I’ve been thinking a lot about posture in the last few months, ever since pouring over the 650 photos (mostly of myself and my husband) taken by our wedding photographer and gasping at my own posture. Snapped glancing down at my reception speech, there I am: belly slouched forwards, shoulders rounded, chest dropped, if it weren’t for the long dress you’d probably see my knees locked too. And I’m a Pilates teacher!!!! I spend my working days encouraging clients and classes to be aware of their habits, and here I am: a perfect example of swayed-back posture...

This somewhat humbling realisation reminded me how complex posture is. As the founder of Feldenkrais technique, Moshe Feldenkrais, noted:

The human posture is not simple nor is it easy to achieve. It necessitates a long and demanding apprenticeship. The learning that each human being has to go through to achieve the best quality of functioning his structure permits is as remarkable as anything in nature.

- Moshe Feldenkrais

And that complexity stems from both the instability/ plasticity of the human body and the ways in which it plays out psychosocial, genetic and environmental effects that act on tissues, skeletal structure and movement. Posture is not simply a way of standing so much as an embodiment of our entire being, manifested in how we hold ourselves, like an imprint of everything that we are. Unfortunately, or fortunately for some, it’s also very public. Though most people may not be aware of it consciously, our posture indicates to others both our current and our general state of being and appreciation of the world. The Rolfing practitioner and writer Mary Bond puts it most succinctly:

Posture is the compound expression of your habitual stabilizing actions. In essence, your posture is your approach to life. How you perceive a relationship or a situation affects the ways in which you move, and how you move shapes your posture and your point of view. If your perception of the world is that people are generally well intentioned, the movements of your body will have more freedom than if you are unsure or anxious about your interactions with people…. The actions of your life mold your plastic body.’

- Mary Bond

Whilst we take on the affectations of our being, responding to the situations that arise in life and playing out our roles of being functioning adults, our tissues adapt to sustain the stresses and strains placed on them. In the ground breaking book on fascial connections, Anatomy Trains, Thomas Myers explains how this adaptation happens in a forward slump (text neck) posture:

We can imagine a person who develops, for whatever reason (eg. shortsightedness, depression, imitation, or injury) a common ‘slump’: the head goes forward, the chest falls, the back rounds. The head, a minimum of one-seventh the body weight in most adults, must be restrained from falling further forward by some muscles in the back. These muscles must remain in isometric/eccentric contraction for every one of this person’s waking hours….eventually, fibroblasts in the area…secrete more collagen in and around the muscle to create a better strap.

- Thomas Myers

Years of teaching have made me more attuned to spotting this ‘strapping’ and ‘holding’ in clients, people standing at the bus stop or runners sweeping past me on the pavements. It is tempting to proclaim what should be done, e.g.: “that person needs to roll out their ITB and connect up their inner line”, or, “stretch out their pectorals and strengthen their upper backs” etc, etc. I’m sorry to say that I have often heard exactly these proclamations from Pilates teachers, or even from my own mouth (never volunteer to demonstrate in a Pilates teachers’ workshop, it is terrifying…). In truth these statements aren’t necessarily wrong. But they might only be starting points/ initial observations that don’t give us the full story.

It’s important to remember that our holding patterns are functional too, at least they serve a function, though they might do so inefficiently. Change needs to happen gradually, without any sudden big shifts (I’m sorry to say) to allow the tissues to adapt, where this is possible. As a Pilates teacher I use movement as the ‘way in’ to affecting posture. My aims are firstly to bring awareness to my clients’ holding patterns and secondly to give them some tools to enable them to help themselves. With the former I hope to open the door to their own realisations (like the teenager I once taught who explained that she slouched because standing more upright would come across as being over-confident and lead to her losing friends at school). With the latter I hope to remind them that the plasticity that enabled their forward bending or hip thrusting, is exactly their ticket out of it. You can affect change, no matter how young, old, injured or genetically jinxed (- this is my excuse), you might be.