Restoring healthy posture from childhood for relief from chronic pain, easy flexibility, and enduring strength and vitality well into old age
• Offers 12 physical exercises to become mindful of your posture and discover pain-free alignment of your pelvis, rib cage, shoulders, neck, and back
• Provides simple yet detailed instructions on how to sit, stand, walk, bend, get up from a chair, sit to meditate, sleep, and practice yoga with proper alignment
• Includes detailed diagrams and posture photographs from around the world
Our bones are the framework of support for our bodies, much like the wall studs and beams of a house. Yet the alignment of the skeleton along the vertical axis of gravity is largely overlooked today, even by fitness experts and yoga teachers. In a culture of cocked hips, sauntering models, and slouching TV watchers, where “chin up, shoulders back, stomach in” is believed to be good posture, we have forgotten what healthy alignment looks and feels like–leading to chronic neck, shoulder, and back pain for millions.
Sharing photographs from around the world of “gurus” of natural posture and authentic strength, such as women in their 80s who easily carry heavy loads on their heads and toddlers learning to walk, Kathleen Porter shows what natural skeletal alignment truly looks like. With insights based on the fundamental laws of physics and detailed diagrams, she guides you through an understanding of the body’s naturally pain-free design. She explains that when the body is aligned as nature intended, your weight is supported by your bones rather than your muscles, allowing a blissful release from chronic muscular tension–which you may not even be aware you had. She offers 12 physical exercises to become mindful of your posture and discover healthy alignment of your pelvis, rib cage, shoulders, neck, and your body as a whole.
Providing easy-to-follow instructions for mindful alignment during the most ordinary daily activities, even sleeping, as well as a chapter on practicing yoga safely, Porter shows how returning to our forgotten alignment from childhood can offer relief from chronic pain and tension and can provide easy flexibility, enduring strength, and vitality well into old age.
The solutions wer quite simple. One example is the statement that most of the weight of the body lies on the pelvis, the angle of which determines one's posture, movements, etc. Most surprising was that the muscles controling the pelvis also affect your voice, since the production of the voice depends much on the natural posture of the body. i am gragteful for this book.
Kathleen Porter
This book contains good ideas anyone can easily practice. It is also an easy read with good sound advise that really make sense..
Good practical suggestions and also good pictures.
Different authors bring their unique view and manner of letting us sense the difference in movement with an anterior-placed pelvis, a responsive sacrum and an incredibly integrated and spacious spine. Esther Gokahale and Linda McCall each have their books, both illustrating and helping to recover lively balance and stress-free movement. I would highly recommend Angelika Thusius' book, Kentro Body Balance, which opened this whole new world of body placement for me several years ago. Her approach is slow and subtle, which invites us to step further into our body experience, and her illustrations and descriptions of the body centering and supporting go deep to the heart of the matter.
Everyone should read this book.
it may help to reduce the need for pharmaceuticals.
It is filled with excellent research material, beautiful graphics, and very useful lessons that can change your life.
This book is not a replacement, however, for finding somebody like an Alexander Technique teacher and attending some lessons in person; it is though a very good introduction to alignment and posture and how it relates to health and well-being. I highly recommend it.
I would recommend this book along with "Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Your Back Pain, and Move with Confidence" by Eric Goodman, which I use every day and has helped me with sciatica, knee and shoulder pain. The videos for the exercises are free on Youtube.