Figuring Out How to Stand Up Straight

Miss Craig

"Incorrect posture can be the cause of a protruding abdomen, thick waistline, sagging bust, protruding hips, stooped shoulders, double chin, short neck, knock-knees, bowlegs, and flat feet."  Marjorie Craig, "Miss's Craig's 21-Day Shape Up Program"

Thanks for sharing, Marjorie!

I've had lousy posture as long as I can remember.  People were always telling me to stand up straight. 

Which was sort of okay when I was a kid and used to being bossed around, but not okay when it was other adults telling me. 

Hey, I came by my slump honestly!  I had a lot on my shoulders when I was a kid:

My mother, me, my sister, and my dad:  I slump, my sister stands up straight, shoulders back.

I know I should stand up straight to be more comfortable, to look better in my clothes, and more important, to avoid a dowager's hump and maybe solve a persistent upper back ache.

Why not address this in advanced middle age?

So I've been going to a physical therapist (who's also a massage therapist, Pilates instructor, and practitioner of yoga).  Her name is Liz, too, and I see her every four weeks.

She works in a studio in her house, a bungalow in the hip Temescal district of Oakland.  Her studio is an addition at the back, large, airy, and painted a sophisticated taupe.  She has a massage table made up in taupe sheets. (Oh, how I look forward to the back massage after she's run me through the exercises!)  Yesterday she told me she gave birth to her son in this soothing room, with a midwife in attendance.

Liz runs me through exercises, increasingly ambitious.  She has a bamboo stick she holds to my back sometimes to show where my back should curve and where it should not.  I catch glimpses of myself in the wall of mirrors.

"Who is this sweaty old bag and what is she doing?"  I think.  I've always been lousy at PE stuff, uncoordinated, out of touch with how my body looked.

"Good, good, good!"  Liz says.  "Perfect!"

Perfect?  Honestly?  I'm trying to remember to retract my head, stay in neutral position, feet shoulder width apart, all at the same time.

Last weekend, taking a hike, I realized that if I'm in good-posture form, head-back-chin-retracted,  I can't look at my feet.  What if I trip, for God's sake?  But apparently correct posture doesn't mean you're not scanning the path ahead of you, especially if you have good progressive lenses.  Supposedly.

Yesterday Liz told me that my posture is already improved and--I'm not making this up--that I'm a role model for her.  She's 39.  I'm 63.

"Why?" I asked, startled.

"Because you've taken care of yourself, and you don't look your age," she said,  she with the perfect posture.

That sent me out with a bounce to my step (and I did not trip on the way to the car.)

Now I have to do my homework: