[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:
- The Cervical Region that facilitates the rotation of the head (seven vertebrae);
- The Thoracic Region from which the ribs articulate (twelve vertebrae);
- The Lumbar Region that support most of the body’s weight and make the greatest effort to keep posture erect (five vertebrae);
- The Sacral Region consisting of fused vertebrae from which the pelvic bones articulate (five fused vertebrae); and
- 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
- The human body is designed for movement, not static positions;
- Posture is the essence of human movement;
- Posture integrates our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual orientation to our experiences and the world around us;
- Our mental and emotional experiences in life reveal themselves and take shape in our physical posture;
- 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.
