I’ve been just watching Tom Myers’s DVD training in bodyreadying Have never really seen anyone explain the postural tilts and shifts so beautifully. Have never really seen anyone explain the postural tilts and shifts so beautifully.

Another thing I really liked is that he doesn’t just readjust the body as it ‘should be’ but explores where to get that extra little space for expansion. In order to make an alignment shift sustainable, we need to focus on the body as a whole, looking not only for the areas of the body that have been overused and start to trouble us, but also the underused ones. We need to find an individual’s capacity to expand.

I’ve found my own extra little space upwards, discovering the simplicity and ease of rebounding from the earth and lengthening up through yoga. And I literally grew some 2–2.5 cm taller though already in my early thirties. The spine realigned itself, slightly decreasing its excessive curvature and getting some more length.

Our bodies are beautifully plastic and can adapt to our lifestyles and compensate for our postural habits in a variety of ways. Similarly they can gradually adopt a better alignment if we offer them space for expansion through movement, the space to grow into.

This makes me think of Chinese gardens. As opposed to Western tightly trimmed grass and perfectly symmetrical lanes of flowers, they focus on wild beauty of nature, creating the effect that ‘although made by mankind, it seemed created by God’. They don’t try to tame nature but work together with it, making space in which nature can grow of its own accord.

We need to work together with the body and allow it to find a sustainable solution in realigning itself, rather than force it into a particular ‘healthy’ alignment. It’s not enough to consciously drop the ribs, untuck the pelvis, check yourself in the mirror and just keep checking if you are in alignment thousand times a day. The change needs to happen at subconscious level. As we make space for the body to realign itself, the change will feel natural and won’t need to be consciously maintained. The body will grow into a healthy alignment — in its own way, gradually finding its new normal.

This post was also published on Medium