Private yoga session available now at Rain City Massage Therapy

Rain City Massage Therapy welcomes 

Sarah Jamieson, Certified yoga teacher

 

Sarah Jamieson graduated from Langara College as a Certified Yoga Teacher in 2009. Her formal continuing education includes: Advanced Training at the Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram in Rishikesh, India with Yogi Vishvketu, Restorative Yoga training with renowned yoga teacher and physical therapist Judith Lasater, additional training in Yoga Anatomy with Leslie Kaminoff of The Breathing Project in New York and Prenatal Yoga Training with Janice Clarfield.

Sarah's approach to teaching yoga focuses on awareness, alignment and breath. Through awareness, she emphasizes the development of your own ability to sense what is right for your body - and what is not. In many ways, alignment is simply a tool to safely guide awareness, and staying present with your breath helps to foster the presence necessary to explore, observe and listen.

Sarah is passionate about making yoga accessible, and she strongly believes that anyone can do yoga. She hopes to challenge any ideas you have about "not being able to do" yoga and invites you indulge your curiosity about practicing yoga with her.  

Students have told Sarah that one of the things they appreciate about her is that she makes them feel like they really have a choice about whether or not to try things when she is working with them - and that the freedom often helps them feel more courageous and willing to explore.

If you are interested in working with Sarah to support injury recovery, to develop physical mobility, to build strength, address anxiety or mood disorders, or to support general well-being, please email yoga@sarahjamieson.ca or call778.549.8374 her to arrange an appointment through Rain City Massage Therapy.   

Posture 3D style: Part 2

Posture 3D style: Part 2

So before I get deep into the subject of posture and how to sit up straight I feel the need to acknowledge that this blog post is probably a good 3 months overdue.   Somehow I have found every form of procrastination possible, from putting up a Christmas tree, to sweeping floors, before divulging my thoughts on proper posture. 

In some sort of weird “cosmic” way I’m actually happy that I didn’t post what I initially had written for part 2.  Here’s why, I had a huge list of anatomical, position specific directions that were over the top and I think confusing to the average Joe or Jamey.  For a fellow colleague or an individual like myself, my in depth analysis of how many degrees your pelvis should be tilting and how your adductors should be engaging, would have been an appropriate “how to” guide for posture. For the Joe’s and Jamey’s my “how to” guide would have flown right over their heads.  Which defeats the purpose of this post.

The massage therapist in me wants the Joe’s and Jamey’s to connect with their bodies and  to have the felt experience of what good posture feels like.  This is because life can get overwhelming and stressful, and lets face it, we all need some simple tools that we can pull out of our back pockets when were slumping over our desks and computers.

So here it is posture 3D style:

The most important part of the posture process is to connect with your body.  I would suggest getting comfortable and maybe start by closing your eyes and taking some big belly breaths in and out.

The only directional tips I’m going to give you is, if you are standing press into the four corners of your feet or if your seated take your sit bones, the bones in your bum, to the back corner of the seat/chair.  This will give you a supported foundation.

Now that your foundation is stable what your going to do is visualize your body expanding in three planes, 3D style.  Start with front to back, then add side to side and then finish with bottom to top. With each direction take a belly breath in and out and imagine your breath expanding your body.  You can repeat this for as many cycles as you like.

It’s that simple!

Again, I could intellectualize posture until the cows come home but this is at the risk of all the Joe’s and the Jamey’s being stuck in their heads and not in their bodies.  Which would lead to a bunch of useless information floating around in brain matter that has no connection to what you are feeling on a daily basis and really, who has extra room for useless information in their brain matter?

So I encourage you to connect with your deeper posture self and start enjoying all the deep benefits of perky posture.  

Part 1: The secret to anti-aging… Sit up straight!

The secret to anti-aging… Sit up straight!

The quickest before and after you will ever see:

We’ve all seen the endearing old couple walking down the street, shuffling and hunched over; they are unable to lift their heads upright to see where they’re going let alone to embrace in a romantic kiss.  The explanation for this is not just do to old age; rather it is their inhibited posture that is actually impeding their once mobile, flexible young tissues.  In most cases this humpy, hunchy posture can be avoided by taking preventative measures in your 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.

I first became curious about posture when I started massage therapy school but quickly put it on the back burner when 750 other things took precedence. My curiosity eventually resurfaced when I started my professional practice and had patients constantly quizzing me about how to properly hold their bodies.  It wasn’t until I started a regular yoga practice that I took a personal interest in how my bones stack on top each other and what it feels like to have good posture.

So what on earth is good posture and how can this keep you staying young?  

Firstly, I think its important to consider what causes us to age and degenerate in the first place.  To keep it simple; anything that causes stress on the body, or taxes a particular system in the body, can inevitably speed up the aging process.  Whether it be through physical stress, (caused by a poor diet or lack of exercise) or emotional stress, (such as an unhealthy relationship or excessive worry), on some level, our bodies are being taxed and the surplus of natural resources we need to be healthy are being depleted.  As our bodies age they have a harder time coping and managing stress.  So why not take action and support our bodies with good posture?  In doing so we can potentially decrease some of the stress that our bodies have to interpret on a daily basis. 

Benefits of Sitting up Straight

·      Spinal Alignment

·      Engagement through core, Pelvic floor and Transversus abdominus

·      Lengthened Hamstrings

·      C1 and Jaw (TMJ) alignment

·      Vertebral Disc, Membranous, Muscular, ligamentous, tendonous, fascial and joint health

·      More efficient circulation especially to the extremities

·      Efficient Lymphatic Flow

·      Energetic Flow

·      Increase in flow of Qi

·      Increased space for Lungs to breath

·      Increased space for the Heart to beat and pump

·      Diaphragm has space to expand and contract

·      Increased oxygen and blood to the brain

·      Ease on the organs because they have space to preform their function

·      Decrease in stress and anxiety

·      Feeling more alert, alive, present, awake, focused, productive

As you can see, sitting in a more vertical and upright posture can have all these enormous benefits on your body, causing less stress on the body as a whole, ultimately means your body has an easier time trying to achieve homeostasis and your sympathetic nervous system can stop firing.  Just by focusing on your posture everyday you are taking preventative measures in slowing down the aging process.

So before you start looking like the hunch back of Notre dame, here are some preventative measures that are essential to staying and looking young

Preventive Measures

·      Yoga

·      Mediation

·      Core Exercises

·      Massage

·      Chiropractic treatment

·      Physiotherapy

·      Regular exercise

·      Acupuncture