What is posture?
We all think we want perfect posture but what does it actually mean?
Posture is not a term I particularly like.
There is something of the poseur about it – a thing that we do with our body to show that we are … strong, straight, fearless, sexy … or, alternatively, non-threatening, not-worthy, non-sexy. The etymology is from the latin "to place" - so there is a sense in "posture" of deliberate placing of body parts for an effect.
Ida Rolf shunned the idea of posture. She referred to structure or alignment. But posture is a word in common use, and many of us use, so I'll play a little with it here.
What could posture be for a Rolfer or a client exploring with a Rolfer?
Posture is not one fixed certainty. Posture is our adapting to our situations … a “process”, always contextual, forever coming into being through our present interaction with the world. If we are healthful, responsive and adaptable, posture is ever changing
How? It is definitely not something we “do”, but more something we allow.
When we "do" posture we have to engage muscles that are under our conscious control. These muscles are great at short bursts of activity but are not well suited to be kept switched on for adaptable posture. Muscles start to tire, and we become tense, or we collapse because we cannot go on with the effort.
We "allow" posture to arise by the way we connect with the world around us. There is something about
how we release weight through our body,
how we receive the upward support of the ground,
how we find inspiration and support from our surroundings, and
how we relate with other beings (humans, animals, trees) that inhabit the space we are in.
Those of you who have explored with me will perhaps recall that I often ask where is your sense of weight (in your feet, your gut? in your shoulders?), how is your sense of weight (crushing? buoyant?). The "I don't know" is always welcome - developing a sense of becoming curious and noticing is taking steps into renegotiating how you are in the world - how you allow posture.
Journeying through Rolfing is about starting to understand what the heck all of this means, and how to (not) do this not doing of posture.
Above are lots of words for a process that is best experienced with touch and movement in a Rolfing studio and then explored regularly, preferably outdoors with trees and horizons and birds!
In gratitude to Ida Rolf, Mary Bond, Hubert Goddard, Giovanni Felicioni and Iain McGilchrist.
"Shoulders back, guts in", says the top sergeant, meaning you must do it, it doesn't come naturally. The minute you force yourself to maintain a posture of this sort, you betray that all is not well with your world. You show the world that your structure and your posture are at war". Ida Rolf, Rolfing