“Founded upon rigorous scientific research and 30 years of clinical experience as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Master Your Core offers a practical holistic plan to improve your health starting with your core. This terrific book will help you integrate your mind, body, and spirit in an easy-to-follow program to reduce your risk of injury, improve performance, and optimize your physical, mental, and emotional health.”
—David Katz MD, MPH
CEO DietID
President True Health Initiative
Founding Director Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center
Health Journalist
“Highly recommended!”
— Dean Ornish, M.D.
Founder & President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute
Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF
author, UnDo It!
“Carefully built upon rigorous science and a rich personal clinical experience, Dr. Zazulak shares with us a blueprint for improved health, described in understandable and approachable terms in her book, Master Your Core. As a scientist, Dr. Zazulak first highlights the incontrovertible disparities in injury prevalence, pattern and recovery in females of all ages, some based upon physiological and anatomical considerations and others reflecting societal or cultural influences. In her role as clinician, Dr. Zazulak constructs a framework of interventions to mitigate the incidences of, and enhance the recovery from these health threats, as exemplified by the disproportionate rate of anterior cruciate ligament injuries in females and the silent pandemic consequences of osteoporosis. The foundation for these improvements, the opportunity of empowerment, is based upon core stability, and integrates use of mind, body, and spirit in a stepwise program to achieve the intended benefits in outcome.
Master Your Core is first a treatise for women. It carefully and convincingly explains the problems and then solutions to musculoskeletal maladies disproportionately affecting females versus males. If one understands the factual basis for concerns, the scientific foundation for repair and one’s ability to successfully pursue these remedies, then we are empowered and motivated to make substantial investments and improvements in our own health. But secondly, this book is an epiphany for men, who will not only benefit from improving their own core health, but are also important stakeholders in the well-being of women by virtue of a spectrum of meaningful and impactful relationships. Master Your Core is a source of enlightenment for us all.”
—Gary E. Friedlaender, MD, FAAOS, FAOA, FOR Wayne O Southwick Professor of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Chair Emeritus, Orthopaedics and. Rehabilitation, Yale University School of Medicine
“I am the poster girl for this book . . . I am a writer, and writing is often a lonely profession that requires long hours of concentrated sitting. Several hours would go by before the pain of being slumped over a hot computer would jerk me out of my reverie and let me know that I had to get up and move. Having this book on my worktable would lead me to thumb through to find the perfect movement that would straighten out the kinks and relax my mind, as well as my muscles. When I did my own personal routine at the end of the workday, I found mental and emotional release as well as physical restoral. I wish I had had it years ago so that I could have trained my daughter to follow it from her childhood. Now she and her own daughter have copies and are happy practitioners. This program is simple and direct, and it makes great sense, particularly for the fractious and fragmented time we live in now.”
—Deirdre Bair, author, recipient of the National Book Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
“As former patients of Dr. Zazulak, my wife and I have always admired Billie’s dedication to her profession and to the advancement of women’s health. I share my perspective, as a patient who personally benefited from her skill and acumen, and as a healthcare professional who took great pride in her success as a clinician, researcher, and educator and in the very positive impact she had on her patients, her colleagues and her students. Master Your Core is an essential read foreveryone who hopes to optimize their holistic self.”
—Joseph A. Zaccagnino, President and Chief Executive Officer Emeritus, Yale New Haven Health System
“Master Your Core is an empowering and practical book for everyone. Dr. Zazulak has distilled her years of scientific research and clinical experience into this easy-to-understand and highly actionable guide for improving your health. Women are not little men, and Dr. Zazulak helps us understand the important differences between men and women that translate into significant medical risk—for example, torn anterior cruciate ligaments in young female athletes and hip fractures in seniors. She encourages us to accelerate our wellness through the power of the mind-body-spirit connection. I highly endorse this book which supports us in our growth to become happier, healthier, and magnificent.”
—Mary I. O’Connor, MD, Director, Center for Musculoskeletal Care, Yale School of Medicine Chair, Movement is Life, Emerita Professor of Orthopaedics, Mayo Clinic
“I have known Dr. Zazulak since she came on staff at Yale many years ago. From day one, she established alliances within the Yale School of Medicine, nationally and internationally, to pursue her research interests of injury prevention, recovery, and wellness. Her prestigious work earned special recognition when she received the American Physical Therapy Association’s Rose Award for Excellence in Research, an event I was privileged to attend. I am pleased to see the years of Dr. Zazulak’s research and clinical expertise come together in this important book, which helps to bridge gender disparities in research without ignoring similarities between women and men. I highly recommend Master Your Core to anyone interested in a scientifically-based holistic approach to health.”
—Michael Parisi, PT, MS, MBA, Director of Rehabilitation Services (1985-2016), Yale-New Haven Hospital
“I would highly recommend Dr. Zazulak’s comprehensive and enlightening book Master Your Core to every woman, man, trainer, teacher, doctor, coach, parent, and grandparent of every young child. I greatly respect Billie’s integrated, holistic, and evidence-based program, and I am overjoyed to see her invaluable knowledge shared with the world to empower everyone for optimal core wellness and injury prevention.”
