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Christine Ackers
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We do a lot of it. We generally do it very badly, as
is evidenced by the growing lists of damaged parts we
develop through sitting for long periods. Nor is it
entirely due to our  increased
longevity that these lists are lengthening. Complainants
of neck pain and sore knees include an increasing number
of children -some as young as three years. We have advanced
in strides to protect our health from invasive attack;
but when it comes to recognising the importance of good
carriage and well co-ordinated movement for the healthy
maintenance of the systems and structures of our bodies,
we have less awareness today of the effects of use on
function than in pre-industrial ages, when we were the
machines we used. Even my 19th century Encyclopedia
of Embroidery opens with a paragraph entitled "How
to Sit to Sew". It warns of the importance of 'bringing
the work up to the face, and not the face down to the
work', and It goes on to enumerate some of the terrible
things that can happen to the
neck, back and eyes of a seamstress if good sitting
habits are not adopted from the start. Before the 20
Century, in both our leisure and work activities we
paid attention to using appropriate postures and appliances
to do a job or pursue a hobby. Nowadays we see children
playing sports which, with their poor co-ordination
can only harm them. We wait until our own bodies are
so badly damaged that replacement of their parts becomes
necessary.
Nor do medicine or its auxiliary professions come up
with preventives or cures for musculo-skeletal disorders.
Although much is now recognised within the health professions
about the effects of poor posture, we still have no
reliable mainstream source of knowledge and practice
with which to address them. Some health practitioners
assume that their knowledge of human anatomy gives them
a means of bringing about postural change. But this
is not so. A proper understanding of use is only acquired
through the development of one's own co- ordination
to a high standard by means of training in the Alexander
Technique. Without help from the Alexander teacher's
uniquely trained hands, the essential process of lengthening
and widening the body to facilitate beneficial movement
is inadequately understood. The usual shallow understanding
lends itself to the designing of endless posture- training
systems which are added to the supermarket of confusing
and contradictory gadgets and gizmos such as the 'orthotic
insole,’ the 'posture bra,’ the 'neck pillow,'
variously angled 'back supports' and 'harnesses' and
the pervasive and increasingly uncomfortable 'ergonomic
chair'. Currently under scrutiny is the design of the
school bag. Not before time -but also a complete waste
of it unless the child is simultaneously going to be
taught … to carry it.
 The
continuing failure to repair damage caused by poor use
leads the despairing health professionals with their
scant knowledge of our evolutionary history to claim
that "we are not designed for sitting." So
what are we designed for? And if we're not 'designed
for' ballet dancing, should we therefore be doing it?
I suspect that neither are we 'designed' to do yoga
-although it is touted as a healthful practice - especially
its postures that aim to extend our parts beyond their
natural limitations.
We are clearly designed to engage in some activities.
It's axiomatic that to be alive we must move, to retain
the fullness of our musculature, to be flesh at all.
During some millennium of our several-million-year history
we may serendipitously have discovered
activities that we could undertake to our benefit, including
some we may not have been specifically designed to perform.
Sitting may be one, but which we nonetheless manage
to do without harming ourselves -provided that we do
it well.
So before we move on to the question of … to
sit well, we must first define what we think good sitting
is. And in the process we can consider what sitting
might be for.
Some history
 There
is no question of the need for sitting as a developmental
stage in the human baby on her way to standing. Her
spine at birth is curved concave forwards in the thoracic
and pelvic regions, and is slightly curved convex forwards
in the cervical region. She has no lumbar curve at all.
Her cervical curve increases as she practises holding
her head up during crawling and sitting. Moving and
balancing her weighty head during these developmental
stages also strengthens the musculature of her trunk
in preparation for her bipedal future.
 Although
the size of her head will diminish in
relation to her overall size as she grows more upright,
it will still be sufficiently heavy to require a second
curve in her spine. This second convex forward curve
forms in the lumbar region and brings her centre of
gravity over her legs. It also affords more springing
and flexibility for moving her precariously balanced
body lightly -that is, with minimum expenditure of energy.
 To
understand how strength without rigidity is achieved,
take a length of cane or a green twig and push down
on its top end. You will feel a little resistance as
it
bends to left or right. Put another curve in the opposite
direction in the same length of cane and you will feel
how much more powerful the resistance is when you try
to push it down. Both curves are thrusting upwards against
the downward force of your applied weight. The resistance
of the curves as they attempt to straighten out is what
puts the counteracting force into a spring.
A benign circle of events is set in train by the weight
of our large heads stimulating this resistant force
from our spinal curves as they thrust against it.
This anti-gravitational thrust also ensures that our
heads -as long as we don't fix our neck muscles -are
constantly brought to the spot where their weight can
be deployed in this way to our advantage.
 As
a one-year-old, while her spine is still relatively
straight, or before the second curve has fully developed
baby's head will pull her off balance when it falls
backwards. This is an amusing period to watch. Her trunk
and neck musculature is not yet strong enough to hold
it up there at all angles. From now on and for another
20 odd years she will continue growing taller and broader.
Then she will go on through life carrying her heavy
brain around on her thin neck until she's almost 100.
