Please advise about sway

Hi Chris, In answer to questions: 1. Same muscles as when you stretch; not the same as when you yawn. 2. You have a significant sway in your lower back, and a corresponding rounding in the upper back. You need to address your sway by rotating forward the rib cage - that's not going to feel or look good because it will show the full extent of your upper back rounding. Doing a shoulder roll and pulling back and up on your hair to reposition your head will improve the situation. The practical way to go about this, given how much of a sway you are starting with, is to straighten out the sway a little (rotate the ribcage forward a little), then use the shoulder roll and head repositioning to lessen the thoracic hunching. After some time, when the spine straightens out some more, go to the next level of straightening out your sway, etc. Don't expect the curves to straighten out over night. Bending the knees a little is also okay provided you aren't tucking your pelvis while doing so. Bending the knees slightly creates some slack in the psoas muscle, and a tight psoas is a possible origin of some of your sway. Be patient and you'll get good results in a month or two.

It's a pleasure to facilitate these changes. One extra thing that I think you're already onto is to keep doing the inner corset as much as you have the stamina for - that will help straighten out the spine too.

Hey, my back looked an awful like that in Feb. '09. Since working with Esther, my back no longer has a sway! I definitely think that Esther's work is the best track for handling a sway. (I ended up sampling a ridiculous number of techniques before I found Esther's -- I used to be in massive chronic neck pain daily, and couldn't read or use the computer without exruciating pain. No longer!! ... !!) Some stuff I found helpful when working out my sway: 1. I found that doing the rib anchor exercises in Esther's book were hugely important to me. These are the muscles that let you move your ribcage forward, and I had virtually no musculature there at first. I think of these as an intervention -- you work the muscles up to a baseline strength until your body starts to use them on its own day by day. 2. I liked doing lunge stretches for the psoas and hamstring stretches -- again as a kind of intervention, to get my body moving in the right direction (the hamstring dominates the pelvis' angle of rotation: tight hamstring pulls on the sitz bones and tucks the pelvis. the psoas is going to come pull on the lower back if its tight, as it attaches to L1 - 5 from the upper legs (femur.)) Both of these are things that Esther's method has you incorporate into daily life (stretching hamstrings as you bend and psoas as you walk), but I found that with my sway, which really severe (on par with yours, perhaps a little worse?), my body was really not interested in holding up good posture at first, and so stretches were a simple way to get the ball rolling. 3. Full length mirrors or video cameras, ways to see yourself, are absolutely invaluable to figuring out what's going on. Your body might tell you it feels weird or unusual, and your eyes can help with this. In fact, I could go on and on. I don't know what's helpful, and that's already plenty. But! I was in the literally exact same position you were in February, and now I have a beautifully straight lower back (and beautifully recovering upper back.) Esther's work is something I recommend to literally everyone I know now, and I think that in your case it will be a very powerful tool.