Dumb Little Man | Tips for Life

Many people think that a large expensive vacation is the best way to comforting relaxation. Does this sound like someone you know:

• Complains about the daily stress of life and work
  
• Plans a vacation
  
• Takes their Blackberry on vacation to address work issues
  
• Comes back from vacation super stressed because there is a mountain of work waiting
  
• Loses 99% of the vacation's intended benefit

Listen, there is nothing wrong with vacations. However, in order to enjoy them you have to learn how to turn off work and frankly, this may take some practice. Make it a point to learn how to relax. I do it with nature. There's nothing better to banish the stresses and strains of everyday life than getting back to nature. Kids love it, couples enjoy it and even on your own, it is good for the soul.

This weekend, put your Blackberry down and try one of these five ideas. If you have a different relaxing idea, do that instead. The point is to do something that relaxes your brain for a while!

1. Go barefoot
   The simple pleasure of feeling velvety green grass under your feet will take you right back to your childhood and give your feet a well deserved break. It’s also proven to be much better for the health of your feet, which are marvels of engineering only hampered by the shoes we wear. If you’re a runner, try a barefoot run and notice how your stride feels so much more natural and easy.


2. Plant some fruit or vegetables
   Growing your own food is great fun and brings you closer to nature and the rhythm of the seasons every day. If you don’t have a garden, you can still grow vegetables in containers on a balcony so long as it gets plenty of sun. This time of year it is still worth planting up some strawberry runners, giving you lovely juicy strawberries later in the summer. You could also plant up your favorite herbs and have a fresh supply for cooking all season. I have parsley, coriander and basil in my pot at the moment - all they need is water and sunshine.


3. Go fishing
   A fine excuse to relax in the sun by the water, while actually having a legitimate purpose there. Whether it’s by a lake or by the sea, fishing can be an absorbing activity as you have to think like a hunter in order to catch your fish. There’s no need to spend money on expensive equipment if you are not a regular fisherman. A basic kit is fairly cheap or you could even have a go at making your own.


4. Make a fire and cook outdoors
   Get a bit wilder than a simple barbecue and actually build a fire. Toast a few marshmallows, bake potatoes or just sit around the fire with family and friends as the evening draws in. Choose a site that is sheltered from the wind and clear it so that there’s nothing around that could catch fire accidentally. Ignite your tinder and gradually add small pieces of kindling (dry twigs and sticks) to the fire. Once the fire is established you can add larger pieces of dry wood and enjoy your campfire.


5. Forage for wild food
   Many of the plants growing in the wild are edible and we’ve simply lost the habit of eating them. Get yourself a pocket-sized guide to wild food and get foraging. It makes a walk in the foods much more exciting. If you can get to the coast, you can forage for shellfish such as mussels, clams and limpets as well. Be careful though with wild fungi as some are poisonous. The general rule for all wild foraging is only to eat it if you have confidently identified what it is. If you don’t feel like eating your findings, simply take a field guide and identify the different plants and flowers.

How do you get closer to nature? What would you recommend? Did you read this entire article without looking at your Blackberry?

Written on 6/20/2009 by Sally. Sally writes at Dropout Diaries on how to leave the rat race behind and live a simpler, freer life. She doesn’t claim to have all the answers and she’d love to get your perspective on the ‘drop out’ life.

Photo Credit: neon.love

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Backyard grills could be called heart attack grills and we all know it.

Greasy beef, fat-laden cheese, mayo, white bread, and the complimentary beer(s) are prime ingredients for fat build-up in your arteries, heart and brain. Practice some moderation and you'll be just fine. However, if you are hooked on BBQ in a major way, give this a shot.

Here's a burger recipe as good as any slider you ever glommed down and it's healthier than usual backyard grill fare.

Deluxe Bird Burgers to Die for (topped with sweet and sour coleslaw)

The burgers:

• 1-2 lbs lean ground chicken or turkey
  
• 2 tbs tomato sauce OR 3 Tbs ketchup
  
• A splash of Tabasco or your favorite hot sauce, red or green, to your taste garlic, chopped - you decide how much
  
• 1 small white onion, chopped
  
• 1 small red onion, sliced
  
• A little olive oil
  
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire Sauce or steak sauce
  
• 1 Tb grilling seasoning mix (from the spice aisle) Low fat cheese, optional
  
• 6 Whole grain hearty hamburger rolls

Fire up the grill. Gently saute the chopped white onion in a bit of olive oil and just as they begin to turn clear, add the garlic for a few seconds to soften it but not brown it at all. Remove from heat. In a big bowl, mix the bird, tomato sauce or ketchup, hot sauce, the sauteed onions and garlic and the Worcestershire and seasoning. Add a good amount of black pepper and a pinch of salt, if you must. Your clean hands are the best tools.

