Tag Archive for: posture

From Duty to Delight

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Storytelling in a maze of art. A true story about love, duty and delight.
In a search for one’s Self.

All eight storytellers of The Courageous Messenger Collective were intended to gather at the Gary Marshall Theater in Burbank, CA. to speak to a live audience and be streamed on-line. Due to COVID we were asked to tape our talks and the interviews were organized on Zoom.

The show must go on, as they say!

 

Enjoy all the speakers and our host Jeffrey Van Dyk.
My contribution: From Duty to Delight can also be viewed HERE.
DancerInWhite

Jeffrey Epstein Cohorts

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DancerInWhite

How Sex, Dad and Dance Woke Me Up!

There have been many reports regarding sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, sex trafficking and pedophilia. Little commentary from these report’s share the actual experience beyond the victim/perpetrator dynamic.

Jeffrey Epstein’s story is no exception. Even with the stream of young women who bravely confirmed his disgraceful schemes, the high drama was created by the who’s, the how’s, and the outcomes.

An experience is felt. It may be felt all at once or as awakening layers of deadened sensation. An experience exposes feelings not scandalous facts.

My story is an account of my experience, not the facts that could accuse and convict a perpetrator. My perpetrator is dead and I seek no revenge. What I offer in this story is faith building…

Asleep only a few hours, I am awoken night after night by my dad. Hearing him enter my private space curled me up into a ball of tension. My eyes wide open under closed eyelids. Even the first time, at the age of ten, I knew nothing good was going to follow.

Then suddenly, I am plucked out of the terror, from what felt like a hand from the heavens, taking me to a place that I can only describe as nirvana––a place where the soul is free from worldly possessions (including my physical body)––a place where I felt safe, relaxed and strong.

This is referred to as a disassociated state in psychology, where the person experiences a detachment from reality, different from a loss of reality as in psychosis. My experience of this state was not one of mental scrutiny; rather, it was a spiritual awakening.

When in this surreal state I felt plugged into both earth and sky. A relationship with my energy body, separate from my physical body, was woken. My central plumb line––the body’s innermost relationship with gravity––was plugged into a relaxed stretch that carried a current of pure life force. I was infused with a spiritual strength that cursed through my energy centers.

I felt like the channel connecting earth and sky. I felt important. I felt like an integral part of the whole of Creation.

Then suddenly, I would be snapped back into my physical body. Usually dad would be gone by then. Sometime not.

My life was like a Ping Pong game. For the 3-years dad visited my room at night to satisfy his sexual need. Back and forth I would bounce, between feeling the relevance of unifying earth and sky, to feeling unworthy of the most basic parental protection.

I had no control over these disassociated experiences. Just as I had no control over what was happening in my reality. But what I gained from these experiences was twofold:

• I have clear reference points for tension and strength.
• And I can distinguish between energy movement and physical movement.

At this time in my life I started dance classes. I wanted the physical mastery to maintain the energy alignment I experienced in my surreal life in my real life. I knew undoubtedly that spirit lived through me, and the way to connect with it was through my central plumb line––my posture.

I learned to transform the static energy of tension into the fluid energy of strength. I found the quiet balance of energy movement inside the demands of physical challenge, and understood the inner grace of poised posture.

Through years of practice, the tension of my curled up body learned to elongate into a channel of life force. Gaining the mastery, embodied in my surreal life into my real life, landed me in the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line at the age of nineteen!

Posture matters. It has the capacity to break through tensions grip and transform misaligning beliefs. It rescued me from the potential downward spiral of my childhood trauma.
Your plumb line connects the essence of you with gravities force and you plug into a universal belonging that is safe, relaxed and fiercely strong.

Strength is experienced as ease-full, not tough, rough and rugged.

It has become clear to me that many of the ways we are taught to strive, prepare and compete for the lives we want are tension building rather than strength enhancing. And by relating to an end goal, in leu of being on the journey, keeps us detached from our energy body––Spirit–– and exhausts our physical body.

What I have concluded from my experience is, the aligning energy that connects our energy body (or Spirit Self) to our physical body is the energy we each borrow from the greater whole. It took trauma for me to experience the gift of spiritual belonging. Showing me that there is a sacred thread that runs through all our life experiences.

