I had a revelation this morning. I realised that for years, I have been unconsciously regarding good posture as a fixed thing, as a standard, ideal, static thing to aspire to, as a particular position that I encourage my body to adopt. And as a result, I suspect I have got stuck, in all sorts of ways and that this no doubt contributes to the stiff back and all the other discomforts that I attribute to ‘ageing’.
This morning I realised it might be better to think instead of posture as an inner dance. That how I hold myself, how my body is, is always a movement, even I am not visibly moving. After all I am always breathing. It may be a subtle dance, swaying gently back and forth but a dance nonetheless, not a static thing.
And of course, there is a metaphorical, as well as a literally interpretation of this idea, namely, that when we try to achieve a particular, fixed goal, we get stuck. How much more useful would it be I wonder, in our organisations and businesses, to think in terms of a dance or a movement, rather than a ‘position’?
What is particularly lovely about this is that for once I can track where the insight came from. The seed was planted last week by my friend Adriana in a Feldenkrais class. Then Roland, who has also worked with Adriana commented on what he had learned from her. Then yesterday, as serendipity would have it, I spent a good bit of the morning reading a draft of an upcoming book about embodiment, “Your Body is Your Brain” by my great friend Amanda Blake.
We will see how I get on. But for now, I am dancing.
