Femur starts here, as Nancy Burns demonstrates to her Saturday morning free introduction to Restorative Exericse class
Nancy Burns may not think of her new exercise studio "
Body Wisdom Exercise Studio," located at 146 Washington Avenue, Suite A, Point Richmond, CA 94801, Phone: 510-232-4566 or 415-722-3000, as a Christian exercise studio. However, when she insisted on me taking my shoes off to exercise barefoot, even though I have a short left leg, I thought of the story of Ruth, in which Ruth's mother tells her to go to the Boaz after he had dinner and drinks, take his shoes off, and lie down at his feet.* (Ruth 3, 1-4) In the bible it says uncover his shoes, but for some reason taking the shoes off stuck in my mind, perhaps because my mother's name is Naomi. My son and his ex-wife had a no-shoes policy in their house that I also asked exception to, which I later regretted and decided to go along with.
My feet may be fat, but they're straight.
Nancy also believes that people should live a long time and then boom, they're dead, instead of slowly deteriorating on a slow descent downwards towards the end. I do not know what chapter and verse would describe that philosophy, but to me it sounds more like my financial situation than any health philosophy I would want. Who decides when the "boom" happens and what age they think is old enough to be boomed out of existence? I'm 68 and I think I am too young to die. That's one reason I went to Nancy's studio on Saturday morning April 2, for her free sample introductory exercise class called Restorative Exercise.
Here we start with black clothing and move up to blue. If your clothing doesn't make you feel great when you wear it, throw it away, Nancy says.
Nancy has a B.A. from St. Mary's college in Moraga and is a graduate of the Restorative Exercise Institute of Ventura, CA. Nancy's class is education as well as exercise.
The previous Wednesday evening, Nancy had told the Point Richmond Neighborhood Council about her exercise philosophy.
"Body alignment is important," she said. "Most diseases are preventable. It's movement education: not just an exercise place. Your body is designed to move most of the time. Thousands of years ago human beings spent most of their time running after animals. With the advent of the computer, we sit a lot. The medical community manages illness, not restorative health. We want to go along strong well into the 80's and 90's and then boom, you're gone."
Sue Rosenoff is getting some good advice about posture.
"We have to change the way we think about the body," she told the neighborhood group. The goal is to change your posture."
The leg hinges, it doesn't rotate. (Unless you stepped on a kickball and sprained your knee.)
Nancy credits her success to appealing to an older population—like the people who go to Neighborhood council meetings, or the ones who live in Brickyard Cove. She has had an exercise studio at Brickyard Cove since 2007 and is now expanding her clientele and teaming up with other local exercise gurus like Lauren McLeod, who has been teaching Feldenkrais exercise evenings in the Methodist Church for years, Bernard Bedeur who teaches yoga on Saturday morning, and Jonothan Pofsky who teaches yoga on Wednesdays.
She will give the free sample introductory class again at some future time to be announced, she said. We were joined by Sue Rosenoff, who is the current secretary of the Neighborhood council, Rachel and Lucie, who recently had a liver transplant. All gave permission for me to take their photo.
"How the muscles work depends on where the bones are," she said. "That's why alignments are important. Bending over at the computer a lot makes the muscles of the stomach flabby.'
Give your calf a stretch.
We were asked to stretch our calves. That was the reason we took our shoes off. I placed the ball of my right foot on the little plastic pad and then attempted to stand with my left foot straight. I could feel it immediately in my right calf. Taking advantage of the moment of silence as we tried to stand the way she wanted us to, I complained that at the college we did calf stretches with our shoes on. "Well, this is the way we do it here," she said. That's what I mean when I say you have to come prepared to cooperate with the program which you are paying for, though there were no prices on any of the information sheets we were given.
"I like Kaiser," one person said.
"I'd rather get my health care from the county," I said. "I have to have it because I am on my husband's plan." (I guess I am not sick enough anymore to be on the county plan. They treat people who are really very sick and very poor.)
"I work at Kaiser," Sue said.
"Present company excepted." I said.
Mr. Skeleton Man will always let us use him for a demonstration.
Nancy brought a portable life size skeleton, whom I shall call Mr. Skeleton man, over to our exercise group to show us where the patella (knee bone) was located that she wanted us to raise by contracting our "quads," (the big muscles in the front of our legs). It is an education class as much as it is an exercise class.
"See if you can raise the patella, the kneebone, with the quads," she said, as she swung the tibia bone, showing us how it hinged on the femur, under the patella. "Now drop it. See if it drops."
I could not tell if it did anything. I think the right one did, but the left one didn't. Who can tell anything through all that fat?
However, Nancy was able to find my femur. She showed us the femur on Mr. Skeleton Man. She gave us a flexible rope. "It's supposed to drop straight down to your ankle from the top of your femur, " she said. Mine did. Thank God that did not go wrong.
A little hair pulling, but nothing serious.
The free lesson included a little hair pulling, but I wasn't the only one whose hair got pulled a little. Nancy wanted me to let my hair down a little bit so she could see my double chins, without the rubber band pulling my face back towards my ears. She did it to Sue Rosenoff too, so I could see that I was not the only one with droopy-under-chin, which she said would get better if I followed the program.
Maybe this is not your idea of a real exercise class where you are doing step-ups on a little stair platform, or screaming with pain as you get down on your knees to do back kicks. It's more like physical therapy that a hospital clinic would give you. But it was a fun morning and I got to meet a few other people there in Body Wisdom boot camp who also seemed to be enjoying it. Thank you to Nancy Allen Burns for the free sample.
*I pay $40 to get a 3/8" lift put on my left shoe by the shoemaker, every time I buy a new pair of tennis shoes. He has to cut the sole off, put the lift on the shoe and then glue the sole back on. Insurance does not pay for that. The county paid for a small leather lift for my heel, which I could take out and put into another shoe, whatever I was wearing. But that made my foot tilt forward and I was still 3/8 inches short standing on my toes, though my heels made me straight. This lift enables me to walk comfortably.
Postscript: I went to Kaiser hospital this week with a swollen ankle and a pain in the top of my right foot this week. The doctor told me that I had sprained my ankle. I don't know how I did it, but I can't help but wonder if that calf stretch was asking too much of my old feet. No, I didn't get any medicine for it. I know from experience that it will get better over time. I just keep walking until it hurts too much to walk. Then I rest. It gets better, eventually. I get beat up a lot in Point Richmond. I never get used to it, but it's nothing new.
