What’s The Proper Position For Your Head?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Luke Ford

Alexander teacher Leland Vall says: “Of course there is no real “position” for your head because your head moves in response to everything you do. More of a problem is that the head is often almost stuck in a position because it is held too tightly. Allowing for a softening (release of the muscles) of the back of your neck will allow your head to rise a little bit, giving more room to your spine, which in turn can make all your movements easier. Without extra movement or massage, try it now with just a thought.”

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Critiquing Youtube’s Most Viewed Posture Videos

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Luke Ford

I went to youtube.com and put in “posture” and found that none of the top videos mentioned Alexander Technique, the best way to develop good posture.

Instead, I found these videos:

Caroline Blackburn, an Olympic athlete, recommends tightening the abdomen and buttocks and relaxing the shoulders.

My critique: Nobody can deliberately tighten any muscle for very long. Your attention will go elsewhere. And while you do tighten certain muscles, you won’t move as smoothly or sit as comfortably or breathe as freely. And as for “relaxing” shoulder muscles or any muscles, this usually leads to collapse.

The tightening instructions are going to feel terrible and will restrict your breathing and movement. Aside from that, they’re great!

Caroline’s advice does not address the root cause of bad posture — reacting to stimuli by tightening and compressing. You could do all of Caroline’s directions, but if you’ve developed the habit of tightening your neck and compressing your torso every time you get in and out of a chair or chop vegetables or answer the phone, these destructive habits won’t change.

In this interview, Alexander teacher Jan Baty advises listeners to try tightening their stomachs. “See what happens to your breathing, what happens to your availability to yourself, what happens to your movement throughout the body.”

Everything tightens up when you try to tighten your stomach. It causes unnecessary strain and stress.

Chiropractor Natalie Cordova advocates pulling the shoulders back and down and the hips should be tucked in.

This is going to narrow the back, feel terrible, and restrict breathing and movement.

From an Alexander perspective, Dr. Cordova’s advice ignores the habits that are causing postural malfunctions. Trying to align the ears above the shoulders and the shoulders above the hips is likely to increase body tension and compression and won’t result in free easy movement.

Telling yourself to pull the shoulders back and to tuck in the abs will have an effect only as long as you think those directions and does not counter the habits that formed the problem in the first place. By contrast, the Alexander method of thinking about your width and your length helps you to let go of unnecessary tension and compression, even when you’re not thinking your directions.

Leland Vall, Alexander Technique teacher, says: “For a wider back, gently point your shoulders away from each other and avoid pulling them back. Pulling your shoulders back narrows the back of your upper torso, restricts arm movement, and also makes breathing more difficult. Instead, think of your shoulders as drifting away from each other in opposite directions.”

Chris Lopez from FitandBusyDad.com gives four exercises that supposedly correct bad posture.

All of his exercises call for squeezing the shoulder blades together. This will constrict the back, constrict breathing, and constrict ease of movement. His neck compresses so much at one point that it disappears.

You can’t get rid of destructive habits of compression by layering exercises of compression on top of them. All you do is add to your unnecessary tightness and tension and strain, increasing your likelihood of injury and decreasing your ease of movement and of breath.

Watching the MassageNerd below makes me wince. Who would want to look like him? His head has collapses on to his spine, reducing his neck. He bends and collapses from the middle of his back. He’s obese and ungainly. I can’t imagine that his touch would feel very good.

Below, Mike D’Angelo of BodyEvolver.com is a disaster. He says: “You can contract and squeeze through these muscles in the middle of the back in order to hold yourself upright. That’s proper posture.”

This is horrible advice. If you constrict your back, you will constrict your movement and your breath and you will feel terrible.

If you want to develop the muscles in your back in harmony with the rest of you, try just sitting cross-legged on the floor in a meditative pose (if you can do this comfortably). Add a cushion if necessary to make things easier.

Another thing you can do is to practice getting in and out of a chair by stopping at any point and just hanging out for a few minutes. There should be no point in getting in or out of a chair where you can’t comfortably hang out for a few minutes. If you can’t do this, you can build up to it. Make sure your neck is free and your torso is lengthening and widening rather than tightening and constricting.

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The Power Of Negative Directions

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Luke Ford

Robert Rickover writes: Most of us create excess tension somewhere in our bodies. If you have a pretty good idea where you’re habitually tightening up – could be your shoulders, your chest, your pelvis, whatever – you can use it for the little experiment below. If you’re not sure where to put your attention, put it on your neck.

