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Blog Posts in March 2015

Arizona was on fire this past weekend with Pelvis Restoration.  We had a full class with six new individuals to PRI.  I felt this class gained understanding with PRI tests and what they are demonstrating to assist with activity selection for their patients.  In addition, as with a lot of classes, the power of synchronization of the respiratory and pelvic diaphragms was appreciated.  Thank you East Valley Spine and Sports and Zac Cupples for hosting!  I had a blast teaching this group.

Posted March 31, 2015 at 1:26PM
Categories: Courses

I loved March! I have met so many new people, re-visited with people I haven't seen for years, and re-kindled passion with those that appear everywhere I turn. March started out like a lion for me. The first weekend of three in a row which 'focused' on PRI Vision at Bethesda, Maryland. I enjoyed teaching with Dr. Wise our revised Postural-Visual Integration course information and really feel that all 'eyes' were on target. We watched snow fall and periphery move us. The Point Performance team were such wonderful hosts. Thank you Erin, Joanna, Sean, Allison, Louise and Haim for being such great visionaries!

The next weekend, I traveled to my favorite Canadian city, Montreal, home of CoreXcellence. These practitioners and trainers love PRI and I loved teaching Postural Respiration with Heather Jenny. This was Heather's first opportunity to co-teach as she continues training to teach this course in the Fall, and she did a great job! It's all about the gas and these two days went by fast, because we loved talking about airflow, gas exchange and breathing in general. Don, Rich, Oz, Vito, Christopher, Ora, Leah, Jeff and Echo were awesome hosts! I have never eaten more oysters or had better food. Thank you all so much! I look forward to my next trip to your expanding company.

Chapel Hill, NC was home for me on March 14th and 15th. The staff at Advance Physical Therapy always are gracious with their time and event hosting. Susan, Lisa, Jean, Joe, and Matthew are also family to me. I really enjoyed presenting revised material on Cervical Revolution and again their input was invaluable. There were as many familiar PRI faces in the room, and it was a very humbling and emotional experience for me. Presenting this material to these guys was like coming "full circle" in my career. There was wonderful conversation as the result of having 3 dentists in the class. I would encourage any future Cervical Revolution course attendees to invite his or her local dentists, who might be interested in how occlusion can improve PRI outcomes, to also come to this particular course. The interdisciplinary interaction was awesome!

So March came in for me like a lion and is leaving me as a lamb, because I am enjoying every minute preparing for the upcoming Interdisciplinary Integration Annual Symposium that is approaching in less than 3 weeks. It will also be another highlight of my year and I encourage you to look into attending, because this year's symposium is all about our "need to succeed!" I love Spring Madness!

Posted March 30, 2015 at 3:18PM
Categories: Courses

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re an 80-year-old smoker, a 23-year-old Olympian, or a regular, fit guy-odds are the way you’re breathing right now is flooding your body with stress hormones, compromising your joints and mobility, bottlenecking your energy and undermining your performance in the gym and everyday life. Fourteen times a minute, you become a little weaker and a bit duller.

Hruska is on a mission to change that. Step one is understanding how your body is organized.”

Ron Hruska was recently interviewed by Men’s Health along with Bill Hartman and Neil Rampe discussing Postural Restoration, after Trevor Thieme, Senior Editor for Men's Health attended a Postural Respiration course last year. Topics discussed include: optimal breathing and the typical respiration patterns, asymmetry, PRI in pro baseball, and common compensations that can cause neck, back and joint pain.  

The 90/90 hip lift with balloon was shown as a way to get your diaphragm in a position to work correctly, helping you to breathe appropriately and avoid chronic stress which can increase your risk of dementia by 67%, stroke by 59% and diabetes by 45%.

“You can think of neutrality of being functionally symmetrical- the ability to shift your center of gravity from one side to the other, to breathe efficiently with both lungs, and to maintain position of your true core. “Being neutral helps everything,” says All-Star first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. “When I lift, I’m stronger. When I run, I’m faster. It allows me to fully express my power and speed.”

If you haven't already, go out and grab the April 2015 Men’s Health issue and flip to page 144 to read the article, which they refer to as the "#1 Greatest Health Tip Ever!"

The article that originally appeared in the April issue of Men's Health is now online, you can read it here!

