WW posture questions

Dear Ivonush

I take it that 45 minutes is the professional standard for appointments with your clients and so cannot be altered. If so you need to be creative here. Let’s look at the problems. There are two main ones as I see them, but as I am not in your place must assume there would be others. But start with these two:

1. To sit for 45 minutes in WW posture when you are new to it means aches and pains, and /or lapsing back into bad posture. Incidentally, you do not describe what your ‘bad’ posture was/is.

2. Moving around in your seat/chair is necessarily limited by the boundaries of the seat itself, the desk(?) between you and your client and of course the effect upon your client (I am assuming you are talking) of your fidgeting, your impulse to interrupt or, your impatience depending upon the clients' perception/interpretation of what your movement implies.

Possible approaches to these two problems could be:

Give yourself incremental challenges to begin with to allow your body to become stronger and more accustomed to the new posture. Start with five minutes in posture, then ten, then 20.

When you find yourself lapsing into bad posture move your body forward to bend from the hips and then slowly rise upward into a straighter posture. (It’s not something your client would notice unduly as weird. People do move around a lot. Then again you could feign having dropped something on the floor and are retrieving it just as long as your client does not reach it first.)

Get yourself a new chair more compatible with WW posture or adjust your current one with a strategically placed cushion. I place my dining room chair so that I sit astride one corner. This means that my weight is not all on the backs of my thighs and buttocks but shared by my feet.

Swing your feet. This transfers weight from your thighs to your buttocks. Children do these things and you too would remember doing this. It’s alright for an adult to do likewise and when you see one doing it they usually appear a happy one.

Change seats with your client after twenty minutes into your appointment, (this would be a true underlying meaning to Gestalt?) or both stand up to look at something out of the window, or offer your client a cup of water/ tissue which you yourself fetch. Demonstrate to your client WW posture (what’s wrong with an add break? Just joking.).

When working as a trainer we were very aware that twenty minutes sitting while listening to hard information was about the ultimate amount of mental endurance and physical restraint we could reasonably expect from our trainees. So, we would make sure that we introduced a physical activity at that point. 45 minutes would demand two activities lasting anywhere from a few seconds to five minutes. A similar limit of 20 minutes was imposed for computer typists who were meant to stand up and walk to a filing cabinet or similar and back just so they would not develop repetitive strain syndrome in their wrists. So there are sound OH&S issues here.

You’ll think some of this is dumb, but it’s just a platform to get your own ideas clear and jumping.

Best wishes Fab

Dear Ivonush

I second you perception of the importance of relaxing. It is definitely key to the posture. Gentle and mindful breathing certainly helps here.

Yes, as in any endeavour pacing yourself is as equally important as pushing yourself to achieve more than you imagined. Any good plan sets achievable goals. Consider what is achievable for you and then aim for that plus a fraction. If you find you are being particularly optimistic, you had better subtract a fraction. If you know you can sit in WW posture for at least the first ten minutes of each 45 minute session, then make that your goal. The next day or the day following you can increase it to 11 or 15 minutes. As your strength and confidence grows you can increase your times.

In the meanwhile falling back into ‘bad’ posture is not a good idea, but for us new chums, we do so often without noticing and then catching ourselves out have to straighten ourselves up again. Eventually, WW posture becomes more natural and comfortable and so held for longer and longer periods until it becomes habitual. Still does not mean we won’t ever want to slouch, tiredness being the thing to watch for here. Mostly tiredness can be worked through, but other times it is best to give in to it and go to bed.

The posture you describe is similar to one I adopted while walking, but for different reasons. I had a balance difficulty and it was sometimes like walking on a rolling deck and so my steps became short and mincing (like a cat holding on with her claws) and my head held parallel to the floor. And yes moving from the residuals of that posture to WW was marked by aches and pains mostly in my back and pins and needles in my thighs and calves when sitting. Still suffer them after prolonged sitting when tired, and the urge to slouch is irresistible. But I must add that the aches so caused were nothing like the back ache that my prolapse used to give me.

When it comes to slouching I find myself leaning on my left elbow. This does so wreck my left shoulder and neck afterwards. I persist in doing this because it is comfortable at the time. Ah, the mindless comfort of the moment is so often repented at leisure and with so little pleasure.

A computer chair is considered ideal for typists where they are moving their hands over a keyboard and their hands and wrists need to be at the right height to the keyboard, their elbows unrestricted by arm rests and feet placed firmly on the floor. There is certainly little back support, so your back must be strongly held as in the old ramrod posture we notice in photographs of ladies of the 19th century. A good way of strengthening your back is of course holding WW posture.

Cushion wise I was thinking of placing it behind your lumbar curve. Some people find this helps. I can’t say I do.

It’s so much a personal experiment to find what is right for you, but be assured the posture and relaxation are key and they both require persistent practice and small steps.

