Pathways to a Centered Body

Book excerpt: Yoga teachers Donna Farhi and Leila Stuart have joined forces to produce a definitive guide to centering the body. With over five decades of combined experience in working with people of all ages, and from diverse movement disciplines, Farhi and Stuart share their gentle, yet incredibly effective approach to balancing body structure for optimal pain-free movement. This book demystifies the catch phrase “core strength” and teaches you how to center your pelvis and find optimal spinal alignment as the foundation for true core stability. Farhi and Stuart begin by walking you through the anatomy of the deepest core muscle in the body: the supportive psoas. Using easy to understand terms, combined with beautiful illustrations, they unravel the complexities of the psoas to reveal its function as an extraordinary unifying structure for the entire body. When these deep core muscles are tight, weak, or unbalanced, the position of the pelvis and spine is thrown off-center. Poor posture, back pain, and discomfort in lying down, sitting, standing, and walking can result. In a step-by-step protocol, you’ll learn how to release, lengthen, balance, and move again with ease. As deeply held tension is resolved, this work can help you to feel more grounded, mentally focused, emotionally calm, and more able to stay connected to yourself and to others. Trialed over decades of working with hundreds of Yoga students, Farhi and Stuart share simple and accessible techniques that realign the body and pave the way toward whole body rebalancing. Exercises incorporating the Muscle Release Ball can be practiced in as little as 5-10 minutes, often with immediate and remarkable reduction of chronic muscle tension and back compression. With this foundation work under your belt, later Chapters in the book help you to learn how to engage and strengthen your core and apply these principles to the practice of basic Yoga postures and everyday movement. Pathways to a Centered Body is an invaluable guide for Yoga and Pilates students and teachers, personal trainers, dancers and athletes, as well as physical therapists, chiropractors, and somatic practitioners, indeed, anyone who wants to live in their body with greater ease, grace, and stability. With over 108 color photographs accompanied by concise instructions, this manual will be a requisite text for movement training programs worldwide.