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Recently, I taught a workshop at the Houston NiaMoves Studio, called Dynamic, Beautiful Posture. Lots of my clients express the desire for improved posture, so its a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about. Every time I teach this workshop, I am still astonished by the level of psychological pain, selfloathing, perfectionism, and defeatism that students express. My rant: how did we, as a culture,create such a huge cohort of disempowered people? At the beginning of the workshop, I asked the students (all women, this time, of all sizes, shapes, and ages) to simply walk around the room a few times. You can try this for yourself: as you walk, is there a voice inside your head, coaching and directing you in the right way to walk? For most people, the answer is YES. When asked what thoughts went through their minds as they walked, a flood of comments burst forth. Stand up straight. (What does that even MEAN?) Hold in your stomach. Suck it in! Keep that ass from flapping in the breeze! All agreed that they were following old directions from a past authority figure while walking not in the present moment at all. I asked them how that voice made them feel.
Clearly, this is a fruitless and futile path. And yet weve all trod it. There is a better way. (Its coming soon, my solution. But Im kind of on a roll with this rant, so permit me. . .) Our notion of good posture arises from a cultural aesthetic preference. Great works of art, and artistic pursuits such as ballet and yoga reflect this aesthetic preference for the ideals of symmetry and elongation. The real-world realization is that Ideal means does not actually occur in real life. Ideals are meant to be beacons toward which we move. Ideals are meant to inspire healthy striving and accomplishment (H/T to Dr. Brene Brown for expressing this wonderful distinction.) The closer we get to the ideal, we find the goal posts move. Achieve the ideal, and youve become a butterfly specimen in a display case: dead, wings pinned to a board, no longer capable of flight, growth, or continued inspiration. Rather straining to achieve an ideal, embrace a metaphor: The Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is teeming with life, wonder, and beauty. Face it: nobody ever died from bad posture. The problem is not in any particular position the problem comes from getting stuck there. Moshe Feldenkrais, iconoclastic thinker and movement educator from the last century, said that posture is a static state, like a post. (Post/posture, get it?) That is fine for photographs and statues, but peoples lives are not static. Weve gotta move, and do, and be, and love, and work, and play. We cant do that in one, correct, static position. So he coined a word, acture, to describe a dynamic state of curiosity about the world, poised for comfort and grace in movement without wasted energy. You dont teach that kind of fabulous, engaged attitude toward life by shaming, coercing, nagging, or making people walk with a book on their head. Comfortable acture, along with the happy side-effect of looking aesthetically pleasing, has to be experienced and FELT. Classes in the Feldenkrais Method seek to create the conditions where this dynamic internal spark can be re-ignited. With deeper experiences of the felt sense of springiness, grace, ease, and length comes a changed emotional tone, changed thinking patterns and self-talk, and the ability to be ones own authority in matters of comfort, effectiveness, and self. The workshop participants made a beginning at trading in their perfectionism in favor of resilience, adaptability, and a sense of their own capacity for skill, grace, and comfort in efficient and beautiful movement. They began to experience the old adage, What you think of me is none of my business. When new possibilities open up, the potential for improvement is LIMITLESS. Where is perfectionism blocking you? How does perfectionism affect your relationships with others? Read more from MaryBeth Smith on the SomaQuest blog.