♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Sara Meeks,
and this is the third video
in a series that is being sponsored by Bob and Brad.
And here with me today is Christina
to help me with postural correction,
with some simple ideas
for how you can maintain and correct posture.
Before we get into the exercise,
I do want to just point out
in just a little bit of a review
what we talked about in videos, one and two,
that we're focusing primarily in the Meeks Method
on the spine and on the hips.
Osteoporosis can actually affect
every and any bone in the body,
but these are the two areas most at risk.
So we're going to start with the feet.
Posture, good posture,
and stable posture begins with the feet.
And so I want to have her feet about hip distance apart
for good balance.
To do that, we use this bone at the pelvis.
Here, this is the pelvis.
This is called the...
The scientific name is the anterior superior iliac spine.
I call the two,
there's one on either side of the pelvis,
I call them the headlights of the pelvis.
And if you look here and you follow down
that you will see
that they're directly over the hip joint itself.
So if we want to have the feet hip distance apart
then we have to identify these bones.
So Christina, if you'll come over here
and just place your hand on your naval for starters.
And then come down about an inch
and then over to the side you should feel
a prominent bone on the front of your pelvis.
And then you can glance down at your feet
and see if you have your feet
in alignment with that bone,
or pretty close to it,
and your feet are pointing straight ahead.
So this is how I position the feet.
And now as I look at postural alignment
and we're working with postural correction,
we use the idea of a plumb line,
which basically is just a straight line.
So I will take a dowel such as this
and place it just in front of the ankle.
And if she's in good alignment,
this align will go through her shoulder.
And if I lift it up,
it's a little taller plumb line,
then it'll be just in front of her ear.
Now, this is a simple dowel that I purchased at Home Depot.
So it's a one inch diameter
and it's got some furniture tips on either end.
And so if any of you want to have a dowel,
any of you are therapists watching these videos,
you might wanna get a dowel like that.
Now I also have something here called a Booyah Stik.
This is...
Come up, come back here, okay?
You can do the same thing with this.
You see it's taller
so I can get all the way up.
I don't have to move the dowel to measure.
And this particular dowel is from Bob and Brad
and you'll find it probably on their website
and also on OPTP, which sells physical therapy products.
If I have somebody who's very tall,
I can use dowel such as this one.
So as a therapist, I have a variety of dowels
that I can use to look at the plumb line.
So what I'm doing with her now is a side plumb line.
If you will just turn with your back to the camera,
you can also look at posture
from either the back or the front
and just placing the dowel between the feet.
And then the dowel should go straight up
through the the middle part of the buttock.
and then in the middle part of the head and the shoulders
if the patient has good body alignment in this position.
So there's examples of using a very simple tool
to look at somebody's posture.
So, Christina, thanks for coming.
How tall are you?
- I am 5'1" and 1/2.
- Ah-huh.
5'1" and 1/2.
Is that tall enough, you think?
- No, it's never tall enough.
And when is the last time you were measured?
- Oh, about three months ago.
- About three months ago.
So you keep track of your body height.
- I do. I do. - Is that, right?
I wanna tell the audience this is a good thing to do
because body height can change dramatically
with osteoporosis,
and especially if you have a secondary scoliosis
you may start to lose body height.
So it's very important
to have your body height checked on a regular level.
And I tell people basically,
you need to keep track because you can't be sure
that every time you go to the doctor,
they're going to check your body height.
They may just ask you how tall you are.
(Sara laughs) (Christina laughs)
So if they do that, you ask them to be measured.
Okay, so five-foot-one and a half.
All right, so did you ever have a wish to be taller or?
- Yep, oh, yes. - Oh, always.
- Ah-huh. Okay. - Always.
- And how tall in your dream of dreams would you like to be?
I'd say 5'8".
- Ah-huh.
That's a big agenda here, yes,
but I will tell you there's an exercise for that.
So I'm gonna just place my hand
just on the fontanel back here near the back of your head,
so you use this as a reference point,
and I want you right now to pretend
that you're five-foot-eight,
and feel what happens to your body as you do that.
Now that's called a visual image.
Most people do not stand up to their full body height.
And just pretending that there is tall as they wanna be,
they can actually trigger their postural muscles
and have better posture.
