Lower back position question

Body: 

When I was a girl, my father would constantly criticize my posture and tell me to stand up straight. I think I almost got a negative mindset against posture as a result of that. However, I am willing to do anything short of surgery to help my situation. I have a question about the actual corrective posture stance. I was always told by my father to tuck my tail bone in and under. When I read the downloads on posture, I couldn't tell if I am to allow my back to go into more of a sway back type of position of if I am to still tuck my tailbone under.

Hello,

Your father was right to try to correct your posture, but wrong (perhaps also in his approach!) about correct posture for the female body. I am limited here in trying to describe the anatomy of things without visual aids, and am working as fast as I can on a new resource that will help with that.

What you are setting up in your body in an ideal amount of tension throughout the system, so that all organs are supported naturally. You want the lumbar curve to happen naturally, not try to push a sway back. When the lower back is hollowed, the pelvic floor is extended or stretched out into its ideal position. As you know, we strengthen muscles by flexing, or contracting them. The stretching of the pelvic floor is limited by the hamstring muscles at the back of our thighs. This means it is impossible to keep lifting and lifting your tailbone...the hamstrings, connected to the sacrotuberous ligaments of the sacrum, prevent this from happening, as do the sacrospinous ligaments that are embedded in the pelvic floor musculature.

If you tuck your tailbone under, you are lowering the back half of the pelvic floor. In normal female anatomy, the back half of the floor is much higher than the front. This has vital implications for the whole issue of prolapse, as it is the front half of the floor that receives these energies and the back half that is protected.

If you think of pressing your belly button down and in front of your pubic bone, while keeping your sternum, or breast bone, level (and your shoulders down!) your lower back will be automatically drawn into the correct positon. This sounds paradoxical, but it is true!

Hope this helps,

Christine