Making a fuss about posture
I sit, I stand, I walk. What’s the big deal?
The big deal is not so much the movement that you do. It’s how you do the standing, sitting, and walking that has a big impact on your spine and the muscles surrounding it. In other words: posture. Everyone seems to take bad posture for granted, not knowing that it can lead to a great deal of pain if it is not corrected. And funny enough, all it takes is just a little bit of awareness to prevent all sorts of back aches and pains.
The point for any movement or prolonged stationary positions is for the bones and the muscles of the body to feel less or no strain at all. This means that ideally, any force or pressure acting on the muscles and joints in the body must be equally distributed so that no part individually takes the entire stress of any one movement. When this balance is disturbed — bad posture being a primary culprit — the body part that endures the most strain invariably breaks down, leading to one injury or the other.
As I walk around, the sight that offends me the most is people slouching. I especially feel sad when I see teenagers doing this. At that age, their body is still able to mask the consequences of their stoop. Little do they realize that they are cementing into place a bad posture habit that has unwanted consequences down the road. Is it really so hard to bring the stomach in and lift the chest up to straighten the spine? Not only would they make potential back problems in the future disappear, they would look better too! The trouble is, you can’t improve what you aren’t aware of.
Unfortunately, parents (and adults in general) aren’t the best role models because they, too, are unaware. It’s bad enough that parents do not call the attention of their children; they observe bad posture, too. Not only that, they add other bad habits for the younger generation to inherit. Most common for women is the heavy handbag. The handbag itself is not the problem, it’s favoring putting it on one shoulder over the other. For men, it’s putting the wallet in their back pants’ pocket. Both habits create an uneven pull on the back muscles which in turn pulls unevenly on the spine. Over time, this causes a misalignment in the spine, of which back pain is only a symptom. The ultimate cause is bad posture.
In line with increasing awareness for yoga and how it can help with posture difficulties, Bikram Yoga Manila is hosting a Bikram yoga posture seminar on Nov. 22 and 23 at both its studios (see www.bikramyogamanila.com). Ren Soriano, a senior teacher and faculty member of Bikram Yoga headquarters in Los Angeles, is flying in to conduct the seminars. Since Ren is only one of seven people in the world authorized to conduct such seminars, it is an opportunity not to be missed.
Ren will also be in Manila to act as the senior judge for the first ever yoga competition in the country, the first Philippine Yoga Asana championship (www.philippineyogachampionship.com) on Nov. 24, at the Francisco Santiago Hall, BDO South Tower, Makati Avenue corner H.V. dela Costa Street. The goal of this event sponsored by Pru Life UK (www.prulifeuk.com.ph) is to bring yoga to the Filipino consciousness and Ren has kindly accepted the invitation to judge.
Practitioners of any kind of yoga are welcome to join the seminar as they are sure to learn something for their own practice. In 2007, Ren first visited Manila to do this seminar and constantly pressed home the point that alignment is key in doing any of the postures. He emphasized how the alignment of the hips and the shoulders affected the alignment of the spine and how this in turn had an impact on the kind of stretch one could receive from a posture. Ren gamely fielded questions and explained that although the postures are not easy, being aware of distributing body weight evenly over groups of muscles allows one to do the postures with ease.
While there were many aahhh... moments as many started to understand why the yoga posture is supposed to be set up in a certain way, there were also some knitted brows as the current state of some bodies prevented a number of attendees from doing the postures properly. Ren then explained that in yoga postures, it is always about form, never depth especially since all our bodies are different. He reasoned that setting up the posture properly will get you deeper in a posture in time. You just have to be consistent in your practice and do the best you can.
If you are interested to join the seminar or watch the competition, visit the Bikram Yoga Manila website or call its Salcedo Village, Makati studio at 889-0126 or its T. Morato studio at 376-4632.
