Bouncing Breasts

Submitted by fab on September 1, 2012 - 6:42pm
Body: 

Hi all

Valuable news in the paper yesterday. Two lady scientists, Professor Julie Steele from the University of Wollongong and Dr Joanna Scurr from the University of Portsmouth have both done research on the movement of breasts or breast biomechanics. They both emphasise the importance of breast support. Getting the right bra. See:
http://sma.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1082-SMA-BRABrochure_FA_Web...

Julie Steele was reported as saying there are “significant medical implications of inappropriate breast support”. Poorly adjusted bra straps can cause headache, backache, and numbness and tingling in the hands because the straps apply excessive pressure to nerves that cross the shoulder and innervate the hand. Many women stopped physical activity because of it and it put some young women off exercise for life.

“Young girls, they frequently become embarrassed as their breasts develop, and they start slouching to hide their breasts and the associated bounce.”

Also 50% of women found breast bounce caused pain during exercise.

Julie Steel submitted a paper to an academic conference in the male-dominated world of bio mechanics and was rejected. In 2005, when Julie was invited to present an international keynote address on her research, the organizers asked her to remove the term “breast” from her title. So from “Breasts, what’s the problem?” she went to “Bras, what’s the problem?” But she got heard. http://www.uow.edu.au/health/brl/research/UOW064685.html

For more details on Dr Scurr’s research (she discovered that the average breast can move 21 centimetres about the length of a box of tissues in a figure eight movement. They also move side to side and even in and out. (We could have told her that, but she has plotted the movement and proven it). Given the average breast weighs about the same as 1.2 litres of milk and is held in place by skin and Cooper’s ligaments, that’s a lot of bounce or slide. (Reminds you of somewhere else in the female anatomy.)
check out
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070915124901.htm

I wonder would a bra manufacturer be interested in WW posture and input?

Best wishes, Fab

Forum:

louiseds

September 1, 2012 - 8:58pm

What is wrong with this man? Does he get an 'embarrassing' erection every time they see the word 'breast' in print? Or does his hand start shaking uncontrollably? Like Tourette's syndrome. I think he needs to write and say, "breast, breast, breast, breast", two hundred times a day until he gets over it.

Why did anyone take any notice of him?

chickaboom

September 4, 2012 - 5:10pm

"Sorry, bras might make your breasts sag more.

You have ligaments in your breasts. They are designed to hold your breasts up. If you wear a bra for years - or, worse yet, wear a bra 24 hours a day for years - these ligaments will atrophy (get weaker and smaller)."

From here: http://brafree.org/faq.html

----

What do you ladies think? After babies and nursing, I'm no longer comfortable without my bra for long!

alemama

September 4, 2012 - 8:39pm

I don't have tons of boob- When I'm pregnant or nursing an infant I get them though. And when they are large, I like the support of a bra. But, when I am not pregnant and I am nursing a toddler (and a preschooler;)) I'm good to go without one. BUT...only if I've been doing my pull ups and push ups- Because the ligaments may be what holds up the breast, but it's the pec muscles that seem to help me more...maybe because the ligaments are all stretched out from giant milk jug times...

PS. I love that my boobs apparently can move in figure 8s! And I loved biomechanics when I was studying. It's thrilling science indeed.

Surviving60

September 5, 2012 - 8:28am

I was never large on top, but age and childbearing done their work, and have made me too floppy to go without (except at home). It's just not a good look for the office! I could probably use some work on these pecs. - Surviving

curiousity

September 7, 2012 - 12:04am

Just in response to Louise here:

I do think this stuff is changing, slowly. Caitlin Moran barely gets a sentence in without mentioning vaginas, and now Naomi Wolf has had her book entitled Vagina published. It doesn't seem to have had a great reception but all helps in the de-mystifying and taboo-busting of these subjects. As someone else said (Surviving I think?), when one of these women gets a prolapse and starts talking about it in the media, then that will be a huge leap.

p.s. I am also a bra-wearer. Can get by without for evening wear if I need to, but just feel more comfortable during the day with one on, especially while exercising. I do see some woman running who seem to be having the figure 8 experience - not one I'm keen to sign up for.

louiseds

September 9, 2012 - 12:38am

... I wonder what The Count on Sesame Street would use to demonstrate the number 8? Could he get away with it, and what would his facial expression be?

