All levels of resistance are acceptable. The health of your fascia determines how much resistance is generated when you stretch. The muscles on the back of the body (shoulders, back, back of legs) typically have more resistance in them. Whereas the muscles on the front of the body (chest, inside of arms, front of legs) have less resistance in them. However, injuries or traumas to specific areas of the body can change the usual pattern. If you resist maximally (100%) during a stretch, you will maximally restructure unhealthy fascia. However, you may get tired and also lose range of motion in the stretch. If this happens, resist some reps at 100% and others at less - 50-75%. If you have any pain in your joints when you stretch, try adding more resistive force and decreasing your range of motion (both in the start position and the end position). This should help you stay focused on the fascia and stop you from over stretching joints. If you find you don’t breathe when you stretch or you don't feel much, resist less (50-75%) for a few reps. You’ll find your breath becomes normalized and you feel more sensation in the area you are stretching.

If a stretch hurts, first identify where it hurts. Typically it’s in a nearby joint. Try changing your position slightly by moving your foot, leg, or arm slightly inward or outward. This may alleviate the pain. Next, decrease your range of motion, both in the start position and the end position. Lastly, resist more. When you resist more, you primarily engage fascia and avoid engaging other tissues that have pain and sensations.

Identify if it’s pain or soreness. It’s common to feel sore after you stretch. If you’re in pain, you need to improve your technique. Go back and watch the 4 Pillars of a Stretch Tutorial and the Flexibility vs. Range of Motion Tutorials. The most common mistakes beginners make are over stretching and not resisting, and these mistakes can create pain and injury. That’s why it is so important to get the technique right. If you think you have the technique down, give the pain points a break and try stretching areas in your body where you don’t feel pain. If you increase the health of your fascia and muscles in other areas of your body you’ll take pressure off the pained areas. Many people think they should stretch the areas that hurt, but we disagree. Leave those areas alone and work on everything else – then you’ll see improvements.

No, you can’t stretch too much. As long as you’re stretching correctly, there is no recovery time necessary for the Bendable Body Method of stretching. Our method recovers and repairs damaged tissue in your body, so the more you stretch, the better you’ll feel. There is no plateau.

Yes, it is. How sore you are will depend on the capacity of your lymphatic system to detoxify after you stretch. In the beginning it’s typical to feel sore after you stretch. But after a short time, you’ll be able to do more repetitions, your body will be healthier, and you’ll feel less soreness. To alleviate soreness drink plenty of water, avoid blood constrictors, take an epsom salt bath, go into an infrared sauna, or drink bentonite clay.

Yes! Stretching is hard work. Not only are you resisting your own movements, but you’re strengthening your muscles with each stretching repetition. In time, it will get easier and easier, but it is always good to maintain some level of challenge by either increasing your resistance or doing more repetitions. In this way you’ll continue to improve.

First, find stretches that don't put pressure on your wrists such as Gall Bladder 1, Liver 1, Liver 2, Stomach 2, Pancreas 1, Small Intestine 2, Brain 1, Brain 3, Brain 4, Sexual 1, Skin 2, Bladder 2, Bladder 3, Kidney 2, Appendix 1, Appendix 2, Thymus 1, Thymus 2. Do the Wrist Flow on a regular basis to help make your wrists stronger and alleviate pain there. Also, when you're doing any stretch, contract and resist anywhere you can in your body besides your wrists! This will help you to improve the health of the muscles away from your wrist that have probably become constricted with too much dense fascia. Once these muscles start working better, you'll find that your wrist pain decreases too.

Try the Knee Flow. This entire flow targets the knees, without requiring that you kneel on them! Once your knees feel better, you'll be able to add more stretches that require kneeling.You can also try putting plenty of cushion under the knee you're kneeling on.

When you’re stretching and get a cramp, it's typically not caused by the area in your body where you feel it. The way to relieve a cramp is to do a stretch for the balancing muscle group. Below all of the videos in Single Stretches is a list of the balancing muscle groups for that particular area of the body. Do any one of those stretches and then return to the target stretch you were initially doing. Now the tendency for cramping is lessened.

Anytime! The most important thing is that you do stretch. Stretching in the morning is a good option because you’re less likely to overstretch into end ranges when you first wake up. Stretching will loosen you up and give you energy in the morning or any time you need a boost. Stretching after you exercise or play sports helps repair the inflammation and damage caused to your muscles and joints. And stretching throughout the day, taking 3-5 minute breaks from sitting every few hours, will erase the stiffness and tension from your body.

