Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

I made a quick video tour of our apartment which goes up for sale on March 1. It’s just a quick video; nothing fancy.  You really need to come by and see it to get a feeling for how charming it is. A penthouse duplex in an elevator building with a security door that requires a secret code for entry after 11pm. The listing price is $645,000. One thing I neglected to show in the video is the spectacular view of Manhattan.    From the living room and from the roof-deck you’re facing uptown and have a skyline view of the AOL/Time Warner Center, the Hearst Building, World Wide Plaza Buildings, The New Times Building and many other prominent skyscrapers.    From the privacy of the roof deck, you can see the changing colors on the Empire State Building, watch fireworks over Central Park or over the Hudson River, and see the ball drop and the confetti rise up over Times Square. 

Your brain is your key to health. These exercises are meant to be practiced with a mental focus on your body’s energy. This is truly a mind-body connection exercise.  Energy Flow Vibration uncovers your tremendous natural power to create, to heal and to love. Health is created by enhancing energy flow in the body. Here are some basic exercises you can do at home to improve your brain health.  These are just meant to be a sample of the types of things you can do. Feel free to come up with your own or to spend a lot more time on the ones I’m showing.  Practice them with mindful and grand intentions that you are transforming yourself. Don’t just go through the motions of the exercises. Without this mindset, they won’t be as effective. Hold a very detailed picture in your mind, of “Yourself As You Would Like To Be.” Everyone’s mind is a little bit different, so you’ll eventually find the groove that works best for you, but follow these guidelines to get you started: Bigger Is...

I have created a home-study program designed to help you transform into having a healthy lifestyle. Watch this video that explains a little bit about where it came from and how it works, then click below to get started with your transformation. This program will teach you... - exactly how much water you should be drinking. - a fun way to get a variety of nutritious foods in your diet (without counting calories) - many techniques for relaxation and dealing with stress - a few breathing techniques for a variety of purposes - how to get better quality sleep - how to walk properly - a simple way to address kinks, aches and pains in your body - a thorough explanation of the 'best exercise you can do' and many other tips and guidance towards your healthy lifestyle. This is a 90 day home study program that includes an email each day.  Each email contains another step towards implementing your healthy lifestyle.  If you tried to do it all at once, it would ...

I’ve been spending this entire week doing repairs and improvements around the house. Doing all of this manual labor has gotten me thinking.  I’m lucky I know how to use my body properly or I may be making myself sore from all of this. I hear all the time from people who hurt their backs while doing manual labor.  It doesn’t happen as much to people who do it for a living as compared to people who don’t.  Because when people who don’t move that much set out to do something physical, they may not have good habits established and may not be practiced in the best ways to move. I’ve made a little video here to get you started thinking about ways you can move your body while doing simple household chores. The main emphasis is to protect your back while moving around the house, but these principles can also be applied to having proper body mechanics when exercising or doing anything physical. Notice that the movements apply to things that don’t even seem to be strenuous. Many ba...

I’m spending this week getting the apartment ready to show. The plan is to be able to put the place on the market on March 1. So, I’m spending all of my time this week getting rid of clutter, cleaning up all the nooks and crannies and fixing those little things like loose handles, patches that need some touch-up paint, and little improvements geared towards appealing to a buyer’s eyes. So, since I don’t have a lot of time to make videos this week, I’m just going to post this really brief one.  I’m demonstrating a great stretch for the torso that emphasizes ‘lateral stretch of the spine.”   This type of stretch is really good for anyone with tightness in their lower back.  Very often, the lateral stretch is perfect because it addresses the obliques and the quadratus lumborum--two muscle groups that are often tight, often overlooked and are often a direct cause of lack of mobility and of lower back pain and discomfort. So, watch this video and use it to free up the tension ...

I’ve been getting requests to make another video.  So... In this video I’m demonstrating a movement I learned from Shmuel Tatz.  He teaches it to people who have lower back pain and/or tension.  Use this movement whenever you want to free up your back.  You can do it every day, or as often as you like. Avoid the common mistake of moving quickly.  The movement should be done with awareness and sensitivity. The purpose of the movement is to change the state of your back muscles from tight and stiff to loose and comfortable. Let me know how you like the movement I call The Worm.

I've now been studying Body Tuning with Shmuel Tatz for four months.  I’m not following a protocol or any kind of formal training.  I’m just observing and absorbing the Body Tuning concepts and approach. In the beginning of my apprenticeship, I had faith, but wasn’t sure I was going to be able to learn anything this way.  And in fact, just about a month ago, I was getting down on myself and thinking I wasn’t going to be able to pick up this ‘art’ at all.  I thought, this is just a natural gift that you have or you don’t have.  How can I learn to be artistic and intuitive?? But Yesterday as I was doing my usual observations, lunchtime started to roll around.  As Shmuel was putting on his jacket to head out to lunch, I heard him say something in Russian to his colleague, Valarie, which included the word “Jason” so my ears perked up. Valarie nodded and motioned for me to come and watch what he was doing on his patient.  I don’t usually watch Valarie beca...

