The meaning of posture
What do we mean by posture?
Often, the word invokes an image of an idealised human, standing tall.
But none of us is idealised, we are real humans, each with our unique combination of inherited characteristics and lived experience, our accumulated habits, skills, and limitations. How to know which parts of the ideal to apply? And how to avoid feeling inadequate when judging our self against an ideal which we can never attain? For these reasons the idealised image is not useful.
I prefer to think of posture as self-organisation for the task in hand. Finding an optimum posture depends on function (what is it I am wanting to do?) and on my unique characteristics (my size, shape, and freedom of movement in different joints). For example, a person with hypermobility may prefer different self-organisation for a given physical task than a person with tight fascia.
Further, my optimal self-organisation for a given task may change from day to day. It will vary, for example, with how I feel, whether I have pain somewhere, or am recovering from injury.
Focusing on self-organisation rather than form means we define good posture in terms of qualities instead of prescribing certain ‘correct’ positions of our different parts. Those qualities of posture are:
Efficiency: Can I achieve the same with less energy and effort? Using less effort (while still being enough to accomplish the task in hand) tends to promote ease and freedom of movement. Seek the lowest energy and effort (and therefore highest-efficiency movement) while respecting your limitations.
Ease: Can I make the movement easier? Is any part of me unnecessarily tense? What parts can I soften while attending to the task in hand? (For example, does your jaw stay relaxed? Your feet?) It’s worth taking time to ask yourself these questions in detail, considering in turn individual parts and a more generalised view of the whole.
Reversibility: Am I able to stop and reverse the movement at any point comfortably and smoothly? Reversibility is not always possible (I can’t reverse a fall, or a jump when in mid-air) but as a general principle it lends movement a feeling of balance.
Readiness to pivot: how easy is it for me to change direction? In a well-organised movement, I can change my intention at any point to go in any direction I choose, without loss of balance or flow.
Elegance: This is not performative, but a feature of a balanced, efficient movement, recognisable from within as well as from outside.
Presence: does my posture and movement show my mind? When I am well organised, my body, emotions, and intentions are working together in harmony, in a way that others are prone to notice – again without being performative.
The above principles are all interrelated. It is impossible to work on one of them without affecting the others. Being aware of and practising different ways of self-organisation makes it possible to expand freedom and remove limitations. This is what we learn in the Feldenkrais Method. Over time, I have discovered how to find and use different ways to organise my self. The practice has given me more freedom in how I move and in how I perceive my self.
What does posture mean to you? When are you aware of your posture in daily life? Please leave a comment.