“Yoga is a metaphor for life. You have to take it really slowly. You can’t rush. You can’t skip to the next position. You find yourself in very humiliating situations, but you can’t judge yourself. You just have to breathe, and let go. It is a workout for your mind, your body and your soul.” Madonna.

Madonna practices Ashtanga (aka astanga) yoga, which is a style which encourages more dynamic movements and transitions between the postures. Ashtanga yoga can be an effective cardio workout as well as a isometric bodyweight bearing exercise.

Madonna began to practice ashtanga yoga (the Vinyasa style) to get back in shape after the birth of her daughter, Lourdes, in 1996. At this time she was with fitness trainer Carlos Leon who became her personal trainer. He may have been the source of her inspiration to adopt yoga as a way to stay in shape. Now almost 12 years later, she is still in great shape, and has recently started a new world tour. For a 49 year old (50 years old this August) she is doing very well. So, what does Ashtanga yoga involve?

Ashtanga yoga practice consists of six progressively difficult series of linked postures, each requiring between 90 minutes to three hours to complete. Each sequence typically begins with 10 Sun Salutations and the standing poses. This is referred to as the “opening sequence”. The student then moves to either the Primary, Intermediate, Advanced A, B, C, or D, depending on his or her skill level, a back-bending sequence, finally closing with a set of inverted postures, referred to as the “finishing sequence”.

Ashtanga Yoga is traditionally taught in Mysore style (supervised self practice), where each student moves through the practice at his or her own pace and level. So, astanga yoga is not like the average yoga class you are likely to find in your local gym or village hall. It is much more dynamic, and requires a greater level of strength, coordination, balance and flexibility than other styles. This is why this form of yoga keeps Madonna in such great shape.

Madonna’s enthusiasm for ashtanga yoga has since appeared in her work; Madonna chanted the opening ashtanga chant on her Ray-of-Light album, and also played an ashtanga teacher in the movie The Next Best Thing.

However, she does not limit herself to yoga. She also enjoys horse-riding and gyrotonics, which is a set exercises derived from swimming, yoga, gymnastics, and tai chi, and is intended to improve flexibility and balance as well as muscle strength, and to increase overall flexibility and mobility in joints. It has been compared to and contrasted with Pilates but offers much more flexion.

So, if you wish to look slim, toned and sexy like Madonna when you are 50, you need to make a fitness routine, like Ashtanga yoga, a daily event.

Learn more about yoga.

Get fit practicing our Ashtanga Yoga Workout.

THE VERTICAL-EXPERIENTIAL SIDE TO HUMAN POTENTIAL
An essay by Ida P. Rolf, founder of Rolfing^® Structural Integration, dated March 1977

Like so many teachers, some of them very close to home, I complain that people do not seem to understand my basic goals, the fundamental purpose for which Rolfing has been developed. In an effort to lessen this type of frustration, I offer the following summary of Rolfing developments, purposes, and ideas.  First, let me reiterate what I have often said before: I as an individual, am not primarily interested in the relief of symptoms, either physical or mental. To hear Rolfees tell of their “wonderful”, “unbelievable” symptom alleviation, it is hard not to accept this assessment as a goal. However, I am interested in human potential, and human potential per se neither includes nor excludes the palliation of symptoms.

As of today, Rolfing is accepted as being one of the most basic, one of the most reliable means of developing whatever potential is latent in any given human, psychological as well as physical. By what route did Rolfing reach this particular eminence? We assume that human beings are, as a species, evolving toward verticality. What are the intellectual considerations which can speed us on our way toward understanding the value of this verticality?

There can be no argument that the bony structure is less subject to capricous change than soft tissue. Rolfers have heard me say over and over that the bones, per se, however, are not the basic determinents of body structure. Bones are where they are and as they are to separate and stabilize the softer tissues which, in point of fact, play the more significant role in physical organization. Nevertheless, bones are fundamental, relatively stable elements of structure. As we observe the blueprint of the bones, it becomes increasingly apparent that the softer tissues need to be in certain patterned relations to each other for the bones to perform their role most effectively as separating and relating elements.

