The Kentro Method
Become More Resilient As You Age
Become More Resilient - These centered Greek construction workers have strong muscles.
The innovative Kentro Body Balance method of centering movements, created by Angelika Thusius, provides you with practical guidelines for lasting relief from postural pain and stiffness in the pelvis, back, neck, shoulders, arms, hips, legs, and feet. Practicing these movements while we garden or prepare food, lets our activities stretch, tone and relax our bodies.
Ground Yourself
This American child is centered, bending with optimal, naturally strengthening motion.
Practicing Kentro movements as we go through your day reverses negative concepts about aging. We will be able to decrease premature aging and increase our youthfulness because centered motion will limber, invigorate, and uplift us. Merging anatomical guidelines with an affectionate attitude to our bodies immediately enlivens our powerful kinesthetic sense of fluid motion. We feel how to move with comfort and ease. Holding patterns dissolve. The simple, subtle Kentro movements free us into stunning mobility.
Sound Structural Foundations
Thomas Edison (c. 1893) sitting upright without effort; his pelvis and thighs slant, his back is straight, and his shoulders are relaxed.
For over thirty-five years Thusius has researched the buoyant, free motion of young children and people – in twelve different countries, from Honduras to England to Greece. These observations are in accord with "Gray's Anatomy" book (published in the nineteenth century and still used by contemporary surgeons). She has done comparative studies of anatomy texts (dated between 1930-2000) at prestigious medical libraries in English, French, American and Greek universities.
Lionel Hampton c. 1949). He bends comfortably from his hips, his back straightens, and his shoulders drop and relax.
Centering her own body and the restoration of healthy motion of her students also contributed to her understanding of the shifts from stressful to natural – unhampered - posture in motion. We are familiar with postural methods that contain both a mechanistic and idealized view of our body, which demands a ‘good’ appearance. These methods rely on controlled, ‘held’ posture, which has to be maintained as one maintains a car. We have lost our sense of sensuous, natural ease. We have ‘industrialized’ our movement. On the other hand, Kentro guidelines awaken, sustain and expand our sensory system. Over time, our kinaesthetic sense is honed and we can sense and move as we are functionally designed to do: with enjoyable, personal expression.
Moving From The Center
This centered Honduran woman carries heavy lumber with strength from her back and buttocks muscles.
Comfortable balance can help straighten your back and allows you to move with appropriate weight distribution. However, by itself, smooth balance will not relieve you of stressful thoughts, feelings, and goals of ‘achieving right posture’. A kind attitude to your body is as essential as the Kentro movements themselves. During your activities, a relaxing view of your body moves you beyond measurable balance and centers your body with subtle areas of being. With moment to moment Kentro practice, you simply place yourself into the process of sensing centered movements in accord with an aesthetically inspiring image of yourself. Loving kindness works best; it attracts spirited physical energy. Expect to be at peace with your body – truly the most delightful, dynamic state of being. Postural pain and strain and judgmental beliefs resolve. You are enabled to move as one with your activities. This joyful, youthful postural motion is your very nature.
Centered - My pelvis is centered. I raise my arm from naturally strong upper back muscles.
Strained - My pelvis is tucked and my back rounds. I raise my arm from stressed shoulders.
Prepare The Way For Wellness
Kentro guidelines are basic for safe, centered everyday activities as well as Yoga, Tai chi, sports, sitting meditation and dance. The guidelines enhance these practices and offer longer lasting benefits from massage, acupuncture, osteopathic, CranioSacral, homeopathic and chiropractic treatments. After an initial period of practicing the Kentro guidelines you don't depend anymore on specialized exercises, furniture, props or equipment. All your activities become your source for fun workouts, appropriate stretches, comfort and ease.
Body Ecology
Strained - When the pelvis is tucked, lifting weakens and stresses pelvic, back, leg and shoulder muscles.
Centered - To center and strengthen the pelvis and back, we bend from the hips and feel a 'pleat' in the groin.
Kentro practice revives the vivacity we all experienced as young children. By letting our tissues re-stretch into optimal function and by using the appropriate muscles, our repetitive gestures can soothe and strengthen us. This sweet process offers us a feeling of being at home in our bodies.
Our ordinary activities can gift us with a lifetime of effortless fitness and cheer as we move in harmonious relationship with our environment.
Thusius's KENTRO stretches and strengthening exercises have dramatically improved a number of chronic conditions that have failed to improve during Chiropractic and medical physical therapy. I highly recommend her work.
~Kerby Stewart, M.D., Family Physician (Texas)