by Patricia Issitt

HAVING better posture is one of the main reasons why my clients want to do Pilates.

Good posture gives us the ability to move and go about our daily activities without pain and discomfort. When the skeleton is placed in it’s optimum position to perform whichever task we are demanding of it, then our muscles can function in a cooperative way. Then the muscles which are having to work and contract to perform a movement are supported by other muscles which contract in opposition to stabilise the joint which is moving.

Think of the action of picking up a suitcase and putting it on the overhead rack for example. We need to be able to lift the heavy weight and raise our arms overhead without hurting our back. If our back is stiff and our shoulders are unable to move fully, then we have trouble raising the suitcase and have to ask a nice young man to help us! So what’s the problem here? Primarily, we need to sort how to stabilise the trunk, or in other words the spine, pelvis and shoulder blades. We need flexibility, but first we must have stability.

In my Pilates studio, the first thing you learn is how to place the pelvis, spine and shoulders in a ‘neutral’ position and then locate and focus on the muscles which stabilise the skeleton. Any movement we add on to this process, such as raising a leg or an arm, is a challenge to the the stability of the trunk. Practicing a position trains the brain and neural systems, after all it is the brain which sends the message to the joints to remain stable under a load. This process is called proprioception.

Proprioception is like a sixth sense in the body. Without having to think about it we are able to walk over the cobbles in our lovely city without falling over at each step, and that’s because, within our muscles cells, the organs of proprioception are constantly feeding information about the pavement via our foot position back to the brain, which then returns a message to the joint, and switches on the muscles so we don’t fall over. Clever!

This process is going on in practically every moveable joint in our body. Proprioception is how we relate the position of our body to the world around us and it’s what we need to retrain if we wish to change our posture. Good posture is really not just a case of ‘standup and pull your shoulders back’. In fact doing this can cause over recruitment of the neck and shoulder muscles resulting in neck pain. Once your brain has relearned how to position the spine in a neutral position for standing, sitting, walking, cycling etc, then the head, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles can learn how to reposition. Improving our posture means less pain in the body and once the joints know where their neutral default position is, our muscles can work in a more balanced way.

Find out more at: yorkpilates.com