Episode 9: Jules Mitchell: The Science of Stretching

http://www.liberatedbody.com/jules-mitchell-lbp-009  I get a chance to talk with Jules Mitchell right after she turned in her Master’s thesis in the science of stretching. Jules’ work blends biomechanics with the tradition of yoga to help people move better, and while looking into the research on stretching she discovered some pretty eye-opening things! For example, the idea that we can persistently stretch a muscle and have it grow longer, it turns out, is not exactly true. We get into many other myths of stretching- and it seems there are plenty- what really works, what’s really risky, and what a better model of viewing the body might be when we put aside the “stretch tight bits to make them looser” paradigm.