• Awareness,  Potential

    A Refuge From the Aggression of Life

    Refuge From the Aggression of Life, Blog by Lindy Ost

    Conflict. Some people thrive on it, others run from it. What’s hard is to sit with it or even know what to do with it. Competing interests create conflict, tripping us up, holding us back, basically making a mess of things. All conflict has a home in the mind/body and is acted out through our actions, meaning our muscles are at play. In stressful situations muscle activity increases, giving us the perceived experience of tension, tightness, or pain.  Reducing Conflict In order to reduce conflict, a change in the entirety of the neuro-muscular system has to take place as well as in the psyche. Does one change before…

  • Fun Things

    Hip Joints…Keep Us Moving

    I love telling people that there are 22 muscles that move each hip joint. It’s a surprise and hard for them to know what to make of it. The problem is that in the fitness and rehab worlds, you would think that the only muscles of the hips are the hip flexors (psoas), the ITB and the piriformis. Those are the ones that are most written about, stretched, rolled and massaged. In the olden days, it used to be all about the quads and the hamstrings. How times change! Of course there is good reason to give press to them, but if that is all that we think…

  • Awareness,  Potential

    One Step Towards Better Breathing

    Women's silhouette, Step Toward Better Breathing by Lindy Ost, PT

    What do I want? I find myself asking this question multiple times a week. Sometimes even multiple times a day.   Some days I want this. Some days that, making sticking to a specific plan like going through a maze, not sure where I will end up or how long it will take to get there.   Isn’t that true for many people?   Of course, we all have to know what we want in order to get it. And we have to take action to have it materialize.   The problem is that sometimes we get what we don’t want in the pursuit of what we do…

  • Awareness,  Performance

    A Bit of Anatomy

    Anatomy and movement

    Muscles attach to at least two different bones. Tendons attach a muscle to a bone. Ligaments attach one bone to another bone. Ligaments help keep the joints from moving beyond their joint surfaces. Tendons help move the joint when its muscle contracts. Muscles, ligaments and tendons have receptors that provide sensory information to us. That is, we get feedback from our body giving us specific information. Here are a few descriptions of those receptors and how we know what they are telling us and how best to use that information. You may have heard of them in your classes or books or through your friends or practitioners, even…

  • Awareness,  Potential

    Love Your Shoulders

    My finger slides across his shoulder…lightly…just enough to let him know that I am there and just before he turns and reaches up, me following; each of us dancing to the music in response to each other. Spinning, turning, sliding…the fluidity of the dance…that is what I love. If I push, I get immediate feedback…a strain, a frustration, a disappointment. I practice letting go and staying attentive, both needed to be in harmony with myself, my partner, the music. I have been there before, my excitement, my ambition pressing my body forward, pressing for something that it cannot do or is not ready at that moment and then…

  • Awareness,  Fun Things,  Performance

    Harmony In Support

    Watercolor group of trees - blue fir, pine, cedar, fir-tree.

    I transported onto the silky white ground under a bright blue sky. I had been away for months. The lusciousness lifted and held me.  Jason sat on a picnic table. I opened my arms signaling a hug. The conversation began. Walking tall, I met Jimmy next. He had just returned from Costa Rica on retreat. He carried the energy. I captured it. Eric joined as he climbed on Jimmy’s back. Jimmy yielded to his weight. They had traveled together. His tanned skin evidence. I watched them share space. I put my backpack down and joined the others in the open area. There were about 30 of us. BC-Before…

  • Fun Things

    Holiday Greeting

    Holiday-Greeting-Movement Matters 2021

     Please join me this holiday season to pause, to reflect, to acknowledge this moment of living. In the pause, what shines, grieves, glows, prickles? How do you move with yourself in your feeling life? How do you move with others? At the end of one year and the beginning of another, we are reminded that we start anew. We don’t need a page turn of a calendar to remind us to start over. Each moment gives us an opportunity to live it with a greater degree of satisfaction. Simpler, Softer, Clearer, Longer. Where do you want to make a shift? Where in yourself can you sense that…

  • Fun Things

    Taking A Stance

    Fall in Maine

    Sitting on the steps outside my house, I feel the October sun warming me just enough to feel the pleasure of having to do less work to stay warm. Taking a break. Rest, recover, sleep, the golden nuggets of balance in a busy life. Listening to the leaves blowing in the breeze and the traffic from Rt. 1, I am grateful for this time. Time to write. Time to notice. Time to enjoy. Even the pangs of hunger don’t interfere with the pleasure. It is moments like these that are sprinkled into my life that soften the jabs of obligation, chaos, destruction that go on within me and…

  • Awareness,  Performance,  Potential

    Developing a Healthy Relationship to Food and Digestion

    Gut Health Movement Series

    On the first day of my Feldenkrais® training program, the directors arranged to have a wholesome, catered luncheon. It was great, tasty and healthy…until I ate way too much of the scrumptious gourmet brownies for dessert. I felt terrible the rest of that day and the next. All my excitement for beginning a new adventure buried in an overdose of sugar, just because I didn’t have what it took to enjoy my excitement without reverting back to a childhood pattern. That was 30 years ago and the last time I ate to such discomfort. It was a memorable day because of my struggles with food and body image.…

  • Awareness,  Potential

    More To Say About Breathing

    More-about-breathing

    There can never be too much to say about breathing. Especially since it takes practice and attention to not leave it behind when we are doing the most mundane things. James Nestor, author of Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art, provided a 30 minute video for the Feldenkrais Summit this past May. I had talked to people about his book, listened to radio interviews and watched some of his YouTube videos. None of them moved me to buy his book, until I watched the summit video. I was intrigued by his explanation of the size and position of the mouth and throat and how over time,…