;-)

fab

September 9, 2012 - 1:05am

Oh my god! Louise. Do you know what image you just gave me? No, not with kids would he get away with it.

louiseds

September 9, 2012 - 5:04am

But there is a late night Muppets series. No doubt The Count has done his mischief there!

prolapse2012

September 9, 2012 - 5:57am

Louise you are a nut! LUV it!!

prolapse2012

September 9, 2012 - 5:57am

Louise you are a nut! LUV it!!

fab

September 19, 2012 - 5:53pm

I contacted Prof Steele inquiring whether she was considering researching the bio mechanics of the female pelvic organs. She was warm and gracious in her response, and said that other similar requests had been made to her and that she regretted she had not the time to pursue other issues so important to women. I knew I was a bit off asking her about this when she had only just completed other exhaustive research. Give the girl a break.

She explained that such research was left to other experts whose main focus was this complex area of investigation. She said she appreciated there are some similarities between the two areas of research (breast and pelvic organs) but they both involve very different areas of expertise and very different research methodologies. She offered that an example of another group working on the pelvic floor can be found at:

http://obgyn.med.umich.edu/research/programs-units/pfrg

I informed her of the existence of Christine’s site and said that I would pass on the information that she has given me to this forum.

I know Christine is aware of this research at the above address, but has found it is based on the concept of the pelvic floor rather than the lumbar curve for starters. There are other issues, but there is nothing like seeing these things for yourself.

Best wishes, Fab

fab

September 19, 2012 - 6:14pm

Thanks for this curiosity. It is important we keep up and not be ignorant about what is being said on our behalf even if it annoys you silly. I don’t know about Caitlin but Naomi Wolfe I think has made a reputation from talking about sex (for a male audience) under the guise of feminist liberation. Just my take. I’ve been wrong before, (oh such humility!). But if someone wants to have a 17 inch metal plate with a set of attached metal joints put into her lower back because although she was still having very satisfactory clitoral orgasms with her partner, she was no longer experiencing the psychedelic effects of satisfactory sex, she’s not liberating me. The only thing I see being liberated is her imagination.

Best wishes, Fab

curiousity

September 19, 2012 - 7:27pm

Without having read the book, I have to agree with you Fab. When I read that she had had that op and why, I was astounded (and very much thought about whether this would have a permanent impact on her posture). From reviews I have read (again with the disclaimer that I have not read the book), she didn't seem to have raised any particular post-partum issues. Maybe she didn't have any. But she seemed to be perpetuating the myth that one's vagina would return to its pre-childbirth state.

But ... it has got people talking about vaginas and I think that's a good thing.

curiousity

September 20, 2012 - 3:43pm

Thanks for the link Fab.

I checked out their research page. It sounds like they are asking the right questions, e.g. what lifestyle factors (if any) contribute to post partum prolapse, what are the correlations with obstetric interventions, what are the differences between the pelvic muscles between a post partum woman who has prolapse and one who hasn't, even if their current model differs from the whole woman one.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the WW approach could be factored into this research? They obviously have access to MRI scanners - I guess it is a different machine for erect MRI scans rather than supine but they might have access to an erect one? They could test and verify the whole model this way I imagine. Hell, I'd sign up to be a participant in a study like that.

fab

September 20, 2012 - 7:07pm

I think Christine made some comment about the MRI scans along the lines of them not being able to do curves. I've forgotten the head of research's name at the moment starting with a B with a D, no can't get it, but if you put him into the search box that thread will come up.

Yes curiosity, I had similar thoughts of trying to be included, but I’m in the southern hemisphere, so only fantasy on my part. Another fantasy was a contingent of Wholewoman volunteering and just quietly and gently asking pertinent questions, making serious comment etc at certain points along the way. That way Wholewoman and correct female anatomy issues would not go away, but be a constant point of return which required thinking about and maybe ultimately absorbed into the fabric of the thinking of these researchers at Michigan University.

Well, I could go on. Point is curiosity I figure you could do that if anyone could as long as you had the time and other resources of course. I’d love to volunteer with you; that would be ultimate fun.

Best wishes, Fab

curiousity

October 2, 2012 - 12:56am

I just read Christine's blog post on this: http://wholewoman.com/blog/?p=1375.

Christine, have you considered collaborating with the university? They have the equipment, the resources and the reputation. Could you propose a study which looked at erect women instead of supine? And asked all the right questions?

louiseds

October 2, 2012 - 2:21am

Hi Fab

You are not thinking of John DeLancey, are you?