At her sitting height one curve in her spine was sufficient
for the baby to manipulate her head safely. But now
she has become exceptionally tall in relation to the
comparatively narrow base she has on two rather than
four legs.  However
much taller she gets she will continue to move vertically
between the ground and her uppermost reach. She will
need enough strength and flexibility to perform a lot
of getting up and down. Infants and small children move
from stand to squat so easily.
So, once we're up there why do we bother to continue
sitting? Possibly by chance, in the process of making
the necessary structural changes for getting about on
two legs, early humans also became better designed for
sitting than for squatting. An ape's spine hasn't evolved
for standing on two legs and therefore isn't so well-adapted
for sitting either. Her bits are not so neatly underneath
one another and their weight puts more stress on her
rather straight spine. When she stands upright she is
not so vertical as humans. She sits a bit, but not for
long stretches.
Some evolution
 The
classic question of evolution is whether the monkey
grew a tail because she needed it to swing through the
trees, or whether she grew one first and then found
a use for it? Did monkeys sit so that evolution favoured
the loss of their tail to facilitate it? Or did the
primates find they could drop back onto their sitting
bones from a squat because they had no tail to get in
the way? Perhaps that little squatting-to-sitting discovery
sparked the evolution of the spinal changes necessary
for eventual bipedalism. Gibbons meanwhile settled for
the arboreal life and grew longer arms. Some changes
seem to be what the environment demands and others seem
as though they might be fortuitous by-products of those
changes.
And why would those early people not have chosen to
squat or lie down when they didn't need to be dashing
about? What would they have wanted to sit for? Maybe
the greater stability of sitting had the edge on squatting
for performing delicate hand tasks. Then again, sitting
-or the half-squat -may have been a by-product of a
newly-acquired lumbar curve because the now forward-tilted
pelvis would be making it harder to balance in a squat.
Squatting, once you have a lumbar curve, puts more strain
on the spine because when the pelvis and sacrum are
pushed backwards the lumbar area is forced to over-straighten.
Perhaps our forebears suffered from slipped discs until
someone hit on the idea of adapting the environment
to their shape by creating furniture. Sitting on a log
chair at a rock table would have made tool work much
easier.
Early woman's iliac blades evolved into a more rounded
shape to help contain her intestines and babies in her
upright stance. As a consequence of this structural
change to her sacro-pelvic region sitting became easier
than squatting. Closer to our own time, and with her
bipedal pelvis well-established, she and the clan sat
with their legs in front of them to draw pictures in
sand. Whether they felt the impulse to draw and positioned
their upright bodies on the ground; or whether they
were sitting around the campfire and in an idle moment
started to enjoy each other's lines, who knows? Pictures
became an important medium for spreading news and sharing
thoughts. It probably wasn't long before someone was
delegated the role of line drawer and who would be left
sitting for longer periods than the others. Even so,
that person would have spent fewer hours of her day
sitting than we do now. Whatever the evolutionary purpose
of sitting, if there was any, we've evidently been doing
it for some time. We do not imagine a Cro-Magnon family
gathered around the campfire after a hard day's hunt,
… to gossip or gnaw bones.
 Nowadays
we are almost born to sit, trained to it from when we
start school. And, sadly, we do it on furniture whose
design ensures that our neuro-muscular apparatus for
maintaining a good shape is seriously compromised from
the start.
Perhaps we adopt the sitting posture so much because
we have become so inept at standing that our central
nervous system selects sitting as the less energy-costly
option. What is not immediately apparent is that standing
badly is less stressful for our lumbar spine than is
sitting wrongly. So in the long run our decision to
take a break by collapsing into a chair is not much
good to us. But before we go on about bad sitting, we
must clarify what we mean by good sitting.
What is good sitting?
Good sitting is a balancing act of the head and the
trunk, performed on the ischeal tuberosities. Because
balance is a process, good posture cannot be described
purely in terms of forces and angles. Balance incurs
movement; and movement is what our mammalian body is
designed for. It is as fundamental to our existence
as is breathing, eating and thinking things over. Even
while we keep perfectly still some movement will be
taking place. Both moving and being still are achieved
by a mix of procedures such as falling, contracting
muscle, relaxing muscle, inhibiting response and balancing.
They are stimulated and controlled by interactivity
between several discrete functional centres within the
brain. When these are all working well, we stand on
our legs with a feather lightness, and we sit on our
ischeals in delicate poise.
As in standing, when we sit we must not fix. We must
release all the gripping and holding that interferes
with our springing. We must balance and allow reflex
muscle contraction to run freely through us. Sitting
is the harder posture to perform well because the base
we are poised on has narrowed to the two closely adjacent
points of our sitting bones. These cannot be separated
-as can our legs -to widen our base and give us more
play for balancing.
In standing we cannot collapse so extremely as we
can in sitting because our cerebellar motor function
works at keeping the overall musculature more engaged,
to ensure that we remain safely upright. It is aided
in this by the plantar reflex, a powerfully reactive
impulse that makes legs straighten when pressure is
applied to the soles of the feet. The plantar reflex
makes sure we don't flop to the floor in unguarded moments.
It demands a certain degree of springing in the body
that it is working hard to maintain upright. This muscle
toning from the reflex response refreshes us when we
get up from the office chair to fetch a piece of paper
from another room. We benefit from the movement because
it demands more extensive reflex activity throughout
our body. It is the need for this that makes us hunger
for exercise - and unfortunately induces us to damage
ourselves with inappropriately vigorous activity, after
having sat all day in harmful poor shapes.