Now, the $64,000 question which I asked many years ago, and to which I am still seeking an answer, is this: What kind of organism will develop if these body parts are appropriately related? What happens when soft tissue and related bone structure actually function in the positions in space which their architectural design suggests as most appropriate and which contributes most effectively to establishing the vertical? The vertical in man’s structure is the outcome of his proprioceptive, sensory appreciation of the gravity pull of the earth. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he feels this pull and responds to it. This is a subtle concept: the intellectual formulation arises out of the sensory awareness.

Man’s appreciation of the vertical evolves from his sense of the gravity pull of the earth.

We as a generation have begun to take this touchstone into all parts of the world of ideas, evaluating the validity of a concept in sensory terms, in the light of information from our senses as well as from our intellects.

Up to this point in time, humans have always developed and still live within the gravity pull of the earth. They must make their peace with this energy field, whatever it really is. To the extent that they fail to make peace and mistakenly carry on a war, gravity wins every time. The energy of this field can enhance or dissipate the energy of the individual man. You cannot change the energy field, but you can change the man.

The question remains; to what extent could Rolfers create a small population able to live within the gravity field without an ongoing, everlasting war, without the constant expenditure of precious human energy merely to carry to life within the gravity field? If we could create such a population, what would be its characteristics? I am not interested solely in physical structure, although that is really of basic importance especially in terms of physiological well-being.  What will be the psychological characteristics, the behavior both of the individual and of a group composed of such individuals? How would these more vertical individuals compare with the random, less conscious humans who tread the surface of the earth today?

Is it perhaps too far-fetched to wonder whether one of the tap-roots of human aggression and its underlying fear may be the continuous sense of insecurity which random humans unconsciously feel with reference to their environment – the gravity field?

This emotional response is called forth very early in life, probably with the first attempt at verticality (standing). and certainly with the first walking steps. Many psychological and behavioral aberrations arise from causes less basic than this.

Be that as it may, I see no means of gaining an answer to this suggestive and really important question in the abstract. The answer will come when we can create such a population and observe it through a long-term period. At this point, we are justified only in looking with satisfaction at the reports coming in from people who have experienced some approach to the integrating vertical. The appropriate integration of the bodies of man in the gravity field is a long-term evolutionary project. Not even the first page has been turned yet. It is possible that we are seeing the first conscious attempt at evolution that any species has ever evidenced.

High Leverage Points in the Neuro-Myofascial Net

 by Robert Schleip

The following areas are usually bony landmarks where several important muscles attach and which are specially rich in mechanoreceptors. They are high leverage points to influence bigger structural patterns that reach way beyond the local area of this spot.

I have included the major lines of influence (i.e. the most direct myofascial connections) from each area.

1. Heel

• via gastrocs to back of knee and to thigh
• via soleus deep into calf
• 4 layers of fascia forward along sole.

2. Below med. & lat. malleoli

• many tendons wrap around here
• change of direction horizontal/vertical
• affects lower leg & feet.

Both places (1 & 2) are strong focal points to affect the lower leg all the way up to the knee as well as for the whole foot.

3. Medial side of knee

• Pes Anserinus:
  Three long powerful ropes pulling in three different directions:
• sartorius to ASIS
• semitend. to tubs
• gracilis to pubes.
• Interlacing of semimembranosus & med. gastroc

4. Lateral side of knee

• fibular head:
• peroneals & crural fascia affecting whole lower leg incl. the foot position
• biceps fem. to midfemur and to ischial tubs (plus via sacrotub. lig. to Fascia thoracolumbalis)
• also down to foot: lat. gastroc. & plantaris
• popliteus to affect knee position (e.g. lat. sideshift of tibia in relation to femur)
• ITB to anterior, lateral & posterior pelvis

Both sides of the knee (3 & 4) provide powerful connections upwards to all sides of the pelvis as well as downwards to the foot.

