Postural Awareness

Postural awareness.
Let’s face it, awareness of your posture makes a massive difference to how you manage your posture. And yet it’s so easy to forget.
You might start your day thinking “Right! I’m going to keep great posture today!” and within 5 minutes you’ve completely forgotten, until you see yourself in a mirror, or you start to hurt.

So it’s not just a case of deciding to increase your postural awareness and then letting things take their course.

Thankfully, there are lot’s of ways to increase your postural awareness.
Exercises like Yoga and Pilates are good for building postural awareness, as are martial arts. In particular, Aikido is great for being calm and well-postured in the heart of the storm.

There are also more ‘thinky’ types of things you can try. Feldenkrais and Alexander Technique are both great for increasing your ability to be self-aware as you go about your day. And mindfulness is useful as a way of keeping aware of yourself and your environment too.

If all that sounds a bit much, you can pick certain daily activities, like making a drink or cleaning your teeth, and leave reminder notes there to jog your memory, making sure you have good posture while you do them.

I call these little activities ‘pings’ because they act like little pings of awareness through your day. As you build them up, it gets easier and easier to remember.
Can you think of a way to increase your own postural awareness? Try getting started with any one of the above today. They are one of my five keys to good posture.