I wrote this book because learning this information completely changed my life. I was a long-time yoga teacher with a strenuous practice who frequently created and reinforced tensions in my body through the way I practiced. I had no idea at the time that I was actually addicted to stretching, an activity I had to repeat regularly in order to feel good. Once I learned how to align my bones in a natural way, I no longer experienced an urge to stretch, and longstanding tensions gradually began dropping away. By learning how to sit, stand, bend, walk, reach, lift, carry and sleep in a naturally human way, I discovered a whole new sense of strength, flexibility, comfort and ease that continues to be available to me as long as I remain aware. I've watched the same process repeated again and again as other people have learned how to apply these same principles in their own lives.

I have been an exercise enthusiast, yoga teacher, student of meditation and movement educator for many years. I also have a background in massage therapy and the study of anatomy and physiology, as well as having studied Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Aston Patterning and other somatic techniques. I eventually learned the one element that had been missing from all of these approaches: the importance of a specific alignment of skeletal support. For this I thank Jean Couch of the Balance Center who first introduced me to concepts she learned from Noelle Perez of Paris, France. Jean has been a generous mentor to me in developing this information.

Much of my research has been conducted independently through working with people in Hawaii and New Mexico, as well as gathering photographs and interviews with people who live in aligned, flexible and strong bodies well into old age. Aligned people of advanced age are difficult to find in the West, and in 2003-2004 I traveled extensively, seeking out people who had lived their whole lives in keeping with nature’s design. Many of the photographs in the book were taken during my travels to the Cook Islands, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar(Burma), Thailand and Portugal.

While on this trip, I spent two months in a forest monastery in Myanmar in a silent (vipassana) meditation retreat. During that time we meditated almost continuously from 3:30 am to 9:00 pm seven days a week. Knowing how to let my bones support me while sitting and walking helped me to relax more than resist, giving me an opportunity to tune in deeply to the most subtle details of the body’s sensations: how it breathes, how it creates and holds onto tensions, how it lets go, how it feels when it is aligned and how it feels when it is not. Changing our habits of use is not something that can be done to us by someone else, but is something we can only do for ourselves through a continuous process of cultivating awareness. We forget and then we remember, and then we repeat this process again and again and again, all day, every day. We keep “coming home” to a place we can only touch with a still mind. This stillness acts on the body, as well, and requires that the body function according to the same laws of nature that govern physics, engineering and architecture. This is the dharma of the body.