Listen inwardly and trust what feels safe, relaxed and strong.

 

To learn to access the relaxed strength found in your posture check out: The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind, a Book-3D/Video Learning System that helps you feel relaxed on the inside and strong on the outside.

Single-Hood Suddenly Feels Like a Life Sentence!

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But, it just as suddenly can change.

My first weeks in isolation were uncharacteristic and dark. I mean, typically I’ve liked alone time.

Thoughts about how long it would be before being touched, or touching another human being, cut like a knife. Hopeless loneliness creeped into every moment.

My body was, and continues to be, starved for touch. But it’s changed.

Being single had been a choice to immerse myself in creating my dreams. But suddenly, single-hood felt like a life sentence.

I’m not single because of Coronavirus. I’m single because I cherish me-time. Coronavirus just took away my buffer. Dance and therapeutic touch satisfied the sensual grace physical connection inspires. But this artistry has distracted me, to the point of replacing, a deeper want for an intimate we.

Isolation brought me face to face with my want, and a face off in the mirror.

As I looked myself in the eye, first the right eye then the left, (Does that have some significance?) I recognized that my ambivalence about relationships has always circled around the same theme: they take more than they give. It’s not worth the effort. I’ve got more important plans!

To no surprise, my history is riddled with touch taking—stealing—what was creative in me. From childhood sexual abuse to nursing a brain-injured lover. My time and body were exhausted by their needs.

I’ve been self-isolating, limiting touch, for years.

Now I’m yearning for it!

The CoronaCrisis has cracked me open. Something in me has shifted.

At first it felt sad. I wanted to punish myself for lost time. But then something wonderful happened.

I realized something when I took in my reflection. I wasn’t running away from my past, I was running toward my future. I HAVE made an effort to be in relationship. With myself. And I’m a good partner.

I’ve given myself quiet space to create in. Uninterrupted time to dream in. Aloneness to explore in. I have given myself time to explore what is important to me. And I have successes to show for it.

My fierce love for me has protected what I’ve cherished in me—my body and creative life force—this alliance is what I live and die for. Single-hood has taught me to be a thoughtful, intuitive and independent partner.

Single-hood is a partnership between the inner and outer worlds of a self. This relationship is a gift, not lost time.

Rather than focusing on wanting touch, now I focus on how I’m available for touch. My chest is relaxed wide open, my arms and palms rotate outward in readiness, and my pelvis feels anchored under me. My availability for touch is settling into my body’s posture. Rooting it’s permission in my expression.

I am finally present with an unfulfilled want. No running away or chasing. Just in its majesty.

For today, I am touched by being open to receive.

It is worth the effort. Relationships are worth your effort, be they inward or outward.

Want can be uncomfortable, but it guides you to your next step in living free and whole. Stay awake in these times and learn what you’re yearning for.

Woman Lying Supine

Find Your Natural Posture

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Woman Lying Supine

While learning posture’s subtle balance between surrendering and aligning, a student questioned, “shouldn’t good posture be natural––balancing attention between tension and strength is hard?!”

I felt that his sentiment should be true, but my experience working with bodies showed otherwise. So I slept on it. (My go-to place when stumped!) As I laid down that evening and felt my spine unfurl into its rightness and enjoyed my muscles’ surrender from a day’s work, it struck me. He’s right!

The precision of posture is natural—when horizontal!

Since then, whenever a client expresses uncertainty about what is correct posture, I lay them horizontal and help them answer the question from a supine position.

Gravity is a blanket that guides you to your best self.

Tammy speaks about the Power of Posture

Fitness For Living

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You workout, yet you still feel worn out by life. Every demand, expectation and responsibility adds weight to the gravity of your day.

What carries your workout vitality into your life?

Proper posture is the energy conductor that plugs you into your strength.

Posture that is relaxed and aligned wakes up your mind and muscle’s. You plug into gravity—a universal energy Source. After all, we are an energy resource—we die. The universe is an energy Source—it’s infinite!

