What does good posture mean to you?

What does it look like and what do you do?

Is it more work or less? Can you do that all day?

We can pull ourselves up, or push shoulders down.

But how does that feel? Is it working that way?

The truth is,

Basic good posture is our birthright. Yours, mine, all of us.

It’s what we have when we don’t do anything, as children, we just stand up. It’s a process when we’re babies and toddlers, it’s an instinct within us. We move, we roll, we plop on our bottoms, we stand up. We pull ourselves up as babies and that is sheer delight.

Then life happens. We grow, we go to school. The chair’s too big, the day too long. We want to run and play and recess is an hour away.

Sitting and getting into bad habits, we start going off balance, out of kilter, and our muscles tighten up to keep us upright, or we slump and then put stresses on joints that shouldn’t be in that position or angle.

Mom or our teacher says, “sit up straight,” and we start tensing up to sit up.

Maybe it’s years later and we feel something in the back of the neck sitting at work.

Looking in the mirror doesn’t please us, there’s something missing and we want to be slim and tall and upright and youthful again.

But it’s so much work.

Pull yourself up and it works… for awhile. Maybe a minute, or two. But it’s too much work and we cave in, give in, slump again.

Today I plan to teach my students some secrets to doing posture the easy way.

One of the secrets is that it’s not about making your muscles work harder.

Another is, that even if your ROM* isn’t what it used to be it might surprise you how little it takes to start moving more freely.

First step to undoing all the wrong positions is to become aware of what you want to change.

But in order to execute on that, the secret is what we’re not doing.

Not pushing.

Not pulling

Not adding more tension to a system that’s overworked already.

Instead, we are freeing something.

This is today’s exploration, in the first class of our 4-week series.

Stopping.

Breathing.

Finding freedom.

Coming into balance.

With ease.

 

Once you’re in balance, then you can really move!

Where shall we go with that?

What would you do if you could move like you wish you could?

That’s what we’re exploring today.

 

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Peace,

Dana

*Range of Motion