Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.In recent years there has been significant backlash against the idea that posture is related to good health. Join biomechanist Katy Bowman and biologist Jeannette Loram for a philosophical, historical and biological journey into the controversies around posture.
Katy and Jeannette discuss whether posture is really a thing; is ‘good’ posture important or does your body work just fine regardless of how you hold it? Have we simply inherited postural ideals that are remnants of cultural, social and political baggage?
Katy and Jeannette tease this out by discussing definitions of posture, the history of postural ideals and the difficulty in relating pain to posture. They turn to extreme examples of posture and Katy’s work in alignment to offer a more nuanced perspective on posture and physical experience in terms of load to tissues over time.
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OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
00:04:05 - When you hear the word "posture" what do you think (Jump to section)
00:06:20 - The Dynamic Collective (Jump to section)
00:07:30 - Definitions, is posture a thing, and is good posture a thing? (Jump to section)
00:22:50 - Good Posture? No Posture? Posture Parameters? (Jump to section)
00:30:25 - Loads, Alignment, and posture (Jump to section)
00:41:05 - Consequences of positions vs posture (Jump to section)
00:47:20 - Listener Question sponsored by Wildling (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
The Rise and Fall of American Posture Article
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Is There a Right Way to Walk Episode #165
Is Standing the New Smoking Episode #172
A Dog’s Best Movement Diet Episode #169
SPONSORS: THE DYNAMIC COLLECTIVE
This episode of The Move Your DNA podcast is brought to you by The Dynamic Collective, a group of six companies that create products and services helping you to move more. The Dynamic Collective is:
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Wildling: Minimal footwear handmade from natural materials for toddlers, kids, and adults. Wildling is offering our listeners free shipping on all purchases until April 2025 with the code KATYWILDLINGS
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Theme Music)
This is the Move Your DNA podcast, a show where movement science meets your everyday life. I'm Katy Bowman, biomechanist, author, and alignment lover. And I'm Jeannette Loram, biologist, movement teacher, and emerging philosopher. Every body is welcome here. Let's get started.
(Music fades)
KATY: All right. Today we are talking about posture.
JEANNETTE: Mmm. I know a big one.
KATY: And it's interesting because you're so meticulously organized. You're such a good... I know... your eyes sort of ...
JEANNETTE: Yeah yeah yeah...
KATY: ...bugged out of your head.
JEANNETTE: If you spoke to my husband he would not say I'm meticulously organized. When you look at my cupboards... But when it comes to thoughts and writing things down, then I think I become meticulous.
KATY: Your thoughts are well organized. Your data is well organized.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: So maybe you just have really pooled all of your organizational resources into one domain of your life. That's what we're dealing with.
JEANNETTE: Yes. That's absolutely true.
KATY: So as far as I can see, because you live so far away from me, you have really organized so many pieces of this conversation. And we want to talk today about - I mean when I pitched to Jeannette this topic my title in my mind is: Is Posture Really a Thing?
JEANNETTE: Mm.
KATY: And I'm looking through what you organized and I just want to say that I think today's conversation is going to be ... my thoughts around it had to do with philosophy of posture being a thing. But of course, for me philosophy is not something that sits separate from science.
JEANNETTE: No. And really it was probably considered exactly the same thing. I mean when you look at academic structure when people did an advanced degree, a PhD, it's a doctor of philosophy. So I think it's only now that we see these very discreet separations.
KATY: But no, that's right. So the more you understand something, and the more you question something, you're left with the importance of creating the question just as much as you are gathering the evidence to support or contradict that question. But there's ... I wanted to say there's an art to coming up with a question. That's its own field of what are the things that we don't understand about this and how do we formulate the question. So I'm thinking philosophically, is posture a thing? And then we will be talking about a lot of facts and data type things. But for me it's really philosophical. Because I think the reason this came up for me is I think there's a push back now...
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: ...on the concept. We'll get into that. But I think the roots of push back lay more in the philosophical portion of the question and I think that will maybe emerge as we're talking. As well as some of the data.
JEANNETTE: I think yes. I think the pushback... well, like you said, we'll tease this out. I think the pushback is definitely philosophical but people are using some of the data to add to the pushback.
KATY: Mm-hmm. Of course.
JEANNETTE: And it's teasing that apart.
KATY: And that's, I think, ultimately what science is. You're trying to pick the data to support your argument. But we want to make sure we're looking at it from a large enough perspective. Because we might not even be asking the right question. And I think we'll end up, perhaps, there.
KATY: Personal experience with posture. When you hear posture, what do you think?