 When
we sit well there is sufficient reflex muscular contraction
along the spine to hold it nicely erect. The aptly-named
spinae erector muscles form part of the postural maintenance
musculature which comprises muscle groups that behave
reflexly, that is, we do not have direct voluntary control
over them. These specialised muscles perform the more
energy- conservative job of holding us upright by means
of their co-ordination and work distribution programmes.
The constant and ... stimulation they need to stay strong
is effected by their response to gravity when the body
is erect. If they are not used frequently, they will
rapidly lose bulk. If they have atrophied through poor
posture to a non-functional wasted condition, the only
way we can hold ourselves upright is by deliberately
using alternative muscle groups that were not meant
for the job. These wrongly employed substitutes let
us know they are overworking by making us feel fatigued
and 'tense'. If someone tells you to 'sit up' to improve
your posture, how long can you hold the position?
 To
help ourselves Sit well we must allow movement. Movement
is predicated on release. No part of us can move unless
we let go of it. Try holding your arms rigid while bending
them at the elbows. To do it you must interfere with
the natural process by rigid military postures suppressing
the reflex release response. It feels absurdly hard
to do. It's as hard and awkward as attempting to hold
ourselves stiffly in a 'good posture' with will power.
Experiments have shown that reflexly activated postural
musculature uses 5% -10% of maximum voluntary contraction.
It is clearly the easier option. Making the most of
release and balance helps to make it so.
 Sitting
well is sitting upright, with the shape opened out to
become as perpendicular as possible, and with the contents
of the trunk and its appendages disposed around the
spinal column to give the whole a good shape. A good
shape is one that is easy to balance and to move without
unduly loading any part. The feet must rest lightly
on the floor, or, if you are on a raised platform or
table your legs must be supported to a distance at least
half-way along the thighs so their weight doesn't pull
the trunk off its precarious balance on the sitting
bones. The legs thus function like the base of a bookend,
making balancing on the Ischeal tuberosities possible.
Try sitting right on the edge of a table. You will not
be able to balance without leaning back and gripping
down the front of yourself to counteract the drag from
your legs.
Good sitting is efficient; that is, it becomes light
and easy, low on expenditure of energy by using the
head's weight to elicit the reflex upward thrust of
the spine.
A common mistake is to think of our chunky gluteal
muscles as built-in cushions that we can sink down onto.
In fact when the legs are flexed for sitting, the ischeal
tuberosities are protruded towards the surface we are
sitting on. They need to be on a firm surface to give
purchase to the trunk musculature so it can hold itself
up. Too soft a seat will defeat the reflexes. Place
a hand under your buttock as you sit. You will feel
a sitting bone poking onto your hand. Your buttock has
made way for it by being stretched along the length
of the right-angle formed by your flexed hip joint.
Some comparative anatomy
The spine of a four-legged animal can be described
as a single shallow arch supported by four moveable
pillars. The internal organs are suspended vertically
from the arch and  are
evenly distributed along it. It's a kind of walking
bridge. W e humans have straightened out our hind legs
and made the spine into a column that now has two arches
in it standing on only two pillars. The weight of the
internal organs is now distributed around this column.
Since we turned ourselves into walking towers, our lives
have become in some ways easier and in others more complex.
Our shape has greater manoeuvrability than that of our
four-legged fellows. But our balance and therefore our
co-ordination is less sturdy. F M Alexander believed
that self-consciousness and bipedal walking evolved
together. He believed that the tricky business of maintaining
the head balanced on the end of the spine at such a
height on its narrow base and thin neck, was dependent
on conscious control of the more refined adjustments
that were now needed. Such a delicate business could
no longer be left solely to the motor programming between
the senses and the cerebellum. However that may be,
we did evolve some aids to maintaining verticality.
For instance, the soleus muscle, lying beneath the calf
muscle at the back of the foreleg is especially sensitive
to the swaying movements of the body towering above.
It keeps the cerebellum informed of any deviation from
the vertical so that it can send instructions to the
musculature to bring it immediately back into balance.
This rectification is in process constantly as we amble
or sprint about our business. Special proprioreceptors
in the neck muscles contribute additional information
to the brain about the balance and position of its lolloping
skull.
In common with other animals our skeletal framework
provides an arrangement of struts for the muscles, whose
elasticity allows movement, and for the tough connective
tissue that keeps the whole thing firmly held together.
Muscle is highly responsive, being suffused in a rain
of electrical impulses that speed around the neuronetwork
embedded throughout and about its every fibre. This
electrical wash, receiving and delivering messages from
the brain, incorporates the "I" that operates
our muscle-wrapped selves. Unless … make a decision
to do something -say, to go and get a newspaper -my
clambering-out-of-the-armchair programme will not engage.
The … to take a step towards my goal is the first
thing that must occur on the road to its fulfilment.
Without the stimulus of my desire nothing will happen.
But when I have decided that now is the moment to do
it, my consciousness takes aback seat while the instructions
are cobbled together by a series of mental functions.