Stretching for 15 minutes a day is ideal. If daily doesn’t work with your schedule, 4-5 times a week is a good goal. If that is too much, try once or twice a week. If you stretch daily, you can stretch for less time and still get positive results. If you stretch less frequently, you’ll need to spend a longer time stretching to see maximum results. The good news is that each time you stretch you’ll feel less pain and stiffness in your body.

Your hamstrings and the back of your shoulders. These two areas are the tightest and most prone to accumulating dense, unhealthy fascia. The hamstrings also have the biggest impact on the position of your pelvis - which in turn regulates your posture from head to toe. We recommend doing Back of the Leg and Glutes stretches (which include the hamstrings) on a regular basis or add the Hamstring Flow to your routine. Neck and shoulder pain is partly due to the fact that the hamstrings are so tight and are holding the pelvis in a dysfunctional position - which is reverberating up the spine and into the neck and shoulders. In addition to doing the hamstring stretches, we recommend doing Large Intestine, Small Intestine, Skin, and Thymus stretches to alleviate shoulder and neck pain. Also, listen to your body and do the stretches that your body is telling you to do at any given time.

First, make sure you're stretching correctly. The two biggest mistakes people make when they stretch are they don't resist during the stretch and they go too far in the stretch to an end range. These mistakes are common because it's how we've been traditionally taught to stretch for most of our lives. Stretching produces immediate, tangible results, so if you aren't feeling them go back and watch the Four Pillars of a Stretch Tutorial and make sure you're stretching correctly. Next, determine if you're stretching enough to compensate for your life style. If you have a job where you sit at a desk all day long, but only stretch for five minutes a week, your back, neck and shoulder pain may still linger. If you sit for 10-15 hours a day – and the typical American does – you need to stretch more frequently to reverse these negative effects. Another reason you might not see results is that you're stretching an area where you feel pain but that's not the root cause of your problem. So we recommend doing a Full Body Flow on a regular basis to address your entire body. When you do the Full Body Flow, pay attention to the areas that you have then least sensation during the stretch - these are your tightest areas that have the most dense fascia. Use the Area of the Body section to stretch these areas and you'll see major improvements in your pain points, and overall flexibility and strength.

Using the Search Index page of more than 100 terms, find your injury or concern and copy and paste it into the Search Programs bar on the site. You’ll find a list of all the videos that will solve that particular concern. If you don’t see your pain point or injury listed, leave a comment under any video and ask us about it. We’ve dealt with every imaginable problem and can give you direction right away.

Certainly! You’ll notice that your exercise is greatly improved, your body works better, is stronger, has more range of motion, and an increase in performance. Be careful not to overdo and push yourself beyond your natural capacity. And be sure to stretch after your exercise to remove inflammation, remain injury free and keep your body’s tissues healthy, supple, and strong.

Yes, it does. When you follow the 4 Pillars of a Stretch correctly, your muscles contract and resist while you lengthen them eccentrically for the stretch. This ‘loaded eccentric’ movement is unique to all other exercise methods. It not only engages and restructures fascia on a cellular level to give you an increase in flexibility and range of motion, but it also makes your muscles stronger and healthier because they’re contracting and engaged through every stretch movement. During the Bendable Body Method of stretching, muscles are engaged in ways that cannot be accessed with traditional strength training because unhealthy fascia acts as a blockade. Furthermore, Bendable Body stretches align with the meridian system in Traditional Chinese Medicine and increase the flow of Qi or energy to your body’s tissues and organs. Each stretch is directly improving your physiological health in a much more targeted way than other forms of exercise can. 

The Bendable Body Method of stretching will make all forms of exercise you do better and protect you from injuring yourself. Bendable Body stretching is the one exercise that gives you the capacity to do other forms of exercise. There’s a misconception that if you run more, you’ll become a better runner, or if you cycle more, you’ll become a better cyclist. This is all untrue. There is a degree to which you need to learn and practice the technique associated with the exercise or sport you like to do. People also see an improvement in cardiovascular health and endorphin release from regular exercise. However, it has also been proven that exercise creates inflammation in the body. It’s also a fact that runners, cyclists, weight lifters, yogis, and athletes become increasingly vulnerable to injury the more they do. At Bendable Body, we view all other forms of exercise as athletic events that people should to do because they enjoy them. But to make your body fit to do more and more of those forms of exercise without fear of injury, you need to stretch using the Bendable Body Method and address the health of your fascia on a regular basis.

