Posture plateau

Submitted by Bonne Maman on October 28, 2013 - 5:52pm
Body: 

Hi Everyone,

I've been absent from here for a while but I've been working away on my posture and the FAFP dvd. I guess I've been seriously at it for about 6 months now and I have had good results. Rediscovering natural female posture has been a total revelation that will keep unfolding, but for now I feel at a bit of a plateau which I believe is as much mental as physical. My hamstrings have been lengthening, as have my stomach muscles, as I work in the posture and my lumbar curve slowly deepens. But actually, I am scared of how curved that lumbar spine is getting! I realize now that I have used my stomach and buttock musculature to hold my pelvis tipped back, flattening the curve, all my life. Man is it ever hard to get those muscles to give up that habit! But even when I consciously relax buttocks and stomach, then my mind kicks in and says "Whoa, that curve is too deep! That can't be right!" Anyone else have that feeling?

When I completely relax my muscles and let my pelvis tip all the way forward, curving the spine, then I start to feel compression in my lumbar spine. Is that right? It doesn't feel right to flatten out the curve so the compression goes away, but the compression doesn't feel right either... However, it is only when I let that lumbar spine curve as much as it wants to that I feel I can let my skeleton hold itself up and align into natural posture. So, hmmm.

Any tips Whole Women?

Forum:

Surviving60

October 28, 2013 - 6:26pm

Maman, let me ask you this. When you feel like your lumbar curve is extreme, how does it look to you when you look at your posture in a mirror? For quite a long time I noticed that although I felt like I had a good lumbar curvature, I was disappointed when I looked in the mirror because I felt like it was barely visible. It can take awhile. Now when I look at my lumbar curvature I can see an improvement from those days. At my age I suspect no amount of posture fanaticism is going to restore it to what it would have been if I had never given it up. But I will never stop working on it. - Surviving

kiko

October 28, 2013 - 6:56pm

HI Bonne Maman,

All I can say is that you and I often seem to be at the same stage whenever we post (second bub around 14 months old, yeah?) even though I was feeling like a WW success story before becoming pregnant the second time. I have been feeling the same as you (again). But like Surviving says, in the mirror my lumbar curve never looks half as pronounced as it feels. I think that the compression I feel is just the spine getting used to being freed up. It's not painful for me - just a bit uncomfortable, stiff almost. I somtimes lean forward from the hips and touch the ground with my hands to stretch it out.

My body is taking a lot longer to feel like I actually inhabit it this time round (of course at this stage with the first baby I hadn't come across Whole Woman yet, so was doing all the wrong things...*wince*)

Aging gracefully

October 28, 2013 - 9:11pm

I have had that weird too deep feeling. The curvature seemed to happen sooner than the rest of the posture! I am still constantly readjusting, watching very carefully Christine and company on the DVDs. Listening to the prompts. Knees straight, but not bowed back. That one has been on my mind a lot lately. Surviving is right, getting the body to cooperate with the mind is the challenge in getting this posture right.
I feel more and more the stretching of those muscles in my abdomen with the deep breathing into my belly with the fire breathing.
Every time I think I have it completely perfect, my body changes a little more, trying to get back that natural childhood body I had so long ago...

Bonne Maman

November 12, 2013 - 10:39pm

Surviving - you know, I have been checking myself in the mirror and actually my curve does look pretty extreme to me! HOWEVER, I realize I probably have a pretty skewed image of what a woman's posture is supposed to look like from growing up in this culture, so I take that into account. I have a friend who is healthy and strong and has a very pronounce lumbar curve so she inspires me, as does my 14 month old daughter who is just learning to stand and walk. Her posture is so beautiful and I am learning a lot just by watching the way she moves - bending from her hips and not her waist, and sticking her little butt out while her yummy little tum hangs forward!

Kiko - I know, funny eh? We are on the same orbit. Now that I have been really working in that deep lumbar curve for a bit longer the compression feeling isn't as bad. I also have a feeling that I need to work more on lifting from my sternum and crown to lengthen my spine without flattening the curve. I'm curious to know when you discovered the Whole Woman work after your first baby?

Aging - Yes I am every day discovering new aspects of the posture work. That's encouraging to me because it means I am progressing. I love that my abdominal muscles are stretching out. Even though I have not done any of the type of exercises that I used to think were good for core strength, I feel much stronger in my core just from doing the FAFP dvd than I ever did before. Long and strong!

The bottom line is that when I do this posture work I feel like my body "works" for the first time in my life. So I will keep doing it and trust that it will all come together someday! Also I have been having much less symptoms lately since I have been working deeper into the posture, so that's good :)

wholewomanUK

November 13, 2013 - 9:09am

Please take a look at my response re standing posture to greeneyedgirl. This explains how to attain WW posture naturally. xwholewomanuk

wholewomanUK

November 17, 2013 - 2:19pm

Hi Bonne Maman,
You may find my response to ang4111 'question on relaxing belly', which includes a detailed description of how to do the WW posture helpful. It's important to view the posture as a whole body posture, not just the abdominal and pelvic area. Otherwise your posture and alignment will not be correct.
Wishing you al the best, wholewomanukx

Bonne Maman

November 18, 2013 - 12:34pm

Thanks wholewomanuk!
I have been working with your instructions for posture in your post to greeneyedgirl over the last week and have found it very helpful. It's such a fascinating process, constantly refining and refining, and finding guideposts like yours to help point the way. Thank you.