Almost everyone in our modern world is somehow exposed to concepts of movement or posture and was told one way or the other to mind their movement, stand tall or do something to improve their posture. According to a metastudy done in 2019 that analyzed more than 750 publications, between 50% and 80% of all people will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives. But is this really all there is to it? Are considerations of a painful back and symptoms that come from a chronic misuse of our body due to too much sitting the only thing that matters or is there more? Fact is, there is much more and those often overlooked aspects pose an even bigger threat to human health, happiness and success than physical pain. The physical component is merely the final stage of a number of problems that haven’t been properly addressed for a long time.
Very simply put movement is a more or less deliberate action that involves our mind that makes a decision, our nervous system that relays signals back and forth between the body and the brain and last but not least our muscles that either contract or relax in coordination with other muscles around the body to create the intended movement of the whole body. So basically you want to go to the kitchen means you make the decision and based on preprogrammed patterns you get up and walk to the kitchen with the help of your muscles that contract and release in the required order to facilitate that movement. I say “preprogrammed patterns”, because regular day movements like walking, standing, washing the dishes or eating don’t require conscious muscle activation. You just think what you want to do, the body “loads” the right program and the rest is automated. That’s different when you learn a new movement. So for instance if you never played tennis and are given a rack and a ball, you need to learn some basic moves before you can play with precision. Once you have more experience, you just play and don’t have to think about every single step or the right grip on the rack any more etc. Learning new movements literally builds your movement library which equates to the number of movement patterns that you are confident in using without much additional mental focus.
Movement is not the same for everybody!
While we recognize if someone is walking, or running or doing a Yoga pose, because we recognize the basic pattern, movement is not at all the same for everyone. The exact activation of muscles to perform a balanced movement is almost as diverse as there are different people on the planet and there are physical, structural, aswell as psychological and even biochemical reasons for that.
Let’s start with a simple structural example. Everyone’s bones are slightly different. They differ in length and shape and some other minor elements. The reason why they differ is because we are of different height and build, with some of us being tall some having long legs and a short upper body and some others being the exact opposite. On top of that the life we live shapes us, and whether someone was doing a lot of sports as a kid, started later in life or not at all makes huge differences in how bones, connective tissue and muscles develop. This goes so far that it even makes a significant identifiable difference which sports or movements someone was involved in at what intensity and at which age. Mechanically it is obvious that longer or shorter bones make a difference in how much force has to be used in order to move an arm or a leg and how the muscles in the body have to be coordinated in order to move smoothly.
The psychological component is even more exciting. We know that every single thought is accompanied by muscular action, either of the skeletal muscles and or of the smooth muscles that surround organs. This is long past theory or simple passed down knowledge of old traditional movement or healing methods and meanwhile neuroscience keeps reminding us of the fact that thoughts always correlate with physical reactions. Typically the thoughts we think and even the decisions and decision making processes we run through are quite individual and depend again on our upbringing, social interactions, education and general experiences we have made so far in our lives. In other words repetitive patterns can easily be identified which are part of our subconscious programming and makeup. Due to the tight mind body connection, those mental underlying patterns aswell as ones emotional basic patterns affect the way we move and coordinate our muscles.
Tightness or the lack of muscle tone can be a result of too much stress or too much exercise or the lack of it for that matter, but the basic pattern also shows ones basic psychological makeup. Through this tight connection between emotions, mind and body ones posture and movement is a physical representation of much more than just ones movement habits or training. This is what I refer to when I talk about movement and posture being an “energetic- psycho- social fingerprint”. However, there is a major difference between an actual fingerprint and their movement postural counterpart.
What knowledge about the fingerprint component of posture and movement enables you to do.
Fingerprints on our hands are the same at any age. They do not change which is why it’s used as a method of biometric identity screening. The energetic- psycho- social (EPS-) fingerprint of movement and posture on the other hand develops over time and can be changed deliberately. The beauty of the body is that it is a biological feedback mechanism that always works both ways from our emotions, mind, or consciousness towards the body and back. This opens the door to an incredible opportunity once someone is able to “read” his or her own EPS-fingerprint.
