You Don’t Need to Perform Your Posture

What if your posture wasn't about holding yourself correctly, but about staying in relationship with your body?

As dancers, many of us learned to perform posture, to hold our bodies a certain way and make them look “right.” But everyday life doesn't require that choreography.

In this video, we'll explore a different approach: noticing your body as it is, without immediately correcting it, and discovering what happens when you come into a more alive relationship with yourself. This is a gentle shift away from judgment and toward curiosity, awareness, and ease.

If you’d like to go deeper, I offer free consultations in which we can discuss what you need and how to apply this work to your body and your movement.

A transcript of the video is below if you’d prefer to read rather than watch and listen.

Hello friend.

Let's talk a little bit about posture. Oh my god. Posture. So in dance class many of us learned to perform posture to perform with our bodies to look a certain way. You know the choreog choreography needs to look a certain way and that got built into our bodies. That posture looks a certain way and takes a certain amount of effort to achieve and that's what you need to hold onto.

I'd like to shift this a bit that posture especially when you're sitting is not about looking a certain way noting not about holding yourself not about performing not about the choreography of posture but it is instead about relating with your body and what is already there. And dancers and especially highly sensitive dancers can be very good at this. We got very good at performing posture. You can be very good at relating with what's happening with your body. It takes a shift.

So, at right where you are, you could close your eyelids if you'd like,

I'd like you to first just get in touch with your body and knowing that it's there,

which is very different from judging what's going on.

to first become aware that you have a head for instance.

What's happening with it? Where is it

that you have a neck? What's happening with that? Where is it? It's already there. instead of immediately trying to fix it. Fixing things is more about that old way of thinking about doing the choreography correctly. And it also takes a lot of effort, a lot of energy and can get tiring. So I give you permission right now. You don't have to fix anything.

what's already there. You already have a head.

You already have a neck.

You already have a spine.

You're already breathing.

You're already sitting.

You already have shoulders.

Now, if you notice that you're slumped a bit, great. Notice that. Don't fix it. Don't correct it.

Let it be.

And if you would like to come a little more upright, wait just a moment. Don't just do it because that will go into that correction, that performed choreography.

Wait just a second. Not like that.

I'd like to come a little more upright. Okay. I have a pelvis. and a spine. I'm breathing. I have shoulders and a head. And all these things get to play along and be part of it.

And now as you're more upright, you still have a body that is alive.

I'd like you to keep coming back to that, to coming back to your alive body rather than putting so much emphasis on trying to find the right posture.

Maybe you needed that in the classroom. Maybe you needed that on stage.

You don't need it in your life. You don't need to perform in your life.

Instead, this is about coming back to an alive relationship with your body as it is right now, which is different from how you are judging it to be.

And a lot of us, you know, dancing, looking in the mirror, we got very good at judging ourselves.

So it might take a little time to let that judgment soften and begin to come into a relationship with your alive body just as it is. And I would keep it very basic just that you have a head that you're sitting

that you're breathing.

Here I am slumped over which actually feels quite nice right now.

and come up a little bit by still watching this relationship of the whole body. And if you go a little too far, if you stay attentive and you go a little too far and you start to perform it, you'll know that because you'll feel it in terms of tension of a little push, a little grab, a bit of stiffening. And you know that's you going into that choreography of posture rather than being alive in it.

So today as you're working many of us now we're spend a lot of time sitting in front of computers working and so easy to abandon your body when we're not in the studio when we're not dancing. It's so easy to abandon your body. So I'd like you to choose a moment today and stop. Don't immediately try to fix whatever you notice. Stop.

Bring your attention back to the whole body.

Start to see what's there, what's happening. You know, if I'm at my desk and I'm here, I might stop and go, "Oh, okay. I have a neck and there's this weird cick in it right now. That's not a judgment. That's just a fact. There's this weird crick in my neck. Okay, I'm not going to immediately try to fix it. I'm going to remember I have a head and a spine and I'm going to let myself come into an alive relationship. And actually in this moment, I'm try to sit up. I would rather Oh, let my let that crick come out of my neck.

And now I'll start to come a little more upright. Not because it's the right thing, just because that's what I wanted to do right now in an alive relationship.

So, choose a moment in your day today. Okay, you can choose it now. What it will be? Okay, I'm going to set a timer half an hour after I'm at my computer. I want it to go off. That's your cue to stop. Notice your body. Start to come into that more alive relationship.

Know it's there. And then let it start to change. Not to what you think it's supposed to be.

But just what happens when you're in that more alive relationship,

please play with that. Let me know what you discover. If you'd like to go a little deeper with this, need some individual help, that's what I'm here for. Please reach out. And if you like this video, please let the mysterious algorithm know by liking, commenting, and subscribing. And until we meet again, take care.