Why Does Everyone Feel Round-Shouldered?
Most of my sessions begin with a similar question.
I ask everyone who comes in, whether for privates, yoga classes, or workshops, if they think that their shoulders are in line with their hips, forward of their hips, or behind their hips.
Ninety-nine out of one hundred say that the shoulders fall forward of the pelvis. Ninety-nine out of one hundred are wrong because the center of their shoulders line up behind the center of the pelvis.
Over the years I have grown used to everyone thinking that they are round-shouldered and come to expect it.
What I love is the reaction of people at workshops when they see that the volunteer/guinea pig standing in front of them—who just said that he thought his shoulders were behind his hips—is actually leaning slightly backward.
So what is it that allows almost everyone I meet to perceive their place in space incorrectly?
Is it the preponderance of parents telling them that they are round-shouldered and should “stand up straight”?
Is it some weird ingrained sense of insecurity? “Does the mind rule the body, or does the body rule the mind, I dunno.”
Sometimes at workshops, I’ll bring three or four people up to the front of the room for everyone to observe this phenomenon.
And the fourth person, having already seen three people and the way they stand, will often still think that their shoulders are forward. I find that to be some very impressive cognitive dissonance.
The thing is that you can be round-shouldered and leaning backward. All it takes is some long and loose rhomboid muscles coupled with tight pectoral muscles, but this is far less prevalent than most people think.
Many people need to do some work on their rhomboids but the head of the arm bones coming forward isn’t as much of a problem for me as leaning backward is.
Kinesthetic awareness– our ability to perceive ourselves in space can be cultivated through awareness, practice, and repetition.
When I first decided to stop hyperextending my knees I had to confront the fact that what I thought was a straight leg was my knee locked far backward beyond its normal range of motion.
Now, when my leg is straight, it feels straight. That took some doing. Anyone who wants to make changes to their posture and movement patterns will likely have to confront some similarly distorted perceptions of their body and its place in the world.
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