Emergent form
Tl;dr — there can be various benefits to working on posture, but don’t get neurotic about it because it’s there to aid your life not interrupt it.
I’m a martial artist and teacher, and bodyworker and embodiment coach.
Posture and how we arrange ourselves is a big part of those areas. Working with contrasts and archetypes, alignment under gravity comes up in every mind-body discipline (qi kung, Feldenkreits, and Alexander Technique come immediately to mind) as ways to investigate structural integrity, emotional state, ability to defend, take action, etc.
But it can be easy to no longer see the forest for the trees.
I’ve got a new student and I’m showing him the idea of alignment and expansive posture. We started with semi supine position from AT where one lies with back of head elevated and soles of the feet on the floor. Working with the intention of extending or releasing tension along the spine. Afterwards we sat up to seiza and asked him to try and recreate that feeling of extension and release, while being upright.
Being the diligent student that he is, he asked me afterwards if we should always try to be like this - walking around and standing day to day.
…
10 years ago, honestly, even 5 years ago, I’d have nodded enthusiastically saying,”it can be tough - but it’s worth it!”
Now I’m wiser ... or lazier… well at least I’ve changed my mind... I told him to keep it as a practice, and allow it to be a surprise when he sees it appear; We’ve got plenty to consider day to day without giving up resources all the time to how we stand.
Let it be like a weed that sprouts untended
Fetishizing/focusing on something continuously, purely to attain an idealized, possibly fictional, goal is brutalizing and will likely undo many potential benefits that the practice could deliver. If it isn’t emerging on its own, but instead by a need-to-conform-because, the neurotic tic will smother most benefit. I’m so stressed by having to do it, that I won’t enjoy it.
The forest has become a lumber yard.
So I recommended that he practice diligently, and when he feels like it, try out the idea now and again. But trust that it will emerge, and be surprised by it. That the meta-practice is not becoming neurotic about consciously managing and correcting every moment of my life…. Even writing that sentence each word felt like a slab dropping across my shoulders.
The meta-practice is not becoming neurotic
The inspiration for the article came from this one I read today:
https://unfortunatetrivializations.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/upright-and-uptight/
