Category: Slouching

Why Popular Attempts To Fix Your Posture Don’t Work (And What To Do Instead)

3/6/2025

Have you ever spent countless of hours at a doctor’s therapy office or the gym repeating exercises aimed at relaxing or strengthening your aching muscles and joints, hoping it would get you out of pain and fix your posture?

But nothing made a lasting positive impact on your well-being...

Does it feel crazy that your body seems to always revert back to your old patterns of slouching, stiffening and tensing up? You correct yourself for a while, but soon enough, you’re right back where you started.

Consider this:

1. Posture cannot be improved by exercising ‘weak’ or relaxing “tense” muscles because there is a reason why they act the way they do. That reason are your whole-body, dysfunctional movement patterns.

2. Posture cannot be ‘fixed’ by forcing your body into a certain position and then holding it there, because it's unnatural and creates more tension and stiffness.

How posture works

Your posture works through a holistic set of processes that are happening in your sensory and nervous systems, and that are directly influenced by the way you move and think.

Imbalances in your musculoskeletal system are the result of the unconscious messages your muscles receive from your brain that cause dysfunction in how your body operates.

So the real million dollar question is this: How can you use your mind and thinking to develop movement patterns that promote a superb functioning for your body as a whole?

How can you develop a use of your musculoskeletal system that makes you feel balanced and empowered? How can you work more skillfully with your awareness so that your body is adaptive and free to do what you really want it to do, and not held back by dis-ease and limitations?

If you want to improve the way you move, look and feel (your posture!), pay attention to how you guide and direct your body into activity. Think of your body as one unified whole, not a bunch of isolated muscles that you somehow need to manipulate.

Muscular dysfunction must be addressed on the level of consciousness and thought because muscles are merely the 'actors' and 'responders' to the way you think - they're not the 'directors' who holds the whole vision.

It is never too early or too late to learn how to let your posture support you effortlessly for life!

All you need is a simple learning process that helps you to recognize & address the repetitive and dysfunctional patterns that shape how you move, stand, and sit every day so that they not only become functional but promote balance, lightness and ease for your body.

This is the foundation of the Alexander Technique—an educational discipline and body of work that helps your posture to become something you experience, map, guide and enjoy, not something you force.

If you want to learn more about holistic posture improvement go to walkinbalance.net or click here to set up a complimentary New Posture Consultation call and learn how I can help you improve your posture, now and forever.

How Holistic Posture Training Helps You

10/21/2024

Holistic posture training starts with an important and crucial mindset shift:
Posture cannot be "exercised" into shape—it can only be minded.

This means that strengthening your core or back muscles won’t solve the issue of slouching or relieve persistent neck and shoulder tension. Instead, there are deeper, more concrete patterns at play that need to be understood and addressed.

These patterns are habits ingrained in how you move and coordinate your body, and my role is to guide you toward experiencing these underlying habits firsthand. The real source of your discomfort isn't a weak muscle group but rather an unhelpful coordination pattern.

Slouching, for example, isn’t a sign of failure or weakness. It’s simply an expression of the way your body has learned to move over time.
By understanding and becoming aware of these patterns, you open the door to meaningful change. Let’s start by observing how you coordinate yourself in everyday movements.

This could be as simple as how you walk, stand, sit, or even type at your computer. These patterns don’t change based on the activity; they remain consistent because they’re habitual and repetitive for all of us. The good news is that if we can examine how you hold yourself in one activity, it can reveal a lot about how you approach all other activities.

Once you begin to recognize your typical patterns ("slouching" for example) you can use that awareness to discover new, less stressful ways to move. I will guide you through this process, helping you explore and practice alternative movements that are easier on your body. This isn’t about forcing yourself into a "correct" posture but about understanding how you can naturally move in a way that feels better and works for your body.

Ultimately, the goal is to help you return to the driver's seat of your own body, where you have the freedom to choose how you want to show up in your everyday life. This is the beginning of holistic posture training—a learning process that empowers you to find ease, comfort, and control over your body.

If you’re ready to start sorting out your posture and feel better in your own skin, I’m here to help. For more about this topic download my FREE E-BOOK POSTURE AWARENESS GUIDE, or book a complementary call with me here to find out how I can help you to unravel the patterns that keep you stuck so you can find a new way forward.

SLOUCHING AS AN ART FORM OF RESISTANCE

10/5/2018

A recent article in the Huffington Post made me realize how society never talks about slouching posture as a cultural act of defiance beyond the teenage years. But grown-up artist Sarah Lucas does just that, and I like the artistic expression of it. If we don't talk about the devastating health effects of habitual slouching but look at it as an artistic standpoint, we get an interesting new perspective:

".....Defiant slumping dates back at least to 1913 with the “debutante slouch,” a self-conscious craze (documented around the time by the Library of Congress and The New York Times) used to describe women of all classes who walked with their “shoulders sloping, chest dropped, hips slung forward and the knees... slightly bent.” For many, the posture went hand in hand with women drinking, smoking and casting corsets aside; it was something to be medically advised against. For others, it was a signifier of imperfect change, of (mostly white) women finally harnessing defiance, vying for jobs in male-dominated fields and protesting for the right to vote, slouch-shaming be damned.

In recent years, celebrities like Kristen Stewart, Emma Watson and Keira Knightley have inspired tsk-tsking tabloid headlines for their refusal to assume classic starlet stances on carpets. And in case you needed any additional evidence that slouching is a good thing, Jordan Peterson advises against it.

As someone who has the posture of Eeyore holding a smartphone, Lucas’ devotion to slouch life hits me where it aches (in my lower spine). I have only felt shame in relation to my posture, perceiving it as a sign of my indefatigable fatigue and inability to function in even the most basic of ways. I’d never considered that a slouch could be something to be proud of, a way of wordlessly communicating some form of BDE...."

If the above mentioned actresses assumed the slouch habitually OR made a conscious choice to make a cultural statement is still unclear.

It might sound like fun to rebel for one night making a slouchy statement, but assuming such posture habitually can have have huge negative health consequences for you. I would advise against it. :)

Why Popular Attempts To Fix Your Posture Don’t Work (And What To Do Instead)

How Holistic Posture Training Helps You

SLOUCHING AS AN ART FORM OF RESISTANCE

Walk In Balance Center Blog

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Why Popular Attempts To Fix Your Posture Don’t Work (And What To Do Instead)

How Holistic Posture Training Helps You

SLOUCHING AS AN ART FORM OF RESISTANCE

Walk In Balance Center Blog

Archives

Categories

BerlinTel: +49 (0)160-3728007

​San francisco work with me virtually​FROM ANYWHERE!tel: 415-879-0038​

Tai Chi / Qi Gong Berlin

Alexander Technique

Study with me online

Testimonials​

Contact

Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)160-3728007

San francisco
work with me virtually
FROM ANYWHERE!
tel: 415-879-0038

Testimonials