treatment. It is over an hour long (I will update the exact duration once it is cut). Each unnumbered lesson is different; and there are an infinite number of them.

  • 15–30 minute classes or instructional videos: 99¢
  • programs or follow-along classes up to an hour run time: $1.99 (USD)

On our side are the production costs (recording the raw footage; converting and editing this, and uploading to our host site, the cost of setting up the on-line shop for these products, and the on-going bandwidth cost of both upload and downloads, and we hope that there are many of these! And it may be that these proposed prices are unrealistic, in the sense that we do not know all the costs yet (and the proposed prices might end up costing me!). Nonetheless, we are in new and interesting territory here, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Comments gratefully received; please  comment here (I removed the contact form I had here, because Nate’s comment came directly to me, and I would prefer if comments were public.

How to enter the Stretch Therapy workshop streams

29 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Stretch Therapy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

kitlaughlin.com, level one stretch Therapist, level two stretch therapist, Stretch Teacher, stretch therapy, Stretching mindfully

I have decided that the new three-day Stretching, mindfully workshop will be the entry point to all other workshops that nestle under the Stretch Therapy™ ‘umbrella’ from now on. So, what I write here today is for comment—and if this finds favour with our audience,  everyone’s first experience of our approach to stretching and relaxation, designed to lead to grace and ease in the body, will be a 100% experiential three days. There will be a relaxation module presented every day, too. No theory, no anatomy presentations, just the best stretching exercises we know. Past attendees have found this experience transformational, and so will you!

As foreshadowed in previous posts, I have decided to move in this direction for a number of reasons, chief among them being my belief that direct experience of simply working on oneself and experiencing major changes in a brief time period is a sufficient reason to attend a workshop—and will lead to better teachers and therapists if that paths calls to you. The other reason is that many people have asked recently “is it OK for me to attend a Stretch Teacher workshop, just for me—I don’t want to teach”. In my view, attending for oneself is the best reason and can open many doors in time.

As well, the idea is that once you have had a direct experience of the method in action (on you and the other attendees), you will be much better equipped to choose the next step: Stretch Teacher or Stretch Therapist. The Monkey Gym will remain a separate stream, though we have already filled the forthcoming MG workshop in Melbourne (11–12 January, 2014), just from the attendees of the Stretch Teacher workshop we have only finished yesterday!

We have decided to keep the Stretch Teacher (“ST”) workshop the same number of hours; historically, it has been a minimum of 36 contact hours; and the Stretching, mindfully workshop (let’s call this one “SM” from here on) will count as the initial 18 hours of either the Stretch Teacher or the Stretch Therapist workshops.

The focus of the Stretch Teacher three-day workshop will be on the essential anatomy, how to structure a class and how to teach group classes, and a full revision of the most important poses. This is what the Stretch Teacher workshop presently comprises—the big change will be that the first weekend will be the fully experiential SM workshop, and the Stretch Teacher workshop will focus more directly on the ‘how to teach group classes’ aspects. At the conclusion of the ST workshops, attendees will receive a beautiful certificate, with an embossed ST logo, suitable for framing, and will be entitled to be included on our website Stretch Teacher listing, so new clients can find you!

Alternatively, someone who has done the SM workshop may want to go the Stretch Therapist (“STh”) route. This will be offered in an additional two parts: Level One Stretch Therapist, a three-day workshop, will comprise the anatomy and the theoretical aspects of low back, neck, arm, and shoulder pain, and will present the latest research into these problems, including piriformis syndrome, Thoracic Outlet Compression syndrome, and many other common ailments. As well, all the essential partial poses, all stretching and mobilisation techniques (designed to be used one-on-one in a clinic or small studio setting), will be taught, including massage table top and chair versions of our best stretches.

In all, as is presently the case, the STh workshop will comprise a minimum of 36 contact hours, the only difference under the new proposed arrangements being that potential therapists will do the SM workshop too, to fully experience the transformations dimensions of the work for themselves. We are certain this experience will lead to better clinical applications of the work. At the conclusion of the STh three-day workshop, attendees will receive an elegant embossed certificate, describing the number of contact hours, and which designates the holder as a Level One Stretch Therapist. As well, the holder of this certificate is entitled to be listed on the Stretch Therapist part of our site for ease of being found by prospective clients. So, to Level One, the contact hours and the content will be the same that we have done in the past, except that we will spend more time on the stretching and mobilisation aspects—a number of past attendees felt that we did not spend enough time on these parts before.

If a therapist wants to go deeper into the work, however, we offer an additional Level Two weekend (two-day) workshop (Level Two requires 36 + 12, so 48 hours in all). In the additional two six-hour days, we will teach how to test for structural leg-length difference, and what solutions to offer if found, and additionally will teach the clinical application of the essential neural re-patterning that is one of the hallmarks of our work. We will explore how to re-establish excellent alignment in feet, ankles and knees, how to activate the pelvic floor, how to activate and strengthen the core abdominal muscles and (for me, most importantly) how to activate the glutes, and how to treat knee pain. All of the key therapeutic clinical applications of the main stretches will be revised. Completion of SM and Level One STh are pre-requisites for level Two. And the certificate from this second workshop describes the holder as a Level Two Stretch Therapist, and the website listing will reflect this level change, as well.

What do you think?

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