JEANNETTE: Immediately I thought about when I was a child, I remember it actually being actually quite hurt because a member of my family told me I walk like a duck and I needed to tuck my bum under. And I remember being like, "oh". And I didn't know why it upset me at the time. But I thought, "That's very harsh and critical and now I feel self conscious." So I definitely was instructed in this. Perhaps people also said shoulders back to me, but it definitely was that one comment, I was like, "Oh, ok. I have to now tuck my bum under."
KATY: And well the interesting thing for me is that now I've got two examples of your family basically inferring that you're some sort of water bird. "You're a heron. That neck of yours - you're a heron. You walk like a duck." But perhaps this is why you love marine animals.
JEANNETTE: Maybe it is.
KATY: You're kin.
JEANNETTE: Yes. I've been trying to channel them since childhood. Oh my goodness.
KATY: You walk like a duck.
JEANNETTE: Yeah, I walk like a duck. So that was my negative experience with being instructed in posture.
KATY: And I don't think I was ever, I never had a "get your shoulders back." I never had any of that instruction. I'm from California. We're pretty laid back there, man.
KATY: That just wasn't the thing in our family culture or in my school culture. However, I would say that I spent a lot of time in the posture field because of my work in alignment. So I think about what we're going to talk about a lot. But it doesn't come from personal childhood stories. It's really just more an interest of mine academically, I guess. I'm involved in it. And of course we're all involved in it because we have a body. All right. So let's start discussing the nuts and bolts of posture. But before we do, I just want to take a moment to thank our Dynamic Collective. The Dynamic Collective are a group of companies that make wonderful products that help you move more and they support the Move Your DNA podcast for which we are eternally grateful. The Dynamic Collective is made up of: Correct Toes: soft silicone toe spacers that can be worn barefoot or in shoes. Venn Design: Beautiful floor cushions and ball seats that keep you moving at home or at the office. Wildling: Minimal footwear for kids and adults made from natural materials. Peluva: Five toe minimal sports shoes, ideal for higher impact activities. Movemate: Segmented active standing boards that allow movement and diverse patterns. And Smart Playrooms: Design and products to keep your kids engaged and active at home. You can find more about these companies in the show notes of this episode. So let's get back to posture. We always want to start with a good definition. And I'm interested in how do you define … gosh let's tease out posture. And then I was asking, is posture a thing? And your take on it was is good posture a thing? So there's something there. But how do you define posture?
KATY: I already have a problem with this definition or I need a clarification around this definition. What is assumed? Because one speaks like it's unadjustable and chronic.
JEANNETTE: Yes, I can see that.
KATY: And then one is ... I can see making small adjustments to body position for an interview. But I wonder also, like, if we're going to talk about shoveling snow, would that be a type of assumed posture? Meaning for every activity there's a posture that's used.
JEANNETTE: Mm. Yeah.
KATY: And I'm not clear based on these definitions.
JEANNETTE: I'm not clear either. And this is the problem. Because probably everyone that uses posture is meaning it slightly differently.
KATY: Of course.
JEANNETTE: So certainly in the scientific literature there's not a standard. Because they might just say, "well standing posture vs sitting posture." And all that means is that someone is either standing in any way they fancy, or someone is sitting. They're not assuming standing in a certain way.
KATY: And how is posture different than position, then? There is a wonderful book out ...
JEANNETTE: I don't think it is. I think posture can just mean the position that you are in. And then it becomes it can be anything. Which is why, I think, when we were talking about it, I really thought about "is good posture a thing." Because I think that comes with a certain set of parameters. Whereas posture could really be anything. It's just the position that you're in.
KATY: You mean position can be anything.
JEANNETTE: Yes. Whereas good posture, people have, there's some parameters around that. Which can, of course, vary.
KATY: Of course. Ok, this is going to be an interesting podcast episode.
JEANNETTE: We can argue about definitions for 45 minutes.
KATY: Isn't that what everyone is doing all the time? They're just not naming it. So let's, for me, I'll need to tease it out to even wrap my head about what I'm talking about. For me, yes, posture and position differ where we are talking, usually, about an element or aspect of time or volume. Because position is how I'm using constellation. It's the orientation of parts. And there's no parameters around it. It's just this shape. And of course, your shape changes based on what you're doing. Posture would be something that's more ingrained. When we talk about characteristics, for example, we're bipeds. So does the fact that we stand and are upright - I can take a quadruped position.
JEANNETTE: Yes. I think certainly when people are talking philosophically about posture, historically about posture, and in the scientific literature about posture, they will often define it as either standing or sitting. But it will be, when posture is analyzed, it will be "Stand up".
