MOTIONS OF THE DAY - Posture.3

Let’s bring our postural focus to the hips or pelvis. The hips have 3 planes of movement they can work with - forward and back in the sagittal plane, left and right in the lateral/frontal plane, and rotating in or out in the transverse plane. Feel your hips move in these 6 directions right now, and maybe combine some of those movements thru a hip circle - standing, seated, in a semi-lunge stance, or however else you find yourself right now.

For the rest of today, do your best to keep the hips in a neutral position, that being not with butt sticking out - anterior pelvic tilt - and not with hips all the way forward or under you- posterior pelvic tilt (anterior and posterior here refer to the direction to which the top part of the pelvis bone points). When we have too far of a tilt one way, we put undue stress on either the posterior or anterior side of the body, and create stress in the spine as well. Neutral hips is often one start of remedying posturally-related or movement related issues. Not all issues will be solved with this fix, but will likely be part of a series of puzzle pieces. Your body is complex and posture is generally pretty simple as are other patterns we shall cover. Don’t be overwhelmed by what you don’t know here, but be curious as to the principles at play.

So as you walk and locomote in general, the hips naturally want to flex forward on one side while other extends slightly, and tilt laterally and rotate in fluid efficient gait patterns. Add a little more movement here if you feel stiff in the hips. If you don’t have stability here though, you may need to take away excess movement (perhaps we observe that we load one side more in movement then the other side starts to hurt) and strengthen these areas through balancing on one leg and keeping the hips closer to neutral position, or unilateral leg exercises like lunges.

In our next Posture.4 Article, we will consider how to keep our spine engaged properly in still and dynamic posture.