Mensendieck-Your Posture Your Pains

Each of us has acquired a manner of moving about our daily tasks, which has become second nature, a habit. Unfortunately, mostly due to ignorance, the majority of us have acquired sloppy postural and harmful movement habits as revealed by flatfeet, bowlegs, bulging hips, a potbelly, a sway-back,

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stooped shoulders, a hunchback, a dowager's hump, or a double chin, as well as by wholly unnecessary muscular aches and pains.

This volume shows how to shape up your posture, and release your muscular discomforts, througt the application of plain common sense.

Using the method established by Dr. Elizabeth Marguerite Mensendieck, the authors guide you, in a systematic and effective way, through a series of techniques designed to help you gain insight and skill in the basic principlesof correct carriage and motion.

The habitual application of these basic principles in all your everyday activities, such as standing, walking, relaxing, breathing, sitting, bending, reaching, lifting, carrying, pushing, will automatically exercise your body in the most consistently beneficial way, with lifetime benefits.

The mother and daughter author tieam of this book, Mrs. Ellen B. Lagerwerff and Mrs. Karen A. Perlroth, both graduated from the Mensendieck Institute in Amsterdam, Holland, and were both certified as Mensendieck Specialists by the Nederlandse Mensendieck Bond (Netherlands Mensendieck Association), approximately twenty-five years apart.

This book represents the accumulation of their forty years of Mensendieck teaching experience. Both authors are active in private practice on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Improving your posture and basic movements
I Standing and walking
The well-balanced stance
The one-legged stance
Walking
II Breathing
Efficient breathing
III Relaxation
Absolute relaxation
IV Bending your back forward
The round forward trunk bend
V Bending your knees
The central knee bend
Applying basic techniques to your everyday activities
VI Sitting down-sitting-standing up
VIII How to pick up a small oobject from the floor
IX The lifting and carrying of a heavy load
X Going up and down stairs
XI Kneeling down and getting up
XII How to lower your body all the way to the floor
XIII The leg pump sit-up after surgery, childbirth, etc.
XIV Pushing
XV How to avoid flabby upper arms
XVI A word about occupational postures
Advanced techniques for selective muscle control and conditioning
XVII Get acquaninted with your feet
Your toes and your stirrup muscles
The well-balanced foot position
The toe spread
Ankle conditioners
The pan scrape
Caterpillar
Standing erect on the base of the big toes
Ankle carriage
XVIII Your spinal column and its disks
Pelvis rocking
XIX Gaining awareness of your spinal column
Stacking the vertebrae
XX Correcting the rigid upper back
The chest bounce
Stretching the pectorals
XXI Relieving backaches of muscular origin
The bridges
Supine stretch-twist
Bus stop
Chest shift
Forward trunk suspension
XXII Conditioning your back muscles
Airplane
Straight forward trunk bend
Pelvis rocking in the straight trunk bend
XXIII Proper abdominal contraction
Belly balloon
XXIV Conditioning your abdominal muscles
Progressive leg raising
XXV Conditioning the muscles of your shoulder girdle
Trapezius exercise
Latissimus exercise
Rhomboideus exercise
XXVI Head carriage and movements
Tkeh nod-turn-tilt
XXVII Swings
The round rforward trunk bend swing
The straight forward trunk bend swing
Progressive swings
Background information
The Mensendieck System
Appendix

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