sports Archives - Claire Cutler Casey

Do you wish your body would just perform better?

When just one muscle under-performs the knock on effect impairs your performance

Do you wish your body would just perform better? Whether you’re fed up with pain and discomfort or you want to improve your sports performance, this is for you.

Muscles are vital to good posture, they hold the spine and body upright and enable movement and flexibility.

When the integrity of muscle performance is compromised it can result in postural deviations which, if not addressed, can lead to discomfort and pain which can affect performance, sleep, concentration and overall quality of life.

Whilst such deviations may be imperceptible at first, as you continue to train or just go about your day, their impact increases, as other muscles try to compensate to counteract the effects of deviated posture, eventually leading to damage and, of course, pain.

When just one muscle under-performs the knock on effect impairs your performance and, eventually creates pain.

Your body is an incredible piece of kit, a superb structure of organic engineering.

Over 650 muscles work with 206 bones to

Everything you do uses muscles, from unconscious actions like breathing and blinking to the more conscious activities like cycling and cooking dinner.

Your body is focused on one crucial task, keeping you alive. Making sure that, if a hungry bear runs out of the woods, you won’t be their next meal.

When a muscle malfunctions others quickly take up the slack, pulling together to keep you going but, eventually, this creates danger and your brain sends a pain signal to alert you that something is wrong and you need to stop. Stop before you fall down and become bear lunch.

Initially working through the pain seems a viable short term way of continuing in the face of impaired muscle function. Your body pumps endorphins that bathe your brain and cut off the pain signals. This mechanism is designed to ensure that, when that bear is in hot pursuit, you can keep running. Keep running to a place of safety.

Until you stop.

Once you stop all those juicy endorphins settle down, the adrenaline tails off and the body quickly reveals the true state of affairs, with exhaustion and pain taking centre stage.

Are you ready to take your training to a new level of personal performance? Get the inside track.

In these extended sessions we:

Kinesiology addresses the factors that inhibit or impair muscular integrity.

It is not a test of strength, if it were I’m pretty certain you would win, it is an analysis of how the stress and existing damage you hold affects your ability to train and perform ongoing.

Having established the blocks that are holding you back from peak performance we resolve them using various subtle, profound techniques.

If you are curious to know more, please get in touch

I look forward to working with you.

Claire Cutler-Casey is a professional Kinesiology Practitioner and Touch For Health instructor as well as delivering a variety of business and well-being workshops designed to help you navigate the process of change.

If you would like to book a 1:1 Kinesiology session, please click here.

You can also join our online community here.

What do you need?

So often it seems that there is something in our mindset that is blocking us, an attitude or a belief but, when we actually go into it and explore the logistics of something the solution is much simpler that we first imagined.

What do you need? I’ve a card on my wall with the saying

‘It’s not the mountains ahead that wear you down, it’s the grain of sand in your shoe’

How true is that?

Like so many people I can get a bit ‘Heath Robinson’ about things, using anything and everything, except the correct tool for the job.

I had been using various boxes to rest my feet on under my desk, they were too solid, too high and, basically, all too ‘wrong’ in some way.

Eventually the stiffness I experienced after long periods sitting with my knees at this angle was too painful and I began to avoid sitting at my desk and working.

This dislike of sitting at my desk was preventing me from doing all the things I wanted to do, as the frustration about not doing things grew, I became scared that I couldn’t do things, distracting myself with other tasks that I decided were much more important, like laundry and gardening, soon apathy took a seat at the table and then discontentment joined the party, soon I was feeling pretty useless and fairly low.

I wasn’t getting any satisfaction because I wasn’t doing anything I wanted to do, I wasn’t

sending the emails that I wanted to send
writing the courses I had been excited to write
sharing the insights and information I longed to share
experiencing the usual joy of achievement and progress.

So I resolved to sort it out.

Through my work I have learned to ‘listen’ to bodies, to witness the subtle messages that are either ignored or misunderstood. I could have taken pain killers to reduce the stiffness in my knees, but I knew that wasn’t the issue.

Unfortunately I had disappeared so far down the emotional rabbit hole that my emotional state had become my perceived ‘issue’ and I had completely forgotten about the discomfort I experienced sitting at my desk.

I sat quietly with my ‘self’ and I asked ‘What do you need?’

I feel fortunate that my work empowers me to be curious this way and to allow the answers to come. My ‘self’ knows that I will witness and respect the answers revealed, even if I don’t necessarily ‘like’ them.

The solution came quietly and simply, as a thought, a memory of working in huge well resourced organisations where we were all assessed and supplied with ergonomically designed, fully adjustable foot rests under our desks.

What my body needed was the correct tool for the job.

Today my (maybe I’d better say our) new foot rest arrived and I am stunned at the difference it has made to my sitting position and my demeanour.

IMAG3302

I am now excited to sit at my desk and get on with all the computer based things I had been avoiding and really wanted to do.

Clearly my body knows what it needs, and pTerry fully approves of the new piece of office kit too, which is always a bonus.

Next time you find yourself down an emotional rabbit hole, take a moment to stop and ask yourself, ‘what do I need?’ The answer may surprise you, if you let it.

If you would like to book a 1:1 Kinesiology session, please click here.

You can also join our online community here.

Hydration, why it’s never too late to re-hydrate

Hydration, why it’s never too late to re-hydrate. Your body is approximately 70% water, we are the most amazing pieces of organic engineering, creating power, strength, resilience and sustainability out of water.

Your brain and heart are approximately 73% water and your lungs are about 83% water.

If your car or your mobile phone ran on water you’d make sure they were fully recharged every day, to ensure you have all the power and functionality you need, yet we still find it difficult to drink enough water to stay hydrated and function well.

it's never too late to rehydrate

Water is fundamental to our survival, not liquid, just water.

