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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Wearing spectacles and sunglasses
New generation video eyewear.
The spectacles are well adjusted so she is looking through the centre of the lens while maintaining good posture.
Although we have a national and indeed a global tendency to stiffen our necks and hold our head in a position that is not in the best of balance, the tendency can be exacerbated if we wear spectacles or even sun glasses.
As healthy children we have the best poise imaginable; free of habit, loose, tall and expansive. We do not have any postural habits at that age but as we grow up and even from the age of four we develop tendencies to stiffen, hunch, stoop and slouch. We pick these habits up from our parents, friends and other people of influence such as rock stars and film stars. As we grow, we learn how to tie our shoe laces and write at a desk by example and we copy people who also stiffen their necks. We may also play computer games slouched for hours and these tendencies, innocent as they may appear at such a young age gradually take their toll on us and by the time we're middle-aged we have a bad back, sciatica and stiff neck and shoulders. We probably don't breathe well either and suffer unnecessarily from stress.
Stiffening our neck is not just a habit but part of startle pattern which is our defence mechanism setting us up for 'fight or flight'. If someone slams a door behind our back we may well stiffen, but as we copy our parents and others who also stiffen their necks, we also stimulate our fear reflexes so we can live our lives in a constant state of anxiety; which comes first, the chicken or the egg? If we break the pattern by learning how to release our neck and shoulders, i.e. by means of the Alexander Technique, we also break the physical pattern associated with the 'fight or flight' reflex. We can become calmer.
Wearing spectacles or sun glasses can be problematic as well as having benefits. When we buy new spectacles the optician will take care to adjust the bridge and legs so that we look through the centre part of the lens. However after a few months they can start to slacken or become misshapen by constant use and if we accidentally sit on them, then they are put even more out of alignment.
When spectacles are slack so the slip down our nose we always end up pulling our head backwards so we're arching the back of our neck and facing upwards a bit, just so we can see through the centre part of the lens. We may not notice that we're even doing this if the tendency is part of our postural habits. We may even have had a stiff neck when we bought the specs in the first place and they were adjusted according to our habitual and tense stance! The problem can be made even worse if the lenses are narrow in shape so there is not much to look through.
If our head is slightly tilted backwards it is because we are stiffening our necks. Indeed if we relaxed our neck muscles our head would not come backwards but 'fall' forwards a little as the bulk of the weight of our head is in front of the balancing point on our spine at a height of between our ears. If we 'nod off' when sitting, our head falls forwards.
To free our necks from tension we often need to allow our head to roll forwards just a little on the top of our spine. But if our spectacles or sunglasses are half way down our nose, we will not be able to free our neck because of the need to see through the lens.
It's a good idea to always have your spectacles or sunglasses tightened up by an optician if they are slack so they can sit properly right up on the bridge of your nose. But when you do have them adjusted, make sure you're not standing in a slouch or stoop and pulling your head back when they fit them! Bring yourself up tall, then let your head roll forwards a few millimetres so they are adjusted when you are at your best posture. That way, your spectacles will help you maintain good poise as they are then adjusted according to upright posture.
