by David Zemach-Bersin and Marek Wyszynski
Your posture matters. It is the way you carry yourself through life and encounter the world. Largely self-created, your postural habits reflect aspects of your early development, your physical history, your habits of self-use, and your relationship to your environment.
Healthy posture is: when your skeleton is organized to carry your weight in a comfortable, balanced way without straining your musculature. It’s a feeling of being fundamentally supported while upright, uplifted and able to move around with ease. Healthy posture is stable yet flexible and helps to promote a general sense of well-being.
Unhealthy posture is: being upright without sufficient skeletal support. This typically causes excessive muscular contraction which compresses the body and pulls it forward. With ineffective skeletal organization, it is harder to hold yourself upright against gravity, and your muscles have to do the work that your skeleton should be doing. People with poor posture are more likely to feel tense, achy, tired, and less energetic.
The nineteen Feldenkrais exercises or 'lessons' in this program are effective tools for your self-care. Interacting with your nervous system on behalf of your body, they are designed to reduce back pain and facilitate the development of new postural habits which are protective, shock-absorbing, and improve your balance and ease of movement.