As soon as you add anything to water it becomes a food, then it must pass thorough the whole of your digestive system before the water can be extracted.

Think of it like legos. A cup of coffee is constructed from some water bricks, some coffee bricks, some milk bricks and some sugar bricks all bonded together. The blocks can be broken apart again but that department is in your small intestine. So all the tissues that make up the oesophagus, stomach and duodenum don’t get any direct hydration from the liquid you drink, they have to wait a few hours and hope they get some from the water that is absorbed through the lining of the small intestine, and into the blood stream. They have to join the queue only, now, they are at the other end.

Your hydration is important to us, you are held in a queue and may be answered ... eventually

Meanwhile your body is performing at much less than optimum, because everything that your body does uses water. There is not one single bodily function that does not rely on hydration.

Think about that for a moment. Every thought, action and breath. Literally every thing your body does relies on water.

Signs of dehydration include

Fatigue, weight gain, reduced mobility, aches and pains, headaches, inability to concentrate, fuzzy head (like a hangover), irritability, dry skin, chapped lips, wrinkles, flaky skin, halitosis, poor urination, urinary tract infections, constipation, acid reflux, indigestion, changes in blood pressure, nausea, dizziness, increased resting heart rate, poor memory, slower response times, reduced dexterity, depression, anxiety, tension, mood swings, confusion…… and the list goes on.

Understanding the bodies need for water and the impact that can have on our system it’s time to get real.

How much clear, pure water do you drink, every day, and how much do you need?

Using a baseline of average adult (I know you’re not average, I know you’re amazing) but let’s use average as a starting point.
The average adult needs about 4 pints of water a day.
This adult is having a fairly decent time of things, no stress, no caffeine, no bugs to fight off, sleeping and eating well and taking moderate exercise.

So if you have stress, stimulants, illness or take more exercise you will need more water to keep you hydrated. How much is difficult to say but there are rules of thumb that we can use to help

For every cup of coffee drink twice as much water again – for 250 ml coffee drink 500 ml extra water
In times of stress drink more water, stress is very dehydrating. Drinking more water reduces the anxieties around stress and also helps the body recover more quickly from the effects.
Working out – drink more water. Yes, you’re sweating but did you know that water is responsible for the elasticity in muscles? If you’re really interested in building resilience into your workout – drink more water.
Feeling ill, recovering from a bug or laid up with something – drink more water. If the bug creates mucus, your body is using water to make that. If your body is fighting something off, your immune system uses water to make and distribute the anti-bodies to the internal battlefield, and to clear away the debris to keep your system clear.

As you run through the calculations you may begin to wonder how you’re going to have time to drink all that water, here’s the pay-off.

The better hydrated you are the better your system functions.

Stress reduces so extra water intake can too, drinking more water means you are naturally drinking less coffee because there are only so many hours in a day, right?
This reduces stress (again) so you will need less water.
Your sleep improves so, yes, you guessed it, you’re less stressed and so you need less water.
Your immune system functions better so you get less bugs so you need less water to be well hydrated.
You lose weight so your body requires less water to move you about.

In a fairly short period of time you reach that sweet spot of balanced hydration, where 4 pints of water a day is enough to keep you hydrated and you are more responsive to your bodies need for extra water as/when required.

It’d never too late to rehydrate and experience the benefits that decent hydration has on your physical, emotional and biochemical systems.

So, what are your waiting for?

Hydrate, sleep well, live better

If you would like to book a 1:1 Kinesiology session, please click here.

You can also join our online community here.

Kinesiology: What, Where, When & How

The purpose of my kinesiology practice is to help you get into the natural flow of life, known as the Wu Wei in traditional Chinese medicine, meaning ‘without effort’.

In the west we talk about being ‘in the zone’ or ‘in the flow’ and you may already have some experience of that; that feeling of everything going smoothly, seemingly without effort, this is what we work towards with kinesiology; creating sustainable internal harmony that enables you to be the best version of yourself, achieving whatever you wish with ease, grace, calm and contentment and supporting you to handle the ups and downs of life, effortlessly.

I work 1-2-1 with clients, in my cosy clinic on the rural outskirts of York, in the North East of England.

I also offer Touch for Health Kinesiology Training, CPD workshops and monthly circle gathering designed to help you get the most out of yourself and the seasonal energies that are most active at the time.

Kinesiology is an interactive, non-invasive therapy, as a client you remain clothed throughout (you may choose to remove your shoes). We sit together and undertake a short, thorough consultation, to ensure all relevant information is captured, we then discuss the changes, both subtle and profound, that you are interested to address in your personal journey.

I then take you gently through the process of muscle testing, allowing you all the time you need to adjust to a space where, finally, the whole of your system can get involved in creating and accessing your own unique solution.

Together we’ll explore the binary muscle monitoring system. This is the foundation of all kinesiology practice and you can ask all the questions you need as we go along.

Then, together, we check which aspects of you are already working towards the changes you wish to make and which aspects need some help to do that.

Kinesiology embraces a comprehensive range of techniques drawn and adapted from various disciplines, as well as plenty of its own. Your system will indicate which technique(s) are needed. You may also be given simple techniques as homework. Homework reminder sheets are provided to help you.

After your session we check in to see how you’re feeling, you may feel some changes immediately and some may need time to evidence.

After your session you can carry on with your day and, when it comes time to go to bed, you may feel more tired than usual. My advice is always to listen to the needs of your body; it is possible that your system has done some significant work that you might not be fully conscious of, so sleep, restore and allow the changes you have worked on to permeate.

Please contact me to book you own window into your unique world,

I look forward to working with you.

Claire

If you would like to book a 1:1 Kinesiology session, please click here.

You can also join our online community here.