5. Greater trochanter

• affects every aspect of pelvis! (Check out the anatomy for this yourself)
• via ITB to below knee

The greater trochanter can be seen as Grand Central Station in the fascial (train) network system. Almost every long fascial sling (or Intercity train) can be caught here.

6. Coccyx-Tubs-Ramus Line

This includes the sacrotuberous ligament (which used to be the tendon of the

biceps fem.) and sacrospinous ligament.

• Glut. max. attachment (on sacrotub.lig.)
• most powerful point to influence hamstrings
• pelvic floor
• adductors.

7. Multifidus triangle

The multifidus triangle has been defined as the area extending from L4 lateral to both iliac crests and then down to the lower third of the sacrum. Except for the muscularmultifidus fibres it is mostly filled with white fascial insertion tissues. The thickest fascial place in the body!

• Roots of erector spinae, reaching all the way up to occiput
• deeper spinal musculature (spec. multifdus)
• iliosacral & iliolumbar ligamentous connections.

8. Trigonum Lumbale

Between the iliac crest, the dorsal margin of the obliquus abd. externus and the lateral margin of the latissimus there is often a small triangular window, called TrigonumLumbale. It provides relatively easy access to:

• quadratus lumborum (check for three different fibre directions)
• affecting diagonal trains via obliquus abd. internus (extending up & forward)
• entry point to abdominal bag (Fascia transversalis bag) via transversus abdominis & iliacus.

9. LDJ

The lumbodorsal junction includes here the lower end of the trapezius and of the semispinalis, so it covers T10 - L1/2.

• Superficial and deep layers of lumbodorsal fascia
• via latissimus & trapezius to shouldergirdle
• via erector spinae up to occiput
• via 12th rib to:
• quadratus lumborum
• diaphragm
• psoas (indirectly)
• transversus abdominis (& abdominal bag)
• serratus posterior inferior.

10. Dorsal hinge (mid dorsal area around D4-7)

• influences shouldergirdle & arms via rhomboids & transverse trapezius
• upper ribcage via serratus posterior superior
• neck & head via trapezius (pars decendens) , splenius (cerv) & semispinalis (capitis).
• spinal extension (via erector spinae) as well as rotation (via deep spinal rotators which are most strongly developed in this area)
• costovertebral joints (here often most effective place to influence wholeribcage mobility). Also most efficient place to affect external intercostals (which are most focused around here).

11. Xiphoid area

• diaphragm
• transversus thoracis
• rectus abdominis

12. Coracoid process

• Fascia clavipectoralis: thick fascia separating pect.min. & major, also enveloping subclavius & coracobrachialis.
• biceps brachii

13. Spina scapularis

• effect on cranium/neck as well as on scapula elevation via trapezius decendens & levator scapula
• on scapula retraction via trapezius transversus
• on arm retraction & abduction via deltoid

14. Lat.& med. epicondyle of humerus

Powerful places to affect the whole arm. Work on med. epicondyle tends to affect more the flexors, on the lateral epicondyle more the extensors of wrist & hand. It also affects the upper arm muscles via the lateral & medial septa and the attachments of triceps & brachialis on both septa.

15 Carpal tunnel area

• influences all plantar hand structures
• also all flexors in within lower arm
• radial attchements also go up to lat. epicondyle (e.g. brachioradialis)

16. Hyoid sling

• infrahyoids incl. omohyoid
• suprahyoids (floor of mouth)
• attachment of pretrachial fascia (which goes down behind clavicle to fascia clavipectoralis)

17. Nucheal lines

• Superior nucheal line: trapezius & sternocleidomastoid.
• Inferior nucheal line: suboccipitals, controlling A-O as well as C1-2 joints. These tiny muscles have richest desity of spindles on this planet. V.Janda: their function is primarily to be a sensory organ.
• in between: attachment of nucheal ligament (as extension of lumbodorsal fascia) and upper erector spinae portions (splenius, semispinalis, longissimus).

