As August is the mark of the end of summer, we hope that you savor the remainder of the season doing what you love, whether it be wearing shorts and tank tops, summer travel, barbeques with friends, having the kids home from school, long beach days, or leisurely bike rides.  Luckily, residing in California is the ultimate blessing given summer weather doesn't truly end until around October.  This means an extended period of time for outdoor activities, thank goodness!

The Egoscue Family appreciates your effort, dedication, and time that you put into your wellness. We congratulate you on your progress towards your goals.  Keep up the good work!

Recognize these stairs?

When you stand on one-leg, are you balanced?

Much of the success of the Egoscue Method is based on its ability to reconnect individuals to their innate kinesthetic sense, or muscle memory, of how things feel beneath the surface. It is more basic than remembering that an overstuffed suitcase is going to be heavy or that a long walk in loose shoes will lead to blisters. Kinesthetic sense allows us to respond physically to the experiences that we have archived in our long-term memory. 

How is your feedback system working? Have you been testing it regularly? Have you been listening to your body's signals BEFORE the pain sets in? Here are a few things you can do as tests:

1. Standing with eyes closed: Stand with your shoes removed (in a doorway if you think you're gonna need support) in your normal stance.Close your eyes and feel your weight distribution through your feet. Is it even between your feet? Are you moving a lot? Or do you feel stable? If you feel heavier on one side or unsteady, the kinesthetic sense of your body may be relegating too much of your balance to your visual center. This can become a problem for many, especially with age, when the inner ear and sensations from the body are not being utilized and vision is the only balancer.

2. Or off-balance? Notice right arm lifting.

   Stork Stand: Stand on one leg with your arms relaxed at your sides. Then test the other. How did the two sides compare? Even or not? Imbalances between the right and left sides of the body are a MAJOR reason manyare coming in to see us with pain. If uneven, there is musculoskeletal dysfunction being carried into all of your activities. If your arms lift, it means that instead of your legs and hips giving your brain the feedback it needs to balance (and having the proper stabilizing muscles do the work), your upper body is taking over.

Fear not however! Remember that the body is very forgiving and works on stimulus-response. Reconnecting with your body and it's balance is putting it to work. Ways you can work on this:

1. Correct your posture. The misalignments in your body lead to altered signals coming back to the brain. It's like "jimmy-rigging" the wiring in your house instead of having an electrician do it right. Signals may be crossed, connections weak, etc. (Thank God nothing in your body's gonna catch fire!)
2. Tap into your kinesthetic sense. Walk around the house and yard barefoot. We have over 6 MILLION nerve endings on the bottoms of our feet -- MAJOR balancing system. You can also improve awareness in your feet with less of a sole on your shoe, or something like the New Balance Minimus. Continue exercising in ways that challenge your brain to think and respond more. Get outdoors instead of being on the treadmill or machines all of the time.
3. Check in with the above tests periodically.