Change Your Posture, Change Your Life
Author:
Richard Brennan
Pub Year:
2012
Source:
Read: 2018-04-03
Last Update: 2018-04-03
Five Sentence Abstract:
Given the focus us posture, a good deal of pages are devoted to conveying a simple but critical foundation, how you think you are standing is not really how you are standing. Before you can know how you are actually standing you need to use mirrors, or advisers, to show you, objectively, how you are standing. The seemingly, to me at least, common sense aspect of the book is that if something hurts, there must be a reason for it and if you can locate, through the aforementioned mirrors or advisers, and eliminate the root cause, the pain will abate. This theory can be applied to all manner of ailments originating from habits, such as posture is only one simple example. Finally there is a criticism of school and work environments in regards to having unergonomic furniture that teaches us bad habits from you and reinforces them in adulthood, culminating in the staggering expenditures relating to preventable back and neck pain.
Thoughts:
There really isn't much here, in 173 pages. The most obvious statement, which
might not be very common today, is to be conscious about how you hold and carry
your body.
Using mirrors of having others offer you feedback about how you are actually
positioned may reveal that how you think you are standing/sitting is not how
you actually are standing/sitting. It seems like common sense that empirical
data should be held up in favor of what you think.
Lastly I would agree with the idea that: if something is hurting, why is it?
Another common sense question in my mind, but many may not think to look for a
root cause. Particularly in our world where surgical operations and lifetime
prescriptions are seen as the only path to health.
Before going to such extremes to relieve or mask pain, ask: what are you doing
and how are you doing it? Is there a better way?
The book itself promotes what I'll call a hippy dippy view. The author promotes
Ram Das and his destructive live in the moment attitude alongside none other
than Aldous Huxley. I wouldn't say the author even realizes the extent that
these two are bad actors, but it should be mentioned seeing as how someone
duped by these two agents might not be the best place to go for advice, in any
arena.
I also wonder, how did this guy (this author, not Alexander) write four books
about this topic? This one goes on and on, stories taking up the lion's share
of the book. The technique could be introduced, and even extolled, in two dozen
pages, plus pictures. The stories add little but human interest, good if you
are looking for a pick me up or as part of a sales pitch, not so good if you
want to get down to brass tacks.
Again it is the hippy philosophy that turns me off more than anything else. The
technique itself seems more than reasonable.
A year or more before I read this book, I followed a similar path of thinking
when I built a custom
ergonomic 'desk'.
Books
| The Use of the Self, Gollancz, 1985
The Universal Constant in Living, Centerline Press, 1986
Man’s Supreme Inheritance, Centerline Press, 1988
Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Gollancz, 1987
|
Exceptional Excerpts:
Interference with the physiological mechanisms often
occurs habitually and unconsciously.
The existence of the Primary Control, which
organizes balance and coordination throughout the rest of the body.
The way in which a person uses themselves will invariably
affect their various functions.
The body does not function as a collection of separate
independent parts, but as a whole unit, with every part affecting every other
part.
A given stimulus produces the same reaction over and over
again, which, if it goes unchecked, turns into habitual behaviour. This
habitual reaction will eventually feel normal and natural to us.
The Alexander Technique also involves examining and
improving posture, breathing, balance and coordination, which are inseparable
from one another.
It is often hard for us to detect this increase in
tension because it builds up gradually over the years. We become accustomed to
the ways in which we sit and stand, and while these ways may feel comfortable
to us, they are often putting strain upon our body without our realizing it. No
matter how uncoordinated these positions become, they will feel right to us. In
the end, poor posture, or as Alexander called it, ‘misuse’, will feel
comfortable and ‘right’ and good posture (similar to the original natural
posture we had as a young child) will initially feel strange and wrong. This is
the effect of what Alexander termed ‘faulty sensory appreciation’.
If you were driving a car and the oil light came on, you
would not take out the bulb and carry on driving; this, of course, would be
foolish. You would stop the car and endeavour to find what was wrong, and if
you did not you could expect more serious problems later. Yet we are not
encouraged to apply the same logic to the body.
The crucial point here is that trying to improve posture by
deliberately sitting up straight and pulling our shoulders back will never ever
work, no matter how hard we try, because we will be using our phasic muscles
rather than our postural muscles to do so.