As mentioned earlier every single one of us has a very distinct and unique way of interacting with the world, of thinking about it and of perceiving him or herself in emotional relation to it and others. This is normal. Almost everyone also carries old unresolved issues or trauma, whether the origin was a physical one like an accident, a psychological one like loosing a loved one or a combination of both like high stress, burnout, or trauma of abuse of some sort. This again, is pretty normal. It’s not healthy, but nowadays normal because most people either don’t bother working on resolving traumatic experiences fully or simply lack the understanding or opportunity that something could be done to improve such old hurtful patterns. So traumapatterns aswell the way we think and feel also show in the body and someone who is specifically trained to both identify and analyze those patterns understands how a certain postural or movement habit is actually a physically visible manifestation of a specific emotion, trauma or thought pattern.
Nowadays especially in the realm of motivation, business-consulting and personal development countless methods to change ones mindset are being taught and we also know that beyond just trying to think differently in order to get a different outcome it’s also important to feel different. What’s never talked about is that understanding the mind-body connection on a deeper level gives you an additional handle if you want to improve your mindset and the outcomes you see in your life. Neurologically it takes about 66 days to form a new pattern to the point that it is so solid that it becomes the new predominant pattern over the old one and doesn’t require any deliberate attention anymore to be maintained. Once that new pattern is implemented then ones physique will eventually start to change aswell as the body is always slower to adapt to changes than our mind or even our brain. Becoming aware of the link between a certain body posture or movement pattern and an emotional or mental pattern highlights something very apparent that can be used as an additional hook to remind yourself of the intent of wanting to change something. If we want to change something in the mind and we only use our mind to remind us of it that’s sometimes difficult. If however we comprehend the link to a certain posture or movement we get physical sensory feedback from the body which is something the mind can easily lock on to and change. Say for example someone tells you not to slouch. That’s purely mental information and you might be aware of the slouching from time to time but as long as you don’t have an actual physical experience with how it feels not to slouch and actually be able to stay comfortably in this posture for prolonged periods of time it’ll be difficult because one reference point is missing. If that person however, instead of tell you actually shows you the difference, your brain actively makes the experience of how much better it feels not to slouch hence every time you feel the compression in the slouching posture, rather than thinking of effort needed to “oh I know I should sit more straight…” it will consciously or subconsciously remember the positive experience provided which is an additional incentive to change the posture and your effort becomes supercharged leading to faster and more sustainable results.
Let’s go through a real life example. Say you are a person who on one side has a lot of drive forward but on the other side is also quite cautious, almost to the point of coming across a bit introverted in certain situations (There is nothing wrong with being introvert by nature, this is merely an example and it’s important to understand that neither being introvert or extrovert is to be considered “better” or “worse”! Actually the only thing that truly counts is to be as authentic as possible as from a place of authenticity everything becomes more easy in life and one generally fells more deeply connected and at peace with one self.) although that might not be your fully authentic expression but rather one that you “learned” due to the things you experienced in life so far or due to some long forgotten but still somewhat unresolved traumatic experience. A body posture that could be linked with and indicate such a mental and emotional background would be pushing the pelvis forward while slightly pulling the upper body back as if it was seeking a bit more distance from the person you are talking to or even just a situation you are in. This would be a typical example of an observable body posture that might correlate with afore mentioned psychological trait.
(Note that body reading is quite complex. To think that the postural habit I just described always indicates the psychological trait I mentioned would be a mistake! Posture can look a certain way for a number of reasons and those have to be carefully evaluated to truly understand the underlying pattern. So please understand this as an example and not a dogmatic rule that links this specific posture with this specific psych aspect.)