BTW, I have seen so many bad reviews of The Vagina by Naomi Wolf that I went and bought a copy. I figure that bad reviews are sometimes because the reviewer doesn't want to hear what the author has to say. Let's face it, there are evil forces out there that do not want women being comfortable about their genitals at all. I figure that if you don't p*** off someone with your writing, you are not trying hard enough. My mind is open. A review will appear in time.

I just have to get through some heavy non-WW reading in the next three weeks so I can return the books to the Uni Library where I work. My contract finishes in about three weeks, and I won't have access to them after that.

BTW, the only reason why I would even consider buying this book is because her earlier book, The Beauty Myth, is one of my all time favourite feminist books.

Watch this space.

Louise

fab

October 3, 2012 - 6:49am

don’t feel obligated to review Naomi Wolf’s latest offering “Vaginas” on my account. Some people you get and others you don’t. As I said in a post above I don’t get her. And I am thinking now it was because I never bought into the beauty myth in the first place, always observing that it was something truly within the eye of the beholder. Besides, I am sure my personal disaffection would not bother her one way or another.

I actually got Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. Mainly, I think, because I was close to women who had bought into the perfect housewife myth of the fifties and later some others in Germaine’s same Sydney Push milieu who had been sold the sexual liberation myth of the sixties. There was no warning them. It seems once you are in the hold of a myth, there is rarely a timely breaking free unscathed. I watched powerless as reality began to brutally bite at these women, and as they crashed into the shoals and the truth washed over them, they were left shivering and stranded; disillusioned on the shore.

Technological change (as well as education and the employment of women during the 2nd World War) is what cruelled it for the ideal chauvinist society of the fifties, and it hardly needed Betty pointing out that women have a brain and that housework saving devices were here to liberate women from drudgery and free them for other activities, and not to compel them to look for more and more mundane tasks with which to fill their day, at home alone, waiting for the man to return. But she put it into words and verified what many a housewife was suspecting or discovering for themselves. The pill was the catalyst for the sixties. Suddenly, women could have the sexual freedom that men had always enjoyed. If only it had been that simple. Germaine, I think, discovered that chauvinist men don’t cease being chauvinist just because they espouse libertarian ideas, and possess high intellect and murmur of the liberating effect of free love.

Myths are only powerful, if you accept them as truth, buy into them, or surrender to them, and once the disillusionment comes…..it’s tough. Of course, some people are able to cling to them for a whole lifetime.

I was saved from these particular myths as much by circumstance as any deep understanding on my part. I fell for other myths, just as misleading, just as disillusioning.

Of course, too, it’s a generational thing. I don’t get it that Naomi would be upset by the use of the term c***. Germaine wanted women to embrace that four letter term mostly found only in Chaucer or heard only as a term of abuse uttered by angry, chauvy men, for she saw the word vagina as a male term declaring male possession of that part of the female body with its meaning of sheaf or scabbard for the entry of his sword. Naomi would have known this.

Christine

October 3, 2012 - 10:17am

Thank you all for this fabulous thread. Just yesterday I emailed a few local women to see if I could get help with something I'm calling the Witch Study Group - sort of the darker side of the women's awakening being discussed here. Here is what I wrote:

"From my perspective the concept of "witch" is an aspect of our history and culture that continues to influence and impact generation after generation. Who are the real witches of the world? Who were the brothers Grimm? Did Western culture ever really recover from the Inquisition? How is it that almost every children's movie has an evil *female* witch? What I am envisioning is a small research group that will look deeply into the subject - including interviews with people inside and outside the justice system. The final outcome will be a documentary that sheds light on aspects of humanity never adequately studied in our culture."

I will update you on the progress of the study.

As for John Delancey, UofM, and all of the rest, their very outlook is embedded in the torture of women. Sound extreme? Read back on the writings of all the women here who have been trapped in the jaws of the system. I talk to women all the time for whom "happy hysterectomy" was a wicked lie based on a century of deception, abuse, and cover-up.

