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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A back like a trampoline
It is a strongly held misconception that a strong back involves having strong muscles in that area. But this is not entirely true.
While it is necessary to have muscles that have a degree of strength and are not flaccid, they do not need to be so very strong if our whole musculature is working effectively. Many people will go to the gym to work out and within their regime will include some work specifically to strengthen their back muscles, but even when these muscles have been considerably worked and strengthened in this way it is not a given certainty that they will support our posture during normal activities such as walking, sitting and bending. This is because the muscles get into habits where some are too tense and others are not working enough. There can be an imbalance of effort between all the muscles so no matter how strong they are individually, they do not necessarily do the job they were intended for. Look at young children of around 3-4 years old. They do not have strong backs and nor do they have 'chore strength' to support them; indeed their tummies are beautifully soft yet they have great posture.
It comes down to co-ordination and getting the muscles to work together. It will not be the case that individually strong muscles will work together in a co-ordinated way in the task of supporting us. They get strong to do the job they were strengthened for....to do the stretch, to do the 'lift' to do the exercises we did. Muscles need training. Weak backs need training; not to get stronger to excercises, but to do the job of supporting us as we walk, sit and stand. That's entirely different.
A strong back is a 'widening' back.
A widening back comes about when we become free of unnecessary tension and expansive in stature. Specifically it requires the broad sheet muscle such as Latissimus Dorsi and Trapezius to span out across our backs. These muscles are effectively broad and flat but with unnecessary tension can get drawn inwards towards our spine and can be seen in a bare back as being hard ridges of muscle running vertically on both sides of the spine, rather like drainpipes. This is inefficient use of these muscles.
When I was a kid, my mother would wash our bed sheets and hang them out to dry on a washing line. When done, she'd ask me to take an end of them and tug against her to stretch out the creases before folding the sheets. When we did this, there were deep corrugated ridges along its length. However, if we were to get two other people, one on each side to stretch out the middle of the sheet, it would become flat, like a trampoline. This is effectively what happens when our flat sheet muscle is encouraged to lengthen and also fan outwards across our back.
Our back muscles need to be lengthening and widening across our back. In Alexander Technique we encourage this to happen by intending and 'directing' them to do so. We give internal 'directions' to ourselves to free up, to lengthen and widen. It's all done by thinking, nothing more. These thoughts or 'directions' tone our back muscles so they are very supportive. I know some elderly people who do not work out in gyms but have stronger backs than young people who work out daily. This is because they are using what they've got more efficiently.
Good teamwork will achieve far more than the efforts of strong individuals who are not working together in a co-ordinated manner. It is the same with our posture and the strength of our backs. We don't need strong muscles in our back and we do not need to develop strong chore strength in order to be upright and pain free. We just need to use what we've got as nature intended it. What we're doing with Alexander Technique is exactly what's happening in nature; it's just that we're bringing it about consciously and by so doing, we can get rid of the postural habits that undermine us. This whole process is a lot simpler than most people imagine.
You cannot 'do' good posture. You can only let it happen by making sure that bad habits do not get in the way of it. The right thing will do itself as nature intended. Alexander Technique enables us to do just that.