If that link is successfully identified, rather than simply trying to change the way you approach situations purely mentally or emotionally through trying to think differently, the better way is to go the exact opposite route. Like I mentioned before in order to facilitate significant changes not just thinking but also feeling differently is of the utmost importance. The easiest way to feel differently is by actually changing the way you use the body which in this case means to deliberately change the postural habit in a training situation while paying close attention to how it changes you perception of the surroundings, yourself and potentially even your breath and emotional state. Those changes typically happen rather quickly (within seconds) and the only trick is to get the person into the right awareness state to be able to perceive the shift. This is nothing that requires monk like training, but is quite doable for most people with merely a couple of pointers on how to focus their attention or even better put, what to pay attention to. Now, with the live experience of a shift in ones perception of self and ones surroundings by changing one’s body posture or movement pattern you are much better equipped to apply it in a real life situation. Instead of for example going into a conversation and trying to consciously stick to a new mental concept of being worthy or being more present or outgoing, which requires conscious intentional recalibration and confirmation, one can then simply go into the postural pattern that was trained and that was linked with the experience of feeling for empowered and approach the situation from in this changed physical state. The main difference is, that with the additional component of the body that’s linked to a positive experience you are using a resource beyond the mind which takes a lot of strain of the mental component. See the more elements you try to control mentally the more stressed out and the more jumpy the mind becomes as there is no such thing as true multitasking in neither a man’s, nor a woman’s mind. But if the body is actively involved an additional feedback mechanism is at work namely the positive experience linked with the proprioceptive sensory feedback from the body which runs on an additional layer almost in parts subconscious to the rest. In other words adding the physical component actively helps to take pressure off the mind hence more of your conscious ability is free to actually engage with the conversation. In addition to that, if you constantly try to stay mentally focused on the status you want to be in you block dynamic and mental adaptability which in a conversation translates to being less responsive and needing more time to process what you have heard and then for a proper response. Another common mistake especially at the beginning when trying to change a mental pattern that one was recently made aware of is to try and “stay away” from that pattern or the linked emotion which effectively holds the emotion or pattern you don’t want ever so present in your mind thus you stay connected with the exact thing you don’t want to attract which obviously leads to the exact opposite outcome namely that you do attract it. This by now is common knowledge for most and is typically also something that people are being told so that they can turn their awareness towards what they want rather than how to get away from what they don’t want. Both of those last points, the “holding on to” aswell as the “staying connected to the negative” that I just described also if not disappear completely, at the very least loose much of their relevance once the body is consciously involved in aforementioned way because minding one’s body posture is sort of a different channel than the one used for a conversation hence it’s less distracting because the feedback mechanism whether or not one is actually in the optimized position is one of sensation and body feeling rather than mental data in the form of a sentence or numbers.
Very simply put, through deliberate movement and the conscious perception of its effects on us we all are in possession of an incredible tool to improve our status mentally and emotionally and boost overall wellbeing and health. The more congruent movement and psyche are the more efficient they support everything we do. Every part on the other hand, that one isn’t consciously aware of and neglects runs on autopilot thus potentially counteracts positive intentions and the attempt to be more healthy and efficient.
“Paying attention to movement quality and how movement and posture affects us on a daily basis builds your individual posture and movement to psyche library that can be used for your own benefit at all times!”
There is a lot more that could be said about all this, but I hope it gives you a vague idea of how important it can be to include the body in matters of changing a mental or emotional pattern and vice versa. Like mentioned in the last quote, one doesn’t have to make it difficult and complex in order to reap benefits from this knowledge. Just explore, be conscious and curious and enjoy the results. A full therapeutic assessment, while sometimes helpful to truly understand a pattern or connection especially at the beginning, is not necessary to apply this knowledge right now and have positive results. Even if the focus is not on changing the body for the sake of changing a psychological pattern in the first place, awareness about the positive effects of postural and movement improvements on ones psyche is incredibly important as it deepens the positive results of ones efforts well beyond the pure physical and builds your experiential library that is yours forever.
Stay curious!
Explore!