Your Posture Is Your Story

(The book begins with a passage describing the posture problems faced by a young woman named Carmen. The author, watching Carmen at work behind a check-out counter in a Target store, reflects on numerous possible causes for the low back pain the woman is complaining about.)

Our culture’s assumption about getting older is that posture will deteriorate and the body will become a burden. If this is our belief, it is no wonder that we’d rather not think about caring for our bodies.
Aging happens to us all, however, and knowing how to use your body well will make a huge difference in how you experience the process. Carmen, if she does not change her habitual way of doing things, will find herself at age fifty with hunched shoulders, a forward head, a thickened waist, and a protruding belly. She’ll try to straighten up but will find that holding herself erect demands too much effort. Added to her back pain will be a host of other symptoms: headaches, a sore shoulder, digestive problems, and, although she won’t like to talk about it, urinary incontinence. She’ll find it hard to enjoy the kind of things she now loves to do, like salsa dancing on Friday nights.
Such a picture is not an unfamiliar one, but it does not have to be true once you understand how to manage your body in harmony with the principles set forth in this book. You can have a body that stands gracefully and moves effortlessly throughout life when you learn to use it the way it is designed to be used. It is never too soon, or too late, to create healthier posture.
Most people think about posture as the body’s alignment or position when sitting or standing still. Good posture is commonly defined in terms of the contours of the upper body-the chest, shoulders, spine and neck. Although people may be aware that balance over the feet has something to do with good posture, this usually is not what they consider first.
If this is your definition, I’d like to help you to expand it. I see posture not as how you hold your body when you’re still but as how you carry it while you’re moving. This distinction reveals posture to be a dynamic activity rather than a static attitude. Your posture is generated by your movement–by the way you carry yourself as you proceed through your life.
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We cannot separate posture from movement or activity from how we stabilize our bodies in order to act. How we stabilize ourselves determines our posture and the freedom, efficiency, and grace with which we move. The essence of posture, then, is the unique way in which each of us negotiates between moving and holding still in relationship to gravity.

(a thanks to Mary Bond whose mission as a writer, teacher and bodyworker, is to help people further that understanding and respect. She believes that becoming more attuned to our physical experience affects the choices we make in relation to ourselves, to our fellow human beings, our environment and to our planet. Her mission is to contribute to humanity’s deeper embodiment.)

I couldn’t agree more!

Now, Go Strike a Pose~