When posture isn’t considered you use up your energy reserve quickly. You crave sleep and food to recharge, or external stimulants to keep up. Posture extends the life of your body’s battery of life force.

Listen to this 17-minute talk, broadcast from the Gary Marshall Theater in Burbank California, about the power of posture.

When You’re Aligned, You’re Never Alone

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Search For Nothing and Find Everything

 

Do you experience your body as a spiritual instrument or a mechanical frame?

If we recognize “spiritual” as a connection with the greater whole––Creation––and the body’s relationship with gravity as a connection with the Universe, then our physical relationship with gravity is a spiritual practice. Our physical posture is a part of Nature’s spiritual artistry.

This has been my experience since childhood. When I’m aligned I’m never alone.

As a young girl I was traumatized regularly and would regularly disassociate—leave my reality without warning—into an altered-reality. I would find my self rescued from my tension-filled curled up body and suddenly be ease-fully stretched between Earth and Sky. I experienced myself as an energy-body, bones in a relaxed stretch and muscles surrendered to accommodate this stretch.

This altered-reality felt safe, connected and relevant. So, when I realized chasing those feeling in my reality was futile, I set out to find them through my body’s ease-filled stretch between Earth and Sky.

Embodying, what I now call, Neutral Alignment became my life’s mission.

Alignment asks our bones to be neutral—central—in our muscles’ intricate cocoon. Neutral by definition is resistant-free and the absence of resistance is sensation-free. Because of this we experience Neutral Alignment as nothingness.

But in this nothingness there is an energetic exchange that makes us whole.

Our bones, when aligned with gravity, become an energy antenna that channel’s gravity’s force through its structure, conserving and strengthening our energy’s flow. This channel of force is Source energy that recharges our resources––our mind and body––and it connects us to all that is.

This energy exchange is the REAL World Wide Web!

This energy exchange introduced me to a spiritual life without setting out on a spiritual quest.

Strength training has been the most influential game-changer in establishing Neutral Alignment. Even more than ballet class! I witness how my physical relationship with an outside resistance mirrors what I emotionally resist in my life story. This emotional resistance being the root of my body’s tension and misalignment.

For example:
• When I catch myself trying to dominate resistance in the gym, I realize I’m trying to trump uncomfortable feelings with physical aggression, in the hopes of restoring my self-worth or rightness. I may be able to dominate a dumbbell, but I’ve lost myself in the process!

So instead:
• I connect to resistance like a handshake. Rather than focusing my attention on dominating the challenge, my primary concern is to align my bones ease-fully between Earth and Sky. This connects me to me first! Then, to maintain my alignment through a challenge, I connect with the outside resistance with equal degrees of muscular contraction and muscular release. The places I struggle to release muscularly make me aware of the places I’m reactive, so I can break the pattern. Strength training challenges become tension releasing opportunities.

Weakness is not the opposite of strength, tension is.

Strength is a willingness to feel into the tension that obscures your body’s posture, and to trust the inherent wisdom urging you to surrender it. Strength training is using as much conviction to connect with resistance, as you have strove to dominate resistance.

To dominate—to value only our end goal—is to miss out on what could be learned from our vulnerability. This curiosity about vulnerability is the undercurrent of our strength and unravels the tension causing our pain.

Neutral Alignment introduces me to the resilience and wonder of my strength. It unmasks underlying beliefs so I can consider them and create positive change.

This is why we feel better when we workout. It’s not just about endorphins and oxygenation of red blood cells. It’s about shifting the tension template of our life story into greater alignment with our present lives.

Your workouts can teach you to be competitive and tough; or they can give meaning to your life.

 

Learn more about alignment and strength in The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind

 

Feeling the Pinch of the Holidays?

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Let It Direct Your New Year’s Resolution

The NYC craft fairs are an art-filled, outdoor, community experience that gets everyone in the holiday spirit. It is a unique and wonderful holiday shopping frenzy. I find myself dashing through them between clients, at the end of my work days, or over the weekend to get all my holiday needs in order. It’s all consuming and I love it!!

The holidays, however, can make us dizzy with fatigue, unsettled by the all-consuming whirlwind, and overwhelmed with what it will take to recover our best selves to kickstart 2019!