Programmes are sent around my body carrying instructions
to expedite a task, telling some muscle groups to act,
and others to not act. They are carried out largely
by reflex mechanisms. Consider that each of my legs
has around 50 muscles that need to be operated for it
to take a step, while my brain has to ensure that the
50 muscles of my other leg don't intrude on the operation;
and consider that my weight has to be transferred and
the balance of the whole of the rest of me has to be
adjusted while the leg the programme has decided to
move off with is raised from the ground. If all this
were not programmed to be carried out automatically,
it would take me a lifetime to get to the post office.
It has to be done reflexly. It has to be accomplished
in nanoseconds. I couldn't possibly do this consciously.
Muscles respond in co-ordinated groups, according to
the bidding of their "I".
When a glitch occurs in this intricate communication
system, we experience cramp pains. Both the agonist
and antagonist muscles have answered the/call to action
simultaneously. The neuronetwork in your leg, say, has
got a message a little wrong, and it is attempting to
both straighten and bend itself simultaneously. Remarkably
this doesn't happen often; and when it does, it's promptly
rectified by conscious intervention.
So while "I' sit, an interplay of neuro-electrical
programmes maintains me, out of my awareness, on my
sitting bones. If I am well-habituated, stocked with
good-use programmes, a predominance of reflex muscular
activity will minimise the effort needed to hold myself
up. 
This good posture will not be upset by any additional
individuated act such as waving Hallo to someone as
I sit. The additional voluntary activity will be organised
so as to enhance the reflexive performance of my sitting,
thus ensuring that the energy and wear costs of adding
a wave to my poise will be small. Neither sitting nor
waving should tire or damage me. Come to think of it,
nor should I become fatigued or harmed by pushing a
mouse around a pad.
Dangers lurk within
Among animal designs the human has exceptional manoeuvrability
and dexterity. We can curl into a ball or stretch out
to our full length and create an infinite range of shapes
in between. Our limbs flex and extend and rotate with
a versatility that affords us a greater variety of movements
than any other creature on earth. Even our closest relatives,
the chimpanzees, cannot do with their hands or legs
or trunks what we can with ours. The flexibility of
the spine at its lumbar and cervical curves helps us
to balance and manoeuvre our willowy structure. If my
sacro-pelvis is given an unexpected shove forwards,
my thorax springs back at once to stop me from falling
over. In an instant I can swerve the whole or twist
a bit of myself to avoid danger. My parts move automatically
to compensate each other for the threat to my balance.
With all we've got going for us, we should be the
most joyful of creatures. But when destructive programmes
develop, the organism ends up working against itself.
The downside of our versatility is that we are able
to continue functioning while deviating far from the
ideal of our blue-print verticality. It's very hard
work operating a word-processor with the body at full
throttle in a slump. Paradoxically it will need to spend
more energy tightening down in front to keep from falling
over than it needs for clicking along on the keys. That
we manage to function at all betwixt the absurd contradictions
we create is due to our marvellous adaptability coupled
with an extraordinary flexibility. Somehow we manage
to keep going for years using these gifts to our disadvantage
-at least until a damaged part causes enough pain or
hindrance to capture our attention.
The tragedy of allowing such deterioration in comportment
is that once the trunk has shortened and become misshapen,
the relationship of its parts -especially that of the
head to
the trunk -will no longer effect the gentle stretch
of the postural muscles needed to stimulate them. The
body's most important muscles will wither and will be
supplanted by compensatory muscle groups that should
~remain free until required for more strenuous Jobs.
In vicious circle fashion, because the alternative muscle
groups are shape shorteners, their employment prevents
engagement of the postural maintenance musculature,
thereby ensuring that all attempts to "correct
the posture", will fail. The now vestigial postural
muscles will need subtle coaxing by means of specialised
re-education in good habits of use, to restore them
gradually to adequate fullness.
Individuation and integration
Another factor that adds to our rich movement potential
is the high degree of individuation we acquire as we
mature. Individuation is the ability to move one part
on its own while leaving the rest of the body undisturbed.
When we are mature we can stand very still and blink
an eye without moving any other part of ourselves. This
must have been useful during our hunting eras as a means
of communicating silently. It is the body's ability
to remain integrated while individuating that enables
us to keep our balance while we wink or wave.
But when a baby chuckles she kicks her legs and flings
her arms around at the same time. Her unindividuated
way of responding is very appealing. Perhaps we are
nostalgic for the feeling of deep satisfaction such
total response gives. As she gets older she'll get better
at individuating her response: she'll be able to smile
and wave one hand at a time. Her integration skills
may not be the greatest yet so she might stagger a little;
and she'll hold her hand with a charming floppiness
while she is not yet very good at individuating her
waving hand from the gross movement of her arm.
The trap we fall into is that because we are moving
only one part, we assume the unengaged parts don't need
our attention, they can go hang. It's a mistake to think
that while I'm winking what I'm simultaneously doing
with my legs can be ignored. On the contrary this is
precisely the point at which I need I my individuation
and integration skills to be up to scratch. If I stiffen
and shorten myself while operating my eye-lid musculature
I shall be harming myself- while just winking. This
is why exercises I to strengthen one area of the body
-without taking into consideration what is happening
to the other parts while we perform them -can end up
doing us overall more harm than good. How many people
do you know who, subsequent to performing a 'back- strengthening'
exercise, have developed a sore neck, knee or shoulder?
