Today as I walked the halls at work, I thought more about my posture and the proper way for me to hold it. In "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee", Rodney talks about keeping your back and hips wide. And I can feel that as I relax my back, my hips and back widen. I can especially feel it in my chair, where I have a lumbar support. If I relax my back so that it feels widened, the I can feel a greater ability to curve my back over the lumbar support.
It feels as though if I relax my back when I'm walking, where I can feel my back widening, it brings my spine back (or up from the slouched position, if you want to word it more properly). And then, it feels as though everything else begins to fall into place.
I'm still experimenting, though. I'm the first person to say that when I'm in a touchy-feely class and the teacher asks "what are you feeling"? I inevitably am the person that makes a comment that's totally the opposite of what I'm supposed to be feeling. Throughout my years and years of built-up stress, I find that I'm completely out of touch with perceptions about my body.
John made a wise statement the other day. "You reach and age where you have to do these [stretching/exercising] things because they're serious business". That is so true. I've reached an age where my yoga and meditating and such are very serious pursuits, and I know that if I stop them, my body and my emotional health will slide downhill.