Form the mixture into six patties, but don't smack them around or flatten them too much. Get your spouse or best friend to pilot the outdoor cooking - put the burgers on the grill, but keep the heat on the medium side - flare ups will dry these babies out too much so go gently. Cook until the juices are clear and the centers are done. Do not char. Add a slice of red onion and one of cheese to each burger just before you take them off the fire. Let the cheese melt.

Meanwhile:

The coleslaw (make it the night before, if you can):

• 1 bag already shredded red and white cabbage
  
• 1/2 small onion, grated
  
• 1/2 c. raw carrot, grated
  
• 1 Tbs honey or 3/4 tablespoon sugar
  
• 1/4 cup sweet or sweet/dill pickle relish
  
• Juice of one lime
  
• 1 tsp lime zest
  
• Salt and pepper
  

Put everything together, toss thoroughly and let it set while your burgers cook. You can refrigerate it over night for the best texture and flavor, but bring it to room temp before using. Now, put the burgers on buns, plate them and top each with a big spoonful of the coleslaw. You won't need any other condiments. Serve with watermelon wedges and a few whole grain chips.

OK, now you have a hearty and satisfying meal. My very picky husband, who refuses to eat health food, loves these bird burgers. Give them a try this summer.

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While your best defense is to ensure you're always driving below the speed limit, most of us don't.

Nevertheless, if you've received a speeding ticket, you should consider fighting it instead of simply prepaying and skipping the court date. A speeding ticket may fine you $50 (or over $300 in some areas), but the cost to you expands greatly if your car insurance rates jump.

Like anything else, you have to be proven guilty and the government (i.e. the police) have to prove that you actually violated the law. So, why not make the government do its job?

If you're going to fight a ticket, don't believe everything you read. I've listed some common myths that I hope to clear up:

• The officer won't show up
  Many people think police officers rarely come to court. Thus, they think that you just have to show up in court to beat your ticket.
  
  Wrong. Part of a police officer's job is to testify in court about the citations they write. If they regularly didn't come to court, they would be in trouble. Everyone would just be able to skate on their traffic tickets.
  
  Out of all the traffic cases I've seen, only a few were dismissed because the officer didn't show up. It's a rare occurrence. The officer needs to be present at your trial to testify about what you did wrong, but you can't bank on him not showing up. You need a better plan.


• You can go with the flow of traffic
  Traffic court judges have heard lots of excuses. But one that will never get you anywhere is "I was just going with the flow of traffic."
  
  As a driver, you're obligated to follow the speed limit. If you are clocked speeding by a police officer, you can present defenses in court. But it's not a defense to say that you were going at the same pace as other cars on the road.
  
  Think about it: If someone is on trial for murder, they wouldn't argue "I only killed the person because other people were doing it." Adults are responsible for their own actions, and doing what the crowd is doing doesn't constitute a legal defense.


• You can easily argue radar technicalities
  If you were clocked by a radar gun, you'll probably read about the possible sources of interference and errors associated with these devices. But you can't just go into court and allege that the officer's radar gun didn't work.
  
  There are certain defenses you can raise regarding the government's speed measuring device. But you have to present evidence that proves your defense. As a layperson, you can't just go into court, talk about radar technology, and allege that the officer's radar gun was inaccurate due to interference or frequency problems. I've seen defendants do this, and the judge almost laughs them out of the courtroom.
  
  What you can do is to ask the officer for his calibration records. In most jurisdictions, the police have to periodically have their equipment checked for accuracy. If they fail to do this, it could get your ticket dismissed.

The moral of this story is not to believe all of the common wisdom about tickets. They can be beatable, but only if you know what you're doing and have the time to do the research.

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In a few months I'm starting what I hope to be a yearlong adventure around the world. Because of this, I'm going to have far less time online than I currently have available. Therefore, I really need to streamline my operations in regards to internet activity.

Quite simply, before I leave, I have to make all my operations as simple as possible. I need to de-clutter all online areas of my life so that when I do have the time to use them, I will be as efficient as possible.

