Living Well Blog
Integrative Medicine
Pose of the Week – Kite Flying Hip Hack (Two Strap Hip Release)
This week’s Pose of the Week is a Hip Hack called Kite Flying, or what I also call Two Strap Hip Release. Kite Flying is not your typical yoga posture. It’s actually a Medical Therapeutic Yoga technique I created to mobilize a hip joint that has been snarky for too...
Mindfulness vs. Meditation: What’s the Difference?
Mindfulness vs. Meditation - What is the difference between the two? Well for starters, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Mindfulness can be actually be an entry point for meditation. Plus, you don't need to be doing yoga to practice either one (just in case...
Busting 6 Myths about Postpartum Recovery
What Mothers Want You to Know There are a lot of myths surrounding postpartum recovery. I'd like to bust just 6 of those myths in this short post. Becoming a mother through giving birth is a miracle – a transformative, profound rite of passage that can be a defining...
A Letter to My Children on Mothers Day
A Letter to Our Children Pregnant with my first son, Michael In 2012 the National Association of Mothers’ Centers asked me to write a letter to my children in recognition of Mother’s Day, as a way to impart to the world what wisdom I would like to pass on to them....
The Emotional Long Haul of COVID: Continuous Coping as Another Pandemic Earth Day Arrives
Earth Day has a whole new meaning now in the midst of this pandemic. On March 27th, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. And during this time, I’ve been able to reflect on gratitude and grit, the notion that I, that we, will get through this – and we will somehow emerge stronger, together.
Pose of the Week: What to Do When a Tight Pelvic Floor Causes Pain
What is a tight pelvic floor? In 2012 Dr. Stephanie Faubion from the Mayo Clinic wrote a scientific article on recognition and management of the "nonrelaxing pelvic floor," at the time and probably still, an under-recognized and under-treated problem in women. The...
Pose of the Week – Know Your Hip Motion Limits for Hip Preservation In Yoga
Today’s pose of the week is about how to know your hip motion limits for hip preservation in yoga. In short, it's about hip preservation over hip opening, folks. I want to teach you how to know your hip range of motion boundaries through to beginning to understand how...
Pose of the Week – A Better Squat for the Hip & Ankle
Pose of the Week is all about tackling hip and pelvic issues in yoga postures. The goal is to make a yoga pose fit your body, rather than trying to force your body to fit a yoga pose. Visit my blog to see the other Posts of the Week and sign up for my newsletter (at...
Racism is a public health crisis on MLK Day 2021
Last August, during the height of the George Floyd tragedy, an article was published with this title: racism is a public health crisis. Below is a snapshot capture from the CNN article. How does this relate to the work of Integrative & Lifestyle Medicine? For...
Pose of the Week – The “Screw Home” Hip Hack
This week's Pose of the Week is not your typical yoga posture, it's a technique I use to preserve and protect (and realign) the hip joint. That means this particular pose can be used INSIDE of other yoga postures in order to create hip integrity and stability. Hip...
Sue Berres, OTR/L, PYT
“I came to the Medical Therapeutic Yoga program as very yoga-curious, but perhaps also a little yoga-skeptical. A colleague had been through the program and she raved about it and used yoga in some way in nearly every session, so there was clearly something there, but...
Dr. Leigh Sato, PT, DPT, NCS, MSCS
“Thank you so much for creating an amazingly comprehensive and intelligent body of work! I feel I have only a dipped a toe in but have already started applying the FMA to some select patients. I am so excited to move into this work more and find it hugely relevant to...