Whole Body Revolution

Rewire yourself for greater health, happiness and success.

Sukie Baxter

Pain Relief

How to Fix Rib Pain with Self Myofascial Release

ribpain

Do you ever have a sharp pain in your side when you breathe?  Do your ribs ache after you sit for a long period of time?

Ribs are actually very  mobile little bones.  In fact, they’re supposed to roll around when you breathe just like venetian blinds open and close; however, if you’ve injured your ribs through impact or even by breaking one, it’s likely that you have scar tissue or tight, restricted intercostal muscles – the tiny muscles between your ribs – that are causing you some discomfort.

Also, your ribs are plugged into your spine in the back.  They articulate with the vertebra, so every time your spine moves (which is often, by the way) your ribs move, too.  Therefore, if you have tightness and pain in your ribs, it directly affects your spine and back.  Alleviating tight, twisted ribs will also help relieve back and neck pain.

Check out this video for a simple walkthrough of releasing tight or twisted ribs and their surrounding tissue.

Pain Relief

The Best Sciatic Nerve Stretch Part 2

Sciatic nerve pain happens when the sciatic nerve, a large, main nerve running from the lumbar spine of the lower back all the way down underneath the gluteus muscles and continuing along the back of the leg, gets pinched.  That usually happens when the piriformis, a small muscle that rotates your leg outward, gets tight.

The sciatic nerve runs underneath the piriformis, like a creek running under a foot bridge.  A tight piriformis muscle cranks down on the sciatic nerve and causes pain to radiate down the back of the leg.

Because we sit so much in cars and at desks, on the sofa in front of the television, while chatting with friends and reading books, most people have tight lateral rotator muscles and weak posterior hip muscles.  The muscles on the front of the hip – hip flexors – on the other hand, are very tight in nearly everyone.  Wait, scratch that.  They’re tight in everyone.

So, I love this stretch because it simultaneously lengthens the front of one hip while opening up the back of the other one.  It’s a little advanced if you have full blown sciatic nerve pain, however, so if you’re in the acute phase of piriformis impingement, try this sciatic nerve stretch instead.

But if your pain is mild or intermittent, this might just be the solution you’re looking for.

 

Posture

How to Stretch Your Inner Thighs (a.k.a. Adductor Muscles)

Most people are well versed on the fact that they need to stretch their hamstrings, and some people regularly stretch their quads and hip flexors (the muscles along the front of the leg and hip), but few people – save for elite athletes and dancers, really – dig into their adductors.

The adductor muscles are the big ones along the inner thigh.  They are an entire group of muscles unto themselves, separate from your quads and hamstrings.  Although, tight adductor muscles WILL restrict your range of motion and make it hard to get really flexible in either your hamstrings or quads, so if you stretch constantly but aren’t getting anywhere, try working your adductors a little more.

Also, these muscles have fascial connections deep inside the pelvis that can pull on the lumbar spine, causing low back pain and, yes, even neck pain!  It’s one of the areas that I consider a gold mine when I’m working with anyone who has pain in their hips and back.

So, if you want to increase your hip flexibility, or you are looking to alleviate back and hip pain, try this easy dynamic stretch.  It’s basic enough for even a beginner to try, so don’t worry if your hips feel locked up like they’re bound with steel cables!  They’ll loosen in time.

Go for it!

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Pain Relief

The Absence of Pain Is Not Nothing

If I asked you what you feel in your body right now, at this very moment, you would probably tell me what hurts.  “My neck and back are a little sore,” or, “There is some pain in my right thigh,” or quite possibly, “My left foot is achy, but, you know, that’s always there so it doesn’t matter.”  But, what if you weren’t in pain at all?  What would you answer?

Typically, when I ask clients what they feel, I get the laundry list of complaints (a totally valid response), or I get a very nondescript answer like, “I feel pretty good.  Nothing hurts, so, yeah, I guess I feel fine.”

Hmm.  This is a problem, and I mean a problem in a BIG way.

Pain, although it’s really annoying and frustrating, serves a very important purpose.  It brings us back into our bodies.  Most of us are just drifting along, amputated from all sensation from the neck down.  If we don’t feel pain, we don’t feel anything.  We just assume our heart is still beating, our lungs are still taking in air, the blood is flowing through our veins and we probably still have all our limbs.

After all, you’re still alive, right?  Everything’s probably fiiiiine.  No need to check in.

But I really disagree.  I think that a huge part of the depression, dissatisfaction, fear and frustration that most people experience comes from disconnection from the self.  We’re looking outside ourselves for satisfaction and diving deep into the black hole of consumption.  “If I just had a bigger TV…a faster car….a shiner living room…then I could be happy!  For realz!”

