Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Adaptive mechanism - posture
While our immune system adapts to cope with the invasion of new viruses and we adjust our behaviour depending on our social situation, our posture too is constantly adapting to the forces of nature. Gravity doesn't take time off; it's unremitting effect works on us the whole time. As we move, our balance shifts and there are millions of adjustments taking place to compensate and keep us upright.
Adapting to our postural situation is an automatic process that involves the cerebellum, the vestibular mechanism, the eyes and all our proprioceptive senses. Clearly any object that's not in balance fall's over. So our body is constantly adjusting the various tensions of our muscles to maintain upright poise while moving in relation to the earth's gravitational pull. However, we all get into bad postural habits such as slouching, stooping, over-stiffening and these interfere with the natural functioning of our body.
If we're stiffening our hips, legs and back by habit, then we're preventing the subtle shifts and compensations required for healthy, free poise. As a result of our postural habits most of us are off balance....all of the time. The reason we don't fall over is because we adapt to our situation and create extra tensions, bracing muscles that are not normally required for natural poise. These habitual tensions undermine us further and it can be a downward spiral of health and well-being if not corrected.
