ANANN YASSIN:
Listen to an interview with Annan Yassin of Grace Haven Dance Studio in Hawkesbury about Foundation Training.
She tells us about a new way she has found to deal with back pain.

With permission of The Review
by Theresa Ketterling
HAWKESBURY – Anann Yassin says she’s experienced back pain on and off for most of her life.
“My first injury was when I was 11,” she says.
Yassin is a belly-dancing instructor in Hawkesbury. “I want to teach belly dancing until I drop, because I love it,” she says. But I know I have old injuries.”
Yassin says she’s experimented with lots of different approaches, but when she heard Eric Goodman speaking about his exercise program, it resonated.
“Yes, he was a chiropractor but he had also hurt his own back, which I always find extra special,” she says. “My interest was piqued.”
Despite being “surrounded by the best professionals,” Goodman could not fix his own back pain. He developed Foundation Training – a series of exercises aimed at people in pain as well as athletes. The basics are sold on DVDs and in a book. The focus is on strengthening your “posterior chain of muscles” – a series of muscles from beneath your feet to the top of your neck which Goodman says is your real core – and not depending as much on your abdominal muscles.
“I’m in back pain watching the interview. I’m watching it on my phone,” says Yassin. “But he did what’s called a decompression breath.” Yassin says she followed along and immediately felt better.
After buying Foundation Training DVDs and books and following it on her own for about a year, Yassin went to New York to train with Goodman to become an instructor.
On its surface, Foundation Training seems very different from Yassin’s usual classes in Belly Dancing but she says it can be used to strengthen the body for all forms of exercise.
“I started it from the perspective of my own body,” she says. Yassin says a session of Foundation Training can help relieve her stiffness after belly dancing.
“I get very excited about it, because for a long long time I’ve been working with my back.” She says she feels she has “finally found something that supports me to do everything I want to do.”
“When you’re in pain, it tends to distract you from the other issues,” says Yassin.
She says Foundation Training doesn’t replace exercise, and as someone who’s interested in alternative medicine, she still has faith in other activities: acupuncture, osteopathy, yoga.
But she says Foundation Training doesn’t wear her out, like other exercise regimes do sometimes. “It doesn’t break the body down. I feel awake and ready to go.”
She also likes how accessible it is.
“This is me needing nobody. Once you know what you’re doing you don’t need any equipment,” she says.
Up until now, Yassin has been giving private Foundation Training courses. She says some but not all of her students have chronic pain. Foundation Training can be used preventatively as well, she says – it’s how her belly dancers warm up.
Our lifestyles can cause bad posture and pain, she says. “A lot of our problem is sitting. We drive, sitting in the car, on the computer. Everything becomes compacted.”
Even stress contributes, says Yassin. “You’ve got a load on your shoulders, you walk like you have a load on your shoulders.”
She says it’s very much about “bringing space back into the body. Because so much of what we do closes everything down.”
For more information about Yassin’s group Foundation Training classes, which she will keep small, contact her at (613) 678-1421 or anannyassin(at)hotmail.com.
For more information about Foundation Training visit the web site; foundationtraining.com