Posture and Balance
We’ve all had someone prod us to sit up straight.
And you’ve probably felt the disappointment of failing to live up to the demand.
You see, we just don’t really know how to have good posture. We try to sit up straight, but it tires out our lower back. We try again and find ourselves hunched over before we know it. We pull our shoulders back but feel tension in our upper back. We try and try… but holding our body in the right alignment just never seems to work.
In fact, this experience is so demoralizing that many begin to see “posture” as a bad word.
But don’t be deterred – good posture is important, and its importance isn’t going to “fade away” just because we find it elusive.
To understand and attain good posture, we must redefine it.
Most people think of posture as alignment. We try to attain it by lifting up our ribcage and shoving our head and shoulders back to hold them in some position we think is straight.
Alignment is one characteristic of good posture, but it is not the most important characteristic. And, more importantly, the way we improve it does not require us to hold body parts in some fixed position.
This approach is doomed to fail because we aren’t made up of inanimate objects that can be stacked like boxes. We are alive and cannot treat our body any other way. Although posture seems like the domain of our body, to attain it we must use our conscious mind – we must change how we think about ourselves and our approach to activities.
Good posture develops when we allow ourselves to be dynamic…
… when we are in a state of POISE.
When we were children, we could move with ease and accomplish challenging feats without effort. We still have that ability – we just have to remind ourselves how.
The Alexander technique can show you how to bring your attention to yourself and how you are performing activities.
Bringing the right kind of consciousness to how we are moving allows us to pay attention to the few things that are necessary to bring about a more coordinated use of the body. Then, we don’t have to micro-manage the movements of parts of ourselves; we can simply move in an integrated, easy manner. Coordinated movement comes from prioritizing the right reminders and from choosing not to let our old habits guide us.
Instead of holding ourselves up stiffly, we can develop a way of using our mind and body that quiets unnecessary hyperactivity, but also maintains a liveliness that keeps us ready for whatever we need to do.
Balance improves when we replace our static posture with dynamic poise…
Good balance doesn’t happen at our feet. And it can’t be controlled with perfect alignment.
Balance is determined by how we respond to the constant downward force of gravity. We can let it pull us down, contract our muscles, and pull in on ourselves – or just collapse downward. Most of us respond this way without even knowing it. But we don’t have to.
The Alexander technique can teach you to develop a conscious process that aims you up against gravity and allows you to move with expansiveness and freedom instead of being compressed by it.
The Alexander Technique teaches a conscious process that unlocks our natural state of POISE, allowing us to stand in BALANCE and move in a COORDINATED way.
Find your natural state of poise!
Schedule a free consultation to learn how to calm your mind, enliven your body, and move with a natural state of ease. You can have good posture without even trying!