Why bother to improve your posture?

Improving your posture is highly advantageous for many reasons and the benefits are long term, they are for the rest of your life!
With improved posture you will breath more efficiently and have better concentration. Digestion is also helped by having good correct natural posture. We read far more than we realise about people by there body language, how you carry yourself says a lot about you to the rest of the world. The more comfortable that we are with ourselves then the more comfortable others are being around us. A big part of being comfortable with yourself on a physical level is having a natural relaxed and therefore comfortable posture.

So what are the causes of poor posture?

The obvious culprits of poor posture are the endless hours that many people spend slumped in front of a screen or griping the wheel of the car fighting through the rush hour. Periods of sitting should be balanced by regular stretching, how many of us do this? Although standing for long periods can be better for you than sitting down this is only true if you are standing correctly as many a shop worker knows! If you are well above average height when you are talking to most people you will be looking downwards which can cause another set of problems.
The not so obvious culprits of poor posture are the cultural images that we emulated when we were young. At an impressionable age we mimic our heroes, often unaware that we are doing so, we even adopt their style of walking and standing along with their way of dressing. In our man made artificial world we have moved along way from what is natural and this is reflected in artificial and unnatural ways of holding ourselves. An extreme example of this are high heel shoes, when they are in fashion women will risk deformities in their feet to project a taller and more curvy shape! Once these artificial ways of, for instance standing, become ingrained in the muscle memory they feel natural and when people are shown a more natural way of standing it feels uncomfortable and artificial, at least at first.

Better concentration.

By improving your posture you will automatically improve your breathing and your concentration. By habitually adopting a more natural position you will be giving your lungs the room to work to their full capacity. By increasing the oxygen that is entering the body and reaching your brain you will improve your concentration as well as your all round health.

Less tired and more relaxed

When our posture is poor we have to use muscles that we should not be using to compensate for poor body alignment, this causes fatigue. The more that our body structure is balanced and self supporting the less effort it takes physically to say, stand in a queue at the airport for twenty minutes or more! When you see this in terms of many many years, in fact the rest of your life, good posture is a good investment and a big energy saver!

Less wear and tear on the joints

It’s not just fuel for your car that’s gone up in price recently, have you noticed the increase in the cost of tires? We drivers know that by keeping balanced tires at the right air pressure both the fuel and the tires last longer.In a similar way to car tyres if through good body alignment our weight bearing joints have the weight load that they take evenly and correctly distributed they too will last for longer.

Old age and posture.

Our posture does not get worse when we get old, it’s just that as we no longer have the muscular strength to compensate for any faults in our body alignment, the bad habits of a lifetime start to show more. In China were millions of people practice exercises that are good for their posture daily a person that you assume to be not old can be walking in front of you but if they turn around you can see that they are actually very old, their posture can be like that of someone many decades younger.

What your posture is saying to others

I remember knowing some body builders that worked as bouncers. These lads looked really strong and they were actually even stronger than they looked, it was nothing to them to sling a trouble maker out of the club as if they were a rag doll. For all the muscular strength that these bouncers had during all the long hours that they were payed to stand at the door they couldn’t keep still for more than two minutes, hand on the wall then back on the wall turn to shoulder on the wall, it was uncomfortable just to watch!
There is just that something about someone who carries them self well is ant there? It goes beyond the outer trappings of clothes or even age and is hard to describe but you know it when you see it. Good posture equals physical balance and a relaxed but poised manner, beauty and physical strength are fleeting but your never too old to be elegant and graceful. Along with good manners and having tact good posture costs nothing and is worth so much.

With Tai Chi Plus you will be working on improving your posture right from day one. The best way to improve your posture is by what is called in tai chi, stance testing. This involves the instructor showing you where your posture is weak in any move, correcting it and then showing you how much more stable your structure is when in the correct position. The tai chi form is excellent for improving your posture and the stretching exercises unlock the tension that you are holding making it easier to get good body alignment. It’s good to make long term investments and the best investments are in yourself. Having good posture is at the core of good health and vitality, it is a discipline worth having.

As a long term sufferer of neck pain I know that these Tai Chi type exercises can really help.

When life has become a real pain in the neck or you have simply slept the wrong way there is something that you can do before you reach for the pain killers or even afterwards before they have worked. This method is free natural and should go at least part way to relieving your plight.