Delancey knows exactly who we are (Louise even corresponded with him - until he didn't write back), as do many other prominent pelvic surgeons. They don't care about our work. What they care about is keeping the Machine running smoothly - "more research studies needed". As I said in my blog, it is $$$ from big pharma and a colluding government that pays universities to study women's "health". They study the same things year after year - "Does sacrocolpopexy have a better outcome than sacrospinous ligament fixation". I have several studies on that very subject in my files from ten years ago! Where else in our shrinking world is there an inexhaustible, *free* resource to supply a booming industry, than women lying down for surgical "studies" conducted at university hospitals? Everyone wins...the pharmaceutical and medical supply companies, the hospitals and doctors, the kids in private schools. The only losers are the eviscerated women who are forever weakened and disabled.

If John Delancey ever rings, I will certainly take the call. Until then, he is on my witch-list.

Christine

fab

October 3, 2012 - 4:23pm

Our first lady Prime Minister Julie Gillard has been called a witch by her parliamentary colleagues in opposition and eagerly taken up by the media (in agreement I might add, full front page drawings of a witch character with long Pinocchio/witch's nose ). They also constantly refer to her as JuLiar for having changed her mind on a pre-selection promise. (She couldn't get the numbers.) It's a constant barrage in the name of free speech, but not much politeness or respect for her position or a fair go.

Sounds a good idea Christine, plenty of examples out there.

curiousity

October 3, 2012 - 9:56pm

Yes Fab, I totally agree with you about Wolf's response to the cuntini episode (which I read about in one of the reviews). At that point I thought that this is a very particular response, and perhaps should have been presented as a memoir rather than some sort of manifesto for all women. I didn't know about vagina meaning sheath. How interesting.

Christine, I think I can see your point of view re engaging with researchers who are working with a very different model from yours. You've spent years trying to promulgate this message, which has apparently fallen on deaf ears. But am I being naive in thinking that when erect MRI scans, showing the pelvic anatomy as you have described it, are published, then this will open mainstream doors to your way of thinking? A bit like Galileo and his telescope :-)

fab

October 3, 2012 - 11:12pm

I thought it rather delightful that someone was being so creative with pasta. I bet it will be a hit.

Yes, curiosity oh delightfully persistent one. An erect MRI would be great. It should show all. Can they do one? Is there a machine designed to do one, or is it all that prone, tunnel business?

Back to my saw. An important perspective on the witch concept is: who is talking about witches and why? The old cui bono question: who benefits? The answer in my example is someone who wants her job. The public is sick of it and he will probably get it.

fab

October 3, 2012 - 11:29pm

The thought just came to me Curiosity, what about those portal machines at airports that you need to pass through so that officials can check if you are wearing some weapon. Would that show the bones of the erect neck, spine, pelvis and hips and in their true relationship?

curiousity

October 4, 2012 - 1:15am

They possibly would Fab, at least the bones anyway. I am heading on a trip in a couple of weeks. I wonder if I can get them to pause the display and pop around and have a look :-)

In answer to your other question, yes, erect or upright MRI scanners are a thing. They seem to be mainly used to for back conditions at the moment, I am guessing for similar reasons to POP i.e. the symptoms are completely different when supine compared to upright.

This was for a seated one, but the authors note the promise of the technique for studying POP. I'd say it's only a matter of time: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8956147.

louiseds

October 4, 2012 - 2:25am

I would like to be a fly on the wall in the Security area when you go through, Curiosity! (Just don't try it in the USA, methinks!)

;-)

Surviving60

October 4, 2012 - 4:41am

Louise, dd you have a run-in with airport security during this last trip over here? - Surviving

MsNightingale

October 4, 2012 - 5:01am

When first reading Christine's book, I too thought of this. Why haven't there been a series of standing in posture images done on this? None of us want more x-rays or MRIs than we need, but shouldn't we see to it that a series are done to put out there in the world for women to see.....even if the doctor's won't look? The docs and PTs are all so focused on the so-called pelvic floor but if only we could organize the hip/skeletal images for them to see the real pelvic floor. A possible project for the next conference? We can line up at the local radiology department and have some imaging done:)

louiseds

October 4, 2012 - 5:17am

No, no problems, but it was a bit like I imagine it is being arrested and taken to the lockup. They are in charge, and you don't dare step out of line or try to do something 'a little different', like asking to take a peek at the x-ray screen. The threat of deportation is ever present.

All the airport staff were great, really ... and very well mannered. They just have a very difficult job to do, and familiarity is not part of the recipe. With all those people in uniforms openly carrying guns I didn't know whether to feel very, very safe, or very, very unsafe.

