STAND UP STRAIGHT.......OR SHOULD WE?
~ Stand up straight!
~ Sit up!
~ Don't slouch!
~ Your posture is terrible!
~ If you fixed your posture you would be so much.......fill in the blank with any term that adds shame and judgement
I am going to bet on the fact that everyone single one of you will have been told these words at some point in your life and I bet at some point you have also told them to yourself or to a friend, loved one. In fact full confession I have definitely said it to my youngest when I have found her slumped over her phone.
I am also going to bet on the fact that most of us have experienced pain in some capacity, at some point, in our body.
When it comes to posture there is a narrative that has become the norm and that narrative is on the understanding that standing taller is better, more sexy, more successful and so much more in general. There is something about standing more upright that has people thinking that they occupy more space, that as a result they can be more assertive, more powerful. That their tall-ness means that they are winning. That those who slouch are losers and that those who do not occupy space with an upright spine, somehow are not as present.
I spend my days hearing people say that their posture is terrible and that they just feel that if they could fix that then all their problems would go away. I also spend my days reading about people wanting to buy some new gadget or device that will help them have better posture. There are blogs upon blogs written about posture. Everyone has an opinion on it, feeding into this narrative of shame and judgement.
But let's just think about what standing is, rather than get stuck on what we think standing should be. Starting with the human skeleton, an incredible architectural structure designed to support the body, yet exert some gravitational force to this structure and what you get is forward momentum. In other words the human skeleton is always ready to fall forward. Within this skeleton there are certain junctions that have capacity to move forward with this momentum such as the knees, the pelvis, the thoracic cage and the head. But bring any one of these junctions forward and your internal navigation system will likely see this as falling.
So let's now add in the nervous system. The nervous system is an amazingly complex and intricate messaging system that coordinates your body through the maps of movement that it knows and feels safe with. The reality though is that what your nervous system thinks is safe is based upon a whole heap of stuff, mostly past experiences and belief systems and is not always based on reality. As much as we think we are in control of our nervous system, a lot of the time we are not. Stuff is going on in our brains and we have no idea, we may get glimpses of it and over time we may get better at catching it. But the truth is there is a lot outside of our control.
So human skeleton impacted upon by gravity plus a nervous system that is doing its absolute best to ensure that it feels safe but is not always in control. Therefore it may be safe to assume that falling forward is not something that we are too comfortable about and that we will respond in the only way we know how to stop ourselves from falling. We try to lean back.
Let's put that into some context. You are doing a job, be in the office or at home with your family, whatever it is and your sense of self is derived from the accomplishment of that job. But you are also juggling a load of other stuff which is inclined to compromise your ability to achieve all the stuff you think you need to achieve. So something has to fall but what and how comfortable are we with letting something fall, what are the consequences of something falling and how do you feel about that?
Based on the idea that what we think is felt in our bodies and what we feel in our bodies is felt through our thoughts, it would stand to reason that falling is difficult for us and that our nervous system and physical structures will do everything they can to hold us upright. So it would also stand to reason that those junctions that are designed for forward motion are just not that excited about going forward and in fact do all they can to do the exact opposite. So your nervous system that is busy coordinating the maps within us is working hard to instruct the body to do just that, to pull you back from falling into the deep well of gravity. Pulling you away from my be scary or the stuff that you fear.
Now let’s come back to the idea of standing upright and the impact that this narrative has upon us. Very simply a body that looks like it is able to initiate movement at any time may not fit our exacting ideals around posture. A body that has forward momentum in it needs to have just that, forward momentum. A body that has pain, is a body that is not comfortable falling and the chances are that somewhere in the chain it is not able to let force in. So what do we do to overcompensate? We try to meet some ideal, we lock the knees, we pull the shoulders back, we lift the sternum.......anything that makes us feel that we are standing more erect. We overcompensate in order to stop this feeling of falling.
Let’s also come back to the part of the narrative where we feel standing up straight is what makes us more beautiful, more powerful and occupying more space. You know that feeling you get when you are with someone and just get a sense that they are at ease, that they have comfort and that actually being in their presence feels safe. You also know that feeling you get when you are with someone when you just get a sense that they are holding on tight to something, unwilling to let go, it is possible that you may also not actually feel that safe in their presence. Which of the two for you occupy more space? Is occupying space really anything at all to do with posture, is in fact being powerful or beautiful at all to do with posture or is it our nervous system looking for a reason to explain something that we feel. Could we replace the sense that someone who occupies more space, someone who is more at ease with their body is someone who is willing to fall.
So how do allow our bodies to fall? In what way can we explore this so that we safe?
Try this enquiry and see what you feel, explore what thoughts come up and notice any new or alien feelings.
Try standing upright, simply let your feet sink into the ground.
Bend the knees very softly, just enough to let the skin at the backs of the knees soften.
As you soften the knees allow the pelvis to gently move forward.
With this set up bring your awareness to the breath and then with the exhale let your collar bones curl forward and your sternum drop, as if bringing it closer to your spine, again pause for the breath.
Now gently roll your cheekbones up and back and then allow your head to find a place of balance on top of your spine.
Stay there, breathe, notice where your centre of gravity is.
Notice if any point in this enquiry that a junction of movement was resistant to forward momentum
Play with that resistance with curiosity. Is there a sweet spot where you feel the weight shifting forward and backwards?
Just last week I was working with someone on this exact topic, the person in question had verbalised to me that she felt her posture was an issue and that she wanted to be able to stand up more fully as she felt it looked better. So we decided to have a little play with it. First of all we did some simple somatic based breathing practices to bring her into her body, then we played a little with connection to the ground through the feet and then finally we came into the spine. Her belief is that she has a hunched “kyphotic” curve of the thoracic but in fact what I saw was how much she was leaning back and as a result how much responsibility her lumbar spine was having to take on. The process of her leaning back has the added impact of her head needing to jut forward, very simply her spine is doing its best to balance itself out. Remember your spine is a neutral seeking structure, it will do all it can to find balance. The shape of her spine is not the problem, her spine is shaped liked that in order to help her stay balanced, the issue is with a resistance to falling. So I asked her to soften her knees and bring her pelvis forward and then we worked with her sternum, asking it to drop towards the spine. Using the Reembody Method I manually helped this to happen, with the exhale I encouraged her thoracic to round, the collar bones to drop and her sternum to fall. Then we played with allowing the head to find a place of balance on top of the spine. What she felt at that point was that her shoulders we hunched and rounded, it was a very new feeling and not one she was altogether comfortable with. It felt like things were moving forward. So we just stayed there for a while and let that sink in.
It is hard to see yourself when doing this work and so we took some images which I have the permission to share here and perhaps you can see the difference I am describing.
I sent the images to her and her words were “What a difference!”
Doing something different has a huge impact on our neurobiology, it creates internal shifts that if we allow it can lead to external shifts in our movement patterns.
If you have got this far then I would just like to add that there are no rights or wrongs and certainly I do not have all the answers. I am not an expert in the biomechanics of posture, all I know is what I see within myself and within the bodies of others along with an understanding of the impact a narrative can have upon us. I am linking in this article that I thought was interesting with regards to the timeline of this narrative and where the idea of “standing up straight” came from.
https://unfortunatetrivializations.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/upright-and-uptight/
In loving kindness