An indirect approach.

When you can hardly move your neck due to pain and stiffness the last thing that you want to do is exercises that directly work on the neck, which is a delicate area to exercise at the best of times. However gentle slow exercises that work on the neck indirectly can give some relief and often in just a few minutes. Keep any of these exercises slow smooth and gentle, all of the exercises should be done as small circles.

Rolling the hips.

Rolling the hips is an indirect way to get some movement going in your body when it is locked up due to neck pain. The hips are a large strong part of the body unlike your small delicate and at that moment painful neck. The hips are a relatively long way from the neck so even with only a little practice but a lot of care you should be able to slowly rotate them without having to move the neck or hardly at all.
For this exercise cast your mind back to the school playground and the girls spinning hoola hoops on there hips, now divide the speed and size of their movement by ten!
As your hips are at one end of the spine and your neck is the other slow controlled circles with the hips can help to gently start to free up the neck. Try no more than five rotations and then rotate the other way, feel how you are doing before deciding to do more.

Shaking the hands.

Again because the hands are along way from the neck you can get away with moving them and not jarring the neck. What we want to do is create gentle rhythmic movements that cause a sensation in the neck that feels like a gentle vibration. Hold your hands in front of you or at your sides and imagine that you have wet hands and no towel and shake your hands trying not to move the rest of your body.
Do this gently so that if your hands really were wet it would not get them dry! Do this for no more than thirty seconds, you should be able to feel if it is starting to help.

Rolling the shoulders.

This exercise is best done after the first two as the shoulders are in close proximity to the neck, only do this one if the first two have to some extent given you some extra movement back to your neck. Very slowly rotate the shoulders one at a time, place the opposite hand near the shoulder to help control the movement and help to isolate the rolling shoulder from the neck. Try no more than three rotations on each side to start with and see how you get on.

Breath deeply and calmly from your lower tummy.

When we are in pain we often tense up without even noticing. Tension in the body especially a sort of holding or locking up of the part that hurts only makes things worse. In the medical profession they call this habit of the body to tense an area in pain guarding. By breathing deeply calmly and in a relaxed manner we can start to disparate some of the tension held in the body. Focus your mind as much as you can just on following the breathing as you breath in and out. When distracting thoughts come along just bring your attention back to following your breath in and out. This breathing exercise can help with many things so it’s a good one to know. Like everything you will only get the hang of it with some regular practice but once you have got the hang of it this breathing exercise is a great tool.
I would recommend doing this breathing exercise in between each of the other exercises even if only for half a minute. By repeating the breathing exercise briefly in between the others you will be relaxing and slowing down the pace that you are going at, remember that you can go too fast but never too slowly with these in fact the slower the better.

It’s your body

If you suffer from neck pain from time to time you may find yourself doing these exercises quite often. These exercises are some good basics there are others which could well be worth doing as extras. It’s easy to depend completely on pills but it feels good to be able to help yourself, it’s your body and it’s up to you how you look after it. I have found these exercises to be helpful on many occasions and they can work for you to.

Prevention is better than cure.

Most of us in this modern world watch a screen for too many hours a week and sit driving for many hours as well. These exercises can be done daily as part of a general exercise program which could well reduce the occurrences of a stiff neck. Like anything what you choose to put in will govern what you will get out of these exercises, I hope that you give them a go because they do work.

A major principle of Tai Chi is to stay in your circle both mentally and physicaly. This allows a centered ness and balance to be maintained in both combat and daily life. As soon as you are drawn out of your circle in tai chi pushing hands you are already loosing balance and can easily be toppled, as soon as you take on too much or spend too much in everyday life then you are already skating on thin ice!

How big is the circle?

The size of your physical circle in tai chi pushing hands will vary with each individual. Your circle is defined by how far you can reach to and still not easily be pulled off balance. Learning not to reach outside your circle is a big part of tai chi pushing hands as is also learning how to entice your opponent out of their circle where they are easy prey.
In life our circle is defined by our mental physical and financial strength. Life experience teaches us not to over do it and to know when to quite while we are ahead, trying to keep up with the jones is pointless and exhausting. Tai Chi calls this moderation and balance staying in your circle or you could say knowing yourself.

