Fall Into Your Best Posture
I’m sure you’re having a lively fall season, the summer sun is well behind us and new plans are waiting to be realized in the future One thing that is present now and is always a constant in our lives, no matter what the season, is our POSTURE. Not just the posture that makes one slouch or un-slouch but the potential posture that invites Total Body Awareness, dynamic posture. Why bother talking about postural awareness? Because it’s everywhere that we want to be. If we expand our postural awareness then every move we make has more flow, energy and efficiency.
Dynamic posture involves the integration of our sensory and neural systems and includes proprioception, kinesthetic awareness, neuromuscular facilitation and the vestibular system. All sports and activities of daily life consist of a series of postures strung together that result in movement.
Posture is not just a measure of sitting straight at the table or standing tall without rounding the shoulders. Posture is a result of many elements coming together into one dynamic “pose”. The main components of a dynamic pose are balance, dynamic flexibility, alignment and neuromuscular coordination. One of the most interesting things about posture is that it’s never static. Even when we are sitting “still”, posture constantly changes and moves. In fact, one of the best ways to begin to tune into our best posture is to sit or lay down on the ground.
Follow these three steps to Fall Into Your Best Posture:
First, sit on the ground with legs crossed or sit in a chair without leaning back. Visualize the spine balancing in space while sitting still. As you hold this image and relax your muscles the brain will form a new image of a relaxed vertical spine. Second, lay flat on the ground face up with palms up. Again, visualize your spine but this time allow the ground to absorb the weight of your back. As you do this, the brain receives a signal that says “it’s ok to relax” and all your aches and pains begin to release into the ground. If you have experienced the first two exercises in postural visualization, you are ready for phase three.
Phase three is about having total body awareness while moving. Proprioception (the unconscious perception of movement arising from stimuli within the body) and the vestibular system (organs in the inner ear concerned with equilibrium) play a big role in our orientation to the environment. Let’s begin by taking a walk around the block. While taking a slow contemplative walk allow your spine to align like a plumb line assisted by the downward pull of gravity; visualize the spine balancing freely in space as you move. When the spine finds balance while in motion many muscles can relax because they stop worrying about holding up the posture.
BALANCE IS WHAT SUPPORTS DYNAMIC POSTURE.
Dynamic posture is not “held up” by muscle power. As one allows muscles to relax while in motion the communication from the proprioceptive nerves in the muscles, inner ear and skin to the brain becomes heightened; this gives us a sense of fluid flow. Who doesn’t want fluid flow while they’re moving? This flow, once attained, will make any movement effortless.
Enjoy the slow contemplative walk a while longer allowing yourself to sink deeper into the earth with every step, let the inner eye of awareness expand to encompass all of the surroundings and feel the breath flowing unimpeded through your whole body. AH, that was regenerating!
If you are a runner, an athlete or an all around mover and shaker these elements of postural visualization can be incorporated into any of your dynamic activities. Good luck falling into your best Dynamic Posture ever! It’s never the same twice 
Be Well,
RM