Posted March 25, 2015 at 10:21AM

Well, it was Spring in Worcester Mass this past weekend as I welcomed another group of largely “PRI newbies” to the PRINation.  The sun was shining and the dirty snow was finally melting!  These poor Northeasterner’s have endured quite the winter, but they were excited to learn about the power of a Pattern and how to integrated the world of A’s on F’s and F’s on A’s into their clinical practice settings.  Michael Roberts and his staff took very good care of me this weekend!  From Yellow VW’s, to yellow M & M’s and chair massages at the break.  These good people didn’t just drink the Kool-aid this weekend they funneled it down!  They are fired up to learn more and I personally would love to go back and teach in Worcester again!

Posted March 24, 2015 at 11:51AM

Dr. Todd Stull is our next speaker spotlight for our upcoming Interdisciplinary Integration Symposium. Dr. Stull, founder of Inside Performance Mindroom, holds a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and is a board certified psychiatrist in Addiction Medicine as well as General and Addiction Psychiatry. He is a former high school and college football quarterback (Hastings College) and has spent a number of years working with college athletes while serving as Consulting Sport Pyschiatrist at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and Creighton Athletic Departments.

As a performance performance psychiatrist, Dr. Stull has worked with athletes, corporate executives and physicians to identify and address psychological, interpersonal and wellness needs through mental skills training. To optimize health, improve performance and managae psychiatric symptoms while operating whithin an interdisciplinary team, Dr. Stull often treats mental health and substance related problems. Here is what Dr. Stull has to say regarding his upcoming presentations at the Interdisciplinary Integration Symposium on April 16017th:

"Top performers are driven by a clear vision based on their passion, desires and strengths. Vision leads to peak performance only when aligned with supporting thoughts, emotions and behaviors. By developing mental routines, brain training skills and feedback processes, athletes and teams can successfully match their mental game to their vision. Many barriers stand in the way of peak performance – lack of confidence or emotional maturity, communication differences, relationship difficulties, mental health and substance issues, parental interference and stress. The mind-body connection is the foundation for the upcoming presentation at PRI on April 16-17, 2015.  By integrating neurobiological and psychological skills and science-based  tools, you will learn to access the power of your mind to enhance performance."

Posted March 23, 2015 at 12:08PM
Categories: Courses

Our last Postural-Visual Integration Course was given a few weeks ago in Bethesda.  The therapists at Point Performance were great hosts and we are sincerely appreciative of their enthusiasm for bringing Ron and I there.  Despite the crazy weather, which included snow and some heavy ice that made travelling interesting (and gave this not-so-graceful speaker a huge bruise on her only “good” hip!), the group was excited and engaging, which made the weekend extremely enjoyable for the both of us.  Eating food I can’t get in Nebraska is always a bonus for me when I travel, and some amazing crab and oysters did not disappoint!  

This was the first time we gave the course after some heavy revision work.  The concept of what vision does for the postural system hasn’t changed.  What we really tried to convey is what components of the visual process impact posture during key phases of gait.  To accomplish this, there were some intense, heated discussions between Ron and myself!  Ironically, I wanted gait brought into it, and struggled taking more “PRI” words out of it, while Ron pushed us to “visualize” it more.  But since we are the geeks that we are, we can say it was a labor of love for both of us, and we have never felt better about what we are teaching and the clinical applications!  It seems the attendees agreed based on the feedback we’ve received, from both first-timers and repeaters, which assured us all the hours had been worth it! 

I have to pause and also say a HUGE THANK YOU to Stacy, our “everything” person in PRI Vision!  She spent hours upon hours at the computer formatting the manual as we wrote and re-wrote, then completed an entirely new power point to go with the finished product.  The word “formatting” is now on the list of dirty words in our office…..those of you who have ever made an extensive power point know what I am talking about!  But we could not have done it without her, so if you saw it and enjoyed it, make sure to thank her.   

With all of this recent work to “visualize” the gait cycle, all my initial thoughts I’d had months ago about my talk at Interdisciplinary Integration had been a bit scattered until this week.  A few discussions with Ron and about 12 hours in one day spent researching narrowed my focus.  I wanted to ensure this wasn’t just another talk about peripheral vision.  Don’t misunderstand me; using peripheral vision and flow is extremely powerful, as discussed in the P-V Integration course, and it will be an important part of my talk.  But if you are catching my references to the focused, narrowed, self-driven attention that is behaviorally tied to vision for many extension-powered patients, then you now know where I am headed for this symposium.  I will show how visual behavior is linked to, caused by, and perpetuates their self-efficacy through neurotransmitter activity in areas of the brain that control attention, which is largely visual in nature. 

And of course, we’ll discuss what to do, and what not to do, about it to help your patients maximize their potential without sacrificing their ability to rest and breathe.  You know, Postural Restoration 101. 

