by Cirsten Verleger, MD, Certified Advanced Rolfer® and Rolf Movement™ Practitioner
Regain your natural capacity to effortlessly sit upright and prevent neck and back pain
Too good to be true? Walking through life effortlessly and sitting upright and relaxed is our inborn nature. Why many people experience this differently and how you can re-activate this capacity for yourself is the subject of this article.
Try this little experiment.
Place your left hand under your left buttock, directly under the sit bone. That is the prominent bone you will find there. … Wait about 20-30 seconds and then get your hand out again. Now, sense. – How does the left side feel compared to the right side? Different? Somehow more relaxed? And we did not even do a lot. Further down in this article, you will find more experiments for you to try, but let us first have a look at how our bodies function and how we can use this knowledge to get through life with greater ease.
Gravity is your friend
Our bodies do not seek complete “relaxation”. The reason: We do not function like “rock piles,” where the upper stones compress the lower stones. Instead, we work closer to the principle of “biotensegrity”: Spacers – our bones – are held together by tensional elements – our muscles and fasciae.
The pictured toy illustrates this principle.
For the system to maintain its elasticity, the tensional elements need to be balanced. If the tensional balance gets lost in one area, the elasticity of the entire system suffers. In the context of our body, this implies that we do not need complete loss of tension but the right tension at the right spot.
Luckily, we do not have to consciously control this tensional balance throughout our body – that would be a very complex endeavour. In fact, even if we wanted, we would not be able to control it. Instead, the tensional balance is regulated by deep parts of our brain. To accomplish this, the brain needs information. We provide this information by keeping our senses open and appreciating gravity, the ground and the support we get from there, and our surroundings.
Infants set an example of moving without effort
A beautiful expression of this automatic regulation can be seen in infants, who still react spontaneously and without consciously thinking about their environment. They have gravity as an unfailing reference. Then, when something attracts their interest, they push themselves from the ground to get it.
In this situation, our body’s inherent movement and uprighting system is still unimpaired and active between the poles of gravity and the space around.
I think, therefore I am – a human being with back pain
This claim is a bit provocative but not entirely false: In us adults, the effortless movement quality described above is indeed easily disturbed by thoughts, emotions, and habits.
You can check this yourself.
Imagine you are on your way to meet a good friend. How does this feel in your body? And now imagine you need make an unpleasant phone call with someone who may get angry with you. What do you sense now? The latter may lead to a slight contraction inside your body. Similarly, when a deadline is approaching and stressing you, this will result in a subtle tension somewhere.
Activate your stabilising muscles
We own marvellous muscles that can stabilise us with astonishing endurance. However, the subtle tensions described above, which we only sense if we carefully listen into ourselves, impair the tensional balance in our body and our effortless uprightness.
As a reaction, in order to keep us upright, we often use muscles that are actually intended for movement. We are prone to apply this strategy because the stabilising muscles, which are regulated by deeper parts of our brain, do not follow our will as readily as the movement muscles do. However, as explained, the latter are not made for an enduring stabilising job. Who can blame them if one day they complain and start to hurt?
This can lead into a downward spiral, where keeping us upright becomes ever more tedious and we are “fighting” against gravity.
How to shift to an upward spiral
The magic word is: Conscious awareness. The muscles that stabilise us need information to do their job. They can only optimally support us, if they know where and how we are oriented and moving in relation to gravity and the space around us and what we intend to do.
On YouTube, you can find a large variety of so called „Body Scans“. Additionally, the exercises at the end of this article provide experiments around sitting. Both are useful tools to improve the precision of our sensing and perceiving in order to provide our brain with the information it needs.
However, it can take some time before we are able to discern that our ability to sense and perceive has improved. As long as we do not recognize any changes, our intellect can easily become impatient. Then, it might overhastily label the whole endeavour as pointless, and we give up.
You can boost your chances that you keep going and are able to reap the fruits of your commitment by working with a Rolfer® or Rolf Movement™ Practitioner.
Rolfers® and Rolf Movement™ Practitioners provide you with impulses that your body instantly understands
And these body and movement experts can do a lot more for you:
They can directly alter the tensional pattern in your body with their hands. Since our habits of posture eventually become inwritten in our tissues, often such a complementary manual therapy is indeed necessary.
They can suggest awareness explorations specifically tailored to your situation. Exploring the insights you’ve gained from the Rolfing Session by trying them out in your daily life can help integrate the changes and dramatically increase your motivation to continue to do so.
They know the typical pitfalls and can guide you to avoid them. Wanting too much too quickly can easily lead to a situation where you get out of sensing into wanting. This is not morally reprehensible, but it does not activate the areas of your brain we want to get to.
They have a trained eye and know a lot about the structure and function of the human body. Often, changes in one area can only happen after another area has changed first. Then, this trained eye and experience is necessary to find the best strategy to restore the balance, step by step.
When effortlessness becomes your new habit
Our body and our mind are one. With time, you will develop new movement patterns. Then, the moment you start an activity, you will already be optimally prepared for it and live more “in flow”.
Further explore your habits around sitting
How the pelvis and spine influence each other
For effortless uprightness of your spine, the pelvis needs to be tilted slightly anteriorly. This creates a healthy lumbar curve.
The three circles demonstrate: When the bottom circle (pelvis) tilts anteriorly, the middle circle (chest) and upper circle (head) tilt in the opposite direction. Conversely, how we position our chest influences our pelvis.
Do this little experiment: How is sitting on a high or low chair? What does this do to your chest and your pelvis? On what kind of chair is it easier to stay upright?
Another question: Do you get more support from a softer or from a harder seating surface? And: What effect does the seating surface have when it is tilted to the front or back or, one that has a little pit in the centre?
Good for neck and shoulders
Did you know that your palm is for its most part made up of your metacarpal bones? These are like an extension of your fingers. Embrace and really sense your computer mouse with these “long fingers.” This helps your shoulders and neck to relax.
How the back of your thighs learns softening
Sit down on a piece of a pool noodle. This is similar to the earlier experiment, when you placed a hand under your buttock. Now you can also experiment with tilting your pelvis:
Roll with your sit bones over the pool noodle while keeping your chest upright. Do you find the spot where your spine is best supported into uprightness?
Elegance – without any effort
Place a little sack filled with sand on your head when you sit at your desk. The little sack should be heavy enough so that you feel it, but not too heavy. Does this influence your posture? In which way?
Regularly change between sitting, standing, and sitting on a higher chair.
Be patient and kind to yourself.
Often, in our wish to be upright, we lose the sensing quality and fall back into wanting something to happen.
Many of our habits that are no longer helpful were once important. So, our body needs the experience of how things can be different before it can be convinced to relax certain areas.
If you overdo it, the new posture and movement patterns of your spine can also generate pain.
Therefore, take your time and enjoy the process!
Author: Text and drawings © Cirsten Verleger, MD, Certified Advanced Rolfer® and Rolf Movement™ Practitioner, Dortmund, Germany.
Editing: Ingo Kabirschke
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