This week we had the pleasure of inviting Eva Nemeth to come and speak about physiotherapy and holistic movement. Eva Nemeth is a physiotherapist and movement educator who has devoted her life to discovering and refining creative methods to support health, create strength and fluidity, and treat specific physical problems. As a child in Hungary, Eva competed in national and international gymnastics and at the age of 19, she began studying and working with the innovative movement teacher Eva Kovacs, a modern dance pioneer in Europe. Eva later obtained her graduate and postgraduate degrees at the Medical University in Physiotherapy in Budapest where she also taught modern dance techniques and rhythmical gymnastics. In 1990, she founded Marina Physical Therapy Center in Marina del Rey. Today, she hosts Eva Movement workshops locally and internationally for professional athletes, actors and business executives. The EVA Movement is an original approach to wellness and rehabilitation that draws on disciplines as diverse as modern dance, yoga, ballet and tai chi and includes practices of mindfulness and psychology.
She first started by talking about the three main structural groups within our bodies. The first contains the feet, legs, pelvis, spine, and head. The second group contains the chest plate and the ribs. Finally, the third group contains the shoulder, shoulder blades, and arms. Eva explained that, the first structural group is what mainly controls our posture and that our feet are the first point of posture since it is what touches the ground.
Eva also went over some exercises and techniques that can be done at home to improve balance and posture. One technique used to create flexibility in our feet is by sitting in a chair and having a hard ball (such as a rubber ball, similar to the squishy stress balls) underneath the sole of the feet and slowly rotating the feet so that the ball massages the feet. Another technique is to grab a tissue with the toes (as if you are grabbing a pencil off the ground with your feet) and slowly move your ankle up and down.
Some techniques and exercises to improve balance include standing on a balance board or balancing on one leg. Additionally, to help with flexibility and posture during walking, Eva recommended walking backwards, since it allows us to slow down and think about the way that our legs are moving.
The exercise she showed us was a stretching exercise in which we held a flat plastic disk in the palm of the right hand and extended the hand to the right so that the disk was in our peripheral view. Keeping the hand extended, we moved it across to the other side and twisted our wrists around. Then we raised the hand above our head and slowly brought it to the other side. This time we bent the arm at the elbow, twisted the wrist, and move the hand inward so that we reached the initial position. This may be a bit hard to follow through the text, however, the other techniques are certainly ones that can be done easily.
If you wish to learn more about Eva Nemeth and her work, be sure to check out her website at:
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