Back in the Office!

I am happy to say I am back in the office in Manhattan on 26th St. Wednesdays and Thursdays. If you would like to schedule a session don’t hesitate to reach out, or you can do so through my website here. Sadly the yoga studio in Dumbo I helped start 10 years ago, and where I’ve had an office for the last two years has closed down. They are still offering online classes and teacher trainings through their website, abhayayoga.com.

New Protocols
I was initially hesitant to start sessions again in our office because of concerns about the spread of covid 19, but we have done everything we can to make the space as safe as possible and it has been very reassuring. We are all wearing masks of course and are asking clients to sign in, do a health screening, and wash their hands when they arrive. We also have HEPA air filters in every room and are staggering sessions to avoid overlap of multiple clients in the waiting room. We are doing everything we can to make the space feel safe and comfortable.

Moved to Beacon, NY
My family and I have moved out of Brooklyn and up the Hudson to spend the Winter in Beacon, NY. We are enjoying the Fall foliage and are looking forward to exploring the area. If you are near Beacon, let’s connect!

Now Offering Online Sessions

While it is still unclear when I will be able to safely do in person sessions, I have begun offering online sessions to some of my clients who have asked for them. This has been a great way to get centered, work on exercises that can boost your mood, improve your alignment and increase energy. These sessions are a great way to learn new movement practices that support more balanced alignment so that any other exercise you are doing during the lockdown promotes balance instead of contributing to old patterns.

These sessions are especially fun for me because I get to teach material that I often don’t have time to go over in a meaningful way during a regular session, and I get to see you! I hope you will give this a try and join me over zoom to work on whatever is going on for you right now.

I wish you love and support, and hope you are safe and balanced in these difficult times.

Breathing Changes Everything

Dearest Client, 

Soon after I last wrote to you, we lost our childcare and most of my days became consumed with taking care of our 10 month old son.   If there is one bright spot with sheltering in place, it has been the opportunity to crawl around on the floor, be silly and laugh with my amazing son. 

Unfortunately, this hasn't left me a lot of time to connect with you, or create the online resources I had hoped would offer some support while we are all stuck at home.  I am happy to say that I have been working on a short video with a breathing exercise that has been extremely helpful for many of my clients to manage anxiety and learn diaphragmatic breathing in an organic way.   I have been getting requests to make a video of this exercise for years...and years,  I'm so glad to finally have something to show you.  You can find it here, or on the video link below. 
 

Why is diaphragmatic breathing important? If you are under stress, you are probably not using your full breathing capacity. If you are new to breathing exercises, this exercise can be especially helpful for shifting out of an anxious state. If your breathing has become shallow, sped up or stuck in your chest or belly, it can train you to trust your nervous system and its capacity return to ease. You should be able to shift into a state of calm fairly quickly doing this exercise and it can also improve your breathing capacity. If you are a more advanced breathwork practitioner, and you feel off from doing other breathing exercises, this can be a good way to return to a feeling that your nervous system knows what to do to keep things functioning without you having to consciously manage it.  

Send me an email or post in the video comments if you have any questions. I would love to hear from you, whether you are doing well or not.

Stay safe out there and be in touch if there's anything I can help with. 

Sending love and appreciation,

David Murphy. 

Such a Wild Time to Be Alive

Dearest Client, 

On Thursday, March 12th I shut my practice down indefinitely. While I would much rather be seeing you in person, it is the responsible thing to close considering the close contact of sessions and the public health crisis we are in. 

I imagine that, like me, you are dealing with the emotional ups and downs of this situation. It is appropriate to have fears, anxiety, concerns and confusion with the reality of a global pandemic. 

In the face of real danger, I want to support you in honoring the intelligence of your body and your emotions. Commit to meeting your experience with gentleness, compassion and as much mindfulness as you can. 

When we become overwhelmed, one of the best things we can do is to slow down and give attention to our experience. Often just giving ourselves permission to be present allows the feelings to move through us. If that doesn’t work, there is no shame in giving in to distractions to drain overwhelming feelings until you can come back to yourself. But do come back to yourself. 

Most importantly, remember to stay as free, fluid and flexible as you can! This is the antidote to feeling paralyzed. Move your body. You can do this in your living room, bedroom, or wherever. Roll around, watch and practice a yoga class on YouTube, find a way to keep moving so as to move the energy in and around you.