They would not have had any guidance in how to use themselves
to perform the specific movement -what to best be doing
with the rest of themselves to ensure that they don't
harm other parts of themselves in the process. We need
both individuation and integration. Our superior separation
skills must not obscure the fact that we act as one.
It is fallacious to think that giving a wink or a wave
are really all that we are doing.
By understanding a bit about individuation we can
recognise that we act as one, under a central command.
What the "I" decides to do, the brain then
organises its specialist departments to carry out. First
I must have the desire to do it, then- if it's something
I've been practising for a while, such as getting a
sandwich down my gullet, the software for grasping and
moving my hand to my mouth kicks in. It happens before
I know it. On the other hand, when I learn something
new such as driving, I must first bring consciousness
to the task. Once the skill is learned, I will then
not have to give my attention to the particulars of
steering, braking and accelerating. The vehicular cO1itrols
will have become almost an extension of myself. I shall
be able to listen to a talking book while I'm driving
from Sydney to Brisbane. And I can be alert to the vicissitudes
of the highway at the same time. I can respond to sudden
ice or a lovely view.
At the learning stage, wisdom lies in acquiring good
quality programmes both for task outcome and wear of
parts. Imagine a programme that involves our putting
undue stress on our necks each time we depress a pedal
or change the cassette
Proprioception and learning.
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By means of proprioception I experience myself. My
proprioceptive sense lets me know how firm a grip I
need to hold the 'phone, or how much contraction I need
in my arm for picking up an egg or a brick. We are born
with some motor programmes, eg. how to lock onto the
nipple. From the moment of birth we know where "up"
is. But much development of our proprioception is acquired
the trial-and-error way. By reaching fruitlessly time
and again, babies learn how close to a toy they need
to be to grab hold of it. They drive their mothers mad
with their tireless pre-occupation with gravity. As
toddlers they discover with their bodies how to get
more power and direction into throwing a ball. A few
tumbles on and they will be able to assess whether a
tree branch is likely to support their weight; or to
estimate how much of a run they'll need to clear the
creek. Watching 5 yr-olds get to work on playground
furniture demonstrates the drive to learn about the
world from full body contact. They manage to exploit
the possibilities of a construction well beyond the
imagination of its designer. Watch them coming down
the shoot: head first, feet first, on back, on front,
pairs in tandem, pairs head to toe, at half bent shape,
sitting, lying down, running back up, one leg over the
side, arms behind back, eyes shut ... and so on. Later,
with their skateboards and roller-blades they execute
inventive moves on the most improbable street furniture.
As they accumulate bodily experience they are building
programmes for application to more complex activities-
ski-jumping, sailing, playing the piano, teaching the
Alexander Technique.
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Tool-handling, from the relatively simple business
as smashing a bone with a stone, to the extremely complex
performance of micro-surgery in ever more remote control,
is also dependent on proprioception. Do you remember
you r
first go on a computer before you had a grasp of how
rapidly the cursor would move across the screen in response
to your wrist movement? For those of us born before
most of you, learning how miniscule the movement needed
to be took a few goes. An equivalently indirect finesse
is needed for learning how to operate ourselves efficiently
in sitting.
Why we sit so badly
 What
we now ask of a creature designed to sprint and forage
in the wild, is that she sit motionless for hours maintaining
her head in fixed relation to a screen. Here we are,
eons into the future, and sitting more than ever. But
how many of us do so safely and m a manner that keeps
us in good working order? For most of us maturing is
a disaster. We muddle along through life hoping that
a bit of ill-considered exercise will counteract the
damage caused by long bouts of collapsed sitting. Not
even our olympic athletes can sit up. As babies we did
it so beautifully until the harmful influences got to
work. From banana-shaped strollers to high- heeled shoes
-with poor parental modelling, ruinous furniture and
unsatisfactory activities, such as studying for long
periods, in between -both our use and consequently our
kinaesthetic appreciation are subjected to deleterious
influence.
Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) - discovered
inaccurate proprioception by observing that, when he
tried to straighten himself out, he found he was not
doing what he he was doing. What he saw in the mirror
was not how he thought he looked. Logically he supposed
that a faulty instrument would not give an accurate
reading; and since his use of himself was poor, he could
see that proprioceptively he wasn't working too well
either. He called this faulty sensing 'debauched kinaesthesia'.
We can corroborate his findings with our universal experience
of an apparent lack of ability to monitor our performance.
Only when a knee, neck or lower back is damaged does
the question arise of what we might be doing to ourselves.
Only when the swimming coach tells us our faulty strokes
are not taking us to the Olympics, or our dancing teacher
suggests the netball team as an alternative, do we look
at movement and co-ordination as something that has
anything to do with consciousness.
These days in Western societies good carriage in an
adult is so unfamiliar that it is often misinterpreted
as rigid. This is because we cannot interpret what we
don't recognise. We use memory to recognise and assess
what we are looking at. In this way an actor feels her
way into a role by imitating a character's posture,
gesture and facial expression. She knows how someone
feels when their eyes bulge and their jaw is tense because
she has felt angry too. When we have
lost the easy uprightness we had in early childhood,
our judgement of what another is experiencing will be
correspondingly limited by our current range of postural
experience between collapse and the sort of painful
stiffness we associate with trying to stand up straight.
