Posture and the Alexander Technique: The truth about Posture
Page 2: The truth about posture
Page 3: Four reasons for NOT sitting up
Page 4: Posture that works
Since the usual stiff posture is bad posture the truth about posture is:–
A slumped posture is not really a slump at all.
It’s a pull-down.
Your own muscles are literally dragging you down just like a team of men hauling on tight cables fastened to the crown of a tall tree would bend it over.
It’s not just your neck. You are also pulling your chest and shoulders forwards and down.
What muscles are pulling? First, your neck, throat and jaw muscles, then your chest, abdominal and even your leg muscles. They are all joining in — like a whole array of cables attached to the tree at different heights.
What you need for good posture is to stop pulling yourself down in this way. Compare this with the usual, old-fashioned posture advice.
Good old-fashioned posture advice
Seeing your slumped posture, everybody, well-meaning, chips in with the same advice: Sit up! Stand straight!
It soon becomes obvious that this is a struggle. Hence the next juicy bit of advice.
“Do your back and shoulders feel too weak? Then strengthen them! Start a regime of exercises to strengthen your back and shoulder muscles!”
I hope you can now see what bad advice this really is. Your back muscles are already being worked too hard. That’s why they don’t feel strong enough.
Muscle is fighting muscle in a relentless tug-of-war. When you make the extra effort to be truly straight, the resulting appearance of good posture is a stiff, tiring and unnatural travesty — far less functional, even, than the slump you are trying to correct.
That’s why it ends in pain — often extremely severe pain. To get rid of the pain for good you need to sort this mess out.
Just building more muscle (so that it can stand more strain) may relieve the pain short-term, but it will also give you the strength to tighten yourself up even more.
The pain of permanently over-worked muscles is often unbearable. I’ve seen muscle pain officially labelled as nerve pain simply because the doctor could not believe that such intense pain could possibly be muscular. It can be and often is.
For instance, sorting all this out properly normally gets rid of frequent migraine headaches — for good. Often symptoms begin to respond quite quickly — as muscles are no longer forced to work quite so hard.
Do your shoulders hurt? Then read “Why does not understanding your shoulders cause pain?”.
Further Resources
Here are some ways I can help you further.
Wherever you live
- If you’re not already getting my free weekly article delivered to your inbox, then go here to get it.
- Repoise is our membership site for people who are serious about improving themselves (and getting out of pain as they do that). Find out more here: SmilingBackMethod.com/Repoise
When you join, you will:–
- have daily access to me. Together we will work out what’s going wrong for you and how to fix it
- learn from reading other Repoise members’ questions and following their progress as they work with me
- get access to all my articles, not just the ones that are published on my web-site
- I’m writing a book about my work. It will come out on the 1st July 2010. The book I was going to write this year (on the Tube Principle) was a bit too specialised so I changed my mind about writing that book. This new book will still include a chapter or two on the Tube Principle — and, of course, much more besides.
If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)
- I’m also running introductory workshops in Liverpool teaching you how to apply my work to improve your life. Go here for details of the next workshop: SmilingBackMethod.com/workshop
- There’s no substitute for individual lessons. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to book your initial lesson. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).
If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool
- There’s still no substitute for individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
- Remember to still do the things I listed above for everyone. Even if you’re having lessons from someone else, you will find these a very great help. They’ll help you understand your lessons better and get a lot more out of them. All my own pupils read my weekly articles and several of them are active members of Repoise.
