Posture and Your Pelvis

Conventional approaches to improving posture typically emphasize alignment of head, shoulders and spine. But however carefully tutored the upper body may be, improvement in uprightness is unsustainable so long as pelvis and hips lack appropriate foundation, orientation, mobility and adaptiveness. Ida Rolf was adamant about this. In fact, one might suggest that Rolf’s 10-session protocol can be interpreted as “ten steps to freeing the pelvis.”

Pelvic Design

Shaped like a gently molded figure-8, the pelvis receives the scaffolding of the upper body through the sacrum.  Legs and thighs rise from the ground to suspend the pelvis on two unstable knobs.  The highly mobile hip joints combined with plasticity between sacrum and ilia, offer the body a dynamic relationship between the spine and the ground.  However, contemporary sedentary lifestyles all but eliminate the essential role of the pelvis in the design for human movement.  Stiff hips lead to reduced mobility of the whole body. 

Ancestral Pelvises

Evolutionarily, the pelvis is the location in the body where early hominids transitioned from moving through the world transversely on four limbs to upright locomotion on two. They moved from horizontal to vertical through the pelvis. Over the eons the pelvis adapted its shape to the changed orientation of the body.

Contemporary humans make the same transition as they crawl their way out of infancy to toddlerhood.

Movement Coaching for the Pelvis and Legs

My upcoming workshop, Movement Coaching for the Pelvis and Legs, focuses on cultivating pelvis and hip mobility and stability so that spine, shoulders, thorax, and head can be adaptively and sustainably balanced. We’ll review the biomechanics of the pelvis and hips as they relate to legs and spine. We’ll observe movement habits (or lack of movement habits) that inhibit appropriate relationships between limbs and spine. We’ll practice specific exercise patterns that improve pelvis and leg support.  And we’ll see how the simple patterns can be applied to other somatic practices and disciplines such as yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi and dance.

Due to taboos associated with functions within the pelvic basin, many people lack an embodied sense of how the pelvis conveys movement between spine and legs and between legs and torso.  By addressing this gap in embodiment, our clients and students experience integration between legs and body. (Register for the workshop here.)