We won't have a fresh supply of proprioceptive experience
to tell us that sitting upright actually feels pretty
good! The upright posture in the other person will be
read as correlating with what we would be doing to ourselves
if we held ourselves upright with the only musculature
we now have at our disposal. It is this same faulty
perception that leads us to think that baboons are smiling
at us when they bare their teeth.
 Alexander
spent many years pondering the question of faulty sensory
appreciation, concluding that conscious control in the
use of the self was the way to re-establish co- ordination
and shapeliness. He retained a remarkably youthful stance
up to his death at 86 years which in 1955 was a great
age. He would not have imagined how the end of the 20th
century would see such an increase in average longevity.
We now have many more years to live with malfunction
and chronic pain if good use is not inculcated from
an early age. It is common now to see primary school
kids with very poor posture. With 90-odd years to go,
we don't want to start them off with postural programmes
that are going to have deleterious effects on their
future well-being.
Improved co-ordination is learned
A shortened trunk lies not so much a shortened spine,
but rather a spine that has been pulled out of shape,
particularly in its more flexible areas, by a combination
of inactivity of some muscle groups and overactivity
of others. The muscles packed around the spinal vertebrae
that pull each one into proper arrangement with the
one above and the one below, so as to achieve the spine's
best overall length, slacken and atrophy from insufficient
activity. So other muscle groups must take over the
job of moving the animal towards its needs -in the direction
of its food, or away from enemies.
No matter how awkwardly he sits at his screen, a modern
child's dominant need will keep him glued to his computer
game until hunger intrudes into his awareness. Once
his spine has begun to assume the shape he habitually
uses for playing his games, his muscles will oblige
by maintaining their length and bulk in accordance with
the shape his body repeatedly assumes. Muscle has an
habitual length. At whatever length it is normally used,
it adds or sheds fibres in accordance with the everyday
demands made of it. This is why it wastes to nothing
when not used, and why it's possible to build more of
it through training. But its elastic potential is also
determined by use. The habit length of muscle determines
the shape of the body within its genetic limitations.
 If
I do 100 sit-ups a day, I am practising drawing my upper
body downwards with my hip flexors and, to a lesser
extent, my abdominal muscles. Naturally this results
in a very pulled down shape -and into the bargain considerable
stress to my sacro-iliac joints. The shape thus arrived
at will be one in which my vertebral discs and facet
joints of my spine. This shape will also
determine continued use of the wrong muscle groups -
they will be the only ones available before long -so
that the vicious circle continues until I interrupt
it with intelligent strategy. Exercises to alter my
shape -or my posture -will stimulate further use and
development of these wrong muscles. What is needed is
for this over-activated flexor musculature to diminish,
so that the postural musculature can regenerate. I can
only get this to happen by changing my use, changing
the way I start to do things. ... I must abandon poor
motor programmes and plan better ones. I must think.
Alexander's method of re-education in the use of the
self involves directing ones awareness to certain areas
of the body and sending messages to inhibit the engagement
of the wrong muscle groups. Simply, he called it his
technique of "non- doing". Interestingly,
recent scientific findings confirm his, in telling us
that the postural muscles cannot be accessed directly.
The physiotherapy patient can only get his multifidus
muscles enlarging by directing his thinking to their
region. Restoration of natural shape is achieved gradually
by the cultivation of improved habits of use, never
by the pushing, pulling and stretching involved in exercise
programs, yoga positions, or orthotic appliances; and
definitely not by being contorted into weird postures
by the ergonomic contrivances that still bear the name
of their ancestor -"the chair"!
FM Alexander said we must learn to non-do -to quieten
the interference from the wrong parts of ourselves in
order to stock up on better motor programmes.
How to sit well
Sitting is a process. It is not definitive and it
therefore cannot be described in the same terms as fixed
structures. In the sitting process there might exist
an hypothetical relationing of parts that would result
in the body's ultimate openness. Certainly just this
ideal is what we must be asking for when we run our
awareness through the neuro-network of our voluntary
musculature in order1o ensure that we don't tighten
and interfere with its lengthening. But if we were to
achieve such perfection we must be ready to relinquish
it at once, or we shall have defeated our object. We
would be trapped by fixation, which is contrary to being
in process.
Processes are by definition ongoing. We want the process
of sitting to be one where there is an asking for the
shape to open, a releasing and balancing rather than
a deliberate holding of ourselves in 'good posture'
with instructions of the Head-Up, Shoulders-Back, Tummy-In
variety. Generally it is now understood that the kind
of instructions that get us gripping down into ourselves
don't result in the opened out shape we want. It is
increasingly recognised by health practitioners who
address spinal damage that more release is needed. However,
we have to understand specifically what we need to release,
how to release it and where we want it to go to when
we let go of it. Alexander further specified that we
must not do things directly when it comes to re-organising
the relationship of our body parts to one another, but
we must allow the parts to move; that is, we must create
the conditions conducive to their moving themselves.
He was specific about the directions the parts must
be coaxed to move towards, if the shape was to open
out to its best. Jumping chaotically around or being
bounced higgledy-piggledy in movement for movement's
sake would not have impressed him. It absolutely cannot
make sense to sit on a bouncing ball when the reason
we sat down in the first place was to make it easier
to steady ourselves for handwork. So we don't sit and
stitch buffalo hides together any more; still, I wouldn't
want my dentist to be wobbling around on a hall.
