Let’s face it, many of us have back issues and often in the upper to middle back range. The Upper and Middle Back, or Thoracic Spine, is made up of discs, muscles, ligaments and twelve vertebrae, making it the longest part of your back. Upper back pain can occur anywhere from the base of your neck to the bottom of your rib cage. The pain associated with the upper back is often related to posture, muscle strain or injury. For many of us, the time we spend seated at our computers, takes a huge toll. In fact some may have to sit at a computer for up to 9 hours each day, which not only can lead to bad posture but can also eventually cause neck and shoulder irritation.
So, what is our message to you?… Make sure to incorporate a few back exercises into your everyday routine! It’s so important. When the exercises are performed daily, they will aid in improving posture and strengthening the muscles. The exercises can even be thrown into your regular workout routine. If you don’t have back pain at the moment, it’s still a good idea to incorporate a few exercises anyway so that you’re that much more prepared for the future. Building a stronger back is never a bad idea and these exercises are quick, easy and you guessed it… painless.
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Below, our Instructor Monica beautifully demonstrates three of our favorite upper back exercises. Thanks Monica!
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If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
Hamstrings are one of the most important grouping of muscles within the body. They help to prolong the body’s stability, balance, and long term mobility. When the hamstrings are tight, they can pull the lower back out of alignment, which can then lead to back pain. Located just above the Hamstrings is the Piriformis muscle, positioned immediately adjacent to the sciatic nerve (a thick nerve running from the base of the spine, along the glute muscles and down the back of the legs). The Piriformis’s job is to laterally rotate the femur with hip extension and abduct the femur with hip flexion. For example, In the action of walking, the abduction of the flexed thigh is important because it shifts the body’s weight to the opposite side of the foot being lifted, which keeps us from falling.
As you can see… these are an important set of muscles! They help to guide, balance and protect the body. Long story short… we owe it to our bodies to stretch these muscles out for at least 15 minutes per day.
How does one do that? Well luckily our Beverly Hills Posture, certified yoga therapist- Wendy Obstler, has taken a time-out from her busy schedule to demonstrate a few gentle hip and hamstring stretches. Each of these stretches aids in opening up the piriformis muscle and the top of the hamstrings, to help relieve pain that might be associated with sciatica or Piriformis Syndrome.
Throughout these stretches, we ask you to: be sure to breath, listen to your body and perform the stretches at your own comfortable pace. Here’s to a happy Piriformis and a happy and healthy spine!
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Stretch 1:
Stretch 2: (utilizes a band, yoga strap, or towel that you can hook around your leg or foot)
Stretch 3:
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
To most people, “good posture” simply means sitting and standing up straight. According to Beverly Hills Chiropractor and founder of Beverly Hills Posture, Walker Ozar, D.C., most people just do not realize the importance of posture to our health and performance.
The human body craves alignment. When we’re properly aligned, our bones, not our muscles, support our weight, reducing effort and strain. The big payoff with proper posture is that we feel healthier, have more energy, and move gracefully. So while the word “posture” may conjure up images of book-balancing charm-school girls, it is not just about standing up straight. It’s about being aware of and connected to every part of your being.
Posture ranks right up at the top of the list when you are talking about good health. It is as important as eating right, exercising, getting proper rest and avoiding potentially harmful substances like alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Good posture is a way of doing things with more energy, less stress and fatigue. Without good posture, you cannot really be physically fit. Without good posture, you can actually damage your spine every time you exercise.
Ideally, our bones stack up one upon the other: the head rests directly on top of the spine, which sits directly over the pelvis, which sits directly over the knees and ankles. But if you spend hours every day sitting in a chair, if you hunch forward or balance your weight primarily on one leg, the muscles of your neck and back have to carry the weight of the body rather than it being supported by the spine. The resulting tension and joint pressure can affect you not only physically, but emotionally, too — from the predictable shoulder and back pain to headaches, short attention span, and depression.
Poor posture distorts the alignment of bones, chronically tenses muscles, and contributes to stressful conditions such as loss of vital lung capacity, increased fatigue, reduced blood and oxygen to the brain, limited range of motion, stiffness of joints, pain syndromes, reduced mental alertness, and decreased productivity at work. According to Nobel Laureate Dr. Roger Sperry, “the more mechanically distorted a person is the less energy is available for thinking, metabolism and healing.”