“Back In Style”

By Heidi Julavits

This past year has been, for me, a period of intense personal searching. I asked myself the hard questions. What Kind of Person Am I? How Do I Want Others to Perceive Me? And Will My Computer Fit Inside? For months, I pitilessly self-scrutinized as I scoured the earth for the perfect handbag.

And then I found it. A faux-reptile, space-age grommetted Marni tote, “a work of art” as the saleswoman said. Righto, but let’s see what it holds, I thought as I emptied the contents of my current Sad Sack (laptop, books, pens, wallet, diapers, wipes, emergency baggie of bread sticks) into the work of art. Everything fit, and the work of art, not only stunning but sturdy, seemed structurally up to the task. Then I tried to pry it over my shoulder for the crucial test drive. I struggled. I contorted. I removed my coat and my sweater. Finally I had to admit to myself: the bag’s straps were too short. Gamely, I held the bag in my hand rather than wedging it into the boney shoulder groove I’d perfected over the years. For an hour I walked around the store, bag in hand, trying to convince myself that this was indeed the perfect bag. But deep inside I knew otherwise. The Marni handbag triggered my toddler-chasing-computer-ogling forward shoulder slump, and the energy required to counteract this slump (in order to keep me upright) meant I’d be exhausted after walking half a block.

I cursed handbags—a sadistic, impractical invention—and then blamed the Marni bag in particular. It was the bag’s fault I couldn’t buy it. I blamed my kid. I blamed gravity. Then, reverting to quest mindset, I turned my scrutiny inward. Maybe the problem was me. Maybe I simply needed to correct my posture. Except, as I discovered when I tried it, “simply correcting my posture” was precisely as impossible as existing for my entire waking life in Mountain Pose. My mind was unable to counteract my spine’s naturally unnatural curvature toward the earth even when the perfect handbag was at stake. My body, in short, was imprisoned by itself. 

Worse still was this realization, assisted by the store’s full-length mirrors: my body language conveyed timidity, insecurity, even a tiny bit of self-shame. The inexorable aging process, laziness, a momentarily shopworn sense of self-worth had initiated my downward slide, but now my bones and muscles clung to this new shape like a grudge.

I decided to take extreme measures. No wimpy massages or sweetly encouraging physical therapy sessions for me. It was time to radically renegotiate my relationship with gravity and put the “ow” back in powerful. It was time to explore a reputedly hardcore yet effective bodywork technique created by a woman who, in her heyday, resembled the love child of Eleanor Roosevelt and Yoda. It was time to regain my inward (and outward) delusion of worldly dominance so I could buy that Marni bag.

It was time to get rolfed.

Rolfing should connote a ‘60s-era hell massage administered by a hairy, Big Sur sadist. It should connote the words “torture” and “primal scream” and inspire visions of your muscles being separated from your bones, among other gruesome posture-improving procedures. Even though rolfing’s brutal reputation turns out to be an old hippy wives tale, it’s unsurprising that Michael Bulger, my chosen rolfer, doesn’t call himself a rolfer. Given rolfing’s inaccurately negative rap, many recent trainees of Ida P. Rolf’s methods (developed in the ‘40s and popularized, or some might say primal scream-ized, at the infamous Esalen Institute in the ‘60s) refer to themselves as she did—as practitioners of structural integration.

Bulger’s office is located near Union Square, in an ornate old office building where, rumor has it, Man Ray once kept his studio. With his boyishly messy surfer hair, Bulger might be a rock star I should recognize. Many of Bulger’s clients work in the fashion world: editors, photographers, models, in short, the people who both initiated and embraced the mind-body paradigm shift that’s occurred over the past decade and helped to mainstream formerly fringe practices like yoga, Pilates and acupuncture.

