The New Rules of Posture

HEALTH / EXERCISE"The New Rules of Posture is a good adjunct to bodywork of all kinds, from chiro­practic and osteopathy to Pilates and yoga. Read it thoroughly, let it soak into your experience—your body will thank you."—Thomas Myers, author of Anatomy Trains"Few things are as overlooked and yet absolutely critical to our health and well-being as our posture. Mary Bond offers information, stories, and tools for learning how to stand and move with ease and elegance."—Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D., PT, author of 30 Essential Yoga PosesMany people cause their own back and body pain through their everyday bad postural and movement habits. Many sense that their poor posture is probably the root of the problem, but they are unable to change long-standing habits.In The New Rules of Posture, Mary Bond approaches postural changes from the inside out. She explains that healthy posture comes from a new sense we can learn to feel, not by training our muscles into an ideal shape. Drawing from thirty-five years of helping people improve their bodies, she shows how habitual movement patterns and emotional factors lead to unhealthy posture. She contends that posture is the physical action we take to orient ourselves in relation to situations, emotions, and people; in order to improve our posture, we need to examine both our physical postural traits and the self-expression that underlies the way we sit, stand, and move. The way we walk, she says, is our body's signature.Bond identifies the key anatomical features that impact alignment, particularly in light of our modern sedentary lives, and proposes six zones that help create postural changes: the pelvic floor, the breathing muscles, the abdomen, the hands, the feet, and the head. She offers self-help exercises that enable healthy function in each zone as well as information on basic ergonomics and case histories to inspire us to think about our own habitual movements. This book also is a resource for Pilates, yoga, and dance instructors as well as healthcare professionals in educating people about postural self-care so they can relieve chronic pain and enjoy all life activities with greater ease.MARY BOND has a Master's degree in dance from UCLA and trained with Dr. Ida P. Rolf as a Structural Integration practitioner. She is a movement instructor at the Rolf Institute and teaches movement workshops nationally. The author of Balancing Your Body, she has also published articles in numerous health and fitness magazines. She lives in California.