The most immediate problem with poor posture is that it creates a lot of chronic muscle tension as the weight of the head and upper body must be supported by the muscles instead of the bones. This effect becomes more pronounced the further your posture deviates from your body’s center of balance.
To illustrate this idea further, think about carrying a briefcase. If you had to carry a briefcase with your arms outstretched in front of you, it would not take long before the muscles of your shoulders would be completely exhausted. This is because carrying the briefcase far away from your center of balance places undue stress on your shoulder muscles. If you held the same briefcase down at your side, your muscles would not fatigue as quickly, because the briefcase is closer to your center of balance and therefore the weight is supported by the bones of the skeleton, rather than the muscles.
In some parts of the world, women can carry big pots full of water from distant water sources back to their homes. They are able to carry these heavy pots a long distance without significant effort because they balance them on the top of their heads, thereby carrying them at their center of balance and allowing the strength of their skeleton to bear the weight, rather than their muscles.
Correcting bad posture and the physical problems that result can be accomplished in two ways. The first is by eliminating as much “bad” stress from your body as possible. Bad stress includes all the factors, habits, or stressors that cause your body to deviate from your structural center. Bad stress can result from a poorly adjusted workstation at work, from not having your seat adjusted correctly in your car, or even from carrying too much weight around in a heavy purse or backpack.
The second is by applying “good” stress on the body in an effort to move your posture back toward your center of balance. This is accomplished through a series of exercises, stretches, adjustments, and changes to your physical environment, all designed to help correct your posture. Getting your body back to its center of balance by improving your posture is critically important to improving how you feel.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
Whether you are a first time Mama or a seasoned baby-maker, one of the most overlooked areas of pregnancy is the time after giving birth – the postpartum recovery period. Even if you are one of the lucky ones who experiences an uncomplicated labor and delivery and feels “fine” to go home and begin a new life with baby, it still behooves you to be mindful of the myriad of changes happening in your body and life once baby has already arrived. Um, not to mention an instantaneous major lack of sleep!
Most of us are aware that there are ‘hormonal changes,’ during this time, but it is not just that alone to which we are adjusting. Even if we feel we have “prepared” ourselves in advance, no one knows exactly what life will be like until it is actually happening. A complete overhaul in lifestyle occurs, including a reorientation of our relationships, a shift in our personal identity, extreme exhaustion, possible career changes (which may also impact finances), digestive changes, and the demands of nursing, just to name a few. In the weeks, months, and in some cases years, following birth the body-mind-spirit is undergoing a healing process.
It is imperative that we honor ourselves and give our body the space and time it needs to heal. In fact, Ayurveda (the holistic medicine of India and the sister science to yoga) purports that the 42 days following birth are a sacred time. It maintains that this timeframe is possibly even more important to the health of the infant and mother than the pregnancy itself. Ayurveda implicates that the 42 days postpartum sets the stage for a woman’s health for the next 42 years! This is because during the postpartum period Ayurveda sees the mother as being just as delicate as her newborn. The combination of fatigue, rapid hormonal changes, meeting all of baby’s needs and just navigating new motherhood means that the care-giver also needs much attentive and tender care. So who is assigned to the job of caring for the care-giver? It isn’t just up to the supportive figures surrounding mother (partner, family members, close friends etc.) giving her the help needs, although these people are certainly vital to her recovery. Ultimately, the mother herself is tasked with mustering up the gentleness and patience she needs to be present in her experience as a new mother. This is an important foundation for learning and implementing self-care. It is the practice of self-care in this very early stage —in what can feel like the hardest time of your life —that will infuse the mother with the foundation needed to be a better and healthier Mom for the next 42 years. Clearly, in our society today the postpartum period is a time in a woman’s life that is gravely undervalued. However, if we open our eyes to the reality of the challenges inherent in this period, we can be better prepared to ask for what we need and give ourselves the compassion that is so well deserved.
