Posturing...

Posture is not one of those warm and fuzzy words.  Maybe it makes us think of walking around with books on our heads, or of screeching drill sergeants, or of grumpy older teachers muttering about respect.  Maybe it conjures a sense of bravado, of irritating pretense.  It’s still something useful, so maybe we can replace those other images with, say, dancers.  The relaxed-yet-straight poses of sitting Buddhas are also a good image to keep in mind for posture.

 

Or, if some of us prefer a things-to-avoid sort of image:  let’s not be that person hunched over the computer screen, shoulders in ears, lower back screaming, chest compressed.

 

Why?  A couple of reasons, actually.

 

Here’s one to appeal to our collective vanity:  we’ll look thinner if we use good posture.  Who doesn’t like that?

 

How about one for comfort?  Good posture helps reduce tension in the neck and shoulders, improves and/or prevents low back pain, and helps us avoid injury while exercising.

 

Health?  When we hang out in a slumped posture, we inhibit our breathing.  News flash:  people who can’t breathe die.  Sure, we can get by for a long time with substandard breathing, but really, wouldn’t it be nice if we made it easy for ourselves to take a deep breath?

 

Which brings me to what good posture is.  When we are standing up, we want our ears to be over our shoulders, which should be over our hips, which should be over our knees, which should be over our ankles.  This is best seen from the side, so find a friend to check it out.  A lot of us tend to have our heads forward and our shoulders rounded, but we don’t want to overcorrect and stick our chests out like pigeons.  Many of us also tend to arch our lower backs more than is ideal, so we can think about tucking our behinds under us a bit to lengthen the lower back.  It should feel kind of good.

 

At first, good posture will feel kind of tiring.  Our muscles are used to a different position and the short ones will need to get used to lengthening and the long ones will have to adjust as well.  Keep breathing.  It gets better.