The expanding and contracting circle

When we are very young part of the job of our parents is to define our circle for us. Those well defined limits, don’t play further than the end of the road and be back by six where frustrating but also reassuring at the same time, they defined the world that was safe. As we grew and first walked to school all on our own the circle was expanding, do you remember the first time after passing your test driving the car on your own? The new car driver is thrilled at having the freedom that driving gives, their circle has just expanded enormously.
Feeling old is with us for more than half our lives as it is simply the natural contraction of the ffffffhhcircle. We were probably in our twenties when we first did not really feel like going to that night club after the pub, we just did not have energy to waste anymore, yet six months before going to the night club was so important! The expansion and contraction of the circle is as natural as breathing in and out and mentally resisting the ebb and flow of the circle is futile. However within this unavoidable circle of life we can on a personal level expand our horizons and grow as people.

Extending our circle

In pushing hands we can increase our range of movement and still be balanced and comfortable by practicing Tai Chi. Stretching and learning to sink opening the hips and other joints, all this extends our circle physically. if you were to push hands with someone who had a much greater range of movement than you, a larger circle, they would feel solid and bendy at the same time. Even if this person was shorter than you their reach will probably seem greater and rather than you overextending them you would find that it is you who is overextended.
It could be loosing a lot of weight or getting more sleep, anything that increases our vitality will increase our circle regarding our energy.The opposite is also true and anything or anyone who depletes our vitality will also shrink our circle.
When we are learning something new at any age we rightly sense that in some way we are growing, our circle expands. Knowledge and experience breed confidence and this is an expansion of our circle.

How brightly do you shine?

If you imagine that you were a lamp how big a circle of light would you throw out into the dark? The circle that each one of us could light up would be different for everyone, inside our circle things would seem real but outside our circle they would seem abstract or unreal.
To someone having trouble walking even with a walking stick someone talking about hiking twenty miles would seem to be a ridiculous waste of energy. However if the person using a walking stick regained full health and was capable of walking long distances they may well see a twenty mile hike in a different, or brighter light!

Reacting at the right time

In a self defence scenario, say a person running towards you and yelling, a good martial artist will only react as the attacker enters their
circle, that is when the aggressor can no longer change their attack. This skill, to react at the right time takes a cold calmness loads of training and more cold calmness! We have all heard people saying don’t show your hand too soon but the impulse to come out with a reaction prematurely is just so strong.
In life it takes lots of practice and awareness not to over react to things, maybe on the newes, that are outside of our control and save our energy for smaller things closer to home that we can influence.

When the dog has you over and the salesman sees you coming.

What dog owner has not experienced the dropped ball near your feet but, you reflect afterwards, not that near. Those brown eyes look at you so pleadingly, there may even be a slight slow wag of the tail as further encouragement if only you would bend down pick it up and chuck it! Sometimes you may reach for that ball not even fully aware that you are doing it and just before you touch it suddenly it’s not there, snatched gone, the trap is sprung! For a game that you had little or no interest in is ant it amazing how annoying it can be?Keep your saliva covered man key ball you scowl at the laughing eyes, you have just been had! You have allowed yourself to overreach and be drawn out of your circle, it is not the first time even is it and you know annoyingly not the last? To your dog ball games, if they are his thing, are as important as football to a professional football player and they both master their art. With the same intensity the top salesman will draw you into an expensive purchase, such as a time share apartment and a day before you did not even know that you needed it or had even heard of such a thing.

The importance of routine

The jobs and things that we need to get done regularly are easier to accomplish if we are in a routine. It’s often only when a constructive routine breaks down that we realise that things had been going along quite smoothly. Even our bodies like routine, it’s not the regular but the unexpected demand that puts our back out. If we get into doing some Tai Chi daily it can be a big plus, but it’s probably only when we have slipped out of the habit of doing it that we realise just how much that we were getting from doing it. Being in a good routine gives us a balance and centered ness, you could see the routine as a circle.

The Tai Chi circle in a nut shell.

If we could not worry about the things that are outside our control or even react to them at all and be aware certainly of possible trouble in the distance but not disturbed by it, we would have little stress. Keep to a well balanced routine and when we let it slip do not beat ourselves up but just get back into it. All of this is easy to say of course and hard to do but with practice it can become as natural as any habit and staying in your circle is a habit worth having.