Now, let’s take a moment to just focus on what’s happening physically. The normal follow up with the OB doctor occurs around 6 weeks postpartum. Mama will be checked, either vaginally or at the location of her C-section incision, consulted about postpartum depression and asked how breastfeeding is going (if that is indeed part of her postpartum plan). If all seems well, the doctor usually gives the green light to resume all normal activities, including exercise and sex, somewhere around 6 – 8 weeks. However, what most doctors do not include in that visit is an assessment of the woman’s rectus abdominis for something called Diastasis Recti. Diastasis Recti is a very common condition caused by the stretching of the rectus abdominis muscle by the growing uterus. The result is a literal separation of the left and right halves of the muscle. This is a common occurrence for women during pregnancy and doesn’t matter whether they have had a C-section or vaginal delivery. The separation can be significant or slight — sometimes so slight a woman may not even know she has been affected.
Diastasis can contribute to low back pain, pelvic floor instability (including incontinence) and digestive concerns. Often times it will heal on its own, however in cases when the wrong kind exercise and activities are introduced too early in the healing process, it can actually become worse. In fact, it usually isn’t until months later when the postpartum woman is complaining about ‘the bulge in her belly’ even though she has been working out religiously. Her problem lies in the type of exercise she has been engaging in.
You may recognize this scenario: Mama is soooooo very ready to start exercising again and get her pre-baby body back. She decides to engage in lots of belly crunches and/or baby bootcamp type activities thinking she is doing her body good. However, unfortunately, if Mama has diastasis recti there is a good chance she may be making things worse. So, what’s a Mama to do? First, although there are ways to do a self-check of the condition, I recommend getting checked for diastasis by someone who is trained to test for it. It’s an easy, non-invasive test. Knowledge is power so once you know for sure this is happening in your body, you are poised to make educated decisions and prepare a game plan for the postpartum recovery process. Secondly, find instructors well trained in Pilates or yoga therapeutics who can safely lead you through exercises that help to strengthen and balance the body. Finally, because our bodies want to live in a state of homeostasis (i.e. balance), we must be patient and trust that our bodies will restore the integrity of our abdominal muscles.
I have offered yoga therapy to many women postpartum and I have recently moved through my own postpartum recovery as well. I must say, I am amazed again and again at the inner intelligence of our bodies. When we set up our bodies optimally and give them the time and attention they need, they will heal. Our body may not look exactly the same as it did pre-pregnancy, but we aren’t the same! We are now “Mama.” And perhaps we can be okay — dare I say even proud — that our body bares the experience of pregnancy and childbirth upon it. Having a child forever changes our lives so couldn’t it be considered normal for our external appearance to be, if nothing else, slightly different? As we move through the throws of motherhood and begin to patiently adjust to the changes in our lives, we can offer the same kindness to the adjustments in our bodies. Invoking a feeling of physical strength and balance in our body is a beautiful goal. If along the way to that aim we happen to get our ‘pre-baby body’ back, then well, we can consider that as just an added benefit!
TIP: To protect your mid line during pregnancy, always use the “log roll” maneuver when rising from the floor or out of bed. This practice should also be used in the first couple months postpartum until you have been checked and cleared for diastasis.
Log roll: with your torso and head aligned (in one piece), roll over onto your side. Then, use your arms to help push yourself up to a sitting position.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
If you’re thinking about taking up yoga, you might be interested to know that yoga not only reduces stress levels, it also supports weight maintenance and loss goals.
The lower your stress, the lower your cortisol levels which means your body will store fewer calories as fat.
Acupuncture and massage therapy also lower levels of inflammation in the body—another known contributor to weight gain.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
Chiropractor, Walker Ozar and his Beverly Hills Posture team serves the Beverly Hills, California area and the surrounding communities. A Beverly Hills Posture health and fitness plan starts at the root causes of poor health—from poor posture, fitness and weight issues, ergonomics at home and in the office, to musculoskeletal issues and more—then tailored to include the fitness and therapy programs that are necessary to achieve desired short and long-term results.
As most people know, chiropractors practice natural, drugless, non-invasive health care and rely on the body’s ability to self-heal. Sounds ideal, but just how does it work?
Chiropractors look at the whole picture
Like other health-care providers, we follow a standard routine to gain information about the patient. Chiropractors consult, review the case history, conduct a physical examination, and may request laboratory analyses and/or x-rays. Unlike other health-care providers, however, chiropractors also conduct a careful analysis of a patient’s structure and pay particular attention to the spine. Chiropractors also ask you about your life: Do you eat well? Exercise at all? How do you deal with stress? Do you have children? What do you do for work? And so on.