Now walk back and forth across the room. When going in one direction, walk as you usually do. When you walk in the other direction, softly think “I am not tightening my (neck, shoulders – whatever region of your body you have chosen to experiment with)”.

The “I am not” part of this phrase is very important, but feel free to experiment with other words that mean something like “tightening” – maybe tensing, squeezing, compressing or any other similar word you like. Feel free also to experiment with other activities you do – speaking, chopping vegetables, whatever. Simply alternate between your usual way of doing them, and gently adding this self-directing phrase.

And remember a key word here is softly – whichever version of the phrase you are use is best conveyed to yourself without any pressure, detailed instructions or expectations.

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How To Read A Book Comfortably

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Luke Ford

Before I took Alexander lessons, I never thought about the way I read books. I never thought about my sitting mechanics. I never thought about the strain of holding a book up.

Nuitsmani comments on one of my videos on how to sit: “When reading a book (or writing) I put my book (or journal) on the table. And so I need to bend my head down. Is it a right thing to do? Or should I bend from my hips while keeping my head aligned with my back?”

I would recommend putting the book or journal under some pillows on your lap. I use three pillows.

I also read standing up, allowing my book to rest on the back of my chair.

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Dennis Prager? Why Did You Have To Go To Him For? He Was The One Person In The World I Didn’t Want To Hurt

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Luke Ford

I’m watching The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Duddy runs around, cutting corners, betraying everybody who loved him in his drive to get ahead.

He reminds me of myself. Everybody around me ends up feeling betrayed.

There’s a great line in the movie where Duddy tells his shiksa, “My grandfather? Why did you have to go to him for? He was the one person in the world I didn’t want to hurt.”

And the shiksa says, “And that’s why I went to him.”

Dennis Prager has been my hero since 1988. And when I managed to exchange some letters with him and even get a phone call from him, I was so proud. I was so chuffed. I was all swelled up.

The rest of my life was messy. I was a tad unorthodox. I cut some corners and I screwed around. And my mother said, “Somebody should tell Dennis Prager that you’ll betray him just like you did us.”

And then my girlfriend who became my ex-girlfriend went to Dennis Prager with her complaints. Everybody knew that was my weak point. When I’d do something a little unorthodox, they’d say, “What would Dennis Prager say about that?”

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time for me to write about Dennis Prager so everybody could feel betrayed and everybody could say, “See?”

For the last 14 years, nobody has said to me, “What would Dennis Prager say about that?”

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Duddy Kravitz On Alexander Technique

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Luke Ford

I’m watching The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Duddy is just racing around. He’s working class and eager to succeed. He’s not educated. He’s not cool. He doesn’t play by the rules of the game.

He reminds me of myself when I was younger.

Scratching, sweating, pushing, grabbing, Duddy is always in motion. Always in a hurry. He has little concern for what is socially appropriate. He doesn’t care about what the goyim think. He just wants to get his now.

As I look at all his nervous tics and fruitless striving, I think he badly needs Alexander Technique. “I’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it” is probably the mental construct that most causes body tension and compression. When we rush, we hunch and clench and use ourselves poorly.

When we look back, we realize we could’ve accomplished more things and at a higher quality of performance if we had simply taken our time and done things elegantly.

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Jews, Non-Jews And Bribes

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Luke Ford

I better tiptoe around the roses here.

When I grew up, I never knew any Seventh-Day Adventist who took a bribe or gave a bribe. I’m sure it happened. It just wasn’t discussed.

Sex and money were generally not matters for public conversation.

Then I became a Jew in 1993 and encountered a world of frankness hitherto unknown to me. Even among Orthodox Jews at a Shabbat table, I found earthy talk.

One Orthodox family told me about giving their 13-year old son a jar of vaseline and a Penthouse magazine for his Bar Mitzvah. No orthodox Adventist family would ever say such a thing.

Seventh-Day Adventists are Protestants and Protestantism is all about faith. When you have faith in God, it transforms your heart so that you no longer live for money, sex, power, fame and the like.

Judaism is all about works so you can be much more open about what is going on in your heart.

A good Seventh-Day Adventist was not supposed to live for money. And you didn’t think of money as a way of solving inconvenient problems that did not on the face of it have a price tag.

As I grew up, I came to learn that everybody had their price and almost everything had a monetary solution.

When I converted to Judaism, I found Jews were much more real than what I was used to. They were more gritty in how they talked about life. They were down to earth. Less pretentious. More passionate about this life than the next. Eager to succeed in the here and now. Devoted to minimizing suffering (including adjusting the thermostat if it was two degrees too high or low).