Going Forward
I am working on a way to create space online for a regular embodiment practice.  I will send an update with more on this soon, but please send me your thoughts for how I can support you.  Despite this time of uncertainty, there is a lot that can be done to move forward knowing that none of us are alone. I may be reaching out to check in and see you are doing, but if you don’t hear from me, feel free to get in touch.  I would love to hear from you. 

If you feel it would be helpful, I am also offering coaching via phone or zoom. If you have any thoughts or questions about how you’re feeling I might be able to help. Many of you saw me for bodywork sessions, but a good portion of my practice over the years has been dedicated to coaching and body based trauma resolution.  If this sounds like it would be helpful right now, let’s talk.
 

Please remember....

We will get through this. 
Stay alert and as informed as you can. 
Do meditation and breathing exercises regularly.
Stay hydrated and get exercise. Move your body!
Find something to be grateful for. 
Take time to enjoy your food.
Do something you love.
Reach out to friends and family.
Know that you are loved.

I am committed to your health, well-being and progress.

With deep respect and appreciation,

David Murphy. 

5 simple ways to manage stress in 2020

Nothing will have more of a positive impact on your well-being, alignment, athletic performance, metabolism and overall health than eliminating stress.  Here are five simple ways you can lower stress and improve your overall health. 

Meditation  Mediation can have a profound impact on your wellbeing in a short period of time. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, you don’t have time to work out, or your work or life is stressing you out, meditating just 10-20 minutes a day can begin to shift almost anything that ails you.  A simple place to start is to watch your breath and count your exhales to five, then start over. If you lose track, start over at one. Do this for 10-20 minutes. 

Develop a Physical Practice We all know that working out is important, but what I’m suggesting is something different.  Your connection to yourself will expand exponentially with a movement practice that is meditative. I usually suggest a practice like yoga, pilates, or movement that allows you to tune in to how it feels to move. If if something like yoga doesn’t do it for you, by all means, do exercise you love, but when you are working out, try taking out your headphones, tune into your breath, and notice how it feels, let go of any unnecessary tension and allow the movement to be as effortless as possible. Notice what this frees up for you.  

Connect to Your Breath Breathing is our primary source of energy, so anything that gets you breathing, including good exercise, can be helpful. Some good ones for developing calm and balance are alternate nostril breathing (Nadi Shodena), and slow deep breathing.  Both have been shown to increase heart rate variability (HRV), a marker of a healthy heart and autonomic nervous system. Alternate nostril breathing is also a great practice for balancing the left and right side of the body.  To slow down your breath, a good place to start is a 6-8 second inhale, 2 second gentle hold, 6-8 second exhale, 2 second hold. Once you get the feel for it, there’s no need to count.  Just keep it slow and relaxed with a pause at the end of the inhale and exhale. 

Eat a Low Inflammation Diet Eat simply. Cut out anything greasy, processed or sweet.   By avoiding sugar, greasy or fried foods, or foods with a lot of ingredients you may be able to decrease inflammation, pain and other imbalances.

Create a Plan and Stick to a Routine With the new year it’s a great time to create a routine that fits your schedule. How will you create the time and space to nourish your physical experience?  Even if it’s just one thing a day find a time to do it regularly. 

Some Simple Exercises and Tips for Bunions

Bunions can be a real mystery but I’m hoping that this mini guide will help shed some light on the issue. In my 20s, after repeated foot injuries from skateboarding I began to develop a bunion on my left foot and it wasn’t until I began practicing Hellerwork Structural Integration that I developed some insight into this common misalignment and began correcting the imbalance in my own feet. I am 46 now and haven’t had any issue with pain in my big toe for some time. I won’t lie, it requires a major shift in awareness of the feet to create a long term shift. At first this can seem onerous, maybe even impossible. How can I constantly be thinking about my feet? Well you don’t have to, you only have to be committed to shifting your awareness little by little for patterns to change. Old dogs can learn new tricks and like any new pattern, it can eventually become second nature.. If you have bunions I hope this helps you to manage or even correct your foot misalignments so they don’t stop you from doing what you love.

