More About The New Rules of Posture
ISBN: 1594771243; Paperback; February 2007
Read Reviews
"Recommended for anyone interested in the anatomical and emotional aspects of the movement of one's body; good for all libraries."
Library Journal
"Few things are as overlooked and yet absolutely critical to our health and well-being as our posture. Mary Bond offers information, stories, and tools for learning how to stand and move with ease and elegance."
Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D., PT,
Author of 30 Essential Yoga Poses
"Therapists as well as anyone seeking relief from the pain that results from poor postural habits should explore this gem of a book and follow its advice."
Leon Chaitow, N.D., D.O,
Honorary Fellow, School of Integrated Health,
University of Westminster, London
"I have long searched for a book that addresses the human body as a whole, and with clarity, guidance and completeness. This book is a multi-faceted gem offering all of that and much more. I highly recommend it to teachers of movement and to anyone eager to learn how to become a better occupant of their body."
Marie-Jose Blom-Lawrence,
Pilates Specialist and Professor of Anatomy and Physiology,
Department of Dance, Loyola Marymount University
"The New Rules of Posture is a good adjunct to bodywork of all kinds, from chiropractic and osteopathy to Pilates and yoga. Read it thoroughly, let it soak into your experience -- your body will thank you."
Thomas Myers, author of Anatomy Trains
"The New Rules of Posture... addresses a common health problem: poor posture. New to Mary Bond's approach is a focus on postural changes combined with attitude realization: it comes from her background as a dancer and a Structural Integration practitioner who teaches movement, and it draws on over thirty years of experience to show how habit and emotional factors contribute to unhealthy posture. Both new age and general-interest public lending libraries will find the focus on health, exercise and ergonomics to be a fine coverage.
Midwest Book Review
Readers' Comments
"Thanks Mary! I had a real breakthrough with my feet through your excellent book. I have a lift in my posture and a sensuality in my feet that I have been working to achieve for two years doing continuum movement exercises…maybe that paved the way to get results so fast from your book. I have joy living in my body. It is delicious. Your book is a real tour-de-force."
Johan Söderberg
"This wonderful, rich manual is far more than it sounds. It offers integrated, palpable core process understanding and practice that will work for anyone. The writing is relaxed, human and deeply knowledgeable (I feel her background not only as a Rolfer but as dancer) - grace throughout. The information is fundamental for all movement (and sitting!) An essential book."
Dianne Mcpherson "Dunya" (New York, NY)
"Easy to understand and enjoyable to read. It is written for the common person, however there is plenty of juice for bodyworkers, yoga practitioners, doctors, etc. Find gems such as how to sit correctly in those awful car seats, a whole chapter on breathing, and what the "core" of the body really means. "
Karin Edwards (www.portlandrolfer.com, Portland, OR)
Read an Excerpt
Excerpt from the Introduction to The New Rules of Posture
The book begins with a passage describing the posture problems faced by a young woman named Carmen. The author, watching Carmen at work behind a check-out counter in a Target store, reflects on numerous possible causes for the low back pain the woman is complaining about.
Your Posture Is Your Story
The book you're holding in your hands is my attempt to show you what I wanted to show Carmen: the relationship between your posture, your pain, your habits of movement, and your aging process. Our culture's assumption about getting older is that posture will deteriorate and the body will become a burden. If this is our belief, it is no wonder that we'd rather not think about caring for our bodies.
Perhaps you, like Carmen, are still in your twenties and not yet giving thought to growing older. Aging happens to us all, however, and knowing how to use your body well will make a huge difference in how you experience the process. Carmen, if she does not change her habitual way of doing things, will find herself at age fifty with hunched shoulders, a forward head, a thickened waist, and a protruding belly. She'll try to straighten up but will find that holding herself erect demands too much effort. Added to her back pain will be a host of other symptoms: headaches, a sore shoulder, digestive problems, and, although she won't like to talk about it, urinary incontinence. She'll find it hard to enjoy the kind of things she now loves to do, like salsa dancing on Friday nights.
Such a picture is not an unfamiliar one, but it does not have to be true once you understand how to manage your body in harmony with the principles set forth in this book. You can have a body that stands gracefully and moves effortlessly throughout life when you learn to use it the way it is designed to be used. It is never too soon, or too late, to create healthier posture.
Most people think about posture as the body's alignment or position when sitting or standing still. Good posture is commonly defined in terms of the contours of the upper body-the chest, shoulders, spine and neck. Although people may be aware that balance over the feet has something to do with good posture, this usually is not what they consider first.
If this is your definition, I'd like to help you to expand it. I see posture not as how you hold your body when you're still but as how you carry it while you're moving. This distinction reveals posture to be a dynamic activity rather than a static attitude. Your posture is generated by your movement-by the way you carry yourself as you proceed through your life.
To determine whether your posture is healthy or not, I want to see how you move, and I consider the movement of your entire body, from soles to crown. Healthy posture is characterized by an easy grace, with movement flowing effortlessly between limbs and trunk. The movement of someone with unhealthy posture looks disconnected and effortful.
How we carry our bodies evolved from how we were supported and regarded by other people from the time we were born. How Carmen bends over could derive from hundreds of experiences that have shaped her body usage. She was tall as a teenager, so perhaps her slouch was an attempt to be eye-to-eye with shorter boyfriends. It could have to do with not wanting to be a center of attention. She could feel imprisoned by her job or resentful about the way her life is going. Maybe the compression in her gut has to do with a baseball that knocked the wind out of her when she was fourteen. Whatever the source of her tensions, they have distorted her body to the extent that, at the ripe old age of twenty-two, her posture is creating pain.
