Mention the word posture and watch what happens next. We must hear grandma telling us to sit up straight, suck our tummy muscles in and pull our shoulders back and then keep them there because that’s what I see. A tense, held body. Sorry grandma but that is not good posture. A tense, held body is a serious overcorrection that causes more imbalance in your musculoskeletal system than what you started with and the antithesis of ‘good’ posture. So out with the old fashioned notions of ‘posture’.
Posture simply refers to your skeletal alignment. Due to the connected nature of the body you either have 206 bones sitting correctly or you don’t. You either have sound skeletal alignment and therefore ‘good’ posture or you have compromised skeletal alignment and therefore ‘poor’ posture. Sucking something in here and pulling some bones back there is literally tinkering around the edges.
Therefore to achieve ‘good’ posture you need to achieve ‘good’ skeletal alignment.
So how do we achieve ‘good’ or sound skeletal alignment, how do we correct our posture?
How do I correct my posture?
Correcting posture starts and finishes with our bones, realigning our skeleton and this is where it gets interesting. Of our 639 muscles more than 500 of those are there to do one job, establish and maintain our 206 bones in the correct anatomical position and simultaneously establish and maintain 360 healthy joints no matter what we are doing. That is the definition of good posture and a truly healthy skeleton and that is a huge job for our muscles. That is why it takes hundreds and hundreds of muscles to achieve that.
So how do we achieve great postural muscles so they place and maintain our bones and joints beautifully for us all day no matter what we are doing so we always have great posture naturally and without trying?
How do the postural muscles work?
Well that is the point…..postural muscles are ‘not trying’ muscles. This deep intrinsic network of hundreds and hundreds of muscles are either working as a team for you, placing every bone and joint correctly, or they are not. They are either receiving their instructions to fire straight from the nervous system or they are not. So before you stress over how we get ‘not trying’ muscles to work (possible mind bender) go to the positive side. At least it means you don’t have yet another thing to add to your ‘must try harder’ list of things to do.
How often do I need to do posture correction exercises?
Postural correction exercise is best done daily and must start with our bones. I have developed The Skeletal Workout that realigns your 206 bones simultaneously without you moving or trying to activate, stretch, hold, lengthen or strengthen muscle. You work directly with your skeleton via Key Bones and as you deeply realign your body, your connective tissue places the layers of postural muscles to the bone or bones they are responsible for. As your postural muscles are now placed correctly, the nervous system innervates them directly. This is happening on a grand scale. Hundreds and hundreds of muscles you can’t see but you can feel being placed and innervated simultaneously via simple safe postures. Almost invisible, deep exercise. Completing 20 minutes of The Skeletal Workout a day for 6 to 12 weeks realigns your body achieving great posture.
Why are posture devices bad?
Applying an external device to improve ‘posture’ prevents our connective tissue and nervous system from coming together to do their jobs placing and innervating hundreds and hundreds of postural muscles simultaneously. Therefore the answer to great posture is not in an external device, it is by going deep to your bones and working with the amazing design of your body.
Realigning your body with The Skeletal Workout captures your two innate systems, your connective tissue and your nervous system so they can place and innervate hundreds and hundreds of muscles just like roads lighting up on a roadmap. More and more postural muscles innervated means more and more bones and joints being placed perfectly for you all day without you trying so your posture just keeps improving.
We don’t need external devices. We have an amazing machine called our body. When our postural muscles are working correctly for us and our 206 bones are sitting well all day for us we feel just how amazing our body really is, how deeply balanced we are, how beautiful our posture is, before we move and before we exercise.