The other day, I was talking with Viktor; a massage therapist who works at the Body Tuning studio. I was telling him about how frustrated I was that ever since my injury, I’ve been asymmetrical. I blogged about that here. He told me that in days of yore, the warriors and gladiators all had one side of their upper bodies that was a lot bigger and stronger than the other.  He explained how they’d use one arm for the shield and the other to wield the weapon.  The side with the weapon would be a lot more muscular, and therefore that look was revered as being extremely virile. I didn’t know what to say.  I had been calling myself a Warrior for years. And I didn’t know this about the warriors.  So maybe I’m just fulfilling my own prophecy.  But it got me thinking about ways to better develop my right side.  The workouts that I’ve been doing mostly are balanced and aren’t really helpful in addressing the imbalance I have.   Then I remembered that wh...

Today is exactly one month from the day I made the resolve to get back into shape. I made a video on that first day.  In it, I stood up and showed my body and pointed out what I wanted to change about it.  Then I went to the kitchen and gave an example of the type of eating I was going to be doing to achieve my goals. And then I went into the living room, where I demonstrated some of the types of movements I would be using to take care of my body. So today I made another video, similar to that one I made on the first day.  I’ll first show my body and we can look at how it has changed in the month.  And then I’ll go into the kitchen for another demo of my style of eating, and finally back into the living room for a demo of some more of my movements.  Check out the original video if you want a more in depth comparison than what I show on this video  I’m happy with the shape I’ve gotten myself into. Not that I was in bad shape thirty days ago, but I knew I cou...

I woke up today with lots of energy, so I did my moderate workout first thing. Since it was only a moderate and not an intense workout, and also since it was the first time for doing these movements, I took it pretty easy, going through the motions.  I was sure to give my body time to adjust to the movements for this month.  There’s plenty of time to add the intensity later.  Better safe than sorry. My workout felt great.  Then I took a shower and made breakfast. Breakfast today was some leftover sliced steak from last night and some steamed cauliflower cooked with a couple of eggs. Then at around 1:30 I had most of a whole rotisserie chicken with a few red and yellow potatoes and some marinated artichoke hearts. Because of a time crunch, I didn’t have time to eat dinner as planned after my Nia class, so I just grabbed a handful each of pecans, cashews and blueberries and ate them on the way to the theater. Then, when I got home at 11pm, I heated up some BBQ’d ch...

Robin had been doing yoga for many years. She loved it. And she often found that it helped her get relief from time to time when she had little pains or tight spots.  But about six months ago, she hurt her neck doing a headstand. At first, she thought it would get better, so she kept going back to yoga, but after a while she realized she was going to need more attention. She stopped doing yoga and tried physical therapy and acupuncture.  The physical therapist would give her some exercises to do and some elementary mobilizations, but she didn’t see a lot of results. And the physical therapist was really only committed to the extent of her insurance coverage. Once her insurance ran out, her treatments were over.  And she felt no better. At the acupuncturist, her experience was different.  She did some cupping techniques and the needles, but Robin thought her manner was too anxious and found it hard to relax. She thought she might be getting some relief, so she didn’t ...

Today is day 29 of my 30 day transformation.  It is a flow day, so I’ll do some sort of Flow workout, which is very low intensity.  And since today is February 1 and a new month, I’ll change all of my workouts.  For the entire month of January, I’ve been using the same movements throughout.  Of course, I’ve been tweaking them in minor ways to either improve my body alignment if something didn’t feel right or to increase the sophistication if I needed more of a challenge.  This gives me a chance to get familiar  with the movements so I can really blast out some serious intensity on Intense Workout Days, and to spend my energy on Moderate Workout Days developing my skills and honing my movements throughout the month. But then, by changing my movements up each month, I prevent myself from developing my body in any one particular shape.  Because I keep the movements changing up, I get the benefit of multiple directions of movement and different stresses pl...

I started this morning with two big glasses of water. I usually only do one. But for many reasons, I decided to do two today.  One reason was that I’ve noticed the color of my urine has been really dark the past day or so.  Another is the fact that I was really dry-mouthed and not sweating as much as usual during my workout. And thirdly, was that I woke up feeling thirsty. I don’t wake up feeling thirsty, usually. But I do still start my day with a big glass of water out of habit.  After my water, I had my coffee and made my breakfast: three fried eggs mixed with a cup of garbanzo beans and topped with half an avocado For lunch I had a modest banana and handful of cashews, which left me hungry after just a couple of hours.  So, at around quarter to five I heated up some leftover steamed butternut squash with the leftover thai peanut chicken breast and had that with the rest of the avocado from this morning. After class I came home and made a sirloin butt steak wit...

This is the story of Maggie (not her real name). Back in the 1990’s Maggie got into a car accident that resulted in a lot of pain in her knee. She went to see many specialists, including physical therapists, acupuncturists and medical doctors, but no one was able to offer her any lasting results. Mostly they would manually manipulate her knee for about five minutes and then put her on some kind of machine. They didn’t tell her anything more could be done to help her.  Her leg muscles were atrophying (wasting away) at an alarming rate. The only thing that gave her a modicum of help was acupuncture, which helped her regain her muscle tone, but didn’t offer relief from the pain. Finally, her friend told her about Shmuel Tatz.  “This is the guy who can help you,” he said.  Maggie went in to see Dr Tatz, who after touching her knee for no more than five minutes, reported, “This is jammed.  I can help you in two sessions per week and it will take ten or twelve weeks.” Ten ...