Gokhale Method posture work | The Roots of Health

GOKHALE METHOD®--Primal Posture™ for a Pain-Free Life

For questions, or private instruction/group class registration please contact

Gokhale Method teacher, Rachel Benbow.

To register on-line for group courses, go to

Rachel's teacher page at gokhalemethod.com

What is the Gokhale Method?

Offered at the Roots of Health by Rachel Benbow, qualified Gokhale Method teacher, the Gokhale Method uses healthy posture and movement to help you restore your structural integrity and regain a pain-free life. It addresses the root cause of most muscle and joint pain, because you have a right to a pain-free back, neck, hips, knees, feet...

We are marvelously designed animals. We have inherent grace and strength, like every other creature on the planet. Our bodies strive to heal themselves, and if we respect our natural design, we can function well for close to a century.

Most pain can be attributed to how we hold ourselves and how we move. Since we aren't born with a user’s manual, we rely on our culture to guide us. About a century ago, our culture took a wrong turn.
As a result, in the United States:

90% of adults experience back pain at some point in their lives.
This year, 50% of working Americans will experience back pain.
Back pain is now the leading cause of disability in people under 45 years old.
By age 15, more than 60% of all adolescents have experienced back and/or neck pain.

We have lost sight of what constitutes healthy posture; in fact, many popular guidelines for “good posture” are just plain wrong. However, we can re-learn what we once knew:

Our ancestors knew how to move without pain.
Babies know how to move without pain.
Some cultures still know how to move without pain.

This method educates you in a way that your culture does not, so that you can live a fully-functional, pain-free life.

Benefits

You learn techniques to:

Reduce or eliminate back pain, neck pain, and other muscle or joint pain
Prevent muscle and joint degeneration and injury
Increase your energy, stamina and flexibility
Reduce stress and improve your appearance

Effects are immediate and last a lifetime.

Our multi-pronged approach will profoundly change your habits through simultaneous visual, kinesthetic and intellectual learning. You can forever reclaim the pain-free body you were born with. Most students find relief following the first lesson.
You will achieve results without time-consuming exercises or special equipment; by emphasizing everyday movement rather than periodic exercise sessions, the Gokhale Method gives you ample opportunity to practice without taking time out of your day. You naturally incorporate your newfound body wisdom into your daily activities and physical pursuits. Every movement becomes an effective exercise to strengthen and stretch.

How it works

You will learn to sit, sleep, stand, walk, and bend in ways that protect and strengthen you instead of wear and tear you.

Sitting will be comfortable, either with a backrest when you place your back in therapeutic traction (stretchsitting) or without a backrest, when you stack your spine on a well-positioned, anteverted pelvis (stacksitting).
Sleeping will be comfortable and provide hours of restorative traction, whether lying on your back or side (stretchlying).
Standing will be a resting position for most of the muscles of the body with the weight-bearing bones vertically stacked over the heels (tallstanding).
Bending will involve hinging at the hip rather than the waist, exercising the long back muscles and sparing the spinal discs and ligaments (hip-hinging).
Actions that challenge spinal structures, such as carrying or twisting, will involve deep layers of muscles in the abdomen and back (inner corset) to protect the spine.
Walking will be a series of smooth forward propulsions, challenging the muscles of the lower body and sparing the weight-bearing joints throughout the body (glidewalking).

In relearning these everyday actions, you will reposition and reshape your shoulders, arms, neck, torso, pelvis, hips, legs, and feet the way they were designed to be. You will develop a high level of confidence in and sense of control over your well-being.
Once you have learned the basic principles, you integrate them into all positions and movements. Your everyday activities will once again become therapeutic.

Gokhale Method offering descriptions

Free workshop: In the 1 hour free workshop you will start to learn the why and the how of the Gokhale Method. Many free workshops begin by showing you how to stretchsit. This is a way of sitting back in a seat and giving yourself gentle traction, which eases compression in your spine and stretches out tight or spasming back muscles.
Group Foundations Course: The Foundations Course is the core offering of the Gokhale Method. In six 1.5 hour lessons, you can change your habits efficiently and profoundly through a combination of verbal explanation, visual materials, and gentle hands-on guidance. Classes kept at a maximum of 6-8 students.
Private Foundations Course: Learning the Gokhale Method Foundations course one-on-one allows for more flexibility in scheduling, permits your teacher to focus on you for the entire time, and allows for more privacy. Learn the basics of Primal Posture™ and how to apply this knowledge in situations particular to your life. The one-on-one course accommodates people with mild to severe levels of pain, as well as people seeking to improve well-being.
Initial consultation: An initial consultation is a good place to begin your posture journey, especially if you have a complex history of musculoskeletal or health problems. You will receive a comprehensive evaluation of your current posture and how it relates to problems you may be having, a projection of what structural changes are possible, and some key ideas and practices to help you improve your structure immediately and long-term.
Alumni classes: The experience of our many alumni shows that ongoing practice, as well as learning new and advanced methods, make the experience of the Gokhale Method Foundations Course even more valuable. These hands-on classes offer refresher training, as well as introduce new and advanced techniques.
Corporate offerings: Since healthy posture is a cultural matter, the workplace offers an especially rich opportunity to improve people’s musculoskeletal health. Gokhale Method teachers have conducted one-hour workshops in numerous corporations and more extensive offerings at large companies such as Google, IDEO, Varian Medical Systems, and Facebook as well as small companies such as Johnston Millwork, McCarthy Law Office, and Mimosa Systems. No place is too big or too small for us.

To read more information about the Gokhale Method, please visit

www.gokhalemethod.com

Rachel Benbow and Esther Gokhale at a Gokhale Method teacher continuing ed weekend.

Rachel Benbow as a Gokhale Method Teacher

As a nationally award-winning Licensed Massage Therapist, Rachel’s understanding of anatomy and physiology enable her to clearly instruct her Gokhale Method students with an understanding of how their muscles and bones work to realign their posture. As a Certified CranioSacral Therapist, Rachel also recognizes that our minds and our bodies are not separate, but are actually a unified whole. She understands that by addressing the body with the Gokhale Method, we are likewise addressing our minds. After obtaining better posture, regaining range of motion, and reducing or eliminating pain, many people using the Gokhale Method find that they approach life with greater confidence and ease.

But static good posture alone is not the whole picture. Good posture must extend to how we move and use our bodies. Rachel has been able to personally transform some of her movement limitations by using the Gokhale Method. Dance has been a passion of Rachel’s for decades;

however, a shoulder condition came to significantly restrict her ability to go dancing. After learning and applying the Gokhale Method for herself, she is now back out on the dancefloor. Similarly, an imbalance in muscle strength and movement application caused excruciating knee pain whenever Rachel tried to run. The Gokhale Method has adjusted her body to where she is now, for the first time in her life, enjoying running without any knee pain. Rachel views health as a continual journey of investigation, discovery and understanding. Her degree in Anthropology and extensive travels through more than 20 countries enables Rachel to see the inherent value of the Gokhale Method’s core elements: natural movement and primal posture. She fully agrees that balanced, functional posture and healthy movement, still used in various traditional societies, are our human birthright — a birthright she hopes to help everyone regain.