I started this de-cluttering recently, and began with my email accounts. I actually have 5 accounts because of the different projects I've been involved in over the years. Having multiple accounts has actually been really useful for me but the downside now is that they each contain thousands of messages.

My reason for clearing this accounts before I leave was firstly to make sure I hadn't missed any important emails and wouldn't have to catch up to them later. Secondly, I receive a lot of irrelevant messages, and I need to be able to process these much faster.

I decided to clear my massive inboxes recently and set aside a whole day to do it. After-all, I did have 10,000 emails to process. Yet, within 2 hours, I had managed to process all of them. Today I want to share how, and hopefully share some tips you can use if you are in a similar situation.

Set Strict Guidelines
First of all, you must make it clear what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. I don't think it is a good idea to be lenient here. Instead, you should have strict guidelines for what deserves to sit in your inbox and what doesn't. Some people prefer to archive their messages, but I opted for deleting most of them as I have no need for the majority. Just because you have ample storage doesn't mean you should fill it with clutter.

Do you really need logs of your Facebook messages? Are reports from your previous job ever going to be needed? Will you ever think "wow, I'm glad I kept this email?" Set guidelines for what you need and what you don't and then stick to them when you're 'tidying up.'

Unsubscribe from Email Lists
I have spent the last three years working online and subsequently I'm on the 'list' of many a marketer. After I've received the freebie for joining though, I rarely care about what they have to say. Whether you work online or not, there's a good chance you've signed up to some email lists you no longer care about, but still receive updates from them.

The benefit to unsubscribing from these lists is not only that can you delete what you've already received, but it will stop new messages coming in thus removing the need to process them in the future. Instead of hitting the delete button on email lists you no longer care about, take a second to unsubscribe (there should be a link at the bottom of the email). In the long run, this will be worth it.

Turn Off Website Notifications
If you're a member of Facebook, Twitter, online groups or even discussion boards, you'll know how much clutter they can create in your inbox. In fact, in one account, I had over 3,000 emails from Facebook and Twitter combined.

I recommend taking the time to log into the sites you use and change your email notification settings. I no longer receive notifications for Facebook or other social media platforms and actually feel this helps my productivity as checking my email doesn't tempt me to check the site. Do this on all online communities where you're active and you'll soon see the benefits.

Select All Conversations
If you use a Gmail account and you want to tidy things up, you're in luck. As I've just stated, for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, I literally had thousands of messages to process. I performed a search for 'Facebook' in Gmail and started hitting "Select All" and then "Delete" for every page that appeared.

The way Gmail is set-up however, you can only delete 20 emails at a time. As you can tell, it would take me forever to delete thousands of messages from the same source with this process. Thankfully, I noticed a "Select All Conversations for This Query" option and proceeded to use that. What would have taken me over an hour was now completed in seconds.

If your current email provider offers this then take advantage of it. Perform a search that you know will only show messages you want to remove, then select the option to delete all of those results instantly. That will greatly minimise the size of your inbox in seconds.

Search for 'Password' and 'Registration'
While it's probably not the best idea to save your online passwords and site registration details in your inbox, most of us do. And, when you're trying to clear out an inbox which has thousands of emails in it, it is all too easily to accidentally remove important items.

Therefore, what I did first was perform search queries which I knew would probably show emails I didn't want to lose. Once you've found them using queries lke "registered," "password," "registration," "notification," and so on, you can archive them straight away. This is just a nifty little idea to prevent you deleting important emails by mistake.

If you have your own tips for clearing out an inbox that is literally flooded with emails, I would love to hear them in the comments!

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Unless you’re just counting down the days till you can quit, chances are, you want to do well in your job. Perhaps you’re making an effort to manage your time well in the office, to network with colleagues, and to bring energy and enthusiasm to your projects. If you’re self-employed, you might be working long hours, pushing yourself to get the boring tasks done and figuring out where your next motivation will come from.

You’re doing all the right things during the workday. But, are there actions you could be taking outside work in order to boost your performance? No, I’m not talking about checking your Blackberry every few minutes and responding to emails within seconds, I am talking about taking some time to improve you.

Here are five things you might like to consider. Admittedly, you will have to find some time in your schedule to work on these, but many times, the payoff for accomplishing just a few of these is greater than the payoff you'll receive for having a tidy desk or being an email guru.

1. Take a Public Speaking Course
   It’s not exactly a secret that most people hate public speaking. Whether it’s delivering a presentation to a roomful of clients, or simply speaking up in a meeting, being confident and competent at public speaking really will get you noticed at work.
   
