What IS Posture?

Vitruvian Woman!

I was recently interviewed for Jill Miller’s TuneUp Fitness Blog.  Since I am but one of many contributors on posture, it’s likely that only a little of what I shared will make it into the finished piece.  So I decided to share the whole Q&A here.

What is most important to know (or most misunderstood) about posture?

Good posture has historically been taught as an idealized positioning of body parts. It’s a static concept —something you must do with your body in order to appear a certain way. Typical postural ideals include a straight spine, broad chest, shoulders back, head lifted, and alignment along a midline.  Poor posture is a configuration of the body that doesn’t conform to the ideal.

In reality, posture is dynamic. It’s the process of moving the body through time and space. Ideal posture is a moment in time.

At any given moment we must be perceptually oriented to the ground and to the spatial field surrounding us. That perceptual orientation allows us to feel secure enough in our environment to freely express ourselves in response to what we are facing.

When one’s perceptual orientation is incomplete, the body finds alternative ways to feel secure—gripped toes, clenched pelvic floor, held breath, tense shoulders.  Such tensions configure body parts in ways that limit movement. Tight shoulders, for example, block expansive gestures of the arms and hands and also prevent vertical extension of the spine through the upper body. 

Why is posture important (or IS it important)?  Consequences of bad posture.

Yes, posture is important, and has consequences.
In my recent book, Your Body Mandala, I talk about it this way: every point on and within your body has potential to initiate movement in any direction. Perceiving your body in three-dimensional space gives you support from the space.  It is as if your body is suspended within an invisible network of potential movement vectors. Such awareness of the space around your body maintains the space within your body. I call this perceptual tensegrity.

(Tensegrity is a word coined by Buckminster Fuller to describe the balance of tension and compression that supports a structure such as the geodesic dome. Tensegrity principles are now being used to understand biological processes. I use the term to define optimal perceptual orientation.)

Life events can block your body’s potential movements due to illness, trauma, repetitive work activities and emotion. When this happens, areas of the body become quiet, tense, and withdrawn from the surrounding space. The spatial field surrounding the body shrinks. In those areas the potential to move is blocked. Perceptual tensegrity directly affects structural/postural tensegrity.

Diminished movement potential anywhere in the body weakens function. Biomechanical, digestive, respiratory, and psychosocial functions— all can be affected.

Most common postural issues you see and what to do about them.

The most common postural issue is loss of embodiment. You cannot make full use of your body as a perceptual instrument if your only awareness of your body takes place when you 1) feel pain, or 2) look in a mirror.

In western culture, the region of the body that is often absent in what we might call a perceptual body map is the pelvis. Most people do not sense the location of their hip joints within the pelvis or know that the pelvic floor/genital area is circumscribed by bone.

It’s curious that such a dynamic place in our bodies should be occluded from awareness. Pelvic semi-consciousness is combined with hip and buttock tensions that may occur for a variety of reasons. We can’t blame it entirely on the “tyranny of chair.” Tension in the pelvis restricts free transmission of movement through the hips into the legs and feet as well as up through the spine and torso.

Why do we have so much hip and buttock tension?

• Poor, sluggish digestion. I’ve tracked increasing incidence of constipation among my clients. And noticed an increasing number of ads for stool softeners on TV. 

• too much sitting on chairs.

• Falls and other injuries

• Emotional and physical sexual abuse; shame

• Tight clothing and tensions engaged to appear thinner
  
  

Cues/coaching to help people develop good posture.

My books, The New Rules of Posture and Your Body Mandala, both include sensory meditations that help people cultivate postural tensegrity. I coach my readers to become more aware of the space around their bodies, and to rest into the weight of their bones.  

Along with the tyranny of the chair we are also subject to the tyranny of devices. Looking at screens confines our visual perception to a narrow window straight in front of us. Such perceptual restriction subtly compresses the body’s joints and renders movement less expansive. So I help people cultivate their peripheral vision. When focused vision can be balanced with peripheral vision the body functions better biomechanically. Balance improves, as does range of motion in the spine. 

To increase embodiment of the pelvis, I help people become aware of the pelvic rami, two branches of bone between the sit bones and pubic bone. These bones at the base of the pelvis are like rockers or “feet” for the pelvis. I use the concept of a spacious triangle between the two sit bones and tailbone, the area anatomists call the anal triangle. Excessive sitting invites the coccyx forward and too close to the sit bones.  Consciously widening that “tail space” restores greater range of movement in the hip joints and normalizes the lumbar curve. This makes walking more efficient and graceful.

Please share your thoughts about the breath/posture connection.

It’s important to understand that oxygen exchange takes place mostly in the lower lobes of the lungs where we have the most capillaries. Also, the bulk of the lung tissue is in the back of the body. 

Furthermore, each rib has two connections on either side of the vertebrae. These rib heads function like spacers in between neighboring vertebrae. Breathing in is facilitated by a very subtle extension of the spine which in turn allows the ribs to externally rotate, expanding the rib cage.

The words “Take a deep breath” often inspire a gulping of air into the upper chest. Upper chest breathing does not take advantage of the natural coordination between the vertebral segments and the individual ribs. This actually prevents breath from being “deep.”

Please share any specific examples of clients or patients (or your own self) that apply to any of these answers.

I’m currently dealing with a mild case of Parkinson’s disease which affects the left side of my body with tremor and stiffness.  I make it a daily practice, to be aware of spatial orientation on the left side of my body. I try to cultivate this peripersonal space while I’m working out, walking, or doing chores. It’s hardest to maintain when I’m trying to get something done. But to the extent that I can, my balance and movement sequencing improve.

Peripersonal Space

In Your Body Mandala Ch. 3 & 4, I teach readers to become aware of the peripersonal space and the movement expression of it called kinesphere.  We all have unconscious habits of spatial awareness.  The book has links to audio recordings of my sensory meditations on peripersonal space.

© 2020 Mary Bond