Jewish girls told me about giving their dates various forms of release so that they could end things without doing the deed. This form of bribery for just leaving a girl’s apartment was unknown in my Adventist world.

When the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles commissioned a front-page profile of me in 2001, an Orthodox woman who got a sneak peak called me in a panic and suggested I bribe the Journal $10,000 to not publish the piece. This was not a way of thinking I was used to.

It never occurred to me to offer a bribe, despite this suggestion, and the piece was never published.

Most Jews have lived in the diaspora for the past 2600 years and have frequently been persecuted. They learned to survive in part by paying bribes to people to not hurt them.

When the Holocaust came along, Jews were shocked that they could not bribe their way out of trouble. Committed corruption-free Nazis would not take bribes.

Sex and money are important parts of life and Judaism gives them their due. It does not deny their power. Therefore, Jews tend to be more pragmatic and less airy-fairy about such matters. Using money to solve problems comes much more easily to the Jews I know than to the Adventists I know (who have WASP reserve). You could call many of these transactions “bribes” just as you could call women who exchange sex for money “hookers”. I guess I don’t cast aspersions on many of these transactions. I see people doing the best they can do. Sometimes the most honorable thing is not the most polite thing.

If the payment of money will solve a problem, and the payment is not illegal, then by all means pay the money so all sides to a dispute can be happy.

I’ve come to love Jewish honesty about money, sex, fame and power and what they can do. This has helped me to see life and myself more clearly..

I could’ve stayed an Adventist and pretended to be so full of faith that I was above these worldly matters. I didn’t. I chose Jewish and I chose real. And my education in overcoming my goyisha heritage continues every day.

When the Jewish part of me looks at the Adventist world I came from, it sometimes seems overly nice and largely fake. When the Adventist part of me looks at the Jewish world I’m in, it sometimes appears crude and unspiritual.

Judaism and Jewish families expect an awful lot from kids. They’re usually in Jewish schools for more than 40 hours a week. In exchange for living up to demands, Jewish kids are often bribed. They get enormous amounts of love and favors and material gifts. Just think of the bar mitzvah. The Jewish kid learns his Torah portion and on his special day, he gets hundreds of dollars.

As a news reporter, information is currency. When I go easy on one party in exchange for the information they give me, I’m taking a bribe. Journalists do this all the time.

The New York Times reports on the scandalous use of bribes to navigate corrupt bureaucracies:

The going rate to get a child who has already passed the entrance requirements into high school in Nairobi, Kenya? 20,000 shillings.

The expense of obtaining a driver’s license after having passed the test in Karachi, Pakistan? 3,000 rupees.

Such is the price of what Swati Ramanathan calls “retail corruption,” the sort of nickel-and-dime bribery, as opposed to large-scale graft, that infects everyday life in so many parts of the world.

Ms. Ramanathan and her husband, Ramesh, along with Sridar Iyengar, set out to change all that in August 2010 when they started ipaidabribe.com, a site that collects anonymous reports of bribes paid, bribes requested but not paid and requests that were expected but not forthcoming.

About 80 percent of the more than 400,000 reports to the site tell stories like the ones above of officials and bureaucrats seeking illicit payments to provide routine services or process paperwork and forms.

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The Apprenticeship Of Luke Ford

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Luke Ford

I was listening to Dennis Prager’s radio show today.

He’d just returned from his fifth trip to Australia, my homeland.

Dennis said that Australia was over-regulated and rather reserved.

An American woman phones in. “Australians are reserved. Timid. When I lived there, I had to change my own enthusiasm. When you’re enthused about something, they shut you down. Even when you’re feeling good, they make you aware of how you speak. When you live there, as an American, you have to tone yourself down. I can not be myself.”

Yes! That’s right. When I lived down under, we said about anyone who got too enthusiastic, “He’s raving like a Yank.”

So that’s where I’m from – a reserved, British-type Protestant-influenced country.

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist. Protestant. Reserved. Nice. Not grubby. Not worldly ambitious.

Seventh-Day Adventists suffer from nothing akin to anti-Semitism. I never went to a church that required security guards outside. There’s nobody out to torture and murder Adventists.

Adventists believe in fearing National Sunday Laws and the persecution at The Time of the End, but they have no empirical reason to fear anyone hurting them in the here and now. I didn’t grow up with that.

So over an early dinner tonight, I watch The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and suddenly much of my Jewish experience (I initially converted Reform in 1993, then Orthodox in 2009) started to make sense.