Now, I reached one time five-foot-two.
I don't think I'm five-foot-two now,
but I've always wanted to be five-foot-four.
So I have a little less to go than you do.
So if you just pretend that you're that five-foot-eight,
you'll automatically have better posture, okay?
Now, good posture actually begins with your feet.
So we're gonna go down to your feet.
You've got your feet in position.
And now what I'd like you to do,
is I'd like you to bring your weight back onto your heels,
run your weight up the sides of your feet
up toward the little toe,
and then across the ball of the foot.
So you're standing on the bones of the feet.
You should be able to wiggle your toes.
There's no weight on your toes.
You don't have to wiggle on,
but if you can
you wanna make sure that the weight
tends to be a little further back on the heel.
And now I want you to imagine that this floor
has suddenly turned into a slab of wet concrete.
And what you're gonna do is you're gonna take a breath.
And then as you breathe out,
you're gonna press your feet into the floor
as if you could make a mold of your foot
that looks just like that foot triangle.
Are you ready?
Okay.
Take a breath in.
(Christina inhales sharply) (Sara inhales sharply)
As you breathe out, press down with your feet.
(Christina exhales sharply) (Sara exhales sharply)
And then breathe in again,
(Christina inhales sharply) (Sara inhales sharply)
and press down with your feet.
(Christina exhales sharply) (Sara exhales sharply)
And you let me know throughout this session
if you feel anything in your body.
One of my motto is pressing down, lifts you up.
So when you press your feet into the floor
according to a law of physics,
for every action there's an equal in opposite.
So when you press down, your body tends to lift up.
And what you're doing is,
you're triggering your postural muscles
just by pressing your feet into the floor.
Now, how many times a day
could you do an exercise like that?
- Gosh, I could do that a couple of times an hour.
- Couple times an hour.
Yeah, sure.
Whenever you think of it, basically.
I do it in Publix Supermarket
when I'm waiting for, you know, to cash out.
I do it after I wash dishes,
stand at the at the sink
and just press my feet into the floor.
Sometimes after I'm brushing my teeth, I do it.
If I can think of it, that's the real key,
remembering to do it.
But you can do it many times a day.
It's just a little reminder.
And here's another addition to that.
So I'm gonna place my hand
right up here on top of your head.
This is the area called the fontanel.
This is where you had the soft spot when you were a baby.
So the exercise is called the Fontanelle Feather.
So I'd like you to take your own hand
and place it lightly right in that area of your head, okay?
Take a breath in, press your feet into the floor,
just as we did,
and also push the feather off your head
with the movement of your head
so that you're lengthening down and up,
and the whole body,
the whole body postural muscles
are being activated with this.
You may feel it in your body.
So tell me if anything happens there.
- Okay
- The Fontanelle Feather.
- Fontanelle Feather.
- Yes.
This is an exercise that I designed
once when I was lying in bed on my back.
And I had a pillow that was behind my head
and it was kind of annoying me.
It was kind of pushing my head.
I felt like it was compressing my neck.
And so I started to push the pillow away with my head
and I felt it lengthening my whole body.
So I thought this is a great exercise.
You can do it standing.
You can do it sitting.
You can do it lying on your back in bed.
Again, it's one of those exercises you can do a lot.
All you have to do is remember it.
- Right. - Okay?
All right.
So the next thing we're gonna do
is we're gonna kind of work down your body
with some other visual images.
So I'd like you to identify your collar bones, okay?
You have two of them.
So take the fingers of one hand
and kinda trace one of those collar bones
over towards your shoulder,
and then do the other one.
And notice that the collarbones
do not go straight across to your shoulder.
They kind of go up a little bit, okay?
As you come out to the side.
All right.
And then in between those two collar bones
you have a little notch, okay?
It's called the cervical notch
or sometimes the notch between the collar bones.
And then if you take your thumb
and you press down in the notch,
you'll feel a bone.
That's one of the bones of your breast bone.
Your breast bone is actually three bones.
And this is a bone on top of the sternum,
which is your primary breast bone,
and this bone is called the manubrium.
Now that's a big word.
I don't expect you to remember that.
So I call it the M-bone for short.
So I want you to imagine something.
