Blood & Ink: Monday

When you begin studying Shaolin kung fu, they start you in one place:

Learning how to stand.

What do you mean I can’t stand? I’ve been standing for decades?

Your standing posture highlights the entirety of your kinetic chain:

• Do your ankles collapse inward from weak arches?
• How are the bunions on your big toes from wearing shoes?
• Anterior pelvic tilt from sitting for decades?
• Are your ears, shoulders, and hips aligned?
• Are you distributing weight evenly?
• Does your head tilt forward from ‘text neck’?
• Does the bottom of your ribcage flare outward to compensate for rounded shoulders?

Posture is a subtle gateway into fundamental personality.

Your history, personality, and lifestyle are written in your posture, for those with eyes to read. 

Learning how to stand comes first. Correcting any of the things mentioned on the list can take a considerable amount of time. Fundamental musculoskeletal changes take months and years, not just hours and days.

Here’s a fascinating quote from Yoga and the Quest for the True Self:

“The entire superstructure of our adult lives is underlain by the primal language of our postures. The primary genius of yoga lies precisely in its recognition of the critical role of the body in the development and transformation of character.”

Posture and personality are a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

If you feel confident, your shoulders will naturally come back, chest out, head up, with an alert, wide stance. If you lack confidence, you slump down, hide your head, have no eye contact, and generally contract yourself.

The reverse is true: claiming a posture of confidence causes you to feel confident. 

This is the wisdom of the Shaolin and the ancient Yogis: start with the body.

Taking care of misalignments in the body posture can resolve—on their own—misalignments of the personality.

I need to do more yoga,
Eric Brown.