This mayhem is the perfect setting to recognize the root of our year-round triggers.
Yes, there is an intrinsic message in our tensions expression!

When overwhelm turns into physical pain our body is trying to tell us something.

The body uses location and pain as its sentence structure to communicate. While your brain remembers an event, it’s your body that harbors the emotions that accompanied an event. Emotional tension patterns settle in the areas of the body that animate the emotion. And it can carry these emotional tension patterns around indefinitely if you don’t listen to its cry.

Unresolved emotions create tension that distort your posture. That tension then gets triggered into reactive expressions when under pressure. The emotional outbursts, physical pain, even sickness that interferes with your joy for living is actually a low-grade drain that is always under the surface!

Locations of emotional expression commonly agitated over the holidays:

  • Shoulders form the widest part of your skeletal frame, their muscles shape your posture’s horizontal integrity. For this reason, shoulders carry emotions regarding your integrity––what you value, as well as, your sense of personal value.
  • Low back muscles protect the kidneys, which from an Eastern perspective carry your fear. Their muscles tighten and surrender to the same degree your fear rises and falls.
  • Hip flexors/Iliopsoas muscles balance your torso over your legs. Too often however, they are used to power your legs direction. This overuse of a relatively small muscle is over controlling the larger leg muscle groups. Control is carried in the iliopsoas muscles and its grip is felt in the fold or the center of the hip joints.

Emotional anguish around social pressures and family gatherings at holiday time are undeniable. It’s important to remember that the emotions that surface under pressure are always lying under our smiles of pleasantry. And their low-grade energy consumption can draw us further and further away from our smiles of truth.

Resolve your body’s cry in 2019! Correct your posture and consider your emotional misalignments.

  • For shoulder pain keep them physically positioned on the coronal plane––the plane between front and back planes of the body––and emotionally explore your relationship to your own value or the values you are surrounded by. Create a suitable active meditation, like: My value is always in my being.

  • For low back pain keep your low abdominal muscles supporting its physical curve and explore the emotions creating your fears. Create a suitable active meditation, like: My fears are not facts.

  • For iliopsoas pain keep your hip bones forward enough to rock your weight onto the balls of your feet and explore your emotional relationship with being controlling or controlled. Create a suitable active meditation, like: I can have control without being controlling.


High pressure holiday situations that escalate your tension into tantrum and spasm excavates the work that needs to be addressed in your life’s story. Recognize the root of your tension so you can weed them out in 2019.

Have a liberating new year!

The BodyLogos Practice helps you understand where specific emotions get trapped in your bodies’ soft tissue. Developed by me––Tammy Wise––B’way dancer turned Tao Minister. I use the emotional intelligence of posture to transform tension into strength.

In my new book/3D-video learning system, The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the mind. I walk you through mind-body techniques that will help you release tension and build strength simultaneously.

Learn more…

Inner Space––The New Frontier

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Carol Burnett as Miss. Wiggins

Empower the Space in your Pelvis  

 

Remember Carol Burnett’s secretary character, Wanda Wiggins, played opposite Tim Conway?

She was a constant distraction to her boss, Mr. Tudball. In addition to having an exceptionally low IQ, her blonde curls, fitted skirt, baby-doll sway back and turned in legs left Mr.Tudball persistently bewildered and distracted.

It was as if she never fully stood up from her chair before she would shuffle across the floor in her black pumps, cowishly chewing her gum, readying herself to take notations perched beside the bosses desk. We would all giggle at the obliviousness of her presence.

Her posture told her story. She clearly had no interest in asserting herself physically or mentally, and though she had a nice enough hair-do, manicure and outfit, she had no real objectives beyond that.

Perhaps we were all giggling at our own propensity to embody the same unexceptional disimpassioned attitude. Don’t we all fantasize about how much easier life would be if we just didn’t care so much about being outstanding?  

 

If you’re over forty, you can (occasionally) relate to Miss. Wiggins’ squatty posture when you try to stand up after sitting too long at your desk. In the last two inches of getting to your feet your body creaks in retaliation before allowing a fully upright stance. If you’re over fifty you may not even make it to fully upright!

