Have You Ever Tried to Define Good Posture?

You think you know what good posture is, but do you?

Shoko Tsujimura, a lecturer and physical therapist at Toyohashi Sozo University, tried to answer that question by researching the literature on Posture. [Her full article is here http://www2.sozo.ac.jp/pdf/kiyou2009/07tujimura.pdf]

Posture is getting popular as a concept.

It is being mentioned more in the media and research literature in relation to health. We all know that we need good posture, but have you got a working definition of it? 

Maybe not.

Apparently - Tsujimura found out - neither has anyone else! 

Most definitions, when they exist, are ambiguous.

This reminded me of a problem some young scientists had told me about at the Kyoto University Human Posture Lab a decade ago. They had been collecting research data on two wildly different groups: aged people and high-performance sports people. (Partly because they could quickly get funding for those two groups!)

The question that kept them awake at night was this: how do you compare the data between these two groups?

It goes to Tsujimura research question - can we find a working definition of "good" versus "bad" posture?

You don't expect old people to be performing at the level of an Olympic athlete! 

Then how can you decide who is healthy and who is unhealthy within each group? 

Could it be possible that an old person was objectively in better health than a high-performance sports person?

To which the answer is: no-one knows.

Except, someone does. And I told the scientists so.

An Alexander teacher or student. You.

An Alexscovery teacher can quickly look at an athlete and an aged person and tell you immediately who seems to be in better health relative to their age. 

Because Posture is seeable.

How?

Give them A Posture Test.

Have you got something like that on your website?

That would make a lot more sense to someone searching the internet, than a picture of an Edwardian gentleman smiling to the camera.

This kind of thinking, and much more, you will gain by joining my Foundations course to find ways to think differently to build your practice.

A full explanation is here:

https://atsuccess.com/foundations