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: You're not doing anything with your arms or legs. You're just standing in place or you're sitting in place. And then somebody will have a look at the parameters of your spine and your head. So I think, yes, it would not be shoveling snow. It would not be standing asymmetrically. It would be this sort of anatomical type arrangement.
KATY: And it's inactive.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: You're sitting, you're standing, you're lying down assessing a sleep posture.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: And so perhaps posture is assuming a general form whether it's sitting, standing, or lying down.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: What are the nuanced loads that are, I would look at load, but positions of the smaller pieces that make up this general thing we all call standing? Because you could have everyone in a standing position and have many different postures. Many different sub-positions.
JEANNETTE: Yes. Mm-hmm.
KATY: Further, though, I think that posture, I wonder if we talk about posture being characteristic, that there's something more adaptive. And again, more semi-permanent to our postures.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I would agree with that. The problem with posture in how it is analyzed, it could be as simple as is someone slouching. Or it could be let's look at all these points on the body from ankles to head and map them. So it becomes complicated. Which is why whenever you are reading something it's worthwhile looking at what they are really meaning by posture.
KATY: And how they're assessing it.
JEANNETTE: Yes. Yeah, exactly.
KATY: Ok. So I'm still undecided on posture but I feel a little more clear. Now good posture would simply mean that it's got these culturally defined parameters.
JEANNETTE: Again, I mean, I think if you go back to the Victorians, it would be are your shoulders back? Are you standing upright? Whereas now it might be more of a scientific assessment of curves of the spine, for instance.
KATY: Yeah. So the measure is more precise now.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: But the idea of it being good or bad is, I think we should talk about... There's a wonderful paper, and I sent it to you. It's The Rise and Fall of American Posture.
JEANNETTE: Written in 1998.
KATY: We'll put it in the show notes. And it's really interesting where they have looked at the phenomenon. I'm even questioning whether we can define posture as something that's always cultural. That's a question that I'm curious about. We'll leave that curiosity there. But general posture, position used throughout the day, was a lot of lounging.
JEANNETTE: Yes. I think particularly, and we're talking about a while ago, right?
KATY: We're talking about hundreds of years ago.
JEANNETTE: But I think that the lounging was very much the kind of wealthy aristocrat type. You could lounge because you had the money to lounge. So I think that was why.
KATY: Well if we look at artwork. If we look at historical artwork, there wasn't a ton of written works about posture. Certainly the Greeks had quite a bit of that. But if we're going to go at, if you look at artwork, it was a way of sort of ... lounging images of yourself, presenting yourself as a loungy person was the social cue, that yes, you were middle to upper class. And it wasn't so much, I think, the shape of the body but it was the fact that you were probably not doing very much. You weren't laboring. And then there was a transition away from that in the 17 and 1800s where the new way of separating yourself posturally... I guess we are all using our body to communicate about ourselves all the time through how you do your hair and what clothes you choose to put on. So we are creatures that adorn or posture to communicate.
JEANNETTE: For sure.
KATY: And so, during this Victorian period of time, there was an onset of I would say body stiffness. It was stiffness. Uprightedness, straight, erect presentation to signal upper class - middle and upper class.
JEANNETTE: And I think that also, particularly in the Victorian era, it became really, with Charles Darwin, the evolutionary model that came out. The thing that separated humans from other animals was bipedalism and its upright position. So I think that all came into that. That we are upright and we do not walk on all fours or slouch like a chimpanzee or whatever.
KATY: Yeah. And I agree. I didn't see any notes that you had on that but I was thinking that same thing. Where this emerging of yes, if uprightedness is how we demonstrate civilization - that I will be as upright as possible. Right? That you are sort of, there were degrees of uprightedness and therefore humanness.
JEANNETTE: I think so. I think so.
KATY: And then the clothing at that time, I thought that was really interesting in this paper, which you are all welcome to read. It's really accessible in terms of language used, is that clothing ... We've talked a lot about movement rich clothing here. And that the clothing of that time was designed to help support uprightedness.
JEANNETTE: That's right.
KATY: It was meant to block movement. It was meant to block flexion and extension. That was the whole point of not just corsets. And also hiding parts of the body.
JEANNETTE: That's right. Yes.
KATY: So that if you had an alignment there that wasn't culturally as valued as others, you could easily just sort of disguise lots of it.
JEANNETTE: They talked about bow-leggedness, didn't they. The crinolines and the skirts that could hide that. Yeah.
KATY: Baggy pants. The men. So you couldn't actually see where the parts are. But yes, this sort of constant upright. It even made me think of top hats and things to extend the look.
JEANNETTE: True.