   People often think that public speaking is either something you’ve “got” or you haven’t – but it’s just a skill, like any other. You can be taught public speaking skills and you’ll also find it becomes much easier as you practice.
   
   Look for an evening class or course in your area that relates to public speaking, or find a local Toastmasters group (these can take you from absolute beginner to expert paid public speaker).
   


2. Attend Meetings of a Professional Organization
   Whatever your field, there’s a good chance that there’s some sort of organization related to it that meets regularly. Look for opportunities in your area. In many cases, you will need to pay a membership or attendance fee.
   
   The advantages to getting together with other professionals include increased knowledge and building up contacts. If you’re self-employed, this can be particularly valuable, as you may feel that you miss out on the “buzz” that comes from being around like-minded colleagues.
   
   It’s worth asking your line manager whether you can claim back any meeting costs on expenses.
   


3. Spend Time Improving Your Skills
   Most of us find that there are one or two areas of our job where we don’t feel very confident. Perhaps you’ve never really got to grips with a particular software package. Maybe you’re perfectly happy writing emails and reports, but the thought of writing a press release is enough to make you want to hide under your desk.
   
   Whatever your particular weak area, it’s worth considering how you might be able to spend some time improving it outside the office. The typical workday, whether as an employee or a freelancer, doesn’t allow much room for reading, training or learning.
   
   There are books available on any topic you can imagine (and you can often get DVDs on subjects which are best shown visually). Check out what’s around, find something that comes with good recommendations or reviews, and give it a go.
   


4. Get Enough Sleep – and Watch the Caffeine
   How often have you struggled through the day at work, feeling like a zombie, because you’ve not had enough sleep? If you’re working a typical 8-4 or 9-5 job, you can’t stay up till 2am partying or playing computer games like you did in college and not suffer for it.
   
   Getting into a good sleep schedule can make a big difference to your motivation and productivity levels at work. Turning up tired and cranky isn’t doing you or your colleagues any favors. Try forsaking your weekend lie-in, and get up at a similar time as you normally do for work. This ensures that you’re not struggling to reset your body clock on Monday.
   
   Don’t use coffee as a replacement for sleep, either! You might get a brief jolt, but it’s likely to be followed by a deep slump in productivity. Try cutting down on the amount of coffee you drink, and see if you feel a more sustained energy at work.
   


5. Take a Look at Your Appearance
   Have a look in the mirror. If you were a client or manager, would you be impressed with what you see? What messages does your appearance send?
   
   Think about your clothes – depending on your industry, it might be appropriate to wear a smart suit, or you might find that a suit says “stuffy” and “too formal” for your particular field. Aim for a “smart” look rather than “sexy”: no-one wants to have colleagues who seem to have dressed for a night out on the town. (This goes for both men and women.) If you’re self-employed, you may need to dress up a bit when meeting clients.
   
   If you’re seriously overweight, you might want to take action too. I’d urge this purely for your health’s sake, but there’s also the unfortunate fact that overweight individuals are often discriminated against in the work place:
   
   

   Workers who are heavier are paid an average of $1.25 less per hour, and overweight women make about 24 percent less than their thinner counterparts. - (Fat chance: Obesity in the workplace, Colorado Springs Business Journal)

   
   Other aspects of your appearance to consider are personal hygiene: this is one where asking a close and honest friend might help!

What kind of things have you done outside your 9-5 job that has impacted how you perform on the job? Have you used those experiences to your advantage? Are they on your resume?

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Wikipedia is an ocean of information. While you may still want to seek secondary information sources before trusting it entirely, you cannot argue that the site contains a plethora of useful information.

That said, it's tough to navigate through so much data. You can get much more out of it in less time if you decide to ditch the conventional way of using the built-in Wikipedia search for scouring through the information. The following ten tools will help you search and use Wikipedia like never before. I am sure you'll love using some of them.

Navify
Navify is an excellent web service which shows a lot of additional information related to a Wikipedia article like related images, videos and articles.

So if you are searching for Barack Obama, you can see the Wikipedia article on him, his photos, and the Youtube videos of his speeches, all on one page. Hence it can be used as a good research tool.

Powerset
Powerset is a Wikipedia search engine which certainly produces much better results than Wikipedia's in-built search. It finds keywords related to your search term and also displays various articles and categories which could be relevant to your query.