According to imdb.com: “The younger son of a working-class Jewish family in Montreal, Duddy Kravitz yearns to make a name for himself in society. This film chronicles his short and dubious rise to power, as well as his changing relationships with family and friends. Along the way the film explores the themes of anti-semitism and the responsibilities which come with adulthood.”

Until I went to a Hasidic shul, I’d never attended synagogue where people didn’t go to college. I’d never met Jewish plumbers. I didn’t know they existed. I wasn’t used to Jews with muscles and working class Jews and Jews without money. All the other shuls I went to, everybody went to college. They were mainly professionals — doctors (highest status!), lawyers, accountants, professors, teachers, dentists, and the like. They were polite accomplished educated members of wider American society. They were concerned with how the goyim viewed them. Much more concerned than the Adventists I knew. “What will non-Adventists think?” was never a phrase used in my childhood.

Somehow, I have a big part of me that loves the street. For two years during college, I worked construction and part of me loved it.

Then I moved to Los Angeles in 1994 and felt compelled to chronicle its dirtiest parts such as the porn industry. Here I met a different type of Jew — one not concerned with the acceptance and approval of the wider Christian society. One not afraid to get dirty, to traffic in human flesh and drugs and organized crime and the like. A Duddy Kravitz type of Jew who’s not afraid to bang shiksas.

The polite Jews scorn the dirty Jews. I know. By immersing myself among the dirty Jews, I became a dirty Jew in many eyes. I’ll never have an upstanding reputation. I’ll always be grubby on Google.

I’ve never been comfortable with grubbing for money. That’s part of my reserved Protestant heritage. My academic heritage. Being a preacher’s kid. We don’t chase money. We’re intellectuals. We read books. We write books. Even if there’s no money in it.

So the Modern Orthodox Jews I know are polite Jews. Middle-class Jews. They’re part of the wider society and they’re concerned about how the goyim view them. The Hasidic Jews and the porn Jews and the Hollywood Jews, they don’t care so much about polite society. They’re mainly concerned with their little world. They’re not worried about what will the goyim think.

I’m not sure where I belong. I do like it in the gutter, but I don’t want to live there.

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Australian Orthodox Rabbis Called Ministers

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Luke Ford

I’m looking at the website for the Central Synagogue of Sydney, Australia.

Rabbis in the mainstream Orthodox synagogues of Great Britain are also called “ministers” and they used to wear robes like Reform rabbis in America.

“Minister” is a Protestant term. An English-language term. There’s no Jewish basis for calling our rabbis “ministers”. Rabbis have traditionally not dressed in robes.

The title of “minister” is just so goyish and English and Protestant. Rabbis do not deserve such a term.

I bet no Chabad rabbi in Australia is called “minister”.

In France, where Jews are discouraged from publicly wearing a yarmulke and any identifying clothing for fear of getting hurt by Muslims or shunned by the French, Chabadniks still go around dressed like Chabadniks.

Here’s an excerpt:

Rabbi Levi Wolff – Chief Minister

Rabbi Levi Wolff and his wife, Chanie, are both originally from New Jersey, USA where they both grew up and completed their studies. In 1996, the Wolff family with their two young children, moved to Perth, W.A. where served for 5 years as senior minister at Perth’s Northern Surburbs Hebrew Congregation.

Rabbi Levi and Chanie Wolff joined our synagogue in August 2001.They came to us as a youthful and energetic young couple and have won the hearts of many in their years in Sydney. The Wolff family has also grown in numbers to a total of 3 boys and 3 girls.

Rabbi Wolff is the driving force behind the growth, warmth and soulful energy that Central is renowned for.

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Dennis Prager Returns From A Week Lecturing In Australia

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Luke Ford

Dennis arrived from the airport this morning (after his fifth trip to Australia) ten minutes before his show was due to begin. That’s the time he normally arrives as he lives ten minutes away. Occasionally he gets caught in traffic and has to do the first segment over the phone.

Dennis: “The first thing I have to say is that I was shaken at the death of Andrew Breitbart. I was shaken on the human level, on his family level, on how young he was, and for the cause of conservatism in the United States.

“I’m careful with adjectives. I try not to speak with adjectives and I try not to write with adjectives. One of the characteristics of my approach is that I try to let the listener and reader fill in adjectives and adverbs. Among the adjectives I almost never use is ‘irreplaceable’. Thank God most people are. He was not.”

“The left has a lot of Breitbarts. We don’t.”

“I got back in time to attend a private service for him. I want to take those four kids and hug them and say, ‘Your father was a great man.'”

“George Gilder taught me a lot. He lost his father during WWII. His dad was shot down. He said his father was always alive in the family and in his mind and that a boy having a father he loved and admired is infinitely different from a boy who never had a father.”

