The
P word?...
you
know, posture. As a physical therapy student some eighteen years ago I was taught to evaluate
posture based on observing the relative positions of key anatomical landmarks ... ear over
shoulder over hip, etc. . We were instructed in the perils of poor posture. Those forward
heads and overly curved lumbar spines would most certainly result in stiff necks, sore backs
and worse. One of our missions as good PT citizens was to save our patients from such maladies
by teaching them good posture, which as best as I could figure out meant instructing people
how to line up their landmarks. If one of our charges just couldn't seem to get it right,
it was up to us to figure out which muscle groups were either too tight or too weak to allow
for the ideal configuration of body parts and then try and come up with appropriate strengthening
and stretching exercises. The results were at best, mixed.
Even back then I felt like I had as many questions
as answers. First of all, why did bad posture seem to be more the norm than good posture?
By the time I got to PT school I had studied dance for many years and was pretty darn
sure that the ability to line up body parts in an ideal configuration really didn't have
much to do with the ability to move on stage or in life with grace and ease ... hmmm.
Still I believed that having bad posture couldn't be very healthy for the musculoskeletal
system and as a young orthopedic/sports medicine physical therapist I tried to get my
patients to fix theirs ... only to see them revert by their next visit.
The reason I became a PT in the first place
was because I was interested in movement and wanted a way to pursue that interest and
feed myself (and my cats) at the same time. If I could ever figure out how it was that
those natural athletes moved with such ease and grace and teach that to my patients I
would be one happy and successful physical therapist. Partly for self-improvement and
partly in quest of the answer to my question I began to study the Alexander Technique.
Sometime after, a friend encouraged me to try an Awareness through Movement®
class. The variety in the ATM classes intrigued me. Eventually I had my first "hands
on" Functional Integration® lesson and decided I wanted to learn to do
this work, so I enrolled in the Berkeley 3 practitioner training.
My training in the Feldenkrais®
Method has been a big step in helping me come to terms with the "P word".
I clearly understand posture as a neuromusculoskeletal event. By that I mean that our
brains and nervous systems organize patterns of posture and movement so that it is unlikely
that any isolated exercise would be of much use. I also am less concerned with ideal static
postures that have little to do with accomplishing any meaningful act easily and effectively.
I now suspect that the reason so many adults lose the natural good posture and ease of
movement they had as small children is that the stresses and strains we experience in
the world, be they physical, mental or emotional create habits of muscular tension. Lying
on the floor performing gentle movements with care and attention in Awareness through
Movement lessons, we become increasingly aware of these habits and explore alternatives.
In "hands on " Functional Integration lessons, the exploration continues
and deepens based on individual needs and requests.
Now as a Feldenkrais® Practitioner,
nearly twenty years into my professional career I feel that I have some real tools for
addressing the postural concerns of my clients.
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