We’re in search of the magic bullet to fill the void that lives inside of us.  We’ve been taught that any sensation at all is evil and should be squashed, but that just makes us numb out into sort of a void of nothingness, a living death.

I truly, truly, deeply and with all my heart and soul believe that each and every one of us is seeking an experience of aliveness.  We want to feel as though we are truly here, but it’s so easy to become a walking shell, mindlessly and heartlessly going through the motions everyday, showing up at work and doing what needs to be done without any joy, satisfaction or presence.

But you’re not gonna get it from buying more stuff.  In fact, you’re not going to find it in weight loss, it’s not hiding behind a pile of money and those bigger and shinier gadgets just serve to mask the gaping void lurking behind them.

Aliveness – that juicy feeling of total satisfaction with your self and your life – can only come from being incredibly present in the here and now, totally connected to your body.  Anxiety, fear and depression come from living too far in the past or the future, from fretting about the what-ifs and might-happens.

I know this intimately.  For much of my life, I suffered from paralyzing panic attacks.  I used to think there was something wrong with me – I even let doctors try to medicate me for a while (it really didn’t work…just created more problems).  Finally, I discovered that managing panic and depression was as simple as eating a clean, healthy diet, getting plenty of movement everyday (read: exercise) and staying super present.

When you find yourself freaking out and flying out of yourself, here’s how you bring yourself back into the present moment in a flash:

Start by taking a few deep breaths.  Breathe into your lungs, high in your rib cage.  Let your shoulders drop down as you breathe in.

Tell yourself that, in this moment, everything is okay.  You still have two arms and two legs.  There is plenty of food.  You are safe, warm and dry.  There are people who love you.  There is enough money in the bank – this one can be a trip.  If you think there isn’t enough, check in on that.  You probably have just what you need for today, for this moment.  Don’t worry about tomorrow, or even tonight.  Those will take care of themselves.  Right now, you have enough.

And that brings me to YOU ARE ENOUGH.  This is such a hard one to get because we live in a culture of not enough – we’re never rich enough, thin enough, pretty enough, tall enough, cute enough, successful enough…the list goes on and on and on and on.  But right now, in this moment, you are enough.  Give this moment everything you’ve got and you’ll be shocked at how powerful you really are.

Okay, your turn!  What do you do to bring yourself back to the present moment?  Leave me a comment below and let me know.  Oh, and if you like this post, use the many buttons to share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Hugs!

Uncategorized

Warning: The Common Vitamin Supplement That May Actually Be Harmful to Your Health

Food just isn’t as nutritious as it used to be, mainly because over-farming practices have robbed the soil of its nutrition.  Fruits and vegetables are less nutrient dense than they used to be, and we are consuming fewer of them on average due to the prevalence of highly processed, readily available foods that are prepackaged and take no prep time (hey, we’re all busy!).

So, you might be swallowing a multi-vitamin or even a combination of supplements to boost your nutritional intake and get all the nutrients you need.  One of the most commonly recommended vitamins of late is Vitamin D due to its powerful ability to boost immune system function and help fight disease.

When the body identifies a foreign invader, the T-cell (immune system cells) send out a Vitamin D receptor that actually activates their function and allows them to fight off the pathogen.  Researchers have long known that Vitamin D is imperative for calcium absorption, but they had no idea how critical it was for keeping the immune system healthy and functioning.

Vitamin D can be found in foods like fish liver oil, egg yolks and fatty fish such as salmon, herring and mackerel, but the best source of Vitamin D is that which your body absorbs from sunlight (without burning, of course!).  Of course, in northern latitudes (hello, Seattle) we don’t get quite so much sun in the winter, which has been linked to higher incidence of multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune diseases.

Suddenly, it makes a lot more sense as to why Nordic cultures rely so heavily on deep water fatty fish as their primary food source….

Enter Vitamin D supplementation!  But buyer beware, all Vitamin D is not created equal.  There are two forms of Vitamin D – D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol).  Vitamin D2 is usually available in prescription form while D3 is available over the counter at relatively low cost (around $6-9 per bottle).

Vitamin D3 is what is produced naturally in our bodies when our skin is exposed to sunlight.  D2 is made by irradiating plant matter and fungus.  A compilation of 42 studies involving Vitamin D showed that Vitamin D2 is correlated with a 2% increase in mortality while Vitamin D3 is correlated with a 6% reduction in death.

The bottom line is that you should supplement with Vitamin D3, the same form that is naturally produced inside your body when skin is safely exposed to sunlight.  You can also use cold water fish oil, such as cod liver oil, to supplement.  If you are in northern climates, you almost certainly need Vitamin D supplementation in the winter, although your naturopath or physician can run a blood test to see if you are deficient.