Do you ever feel yourself sinking into your seat, posture compressed, energy drained — and you can't seem to overcome it for longer than 30 seconds or so?
Today, I'm going to talk about the hidden key to posture correction and a comfortable body.
Your bones.
Bones: The Key to Improving Posture without Straining
Bones are cool.
With the help of muscles, they are instrumental in moving you, or just parts of you, from one place to another.
Bones have leveraging power.
They can:
- Help get a movement started
- Give your actions integrity and intention
- Keep your sitting posture upright without strain.
Bones are the key to efficient, economical movement.
Why the emphasis on efficient, economical movement?
Efficient, economical movement uses only the amount of muscle contraction necessary to get the job - of transporting those bones around - done.
The result for most people is a lot less pain-causing muscle tension to deal with during the day.
And my personal favorite, when movement is efficient, it's easy to let go of super-tight muscles, even if they’ve been that way for a long time.
Yum, and a new lease on life!
Try a Quick Alignment Experience: Let Go of Held Muscle Tension
To start to get to know what your bones can do for you, try letting go of held muscle tension throughout the body. Here’s a protocol I like to use with my beginners:
- Set yourself in generally good alignment and posture - either lying on your back or seated in a chair.
- Breathe in, expanding your world with nourishing oxygen.
- Exhale, let go, and observe what happens to the weight of your body.
- Ask yourself: Does my weight relax into the supportive surfaces I'm on? (Floor and/or chair seat.)
- If it does, does it feel like I'm collapsing? Or, slowly releasing back into place?
- In what areas does my weight feel like it's supported?
This short experience done repeatedly over time may help you develop the sense as to when your bones are there for you, and when they're not.
In the below guided video (which is more like an audio with a thumbnail,) I expand the experience a bit more. (Run time: 7:50)
Try it and tell me what you think.
Yours in easeful, comfortable movement and posture,
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Anne Asher is certified by American Council on Exercise as a personal trainer and health coach, and certified at the 200 hour level as a yoga instructor. She has 25+ years experience using movement and body alignment techniques to help people feel better both physically and mentally.
For over a decade, Anne was also an award winning health journalist for a large website owned and operated by the New York Times Company. Her "beat" was spine and chronic pain management.
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