A Post About Posture
Saturday, September 15, 2012 at 4:32PM An unusual topic, I guess, but I feel compelled to write about the spine. In a literal sense.
When I was a teenager, I had deplorable posture. It’s still nothing to write home about. But, you know, when you’re young you’re under the thumb of your parents. And my posture wasn’t good enough for mine. So they sent me to this special doctor, this bone specialist. To see if there was something seriously wrong with me.
I took offense to that. I took it to mean that whatever I was doing was somehow not acceptable. That they suspected me of being defective. I could have told them exactly why I had bad posture, but I didn’t choose to. It’s because I had no self-confidence. I rounded my shoulders and carried my head down in a human version of a submissive gorilla, not wanting to meet anybody’s eyes.
Lots of tests later, the doctor said there was nothing wrong with me except bad posture.
I’ve done some work on it over the years, but it’s not easy. When your shoulders have rolled forward for years, you can’t just pull them back again. The muscles don’t work that way. They’re too stretched out in back, too foreshortened in front. But for the last several years I’ve added stretches and strengthening exercises to my morning Yoga that are designed to reverse that a little at a time. And it’s getting better.
Many of you know I lost my mom in March of this year. She was about 90, just a few weeks short of the big decade birthday. She was in robust health throughout her final years in almost all ways. The flaw in the system—and I saw this about a year before she died—was her curvature of the spine. It was quite severe, the condition that was once called a “dowager’s hump.” Sounds like something that would be cosmetic only, but late in her life I saw the writing on the wall. The rest of us balance our heads and shoulders on our skeletons. My mother’s head and shoulders were thrust forward, and she had to hold up the weight of them with the muscles in her back, and with her spine. As her muscles and spine neared ninety, they were no longer up for the task. Soft tissue injuries became an everyday occurrence, and her spine was riddled with hairline fractures. But she resisted pain medication until the very end, because of the fall risk. Her spine was the weak link in an otherwise healthy system.
The condition ran through her family. She once told me a heartbreaking story of a female relative who broke off an engagement because she knew she would soon be hunchbacked, and I guess she didn’t want her prospective husband to see her that way. And she never told him why, so of course he was devastated. Amazing how we let these issues rule our lives.
A few months before she died, I asked her when she’d known for sure she’d inherited this curvature of the spine. I guess I wanted to rest assured, at 57, that it had missed me.
“Oh, I knew in my thirties,” she said. Then she went on to tell me that this is why they sent me to the doctor all those years ago to have my spine checked. Not because I had failed them by not standing up straight enough. Because she was afraid she had failed me by passing along a congenital spinal condition.
For what it’s worth, I’ve begun to stand up straighter. I sit up straighter, and I notice when I’m being lazy with my spine. I have the ability to hold my spine straight, and I should use it. It would behoove me to be grateful for that. Not everybody on my mother’s side of the family was so lucky.
Part of me thinks it’s a strange thing to write about. Posture. But every time I talk publicly about something like this—my cuticle biting habit, for example, which is thankfully still in remission—I find many more people than I realized are going through similar issues. And that everyone comes out feeling a little more human.
So…tell me. Is posture an issue in your life? What does it mean to stand up straight?
Reader Comments (9)
What stands out to me in this story is less about the spine and more about the miscommunication that you lived with for years. We all need to be VERY careful what we say and how we say it, particularly to our children. In this case, your mom was trying to protect you and you took it to mean that you weren't good enough This is a great lesson for us all, but mostly for PARENTS and TEACHERS. BE careful with your words!
Hi Terie. Yes, you're right. The deeper message here is that, just like her relative's fiance, I didn't know her deepest fear, so I couldn't have known the motivations fer her actions. Good communication is huge.
I was always very tall, and very self-concious about it. With all of my friends beings shorter than I, I tended to hunch over just to be able to hear what they were saying. I was fortunate to be forced into ballet classes for 10 years starting when I was four, which I am certain is the only reason my posture is so good. As annoying as it was when my mom would constantly tell me to 'stand up straight' and 'hold your tummy in', now I am thankful for her nagging!
Thanks for weighing in, Elaine. Tallness is a very common reason for bad posture. We get so many messages that make us feel we should be more like others. Granted, it may have been just to hear them better, as you say. But in my day tall girls and short boys got made fun of.
I'm definately trying to reconceille my posture, but it's harder than it sounds. Working in fornt of a computer all day, doen't help. Nor does the fact I love to sew and write in my spare time. I definatley remember that my great-grandmother was a little old lady, hunched over and walking slow. I was surprised to find out that she used to be 5'8". I'm pretty sure I was talelr than her by the age of 12, and I never grew past 5'6". I think in her case it was more ostioporosis than a genetic trait. Still I try to keep such things in mind.
But, like you, my slump started in school, for very similar reasons. I'm still working on meeting people's eyes when I talk to them.
:} Cathryn
I developed breasts earlier than my friends and would hunch over to hide them (I forgot about that until your post). Whenever my mom noticed, she would whack me on the back so I'd stand up straight. That, of course, made me mad so I'd hunch over whenever she wasn't around to spite her. I was in my 30s and had joined a woman's gym when one of the trainers took the time to work with me on good posture and to explain its importance. Sure helps ease out the kinks after hours at the computer or bent over my drawing table.
Love that moment when I post something that seems so "fringe" to me and so many people relate. Cathryn, meeting people's eyes is hard. I still can't do it in the course of a conversation. I get too self-conscious, like smiling into a camera, and then I can't remember how to do it naturally. I don't want to say I'll never get that, because I hope to have a good 30 years or so of life ahead of me. Let's just say I'd rather work on posture.
And Marianne, though I also hadn't thought of it for years, "developing," and the often uncomfortable attention it brought, was one of many reasons not to stand up straight for me, too. I didn't really understand the importance of posture either. Until I saw what my mom went through. I thought it was all a matter of how you looked.
Posture was big in our family. My mother was always insisting we stood straight, head held high. I went to charm school between the ages of 12-14; I was such a tomboy, my mother would do anything. I'm not sure it worked (Lol) As much as it made me cringe, I do remember the lesson of "always sitting & standing as if a string was being pulled from the very top & center of my head." And believe it or not, I have gotten compliments! :-)
Tracey, we have something in common. I got sent to charm school, too. But I think you were a better student than I was.