I did Pete Egoscues exorcises from his book for 4 to 6 years with good results and then when I went through a more difficult time, and was not getting freedom from pain with my own efforts, went to their clinic and did sessions where one of his trained practitioners evaluated my body mechanics and laid out a course of exorcises for me to do for a week or ten days. Then I would go back to the clinic and get re-evaluated and etc.. I did that for five or six sessions of the eight session package I had paid for and then stopped going to the clinic as I was out of pain again and able to self regulate my exorcises as before. (I would be lazy and avoid them as long as possible and then when the pain got to be too much, do the ex. again until I was out of pain.)
I have only good things to say about Pete E. and what he is sharing with the world. Anyone who wants to do his program I would wholeheartedly encourage and expect him/her to get great (pain free) results.
A couple of things that have me think of Somatics, by Thomas Hanna for myself and the average person first are:
I believe I can maintain my muscles (and joints) in a pain free state with a daily program of 8-10 min. in the morning and 8-10 min. in the evening (the book expects that the average person can do maintenance in eight min. once per day). With Egoscue it’s about 45 min. to 1 1/2 hrs. once a day (for me). Maybe as few as 3-4 times a week when everything is going along well.
Pete’s team is $250 per session or $1600/$1800? for eight. Somatics is $12 for the book from Amazon.
By the way, the thing that had me come to Somatics in the past year was that I had come down with Sciatica and nothing I tried was touching it. My then weekly Yoga class with my wife ( I refereed to it as my stretching class) was too harsh and painful, my last three sessions with the Egoscue team were too harsh, top flight Osteopath, etc. etc. nothing was working. I was down for 2-3 months. Then I found Somatics and put in 5-6 hours a day doing what I call “movements” as opposed to a stretch or a exorcise. It’s so much easier and less pain inducing. Out of major pain and able to sleep well in a few days, mostly out of pain and able to do all of normal home life in a week or so,dropped my ex. time down to 20 min. in the morning and 20 min. in the evening, back to full blown tree work in a couple of weeks.
Anyone who wants their body to work for a lifetime should pick up a copy of Somatics, and a copy of Pain Free if they want. Pick what works for them and do it.
