Stress and Strain. A Big Picture Approach.

The word posture is thrown around in many circles of health, healing, and movement. What does this big word Posture mean to you and your life? Posture is an alignment of the joints relative to your structural components.

I’m going to paint a picture of how this word relates to the world. The structure of a building is its posture. A quarterback has a particular stance (posture) as he receives the ball from the center. A basketball player assumes a specific position (posture) as he dunks the ball. A catcher in baseball and softball assumes a particular posture as they wait to receive the ball from the picture.

The reason one has pain at rest or while they are sleeping is because their posture is off. If your posture is not aligned appropriately, then you will experience stress and your muscles will experience strain. As your body is in communication with your brain, “Hi, this is Brian from the Hip Level. Yeah, we are getting this flashing light again. There’s a problem, and I’m going to need your help”. You, as a person within your body, are going to seek relief from the pain, right? As any sane and rational human being would, you want to have relief from discomfort.

The long term problems develop when you aren’t looking at the big picture, you are shortsighted, and you are looking for instant gratification and relief from the pain. At this point in time, you’ll want to look not to relieve the symptom, but you will want to focus on the system. As a parallel example, you won’t want to stop eating the desserts in the house, you will want to stop buying the sweets that are in the house. You will then be working at the system, not the symptom level.

When possible, think concerning a system, not a symptom. Take a Big Picture Approach.