It’s as if the space in your hips and lower back silently shrunk while you were busying yourself in your seat, right?

This shortening of the iliopsoas muscle––which travels through the hip joints from inner thighs to lower back­­––can lead to the downward spiral of our fitness. Age and job demands can cause us to shadow Miss. Wiggins or it can be the agitant we need to lengthen the Iliopsoas into an upward spiral.

Sitting encourages tension in your iliopsoas muscles because the muscles become shortened, differing from its elongated standing state. The iliopsoas muscles also collect tension from their responsibility to direct your movement––physically, mentally or emotionally––and they become over-controlling when compressed inward for too long.

Balanced muscle use inspires purposeful alignment and attention.

Sitting tasks need standing time-outs to restore the space in your pelvis. When you fully elongate your iliopsoas muscles you place your torso precisely atop your pelvis. In that moment you are absolutely present in time and space––an opportunity for mental discernment and spiritual awakening. You are standing in your strength.

 

In the Tao te Ching it states:

The Master does his job and then stops.
He understands that the universe is forever out of control,
And that trying to dominate events
Goes against the current of things (Tao).

 

Many of us, unlike Miss. Wiggins, do pass through this aligned state, often unconsciously, and experience a sense of self and purpose in the world when doing so. To support this aligned state consciously unite the core trilogy of your physicality: abdominals, inner thighs and buttock muscles.

You may, or may not, meet tension in your iliopsoas muscles when standing up out of a chair (yet!). But by following these simple steps you will ward off thwarting their upstanding value. This is how you know your iliopsoas muscles are in their fully elongated uprightness:
·      Ground through your heels to stand up, lean your torso onto your abdominal muscles and keep it there as your pelvis travels forward.
·      To adjust your pelvis forward press your hip bones forward until you feel your buttock muscles naturally engage.
·      When your buttocks naturally engage stop the forward press, and gently rotate your inner thighs toward your central plumb line to replace the iliopsoas muscles’ compressed grip.

When your core trilogy is united experience the silence of the moment. Recognize the inner space you have created in your center and the renewed vitality you instantly possess. This space is the Creator in you––your Spirit Self.

 

The Tao te Ching continues:

Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.

 

Making decisions from this silent space is making choices from the inherent wisdom you were born with, combined with the gathered information you studied to possess. The intelligence that lives in your body and your mind are united for your greatest good. You are living in your strength.

 

To learn how to release tension in minutes check out this FREE video!

Relax the Need to Be Heard

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Find the Innocence of Listening

You know that sinking feeling you get when you have your hand up in a class or round table talk and the mediator isn’t calling on you? You have something relevant to say, but the powers that be silence you.

Typically for me, after recognizing that the dialogue was going to continue without my contribution, my hand would come down and I’d sit stoically stewing in, what felt like, their disregard. And this is where it would end.

More recently, rather than focusing on being disregarded, I started to deliberately take a step back and focus on regarding them. I’ve become curious about what IS being said. Does my point work with or against the conversation? Is there something I could learn from listening here rather than talking? Is my comment still relevant after they have finished discussing their perspective of the issue?

The outcome consistently surprises me. When the discussion slows down, the mediator addresses me and asks, “Did you have something to add Tammy?” With eager delight I speak my mind, I’m heard with genuine interest, and I feel honored.

When I let go of the need for others to respond to me, they became interested.

 

“Not needing to make things happen, one understands deeply.

Needing to make things happen, one learns about practical matters…”

Being disregarded is an old story in my life. It is not what is happening in my life now, but the old wound can easily be triggered. I have had to learn how to step back from this trigger––the need to feel heard and considered––to successfully develop in my career and relationships.

I suspect that I am not alone in this trigger!

Here’s what to do to unplug the trigger’s charge:

  •      First, take advantage of the stoic posture. Chin dropped and drawn inward shortening the throat, while the neck is elongated toward the sky like a swan, giving you the same alignment you would use if taking an actual step backward. Then rather than filling your neck and throat with stoic anger, open the crown of your head with innocence and wonder.
  •       Second, relax your eyes back in their eye sockets, remember that they are floating in water like when we float on a blow up raft in a pool, and listen from that receded and relaxed place.
  •      Lastly, recognize the added space between the eyebrows. This space focuses you to observe openly and you instantly enjoy receiving from the other(s).

