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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Developing a strong back
Many people feel that their backs aren’t strong. But this may not because their back muscles are not strong, but because they aren’t working together properly i.e. the teamwork of back muscles is not efficient. It's the co-ordination of many muscles working together that makes a back strong, not the muscles' individual strength. If we have a weak back it’s often recommended by the physiotherapist or trainers to strengthen the tummy muscles to support the back; develop core strength. But we don’t see any young children with strong tummy muscles; theirs are all soft and relaxed yet they demonstrate the healthiest natural poise in the world.
I believe that to develop strong and ‘supportive’ tummy muscles can cause a lot of harm to our breathing, digestion, bowel movements and reproductive systems. This is because strongly worked muscles can have a shortening and compressing effect on our torso and stature, pulling us down, and restricting the expansive movement of our ribcage. In my experience we can improve our posture by improving the co-ordination of our back muscles so that they start do their job properly without interfering with the tummy muscles. If we encourage the back muscles to work together efficiently to hold us upright in a natural way, they will become stronger to fulfil the task they’re being asked to perform. They will strengthen whilst performing their natural activity better than any gym work that isolates muscles. I have worked with some elderly people who have had stronger backs than many young people who work out regularly in a gym, simply because the muscles in their back are better co-ordinated and working more efficiently.
Just in the same way as the uncoordinated football team, our bodies have developed the tendency for some muscles to be working far too hard, getting stiff and wasting energy, whilst others have been allowed to be a little lazy and not do their fair share. So for example, some parts of us may be very stiff such as our necks and shoulders and hips, whilst our lower back may be rather collapsed and unsupported. But the problem need not be a permanent one. Just like any team, our muscles need good direction and to be retrained.
Muscles need to work together. They are encouraged to work to together when a quality of lengthening and widening in stature is restored. We had this as children, and we need it still. With the onset of postural habits from our early childhood we will have lost the instinct to ‘lead with our heads’ and lengthen in stature. It is therefore easy to see how we may think that lengthening and widening will require some effort. But this is not the case. We have evolved with a particular arrangement of muscles to bring this quality about without any ‘perceived’ effort. I say perceived, because obviously muscles are working to do the job, but we should not sense it as effort.
The Alexander Technique is a practical means of getting rid of the postural habits, improving our balance and co-ordination and we get the strong back, and great poise, without working on core strength. We regain the poise we had as young children. If you haven't had experience of the Alexander Technique, get a teacher to demonstrate to you.
