The rest of the posture story

Submitted by Midwest Star on December 15, 2010 - 4:10pm
Body: 

I've been OK with my prolapse for years after reading Christine's book. I adjusted my posture and thought that was all there was to it. I've had low back pain off and on for more than a decade, though, and recently ran across a book that changed everything.

In "8 Steps to a Pain Free Back" by Esther Gokhale, she describes a posture that includes the backward tilted pelvis we do here. (I can't remember the technical term for that!) Plus, there are detailed descriptions on how to hold the rest of your body to acheive a more natural posture.

I've been doing those things for several months, now, and my back and knee problems are only noticable when I forget and slump.

Not everyone has back problems that can be helped by this book, but I figure those of us who have prolapsed are probably a very high percentage of those people.

It's almost like Gokhale's book is the natural extension of what I learned in Christine's book. :) If you go just a little bit further in posture adjustment, you can fix all kinds of problems.

aza

December 16, 2010 - 2:18am

Thanks for reminding me of this woman's work....I came across it awhile ago and thought it seemed more in line with WW than most else out there and meant to go back to it, but never got around to it. I use the shoulder roll technique every day ;) And yes! How refreshing to hear someone encouraging that gorgeous, strong lumbar curve (though i can't remember her exact stance on pelvic angle...WW is about pelvic nutation - rotating the pelvis forward rather than tilting backwards, as you wrote above ;)).
Gokhale has founded a lot of her work on her own musculoskeletal problems and healing (if I remember correctly) and also looks at how we hold our bodies in a cross-cultural context (i.e., why can women of all ages be leaning over at the waist, picking shells out of the sea for hours at a time, for days and months on end, and seemingly have no issues with the aches, pains, and prolapses that plague much of the modern industrial world)
I don't really think there is a 'rest of the posture story' or 'going a little further'. How nice it would be if there was a continuum with total healing at the end of that line! Essentially, Esther Gokhale and Christine are speaking a very similar language with subtle nuances that do not detract from the slight differences in postural practice, if that makes sense. I should go re-read Gokhale's stuff to be sure, but I would say the two women have very complimentary approaches.

louiseds

December 17, 2010 - 5:30am

Hi Midwest Star

Good to hear from you again. I have just bought 8 Steps, and am halfway through it. I am planning on reviewing it when I have finished reading it and done some more of her techniques for longer. At the moment I am just writing notes as I read. I do think her work has value, but I am a little puzzled by some of it too. Hopefully all will make sense at the end of my reading.

One of the things that makes assessing or using any postural model difficult is that you can get your body arranged 'just so', but then you move and cannot work out what comes next. Posture is dynamic, not static. eg, when you take a step forward, your body automatically nutates one side of your pelvis and counternutates the other half. It is simple mechanics that causes this. Stability of the pelvic organs happens in many different poses. I think it is how you identify the sensation of high intraabdominal pressure, and how you adapt your *movement*, rather than your posture, per se. It is actually about what you do with your body during change, either of position, weight, speed, height etc, that determines whether your body will try to spit out your bladder/rectum/uterus or not. While we are simply standing or simply sitting, I don't think our posture is nearly as critical as when we are moving.

It is how we lift, dance, jump, walk, run, bend etc, that will make the difference with prolapse. Learning to do all these things in ways that conserve the positions of our pelvic organs, and the techniques we can learn for repositioning them when they sag, is what makes Christine's work unique.

I think Esther's work is about stretching out muscles that are in spasm, and using your body in ways that encourage those muscles to remain relaxed. She has so many photos that illustrate well the principles of both her own work and Christine's work.

There is a lot of common ground between the two, but they are aiming at slightly different targets.

Louise

Midwest Star

December 17, 2010 - 10:09am

Hey, I wasn't trying to pick a fight or denigrate Christine's awesome work. It's just that I was delighted to find out there's MORE! :D

When I was young, I learned some Kung Fu and thought it was the greatest thing ever. A decade later, I took a judo class and was absolutely delighted. There's more??? Kung Fu was nice, but Judo included throws and pins and basically all the stuff that Kung Fu didn't have.

It's like that, kinda, only not so extreme. I'm just so happy that a bit *more* changes in my posture can have such profound effects. My back and knees and even the perpetually painful bottoms of my feet are OK now. It's absolutely wonderful.

I just had to share!

louiseds

December 19, 2010 - 4:09am

No Midwest Star, I know you weren't trying to denigrate Christine. Esther's work has been fresh on my mind (and my body) as I come to grips with it. It *is* gratifying to know that there are other practitioners who are looking at posture from a different perspective from the norm of our times. I am so glad you are getting some benefit from it. We need all the help we can get. I think you will find that improvements can go on for years with Christine's work. If we can get further improvement by utilising other people's work as well, then that has to be good.

I am hoping that I can reconcile the two models, Christine's and Esther's. I wanted just to say that there are some things in Esther's book that I cannot make sense of, at the moment.

Louise