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2. !Purpose:Practitioners in many therapeutic fields have witnessed generationsperforming various forms of fitness regimes and we have watchedand oftentimes experienced ourselves, as we age, how we haveactually caused injuries. The intention of course is to create flexibilityand have the use of our spine, pain free forever.As a yoga teacher trained in the BKS Iyengarmethod, I have witnessed over the course of 38years in the field working with hundreds of bodies,a disconnect between the intention to createspace, alignment and freedom of movement withthe actual results; bodies out of balance,alignment, injured and in pain. A 2008 poll commissioned by Yoga Journal and announced in theNew York Times concluded that the number of people performingyoga is up to 15.8 million. And the majority of these practitioners areperforming the poses at an intensity of movement that would neverallow the student to align the spine and pelvic floor to create theoptimum balance and stretch.Why are there more and more hip replacements occurring youngerand younger?Of course this does not pertain to just practitioners of yoga. With theawareness that exercise will keep us young and prevent injury came just the opposite for many. Running, biking, playing sports, dancing professionally have all taken their toll on the body. After years of living in distortion and exercising in distortion, chronic pain develops: pelvic, sacral and lumbar, sciatica, referring up and down the spine intothe neck, legs, and arms. We see more and more elders stoopedover walkers because they do not have the ability to stand evenly onboth legs. They have lost the use of their spinal muscles, the psoasand ultimately the lumbar spine. Performing yoga or any otherexercise modality without addressing and unraveling the distortion

3. at the source of the initial collapse, at the site of the perineum, willcontinue to exacerbate the misalignment.Relevance: Most exercise and fitness programs and disciplines areperformed with fast movement and an out-of-aligned asymmetricpelvic floor, causing strain and injury. The movements in all exercisemodalities (e.g. tennis, running, biking, yoga, dance, etc.) canexacerbate a pattern of mis-use that may have begun with the firststep taken as a child, perhaps having favored one side and collapsedonto one leg. This seemingly innocent first step creates the pattern ofsubsequent use. The initial imbalance, coupled with the pelvis beingtilted too far posteriorly or anteriorly, results in the inability to optimallyaccess the psoas muscles and to allow extension of the spinalmuscles to function properly to provide space in the sacral andlumbar areas. The collapse into one side of the body causes themuscles to be stretched across the pelvic bowl and ileum, ultimatelycreating distortion that includes the muscles on the femur bones asthey spiral and pull the structure out ofalignment. The progression and result of theinitial collapse causes further injury, pain,micro tearing in the lumbar fascia, which areunderlying causes of chronic and low backpain. More than 80 percent of Americans at some time in their livesexperience episodic back pain that costs $100 billion annually, withtwo-thirds of that due to decreased wages and productivity. Thisimbalance and progression oftentimes leads to hip deterioration andreplacement. Researchers found that by 2011 more than 50 percentof patients needing hip replacements will be under the age of 65.Consider the cost of this on the health care system.Methods: Structural ReAlignment Integration provides the mapand the tools to awaken, transform and increase proprioception, toenliven the nervous system and feel areas that have previously hadno awareness. When the pelvis finds its correct alignment, musclesrelease their hold, their tension on the bones, muscle tone isnormalized and perception changes. Releasing the distortion in themusculature changes the messages firing between the muscle fiber

4. cells. The correction needs to be made in the fascia and if the fascialpathways are blocked with muscles that are literally wound up, therecan be no undoing of the story created in the muscle fibers. Studieshave shown that cells communicate via mini-projections on the cells.These become deformed through over use, exercise, an aging bodyout of alignment, injuries that cause us to compensate in the way weattempt to hold the structure upright. The resultant muscularimbalance does not allow healthy cellular communication. Living withthe physical muscular response over time creates what we considerour new baseline, our new story, which is not the one we want tochoose to live with. The integrity in the core is compromised and it ishere that Structural ReAlignment Integration begins.Results: The process of Structural ReAlignment Integrationimproves cellular function creating pathways that are open andthrough which organ systems are fed. Through a guided program intothe core of the distortion, at the site of the perineum, we are able toteach our own anatomy to unravel, becoming informed responsibleparticipants in our own well-being. We discover how to release thedistortions, muscles spiraled around the bones of the pelvic floor,across the pelvis and around the femur bones. The goal is to standbalanced on our bones, to extend our leg bones deep into the earth,allowing our structure to be supported by the musculature. The focusof this teaching is on the sacred geometry of the body through whichspace is created to open energetic pathways for healing, allowing thestructure to be the support it is meant to be and allow freedom ofmovement for a life time, pain free. Conclusion: Our intended goal is to be balanced in body and energy, standing evenly on two legs, freeing up the pelvic floor to allow the flow of energy from thebase of the spinal cord to every organ system. In essence we havetwo separate bodies and must unravel the distortion to createfreedom throughout the entire pelvic and lumbar region. Years ofpelvic misalignment and the resultant pain and discomfort that arisecreates a false navigation system with a distorted baseline for our

5. proprioception whereby we are not able to recognize whether or notwe are standing evenly on two legs, engaging back musclesappropriately. Recognition and awareness of the imbalance in thepelvic floor and where the distortion begins at the site of the perineumis essential to free the low back pain and to create space andextension of the pelvis and spine. Held prisoner in a misaligned pelvicstructure with muscles spiraled, torqued, and raveled around bonescontinuing to pull the skeleton out of alignment, with poor cues as tospatial awareness, leads to more injury and pain. Implications: It is the hypothesis of this practitioner that creating space in the collapsed side beginning at the site of the perineum, unraveling the distortion from this core place, creates the freedom we need to literally grow out of the pelvic floor, have the optimal use of the psoas muscles, create extension of the spinal muscles and stand on our leg bones, not distorted musculature. We are an energysystem and when the flow is blocked or limited we create dysfunctionand illness. Only from alignment in our core muscles can we createhealthy movement and exercise safely, preventing injury and allowingour energy to flow freely.Ginny NadlerStructural ReAlignment Integration:A Revolutionary Approach to Pain FreeMovement by Ginny Nadler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Contact Ginny Nadler, ginny@corebodywisdom.com, for more information.Photo of walker used with permission of thisisbroken.comArtwork by Rose Cassano, rosecassano.comUpdated, February, 2010!