Postural Reflections

I just came back from listening to a wonderful concert by the North Carolina Symphony.

As I was ambling around in the lobby before the concert and during intermission, then watching my fellow concert-goers in the concert hall itself and looking at the musicians on stage, I began the think about good posture of the human body.

While there is a concept of ideal posture as shown in anatomy books, each person has the capacity to have the best posture possible within the framework of his/her body. As those thoughts crossed my mind, I looked around.

There are the seats on the concert hall which make it almost impossible to sit upright. Just about everybody I watched was in a posterior pelvic tilt, forward rounded shoulders and a head that was jotted forward.  In this position, you can’t take a full and deep breath. I remembered reading that shallow breathing can alter blood chemistry because of the relative lack of oxygen.  This can lead to many problems, including depression. When we see somebody who is really upset and we try to calm the person down, we usually suggest to relax and to take a deep breath.  

I also thought how much of this position I was watching in the concert hall was the normal position for many people for the greater part of the day. So it was little wonder that standing postures were not much better. There was still the pelvic tilt, the forward rounded shoulders and the head-forward position.

So: what can you do about it? It is my firm belief that bad posture starts as a bad habit and that much ban be corrected through awareness alone.

So stand up straight and take a deep breath.

That was a good IDEA!

Just came back from the IDEA Personal Trainer Institute in Alexandria, Virginia.  As with the many IDEA conferences I attended before, this one provided interesting sessions by world class presenters. I returned home with food for thought, 12 foam rollers, 1 Bosu (already spoken for) and 2 Lebert Equalizer bars.

As is always the case at IDEA conferences, it is an opportunity to renew acquaintances, to network and to exchange ideas with other trainers. It was fun to contrast this conference to IDEA World Fitness which is larger in scope and attendance and also focuses on group exercise. The dynamic of the (mostly) younger instructors makes IDEA World Fitness noisier, and the large international attendance has always been fun for me. But I also appreciated the lower key of the Personal Trainer Institute. It felt like a conference for the grown-ups J

The thing that struck me this time was the increased focus on stress reduction strategies which were discussed in several sessions I took. Of course, there is MELT with its application to quiet the stress reflex. But I also learned about the correlation of breathing and potential weight loss and nutrition consideration to reduce inflammation. The nervous system is beginning to be a more prominent player in the fitness consciousness, and the central role of the enteric nervous system (of the gut) is included in the discussion. Funny that I just finished reading an entire book about the enteric nervous system! It made comprehension of those concepts so much easier.

Now I need to digest the information without letting myself get stressed about it J