AgainButSlower
AgainButSlower is an innovative tool which modifies Wikipedia articles to make them simpler and easier to understand. So if you are looking to gain some knowledge about "Quantum Mechanics " and the Wikipedia article looks intimidating with all the heavy scientific terms, then AgainButSlower can help you. In fact just try that term. You'll find it to be really cool.

VisWiki
VisWiki (formerly Visual Wikipedia) is one of my personal favorites. It is an incredible tool which can take your online research to new levels. Not only it pulls up extensive information about your query but also produces interactive maps showing connection between articles and terms which is really awesome.

Lexisum
Need a quick and uncluttered print out of a Wikipedia article ? Lexisum will help you do that. It displays print-friendly Wikipedia summaries which can be easily formatted and adjusted according to your printer settings.

PedioPhon
Another innovative and useful site. PedioPhon converts Wikipedia articles to mp3 recordings. So next time you feel like listening to something from Wikipedia while jogging then you know what to do.

Snapask
Snapask delivers Wikipedia articles to your cellphone via email. Just send an email to ask@snapask.com with the corresponding command in the subject line and you'll receive the information in 30 seconds.

Similpedia
Similpedia provides a new way to search Wikipedia. Instead of typing search terms, it asks you enter a url or a paragraph of text of at least 100 words and then it displays relevant Wikipedia articles related to that text.

Wikirank
Would you like to know which are the most read articles on Wikipedia and the trending articles in last 30 days ? Wikirank will show you. As I write this, the Beatles seem to dominate the scene. :)

DeletionPedia
And finally, if the current article database in Wikipedia can't satiate your hunger for information then you can browse through DeletionPedia, an archive for deleted Wikipedia articles. You might come across some interesting articles there.

Hope you like the tools. If you know of some other such cool Wikipedia tools then lets hear about them in the comments.

Cheers,

Abhijeet

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We are all afraid of making mistakes. Humiliation, embarrassment, censure and lots of other nasty things can come from simple or significant mistakes.

We would all love to be perfect and do it all right. However, life simply doesn’t work that way (if it does for you, please share your secret!). One person’s right can be another person’s wrong and the absolute pursuit of perfection can stress the body and mind to its limits.

So, should we all run out and purposefully screw something up? No, although, it might sound like fun once in a while. What we can try to do is not be fearful of making mistakes. We can take calculated risks and suppress our natural ability to be afraid to make mistakes.

Take Calculated Risks and Don’t Be Afraid
Mistakes are not only the result of an impulse or simply not thinking about something, they are also often the byproduct of some serious analytic thinking about the right course of action.

What’s the difference? An impulse might spur you to grabbing that hot cup of coffee in the morning without recognizing it could be producing the heat of a small sun. Serious analytical thinking, however, might be your decision to invest in a new venture where you spent days or weeks going over the investment strategy. Both of these resulted in a “mistake” – the coffee and the investment burned you, in different ways.

While restraining your impulses to prevent mistakes is a great idea, restraining your analytical thinking and decision making processes because you are afraid to get it wrong is simply preventing you from ever having a chance.

Give yourself chance, possibility and simply tempt the gods by thinking (as little or as much as it takes) about a potential course of action and doing it without overdoing the fear of getting it wrong. Fear can prevent you from ever moving forward and it can stick you in something called “analysis paralysis”. Analysis paralysis keeps you thinking about the consequences of a course of action and makes you simply lose sight of the end result.

Have you ever met someone and simply couldn’t understand why they had become so successful? Oftentimes, their success is based upon taking risks; hopefully calculated ones. More so, they likely learned from their mistakes. If anything, mistakes will teach you something.

Mistakes are a Learning Opportunity
Learning is good for you. Adding to your knowledgebase (or more simply what’s in your brain that you can use) is a great way to keep your brain working for the long haul. Making mistakes is simply one more way that you can learn and it’s often “experience learning”.

Experience learning is about doing something that then gets branded into your mind. Experience learning doesn’t only take the form of picking up a new skill, it can also produce the “how not to do it” effect.

For example, ever burn a batch of cookies or slide across ice during the dead of winter in your new sneakers? What did or could those experiences teach you? They might have taught you that the temperature gauge on your oven is off, that you should have read the recipe, or that sneakers don’t provide much traction on ice. There are many things you could or did learn from one of these experiences.

When you think about the good, bad and ugly of your mistake – the good is always your take-away - what you learned from the screw up.

Mistakes happen both personally and professionally. You might cc your co-worker on an e-mail they didn’t need to see or you might buy your fiancé a Taschen Art book a modern Swedish design for Valentine ’s Day (I did that). You either did or will learn and grow personally and professional from these mistakes.

