THE PAULA METHOD

Two weeks ago I got my life as a present. On Sunday, my friend Batia Shtraus drove me home in her car. On route to Ramat Aviv, one car hit us from the back and a bus smashed the car front, while we both got out without a scratch. The ambulance that arrived soon after, we had have sent back. I thought to myself, What do I need an ambulance when I have Paula Garbourg?

But Paula won’t like this opening.

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Picturesque opening: On Pinsker (Street), not far from Leon’s cookies and Avital’s records, in a small house in the back yard, lived a magician. This opening is for legends, but Paula won’t like it either. Paula Garbourg, my gymnastic teacher, vigorously dismisses any tale or fairy story. She seeks harmony and understanding with conventional medicine and asks all her patients a physician referral and her dream – that some one will research and provide a scientific explanation for what she discovered intuitively years ago.

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What Paula Garbourg discovered can be put in two sentences: She discovered that there is a relationship between all the sphincter muscles in our body and that they can inflect on each other, and that it has an healing affect on us.

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Sphincters, to those who do not know, are the Ring muscles in our body, and they are located in all the body outlets, from the eyes, the sexual organs, including of course the breathing mechanism, blood vessels, digestion system and the heart.

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Here is Aya Goldhamer’s story, a certified practitioner for Paula’s method: I met Paula 15 years ago. My mother Liza Shteinberg wrote a book about her brother Haim Arlozorove, and she brought the manuscript to Dr. Naftaly the Graphology expert, who asked her out of curiosity for the entire family’s handwriting sample. Based on my handwriting, and after meeting with him, Dr. Naftaly recommended me to see Paula Garbourg. All that time I suffered from chronic pain in my shoulders that accompanied me since the age of 17. Until then I have tried Alexander and other methods in vain.

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I met Paula and began exercising her method and within a month I felt the relief. I continued exercising and later became a certified practitioner for the Paula Method. Five Months later after reaching complete relief from my trouble I traveled with my husband to the US where I continued practicing and as a result I got rid of acne that disturbed me (after 3 pregnancies!). My breathing and swimming improved dramatically. To date I helped patients get over headaches, a variety of orthopedic problems, incontinence of children and adults, impotency, Asthma and more. As time passes by, I realize the global effect of the method, and am amazed of how many healthy people are those suffering from pain and ailments. With the Paula MethodT the various systems of the body helps each other to regain optimum functioning.

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Professor Goldhamer is head of Neurology Department in Tel-Hashomer Hospital and he ads: One of the advantages of the method in my point of view is the non- dependency of the patient on the practitioner. Once the patient learns the technique, he will know how to help himself by exercising at home. The method helps not only with typical sphincter problems, such as prolapse of the uterus, bed-wetting etc., but also in my field – Neurology.

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I witnessed relief of headaches, back-pain, neck pain and all that is related to the spine. Perhaps the most important, what is called scattered pain from foot to head, for which patients are being referred from one physician expert to another, all of which are addressed here. Dr. Amit Yeroslavski is a pediatrician, specializing in Child Psychiatry. She discovered the Paula Garbourg method two years ago. I arrived as a healthy person and curious physician, and the change was first in myself. I am a petite person,who always wore high heels. Even during hospital shifts I walked on heels. When Paula first got me off the heels, my posture improved, my walking changed and I felt as if I became taller. But over and above, the meeting with Paula was fateful in my life. I found the Paula methodT to be in many aspects, superior to the traditional physiotherapy. It has a meaningful shortcut, time saving and possibility to exercise with children as if it’s a game. The freedom and the “body desire” that symbolize the ring muscles exercises, is most important for children. Both with psychiatry and children- medicine, I am a great believer in self correction, with minimal outside intervention and that’s where the method saved me. A real revelation for me was when I realized that during the exercising I was getting back to the newborn basic posture. Following further observation and checks, I reached an understanding that the visible self-correction of the newborn is thrown into disorder during maturity. With the Paula methodT you can regain part of the lost ability, and that’s its beauty.

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Dr. Hemda Tiferet, a gynecologist in Kaplan Hospital introduced the Paula Garbourg method to the delivery rooms there, to find out that many pregnant women gave birth with less or no pain and with shorter contraction time. Dr. Tiferet tried the Paula methodT in preventing premature birth with delightful results.

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Paula Garbourg immigrated to Israel from Berlin at the age of 29, where she practiced dancing, acrobatics and singing. In 1936 she joined her brother in Kibbutz Bet-Alfa where she contracted chronic Malaria. She then moved to Tel Aviv and married Joseph Garbourg of Yafo and has a son, daughter and four grandchildren. At the age of 35, following a major deterioration of her health, she discovered the sphincter method and summarized her findings in the book – “The Secret of the Ring Muscles”. Mordechai Horowitz, the book editor says: we are offered varieties of health methods that claim to guide man to happiness, many of which are from the Orient. The main goal of most is loosening of the body. Actually it is a true solution to the modern life of tension that is the outcome to our way of life. Yet all the importers of those techniques forget one thing – you cannot stop life’s rhythm. Tomorrow morning you will have to get-up again and continue working, fighting for survival with all its pressure gaining more tension. If we do Yoga in the evening and gain tension in the morning, we get a contradicting circle and its difficult to see the benefit to our body.

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The Paula Garbourg method does not loosen the body. This is a Western product aimed at strengthening the body and its ability to take part in the body’s functioning systems, not against it.

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The writer Netiva Be-Yehuda told me: this book saved me. I suffered from Arthritic pain caused by intense writing and for seven years I did not touch my guitar, which for me was a great loss. Following the radio show of Rachel Halfi about Paula Garbourg I purchased the book, began practicing on my own, and what a miracle – I am back with the guitar and play Bach again. I practice 10 minutes when I wake up and an additional half hour during the day, and there is not a day that passes by that I will not thank God for sending my way the book and that wonderful woman, Paula Garbourg.

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“A do-it-yourself system of sphincter muscle control has helped thousands of people overcome their ailments.” Over the past 35 years, Garbourg’s system has been used by thousands of people. Many of them have never met her, or even one of the instructors that she has trained and who practice in various areas under her auspices.

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Using her [Hebrew/English/Dutch] book on the subject, they have put her system into practice all by themselves, and some tell of amazing results from this do-it-yourself exercise system.