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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Doing well
Most of us perform dozens of different activities throughout each day, some of which we may consider as good for us and others are positively bad. Occupations such as sitting at a desk and typing may be thought of as ‘bad for us’ whilst other activities such as jogging ‘are good for us’. However, if we look at two people doing the same activity, for instance typing a letter, we may notice that they are sitting in different ways; one may be twisted, or hunched and tapping the keyboard with quite a lot of vigour whilst the other may be upright and relaxed. It can also be the case that one will complain of backache and tired wrists whilst the other does not. The same activity can be done in quite different ways.
If we suffer some pain such as getting backache from sawing a piece of wood, or stiff wrists when typing we can easily pass it off with “Oh well, that’s life.” It rarely occurs to us that our problems may lie in the manner in which we’re performing the activity, rather than the activity itself being the problem. In other words, it’s not what you do but the way that you do it!
Small postural habits that we may have when young can become more and more pronounced so that as we grow older they can become a serious problem unless checked. So it’s worth doing something about them.
We all want to be able to do things well. It may be interesting to look at a different definition of what ‘doing well’ could mean. It’s normally considered that doing well means we’ve coped with a difficult day, produce the required result, a product beautifully made, produced on time and within the allotted budget. Great! If we’ve performed the piano recital beautifully, we’ve done well. If we get the report finished on time, we’ve done well. If we make our business presentation, and the management bought the idea, then we’ve also done well. But supposing we look at how we’ve done the tasks, can we give ourselves the same pat on the back? Let’s take a different view. If we didn’t tense our muscles unnecessarily, were in good balance, not interfering with our breathing, and if we were loose, tall and expansive in stature, and used a minimum of effort, then we could say we had we done the job really well! If we achieved this, is it possible that we would have coped better, not exhausted ourselves, and been less stressed?
If you want to do well at something, it's really worth paying attention to how we physically go about it. 'Trying hard' really doesn't help as we invariably make more effort and that can be counter-productive. Indeed, in many cases we will do better by making less effort. Avoid practicing your mistakes!
It's important that we have a good role-model to copy. We need someone who is as free as possible of postural habits and who excels in the activity. We learn by copying as children and pick up all the bad tendencies as well as the good ones, so it's worth taking care.
It will be particularly beneficial if you can free your neck from tension as often as possible, as this will have an effect on your overall co-ordination. A little 'conscious control' over our posture and muscles can go a long, long way in helping us perform to our best in almost any activity.