KATY: Or maybe it would fall off if you didn't walk. It was like having a book on your head all the time.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: So I do think that a lot of the backlash to a concept of posture has to do with this period of time.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Because it's classism, racism, so many elements that are here that are gross.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I think, like you said, the uprightedness was in contrast to the big laboring classes in the Victorian times which they had very hard labor and it was associated with this more slouching posture. So there are lots of, I would think, distasteful things to do with this idea of posture.
KATY: And many research papers that I read early in my graduate career, when I was teasing out spinal curvature, really trying to learn that for myself. I read a ton of papers. And the earlier the papers I would read, from even the 30s and the 40s and the 50s were still talking about spinal curvature as being an indication of the less civilized populations of people.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: Which was very much the racism aspect that I was talking about. And to really remove those - it added a motivation to remove a lot of curvature from the body. So uprightedness and sort of straightness, straight lines became confounded...
JEANNETTE: ...with things like mortality and social...
KATY: Just every version of uprightedness and if you were loungy then you were probably up to no good. Yeah. And I wonder also, too, we talk about Darwin - I didn't finish the thought that I had there. Also with Darwin talking about humans and uprightedness I also wonder, too, with the insert of the idea that we had evolved from animals. And to really reject, you know, the rejecting of that idea perhaps took on a physical form. "I will not get onto the floor ever."
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Right.
KATY: "I will look as far from this supposed set of ancestors."
JEANNETTE: Relation to me, yes.
KATY: There was maybe another motivation that wasn't almost in support of what Darwin was saying, but in opposition to it. Whether you are supporting or opposing it, the answer was the same. Get yourself as straight and upright as possible.
JEANNETTE: That's interesting. I've thought about it in the context of just this new understanding that we had evolved. But of course there would have been a lot of backlash to that.
KATY: Oh there's still backlash to it.
JEANNETTE: Of course.
KATY: But at the time... have you ever read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?
JEANNETTE: I have not.
KATY: This is part of your philosophy schoolwork. Write it down.
JEANNETTE: I will write it down.
KATY: Especially because you are a scientist and he was really inserting that new ideas, there's early adopters to ideas and there's late adopters.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: So when this new idea of understanding of evolution came on there was massive, widespread resistance. But what Kuhn is really describing is that it actually takes almost the death of all of the scientists of a time to allow an idea to really permeate.
JEANNETTE: That's always so upsetting isn't it? All these people that they've ... I guess it's always the same, isn't it? But often we don't realize how right people were until they've long gone. Ok so we have this backlash.
KATY: And the backlash seems to be not necessarily - well it is the backlash against the parameters of posture. Or that posture is even a thing. So, to me, those are two separate...does that make sense?
KATY: Is the backlash against good posture is a straight, erect spine, shoulders back, chest up, pelvis tucked? Are we arguing against what constitutes good posture? Or are we arguing there is no such thing as posture? That there's anything that you're supposed to do with your body ever. That there's any sort of ways that ... that your body would essentially work fine ...
JEANNETTE: If you just left it alone.
KATY: Yeah, no matter what shapes it would create.
JEANNETTE: Ok. So I can't speak for everyone, but I think often the loudest voices are the extremes. They become quite polarized. And I think sometimes that's useful. I have a parent that loves to take the diametrically opposite opinion to whatever you are saying, just to tease out that he actually thinks.
KATY: Sure. We know which parent it is now.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: You're the mathematician ... I love it.
JEANNETTE: So and I see the second option. Where people are actually saying "surely your body can self organize and it doesn't need these posture parameters." But I think it comes from two different places. I think it comes, one there's this uncomfortable history around posture. So I think social scientists, historians, philosophers, etc., are trying to tease that. They're saying, "Ok. Is this idea of a healthy posture, is it just remnants of cultural, social, political kind of baggage from the past?" And then I have also seen this idea that the belief that good posture is related to good health is sort of this folk wisdom that hasn't been validated one way or another. So they're taking those two concepts and then I think, in my view, they're kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: Why I think they're saying it's not been validated is because of pain literature. Because I see this repeatedly that people are saying "Well posture doesn't matter because there's no link between posture and pain." And they're really talking about low back pain, neck pain. And that is not wrong. If you look at a lot of the data, it is very hard to tease out whether pain is related to posture. And I think there's a number of reasons for that which we could get into.
KATY: Well, I think it's hard to tease out whether pain is always related to posture.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Versus it also has other sources. I mean I think that's the confusing piece.
JEANNETTE: Yes. That's the confusing thing. Pain is very complicated and there are multiple inputs to pain. And you wouldn't necessarily expect it just to be posture. I also think it's very difficult to tease out posture when we know that certain pathologies of the spine, for instance, can be aggravated by one shape versus the other. It becomes very difficult to tease out these large scale patterns. So that is, I think, where this backlash comes from and why I think that this has become, yeah, we're just going to throw the whole thing out - the baby and the bathwater going. And I think the conversation is missing the actual, what you talk about a lot which is alignment.
