After six weeks I was pain free but at the end of the day, I usually felt like a pretzel, and many times woke up feeling unrested and stiff.
One day I was in a Dr.’s office and picked a Natural Solutions magazine while waiting. There was an interesting article titled,” The Ultimate Workout”, by Katy Santiago. Katy is a trained biomechanist, who developed Restorative Exercise™, a science-based system of diagnostic and prescriptive exercises, designed for the realization of optimal wellness.
I summarily dismissed the workout as a new age namby pamby workout. I didn’t read it at first but my wait time increased and so I decided to read the whole article. When I finished I was surprised that it was so similar to my philosophy of the body and exercise.
According to Katy, the routine helps undo, in just minutes a day, the most common (unhealthy) posture habits and increases circulation and mobility to muscle systems not regularly used to keep optimal range of motion”... just what I needed.
I performed the routine at the end of the day, and found that I slept better. It’s like it erased all of my postural problems before bed.
I enjoyed her routine so much I ordered her DVD programs,(order her Restorative Exercise Institute-In-A-Box)based on her Restorative Exercise system. I HIGHLY recommend it. I found her foot and spinal alignment program to be one of the best DVD’s I had seen that dealt with corrective exercise.
So that’s it in a nutshell. Although my pain was at the neck, my real problem was that my hips were out of alignment. In fact one hip was higher than the other, throwing the whole kinetic chain out of sync. Once that began to correct itself with the postural exercise and the subsequent stretching and strengthening of the facial tissue the last piece was doing some restorative exercise which ironed everything out.
I continue to follow the program. For me it’s a habit now and it has actually changed the way I approach the athletes and people I train. Treating the whole body starting with spinal and postural assessments, correcting any dysfunctions and then and only then loading them vertically and horiziontally for performance and life.
THANK YOU Pete Egoscue, THANK YOU Ming Chew, and THANK YOU Katy Santiago.
Be Safe and KEEP MOVING!
JC