Your posture emerges from your interactions with the world around you. It emerges out of how you orient yourself to the events of your life, how those events feel in your body, and how you move toward or away from the people or things involved. In time, your responses program the way you stand and move.
In addition to being shaped by your personal history, posture is also influenced by cultural and religious standards, by geographical features such as crowded streets or open terrain, by weather and clothing, and by media images that dictate what is attractive. Underlying all these relationships with the world is another more foundational one: your relationship with gravity.
Our bodies are inherently unstable because they are designed for mobility. The skeleton-basically an assemblage of struts, stilts, and levers-has hundreds of mobile joints. The muscles and other tissues that bind the skeleton together, and the organs contained within it, are nearly 70 percent water, making them even more mobile. The instability of this design renders our bodies plastic enough to adapt to the internal fluctuations of breathing, digestion, and other life processes as well as to the variety of positions we assume as we move about. However, without some means of securing such a mobile arrangement against gravity's downward pull, it would be impossible to take a single step. Gravity, as Sir Isaac Newton told us long ago, dictates falling.
For the most part, we do not fall because our bodies are programmed to negotiate with gravity. As we grow, creeping and crawling our way onto two legs, the nervous system coordinates our motions with increasing sophistication. As toddlers reaching out for a bright red ball, we push against the ground, first with knees and later with feet, as we struggle to outwit gravity and move towards our goal. Through trial and error, we learn to stabilize our bodies so we can control our limbs and move with purpose. Once walking, we then figure out how to run and play and work, always poised between falling and not falling.
We cannot separate posture from movement or activity from how we stabilize our bodies in order to act. How we stabilize ourselves determines our posture and the freedom, efficiency, and grace with which we move. The essence of posture, then, is the unique way in which each of us negotiates between moving and holding still in relationship to gravity.
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Leon Chaitow, N.D., D.O.
Preface
Introduction: What Are the New Rules of Posture?
PART ONE: AWARENESS
1. Your Conscious Body
2. Your Body’s Internet
PART TWO: STABILITY
3. The Root of Posture
4. Healthy Breathing
5. Core Connections
PART THREE: ORIENTATION
6. Your Heart’s Messengers
7. Footprints
8. Facing the World
PART FOUR: MOTION
9. Healthy Walking
10. Articulate Living
Afterword: Explore the New Rules of Posture, Together
Appendix: Therapeutic Resources for Healthy Posture
Bibliography
Index
EXPLORATIONS AND PRACTICES
1. YOUR CONSCIOUS BODY
Your Neutral Breath
A Stressful Moment
Simple Pleasure
Walking Inventory
Your Best Foot
Heel Strike
Pelvic Mobility
Arm Swing
Spinal Mobility
Head and Neck
Stabilizing Actions
2. YOUR BODY’S INTERNET
Postural Sway
Fascial Continuity
Sacroiliac Rocking
Holistic Impact
Counterrotation of Pelvis and Chest
Curling and Arching
3. THE ROOT OF POSTURE
Pelvis Palpation
The Pelvic Floor Diamond
The Anal Triangle
Slouching
Supported Sitting
Bending Over
Perceptual Fine Tuning
Smart Reclining
4. HEALTHY BREATHING
Quiet Breathing
Active Breathing
Global Breathing Awareness
Breathing in Your Back
Inhaling Beauty
Exhaling Surrender
The Spaciousness and Weight of Breathing
Breathing in Gravity
Slowing Your Breath with Sound
Healthy Breathing, Healthy Posture
5. CORE CONNECTIONS
Activating Your TA through the Pelvic Floor
Activating Your TA from a Table Position
Activating Your TA Lying Down
A Shortcut to the Inner Corset
Flying Table
Bending Forward and Bending Down
Posture as Relationship
6. YOUR HEART’S MESSENGERS
A Tour of Your Shoulders
Closing Your Shoulders
Shoulder Expression
Leverage
Shoulder Blade Pulses
Handprints on the Wall
Serratus Shortcut
Seated Sphinx
Reaching
Wall Traction
First Aid for Your “Mouse Arm”
Sacred Touch, Living Touch
Two-way Touching
Lifting Something Heavy
7. FOOTPRINTS
Self-assessment of Your Feet
Your Foot’s Dimple
Relaxing Your Arches
Footprints on the Wall
Opening Your Feet
Alternating Pressure between Forefoot and Heel
Rocking from Stance Foot to Walking Foot
Stepping into Your Whole Heel
Help for Bunions
Aligning Your Legs
Shifting Sands
Sitting to Standing
Pushing the Floor
Sacred Ground
8. FACING THE WORLD
Jaw and Tongue Tensions
Nose and Palate Tension
Jaw and Inner Ear
Distinguishing Cranium and Face
Narrow Focus and Open Focus
Releasing Eye Tension
Receptive Eyes
Welcoming the World
9. HEALTHY WALKING
Stop and Go
Wall Traction Enhanced
Flying Table Enhanced
Hip Rotation
Counterrotation
Pelvic Gyroscope
Seated Spine Spirals
Initiating a Step
One Step
One Step with Rotation
Forget About It
10. ARTICULATE LIVING
Body Parts Art
Acceleration
Your Best Walk
Your Worst Walk
Walking Your Way out of a Funk
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