I’ve been told to wear “nice underwear” since this will be my only attire for the next hour and a half (it’s not because of car accidents your mother warned you to wear nice underwear; it was because you might unexpectedly get rolfed). I strip and stand by the wall while Bulger, in jeans and a t-shirt, sits atop a blue exercise ball. I bust out my best mountain pose, but he’s only momentarily fooled by my fake-powerful stance. One look at my legs when I’m lying on the table yields a troubling observation: my right leg is one inch longer than my left. My pelvis is cocked. My ribcage, too, is laughably uneven, with my left ribs protruding further than my right, a problem I’ve long observed from below when in Bridge Pose.

Yoga, in fact, is a logical entry point to structural integration. Rolf, decades ahead of her time, became a yoga junkie in the ‘30s to help resolve her back problems after the birth of her child. Subsequently, Hatha Yoga strongly influenced her when she was formulating her soon-to-be eponymous structural integration techniques. Put simply, her techniques are founded on the following premise: bones, joints and muscles are interconnected by a web of tissue called fascia. Due to injury and habitual use, the fascia—“intelligent tissue,” Bulger calls it—compensates around these hurt or overused areas, and reconfigures the body in such a way that you become literally trapped in the shape of your own bad patterns. The keyboard slump. The shoulder-as-hook for the life-bearing tote bag. The torqued pelvis protecting the ski-injured knee. Since the fascia is plastic, not elastic, it can be reshaped or, as Bulger phrases it, “reeducated” to respond to gravity in a more balanced way. Or as he puts it to me once: “I’m doing yoga for you.”

This sounds good to me, a lazy, lazy yogi and chronic keyboard slumper whose shoulders feel most gravitationally at peace when jutting slightly forward of my chin. My first session begins mildly enough, and does not, in any commonly understood way, resemble a massage. Massage is to structural integration as getting your hair washed is to getting your wet, knotted hair combed straight. Bulger inserts his thumb, fingers, even his elbow into the indentations between my muscles and joints. He applies pressure and gently manipulates the rubber band-like bits of tissue under my skin. I’ve signed up for the “Basic Ten Series,” which forms the foundation of Rolf’s structural integration methodology. Manipulating the fascia—separating it from surrounding tissues, eliminating “unnecessary gossamer adhesions” between the fascia and the joints—works like cognitive therapy does on the brain. “Your body remembers that it has a choice,” says Bulger. While the effects can be long-lasting—even permanent—Bulger has a lot of regular clients who, after completing the Ten Series, continue to work with him to help solve their specific issues.

The experience of being rolfed is primarily a painless one, though it feels less soothing and sleepy-making than it does like sub-dermal hygiene. Occasionally it becomes intense. “This is going to hurt,” warns Bulger, before he separates two filaments of connective tissue that have adhered just below my armpit—but in fact it feels wonderful after a few deep breaths, like the good-hurt of the hamstrings during a forward bend.

While Bulger is open to methods that combine bodywork with psychotherapy, he believes that a past motorcycle accident is more to blame for his internally rotated knee than, say, his relationship to his father.  Still, Bulger remains highly attentive to possible mind-body connections. A woman, say, with a history of bulimia may have an intense emotional response to having her stomach and her digestive system rolfed.
Given my relatively emotionless digestive system, for me the most notable bi-product of a good rolf is this: I am mentally floating when I leave Bulger’s office, lucid, calmly receptive and cheery. I’m protected inside a clear glass bubble that prevents me from reacting to the Union Square chaos with tensed shoulders or a lowered head. I tell Bulger about my post-treatment high; endorphins, I suspect, or maybe my beginning-to-improve posture is already elevating my sense of powerfulness. Both are probably true. Bulger informs me that there’s a link between acupuncture pressure points and fascia. Basically, the acupuncture medians, those pathways for chi, are embedded between the connective tissue he’s manipulating. Which means my chi is flowing readily, and that’s contributing to my heady glow.