So if I were to ask you,
what is your favorite gemstone, precious stone?
Like if price was no object, what would you pick?
- A diamond? - A diamond.
Oh, okay.
So I want you to imagine that right here at this level
you have the most beautiful diamond
that you could ever imagine wearing,
and you want to lift and show off that precious jewel, okay?
So I usually give this kind of an image
to the women who come to see me.
For the men,
now, I don't find that men wear ties too often anymore,
but some of them do.
And I did have a patient many, many years ago
and he was 94 years old,
and he used to always wear a bow tie.
When I arrived, he always had a bow tie on,
he was always dressed, ready for therapy, okay?
And he liked the image of keeping his tie high.
So if you show off the jewel
or if you wanna wear a tie someday or some kind of a scarf,
you can also do that.
So you lift that up right there.
And now for another visual image,
take your hand and flatten out your hand like this,
and place your hand right in front of that M-bone.
And then I'm gonna have you draw a shelf out into the air.
Now you've already told me that you like to drink tea.
So I want you to imagine that seated on this shelf,
there is a boiling, hot
brimful cup of hot tea,
your favorite tea.
And you have to keep this shelf level
so that if you were to slouch down,
then you would drop the cup right off from the shelf.
So you wanna keep that shelf up.
Now, there are some people that prefer coffee.
So you can use a cup of coffee, glass of water,
a glass of juice.
One of my patients wanted a glass of beer
and another one wanted a martini.
So basically what it is,
it's a vessel full of liquid that you don't wanna spill.
And so you need to keep this M-bone up
by whatever visual image you want
so that you keep it level, okay?
Okay?
All right, the next one I want to talk about
is the wings of the collarbone.
So your collarbone starts here,
runs over to your shoulders on both sides.
So now you can change the position of your arms
if you want to,
but you can just leave your arms right where they are
and then visualize your collarbones.
This is a good one to use in front of a mirror too,
maybe at home.
And then you just lengthen out those collarbones.
Spread the wings of the collarbone.
I discovered this one in a yoga class I was taking,
and the leader, she had us standing doing some visual image.
And then she said,
"And now stand and turn your hands facing forward
so your hands are a little bit away from your body.
Visualize your collar bones, take a breath.
(Sara inhales sharply)
As you breathe out, lengthen the wings of the collar bones."
It was like the finishing touch
in what's called Tadasana in yoga.
Tadasana is good standing posture in yoga, okay?
All right, so let's move down the body a little bit.
We've already done the foot press and so on,
but it also,
when we move and do any activity,
we have muscles in our bodies that are called stabilizers.
For example, if you lift your arm in the air,
then your diaphragm will contract
in order to stabilize your upper body
so you can lift your arm.
If you're working with the legs,
then the stabilizers tend to be the abdominals,
maybe the lower back extensors,
but there's another group that's very important, I think.
I call this the Prost Pillow Press.
The reason I call it that,
is that it was designed by a physical therapist
by the name of Evan Prost, one of my students.
And (clears throat) he's also an educator
in physical therapy.
They were standing at the kitchen sink
washing the dishes one night,
and he thought, "Wow," he said.
He was shifting his weight.
He felt a little bit off balance.
He says, "How can I stabilize more?"
And so he began to squeeze the muscles in the groin,
and that means pulling the legs without movement,
just using the muscle.
It's an isometric contraction
where you pull your legs together in the groin area.
And this will help stabilize your lower body
for upper body movement.
It's also good to use for postural correction.
Another visual image that I like
that's very helpful for head position
is called the grapefruit carry.
A lot of people,
when I ask them to pretend that they're taller
or they press their feet,
then they'll begin to tilt their chin up.
And actually I found out in measurement of body height,
if they do that,
they'll actually measure shorter rather than taller.
So I tell them to imagine that they're carrying a grapefruit
between their chin and the M-bone right here, okay?
And that will help keep the chin level.
So that's called the grapefruit carry, now,
and that helps to bring the chin into position
and then the head and better position also.
Thank you, Christina,
for driving all the way from Jacksonville to Gainesville
to help me out with this video.
- Hey, I'm the luckiest one here today.
(Sara laughs)
- Thank you.
(Christina laughs) (gentle music)