National Back Pain Association UK, published in October 2005, which stated: 'Sustained poor posture, which is probably the key environmental cause of back pain in children and adolescents, results from a combination of factors, the most significant of these seems to be the inappropriate furniture at school.'
Notes:
Table of Contents
Introduction
01: Alexander Technique – the Benefits
02: The Origin of the Technique
03: The Development of the Technique
04: How the Alexander Technique Works
05: Understanding Posture
06: Posture and Education
07: The Secret Key to Good Posture
08: The Effects of Furniture on Posture
09: The Hidden Obstacle to Improving Posture
10: Your Inner Acrobat
11: Inside Yourself
12: Posture and Shoes
13: First Steps To Improving Posture
14: Posture and Breathing
15: Bringing Your Life Back Into Balance
page 8:
-
your posture directly affects your body’s overall functioning and has a major
influence on how you think and feel. Poor posture can also adversely affect the
position and functioning of your vital organs and cause more health problems
than you realize. Many people with chronic pain can trace their problems to
years of faulty postural habits. Good posture, by contrast, promotes free
movement and physical and mental endurance, improves appearance
-
Improving posture reduces fatigue, muscular strain and pain.
page 12:
-
In many cases pain is simply the body’s alarm system, it is just saying ‘Stop
doing this to me’
-
Marjorie Barlow, Alexander’s niece
-
// John Perry relation?
page 23:
- Mark Twain, ‘If you do what you always did, you will get what you always
got.’
page 24:
- There are many inspiring books about the benefits of living in the present,
page 28:
page 29:
- Alexander’s first discovery was: Interference with
the physiological mechanisms often occurs habitually and unconsciously.
page 30:
-
Alexander’s second discovery was: The existence of
the Primary Control, which organizes balance and coordination throughout the
rest of the body.
-
Alexander referred to the dynamic relationship between the head, neck and
back as the ‘Primary Control’ and discovered that it governed the workings of
all the body’s mechanisms and made the control of the complex human being
relatively simple.
page 31:
- The body does not function as a collection of separate independent parts, but
as a whole unit, with every part affecting every other part.
- A given stimulus produces the same reaction over and
over again, which, if it goes unchecked, turns into habitual behaviour. This
habitual reaction will eventually feel normal and natural to us.
page 33:
- Summary
of Alexander’s discoveries:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31 | 1. Interference with our physiological mechanisms (poor posture) often occurs
habitually and unconsciously.
2. The existence Primary Control, which organizes balance and coordination
throughout the rest of oneself.
3. The way in which we use ourselves will invariably affect all of our various
functions.
4. The existence of faulty sensory appreciation.
5. The body does not function as a collection of separate independent parts but
as a whole unit with every part affecting every other part.
6. A given stimulus produces the same reaction over and over again, which, if
it goes unchecked, turns into habitual behaviour. This habitual reaction will
feel normal and natural to us.
7. Directing – to change a habit that involves muscular tension, we need to
just think of what we want the muscle to do rather than actually changing it by
using even more tension.
8. Inhibiting – to refuse to react to any stimulus in our automatic habitual
way.
9. Eliminating ‘end-gaining’ – by inhibiting and directing, we can pay
attention to how we perform an action and not be only thinking about the end
result.
10. The mind, body and emotions are not separate entities, but act in unity
with each other.
|
page 37:
- In 1917 Alexander met the well-known American philosopher and educationist,
John Dewey, while visiting America. Dewey was a
prominent voice of the school of philosophy known as pragmatism and had an
enormous influence on American education – in fact, he is sometimes known as
‘the father of American education’. Dewey
continued taking Alexander Technique lessons for the next 35 years and was so
taken by the Technique that he wrote the introductions to three of Alexander’s
books.
page 38:
- Alexander also helped the famous author Aldous
Huxley, when his poor physical state threatened to end his writing
career. Huxley came to see Alexander after he had been suffering from chronic
fatigue, insomnia and a weak stomach. He was virtually bedridden and had been
reduced to writing lying down with his typewriter resting on his chest.
