| by:
Paul Linden, Ph.D.
Chapter
5, pages 71-81:
Balancing
Your Pelvis and Spinal Column
Tensing your muscles unnecessarily is just one way of overworking them.
Sitting in a position that requires the wrong muscles to work at holding
up your body is another way of overworking your muscles. In addition to
simple relaxation, efficient postural support is also necessary to relieve
computer stress.
An understanding of the body's architecture is crucial. Bones are like
the support beams in a building. When the weight of your body falls squarely
through your bones to the surface supporting your body, then your muscles
don't have to work very much. In addition, your body will be in a position
of balance that allows free, uncompressed movement in your breathing and
your joints. However, when your body leans off the vertical line, your
muscles must work overtime to hold your body up, and your joints will
be loaded in imbalanced ways. There will be considerable structural strain
and fatigue. Postural balancing is a process of eliminating the waste
of energy involved in misusing the body's system of support beams.
As an example, think about a tall flagpole being held up by guy lines
on all sides. As long as the pole stays vertical, only slight adjustments
and minor force will be necessary to keep it up. Most of the pole's weight
will be transferred vertically through its own length into the ground.
But if it starts to tip off vertical, a lot of force will be needed to
keep it from continuing its movement and falling. In the same way, a vertical
postural support pattern allows the bones to support the weight of the
body with as little effort as possible. Sitting in a vertically balanced
posture vastly decreases the muscular effort involved in maintaining the
sitting position.
In one way, the flagpole is a good image of postural balance, but in another
way it is a very poor image. A flagpole is an inert object, but people
are not inert objects. Many people make the mistake of thinking that good
posture is really stiff and motionless. "Posture" sounds a lot like "post,"
and very often people believe that good posture is like being a sturdy,
upright, immovable post. They think you get into the right position and
you stay there, but that is a prescription for static holding and postural
strain.
In fact, good posture is a fluid, dynamic process. Good posture is a continuing
action, or more precisely, a continuing series of actions--of small movements
of adjustment around a central line of balance. Only dead people have
"good posture" in the static, unmoving sense. When you sit "still" at
your computer, you are actually in constant movement. Sitting is really
a process of movement.
The flagpole image also suggests an unfortunate idea of the nature of
postural adjustment. A leaning flagpole is brought back to a vertical
position by lengthening the guy wires on the side the pole leans toward
and shortening the guy wires on the side it leans away from. Many people
think of postural adjustment as a merely mechanical process like straightening
up a leaning flagpole. They think that doing strengthening exercises to
shorten slack muscles and doing flexibility exercises to stretch tight
muscles will bring the body to a vertical alignment. However, posture
is a dynamic process of movement, and movements are actions. Whether we
are doing the movements with conscious awareness or not, on some mind/body
level movements are choices. Movements are part of the style and meaning
of our lives, and therefore postural change has to involve awareness and
choice. We have to understand and feel how we are moving and why we move
that way in order to change our movements most effectively.
Let's start by examining the movement processes of the core of the body.
Consider how you balance your spinal column on your pelvis. It is very
much like balancing a bottle upright on a bowling ball. The spinal column
is like a bottle, and the pelvis is like a bowling ball. If the bottle
is placed just exactly right on the bowling ball, it will balance and
stay upright. However, once it is balanced, if the bowling ball rolls
underneath it, the bottle will fall off the ball. The spinal column, of
course cannot fall off the pelvis. However, if the pelvis rotates forward,
the lower back will be dragged forward into a swaybacked position; and
if the pelvis rotates backward, the lower back will be dragged backward
into a slumped position.
There are two very different sets of muscles that will rotate your pelvis
forward. Using one produces strain and imbalance in your body, and using
the other produces balance, power, and ease. To understand this, consider
that there are basically two ways to tip a bowl forward lifting the rear
edge or lowering the front edge. Which edge of the bowl moves determines
where the axis of rotation is, and which edge of the pelvis is the focus
of movement determines whether pelvic rotation will be an easy movement
or a strain.
Most people sit up "straight" by arching their backs. This is done by
using the muscles along the surface of the back to pull up on the rear
edge of the pelvis. However, it creates tension and discomfort, and this
is why everyone will sit up "straight" for a minute when exhorted to and
then give it up as uncomfortable. The most effective and comfortable way
of rotating your pelvis forward involves using muscles deep in the core
of the body rather than muscles along the surface of the back. Those muscles
are the psoas (pronounced so-as) and the iliacus. These deep, internal
muscles cause a movement that drops the front edge of the pelvis and creates
a very strong and comfortable physical organization of the pelvis and
spinal column.
I should address an issue here that may be important to some people. In
Chapter 4, as part of softening your breathing, I had you release the
tension in your genital and anal sphincter muscles. Here I have defined
a new sitting position by the orientation of the genitals. Many people
have been sexually abused or in other ways made to feel very uncomfortable
about noticing, feeling, or mentioning the pelvic area of the body. However,
it is just another part of the body, like your elbow. And the proper use
of the pelvis and pelvic floor muscles is crucial in developing the body
architecture required for comfortable sitting. If you find talking about
this difficult, please take an honest look at the source of your discomfort,
and don't give up on learning to be comfortable, strong, and safe in your
body.
This new way of sitting places the bones of the pelvis and spinal column
in the architecturally optimal alignment. The weight of the body is on
a vertical line through the head and torso. It goes squarely through the
sitbones into the chair. (Your sitbones are the ischial tuberosities,
the two pointy bones in your bottom that press into whatever you sit on.
If you aren't sure where your sitbones are, sit for a while on a flat
concrete surface, and you will certainly begin to notice the hard bones
pressing into the hard concrete.)
I try not to use the word straight in talking about sitting. I prefer
the word vertical. Sitting straight has connotations of being tense, held
in, in a military posture. Sitting vertically is a comfortable and relaxed
way of being in your body. Sitting vertically has an upward-opening and
lengthening feeling to it, like a flower growing toward the sun, with
its roots joining the earth. Your body gently lengthens upward rather
than sagging or slumping, and the upward vertical lengthening allows your
body's weight to fall squarely onto the support surface below your body.
I call this centered sitting.
Vertical does not mean straight like a ruler. In a simple sitting or standing
position, the body is vertical when all the body's normal curves average
out so that the skeleton directs the body's weight directly into the ground.
There is a bit of forward lean in proper vertical sitting (as shown in
the drawing of the balanced pelvis). Sitting with just a bit of forward
lean moves the body's weight along the thigh, away from the rear edge
of the body. Bringing the center of gravity forward delivers the body's
weight into the ground in a more stable and balanced way.
Many people believe that good sitting should be straight and military,
with a ninety degree angle of the thighs and torso. Many other people
believe that good sitting should involve leaning back so the body's weight
falls onto the chair's backrest. Both of these postures are problematic.
However, in order to understand why, you will have to have more experience
with the way the body balances itself, so we will put off discussing these
ideas about posture until Chapter 11.
Read
Chapter 1: The Computer Problem
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