Fake Posture

Can you sizzle snow with your bare bottom?

Tibetan monks can. They melt ice while sitting in meditation using a technique known as "g Tum-mo" or Tummo, which means 'inner fire'. They gain conscious control over what is typically considered an inaccessible system that regulates your body temperature.

Alexander's Discovery puts you on a similar path. 

This all occurred to me as I prepared a one-hour talk for a large gathering of Pilates Instructors. Pilates practitioners are the Supremos of Posture in the modern fitness world. I heard that a Congress of Pilates resembles an Alexander Congress - everyone has a particular "look", and most are self-conscious about it. How many teachers will dare to slump at the upcoming Congress in Berlin?

Anyway, since 'posture' is a Pilates thing - how do you convince Pilates that Alexander offers something new about 'posture'?

That was the puzzle I entertained as I prepared for my talk…

Then it occurred to me! 

I had recently completed the Science course for Alexscovery teachers - and others - that explores how the modern science of motor control dovetails with Alexander's Discoveries. Highly recommended.

Tim Cacciatore, Patrick Johnson and Rajal Cohen have published a new scientific model of our work in the Kinesiology Review in 2020. In that paper, the three scientists propose an idea of two complementary, parallel motor control systems.*

The system everyone knows about is the Voluntary Movement System (VMS). This system moves any voluntary muscle on immediate demand. When people try to sit up straight to improve their posture, they use this VMS control. They don't stay upright very long - as soon as they stop thinking about it, they collapse again.

This is what I am calling fake posture - because the main job of VMS is not postural. Trying to use it that way can cause immense long-term harm.

If VMS is a fake posture system - then what is our real posture system?

That would be the second system that the three scientists identified. Call it the Postural Support System (PSS). This system is unconscious - it automatically regulates muscle tone to ensure we stabilise our shape as we move around. However, it is not under our direct conscious control.

Same as temperature control.

Those monks sizzling the snow have practised a conscious mind control that resembles the same kind of mind control that an Alexander student must master to restore a dysfunctional postural support system.

In the same way that Tibetan monks influence their body temperature, we influence our postural support. Both body temperature and postural support are inaccessible, unconscious systems that do not require direct conscious oversight to function superbly. 

Watching a young child play gives you an insight into this superb unconscious postural regulation.

Most of my readers have collectively spent centuries bringing this inaccessible system under their conscious guidance. While it is easy to understand the unconscious regulation of body temperature, the idea that postural support fits into a similar category is immediately suspect.

Why?

Well, nothing to stop me from sitting up is there? 

People believe they can improve posture by direct control - whole industries are built on this shaky premise. But, of course, our Voluntary Movement System is, well, voluntary. No one can argue with that. However, it isn't the system that regulates postural tone. 

The Postural Support System - hiding in our unconscious Self - has that job.

Of course, the Pilates who attended my talk are still unsure what Alexander is about.

Welcome to the club.