Most of us are familiar with the idea of self massage. For many it may grow from instinctively rubbing a sore spot. For a few it grows into an essential healing art, and may even incorporate skills such as trigger point work, myofascial release, and acupressure.
Old Family Photos Are a Great Posture Tool: Part 1: Upper Body
If you are fortunate and have photographs going back three, four, or even more generations, you likely possess a compelling tool for posture improvement. How and why exactly are these images so useful?
Abraham Lincoln with his youngest son, Tad, 1864. Wikipedia
The invention of photography allows us to look back in time as far as the 1840s. It is rare to possess family photographs going this far back, both because heirlooms tend to get lost over time, and because fewer photographs were taken then due to the cost of the elaborate processes in those times. But many of us have portraits of our great grandparents’ generation—whose posture is usually much healthier than what we see today.
Rediscove
Respecting the Neck: The Eyes Have It
My passion for researching posture has taken me far and wide. I was in a village in Burkina Faso in western Africa when I first noticed how people there would track the conversation from speaker to speaker mainly by using their eyes, rather than by turning their heads. Along with their excellent body posture it contributed to a strikingly well-centered, dignified bearing.
This young man in Burkina Faso demonstrates the dignified bearing that comes with an appropriate amount of eye tracking.
Comparing what I saw in Burkina Faso with what I was used to seeing back home, I realized that in the US, and the wider industrialized world, we move our eyes a good deal less and our necks a good deal more