How do I stand properly?
- Bear your weight primarily on the balls of your feet.
- Keep your knees slightly bent.
- Keep your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Let your arms hang naturally down the sides of the body.
- Stand with shoulders relaxed and positioned vertical to knees.
- Keep your head level-your earlobes should be in front of your shoulders, neck relaxed.
Move the head in a ‘Yes’ type of gesture and let the eyes settle on the horizon
- Shift your weight from your toes to the balls of the feet, or one foot to the other if you have to stand for a long time. It’s all about movement and balance. Don’t concentrate too hard on position points. You’ll freeze up.
B) Anterior Pelvic Tilt
A) Level Pelvis
“Stand straight and tall” is vague. In other words, what is straight. What is tall? How straight? How tall? Standing too straight and too tall with the knees locked back causes Anterior Pelvic tilt and potbelly. The longer and harder it’s held, the bigger the potbelly.
An exercise for positional self awareness: unlock your knees, place your hands on your waist or pelvis. Now stand up straight and tall with the knees locked back. You’ll be able to feel your pelvic bowl tilt forward as in illustration B.
Also: Holding the shoulders back continuously creates a muscle imbalance and tension. It causes or contributes to a slouch to relieve the tension.
Illustration A) reflects the need to keep the knees slightly bent and shoulders balanced and relaxed vertically above the knees as per Perfect Posture tips. The shoulders should be moved forward to above the knees in the illustration.
Standing with the knees slightly bent and the shoulders vertical to the knees levels the pelvic “bowl”. It will cause the belly to flatten because the stomach contents aren’t continuously spilling forward against the abdominal wall which isn’t built to hold the stomach back.
Regarding “Tuck your stomach in”; Google “stop holding your stomach in”, or “dangers of holding your stomach in” and you will find a number of disciplines stating this can cause numerous health problems. The list is long. See: painfreeperformance.com, corewalking.com, abigailsteidly.com, dagmarkhan.com.
Your sensibilities may tell you standing too straight with the knees locked back and holding the stomach in also causes posterior pelvic tilt. Signs of this are flat bottom and deformed abdomen.
Another exercise for positional self awareness: Hold your stomach in. Place your hands on the top of your pelvis or waist. Now tighten the stomach as much as you can. Sense and feel how the pelvic bowl tilts to the back and the buttock curls under when you tighten. The opposite of figure B above right.
Try this positional awareness movement as illustrated at below right. Put a two by four board under your heels if needed for balance when you first start. Move as slowly as you can so you gain as much body
Relax, Breath. Tension in anything but the legs causes imbalance and distortion
awareness as you can from each movement. Try to do the crouch using only the leg muscles. It will probably be hard if you’ve grown up in a western country. Your legs have become weak and awkward from non use.
Let yourself down while balancing on the balls of your feet first, and using your heels for backup. Let yourself down until your shoulders are resting on your knees. In time you could crouch like this indefinitely.
Don’t pay too much attention to the illustration. Let your inner balance be your guide. Align the body parts as instructed, keep the shoulders relaxed, balanced above the knees, and go for it.
When you start back up try and maintain the balance of your shoulders above your knees. When you’re almost all the way up stop just before you lock the knees back and take that Type 1 position.
The position you stopped at is the position of balance you want to maintain. If you have to stand for a long time, dance a little box step, walk in a little circle, crouch. Anything but locking the knees back and resting on joints. If you absolutely have to rest sit in a chair. The more you practice the stronger you’ll get and the longer you’ll last.
Few today would dispute the evolutionary continuity of man and the natural world, or, that mans backbone is not subject to the laws of nature. Stay tuned for more insights on the nature of posture and how to live with it in the modern, Type 1 world.
Another beauty of Perfect Posture body mechanics is that you gain a flat belly without exercise of any sort, and, without the fear of harming yourself by continuously “holding” or “tucking” your stomach in. It’s a win win situation with Perfect Posture instruction.