A Little Background
With bunions, often the stability in the foot is coming from the heel/arch area (supination), while the forefoot is pronating, or the whole foot is pronating. Either way, because of tension in the calves and lack of contact with the ground in the pinky toe ball and big toe ball, the forefoot will tend to wander side to side right before you push off the balls of the foot.  What this looks like is a heel strike that either gets unstable transitioning to the forefoot, or collapses in towards the ball of the foot as the arch collapses. The majority of the contact in the front of the foot will be in the middle three toes with the pinky toe and big toe more lifted, so the front of the foot rocks side to side like a boat, or just collapses in towards the ball of the foot.  When you look down at your feet, this might not makes sense if you see that your weight is over the outside of your foot, but this collapse inward becomes more pronounced in the terminal stance of the gait cycle, or when your leg is lengthening behind you and you are starting to push off. Long story short, the key to correcting bunions without surgery is to create stability in the front of the foot and to develop a strong arch while stretching the calves (among other things), especially in the terminal stance.

So how do we create more stability in the front of the foot? We can move in the right direction by changing the alignment when doing any exercises involving the legs, stretch the restricted musculature and build awareness of how we are walking.  In a nutshell, this means shifting the groins and waistline back when you are walking or standing, stretching the calves, and doing heel lifts and knee bends with the forefoot with good alignment to build awareness of how your foot is tracking as you move.   In this article we are going to mostly focus on the feet, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this issue is just in your feet! Addressing misalignments in the hips and even the ribcage, and developing core support are also extremely helpful for improving or even correcting bunions. 

Here is a simplified brake down of how to improve the alignment in your foot if you have bunions.

Exercises 
Bunions are also a reflection of a pattern happening in the legs and pelvis as a whole. If we just focus on hip openers and calf stretches with the knee and ankle tracking straint, we can make a lot of progress towards correcting the imbalance. If you are doing standing stretches for your hips and calves make sure to follow the instruction in the alignment video for your feet at the same time. Balanced alignment in the feet is key.

Check out this video for some exercises to create stability in the forefoot. 

Massaging Your Feet
Any massage for your feet is probably going to be helpful, but there are some specific areas that are especially helpful with a bunion issue. There are some other one’s we won’t discuss here that can be helpful for different feet but these are universally helpful.

Check out this video for some myofascial release tips to help stretch some of the musculature and fascia that create a bunion. This is some of the work I do in my practice and it can be extremely helpful. Keep in mind that the goal is to build awareness so that you can release these tissues without having to work on them all the time. As you are digging into your foot try to bring your awareness to that part of your foot and focus on visualizing the tissue releasing. This will build the connection from your nervous system to parts of your foot that may be gripping without your awareness.

Shoes
For many people footwear plays a major factor in bunion formation by pinching in the toes and forefoot in. It probably goes without saying that it is extremely difficult to correct bunions if you are squeezing your toes into tight shoes.  Any footwear with a wide toe box would help, but some shoes I recommend are:

Lems

Vivo Barefoot

Vibram Five Fingers

Xero

Altra

Some of these brands have models with a slight heel lift. While this is not ideal long term, if your calves are especially tight, you may find that it’s easier to keep your pinky toe ball and big toe ball in contact with the ground through the terminal stance if your calves are not overstretched.  A little bit of heel lift can help with that, but it is not a long term solution. Stretch your calves!  

Again, the most important thing is a wide toe box and a lower heel. Beyond that, comfort should be your guide and there are lots of other options for shoes with space for your toes if you don’t like the ones I’ve listed here.

Toe Spreaders
Some of my clients have found relief with various silicone toe spreaders.  Toe spreaders can be extremely helpful both as a gentle way to stretch the foot and also while doing foot exercises or yoga because they hold the toes in alignment with the metatarsals (next bone up from the toes). Wearing them in shoes is possible for some, but you will need to find shoes with a wide toe box to accommodate the spreader and your widened toes. Wear them for a short period of time around the house at first to avoid straining your feet. I personally find them difficult to wear in shoes or for long periods of time because they cut off the circulation to my feet. Be mindful of this if you are wearing them in shoes. If your toes start to go numb, take them off.  If they don’t fit in shoes, you might also try a single toe spacer for the big toe. These are often available at pharmacies, but again it is still important to have a wider toe box in your shoes. 

Sugar Toes/Diet: 
This is really just food for thought, but you might find it helpful.. I am not an acupuncturist but having collaborated with several acupuncturists in my practice, sharing clients over the years, I am constantly fascinated by how the organs effect structure. I’ve noticed in my own practice that when I do visceral manipulation with a client the musculature around the organ’s meridian often shifts in some positive way. Back to bunions… in Japanese acupuncture bunions are described as "sugar toes". This would make more sense if you know that in acupuncture the spleen and pancreas are related. The spleen meridian runs along the inside of the foot out to the big toe and is generally the part of the foot that is over stretched and weak with bunions. Some things that may help to tonify the spleen meridian, and indirectly support the abductor hallucis muscle that straiten the big toe are:

-Eliminate or lessen sugar, alcohol, smoking, and excessive caffeine. 