L

Christine

October 4, 2012 - 6:40am

into your life it will creep...." (Crosby, Stills & Nash) lol

The teachers and I gnashed our teeth over the Vesalius-like position of the pelvis in the new standing 3-D x-rays (EOS System) and some MRIs. We know of regular standing AP radiographs, and I also found MRIs where the pelvis was in the WW position. I searched for and found descriptions of how the software used in these new machines slices and dices the image and then puts it back together - to replicate the supine x-ray? I don't know, but something does not add up in these images.

Of course they would be applying standing MRI to every woman with prolapse (and back and hip pain) if there wasn't a conspiracy to keep the body on the table and conceptually dissected into various "compartments" in order to maintain the status quo.

The good news is, you can't stop the march of time and awareness. Let us see where the new wave of standing imaging takes us.

Oh...and I believe that dark, oval structure at the front of these images (that they label the pubic bone) has not only been enhanced, but is in reality the rectus muscles connecting on to the front of the pubic bones.

Christine

Surviving60

October 4, 2012 - 2:48pm

What I'm wondering is, even without any slicing and dicing, how much does posture affect that image? If a woman is standing in good WW posture, we know what we are expecting to see. But if she is standing in typical suck-and-tuck posture, isn't that going to tilt her pelvis enough to give ammunition to those who espouse incorrect pelvic orientation? Will the images really reveal the true story, if the subject in not in correct posture? - Surviving

Christine

October 4, 2012 - 2:52pm

Feeding the troops...will be back soon!

fab

October 4, 2012 - 4:03pm

when you're asleep, into your tent I'll creep. For I'm the sheik of Araby." How times change. Not being nostalgic here, just seeing the contrasts.

Yeah, we are very unused to seeing men/women with guns on their hips. It's even very new for our police force. Unfamiliar, rather than paranoid. Scary even. We still only think in terms of citizens going about their business only getting sight of a gun if it is to be used straightaway in dire emergency, otherwise it belongs to someone with criminal intentions. Just a mind-set that hasn't caught up to the new world yet, and maybe doesn't really want to in this instance.

We trust Curiosity won't do anything to endanger herself.

Can't wait to see the images.

Christine

October 4, 2012 - 7:27pm

Okay...here are two good examples. This first one is a DeLancey MRI, which he says is in the standing position, supposedly showing the pubic bone, bladder and uterus (labeled by DeLancey). This looks like a supine, post-hysterectomy cadaver to me.

The second one is from a study pointing out the difficulties MRIs have calculating curvilinear shapes. This image makes sense and it is how we believe/perceive our anatomy to be. Take special note of the pubic bones, which are clearly under the bladder (white, with the uterus on top of it) and under the torso. I believe the oval structure above is the rectus muscle. The arrows are not mine and not relevant.

I do not believe it would be possible to stand with the pubic bones rotated >45 degrees out front, as in the DeLancey image. One would have to be doing a complete backbend to even get the pubic bones close to that position.

This is a subject we’ve been agonizing over for years. How is it that so much of the technological imaging is wrong? Are their mistakes accidental? I can’t imagine that could be the case. Think of all the imaging they do just of broken and infected pubic bones! These guys must know how the pelvis is positioned. I know we are not wrong, because our anatomy is self-evident.

It is a great mystery.

Christine

fab

October 5, 2012 - 7:38pm

I was waiting for this and I missed it. Don’t know how I missed it.

Thank you so much for these images and explanation Christine.

The images make it immediately clear what you have earlier described as the difficulties you have been up against. Yes, indeed, the question appears to be: do the MRI slices get pieced back together to conform to an erroneous anatomical concept of the pelvic area? Your question is an excellent one.

Do surgeons in fact see patients as prone figures? I think they must. Patients with broken necks, spine, hips, legs, pelvis have got to be prone. You do your best with what circumstances you have. I can see the likelihood of many procedures being designed around the proness of the patient’s body. Surgeons when planning an operation or procedure would have to visualize the body as prone. Which is no mean feat. They then carry out the operation on a prone patient. Men are traditionally better at spatial stuff than women, so it is natural we would follow their lead. It would normally be a successful collaboration.

Do they in fact believe they must see the body as prone to be able to perform their procedures?