KATY: Or loads. And loads as part of alignment.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Loads as part of alignment.
JEANNETTE: So does that make sense? That was my personal view.
KATY: And I was trying to tease it out for the people. Because I think there's two different things. People use the word... again posture is so confusing. Saying that posture isn't a thing is also confusing. What exactly are you saying? Are you saying that good posture isn't a thing? Or that, yes, as you said, that it's not a thing that we need to be concerned about because it actually has no penalty in the body. It's just another, going back to that original definition, another characteristic.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: We all just have a posture. Ok, so that's the backlash.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: So, this is interesting to have this conversation with the umbrella of the philosophical piece and then also the evolution of scientific understanding. Which always has a phase where, as you're teasing something out, science is usually done in long form over decades and hundreds of years whether you know it or not. Whether you realize that or not. And this is a place of tension and, to your parent who shall be unnamed.
KATY: Your anonymous parent. We're trying to tease out what it is that everyone is talking about really just to help you, the listener, tease out what your own thoughts are on this yourself. Do you have thoughts on this?
JEANNETTE: Yes. Because sometimes you can read articles and they're very persuasive. They're very well written and it's like "oh"... I read quite a few articles where there was no good data to suggest that posture is even important or it should even be a consideration. And they're missing a big part of the conversation. Which I think we should get into now. And I think it would be very helpful if you could explain from a biomechanist perspective about loads. And maybe also your definition of alignment and how that differs, if it does, from posture.
KATY: I think of posture as really being more about how something looks. I always say posture has this element of how it looks and alignment is about how it works. And posture is a tricky concept for me to glob onto. Because the element that I think we're missing when we talk about posture is time.
JEANNETTE: Mmm. Yes. Mmm.
KATY: What's your posture? And then what - is someone going to stand up and show you what they do? And they'll show you what they do. And they'll lie down and show you what they do. But there's no concept of how long you're doing that.
JEANNETTE: Which is, that's very interesting. I wonder as well if that's a lot of the reason that we don't see very good data on pain and posture, because they're not factoring in time.
KATY: And time is the only thing that matters when it comes to loads. The only reason posture would be important is because it's letting you know what's pushing and pulling on certain parts, including cells. Yes, of course, structure like vertebral discs and bones and nerves and muscle. What's under load. What's under tension. But the load part is so influenced by time of a load. And a lot of things don't show up until you've had a really long exposure to a load. Mechanical creep is a thing where it's a slow change of tissues, not because of a big traumatic injury but because of something that you do for a very long period of time. And then some tissues adapt and some tissues don't really have that characteristic of - I'm thinking of elasticity, for example. What a muscle can respond to, a ligament can sort of lose its stretch over time due to repetitive sustained low load loading. So when I think of alignment, I am thinking about position over time. And the position of all the individual parts and how they relate over time. And I'm thinking about what's tensing here. What's compressing? What's extending? What's being pulled? What's being pushed. So that's the mechanics part of it; what forces are being created when you're in this posture? So do we all have a posture? Yes. I think we all have positions or postures that we use. But then the using factor adds the movement in.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: And I'm trying to think about something that bothers me now about posture - the way it looks...
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: ... is seeing so many people - kids especially - flexed over a phone. There's this one kid, I think I talked about last time when we were talking about spinal curve, at the bus stop, leaning against a pole, like a telephone pole, flexed over. I mean the spine is completely curled forward almost into a question mark with the head looking down. When I have a reaction to that, I'm having a reaction to what I can see about it, the posture part. But I think it really comes more from the alignment part. I'm thinking about what's happening to the skeleton and to the neck tension. I wasn't thinking about pain, necessarily.
JEANNETTE: No. Right.
KATY: I'm thinking about the loads that you need in certain areas of the body to maintain bone density, breathing. I'm thinking about so much more than pain.
JEANNETTE: And I think that's what's missing from this conversation, isn't it?
KATY: That's right.
JEANNETTE: It's become "we'll throw it out" because all this low back pain can't be related but actually what you're talking about and interestingly, came into the Victorian literature is adaptation to a prolonged position. I found this really interesting. If you read this paper that we will link to, in the Victorian era people started making comments about children in school being hunched over. And they were blaming this on poor posture. That actually disappeared from the posture discussion when school became so normal that everyone was in school. And now we're here coming full circle talking about it again. Bone scientists understand it. People looking at hyperkyphosis understand adaptation over time. But that doesn't seem to be coming into this conversation about posture. Or certainly the backlash about posture.