Chiropractors seek the origin of the problem
Using this information, a diagnosis is made. Included in the diagnosis is the probable reason for your pain or discomfort. It is important to note that chiropractors seek the origin of the illness in order to eliminate it-we do not simply treat the symptoms. If your roof is leaking, do you simply catch the drips in a bucket for years on end, or do you repair the roof to prevent it from leaking? Similarly, if the migraine headache you’ve had all week is being caused by misaligned vertebra and an irritated nerve, do you continue to take pain killers indefinitely, or do you realign the vertebra to prevent the pain? You get the picture.
Chiropractors fix the origin of the problem
Chiropractors have a term for misalignments: subluxations. A vertebral subluxation is a misalignment of the bones that protect the spinal cord. It’s a leak in the roof. Or a kink in the wiring of your nervous system. The severity of the subluxation can vary, and there are a number of potential contributing factors that can be physical, emotional, mental, or chemical. The subluxation can be caused by any number of incidents, from birth trauma to an auto accident to simple repetition or over-use.
Take Your First Step to Better Health. ContactBeverly Hills Posture today to explore how we can support you. With better posture and strengthened muscles, you’ll gain more energy, experience pain relief, and improve flexibility and overall health.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
Wellness psychology is the study of mental and emotional wellness – in other words, the way to create conditions of thinking and feeling that are consistent with healthy living.
Wellness psychology is a way of responding to the challenges of life with positive expectancy and self-esteem, based on the awareness that our natural state is harmony and inner peace, if we can reduce or eliminate whatever is interfering with that state.
Wellness psychology is based more on lifestyle decisions than the treatment of a professional. Learning to interpret the events of your life with positive realism gives you a perspective from which you can assign uplifting meanings to those events. Tony Robbins says, “Nothing has any meaning but the meaning you give it,” and putting a positive spin on things sets an internal environment that is more likely to encourage overall wellness.
But there’s more to wellness psychology than just positive thinking. Rather than waiting around for mental and emotional symptoms, you can be proactive and develop habits that make you mentally and emotionally healthier on an ongoing basis.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
Below is a recent email from musician, Mary Ann Vorasky about how her GYROTONIC® practice has impacted her life, and her work as an artist:
I am currently receiving Gyrotonic lessons at Walker Ozar’s Chiropractic Clinic (Beverly Hills Posture) in Beverly Hills, CA and it is really helping change some longstanding postural issues of mine, as well as supporting me in new ways of being in the world, so I decided to write to you to tell you about it. I have seen interviews with Juliu Horvath in which he says we should feel ease while performing the movements so that we could sing while doing them, and that is why I am writing you. I recently wrote a new song (I’m a singer/songwriter/musician) and sang it to my Gyrotonic teacher, Louis Flores, yesterday in the lesson.
I was amazed how easily the song flowed out of me while I was doing leg work, lying on the table. I also felt so open in my hips, and that is really a major change from how I began, when, with knees bent, I could barely move my right leg outward.
Louis Training a client on the GYROTONIC® Pulley Tower Combination Unit
I still have much healing/rehab work to do, but I just wanted to tell you how happy I am to be receiving the Gyrotonic lessons, which I am using my health insurance to help me pay for.
Along with my developing physical movement comes new emotional awareness, and the song itself describes some of this process. I am learning how to accept who I am as I am, even as I am changing through this work, letting old posture and emotional pain go. It’s amazing!
I am currently planning a music video for this song in which I hope to feature the choreography/dance of Cati Jean and Le Fleur des Sens.
Also, here is a link to my new website which has a few videos of other songs of mine from a house concert I performed last month: http://maryannvorasky.com/
If Juliu Horvath or other Gyrotonic or Gyrokinesis teachers would like to use some of my music or songs for their work, I would be honored.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
Shoulder pain can have a number of different causes, ranging from an injury like a car accident, to a chronic problem like arthritis. Patients who experience shoulder pain may be surprised by the intensity and duration of the pain. The shoulder area is so essential for completing daily activities that it makes sense that the shoulder pain injury should be taken seriously and treated to avoid worsening your condition.
