Functional Fitness: Posture — An Integrated View

[Explor­ing Life] A com­mon under­stand­ing of pos­ture is the body’s align­ment when it stand­ing still. The word pos­ture orig­i­nates in the Latin posi­tura mean­ing posi­tion. If pos­ture is good, then often a ref­er­ence is being made to a pre­ferred shape of the spine when it is at rest. This per­spec­tive on pos­ture is, how­ever, quite lim­ited when we con­sider the fact that the human body was designed for move­ment. Pos­ture, in a more impor­tant sense, is an inquiry into the dynam­ics of move­ment and the nature of human embod­i­ment.

Defin­ing pos­ture as a sta­tic posi­tion, or set of posi­tions, only serves to limit our per­spec­tive on the dynam­ics of move­ment and the nature of human embod­i­ment. The human body was designed to move, not remain sta­tic. Of course, there are times when we keep our bod­ies still, how­ever, even in our calmest moments there is con­stant nego­ti­a­tion between move­ment and being still. Pos­ture is found at the very axis of move­ment itself and the ways in which we nego­ti­ate our unavoid­able rela­tion­ship with gravity.

The Spine as an Inte­grated System

The skele­tal axis of pos­ture is the spinal col­umn. Var­i­ous kinds of cur­va­tures of the spine are often related to good or bad pos­ture. The dia­gram shows the nat­ural and nor­mal cur­va­ture of the spine in the lat­eral view, and the straight­ness of the spine in the pos­te­rior view.

From a lat­eral, or side­ways, the spine should not be straight. The nat­ural and flex­i­ble cur­va­ture is essen­tial for sta­bil­ity and flex­i­bil­ity of movement.

The spinal col­umn con­sists of thirty-three ver­te­brae placed on top of each other and is com­monly divided into five regions:

1. The Cer­vi­cal Region that facil­i­tates the rota­tion of the head (seven vertebrae);
2. The Tho­racic Region from which the ribs artic­u­late (twelve vertebrae);
3. The Lum­bar Region that sup­port most of the body’s weight and make the great­est effort to keep pos­ture erect (five vertebrae);
4. The Sacral Region con­sist­ing of fused ver­te­brae from which the pelvic bones artic­u­late (five fused ver­te­brae); and
5. The Coc­cyx or tail­bone area of the spine (four vertebrae).

The human body con­tains approx­i­mately 206 bones con­nected by car­ti­lage and lig­a­ments. The spinal col­umn is the axis of our entire skele­tal sys­tem. The spinal col­umn is also the con­duit for the ner­vous sys­tem, which is a com­plex cel­lu­lar net­work that con­trols every activ­ity in the body. Sur­round­ing this is a vast mus­cu­lar net­work that facil­i­tates motion. [1]

The spine uni­fies the skele­tal, ner­vous, and mus­cu­lar sys­tems. David Coul­ter sum­ma­rizes the crit­i­cal impor­tance and com­plex inter­ac­tion of the skele­tal, ner­vous, and mus­cu­lar sys­tems as a sin­gle, uni­fied system:

…the mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem exe­cutes all our acts of will, expresses our con­scious and uncon­scious habits, breathes air into the lungs, artic­u­lates our oral expres­sion of words, and imple­ments all gen­er­ally rec­og­nized forms of non­ver­bal expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion… we’ll [also] see that the ner­vous sys­tem keeps an absolute rein on the mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem. The two sys­tems com­bined form a neuro-musculoskeletal sys­tem that uni­fies all aspects of our actions and activities.[2]

From this per­spec­tive, we can now appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of under­stand the spine and pos­ture in terms of motion and action, rather than sta­tic imagery.

Pos­ture: Expan­sive Perspectives

Mary Bond pro­vides a vibrant and expan­sive descrip­tion of posture:

Your pos­ture emerges from your inter­ac­tions with the world around you. It emerges our of how you ori­ent your­self to the events of your life, how those events feel in your body, and how you move toward or away from the peo­ple or things involved. In time, your responses pro­gram the way you stand and move.[3]

In a fig­u­ra­tive sense, pos­ture refers to a par­tic­u­lar approach, atti­tude, or set of behav­iors used by an indi­vid­ual or group in a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. Pos­tur­ing means to impress or mis­lead oth­ers. Bond points out that they ways in which we inter­pret our expe­ri­ences in life have a direct impact on our body that is revealed in the shape of our phys­i­cal pos­ture. Emo­tions and feel­ings emerge in the phys­i­cal­ity of our pos­ture. Our every­day move­ments, such as stand­ing, sit­ting, bend­ing over, walk­ing, and lift­ing, are phys­i­cal embod­i­ments of our own unique ori­en­ta­tion to the events in our life.