Live your life, make a mistake or mistakes, don’t be afraid to, you will learn from them and be stronger for it.

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One of the most neglected aspects of our health is our posture. Amongst all the guidelines on healthy eating and workout methods, this essential facet of our well-being is often overlooked.

Posture provides the foundation for a balanced workout, deeper breathing, effective digestion and efficient functioning of organs. Improving your posture will benefit your overall health, give you more energy, help rehabilitate or prevent injury and increase sporting performance.

That’s a lot of benefits for such an overlooked idea and I didn't even mention that it would help you sit at your workstation longer and work harder without cramping!

Here we take a look at six core stretches that will increase your flexibility from head to toe.

Stretch One: The “Superman”
The aim of this stretch is to finish at 90 degree angle, leaning forward onto a stretch band or other object with your legs straight, torso horizontal and arms extended.

• Keep your feet shoulder width apart with a slight bend at the knees.
  
• Lean forwards with your arms extended and resting on a steady object or stretch band.
  
• Push your backside out, keep your shoulders high
  
• Gently straighten your legs
  
• You control the stretch.

You should feel the stretch in the front and back of the shoulders, across the back of the neck, through the back, glutes, hamstrings and calves.

Stretch Two: The “Reverse Superman”
The aim of this stretch is to step forward pull your arms upwards behind your back. This is a great stretch for your chest muscles (pectorals) and especially good for anyone who has rounded shoulders from desk work, driving or poor training habits (too many bench presses and no back work!). You’ll need a stretch band for this one.

• Hang the stretch band over a steady object and grab hold of it behind you.
  
• Make sure you have an underarm grip on the stretch band – palms towards ceiling.
  
• Keep your arms straight and your body vertical as you step forward, pulling your arms up behind you.
  
• Keep your abs tight, chest out and head up.
  
• You control the stretch.
  

Stretch Three: Hamstrings
The soccer player’s favorite! Connected to the glutes (backside) which in turn are connected to the lower back, improving flexibility here can help back issues. A stretch band will help you perform this stretch effectively.

• Attach stretch band halfway along foot
  
• Lift one leg straight in the air
  
• Keep the knee straight
  
• Pull toes down towards head
  
• Stretch a little further as you relax into the stretch.
  
• You control the stretch.

Pulling back the toes will also increase the stretch into the calf muscles.

Stretch Four: Posterior Chain
You’ll feel this stretch in your leg but it primarily targets the lower spine and is particularly effective for lower back issues and sciatica. I consistently use this with great results for clients experiencing back problems.

• Attach stretch band halfway along foot
  
• Hold the elastic in the opposite hand Left leg stretch, right hand elastic)
  
• Keep the free arm flat on the floor
  
• Gradually increase the stretch as you relax into it.
  
• You will feel the stretch in the calf, hamstring and glutes but it also works the lower back.
  
• You control the stretch.
  

Stretch five: Glutes (backside)
OK, it’s time to work on the buns! These are really important muscles in the lower body. They are used for lots of common movements such from sitting and standing to walking up stairs, so get a lot of use and tend to be quite tight, particularly in people with pelvic tilt.

• Place one leg against a wall at a 90 degree angle for support
  
• Place the ankle of the other foot in front of the knee resting against the wall.
  
• Pull the heel towards you and push the knee away to control the stretch
  
• Hold for 1m on each side
  

You should feel the stretch down the outside of your thigh, into your backside and nowhere else.

Stretch Six: Hip flexors
Lordosis (curvature of lower spine) and posterior tilt in the pelvis can cause these antagonist muscles to be particularly tight. Stretching can help align the pelvis, reducing lordosis and alleviating lower back pain.

• Put one leg on floor at a 90 degree angle
  
• Place opposite knee on floor and your toes on wall behind you.
  
• Make sure your body is upright
  
• Pull back your shoulders and keep your abdominals tight
  
• Push hips forward gently above the knee that is on the floor
  
• Hold for 1m each side
  
• Remember you control the stretch!

And that’s the six stretches! Many of my clients have had great results just from improving their flexibility, some have even been on the brink of surgery after exhausting a lot of other options. Correcting the underlying postural imbalances is a great help, but in the first instance these stretches will set you on the right path.

Written on 1/30/08 by Jan Keller, Postural alignment and Correction specialist for Keller Postural Specialists. Republished on 6/14/09.

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