posterior shoulders

Think about all the things that happen in your kitchen. You're orchestrating ingredients—chopping, dicing, grating, sautéing, steaming, roasting. You're wielding an impressive array of gadgets: grinders, mixers, air fryers, microwaves, dishwashers, ovens. You're navigating spaces from floor-level drawers to overhead cupboards, hoisting grocery bags, cantilevering heavy pots, and balancing precarious stacks of dishes. There's one essential component we don’t think about much—until it starts complaining. Our own body.

In May I spent two weeks in Mumbai, on the west coast of India. To a newcomer it can be overwhelming, being a megacity of over 12 million people; I hold a deeply personal connection and affection for this place where I grew up. I was in Mumbai on holiday, but I didn’t break my habit of over three decades of taking some candid photos and videos of what I observed around me. Nothing newsworthy or touristic—just snatches of daily life here and there. Whereas seeing healthy posture has become rare in the US, it is still an everyday encounter in India, and that has inspired me to record it and share.

This summer, with blockbuster success, Barbie is front and center! And yes, I did see the movie. I usually use dolls to talk about our physical characteristics, but their intended function is to teach emotional and social skills such as friendship, parenting, and play. Barbie the movie certainly emphasizes this aspect of the iconic doll in no subtle way! This blog post looks to dolls for some postural lessons, and also some emotional ones. Research such as a 2017 New Zealand study increasingly shows that posture connects with both our physical and emotional stance, and in our company we have increasingly come to embrace the deep relationship between posture and emotional health. So, over to Barbie, Wonder Woman, and friends. . .