What is the true nature of posture?

Posture is active,
and mostly automatic.

If you are not addressing WHY the muscles are sore, tight, and weak, you are not addressing postural distortion at a deep enough level. Massage, stretching, and strengthening will not solve postural distortion, because they offer little opportunity to unlearn the patterns.

Posture is the learned, automatic, active holding of the musculature.
The nervous system runs it.

The nervous system sends stimuli to muscles that hold these postures 24 hours a day. Posture is a living, dynamic, ongoing event that is changeable. Bones go where muscles pull them. Muscle has no will of its own. The muscles do only what the nervous system directs them to do.

Stretching does not change the contraction signal. The limit in a stretch is due to a spinal cord reflex. Very little cortical learning comes from stretching. Pressing on sore muscles is just beating up the exhausted worker. Pushing against tightness will always fail. Strengthening to correct posture just increases tension in an overburdened system.

Postural distortion is an expression of persistent involuntary tensions. These reflexive contractions result from cumulative stress and injury.

The patterns we get stuck in.

The patterns of postural distortion are quite simple.

In response to stress and injury, the body reflexively contracts in predictable patterns.

1) The Green-Light Pattern: The arching of the back, (hyper-lordosis), also known as the Landau Response. The reflexive contraction of forward action, both in terms of locomotion and getting through life itself. If the phone rings and they say: “Are you ready to go?”, your back arches into action.

2) The Red-Light Pattern: The contraction of the front, (hyper-kyphosis) occurs in reaction to fear, apprehension, to negative emotions of any kind. It’s the same contraction as the startle reflex. Think of cringing.

3) The Injury/Asymmetry Pattern: Typically the contraction of the side, (scoliotic postures) often with rotation, occurs in reaction to injury, in an attempt to keep the injured site from hurting. This pattern soon becomes learned, habituated. Repetitive motion can also habituate in these patterns.

As these reflexive contraction patterns are repeated, and eventually habituated, they become patterns of involuntary of contraction and distortion. As areas that do not move cease to give sensory-motor feedback, the ability to sense/control the tension in these areas is lost. 

You become trapped in the grip of the learned patterns that express as postural distortion.

 

Regaining control of involuntary contraction.

The system has a method for clearing these involuntary persistent tensions called Pandiculation. As humans age, pandiculation (the tension reset) becomes optional. Other vertebrates pandiculate often throughout their lives. We feel old, achy, and stiff in what we erroneously correlate with age.

Pandiculation, a contraction followed by a smooth, slow, lengthening, is the natural tension reset. Pandiculation of the full body stress reflex contraction patterns takes involuntary contraction and makes it voluntary. The contraction phase allows sensing of areas that have developed sensory amnesia. The lengthening phase allows the brain to lower tension in a controlled voluntary way. Yawning is a Pandiculation. And it’s quite pleasurable!

These reflexive stress contractions of cannot be stopped. They are hard-wired into us. But the habit of stuckness and distortion can be changed through these gentle repetitions.

If you are interested in a modality that teaches full body Pandiculation of the stress and injury contraction patterns please contact me.

I solved my own severe, 30-year pain problem with this approach,
-Eric Cooper
CCSE, HSEC, COTT, LMT
InSpireSomatics.com