KATY: There's already been a backlash to Victorian posture. We've left that behind. Look around. We left that behind decades ago. And one of the reasons, I think, it was left behind, interesting enough, had to do with the media of the time. Or I would say entertainment of the time. Did you read that section?
JEANNETTE: Mmm. Yes. When things... when furniture changes when people...
KATY: Furniture changed and then taking in radio. With the invention of in home entertainment, we'll call it that, we'll call it in-home entertainment. The idea that you have a radio.
JEANNETTE: We can gather around the radio and relax.
KATY: And you'd sit and want to be with it for multiple hours. And to stand upright, you know in your corset and your proper parlor position that you engaged with when you were doing civilized things with other people... It's really interesting, again, philosophically, there is a really wonderful podcast episode that I'm going to send you. Now that I know that you're an emerging philosopher, there's so much about the concept of leisure. Leisure was never a thing before.
JEANNETTE: Of course.
KATY: For anyone. And then we had this concept of leisure come into humanity. And how you took leisure, we talked about leisure kind of at the top of this show, but with the concept of leisure came "we want to listen to our radio for hours a day". We've been on the path of media sort of taking over. Entertainment being of course what you want to do. It's so titillating to the mind to have someone else weave stories and things. And you can almost consume them passively. And then going into the theaters and having pantos and you're engaging and more physically active in finding restrictions. And there's just been this slow decline of leaving behind, I would say ... When we asked what we were talking about, the backlash was against posture for communicating status. But I don't think that was an equal step away from posture indicating well-being.
JEANNETTE: No. That's true. It just shifted slightly, I think.
KATY: It shifted. It became a little loosy-goosy, yeah.
JEANNETTE: I think that the historical shift was it became much more about health and less about ...
KATY: Appearance.
JEANNETTE: ...appearance. Yes. And then you got to this situation when you were in some elite US schools in the military and you had all this posture analysis. And it was very much more a physical education, medical professionals that were involved rather than cultural expectations in polite society.
KATY: Yeah. Oh!
JEANNETTE: So much stuff.
KATY: Well, it's kind of interesting. I'm even thinking about, let's say you have scoliosis, or kyphosis. Do we consider these ... These are postures. They're alignments also and not all postures, when we talk about characteristics ... to me , a characteristic is more challenging to adjust in yourself. You know it's something more developmental.
JEANNETTE: Yes. With things like scoliosis.
KATY: But kyphosis is more, what is the ...
JEANNETTE: Kyphosis would be more in an adaptation... something that's happened over time. Right? When we were thinking about this episode, I think there's a validity to say that there's no bad shape for the human body.
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: If you can get in and out - any position that you can get in and out of shouldn't have a value attached to it. And if you round your spine (I'm doing it as I'm speaking)...
KATY: Me too, I'll support you!
JEANNETTE: ...and then you extend your spine and you can do both of those. In some situations people cannot come out of a posture. And so hyperkyphosis particularly in advanced - like the gentleman that you talked about in our walking episode.
KATY: Or spinal curvature...
JEANNETTE: When you were talking about a gentleman in your town that had to support himself with his hand because he was so bent over.
KATY: He'd hold his chin.
JEANNETTE: He holds his chin. So he cannot get out of that hyperkyphotic posture. And nobody could argue that there's not a health consequence of that.
KATY: So I always start with the extremes.
KATY: We know that there are consequences to these extreme postural things that you can see. So we would all agree that there's a degree to these postures that we can't get out of. So now I'm using posture ... these positions that we can't get out of. So posture to me, if someone has a posture, that is the point at which that is more etched and practiced in their body. That's a definition.
JEANNETTE: It's a little bit more... you answered a question on hyperkyphosis last episode where you talked about that permanent hair dye. At what point can't you wash the hair dye out. That it's become a fixed shape that you can't change.
KATY: Right. But you can change the loads to it by how you move all the other parts of your body. How much you move your body in total. So even when you have these semi-permanent or permanent postures - positions that have sort of been more etched either developmentally or through time, etched into your body, it still isn't saying what your entire experience is like.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And I said earlier, I think we might be asking the wrong question: Does posture exist? Does it not exist? I don't know if we've settled on what posture is, but I think that these questions, we talk about the questions that come based on where a society sits. So much of this is relative. Even you going to the definition, the definition that you get now in a dictionary will be different than the dictionary definition...
JEANNETTE: Right. In the Victorian times.
KATY: ... in the Victorian times. Or even 50 years ago. I don't think people realize how malleable… Dictionaries do not set the definitions. Dictionaries record the definitions that people use.
