Developing Your Own Daily Practice
While the exercises in the courses are taught in a certain order and at a set pace, the intention of the courses is that you gradually develop your own daily practice that addresses your unique patterns of muscle tension. Everyone’s patterns are unique, so there is no prescription that works for everyone.
The best way to develop your personalized daily practice is to take the time to explore each exercise individually. As you learn each new exercise, do the Standing Awareness exercise before and after it. This allows you to immediately notice the effect that each exercise has on your muscle tension and posture. Once you know how an exercise affects you, it becomes a tool in your toolbox that you can use whenever you feel tension in a certain part of your body.
As you internalize the exercises, you’ll naturally start to develop a regular routine that feels good to you and addresses your patterns of tension. This will come in time—don’t expect it to happen right away!
At the beginning of your learning process, just focus on doing a regular 20-30 minute practice, either learning a new exercise or exploring ones you’ve already learned. You can feel free to move more slowly through the courses than the set pace, or not do the suggested curriculum on any given day.
The regular practice that you eventually settle into will most likely be a combination of Level One & Two exercises. You’ll always need to do some exercises that work with the core of your body (Level One). And even when you settle into a regular routine, it’s always educational to revisit exercises that you don’t do often—you never know what you’ll learn!
If you’re diagnosed with a specific condition, you may find it helpful to do a search on the Support page to see if I’ve written an article about it. Also, be sure to read the top section of each exercise page in your course, where I’ve listed the conditions that each exercise tends to be helpful for.
If you have an imbalance in your muscular patterns (like scoliosis, functional leg length discrepancy, or simply one side tighter or more painful than the other), please read the following articles for advice on how to address your imbalance:
How to Even out the Imbalances in Your Body
The Myth of Unequal Leg Length
How Muscles Contract in Scoliosis
The Cause of Idiopathic Scoliosis: Involuntary Muscle Contraction