What to sit on
 It
is true to say that there are parameters within which
it is more important how a person is using herself than
what she is sitting on to do it. If she is using herself
well she will do so with no detriment to her poise on
a variety of furnitures. But outside those parameters
the struggle to maintain balance becomes too much of
a strain. For practical purposes our furniture must
be designed in accordance with the body's need for support.
We can walk on our hands, but our arms and shoulder
joints are not designed to carry our weight. We are
straining the structures if we do so for more than a
couple of minutes at a time.
To understand what support is needed to sit well,
we need to recognise that behaviourly the head balances
on the thorax which balances on the sacro-pelvis. iii
Either the thorax or sacro-pelvis can be shifted into
a new position but, in doing so, the other parts will
have to correspondingly move to redress their inter-relationship
to maintain as far as possible the verticality of the
structure. If this correction were not to occur, the
'whole muscular wrapping that encloses them would have
to contract unduly to stop the trunk from falling. It
is possible to lean both the sacro- pelvis and thorax
to the same side; but it is more probable that as the
thorax moves to the left, the sacro-pelvis will tip
to the right because the brain always seeks the cheaper
option, the one that costs less effort. We couldn't
sustain a lean of the whole for long.
 However,
most of the leaning we do will not be sideways but frontwards,
collapsing the chest down towards the sacro-pelvis.
We drop down in front. In compensation, the sacro- -pelvis
must tilt backwards, or we would topple. And of course,
because the spine and the pelvis are attached at the
sacro-iliac joint, the flexible lumbar spine is drawn
back with it. The cervical spine -the spine’s
other flexible part –will have been dragged forward
by thoracic slump. And in order to stay on top of it
all, the head will correspondingly reposition itself
backwards of the forward curving neck, depriving the
structure of the beneficial effects of the weight when
it's right on top. Instead, because It is now off balance,
the head must now be desperately hung on to by hyper-contraction
of small muscles in the neck. No marks for guessing
that this collapse down the front results in 'neck problems'.
This is our most common slumping sitting posture,
and we use it on any furniture. But when the chair seat
is canted upwards from the ischeals towards the knees
-the standard plastic moulded chair is a perfect example
-this slump becomes the most frequently selected option
of three unsatisfactory postural possibilities.
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The first possibility (a) is that you hold yourself
at the angle the seat cant is pitching you (but this
is unlikely as it will be too hard to sustain any longer
than you could stand on your hands); the second possibility
(b) is that you slump down as described above; and the
third possibility ( c) is that you pull your flexible
lumbar spine forwards, tilting the sacro-pelvis far
enough forwards to counteract the tilt of the seat.
This third option gives the appearance of 'good posture'
because it is more upright; but it puts strain on the
sacro-iliac joints, and on the joint between the fifth
lumbar vertebra and the sacrum (L5/S 1 in medical parlance),
and in the region of the atlas where the head joins
the spine. V\Then the head sits too far forward of the
spine -which is the case here -it has the same effect
as when it falls too far back of the spine, in the case
where the cervical curvature is increased. In both these
adaptations to sitting on a slope, springing is lost
in the trunk because the weight of the head is not falling
through the spinal curves.
No matter how you dress up the canted chair seat -in
little skirts, or by scooping deeper holes in the back
to 'accommodate the buttocks' or similar fantasies,
or by adding padding or tasteful upholstery -they remain
the most profoundly damaging piece of furniture in our
repertoire. If the ischeals are not on a horizontal
surface, the slightest tilt of the pelvis - upwards,
downwards, backwards or forwards -caused by a canted
seat, will effect a proportionately much larger deviation
from the vertical at the head end. The brain has to
compensate for this lean by trying out all sorts of
interesting and deleterious shapes.
When the seat is canted downwards from the ischeals
towards the knees, a new set of problems arises for
the sitter. To give due merit, the development of this
alternative chair design is thanks to thoughtful health
practitioners and Alexander Technique teachers who have
recognised the harmful effects of canting the seat upwards.
But faults are not simply corrected by substituting
their opposite. Living things are as complex as things
get on this earth, so that, as Alexander discovered,
subtle and indirect method is needed to redress their
illness and malfunction.
Correcting the leaning tower of Pisa
In the 1970s the application of simple logic to the
question of spinal damage gave rise to the 'earth shoe'.
The argument ran that since wearing high-heels caused
damage to the sacro- iliac joints by pushing the sacro-pelvis
forward into a sway-back shape, then wearing a shoe
whose heel was lower than its toe must 'correct' the
harm. This is about the same as saying that if too hot
is bad, too cold must be good! This shoe further complicated
the wearer's postural confusion by driving the sacro-pelvis
too far backwards, bringing straightening forces to
bear on the lumbar curve. To stop himself from falling
over, the wearer had to tighten down in front, which
drew his thoracic spine into a hump and pulled his head
off balance so that his small neck muscles had to work
overtime to support it. The shoe was a pain in the neck!