Learning and applying the principles of the Alexander Technique enabled him to
resume his normal activities and live a good healthy life for another
quarter-century.
page 39:
- he even based a character (‘Miller’) in his 1936
novel Eyeless in Gaza on Alexander. Huxley
firmly believed that the Alexander Technique was a ‘totally new type of
education, affecting the entire range of human activity, from a
physiological through the intellectual, moral, and practical to the spiritual’
and was not afraid to publicize the fact.
page 42:
- The Alexander Technique also involves examining and
improving posture, breathing, balance and coordination, which are inseparable
from one another.
page 43:
- It is often hard for us to detect this increase in
tension because it builds up gradually over the years. We become accustomed to
the ways in which we sit and stand, and while these ways may feel comfortable
to us, they are often putting strain upon our body without our realizing
it. No matter how uncoordinated these positions become, they will feel
right to us. In the end, poor posture, or as Alexander
called it, ‘misuse’, will feel comfortable and ‘right’ and good posture
(similar to the original natural posture we had as a young child) will
initially feel strange and wrong. This is the effect of what Alexander termed
‘faulty sensory appreciation’.
page 46:
- Contemporary methods of combating such problems
typically involve powerful painkilling or anti-inflammatory drugs, or muscle
relaxants, but these can block out the body’s warning system, whose function it
is to tell us that something is wrong. Often, doctors can offer little advice
because their training centres on treating symptoms rather than uncovering, and
rectifying, the actual causes of such problems.
page 47:
-
The Alexander Technique, however, does the opposite. It can show you the
underlying causes, so that you are then able to eliminate the tension
responsible for many of the ailments that are so often
mistakenly put down to the ageing process.
-
One of the most common examples of how posture can affect our health is back
pain. According to the UK-based charity BackCare, on average a third of people
living in industrialized countries suffer from back pain at any given time, and
a staggering 80 per cent of the population of these
countries will have disabling back pain at some point in their lives.
The Health and Safety Executive in the UK agrees that back pain will affect as
many as four-fifths of people during their lifetime and results in 4.5 million
working days lost each year. In the US, the National Center for Health
Statistics reports very similar percentages. They say that over 76 million
people in the US are suffering with backache at any given moment.
-
Statistics reveal that back pain is on the increase in most industrialized
countries, yet there are no clear solutions to the problem in the established
medical sciences.
-
Although large sums of money are being spent on treatment of the pain
page 48:
-
I came to the Technique through back pain. This was primarily caused by poor
posture due to my sedentary profession as a driving instructor.
-
I often spent over 50 hours a week sitting in a car, and after several years
at the job I developed lower back pain. At first it was an occasional aching
back that was relieved by massage or some gentle exercise, but before long I
was suffering with such a very painful condition that I could hardly walk.
page 49:
- At this stage I started to investigate various forms of alternative medicine.
These included the more established therapies, such as chiropractic,
osteopathy, homeopathy and acupuncture, and then I tried less orthodox
treatments, such as reflexology, metamorphic technique, aromatherapy, Reiki and
spiritual healing.
page 50:
- If you were driving a car and the oil light came on, you would not take out
the bulb and carry on driving; this, of course, would be foolish. You would
stop the car and endeavour to find what was wrong, and if you did not you could
expect more serious problems later. Yet we are not encouraged to apply the same
logic to the body.
page 51:
- Learning the Alexander Technique consists of four stages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13 | 1. Becoming aware of all postural habits that cause or exacerbate a lack of
coordination and a general misuse of yourself.
2. Releasing the unwanted tension accumulated over many years of standing,
moving or sitting in an uncoordinated manner.
3. Learning new ways of moving, standing or sitting that are easier and more
efficient and that put less stress on the body, thus reducing excessive wear
and tear on the bones and joints as well as allowing all the internal organs
space to function naturally.
4. Learning new ways of reacting physically, emotionally and mentally to
various situations.
|
page 53:
- The freedom of the neck is of primary importance, for without it the head
cannot balance freely on top of the spine, which is essential for good posture
One of the first things an Alexander teacher usually shows you is how to
release the tension in the neck.
page 54:
-
The key to learning the Technique is
awareness. It may seem a little odd at first to make an effort to become
aware of how we perform various tasks, because many of our movements have
become automatic and we tend to perform them over and over again in the same
way without conscious thought. Gradually, though, we learn to think briefly
before performing any given action to see if it can be carried out with much
less tension.