If this is the case, you would have to have very good reasons to compel surgeons and general hospital practice to change this prone patient orientation. I think the relearning as well as the technical innovations would be large scale. But small steps, as you have started, let's get the true body orientation right, the rest will follow.

Christine

October 5, 2012 - 9:38pm

What you have described is such a great irony, Fab.

Imagine a woman placed supine on the operating table, the head of which has been lowered 15 degrees or so into "Trendelenberg" position. They rotate her hips backward and place her legs in high stirrups. They proceed to dissect her pelvis, as gravity is pushing her pelvic contents backward toward the outlet. Her uterus is removed and the top of her vagina sutured shut. Her vagina is "narrowed" through "A&P repair". The top of her vagina is tethered to her second sacral vertebra and a polypropylene sling is placed under her urethra.

When the woman eventually stands up, her pelvic interior has been rotated 90-degrees backward into the Vesalius position! No wonder these surgeries are so painful, so very difficult to recover from, and so unsuccessful!

It is a crazy world we live in.

Chrsitine

louiseds

October 6, 2012 - 9:17am

When I think about it, if I was a surgeon, about to go wandering around with my instruments inside a woman's pelvic cavity, I would want a damned good roadmap. Being a woman I always need to hold the map so that the current road I am travelling along is pointing straight up the page. As a surgeon I would need the road map to be exactly in the same position visually as my patient was lying. No turning the map upside down to see where I am going!

But most surgeons seem to be male! Maybe the image that forms in their mind's eye, of any woman, is lying on her back with her legs apart? Mmmm, unfortunate.

I don't think there is any hope at all for surgeons.

fab

October 6, 2012 - 4:13pm

Ok,so we use the Trenelenburg position so that the intestines are well out of the way before the surgeon makes his incision. He can see what he is doing; find what he is looking for without other organs getting in the way. There appears to still be possible damage to other organs in the women’s body when sometimes other organs are pierced during a small percentage of these operations. So it’s not perfect; it seems scar tissue etc can fuse to organs. It sounds like it can be quite a tangle inside there. Also, the Trenelenburg position as widely agreed can interfere with breathing what with the intestines and other viscera now pressing on the lungs, and with someone under anaesthetic that surely is a worry. All this, quite apart from the effects of re-positioning what organs/organ remnants, mesh etc that has been left/inserted inside the women’s pelvis and stitching it according to Versalius’ drawing must give anyone pause for thought.

I’ve gone quite because I am still trying to get my head around it.

Your joke aside Louise, (always the naughty one) it seems they would have to see all patients on their backs except for a very few procedures where they see the patient upside down or topsy turvy, and women’s genitalia operations being I think the majority. (With over half a million of hysterectomies alone being reported performed each year in the US, it would seem so.)

Was it Odin who tied himself upside down to a tree in order to see the Runes?

louiseds

October 6, 2012 - 10:03pm

Fab, seriously, your theory on this being the way surgeons visualise is exactly what I figured out too. There is literally no reason why they would get benefit from seeing how a woman's organs are organised while she is standing. They don't examine standing women unless requested to . They patient is always lying down!

The original anatomy drawings were done of floppy corpses on a mortuary slab. Only Leonardo (also an anatomist, but for artistic reasons) was able to accurately bring them to life. His mind was remarkable. Figure Artists will always see reality the way it is, unlike modern photographers who will create what the payer of the dollars wants to see.

Louise

fab

October 6, 2012 - 10:48pm

Yes, I can see how you would have, I’m just catching up. This report http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1413-78522006000400003&script=sci_a...
shows you the bones, you probably have seen it before, but someone else may be interested. We have the lumbar bones covered by the looks of it, but of course we need photos of the organs in the upright position.

Christine

October 7, 2012 - 8:22am

The illustration in this article is a good example of how relentless the system is in maintaining incorrect pelvic orientation. The spine itself looks pretty good here, but the pelvis is rotated backward. Do you see the little knobby projection on the left hand side? That is the "anterior superior iliac spine", which in reality is only anterior. It was labeled "superior" because it is located high in front when the pelvis is rotated backward into a bowl. The anterior inferior iliac spine is actually behind the ASIS. If you are sitting, you can feel the ASIS very prominently low in your groin - it actually is rotated so far forward that it sits on your thigh. In this illustration the sit bones hang below the pubic bones. You can get them to do that by sagging your bottom under your torso, but when you do you have no back extension of your femur and must take short, bent knee, bent hip steps.