Best wishes
Fab

Hi Fab and Ivonush

I don't think sitting posture is ramrod straight. I like to get my butt well back, relax my belly, then raise my chest, then relax my shoulders and move my upper back backwards far enough to balance it and allow my back muscles to relax. That's my take on it, anyway.

A lot of back strength is to do with general upper body strength. so arm exercises that enlist the shoulder and upper back muscles are important. This is why dance is so good. It is whole body, upper and lower.

I built up my upper body strength over about three months with veil work while bellydancing (a class every week plus a tiny bit of practice in between times). One day I realised that a lot of my shoulder and back pain was no longer bothering me. I have not been dancing regularly for about six weeks, and my shoulders and upper back are starting to trouble me again.

I was talking about the typical ergonomic computer typist chair with its moulded plastic dish shaped seat (like an old metal tractor seat) and its straight back that rises parallel to the seated person's back as requiring a ramrod straight posture. Thing is to work out ways to sit in WW posture in such a seat. Frequently, I put my feet up on the chair's splayed network of legs which is not a solution, believe me.

So hard to explain these things at an internet remove.

best wishes
Fab

Hi Ivonush

You've got me there. I have a really weird picture in my head of what this chair looks like. From my imaginary picture this is not a seat I could sit on. The only way I could do it would be with a thick squishy cushion that I could put in the tractor seat to fill up the dish so it was horizontal for me to sit on. If the metal tractor seat is the same one I am thinking about it has a raised piece in between your legs, supporting your inner thighs, I guess.

It would prescribe the way you sit in it. There would be no wriggle room at all! (This is great on a tractor because it sits on a big spring which absorbs major movements of the tractor but keeps your butt where it belongs.) In an office situation I would sit forward far enough that my back was not up against the rigid back, and could move around, forward and back, and side to side. Do I have the picture?

This is precisely why I prefer a seat without a back.

Ivonush, for me, training my belly to relax was what finally got me into WW posture by habit. If belly is taut you can't be breathing correctly, and you can't be in WW posture no matter what else you do; but with relaxed belly, everything else falls into place. The combination of relaxed belly and lifted chest is what makes everything feel strong and maintains the lumbar curve.

Ivonush, when we say lift the chest we mean this. There are three cures in the spine. The lowest is convex, the coccyx and sacrum. The second is concave, the lumbar spine. The third is the thoracic curve which is convex. This is the curve in the middle of your back.

Lifting the chest increases the radius of the lumbar curve, making it wider, and lessens the thoracic curve, ie the chest lifts but it also moves forwards. It also moves the head and shoulders backwards, so the chin tucks slightly in. The sacrum and tailbone move as well, but that is not what we are discussing.

When you inhale, your belly above the navel moves outwards, then your belly below the navel moves outwards as you breathe deeply 'into your belly'. At this point you can often feel a kind of tingly, burny sensation in your abdominal muscles as they stretch out. The final stage of inhalation is lifting your shoulders to really feel your lungs.

There is no need to get to that last level of inhalation in everyday breathing. It is your overload breathing. People who breathe with their ribs habitually often find it very difficult to breathe with their diaphragm. Breathing with your ribs and shoulders creates a lot of shoulder tension. It is important to teach your body how to breathe with your diaphragm. Teach it however you can, using whatever position you need to adopt to allow your belly to expand as you breathe in. Keep your shoulders relaxed at all times.

I am thinking that your learning to breathe diaphragmatically is like me learning to play guitar. i have to learn the layout of the strings, positions of frets, right hand technique, left hand technique, overall posture and holding the instrument, keeping a rhythm and matching the actions of left and right hands. Then I have to put it all together. Combining them all is hard, isn't it!!!!! No wonder it takes a while to learn. Be patient. Keep trying. You will get closer to mastering it with every attempt.

How about ceasing to use the sentence "I used to be disconnected from my body"? Using instead the term "I am learning to connect with my body. I am in my body." removes the emphasis on the past. Let it go. You don't need the first sentence any more. It is in the past.

L :-)

Ivonush I can tell that you are trying very hard, and you are getting results, so you know it is working. However, when we try to change posture drastically it might mean that you are getting muscle spasm in the muscles that you are using to make yourself uncurl. I would suggest that you do some stretching to allow those muscles to relax again.

I think it is a cycle of every two years or so all the cells in our bodies ar replaced. some parts are replaced more quickly than others. Three months seems to be the time for muscles to heal. People have a broken leg in plaster for 8 weeks, then further healing takes place once the leg is mobile again. It simply takes time for the body to regrow and heal. It also takes time for the muscles you have not been using much to develop strength, to help the muscles you are using.

You are on the road to recovery now. Perhaps easing off a bit might help. Just try it and see. It is your body. You are in charge of it.

You can learn all about how it works for yourself, using books and other educational materials, and the Net. Try the library. Buy Christine's book. Look for old texts in secondhand book shops and market stalls. My son just picked up a first year nursing, anatomy and physiology text book at a market stall for $1, for me. It is wonderful. It is written in scientific language, but it is accessible enough for me to understand.

Louise