Postural Collapse & Structural Mis-Alignment

Here is an Example of a, if not THE, most common result of Postural Collapse:

Notice the Forward Neck & Head and how it is pushed forward of the center line through the ankles.

This misalignment is in most cases due to shortening of the abdominal and hamstring/gluteal  muscles. This has, in the past anyway, been a controversial statement, and denied by quite a few, especially when I started teaching it back in 1990.

However, one of the Great Gurus of Neuromuscular Therapy, Janet Travell, M.D., states in her extensively researched books, that it is flattening of the lumbar spine that causes the neck & head to push forward.

What actions and muscles cause flattening of the lumbar spine? It is NOT a “weakening” of the back muscles, or so-called “CORE” muscles. It is:

1.) Posterior (rearward) tilting of the pelvis caused by over-shortening (excess C.E.M.&.N.T.) of the hip extensors (hamstrings & gluteals).

2.) And over-shortening (excess C.E.M.&.N.T.) of the surface abdominal flexors (rectus abdominus and external & internal obliques) and the deep abdominal flexors (psoas major).

Postural Compensations happen because simple physics say that if one part of your body leans in one direction off the gravitational center line, another part of your body must lean the opposite direction to compensate. Otherwise, you will fall over. So, it’s your Righting Reflexes interacting with Gravity causing this situation.

Now, if your body cannot compensate enough strictly by simple movements to balance itself in gravity, it will have to compensate by contracting various muscles to help stabilize the body. This is one reason postural imbalances can initiate the increase of C.E.M.&.N.T.

Thanks for Reading & Take Care,
David Scott Lynn (DSL)
DSL: Your Hi-Touch Up-Link to the Inner-Net
Inner-net: Your Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial System

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David Scott Lynn (DSL)

DSL the Yogi at Whole Life Perspectives

Beginning at 13 years of age, DSL's been involved with alternative philosophies & practices most of his life. Becoming a yoga teacher in 1976, then a hands-on bodyworker in 1981, he developed a unique & highly effective form of Yoga / Bodywork / Whole Health Fitness & Therapeutics. … David wrote the chapters on a wholistic philosophy & physiology of bodywork & stretching for the textbook Structural Balancing, published by McGraw-Hill, Inc. in 2010. … He is the author of the e-Book Simple Steps to Let-Go Yoga, available at: www.letgoyoga.com/simple-steps/ and several other upcoming e-books.

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