-
you will not be learning anything new, but simply unlearning the bad habits
you have acquired during the course of your life. Alexander often said that if
you stopped doing the wrong thing (i.e. the habit), the right thing would
happen by itself,
page 55:
- it is often easier for others to see these [habits,
patterns, postures] when we ourselves cannot.
page 62:
-
A more accurate definition of the word posture is:
The relationship of one or more parts of the body to the rest.
-
// Postural muscles hold you up, phasic muscles move
you.
- The crucial point here is that trying to improve
posture by deliberately sitting up straight and pulling our shoulders back will
never ever work, no matter how hard we try, because we will be using our phasic
muscles rather than our postural muscles to do so.
page 69:
- In his book Body Awareness in Action, Professor Frank Pierce Jones states
that two of the most powerful stimuli for producing
malposture are a book and a pencil, and it is easy to see that
children’s posture starts to change within a few years of beginning school.
Poor posture in teenagers is now widespread in
developed countries, and we are beginning to see it as normal...
page 72:
- Alexander was also a firm believer that our education system did not address
the real needs of our children, and as a result in 1924
he and his assistants opened a school for children in London. Irene Tasker, a
teacher trained by Maria Montessori and also an Alexander teacher, ran what
came to be known as ‘The Little School’, which incorporated teaching
children the principles of the Alexander Technique as part of the curriculum.
page 80:
-
Ram Dass (aka Dr Richard Alpert), an American
spiritual teacher who spent a great deal of time in India, often said that one
of the most important things people in the West need to learn is that ‘life is
not an emergency’. Another thought-provoking saying is: ‘Man says: “Quickly, quickly, hurry up. Time is passing
away”, but Time says: “It is not me that passes away, it is man!”
-
// Lots of change agents in the book, though I have a
feeling the author is a true believer rather than an agent himself.
page 81:
- // Quote by Aldous Huxley, but I don't actually know what
it was; poorly formatted.
page 82:
- interesting saying in The Talmud that says,
‘Whoever forces time is pushed back by time; whoever
yields to time finds time on his side.’
page 84:
-
The Alexander Technique is a practical way of helping to keep our consciousness in the here and now.
-
// Live in the present, but keep one eye on the past and
the other eye on the future. Proverb.
page 86:
- "The rise in back problems over the last century correlates directly with the
increasing number of hours we spend seated." -Professor Galen Cranz, author of
The Chair
page 87:
-
Since the teacher’s main responsibility is for the
safety of all these children, he or she will usually insist that they
remain in their chairs for most of the day.
-
// Shouldn't it be to educate them? I mean, how dangerous
is a typical classroom?
page 93:
- National Back Pain Association UK, published in October 2005, which stated:
"Sustained poor posture, which is probably the key environmental cause of back
pain in children and adolescents, results from a combination of factors, the
most significant of these seems to be the inappropriate
furniture at school."
page 94:
- To solve the problem, all you need to do is alter the base of the chair so it
is no longer sloping backwards. This can easily be achieved by using a
wedge-shaped cushion. You can also achieve the same effect by taking two books,
about 5cm (2in) thick (old telephone books are ideal), and placing one under
each of the back legs of the chair.
page 95:
- It is important to use the wedge-shaped cushion for
only one hour on the first day and then gradually build up the amount of time
you spend sitting on it. This allows time for your muscles to get used to a new
and improved way of sitting. After about three to four weeks, you will
be able to sit on the cushion comfortably for as long as you like.
page 111:
page 112:
page 114:
page 117:
- Good posture is synonymous with good balance.
page 118:
- We consist of over 650 muscles and 206 bones
page 120:
- For example, a car or aeroplane needs most power when it accelerates from a
stationary position; it needs much less energy to keep it going at a constant
speed. The human body, on the other hand, needs no
effort to move and actually requires a release of muscle tension. Once
the head begins to move forwards, the body will naturally follow,
page 122:
- When standing, the weight distribution should be on
three points of each foot, and this brings a certain amount of balance.