A second benefit is this: I’m getting great conversational mileage out of the announcement, “I’m getting rolfed.” I even meet some closet rolfees this way. “Are you talking about rolfing?” a woman asks me the other day in the park. Robin Aronson, author most recently of a book called “The Skinny: How to Fit Into Your Little Black Dress Forever,” tells me about undergoing an arthroscopic hip operation. Afterwards she had the unnerving (and painful) sensation that her femur, which had been pulled out of her hip socket for the surgery, was in the wrong place. Aronson visited a rolfer who observed that her feet were two very different colors, suggesting a circulation problem. As the rolfer worked on her, she said she felt a pump-pump-pumping sensation in her leg; soon her previously blue-ish foot had “pinked up like a baby’s.”

From a power posture perspective, however, I’m not convinced I’m experiencing any noticeable improvements. Bulger’s work is occasionally so gentle as to seem imperceptible. Yes, there are those ooooweeee moments, such as when he snaps on the surgical gloves and rolfs the inside of my mouth or works those gossamer adhesions between my organs and my intestines. But at times it feels as though his fingers are merely hovering between my muscles. Only when he shifts, again almost imperceptibly, do I realize he’s performing a stealth manipulation.

But after my third session I realize that in fact I have changed physically. One day I look down and am amazed to find my handbag is in my hand. A mistake? Clearly. But since my shoulder is no longer hook-shaped, the bag has slid down my arm and come naturally to rest in my palm. I don’t question it. I keep walking. One block. Two blocks. Three. Suddenly I can walk comfortably, and seemingly forever, carrying a handbag in my hand without having to exert myself to maintain a decently upright posture; my body assumes this balanced shape without my having to force it. I look less like my usual slumped sherpa self and more like a chicly confident Cold War spy carrying a briefcase full of money.

I’m sold. Like yoga, rolfing is one of those practices that your body instantly tells you makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, I keep catching glimpses of this unrecognizably poised woman in glass storefronts; her back, despite the fact that she’s pushing a stroller or weighted down by her office-in-a-handbag, is laughably, even arduously straight. But that power-exuding woman in the window is me, and it requires no effort at all to be her.

I don't recycle or drive a hybrid, but after interviewing global warming activist Laurie David, I can't stop thinking about the 11 billion new tons of carbon dioxide that get wrapped around the earth like an electric blanket annually. I met the woman who helped make An Inconvenient Truth, the must-see documentary of the year, on an eerily warm day in October. In less than an hour, David shared enough facts on climate change (extreme weather events are becoming more intense) and alarming anecdotes (polar bears are drowning as the ice cap melts) to persuade me to start recycling immediately. David had used her pull as a Natural Resources Defense Council trustee to meet with Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and she persuaded her husband, comedian Larry David, to drive a Prius on his show Curb Your Enthusiasm . And she has written a book, Stop Global Warming: The Solution is You! (Fulcrum Publishing), which, naturally, is printed on 100 percent post-consumer-waste paper. "Scientists say we have 10 years to stop global warming. But I think it's more like five," she says. "Everything we care about—our air, our trees, our water, our children—is at stake. And no one is paying attention." It's a moving plea, and as David wipes away a tear, I notice that even the gems in her wedding band are green.

You may be surprised to learn you can tackle a problem this big by modifying a few basic habits. As David says, "You don't have to do everything, but you have to do something." Try these tips to shrink your carbon footprint.

Switch to compact fluorescent bulbs. They consume less energy and last 10 times longer. If every family changed five bulbs, I would be like taking 8 million cars off the road.

Unplug chargers. Devices that are "on" even when off waste energy and account for 10 percent of your electric bill. Put chargers on a power strip turn it off when at work.

Buy energy-efficient appliances. A fridge with an Energy Star label uses 40 percent less power than an older model.

Purchase only recycled paper products. If every household replaced one roll of virgin toilet paper with one recycled post-consumer-waste roll, 424,000 trees would be saved.

Cancel catalogs and shop online. Asking to be taken off a mailing list takes less time than ordering something.

Stop drinking individual bottles of water. The annual amount of oil expended to produce plastic bottles sold in the United States is enough to fuel 100,000 cars for an entire year.

Make your next car a fuel-efficient one. A car that gets 40 miles per gallon emits half the carbon dioxide of one that gets 20 mpg.

What you can do in your community