JEANNETTE: That's right.
KATY: That's what is happening. So if you're trying to find a touchstone for what something means, I don't even know if we can use the dictionary as a really great touchstone. It's evolving and so you maybe have to use a history of dictionaries if you want to see...
JEANNETTE: Yes. And that's why these things are so hard to tease out. Because what someone who has written might mean by posture might be something different than what you're actually receiving as the word posture.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
JEANNETTE: And then we're just getting into philosophical tangles.
KATY: And further, I think that what I want to say with that is I think that we are misunderstanding the concept of posture. We're looking at this like we're trying to solve a static issue. Is there a good way to have a single repetitive position or 3 repetitive positions that's good for my health? And I think the answer to that is no.
JEANNETTE: Right. We talked about this in a few episodes.
KATY: We've talked about this. But when I say that I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because I also think that depending on the activity you're doing there is a shape that optimizes your leverages. And I also think that if we go back to that movement food pyramid in My Perfect Movement Plan, the base of human movement has a lot of static-ness to it. Or repetitive. If we're talking about walking, that's kind of a repetitive position. Now there's a way to diversify by terrain or if you're carrying or not carrying. But the fact of the matter is, the bulk of it is upright. And there's going to be an alignment that is optimized, not just for pain but for performance.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And not just of your walking parts but of the whole person. While you are doing it and after. So I have no problem believing all of those things at the same time. I don't think to believe one you have to get rid of the rest. There can be a lot of nuance here.
JEANNETTE: I think there is a lot. And I think the articles that grab people's attention are the polarized ones.
KATY: Of course.
JEANNETTE: And actually, like you've said, all of these things can be true at once. And I am very much not for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because in my experience, nothing - there's never an easy answer.
KATY: Well ...
JEANETTE: There's never one answer - one simple answer. It's just always more nuanced.
KATY: You don't pull your hair out just because it's tangled.
JEANNETTE: No.
KATY: You know what I mean? You have to untangle it. And I can see the urge in, I don't think we were ever meant to hold this much information as species. Not to say that we're meant to do anything. I was saying that our brain capacity, our very old technology of brain, is sort of spinning in the exposure to so many details which is why you specialize in "I'm just going to write all the information down, and I'm not going to fold any of those clothes." We're sort of specializing and it's a bit overwhelming. Sometimes multiple things can have elements of truth and it just takes a while to tease out exactly what you say. And then everyone will die. And then everyone will understand the more nuanced model and it will be clear. And then something else will come in.
JEANNETTE: That's right. Endless. So that was great. Now we got so into posture, we didn't have a break for a listener question. So have we got time just to do a listener question?
KATY: Yes. Let's do it!
KATY: This question is from Trisha and it is sponsored by Wildling. Wildling is a minimal shoe company with a focus on sustainably. The shoes are primarily constructed with natural materials including cotton, wool, and even paper. I've been wearing them for years. Wildling shoes have a unique feature. They have a sole cut out which allows even more mobility for the arch of the foot. So it's not continuous. It's got some material disruption which allows it to flex and bend in different areas of the foot. Jeannette and I both have Wildling shoes and love them. How long have you been wearing Wildling?
JEANNETTE: Oh a long time.I don't know if you remember. But you've had a collaboration with them for some time. And they contacted me. They came and visited Scotland. So that was several years ago. But I had shoes. I think you got me a pair once.
KATY: Oh that's right. I remember.
JEANNETTE: Do you remember?
KATY: I do.
JEANNETTE: I think you might have gotten me my first pair so I would say at least 8 or 9 years.
KATY: Years at this point?
JEANNETTE: Years at this point. And I love them. I really like them because they have some fun colors. They're pretty. And they're so so comfortable.
KATY: They're very hip. Colorful. And they're just thin. They're like a very stylish nothing shoe.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: I don't mean it like toss away. They're very light on the foot. So thank you Wildling for supporting this question. Ok, this question has absolutely nothing to do with today's topic. And Jeannette, I think that you will love answering this question. If you go back, listeners, we did an episode about a dog's best movement diet. And this question is a follow up from that episode. And it was saying, "Is there an optimal time for dogs?" Probably not just their dog, but dogs as a species, to get their exercise or their movement. So I know that all wildlife biologists would probably be able to say when their species of specialization was most active. What is it like for dogs?
JEANNETTE: Yeah. So that's interesting. So a lot of canine species tend to be more what we term crepuscular. Which is a kind of funky word. But it really means - it sounds kind of very spiky to me the word crepuscular. But it really means active at dawn and dusk.
KATY: Ok.