The first point is the heel, the second is the ball of the foot and the third
is situated on the outside of the foot at the beginning of the little toe.
page 123:
-
(1). Place the feet approximately 30cm (12in) apart, as this immediately
gives a more stable base on which to support the rest of the body. Note: this
measurement is from the inside of the feet; so for tall people the feet need to
be a little further apart and for short people a little closer together.
-
(2). When standing for long periods, it is helpful to take one foot
approximately 15cm (6in) back, so that about 60 per cent of the weight of the
body is resting on the rear foot. Place the feet with an angle of approximately
45 degrees between them. This helps to prevent the all-too-common habit of
sinking down into one hip, which can affect the balance and coordination of the
whole structure of your body.
-
(3). If you notice that you are pushing your pelvis forward, imagine it
gently releasing back without deliberately throwing the body too far forward
(make sure you are allowing your neck to be free and your head to move forward
and up and your spine to lengthen at the same time). This helps to eliminate
the very common tendency of over-arching the back when in a standing position.
Note: make sure you are only thinking and not actually doing this action.
-
While you are sitting for relaxation, for example, when using a reclining
chair or a sofa or armchair while watching TV, you only need to let the chair fully support you, so that no one part of your
body has to bear undue pressure or tension. You can always use cushions
to support your head if you need to.
-
// My desk @link, seems to be a combination. It supports
the entire body while still allowing use of the computer. It does NOT lend
itself to writing on paper or reading from physical books.
-
Sitting while in activity is a different matter altogether, and sitting at a
desk or table while working or eating requires us to be balanced on the two
sitting bones and feet. Make sure that you have even support on all these four
areas, and when you are leaning forward at a desk or table, do not bend your
spine, but rather use your hip joints and sitting bones to help you to transfer
weight from the sitting bones onto the feet. When moving back away from the
desk, just reverse the process and transfer your weight back over your sitting
bones. While you are sitting during any activity, try to be balanced, poised
and movable rather than hold any one fixed position.
page 127:
page 128:
page 134:
- Many of us think of posture as only external, but it actually can affect the
inside of the body just as much. Our internal organs can be squeezed by the
over-tightening of the muscular system...
page 140:
- The foot and ankle contain 26 bones, which means that over a quarter of the
bones in the human body are in the feet. Each foot contains 33 joints and more
than 100 muscles...
page 143:
- According to Dr Rossi, if a person wears a 5cm (2in) heel, their entire body
is thrown forward out of alignment by 20 degrees. In order to stop ourselves
from falling forward, a huge number of changes must be made to the organization
of our precisely balanced framework. The pelvis rotates forward, taking away
support of the internal organs within the pelvic bowl and abdomen. The lumbar
vertebrae become more arched as the body fights to regain balance, and as a
consequence muscles, tendons and ligaments all become strained. Most
importantly of all, being off balance cause a backward and downwards retraction
of the head, causing excessive tension in the head, neck and back area,
page 147:
- the emphasis on treating symptoms rather than root causes is just as strong
today.
page 151:
page 154:
-
Benefits of lying in the semi-supine position:
-
Improves overall posture.
-
Allows the intervertebral discs to absorb fluid and helps to increase height.
-
Helps to straighten the spine by helping to lessen the curves that have
become exaggerated.
-
Lengthens the spine so that it can support you better when you are upright.
-
Releases muscular tension throughout your whole body.
-
Improves your breathing by helping to release the intercostal muscles and the
diaphragm.
-
Improves circulation because the blood can flow better when the muscles are
relaxed. Some of my pupils have found that their hands and feet have become
warmer.
-
Puts less pressure on the nerves that have become trapped due to over-tense
muscles.
-
Helps to prevent deterioration of the bones and joints of the spine and can
even rejuvenate parts of the skeleton that have been worn from misuse of the
body.
-
Allows the internal organs to have more room to function.
-
Helps to revitalize and re-energize you.
-
Brings about an overall reduction in stress and tension physically, mentally
and emotionally.
Glossary
page 175:
-
Being present/attentive Being in the present
moment and focusing your attention on the activity you are performing; not
letting your mind wander into the past or future.
-
End-gaining Being too goal-oriented: thinking
only of the end and not giving any consideration to the way in which you
achieve the goal.