Looking forward to seeing you all there! 

Dr. Heidi

Posted March 23, 2015 at 11:16AM

Wow!  What an amazing weekend in Indianopolis. The enthusiasm and passion for PRI by course attendees was amazing.   We had over 10 physical therapy students in attendance in addition to the physical therapists, strength coaches, and athletic trainers in the room. Integration of the pelvic inlet/outlet in the frontal plane with stance and swing phases of gait were emphasized with synchronization of TWO diaphragms. Powerful weekend. The IFAST group was fabulous and I can’t thank them enough for hosting yet another PRI course!

Posted March 18, 2015 at 4:40PM
Categories: Courses

We are excited to have launched the PRI Japanese microsite! CLICK HERE to view this page! This microsite will allow individuals to register to the upcoming PRI courses in Japan, as well as post information and blog entries in Japanese. Thank you to Kentaro Ishii and Sayuri Hiraishi for helping with all the translation to make this website a reality!

Posted March 17, 2015 at 4:35PM
Categories: Website

Asymmetry of arm-swing not related to handedness:

Authors: Kuhtz-Buschbeck, Brockmann, Gilster, Koch, Stolze,

Gait and Posture 27 (2008) 447-454

During my recent certification process to become a PRC, I found an article whose findings are supported by PRI science.  I felt like I had stumbled upon a pot of gold!  I want to share the wealth with PRI nation!

This 2008 article identified a predominant trend of patterned posterior arm swing occurring more on the left than the right in subjects walking at various walking speeds.  They found this event to not be related to handedness. The author’s provide insight into why this pattern of movement was observed including underlying mechanisms of side differences in muscle tone and/or strength and also neural motor programming.  PRI’s apriori understanding of normal human asymmetry, the development of adaptive muscular recruitment patterns around a left AIC, right BC and a left type1 scapular pattern can explain why the authors observed this pattern. 

 Around the time of finding this evidence, I had two clients who demonstrated L AIC/RBC patterns. Because of these patterns of movements they had developed asymmetries of a left and right triceps and posterior deltoid muscle groups.  Their pictures are below:

The left arm swing findings are understood when you consider that left arm swing occurs during left trunk rotation of the right stance phase of gait and that the human body is always oriented to be in this right stance phase pattern.  PRI courses and previous blogs provide excellent and thorough explanations for why our body has a right stance dominant pattern, so I will not describe them in depth.  Anatomical asymmetries that orient our spine to the right create imbalance in the AICs with the left AIC becoming more influential and orienting the pelvis and lumbar spine to the right.  As a compensation to a right oriented spine the thorax rotates back to the left creating an imbalance in the BCs with the right BC becoming more dominant.  This pattern of counter-rotation, between the pelvis and ribcage, will be the dominant pattern occurring during walking, so even though a person will move into a left stance of gait they may not achieve full and opposite counter-rotation.   Thus the left arm will always have a tendency to move more frequently and activate more into extension or posterior flexion as the authors described it vs. into flexion or anterior flexion.  The degree to which a person is limited in moving out of their LAIC/RBC and into a RAIC/LBC will vary and the results of this study show this.  Clinically, I have observed this and have found that the individual needs for a PRI program will vary from one person to the next person.

In closing, I think one of the take home messages from this article is that the underlying pattern of a LAIC and RBC can be observed in a real world situation, walking.  The power of PRI is that it understands why the person maybe walking in an unbalanced manor, it provides an evaluation to determine the extent to which a person’s systems are influencing the patterned movement and it provides a management program that helps people become sensory-motor aware and find the floor to maintain balanced walking.

Posted March 17, 2015 at 11:41AM
Categories: Articles

Hello PRI Friends,

I had opportunity to talk about Postural Restoration Institute® (PRI) basic concepts such as posture, breathing, ZOA, polyarticular muscle chains, treatment approaches and so on at NSCA® Japan Area Director Seminar (Kanagawa Prefecture) on March 12th. 

Participants had hard time to understand the concepts at first, however, once they had tried the basic approaches such as 90-90 Hip Lift with Balloon, Supine Scissor Slides, and Left Side lying with Resisted Right Glute Max, they had better understanding, and many people asked me questions after that.

At the end of seminar, I had mentioned about the PRI Japanese seminars this coming July at Tokyo and Osaka, and I am sure that PRI will give great influence to Japanese medical personnel. 

Thank you.

Atsu Takei, ATC, PES, CES, PRT

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