JEANNETTE: So that's often wild canids: wolves, foxes. Now, obviously dogs are not wild. But what they have done is looked at different types of dogs. So you have what you'd call free roaming dogs. So dogs that are owned but they're not restricted. So they're village dogs in maybe, you know, Guatemala or Cambodia. Or it might also be farm dogs.
KATY: Mm-hmm. Right.
JEANNETTE: That are not kenneled but they have a large acreage. And then we have the pet dogs. And when you look at dogs that can choose what they want to do, so your free roaming dogs...
KATY: A lot of choice.
JEANNETTE: ...a lot of choice. They definitely show what we call a bimodal distribution. So there tends to be a peak in activity early in the morning about 5-7am ish and then later afternoon. So if dogs could choose, they would be more like their wild counterpoints it seems. I have wondered whether some of that was temperature related because a lot of the free roaming dogs are in places...
KATY: It's hot.
JEANNETTE: And it would make sense. They're not going to go out in the midday
KATY: Like many animals.
JEANNETTE: Like many animals, yeah. But it still seems to hold, when they've looked at things like farm dogs in Switzerland where temperature is not so much of an issue it still seems to be there - that they would prefer this bimodal... and obviously that disappears in pet dogs because they just do what their humans - they tend to shift to what the humans are doing which is when they're active.
KATY: Where they can be.
JEANNETTE: Where they can be. Yes .. And I certainly notice with one of my most athletic dogs. He would get me up in the morning. He's like, "I am ready"
KATY: The sun is coming up!
JEANNETTE: He would actually get socks. He'd pull socks out and start kind of throwing them at me. So, yeah I don't know if you've observed that with your dog?
KATY: Heidi Mai. Yeah, it's interesting how she was when she was younger versus older, but I distribute my movement. I am an early morning and an evening...
JEANNETTE: So you'd be the perfect dog parent.
KATY: I am a dog - yes. She likes that early morning. Only the reason I'm hesitating is she's gotten a bit cozy in bed. And I notice that a lot of the time I'm leaving for my early morning walk and just her snorkel is poking out of the comforters on the floor because she is not going to be joining me. It is far too cold out there.
JEANNETTE: Oh how funny.
KATY: But she likes to nap during the day, I imagine, like many dogs. She's a working dog so she's really wired to work whenever any, especially her humans, indicate that she should work. But that long walk -we spent years in that morning. And then my husband usually takes her out for another. She's a roaming dog.
JEANNETTE: Because you have a large property.
KATY: And she's able to just sort of, she's always been able to kind of mill around. And she doesn't stray too far. She's not doing a lot of roaming. She's not kept in any sort of confinement. She's kind of up throughout the day. If the chickens are doing something she's very curious. She keeps all the raptors away. She's sort of always on the lookout for raptors so she's got many short sprints throughout the day.
JEANNETTE: Oh so she has a job that keeps her busy.
KATY: She has a job that keeps her busy so that's why she's tired in the morning.
JEANNETTE: Yeah, I get that.
KATY: She's like "I've been working all day and I'm going to sleep in now."
JEANNETTE: So she has adapted to her kind of human job or her family job.
KATY: Yeah, what is that? There's a word in biology ... facultative?
JEANNETTE: Yes. Facultative. Well facultative you would use that as facultative symbiosis. Is that what you mean?
KATY: Yeah, to me it has this ... adapted, as you know, means something different in biology. But for general people she's adapted. I think, right, her patterns have sort of emerged based on the life she's lived and the environments that she's exposed to.
JEANNETTE: Interesting question. I always like dog questions.
KATY: Yes. Thank you for the dog question. So where do we stand on posture? Get it? Where do we stand on posture? I am always striving for keeping my parts mobilized so that no matter what position I'm going to get in, I have many options available to make sure that that movement continues to work for my body and where it is right there.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. And you don't become fixed in one position or posture.
KATY: No. And for times when I am standing, I think there are places, there are ways of standing that allow that load to be distributed really well. We've just done a whole episode on standing. That's the previous one. Go have a listen to that. And for everyone else, thank you for listening to this episode which has been brought to you by our Dynamic Collective of Peluva, Movemate, Venn Design, Wildling, Smart Playrooms, and Correct Toes. If you have any questions for us or even topics that you would like addressed please send them to podcast@nutritiousmovement.com. Thanks everybody.
JEANNETTE: Bye
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Hi my name is Michelle Muldoon and I live in London in the UK. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman and Jeannette Loram, a podcast about movement. We hope you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. This podcast is edited by Chris McLaren, transcribed by Annette Yen and our theme music is performed by Dan MacCormick. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to audio and find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com
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