Is your posture getting you down?

• Does your bad posture cause you pain?
• Has someone has been nagging you?
• Maybe you stoop because of your height?
• Or you have a dowager’s hump that only seems to be getting worse?
• Is it making you look less attractive?

You can improve your posture easily, effortlessly and painlessly with the Alexander Technique. Changing the way you think and move means you put much less tension and effort into everything you do. And you won’t need to slog away at the gym or by prodded and poked or painfully massaged.

You should also definitely check out Posture Stars for online courses, posture product reviews, and posture tips and tricks.

You’ll gain a new, more comfortable, less strained way of standing and sitting. Work and play become much, much easier. It’s a way of re-integrating your mind-body awareness and making you much more present. So you stop all that slouching and hunching over, you drive with less stress, and you sit at work without those awful aches and pains. I’ll show you how your bad posture and tension is dragging you down, compressing your spine, narrowing your back and restricting the movement of your ribs and breathing, pulling your neck forward – and your head back and down, causing neck ache and more tension. Ouch!

The good news is you can learn to stop hurting yourself like this, so your head sits comfortably poised on top of your spine, which lengthens and provides the support for the rest of your body, your ribs free up, your breathing improves and you tire a lot less easily. This is the Alexander Technique. As your posture improves, you feel fresher, in less pain, more poised and in control. My clients are also reporting sleeping more easily, getting fewer migraines and headaches, and feeling much more confident.

The Alexander Technique remains the best of the self-care strategies to prevent the sequel of poor posture and poor breathing. Harold Wise, MD, PC, New York, NY

Correct Posture – an old wive’s tale…

We’ve all heard the standard posture advice before. “Stand up straight! Pull your shoulders back!” Honestly, advice like that is pretty useless. It just doesn’t work. It’s an old wives’ tale.

Humour me now by doing your best to sit up straight. Please, sit up straight in your best possible posture. Now hold that posture and read through the rest of this page. I think you’ll find the results surprising!
It’s such a shame. Whenever we think of good posture we think of images like army Sergeant-Majors. We stiffen our backs and necks, and stick our chests forward. Of course, we might look like our posture has improved. At least for a while…
All that pushing and pulling and stiffening isn’t doing you any favours. Are you still sitting up straight?
The effort to do this is substantial. Muscles that remain held for a long time get tired, and then you want to let them go. To slump. To compress your poor vertebrae.
And off you go into a see-saw of stiffening then slumping, stiffening then slumping (you know the one!)

Posture Help.

Help is at hand. We all have a series of reflexes, throughout our bodies, that support us against the force of gravity and naturally co-ordinate our movement. You can see this reflex working naturally in toddlers and young children. There’s a way to release the in-built reflexes you’ve been suppressing. It allows you to sit and stand with natural balance, supported by gravity rather than constantly fighting against it.
Are you still continuing to make yourself sit up straight? Is it getting tiring?

Bad Posture Advice.

Lets face it, if posture advice worked, we’d all have great posture, because our parents nagged us about our posture, and their parents nagged them about their posture, and the list goes back through time. A long stream of people nagging about our posture. All the way back to some caveman turning round to his wife and grunting “Urg! Thundina! Sit up straight!”
And if the advice had worked, we’d all be sitting pretty! But we’re not, are we? We’re crumpled, stiff, tired, bent over, and generally very sore!

More Bad Posture Advice…

The other problem with most posture advice is that we forget it! We forget our posture the moment the phone rings, or the doorbell rings, or a new e-mail arrives. We forget good posture when we decide to make a cup of tea. Or when we get up for the loo. We forget good posture every time something happens to distract us – and those distractions can come from outside us (the phone ringing) or from inside us (when we decide to do something, like make a cup of tea).

A Recipe for Pain.

We’re driven moment-by-moment by movement habits well below our level of awareness. If you know how to drive a car, you learned to drive it and now you drive on autopilot. You’re not constantly working out how far to turn the wheel, or which pedal is the brake. Our brains love to work on autopilot, so we can spend the rest of the time thinking (often worrying about the past or future). And the autopilot does a great job until, with age, the slump and bad posture starts to be included. Then we do things, on autopilot, badly.
So the only effective way to change this is by becoming alert and aware of your posture, by being mindful of how you are acting.
One of the downsides of learning the Alexander Technique for posture is that it takes some time. That’s why I recommend starting with my Six-Step Plan. The upside is that once you’ve learned it, you’ve learned it for life. So rather than relying on other people to sort your posture out for you (which is often painful and ineffective), you can learn to sort out your own posture. It’s painless and fascinating.
So… Are you still sitting up straight? Isn’t it a bit uncomfortable? Or did you forget and are already pulling towards the screen to read this? I’m sorry for asking you to sit up straight for so long. It didn’t work did it? You might even feel more tired than before! So you can see how most posture advice is just nonsense. Tiring too!

How to Improve and Have Good Posture

Posture is easy with Alexander Technique. Fix your posture: learn the Alexander Technique. After Alexander Technique lessons, you’ll find you can sit, stand and move with less effort and strain, so you experience less pain. You’ll feel and look taller and more relaxed too!
It’s also proven to reduce back pain by 86%, and my Six-Step Plan means you can start enjoying the benefits of great posture and pain-free movement as soon as you like.
Today book one my introductory sessions and find out for yourself! Let me help you make the changes you need to spend the rest of your life looking and feeling much, much better.

How to Book Your Alexander Technique Session:

Call me today on 0161 4316977 to set up your first session, email me, or use the contact form.