Fascia is the web-like tissue that connects all other tissues in the body — the bones, the ligaments, organs, tendons, skin, fat — everything. In its healthiest form, we move freely and without pain and sickness. But over time, everyone’s fascia becomes matted and stiff. This happens as a result of injuries, trauma, or because of lifestyle choices. We sit too long, stand too long, don’t make enough movements, make too many repetitive movements, etc. Our fascia responds to this neglect and abuse by becoming stiff and unbendable. The Bendable Body Method stretches the fascia with resistance and tension, allowing the tissue to regenerate on a cellular level, which ultimately keeps it springy and supple — which means you feel stronger, have more energy, and are more flexible and agile. Because the Bendable Body Method works directly on the fascia, the results are immediate and lasting.

Energy meridians accordion to Traditional Chinese Medicine are subtle channels running through your body (specifically through your fascia) that act as electrical currents or energy conductors. Qi or energy travels through the meridian channels providing vitality to your body's tissues and organs. When fascia becomes dry and stiff — or unbendable — energy can’t pass through it. The meridian channels in that area of your body get blocked and the energy becomes stagnated. This translates into illness, pain, and lack of movement. One of the unique aspects of the Bendable Body Method is that the stretches align with the energetic meridian lines in your body. In the same way that acupuncture stimulates the flow of Qi through the body and increases your physiological health, so does stretching the fascia along those meridian lines.

The Bendable Body Method is a life-changing resistance stretching program that transforms tired, stiff bodies into energetic, healthy beings. Our unique program targets muscle weakness and restructures dense, dehydrated fascia – the cause of pain – and replaces it with healthy fascia, resulting in strong, flexible muscles.

Because each stretch moves along a muscle-fascia plane in your body. Each of the 16 major planes have an associated meridian channel that services a specific organ. We name each stretch for the organ health it improves. (It also happens to be the shortest descriptive name we can use!)

Absolutely! The Bendable Body Method gives you true and lasting flexibility. Most people associate flexibility with range of motion - like doing the splits or touching your toes. (Watch the Flexibility vs. Range of Motion Tutorial). True flexibility is the ability of a muscle to contract and engage through all potential ranges of motion. This means the ability of a muscle to shorten, lengthen, twist and turn. When a muscle can do all of this, it’s not only flexible, it’s also strong! The limiting factor in a muscles ability to be both flexible and strong is the surrounding fascia. The Bendable Body Method targets dense fascia at a cellular level, restructuring it and returning it to a healthy, supple, hydrated state. This is in fact the only way to increase flexibility.

Yes, stretching using the Bendable Body Method increases your strength. It does, faster than traditional strength training and all other forms of exercise. When you follow the 4 Pillars of a Stretch correctly, your muscles contract and resist while you lengthen them eccentrically for the stretch. This ‘loaded eccentric’ movement is unique to all other exercise methods. It engages and restructures fascia on a cellular level to give you an increase in flexibility and true range of motion, and it also makes your muscles stronger and healthier because they’re contracting and engaged through every stretch movement. In fact, during the Bendable Body Method of stretching, muscles are engaged in ways that cannot be accessed with traditional strength training because unhealthy fascia acts as a blockade. You can test it by doing five traditional pushups from your knees or feet. Then three sets of Lung 1. Next, go back and do five push-ups and you’ll discover that you can do them with much more ease and strength, and with no pain in your joints.

Yes! People who experience hyper mobility in their joints are too flexible (to the point of pain and injury in their joints). When they do Bendable Body stretches they discover that they’re very tight and inflexible in their muscle-fascia tissue. Bendable Body stretches do not go into joint structures. They target the ‘belly’ or center of your muscles and surrounding fascia - whereas traditional stretching targets the attachments areas of your muscles and joints. When you increase the health of your fascia, your muscles become stronger. As a result, your movements will become less and less powered by your joints where you are hyper mobile and more powered by your muscles - where they should be powered from.

It does! The Bendable Body Method targets dense fascia. This is what is holding your skeleton in its current alignment and giving you your posture. As you stretch and make your fascia more supple and playable, your skeleton will naturally and effortless return to proper alignment. Your shoulders will sit back, you will have space in your spine and low back, your pelvis will sit properly, you will lose any hyperextension you have in your joints, and you will feel generally more lined up.

The list is long:

• Improved flexibility and strength
• Better posture
• Less joint pain
• Fluidity of movement
• Increased performance levels (speed, accuracy, explosiveness)
• Faster recovery from physical exertion (participating in sports and other forms of exercise) and repetitive movement (like too much sitting or standing)
• Increased strength
• Increased energy levels
• Increased physiological functioning (digestion, inflammation, brain function, immune function, organ health)
• Clear thinking
• Less fatigue
• Better sleep
• Increased body awareness and capacity to anticipate and prevent injury long before it happens