In our attempt to control a stressful situation, we often unconsciously contract our muscles in a way that limits or blocks the freedom of movement. Our connective tissue - fascia, our body's own internet - also shrinks and toughens in response to any kind of stress: physical, environmental or psychological. When we move with this kind of tension in the body, we have to overcome the resistance of our own muscles. Our potential for easy, graceful, efficient and pain-free movement plummets.  

 So what is posture? Many will describe good or bad posture according to the shape of our upper body - the chest, shoulders, spine, neck - in a static situation, for example standing or sitting still. But our bodies are designed to move! Even when we are standing still, our nerves and muscles are working hard, making hundreds of adjustments per second to keep us balanced. Our posture is generated by how we carry ourselves through life. Someone with the healthy posture is recognized by their easy grace, by effortlessly flowing movement. The movement of someone with unhealthy posture looks heavy, labored and disconnected.

Our posture is created by our interactions with the world around us; how we stabilize ourselves to the events of our lives and how those events feel in our bodies. Our posture  expresses our approach to life and carries a deep connection to our emotional state. Emotion, Latin for " from movement",  is just a physical sensation before we wrap it in words and imbue it with meaning. 

Our posture is inseparable from movement, and movement cannot occur without dynamic stabilization. How we stabilize ourselves determines our posture and the freedom, efficiency and grace with which we move.

If we deem our environment safe, we stabilize in a way that will allow our bodies to remain graceful and open.

In unsafe, stressful situation we tend to compensate by stabilizing too much. We brace ourselves with tension, literally making our bodies smaller by subtle and often subconscious  contractions of deep internal muscles. As we accumulate these habits of internal closure through our repeated attempts to stabilize our lives,  we create poor movement habits and eventually - unhealthy posture.

Pain, too, demands stabilization. When something hurts, we instinctively keep the wounded area very still -  as still as possible, moving the rest of the body around the still point. When something hurts intensely, we immobilize almost everything.

We hold our bodies still in response to danger - real or imagined, memories, insults, hurtful words. When things spin out of control, most people will hold tightness within body's interior or gain weight to counteract a sense of un-groundness.

Eventually, with time, our protection responses become chronic tensions. Our fluid, plastic, mobile bodies become closed, pain-ridden and solidified. Excess stabilization shortens us as we age, reduces the range of motion in our joints and limits our enjoyment of life.

 

 

Healing the posture entails more than just strengthening muscles to hold our bodies in alignment. In fact, exercise without body awareness will actually make poor posture worse by strengthening the muscles around already compressed infrastructure. Healing the posture involves restoring our ability to move freely, yet efficiently - balancing movement and stability. To develop and sustain the improvement in the posture, we  also need to become aware of the interaction between our physical habits and our emotional connection to the world.

 

 

Yoga therapy is a unique, deep, perceptual approach for healing the posture and getting out of pain. It addresses postural change from the inside out and teaches you to feel different,  to develop new sense memories that will bring your body into alignment. As you nurture healthy posture though a process of self-discovery, your newly gained awareness will amplify the benefits from any exercise - golfers will refine their swing, runners improve their time, yoga practitioners will find effortless ease and balance.