Symptoms
Some signs that shoulder pain needs immediate attention may include a decreased ability to hold objects, decreased functioning of the arm, shoulder pain that persists even while at rest, shoulder pain that lasts more than a day or two, and unusual twinges or aches in the shoulder area.
Diagnosis
Chiropractic care can be an extremely effective treatment for shoulder pain regardless of its cause. A chiropractor will often begin with an examination of the patient’s neck area since shoulder pain can frequently be the result of “referred” pain from the neck. Whether the shoulder pain is connected to the neck or is limited to the lower part of the shoulder, it can generally be treated with non-invasive methods of natural healing such as chiropractic care.
Treatment
Care for an injured shoulder may include application of heat, application of ice packs, gentle manipulation to help the shoulder return to its original state of functionality, and gentle stretching and strengthening exercises that the patient can perform at home.
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel – we’ll be offering a variety of exercise tips that can help you mitigate shoulder pain in the near future.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
The IT Band or “Iliotibial Band” is a thick, tough fascia that runs from the hip to just below the knee on the outside of the thigh. The IT Band is often the cause of knee pain in runners as well as many other types of overuse activities. The causes of this pain and the solutions are subject to much debate. What is clear is that many of the “accepted” methods of treatment are not really of much use.
The overwhelming suggestion for relieving IT Band pain is to massage the outside of the thigh using a foam roller. While we are certainly fans of using foam rollers to treat a variety of ailments, the typical use of a foam roller to treat IT Band pain is at best ineffective. There is nothing wrong with using a foam roller to massage the IT Band; this type of therapy isn’t actually going to help alleviate the pain.
As with any injury or chronic pain, it is always advisable to see a qualified professional to assess treatment options. Knee pain in particular can be very complicated. Diagnosing the cause (of runner’s knee) and recommending an effective treatment plan should be handled by someone with the proper credentials and experience to get it right and help alleviate the pain.
So if using the foam roller to massage the IT Band is not generally an effective method of treatment, what is?
The answer is, it depends. Since there isn’t just one cause of pain in the knee or one reason that your IT Band may be distressed, there can’t be just one solution. The good news is, once we have diagnosed the root causes of your problem, we can begin to build a treatment plan that will not only alleviate your pain, but correct the underlying cause.
Knee pain, whether caused by an inflamed IT Band or some other reason, more often than not can be treated effectively. A patient can also support that treatment with an effective fitness regimen focused on strengthening and stretching the affected areas.
Chiropractic offers many solutions to knee pain and IT Band issues.
Physical Therapy offers a wide range of therapies that address the root causes of knee and IT Band pain.
Pilates, Yoga and GYROTONIC® instructors can design an effective exercise regimen that will help patients strengthen and stretch the affected areas so that pain relief is long-term.
Acupuncture is one of the key supporting therapies for knee pain relief. In many cases, Acupuncture is an extremely effective approach to resolving knee pain and in particular, IT Band pain.
While massaging the IT Band using foam rollers is not generally going to help get rid of knee pain, a qualified therapeutic massage professional can greatly reduce knee and/or IT Band pain. The massage team here at BHP is well versed in treating patients in conjunction with the overall treatment plan.
It is this multi-dimensional approach to resolving knee pain, whether it is caused by the IT Band or some other issue, that offers the best chance for success. More importantly, once we have identified the root cause of your pain and have begun to treat it, we can teach each patient a few simple exercises/stretches that they can do at home to prevent the problem from recurring.
So if you have any type of knee pain, or in fact have an issue with your IT Band, please contact a medical professional for an evaluation so that you can isolate the cause of your problem and find the most effective solution that will help you alleviate the pain (short and long-term). Finding the cause of your knee pain first, and then the best regimen to overcome the root cause of the problem, can get your “runner’s knee” under control once and for all.
If you have any questions regarding anything we’ve written or would like to book an appointment with us, please click HERE to be directed to our contact page. Beverly Hills Posture is proud to offer Chiropractic Care with an abundance of options including- Yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Acupuncture, Acupressure and Massage Therapy. We dedicate ourselves to creating a healthier you.
In Perfect Symmetry 