Women didn't take to it at all. I remember thinking
at the time that surely feet would have evolved a while
before shoes were dreamed on If it were useful to protect
the foot from raw ground, there probably wasn't any
extra benefit to be had from tilting it this way or
.that. The complex architecture of the human foot with
its multiplicity of arches and joints, Its free ankle
Joint and Its specially sensitive skin covering, is
designed to deal with a variety of surface textures
and with every imaginable combination of tilts. But
variation from a more-or-less horizontal surface occurs
naturally only during movement, and therefore only momentarily
while the weight is susp6nded. Even so, it is much harder
work moving up or downhill. The body can adjust to having
its bottom end on a slope, but it is more difficult
to maintain for long. Close attention is needed to ensure
that the better choice is made in adjusting the balance
of the body as a whole. It is within our human capacity
to walk on the very tips of our toes, but our ballet
dancers need a thorough understanding of an efficient
norm they can return their bodies to after the show.
We must be careful not to use simplistic correctional
logic where the elements of an equation are manifold
and complex.
Somewhere between
When the downwards canted chair seat is first experienced
by a person who habitually slumps she will enjoy it,
as the pitching forward of her sacro-pelvis will relieve
the immediate strain on her lumbar spine, and it will
give the spinae erector muscles a fillip as her body
lifts into a more upright shape. The movement would
appear to produce the desirable Alexander Technique
postural outcome -that is, with the back coming well
back, and the head going forward. But it is soon seen
that over-correction of the balance has occurred -the
back has come too far back. sending the head too far
forward in counteraction.
The over-compensation is revealed in the bulging backwards
of the lumbar spine close to the thoracic area. Simultaneously,
over-straightening of the natural forwards concave curvature
in the thoracic and cervical regions has occurred. Before
long the sitter's sensory apparatus will tell her she
needs more upholstery, as the sacro-pelvis, straining
to bring the body closer to vertical, will be tipping
back onto a part of the ischeals not designed to carry
weight. Her legs will be under pressure from their own
weight as they fall away from the trunk, inadequately
supported under the thighs. She will move her feet a
long way forward to relieve the pressure. She might
even feel pleased that her feet are now 'flat on the
ground' as, in spite of high heels and earth shoes the
belief remains that planted feet are best. (They are
-but of course not by simply moving the feet further
forward.) Without doubt she is more upright than when
she slumped but, with regard to mechanical efficiency,
she is no better off. The spine must not be too far
forward; but nor must it be too far back. To encourage
reflex muscular support of the trunk, it needs to be
somewhere between.
When the sacro-pelvis is tipped forwards on a canted
downwards seat, the body finds itself at an angle that
it cannot maintain. It compensates by either leaning
the thorax and head back from the lumbar spine, or by
leaning the sacro-pelvis itself back as far as possible
into the vertical. The first response is what occurs
on the 'kneeling chair'. In the canted kneeling position
the legs are prevented from pulling the whole thing
over by in effect 'standing' the body on its knees.
This is not comfortable for long because naturally knees
were not designed to be 'stood' on. Nor is it good for
the lumbar curve to be intensified by the sacro- pelvic
tilt. When the sacro-pelvis is at sitting height, more
commonly it seeks to rectify its position by leaning
back against the drag from the unsupported legs. If
the body were to maintain the relationship of its parts
in accordance with this move, it would have to be leaning
back as though walking downhill. That is not the sort
of hard work the sorting centres in the brain will opt
for when energy needs to be conserved for handwork.
Instead, it brings the upper body forward. Because the
lumbar spine became rather over-straightened when the
sacro-pelvis leant back, correspondingly the other spinal
curves -the thoracic curve and the cervical curve -will
also have been lessened; and which in turn will have
positioned the head too far forward. This over-straightened
condition can result from engaging in a range of movement
systems, not only from the downwards-canted chair seat.
The weight of the body is not able to drop naturally
through the points of the ischeals at their new angle,
so there is more muscular activity around the mid-trunk
as it struggles with the imbalance. It is not restful.
Nor does it give the benefit of exercising the postural
muscles, as the over-stretch effected in the straightening
of the spinal curves dulls their responsiveness. To
the Alexander Technique teacher's hands, a trunk held
too straight lacks a lively feel.
You can discover the straining effect. of a downwards
canted seat on the body's balancing mechanisms by leaning
forwards on it. Then sit on a horizontal seat and lean
forward. You will find there is less pressure on your
legs too. Having the thighs supported makes leaning
towards the keys or the kitchen table less of a strain.
When sitting has become painful, well-sprung support
must be re-grown. It cannot be fixed by adopting a posture
or by using an appliance such as an ergonomic chair,
of whatever combinations of canted parts. When things
have come to such a pass, rather more than a folkloric
belief in exercise is needed to put them back together
again. The whole self must re-learn good use if robust
postural musculature is to be restored.
Whether we spend our working lives pole-vaulting or
word-processing, the movement from stand to sit and
from sit to stand puts the greatest constant demand
on the neuro-muscular mechanisms of our structure. This
is why Alexander Technique teachers use this everyday
movement as a standard procedure for the practice of
Alexander's principles. But the business of how this
is achieved must be the subject of another paper. Meanwhile,
since general knowledge has it that I am 70% water,
I may as well pool in a firm container as slosh around
in an elastic skin like a goldfish carried home from
the Easter show in a plastic bag!
© Christine Ackers 2001 - 02-9331-7563
Drawings by Jing Sheng Wang 02-872-7958
and
Meredith Page 07-3278-9568
Editorial help from Bradley Newman, David Garlick, George
"Nyima" Warr and Susan Allen.
www.ate.org.au
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