-Take natural anti inflamatories. Spleen "Dampness" in Chinese medicine can be thought of as a phlegm reaction to inflammation, so a diet that lowers your inflammation can be helpful. If you are having problems with mucus in your throat or sinuses, you might try taking black pepper and turmeric to help with gut inflammation that may be causing the mucus. 

-Exercise or anything that makes you build a light sweat like running or jumping on a trampoline, or jumping rope are supportive for the lymph. The  muscle that straitens the big toe runs along your midline, so exercises like pilates that promote length while engaging your midline can be helpful as well. 

Finding your center. The spleen meridian is all about the pregnant pause of Indian Summer. In each moment that can be likened to being present in transition. Anything that allows you to get present and grounded may be helpful. 

Surgery
Obviously there are more than one cause for bunions, and I have only described what I see in my practice. These suggestions may not work for you but they have been incredibly helpful for many of my clients.  If your condition progresses to the point of pain that is not relieved by any of the these suggestions, surgery may be an option.  In my practice I mostly see the negative results of bunion surgery so I generally don’t recommend it as a first course of action. Surgery is never a quick fix. As with most surgeries you can expect a minimum of 6 months for recovery and you may not get the outcome you were hoping for.  If you don’t have any luck with these exercises you might want to speak to an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in working with feet. This is the what the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons has to say about bunions:  https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/treatment/bunion-surgery/

Summary
For many who suffer from bunions it can be corrected without surgery, so don’t give up hope if you are struggling with this. Feel free to contact me if you think I might be able to help you with your own foot dilemmas. I hope this helps! 

In Health, 
David

Structural Integration Mentioned in the Washington Post

There is a raging debate going on in the Structural Integration community about whether the facial model is still scientifically valid or whether we should be focusing more on the nervous system. I personally believe our understanding will eventually integrate connections between the nervous system and fascia, and while current pain science has cast doubt on our previous understanding of how Structural Integration works, that doesn’t change the effectiveness of the work. The interesting journey will be in the evolution of our understanding around why it works. With greater understanding of the mechanism of change, we may develop more effective tools. I’m not passing judgement just yet. Whether or not fascia will still be center stage has yet to be seen. Meanwhile, there is a lot of interesting new research being done with fascia.

Here is the Washington Post article.

Finding Ease

Happy New Year! It is worthwhile to start the New Year and any new intentions with a clean slate. In the body that means starting from a place of ease. When you start by releasing tension rather than putting yourself in an idealized posture, it is far easier to recognize your inherent support. Your body was designed to support you and the way to feel that balance over your bones is to release the tension holding you in any patterns. The internal sense of rightness that comes from letting go and feeling this support can be profound.

When doing anything physical, It is helpful to stay away from the notion that you are trying to achieve some perfect posture and instead focus on creating more balance. You can change your alignment by pulling yourself into some idealize position, but how do you know your alignment is any better? How do you know that you are over your spine or aligned with your joints? You won’t!  Generally letting go of bracing is an easier place to start.  Most people struggle with sitting or standing upright because they feel like they have to do more work to get there. Usually this is based on some idea of what good posture or proper alignment is, rather than what their body is telling them. In other words, they layer a pattern of alignment (tension) on top of patterns of tension they already have (more tension). You can imagine how this might be counterproductive.  Good alignment happens when we let go of holding and feel the support of our skeleton. It is not something that can be layered on top of existing patterns with good results. Your bones were designed to support you and there is no need to add anything extra. 

The following audio exercise is intended to help you connect to your body's intrinsic sense of support and let go of some of the bracing that may be preventing you from moving freely.  Make sure you are in a quiet place where there aren’t any distractions or where you can close your eyes and put headphones on.  This is kind of like a meditation, so make sure you are somewhere you feel comfortable moving around and where you can focus inward. 

Power Posing 101

Amy Cuddy's inspiring talk on how posture changes your chemistry. If you don't just want to fake it 'till you make it, if you want it to become a natural part of who you are, nothing is faster than Structural Integration.