Mindfulness, Movement, and Posture - the Mind Body Connection

Mindfulness, Movement, and Posture - the "Mind Body Connection" - A few key issues explained (2022)

We have all heard people make reference to the "Mind Body Connection."

But what does this actually mean?

For many of us, we go through life constantly in a state of anxiety, worry and overthinking. Now believe it or not, this often can be mirrored by our posture and movement.

If we are afraid to move because of an injury and pain, for example, we tend to modify our positions and posture to avoid certain positions. This type of compensation is the most easy for us to understand.

However, if we dig a little deeper and think about how position ourselves and how we identify with both our thoughts and our physical body, we can start to notice patterns emerge in our posture and movement that mirror our state of mind.

For example, many of us tend to feel our center of thought-based identity in between our ears, somewhere in the skull behind our eyes but in front of the back of our head. Because our strongest sense organs live here, it is easy for us to feel like this is where our conscious awareness is located, and for many of us, we feel that we ARE our thoughts.

If we couple this identification with "being in our head" with thought patterns that constantly push us to strive, push forward, solve problems, or project ourselves towards our needs, wants and desires, we often have a psychological sense of pushing forward and reaching that can be mirrored physically.

This type of pushing ourselves forward in space can manifest as both anxiety, dissatisfaction, but also as a forward head posture or a rounded shoulder posture.

In another example, we may identify with the idea that we know the correct way to sit, stand, or otherwise position ourselves in space. Or we know what "good form" is and the "best way" to train our bodies.

If we identify with these stylized positions and ideas about movement, we are more likely to hold and move ourselves in ways that may be in conflict with what our body actually wants/needs.

A prime example of this is a ballerina, who first learns to posture in a very stylized way for the sake of art, then later becomes identified with "being" a ballerina. She then walks with an exaggerated posture of mid back extension and shoulder depression because she is embodying what it means to be a ballerina.

However, over time our identification can become so overpowering that even if our body is begging to allow the shoulders to raise and to round the mid-back, we just can't sense it because we lack the baseline level of awareness.

These are just a few thoughts I humbly present and I'd love to continue the conversation in the comments.

If you need help improving movement or posture, visit: https://chaplinperformance.com

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