We start every session at Alexandria Wellness with a wellness discussion. The topics range from “How do you define being strong?” to “What is your best stress resilience practice?” and the all-time favorite... anything to do with food. Those get lots of chatter and lots of questions. 

While we are chatting about wellness, you can find community members rolling their (bare) feet with Lacrosse balls, foam rolling, OR using their AW-branded dowels.

WHAT?

A dowel?

Yes, every new client at AW receives a Bill Cotton-specially-made AW red dowel with rubber stoppers on each end. We have been known to deliver them in the area to clients during the Pandemic!

What can a dowel do for your fitness, posture, and overall awareness of how you move? A LOT!

Placing our dowel on the shoulders in a relaxed arm position helps in five ways:

1. It opens our chest, which is in a “closed” and slumped position throughout our forward-facing days.

2. Reminds us to stand up tall and correct our posture.

3. It is a way to nudge us to consciously breathe, a mainstay of AW foundational practices.

4. It helps us relax our shoulders which tend to be elevated due to hectic days.

5. BEST: Is a perfect “pause” to your otherwise hectic workday

Check out a video I recorded when the space was new, before our chalk wall and rubber flooring. This was late Spring 2020 and is part of the wellness and exercise video library we built so that community members could learn new movements on their own, practice between sessions, learn about a wellness topic like “listening,” and, yes, access a bunch of workout videos for travel.

Here, I explain just the basics of how to hold or place the dowel and why it is so important to use one.

Every minute of our day, our bodies are in forward-facing positions. We walk, drive, and sit while eating, talking, and reading. Using the dowel on your shoulders can reverse the impact of forward-facing movement. Sitting or standing at a desk while on the computer, driving, and any position where you are looking at a device can wreak havoc on your posture, core, breathing, etc.

These daily activities can cause forward - or tilted - head posture. Every inch our head leans forward and out of alignment puts about ten additional pounds of pressure on our spine. In addition, for every inch out of alignment, more muscles, bones, and connective tissue compensate for this improper position.

Alternatively, when the head aligns with the spine, where it is intended, there are no impacts on the spine. Sadly, in today’s tech-filled world, forward head posture is common yet can be fixed.

A dowel is a simple tool that you can use every single day to improve your posture and counter the forward-facing activities, and best of all, it takes very little space and time. Just a few minutes per day can lead to drastic improvements and awareness of your posture and breathing.

Alexandria Wellness clients have embraced this simple yet effective way to improve their fitness, and now you can too!

Let us know if you want to experiment with the dowel! We are pretty sure you, too, like many in our community, will feel different immediately!

We want to help you (and your team!) take charge of your health and wellness. Here are two ways you can get started today: https://alexandriawellness.com/#takecharge. If you are interested in joining our new concierge small group, where you’ll have a built-in community of others seeking holistic wellness, email us at contact@alexandriawellness.com.