Posture: Is it more important than we think?
Often the way that we think about posture and the way it is viewed by many health professionals is a static model. Drop a plumb line down the side of the body and the shoulders, hips and ankles and ear should fall into an alignment in relationship to that line. Indeed this defines good posture. I find it much more dynamic to look at posture as a moving model that includes this definition and goes beyond it.
How do we hold ourselves and where do we find tension in our bodies? Is it evenly distributed? How do we move? Is it graceful? Are we related to the whole of our environment and world through our bodies? Or are we twisted, bent, tense, arched, pained, or cut off from some of the things that we would like to do and that seem easy for others to accomplish? How is our energy level? Have we convinced ourselves or feel resigned that we cannot do this or that? Do we define ourselves by how we perceive our bodies, for example do we say, “I’m a tight person”? And if so, how does that limit us?
These are just a few questions that come up when thinking about posture as a dynamic event that is always coupled with movement, thought, emotions, ability to learn, and likely plays a big role in our ability to contact and begin to realize our capacities.
Posture is a player always in our childhood and adolescent, individual and social adjustment. Ways that we think about ourselves, our self-esteem, our sense of self, have in part, been conditioned by our posture, and in turn condition it.
Helping adults and adolescents improve their posture and movement skills requires an understanding of how posture develops and how we react and respond to what we find in our environment. This will determine how we currently hold and use bodies. Then the task is to teach people how to unlearn as they are learning. And to teach people how the body can be used to orient us towards possibilities and potentials. This is very similar to the idea of letting your goal draw you towards it. For example, if you were training for a race this would mean the right training program that takes into account where you presently are and where you need to be on race day.
With children it is similar in that the therapist must have some sense of the potentials involved. Then it requires the understanding to match those potentials with a program that educates posture through creative play and challenges the child to develop along lines that incorporate the important milestones of human physical, emotional, and social development. Because children are so malleable, a lot of specific problems can self correct within the right learning environment. (Read article on Children and Posture: Why It Matters.)
As a physical therapist I find that with nearly every condition that I have worked with in the last 20 years, some aspect of posture (the way that I am defining it) usually plays a significant role in the development of the symptoms. This includes many diagnoses where posture wouldn’t necessarily be thought of as a contributing factor. The short list includes various breathing disorders, digestive disorders, learning disabilities, organ dysfunction, and a host of musculo-skeletal issues.
Two quotes about the body and posture and its relevancy to learning:
"Whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action, increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action.
— Spinoza (1632-1677)
'The notion that intellectual activity can somehow exist apart from our bodies is deeply rooted in our culture. It is related to the attitude that the things we do with our bodies, and the bodily functions, sensations, and emotions that sustain life, are lower, less distinctly human. This idea is the basis of a lot of educational theory and practice that make learning harder and less successful than it could be.
Thinking and learning are not all in our head. On the contrary, the body plays an integral part in all our intellectual processes from our earliest moments right through to old age.'
— Neurophysiologist Carla Hannaford
'Smart Moves: Why Learning is not All in Your Head'
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