At the Physio-Dynamics Studios in Los Angeles and La Jolla, California, Bernice Danylchuck and her staff have developed a series of exercises that you can do at home to help slim down your hips.Our in-house presentations are available by reservation.
Call one of our offices and schedule one today! You come to us, or we come to you!
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DO YOU HAVE OTHER BODY DISASTERS? Physio-Dynamics can show you how to therapeutically ease back or neck pain, how to straighten bow legs, knock knees, to fix flat feet, sway back, scoliosis, slumped or rounded shoulders, scrawny neck, puny chest, flabby arms, knee problems, fat ankles and just about any other distorted shape you’ve managed to create with your body. The answers to these problems and many others are available in the manual mentioned above. |
To make an appointment for a private posture session which includes body analysis, movement training, deep tissue massage and therapy and a personal exercise prescription, call the Physio-Dynamics mentioned here. |
HOW TO GET RID OF A BIG BUTT
Size 34-26-38 ?!!!
Is your caboose the engine on your train?
Are your saddlebags carrying too much payload?
Do you prefer to sit on it rather than show it off?
You’ve dieted down to nothing. You’ve exercised and exercised. And still, your hips are way out of proportion to your body. You may have thought you were dealing with a fat rear end, but what you’ve actually got is bad posture.
According to Bernice Danylchuk, who has been teaching posture in her Physio-Dynamics to some of Hollywood’s most beautiful bodies for more than 30 years, large hips, thighs and butts are caused by improper body alignment. Remember, form follows function. If your body is not being used correctly, your form is going to be less than ideal.
If your hips are way out of proportion to your body, take heart. You can be relieved to know that it is possible to restructure your wide rear end. However, you’re going to have to make some big changes in the way you use it, if you want to lose it.
TUCKING UP THE PELVIS
Usually a sway back accompanies a large rear end. A sway back occurs when the lower back arches too much pulling the buttocks backwards and upwards. This bad habit will cause a lot of strain and back ache.The technical term for sway back is lordosis. You can think of it as LARDosis, however, because of what it does to your rear end.
If you stand in front of a mirror you can perform a simple movement that illustrates how a sway back dramatically widens hips. Stand with your toes pointing perfectly forward and your knees slightly bent. Arch your back as much as you can. Your hips will flare out wide. Now tuck your pelvis under hard and see your hips slim down visibly.
In order to tuck your pelvis under, lift the upper spine up lightly, pull the tail down gently and curl the tail end of the spine under. You will feel a faint contraction just above the pubic bone that tells you when the pelvis is in balance.
Some people have arched their backs for so many years that they may find tucking the pelvis under to be difficult at first, but it can be accomplished with practice. If you have trouble, think of pulling the pubic bone way, way up and pretend you are hooking it onto your sternum (or breast bone)
Another way to find the movement is to lay flat on the ground, knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Push the small of your back firmly to the ground. When your back is completely flat, notice how your pelvis has curled up. Memorize this feeling. This is where your pelvis should be in every waking moment. No ifs, ands or BUTTS!!
The pelvis needs to be tucked under whenever you stand, sit, walk or move. And, especially, when you exercise. When you exercise in a sway backed position, you are increasing the width of your hips by creating unwanted baggage in the form of hard lumps and knotty muscle. Meanwhile, the muscles you should be using are wasting away. Your rear end gets wide and lumpy while the muscles you need to hold your thigh bone in its socket atrophy (more on this later).
If you’ve been knocking yourself out at the gym all these years, wondering why your hips wouldn’t trim down, now you know why. Unless you’ve been exercising with perfect posture, your hard work has actually been preventing you from earning a better body!!!
When you start to move with the pelvis tucked under properly, you will begin to strip away all those lumps and bumps that make up the extra baggage you hate. Remember, form follows function. Adapt the right function, in this case a tucked under pelvis, and the form you want will follow. And isn’t the form you want beautiful slim hips?
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THOSE WITH STUBBORN PELVISES
These instructions are for those people who are very sway backed, have definite large rear ends or are unable to press their lower backs to the floor.
If your pelvis has been held in the wrong position for many years it may take a little extra umph! to get it into the right spot. Be sure that you are pulling it under as far as it can go. In order to get it fully tucked under, you may need to stretch out some tight muscles, ligaments and tendons.
KICK BUTT EXERCISES
One excellent way to stretch a stubborn, frozen or blocked pelvis is as follows:
Stand with your legs wide apart and your pelvis tucked under and back. Make sure your toes are pointing perfectly forward and press the weight of your body directly down into the ball of the foot right below the big toe and the number two toe. Bend your legs so that your knees are directly over your feet. Now tuck your pelvis under as far as you can and squeeze the buttocks together. Pull up really hard on the quads, the inner adductors and the psoas.
Pull up hard on the quads, inner abductors and psoas.Pretend you’re pulling so hard that you are about to wrap all those muscles up around your neck. This is the feeling you want to experience as often as possible for the next few weeks as you stretch out your pelvis and train it to tuck it under properly. Don’t worry if it seems a little strange, a bit uncomfortable or difficult at first. Just keep doing it as often as you can. It will be worth it. Soon it will be like second nature to you.
KEEP YOUR PELVIS TO YOURSELF!
