Envision your body as a chemistry set enveloped in a casing (skin and fascia), supported by an internal scaffold (bones), and enlivened by a motor system (nerves and muscles). Everything is interrelated through tubes and labyrinths of cobweb-like fascia. Bone, sinew and digestive juices all work together to make your day. Or not. To further this idea, I’ll share an example from my own embarrassing recent history…
Read MoreRecently a reader asked for help understanding her “swayback”, AKA lumbar hyperlordosis. She had been taught–as have many of you, I suspect—that the correction for exaggerated lumbar curve is to tuck the tailbone down as if aiming it at a point between the heels…
Read MoreLooking back at my recent video posts, I see that I’ve been focusing on the pelvis and hips. That’s not so surprising, because experience has shown me that if your pelvis is balanced and adaptable, then many other aspects of good posture will follow. In my book and DVD I call the pelvis “The Root of Posture.”
This video adds another detail to our pelvis investigations. It introduces anatomical information that can help change the way you sit, the way you connect to your deep corset muscles, and the way you stand, walk and dance…
Read MoreI like this illustration for The New Rules of Posture so much that I’ve begun using it as a logo for my work in general. It depicts one of the characters in my book as she cleans a chandelier. Here’s the story with its “posture moral” at the end.
What I’ve called “posture zones” are muscular and connective tissue structures that lie roughly perpendicular to the body’s vertical mid-line. When we’re under stress—even a pleasant stress like Alison’s excitement at discovering an Art Deco treasure in her new apartment—one or more of the posture zones tightens in order to keep the body stable. The posture zones are like valves whose closing deforms the body’s mid-line and in so doing distorts posture…
Read MoreThis started out to be a video blog about the way short, tight hamstrings impact your posture. But in order to stretch your hamstrings effectively, you’ll need some information about your hips joints. So, first things first…
Read MoreAs the author of The New Rules of Posture, you might think I’d be a paragon of deep abdominal core strength. Sadly, not true. In fact, shortly after the book was published I was beset by an embarrassing bout of low back pain—a sure sign of low toned abs. And this wasn’t the first such episode—I’d been plagued by a back that “went out” pretty regularly for 15 years. Because I’ve been a proponent and practitioner of Rolfing© Structural Integration, I continued to assume that the pain was due to misalignment, and that more structural bodywork was what I needed. But I also saw the occasional chiropractor…
Read MoreToday’s blog entry attempts to answer a reader’s question about sitting support while also sharing something from my current class.
Shawn’s question was about lumbar support for sitting and why I recommend the Zackback sitting strategy that advocates sacral support instead. My reply to Shawn went something like this: For sitting in the car I like to work my sacrum back into the corner between the seat and backrest and then place the Bucky “Baxter” just behind my diaphragm
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