—Timothy Hewett PhD, World renowned injury prevention expert
“I had the pleasure of meeting and collaborating with Dr. Bohdanna “Billie” Zazulak over the past few years while working together to implement and institute technology in the practice of physical therapy. During this time, I also admired her clinical skills in managing and treating her patients. Her most recent publication, Master Your Core is a must read. As a health professional who has two active young daughters who are also athletes, the discussion on core-strengthening (both physical and holistic) is imperative. She has combined her extensive research with personal narratives to give the reader a simple and thorough explanation regarding the world of injury prevention.”
—Anang Chokshi DPT, OCS, SCS, Chief Clinical Officer for Reflexion Health Digital Healthcare
“With a strong foundation of orthopedic science, almost three decades of clinical physical therapy and a strong passion for knowledge dissemination, Bohdanna Zazulak’s Master Your Core synthesizes our present knowledge of core stability into a meaningful and practical treatise on injury prevention, functional recovery and health maintenance. Contrary to the often-hackneyed terms of “core strengthening” and “core stability”, the scientific basis for these concepts is clearly explained and highlighted by Dr. Zazulak’s fascinating personal and familial experiences to clarify abstract topics for all readers to understand. Not just a crucial roadmap, Master Your Core provides indispensable, practical recommendations on promoting your physical, psychological and spiritual core, which is essential for empowering everyone, young and old. Dr. Zazulak’s book should be considered required reading for all!”
—Michael Medvecky, MD, FAAOS, FAOA, Chief of Sports Medicine/ Associate Professor, Dept. of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation, Yale University School of Medicine
“As a researcher who has devoted my career to the study of spinal biomechanics, pain and injury, I feel privileged to have collaborated with Dr. Zazulak over the years at Yale. I am thrilled to see our work included in this scientifically based guide to a healthy, injury free body available to everyone in an easily understood format. This compelling and comprehensive work not only incorporates the scientific basis for core stability training, but also illuminates our current understanding of mind and spirit influences on injury, illness, and overall wellness that we are only beginning to appreciate as scientists. In this book, Dr. Zazulak masterfully integrates our current knowledge about the mind-body interplay and offers the readers encouragement to take charge of their own health and wellness using her holistic approach.”
—Jacek Cholewicki, PhD, Walter F. Patenge Endowed Professor of Spinal Biomechanics, Director of the Michigan State University, Center for Orthopedic Research
“The term “core stability” can sometimes seem abstract and hard to relate to our day to day wellbeing. In this book, Dr. Zazulak uses her extensive expertise to situate core stability just where it belongs, at the centre at a healthy body and a healthy life.”
—Emma Dunphy PhD, University College London
“What is unique and powerful about Dr Bohdanna Zazulak’s Master Your Core is her lively, fact filled approach to “the core”. The book looks at core stability from a very broad perspective incorporating mental and physical parameters. She brings in unique approaches that are simply not available elsewhere. In the end, one comes out feeling very enriched and, surprisingly, for a book of this nature, it is hard to put down because of the anecdotes, stories, facts, and her appealing style of writing. She talks about such matters as posterior chain, the knee as a weak link, neck to wall measurement, smiling collar bones, hormonal effects, types of meditation, heart, mind, breathing, gratitude, quieting the vagus nerve, and the importance of naps. All of this is interspersed with some great stories including those of her family and her own mountain bike accident experience. I strongly recommend it for anyone engaging with athletes and really anybody who has an interest in and basic understanding of the core who wants a full understanding. I might add that many aspects of her book are useful for personal life style and quality of life decisions
—John P. Fulkerson, M.D., Professor of Orthopedic Surgery
Yale University School of Medicine
“Being an injury prevention researcher myself, I was deeply impressed while reading this amazing book. Based on her natural scientific research, Dr. Zazulak complements her profound knowledge about injury prevention, functional recovery and general health with ancient philosophies-strategies and a socio-cultural perspective to create a holistic view of our health. Besides her thorough instructions regarding neuromuscular training for enhancing core stability, she demonstrates with an evidence-based approach that a “stable core” does not solely depend on our physics, but includes our mind and spirit as well. Feeling confident about, and being in tune with your core will change your postural pattern and make you move differently, resulting in a reduced risk of injury and an overall support for functional recovery and wellbeing. Billie´s scientific research highlights that women have a significant higher risk of injury than men. The crucial point is we can change this dilemma! This book equips you with everything you need to start right now.”
—Sabrina Erdrich, PhD, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Sports Neuromechanics Lab Heidelberg, Germany
“Master Your Core is a wealth of information! As a former professional athlete, I wish I had this in my hands while I was training for the NHL. After reading this book I have learned breathing and core training techniques that have improved my health dramatically! With so much misinformation out there on core stability, it’s difficult to know what program to follow. Dr. Zazulak, as a trusted source, gives us the real “Core Bible” of fundamental, elite, and world class training techniques, with in-depth, scientifically based insight on how the mind comes into play for health and peak performance.”
—Mike Hartman, National Hockey League 1986-1995, Stanley Cup Champion 1993-1994 New York Rangers