When speaking we make things happen––yang––when listening we allow things to happen––yin. On one side we are giving, on the other side we are receiving, both are essential for a dialogue. Needing one over the other brings an imbalance to the dialogue that can turn the communication spout off or cause defensive responses.

 

“… Core and surface are parts of the same whole.

It is in being open and innocent that the

Possibility of understanding arises.”

Tao Te Ching

This became apparent in my daily life when I started to address my newly adopted parrot, whom has shown signs of mishandling, with receded soft eyes rather than gregarious let’s-be-friends eyes, she instantly started purring. She clearly felt more comfortable when I was in a listening posture. I believe she felt no expectations to be or do something she didn’t want when I was listening. It was a breakthrough in our relationship.

If listening is what creates trust in a relationship, perhaps we could all learn to soften our gaze and open our crown to the wonder of innocence.

 

Be guided to Surrender Tension in 8-Minutes with this FREE video.

How the Body Aligns You on Your First ______! And how you align it thereafter.

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Malayan porcupine in nature

You meet someone new. Maybe in an interview or on a first date or a spontaneous introduction, and your heart responds openly. Your chest naturally rises, as if your body were smiling; and, the width between your shoulder blades retreats, like a porcupine retracting its quills.

 

More often than not you trust your heart’s message. You, almost without noticing, reorganize your inner self and let this new person into your life. Your passion to create alignment in business, creativity, friendship or love is ignited!

 

Then one day your body responds differently. Your chest contracts and your back widens—you are on high alert.

 

It is accepted in the West that the heart is our emotional seat and that the chest’s carriage expresses our heart’s emotional state. But in the East, it is understood that the heart carries our joy and the lungs carry our sadness, including the back’s carriage in the expression of our emotional wellbeing.

 

… Trust your natural responses;

And everything will fall into place.

                                                                   Tao te Ching

 

Your body expresses a smile of truth through your chest muscles that relate to your heart’s joy. It expresses the need to protect your smile of truth through your back muscles that relate to your lung’s sadness.

 

Cocooned between chest and back muscles the Heart Center’s rainbow of emotions are communicated through your chest and back’s alternating rise and fall. This oscillation acts as your barometer regarding what you want to align with in each moment. Your chest and back muscles take turns aligning with the situation in question.

 

When passion turns to high alert this emotional yo-yo, exhausted by extreme alignment swings, locks into one extreme or the other. Tension is the result—a physical holding pattern—that steals physical strength and mental resolve.

 

Here’s the thing…

Passion leads to purpose. What you are passionate about does not.

 

When what you are passionately aligned with is leading you away from what feels purposeful, a deliberate realignment is being asked of you. The internal alignment that happened initially, without much thought, is now demanding thought.

 

Allow your body to express what you’re feeling before you try to reason through the situation. Restructuring does not mean your more assertive—yang —nature of your back shadows the more sensitive—yin—nature of your chest, or visa versa. This restructuring asks you to meet the conflict as an aligned team that represents your smile of truth.

 

The conflict is about your relationship with the other person, not the other person.

 

Posture is the first thing that cues you in on how you feel about your relationship with something. Dialogue with your body before it shouts out with pain and fatigue. Listen when it gets energized, relaxed and sits upright. Ask yourself:

 

  •      Can passionate choices be, less about the choice and, more about being lead toward your purpose? The teaching tools that ask you to explore your values and value.
  •      Can protecting your passion be training the muscles needed for you to be purposeful? The call to action that asks you to step into unfamiliar territory.

 

What have we turned our backs on because we didn’t know what questions to ask ourselves? Living life in shades of gray offers way more options that living in black or white choices.

 

If you let yourself be blown to and fro.

You lose touch with your roots.

If you let restlessness move you,

You lose touch with who you are.

                                                                Tao te Ching

 

Learn to neutralize your posture and release tension in 8-minutes – Get Your FREE video!