“If you lose a father at four, you will always have had that dad.”

“James Q. Wilson is another loss. I was very close to James Q. Wilson.”

“I don’t think I ever met a more elegant man than James Q. Wilson. It’s a rare trait. You felt in the presence of a good man and a distinguished man. He was so sophisticated. He’s why I often call myself a WASPaphile.”

“I collect stamps, pipes, cigars, CDs, but the biggest collection I’ve always engaged in is that I collect good people. I say that to people. ‘You’re part of my collection. I have a good people collection.'”

Dennis says the Sydney Opera House is “one of the most famous landmarks in the world. It is up there with the Eiffel Tower, the Statute of Liberty.”

After taking in Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Sydney Opera House, Dennis Prager, his wife and about 30 other people stood and applauded (out of an audience of 2,000). Australians don’t tend to stand and applaud. There’s a British reserve among Australians. “I couldn’t believe that everybody didn’t stand to applaud.”

“Americans are an open friendly warm people.”

Australians love to ask, what do you think of our country? Foreigners bring a unique perspective to a society.

“I said to one leader of the community, I think you are way over-regulated. You folks in Australia are the proverbial frog being boiled and you don’t know it. Let me tell you, you’re being boiled. He said, you’re right. When I raised this at a dinner party, some thought yes and others no.”

“In Sydney, you have four garbage cans. One was for plastics and glass. One was organic. One was paper. And one was just garbage. In California, we have three.”

“Not only are there four garbage cans, but they come and check that you do not have a larger garbage can. You are only allowed a certain amount of garbage a month. And the fines are extremely high, in the hundreds of dollars. If your home uses more than your allotted amount of garbage, then you are fined.”

“I couldn’t find any cigar stores. There are tobacconists where you can buy a few cigars.”

“I went to a tobacconist to try to buy a cigar. She lifted a cloth sheet covering a box of cigars. They can not be seen. The cigarettes must be a certain number of meters away from the consumer.”

“It was a mistake for Rush Limbaugh to call Sandra Fluke a prostitute and a slut. When the right makes a mistake, there’s hell to pay. When the left makes a mistake, there’s no price.”

“Rush carries the burden of being the mouthpiece for conservatism.”

“When Ed Schultz on MSNBC called Laura Ingraham a slut, he apologized and everybody moved on. When Rush does, the advertisers flee. Why don’t advertisers flee the New York Times?”

“When has the right called for advertiser boycotts of the left? New York Times writers who compared the Tea Party to Krystalnacht. Did any advertiser drop the New York Times?”

“I think Sandra Fluke told a lie.”

WSJ: “In her testimony, Ms. Fluke claimed that, “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.” That’s $1,000 per year. But an employee at a Target pharmacy near the university told the Weekly Standard last week that one month’s worth of generic oral contraceptives is $9 per month. “That’s the price without insurance,” the employee said. (It’s also $9 per month at Wal-Mart.)”

Dennis: “New Orleans Saints players should be kicked out of the league if they, in fact, offered monetary rewards to teammates for injuring opposing players. If it was done outside of sports, they’d be in jail.”

Caller: “Australians are reserved. Timid. When I lived there, I had to change my own enthusiasm. When you’re enthused about something, they shut you down. Even when you’re feeling good, they make you aware of how you speak. When you live there, as an American, you have to tone yourself down. I can not be myself.”

Aussies would say in this circumstance, “You’re raving like a Yank.”

Dennis says that every taxi driver, except for one, didn’t talk. In America, you can’t stop them talking.

Dennis: “A lot of Republicans, like George Will, are glum and say we should give up on the presidency and just try to win the House and the Senate. I don’t give up on the presidency. If you give up on the presidency, it’s too dispiriting. It doesn’t work that way. That’s why many Republicans have endorsed Mitt Romney because they think he has a better chance of winning.”

“It’s wrong for Republicans to be in a funk about the Presidential race. You get in funk if you lose. Not before. The races for the House and Senate can’t be separated from the race for President.”

“Republicans have a moral obligation to act spirited even if they’re dispirited. It’s infectious in a bad way. It’s easy to be down.”

“I’ve felt my whole [adult] life that Time magazine international is on such a higher level than Time magazine America. They must think Americans are stupid. Time America is almost a comic book.”

“How does any big corporation impact your life? I’ve never understood that argument [that big business is more of a threat than big government]. Do they send anybody to arrest me? Do they pass laws? Do they tell me what to do? How can anybody compare the power of big government and the power of a big corporation?”

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