Postural considerations for a comfortable neck etc etc etc

Wearing shoes with non slip soles, we can get along quite well without using our toes much.
It requires some effort to remember to push them down and take some weight on them as we move forward over the foot planted on the ground.

It's effort well spent.
This helps maintain the arch of our foot which is the first link in the "kinetic chain" of our lower limb and spinal bones and joints.

You may have had the misfortune to experience this linkage, when every foot fall aggravated a pain in the top of your head.

The anatomy of a foot allows it to safely act as a shock absorber, if the toes are strong. The ligaments of the foot are not strong enough on their own. Without strong muscles the arch can drop, forefoot splay out and shocks are transmitted undiminished up the chain if we jump.

Without our toes taking some of our weight, the other heel strikes more forcefully as we walk and also sends shock up the chain.

Spinal postural curvatures - like our foot arch

We have a lumbar lordosis, curving backward. Bending fully down forwards involves only straightening of the normal lordosis. Our lumbar spine cannot bend forward more than this.

Our thoracic spine is already bent forward, called kyphotic.
Our neck again has a normal lordosis.
The whole spine acts like a spring.

Posture is dynamic, forever changing with the terrain underfoot

One of the unnatural things about modern life, is the floor and footpath - the earth isn't flat. We really have it easy, walking in the developed world.

Too easy, actually.

You can however, make it harder. MBT "anti-shoes' do just that. These have a convex bottom so that you have to continually use your muscles to balance yourself.

Reebok Easytone shoes are another example.

Walking posture is pretty upright, and at the other end of the scale a speed skater is close to horizontal. Good posture always maintains our spinal curvatures.

Exaggerated curvatures with "sway back" or "hunch back" develop from posture habits and consequent weak muscles. Our habits develop from habitual states of mind. We need to 'walk tall" in every sense of the term.

There is an excellent little illustration of the posture Before and after Rolfing, at the Structurall Integration site.

Kyphoscoliosis - bent and twisted back

It is really important to treat complaints of backache in teenagers, with care. The thoracic spine page of this site shows how to look for these "hitched joints".

Exercises for good posture

Hans Christian Bjelke-Petersen got to 92, and was a contemporary of Joseph Pilates, whose philosophy and methods are more widely known.

Pamela White has a good site on Pilates type exercises, illustrated with short videos which make it easy to follow them.

www.my-pilates-exercises.com/posture-exercises



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