This is a repost of an old one of mine from brain talk.

These hints assume you have a copy of the edgelow exercise kit, see www.edgelow.com.

It has a video, a booklet explaining the exercises, and some equipment. You can buy it piecemeal as you progress if it’s too expensive to get the whole thing at once.

I had to learn the Edgelow exercises from the kit initially and then eventually I was able to see Edgelow a few times in person. So I thought it might be helpful if I described all the mistakes I made learning it just from the kit. Obviously as another poster mentioned, it's really helpful to go to someone trained in this for at least a couple sessions.

I did use a Feldenkrais person a little bit to learn the exercises before I went to a PT about them and that was helpful. She didn't have any training in the Edgelow kit, she just watched the video and then watched me to see if I did at the same way.

The kit isn't really clear about how much exercises to do, and I ended up doing to little initially. It's important to do the exercises three times a day. Each session should include a little mobilization exercises, 20 minutes of the breathing exercises and 20 minutes of the walking. Do less than 20 minutes if that much flares you up.

I found the book "Yoga of Breath" helpful in learning the breathing. It's a little difficult learning the correct abdominal breathing pattern from the tape. The arching of your back on the inhale is not really done actively, it's sort of secondary to the movement of the diaphragm. You sort of imagine the air going into your low back. I tended to use my back muscles to do the arching rather than the breathing itself, so the breathing exercises didn't really help me for a couple years. I also tended to use my hip flexors to arch the back which really is not correct.

It's important to work up to walking at aerobic pace, which is a quite brisk walk. I worked up to it by putting finger temperature sensors (cost $10 from Northcoast Medical) and walking as fast as I could without the temperature in my fingers dropping.

It's important to follow the progression. Most of the time when I flared myself up from doing a new exercise, I hadn't really mastered the ones before, I was progressing myself to fast. When you try a new exercise just do one repetition and see how you feel the next day.

The hardest thing I found to learn without an instructor is the chin tuck/thinker pose. The fact that he calls it traction makes you think it's a lot of force, but it's not. You really have to work on having the correct position for your head, you want to get out of the habit of having your head too far forward. I found that I initially tended to over correct, moving my head horizontally backwards too far, to the point of really having a double chin. If you have some Feldenkrais tapes to play with to really get the idea of in neutral position for your head, that can help. It also helps to know the muscle you are trying to activate is in the front of neck (along your spine) not the back of your scalp.

To get in the correct position, he had me arch my head back and slowly undo the arch just until you are no longer actively arching, and just reach neutral. It's easier to find neutral for your cervical spine that way, I guess because that's an easier contrast than trying to move your head forward, since having your head too forward is a habit for many of us.

You press up with your thumb on your chin just enough to balance gravity on your head, so that you don't have to use your muscles to hold up your head.

You will feel the muscles in the front of your neck activate (subtle effect) and the trapezious muscles relax (easier to notice).

If you feel pain or tension at the base of your scalp at the back of your neck, your are pressing too hard upwards.

You can work out the trigger points in your back by lying on a kids super ball and kind of rolling around if the ball on the stick or the six inch rollers hurt too much. You don't have to move your thoracic area as much to do it that way.

Ball on the stick - be very careful the first time you use it to try and push down your first rib with the breathing exercises. I flared myself up for a week the first time I did that. Also go slow on using it to pull down the rest of your ribs, that can really flare you up if you do too soon. I don't know if the tape really emphasizes that you pull down and away from your spine gently as you exhale to move the rest of your ribs.

Six inch from roller. - this is another exercise that you have to be very careful not to injure yourself doing. I was able to do it safely learning it just from the tape but I looked at the tape a number of times before I tried it.

Swiss ball/green ball - this is the prop that is easiest to injure yourself on. I really wouldn't recommend doing the back arch over the green ball without instruction. I did the strengthening exercises depicted on the tape, lifting your arms up with your chest on the ball too soon and I flared up for a week just doing a single exercise. For the exercises that involve you sitting on the ball and keeping your head aligned over your pelvis, I found it really helpful to have somebody watched me do it. I tended to tilt my body without really be aware of it.

The exercises to strength your longus colli muscle using the blood pressure cuff are really important, the TOS will not heal without them.

Don’t do the strengthening exercises on the swiss ball until you can do the longus colli ones.