The won­der­ful aspect of Bond’s approach to pos­ture is that it is inte­gra­tive, expan­sive, and cen­ters on our con­stant nego­ti­a­tion with gravity.

We can­not sep­a­rate pos­ture from move­ment or activ­ity from how we sta­bi­lize our bod­ies in order to act. How we sta­bi­lize our­selves deter­mines our pos­ture and the free­dom, effi­ciency, and grace with which we move. The essence of pos­ture, then, is the unique way in which each of us nego­ti­ates between mov­ing and hold­ing still in rela­tion­ship to grav­ity. (Bond 2007)

Bond states that pos­ture is orga­nized by ori­ent­ing our body in space and by sta­bi­liz­ing it so move­ment is pos­si­ble. Ori­ent­ing is a form of sen­sory aware­ness, that is, sens­ing where we are in space so we can decide what to do or where to go. Sta­bi­liz­ing actions reside in the mus­cles through a com­plex sys­tem of ten­sion and release coor­di­nated by the ner­vous sys­tem. If either ori­en­ta­tion or sta­bi­liza­tion becomes dys­func­tional, our pos­ture, and there­fore abil­ity to move, will suf­fer. This dys­func­tion can orig­i­nate in a phys­i­cal injury, an emo­tional trauma, or the insid­i­ous effects chronic stress. Move­ment, with respect to pos­ture, is always an inte­grated func­tion of body and mind.

1) Cul­ti­vate healthy pos­ture through a process of self-study. You will need to cre­ate new sense mem­o­ries for what feels bal­anced and sta­ble…
2) …your pos­ture is a dynamic activ­ity… the ongo­ing per­cep­tual process by which you ori­ent your­self to grav­ity and to your rela­tion­ship with peo­ple, objects, and events in your world. (Bond 2007)

Yoga Pos­ture: To Sit With the Moment

A yoga pos­ture is an oppor­tu­nity to “sit with” what is aris­ing from moment to moment with accep­tance and patience, steadi­ness and ease… Con­tem­plat­ing asana psy­cho­log­i­cally turns a yoga pose into a tool of aware­ness, an oppor­tu­nity for lib­er­a­tion… The prac­tice of yoga pos­tures invites us into this domain — lit­er­ally right in between — the psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­o­log­i­cal com­po­nents of con­di­tioned exis­tence. [4]

Asanas are spe­cific kinds of body posi­tion asso­ci­ated with Yoga. They are also known as a Yoga posi­tions or poses. Michael Stone inte­grates the lit­eral mean­ing of pos­ture as a spe­cific kind of body posi­tion to the fig­u­ra­tive mean­ing of pos­ture as the aware­ness of our atti­tudes and approaches that arise from moment to moment. He describes the pur­pose of a Yoga pos­ture as being an oppor­tu­nity to sit with what is aris­ing from moment to moment. This is not some­thing lim­ited to body or mind. A Yoga pos­ture is, in this sense, a space for the aware­ness of body and mind, or the body­mind.

Stone’s per­spec­tive on pos­ture dove­tails nicely with Bond’s focus on pos­ture as a dynamic activ­ity asso­ci­ated with move­ment and the way you carry your­self as you pro­ceed in life. In a Yoga asana, the most essen­tial pur­pose of the pos­ture is to become deeply aware of the phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual pos­ture that defines who you are in that moment. The aware­ness of one’s own pos­ture, then, is simul­ta­ne­ously phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tional, and spiritual.

Pos­ture: Key Ideas

1. The human body is designed for move­ment, not sta­tic positions;
2. Pos­ture is the essence of human movement;
3. Pos­ture inte­grates our phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual ori­en­ta­tion to our expe­ri­ences and the world around us;
4. Our men­tal and emo­tional expe­ri­ences in life reveal them­selves and take shape in our phys­i­cal posture;
5. Pos­ture is an inte­gral idea that brings us to the thresh­old of body-mind-spirit-environment-experience

Notes

1. See Gray’s Anatomy: Skele­ton; Ner­vous Sys­tem; Mus­cu­lar Sys­tem.

2. Coul­ter, David. Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, 2001.

3. Bond, Mary. The New Rules of Pos­ture, 2007.

4. Stone, Michael. The Inner Tra­di­tion of Yoga.