How many times did your mother tell you to “stand up straight”? Go ahead. Ignore her. She’s been wrong all these years. Many people mistakenly think of standing up straight as literally creating a straight line from head to toe, but excellent posture does not create a straight line at all. Not only does the pelvis need to be tucked under, but it needs to be held slightly back. The upper torso and head should rise slightly forward out of the pelvis.Watch Michelle Pfeiffer or Melanie Griffith in a movie and you will see how they hold their hips back as they walk and move. If you start to observe people as a habit you will see that people who are structurally slim hipped and straight legged have pelvises that are tucked well under and held slightly back. |
– HEAD RELAXES UPWARD
– TORSO SLIGHTLY FORWARD
– PELVIS BACK AND TUCKED
UNDER – SQUEEZE BUTTOCKS TOGETHER
– PULL ALL QUADS UP
– KNEES PERFECTLY STRAIGHT
– DO NOT HYPER-EXTEND
Ignore your mother. Don’t stand up straight.
PULL THE FEMUR INTO ITS SOCKET
If you’ve been walking around for much of your life with a sway back, your femur is probably not firmly in its socket in the pelvis. The femur is the long thigh bone with a little knob in its upper end where it notches into the pelvis.
In order to have truly thin thin hips, this bone must be firmly in it’s notch. when it is way out, it makes a large lump on the side of the hips creating what we refer to as saddlebags. If it is even moderately out, it can significantly increase the width of the hip line.
Women who have saddlebags on the sides of their thighs are suffering from a muscular weakness which allows the hip socket to separate. Fat accumulates around it causing saddlebags. Although the fact can be temporarily removed with liposuction, putting the socket into place with Physio-Dynamics will get rid of the saddlebags permanently.
-Bernice Danylchuk
How do the femur bones get loose in their sockets? If we don’t use our muscles to keep the femurs gathered in, the inner adductor muscles (those pesky inner thigh muscles) become weakened and are no longer able to hold the thighs in toward the centerline of the body. When this happens the buttocks muscles slacken and spread. The lack of contraction in these two tremendously important muscle groups permits the leg masses to fall away from the centerline, causing the hip joint to become loosened. The results: an ungainly and undesirable broadening of the entire region. Yuck!!
If you are young and supple and only slightly sway-backed, simply tucking the pelvis under consistently will help the femurs pull properly into place. However, if you have an older body with years of bad habits to undue, you will need more. You will need THE BELT!
Actually, the belt is just another way to think of squeezing the buttocks together. Pretend you have a low slung backwards belt that buckles in the center of your buttocks. Notch that belt up another hole with a tremendous inward squeeze. If you’re lucky, you’ll feel that squeezing action pulling the femur into the pelvic socket. If not, don’t worry. It will come with time. Just keep tucking up the pelvis, holding it back and squeezing the belt.
As soon as you are able to feel the femur pull into the socket, stop and ,celebrate. Congratulations! It won’t be long now until you will be able to watch the width of your hips decrease significantly. If your hip bones are way out, you might even lose a couple of inches.
If you can’t pull the femur in right away, don’t worry. Just keep at it and soon you’ll find the motion.
Practice, practice, and practice again pulling the femur in and out of that socket. Memorize the feel of it when it is in. This is where it should be all the time. See how long you can hold it in each day. Let this become a sort of isometric exercise you practice constantly. You can do it sitting, standing, or walking and anywhere you are. Keep it up. Or rather, keep it in. You’ll love the results.
By the way, if it feels a little strange when you pull the femur into its socket, don’t be alarmed. It’s a rusty, dusty unused space in there. Tendons, ligaments and muscles need to stretch, realign and get used to their new home.
Stand with your feet parallel, pelvis under and back. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and relax your neck upward. Lift your right hip so that your entire right leg lifts slightly until only the ball of the foot is touching the ground. Angle the toes in, heel out and slowly lift the leg straight out to the side as high up as you can and pause. Remember to keep the pelvis under and back! Return the leg down with resistance using the inner calf and leg muscles. (Note: You’ll find that when the femur is in the socket, you can lift higher and more comfortably than when it has fallen out.)
KNEE UP
Sit facing the wall with your right leg out straight, foot flat on the wall. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and relax your head upward. Bend your left leg and lay it flat on the floor. Keeping the foot on the floor, slowly rock the knee up and down as high as you can. Try to keep both sit-bones on the floor and your torso and head straight over your hips. (Note: As you improve you will not only be able to lift the knee higher each time but you can move the location of the foot further away from your body and further behind you.) Repeat with left leg.
TRIANGLE LEGS
Stand with your legs wide apart, feet forward, pelvis back and under. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and relax your head upward. Slowly lunge, bending your right leg until the knee aligns directly above the foot. Remember to keep the pelvis way back and under and do not let either the left or right hip cock forward. You should feel your left femur pressing into the socket. Keeping the buttocks tight, pull above the knee with your muscles on the right leg to rise slowly again keeping the pelvis back and thinking about sucking your hip bones into their sockets.
Repeat with left leg.
WHEW!!!
I’ll bet you never gave more than a fleeting moments thought to your pelvis up until now. Are you amazed at how important it is? If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all this, don’t worry. Soon you’ll be tucking your hips under like a pro, a slim hipped pro that is!