Fraser Ruthie - Stack your bones: 100 Simple Lessons for Realigning Your Body and Moving With Ease

To Myles Orion and Uncle Bobby

by Cyndi Lee

When I close my eyes and travel back in time to the days when Ruthie Fraser regularly attended classes at OM Yoga Center, my yoga studio in downtown Manhattan, I see a young woman with her own blend of composure, uprightness, and presence. Ruthie didnt come to class to get more stretchy, or buff, or to sweat out the stress of her work day. She came to study and practice.

In this wonderful new book, Stack Your Bones, Ruthie now transmits to us the joy and wisdom inherent in the various practices and modalities of which she is an expert. And many they are: She is a yogini trained in the methods of Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kripalu and OM yoga; dancer; certified yoga teacher; and Structural Integration practitioner.

Ruthies experience of working and living into each of these pathsas a mover and a teacher, as a spiritual seeker, and as a movement guidehas led her to discover the most essential work for those of us who are not professional dancers or full time yogis, but simply have a body and need to move it.

These 100 seeds, as Ruthie calls her lessons, integrate beneficial commonalities of various techniques and blend them with the same qualities I remember her bringing to her own work: clarity, intelligence, and confidence.

Clarity: In , Ruthies message is clear and simple: Eliminate extraneous complexity.

Intelligence: Ruthie points us to the innate wisdom of our own body and encourages us to bravely open to that which is good and right about us already. No need to push, pull, or improve, only to wake up and apply lessons on : learning to understand our needstoday.

Confidence: In , Ruthie gives a beautiful teaching that no matter how we are feeling at any given time, we can relax with things as they are: You do not need to acquire anythingits all there, underneath.

Drawing on the yogic practice of energetic duality, Ruthie also offers a series of paired teachings. My favorite pair is Be Pieces and Be Whole. What a gift to be reminded that sometimes we are in pieces, and thats part of our truth. And sometimes we naturally feel whole. Why not pay attention to that, too? Ruthie writes: Contemplate your body as a vibrating, living whole.

I like these lessons. You can apply them to your own movement practice or you can work with them as you are waiting in line at the grocery store. Stack Your Bones not only helps us find our way back into our bodyno matter when or where we arebut also shepherds us through the process in a way that allows us to feel comfortable in our own skin. This is a message that we all need to hear and receive. Ruthie understands that the only path to making friends with our body is to go through the body. She also knows that there is not just one way. In fact, in this book, she gives us 100.

CYNDI LEE is the first female Western yoga teacher to fully integrate yoga asana and Tibetan Buddhism in her practice and teaching. The founder of NYCs OM Yoga Center (19982012), she teaches worldwide and at her home studio, Yoga Goodness Studio, in Virginia. She is author of the yoga classic Yoga Body Buddha Mind and May I Be Happy, a memoir about body image and meditation, and also writes for Yoga Journal, Real Simple, Lions Roar, and Yoga International. Cyndi is a longtime student of Gelek Rimpoche and a graduate of Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy program under the auspices of Roshi Joan Halifax.

Your body is intelligent. It knows how to beat your heart, breathe, digest food, regenerate cells, fight sickness, and perform innumerable other biological miracles. And it knows how to move, too. Your body is designed for comfortable movement. Its equipped and wired for natural, easeful alignment and coordination. However, as you move through life, your bodys posture and movement functionality will sometimes veer off course. Stack Your Bones provides fun and simple ways for you to constructively influence your bodys path.

Your bodys shape and movement patterns continually change in response to the content of your life. These adaptations are not necessarily problematic; they are the natural ways your body compensates and evolves in the face of stress and challenging circumstances. Think of a tree that must reckon with a boulder that blocks its natural growth path: The tree will curve and wind itself around the boulder in order to survive in that context, demonstrating the instinctive resilience and creativity of living bodies.

But sometimes adaptations intensify or escalate, leading to excess strain, muscle dysfunction, and discomfort. Your body might spiral more out of alignment than your joints can tolerate. Or, an adaptation might persist beyond its original causefor example, you might start limping because of an injury and then continue to limp even after your injury heals. Similarly, your body might tense up from emotional stress and hold on to this tension long after the upsetting situation has passed. Additionally, adaptations in your body may cause you to unintentionally perpetuate disadvantageous form or movement patterns during exercise.

I see adaptations in alignment and movement every day. I practice a system of bodywork called Structural Integration (SI), which aims to help a person regain flexibility, stability, efficiency, and resilience in their body. SI uses specialized manipulation of body tissues to evoke harmony in your body structure and freedom in movement, and capitalizes on your bodys natural capacity to adapt positively.

While working with clients to help them overcome troubling patterns and thrive in their bodies, I created essential lessons rooted in Structural Integration principles. I gradually identified and developed the lessons that most stimulated experiential learning and contributed to comprehensive body wellness. Over the course of days, weeks, months, and years in my Structural Integration studio, a methodology formed. I am thrilled to share the foundations of the Stack Your Bones methodology with you in this book.

The 100 lessons of Stack Your Bones are not just exercises or stretches; they teach foundational principles that will help you understand your body and establish healthy patterns. Think of them as 100 seeds that you can plant in your body and your consciousness. Each lesson is brief but can have a big impact. These lessons will help you:

cultivate and maintain comfortable, healthy body alignment and posture

improve your muscle coordination and overall movement patterns

gain a foundational understanding of body structure

improve your body awareness and proprioception

study and understand your bodys imbalances and constitutional tendencies

heal and transform muscular and postural patterns in your body that cause discomfort

engage in a movement practice that is nourishing and speaks to your unique needs

develop constructive playfulness and improvisation skills in movement

evolve and elevate your definition of fitness

apply useful teachings to your favorite physical activities

feel fulfilled and enriched by the process of exploring and improving your body

I encourage you to search for personal meaning in each lesson. Ask yourself, What might this lesson mean for me and my body? How do I relate to this teaching? Its a playful and challenging journey to embark on. Make friends with your body! Acknowledge and appreciate all that your body has been through, as well as its intrinsic beauty. So, ignite your curiosity, commit to full participation, and have a good time! Who knows what will sprout from the soil?