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How Spinal Flow Posture-5 (P5) works

It’s best to watch all the videos once through before following along. The axis hand position helps you feel with your hands what neutral is, but when starting I STRONGLY RECOMMEND using a stick, as shown, to verify your positions. The stick is a gold standard, such that if your body can’t assume a neutral spine with 3-point contact against the stick, the problem is not the stick. If you are having trouble, do the best you can and work towards improving posture over time, but don’t do anything that hurts. Once you ingrain the habit of locking the spine in neutral and moving about your other joints, you can lessen, then eliminate use of the stick. Eventually hand positions won’t matter either, and you’ll should be able to feel intrinsically when your spine is in neutral or not. You are really trying to establish a mind/neutral spine link so that when you are living your life and you feel neck and back pain come on, you’ll know what did it, and in time to correct your posture before doing actual damage.

Perfection of technique is more important than speed or number of repetitions for P5. As you learn and internalize the program you should be able to run through each of the exercises in less than 5 minutes with a pace roughly equal to my demonstrations. However, the final position of savasana (laying flat on back) is a good time, place, and position to meditate if you wish. Once mastered, you can quit P5 completely and concentrate fully on Muscle-5 (M5) for strength and fitness, still being conscious of keeping the spine as close to neutral as possible. P5 is more like riding a bike, where once you learn it well, you more or less have it while M5 is use it or lose it. I still think it’s good to meditate regardless.

As with any yoga sequence it’s your practice, use your instincts, push but push appropriately. Any exercise though perhaps good for most people in general might not be good for you, right now. If you get hurt, you did it. Know the USER RULES and use your judgement, which in time, should improve along with your strength, endurance, postural awareness, and willpower.