The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern World | Mary Bond

The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern World | Mary Bond | A revelation

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The New Rules of P...

	The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern World Mary Bond Healing Arts Press, 2006 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A manual for understanding the anatomical and emotional components of posture in order to heal chronic pain

? Contains self-help exercises and ergonomics information to help correct unhealthy movement patterns

? Teaches how to adopt suitable posture in the modern sedentary world

Many people cause their own back and body pain through their everyday bad postural and movement habits. Many sense that their poor posture is probably the root of the problem, but they are unable to change long-standing habits.

In The New Rules of Posture, Mary Bond approaches postural changes from the inside out. She explains that healthy posture comes from a new sense we can learn to feel, not by training our muscles into an ideal shape. Drawing from 35 years of helping people improve their bodies, she shows how habitual movement patterns and emotional factors lead to unhealthy posture. She contends that posture is the physical action we take to orient ourselves in relation to situations, emotions, and people; in order to improve our posture, we need to examine both our physical postural traits and the self-expression that underlies the way we sit, stand, and move. The way we walk, she says, is our body?s signature.

Bond identifies the key anatomical features that impact alignment, particularly in light of our modern sedentary lives, and proposes six zones that help create postural changes: the pelvic floor, the breathing muscles, the abdomen, the hands, the feet, and the head. She offers self-help exercises that enable healthy function in each zone as well as information on basic ergonomics and case histories to inspire us to think about our own habitual movements. This book is a resource for Pilates, yoga, and dance instructors as well as healthcare professionals in educating people about postural self-care so they can relieve chronic pain and enjoy all life activities with greater ease.

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A Useful Tool for Every Body

The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move by Mary Bond is a must read if you're interested in increasing your somatic awareness of your body in motion. Hoorah! finally someone writes about the body as a moving entity and not as a stable unit moving just one joint at a time. Posture for Bond is not about standing still and sticking your chest out, but about how you move is number one of the new rules. Bond writes, "your posture is the product of the ongoing perceptual activities through which you orient yourself to your world."
Bond's goal is to make readers more aware of opening the body up to the world. The entire book focuses on the action of walking to gain an understanding of what Bond calls open stabilization and open orientation. These terms of Bond's encourage movement without unnecessarily tensing muscles in the body that over time develops fascial adhesions and ultimately leads to restricted movement and decreased range of motion. Fascial adhesions where two or more fascia stick together can occur in a variety of locations because fascia, the connective tissue in the body, is everywhere. In fact Bond writes that if everything in our bodies were taken away fascia would maintain a recognizable human form.
Things can get pretty complicated when posture is theorized as dynamic, but Bond is clear and precise. She divides her book into four sections: awareness, stability, orientation, and motion. Each section builds on the next. Threaded through each section are Bond's six zones of the body: breathing muscles, abdomen, pelvic floor, hands, feet and head. Bond states that all six regions are connected anatomically and unnecessary tension in any one of them causes a reaction in all of them.
To help guide the reader to change bodily habits, Bond uses explorations throughout the book. For example she writes, "stand comfortably as though you are waiting in line for movie tickets. Then take a step forward toward the ticket window. Notice which leg took the step." In this exploration entitled, "your best foot" Bond's point is that because the spine accommodates the habits you have with your legs, if you have a strong preference for one leg over the other it could cause misalignment all the way up to your jaw.
Throughout the book are fascinating facts and relationships in the body that if nothing else will help you to reconceive of your bodily connections. For example, Bond writes losing too much carbon dioxide by breathing too quickly can cause everything from depression to low back pain; she cautions against tightening the sacrum because it prevents your feet from meeting the ground successfully; and ,warns against performing the same movement over and over again. Why? Because repetition without staying aware of bodily signals diminishes our consciousness. All in all The New Rules of Posture enhances our consciousness and is a book to go back to again and again each time with a deeper understanding of the moving body.

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A revelation

I have been receiving Rolfing treatment for a while and had experienced a lot of improvement but I wanted more. I eventually realised that no treatment is going to work unless after/in between treatments you make life style or muscle movement pattern changes. I first came across the free down loadable article on Mary Bonds website about sitting. This article is one of the chapters in the book. After, following the advice on sitting, I experienced immediate benefit, so I decided to buy the book. I haven't yet worked my wat through the whole of the book - that will take several months - but after 2 weeks and working on the feet and breathing execises in particular I have experienced releif from a groin pain I have had for 2 years plus. This isn't an overnight fix book, real results will take 6 months of dilignetly following the program. If you are prepared to put in the time and effort for this sort of time frame, I recomend this book. At the very least the book is a good explantion of how the body can function optimaly.

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Amazing... a new perspective on the body!!

I am a yoga teacher, and have read many books on the body. Anatomy books, posture books, etc. This book rocked my world.
It's a MUST READ.

A Must Read

I have learned so much from this book. I am sure with the the awareness and the knowledge gained from this book, I will be able to improve my posture in a healthy way. I can already see my dancing and my yoga practices improve as a result. I am so glad I read this book. Mary Bond's writing kept me interested the whole time. I will be buying more copies as birthday gifts to my family and friends.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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