Posture is non-binary

A personal reflection

Some teachers of the Alexander Technique taboo the word ‘posture’ as it can connote a fixed idea of how to sit or stand. During training, my classmates and I were encouraged to choose terms like ‘use’, ‘poise’, and ‘carriage’ over ‘posture’. While these are all excellent options, and important in their own right, they are not necessarily as relatable to the general public. When I first started teaching the Alexander Technique, I told clients who wanted to work on their posture that they should think about poise instead. My pedantry was most often met with blank stares or confusion. Reflecting now on these interactions, I am not surprised by the responses I got. Language gives us a lens with which to view the world and can limit or expand our perceptions of and approach to life. By avoiding a common and all-encompassing word like ‘posture’, I was separating the practice of the Alexander Technique from everyday life and the yet uninitiated. I unknowingly made the Alexander Technique less accessible than it can be. Without diluting the Technique – and all it comes with – I am curious to reclaim ‘posture’.

For this piece, I draw on my memories and experiences of posture in various settings: school; extracurricular and vocational activities; and training in and teaching the Alexander Technique. I trace the evolution of my notions of posture, from being totally rigid to becoming more fluid. I consider the idea of posture as a changeable means rather than a fixed end. Then, I look at the role habits play and how they can shift. Finally, I reflect on the possibility of carrying myself in daily life with more openness and fewer expectations.

Conditioned notions of posture

Posture refers to positions one adopts, while sitting, standing, lying down, or in movement. It can be thought of as an arrangement of parts in the whole. In the human body, this brings the orientation of the spine and its relationships with the limbs into focus. There are endless possibilities. When we think of posture though, many of us have certain ideas associated with it. For example, good posture is commonly equated to someone sitting with their back straight or standing upright like a ballet dancer or soldier.

Such narrow notions of posture may stem from how we are conditioned to think and act as children. In school, we are taught to sit straight, often for hours at a time, and on one-size-fits-all furniture that might not be supportive for every kind or size of body. Growing up, I went to an alternative school, where sitting on the floor was as common as, if not more so than, sitting on chairs. Physical education (we called it ‘games’), dance, music, art, pottery, carpentry, yoga, and meditation were daily or at least weekly activities, interspersed between traditional academic classes. There was quite a lot of freedom in our days. But although we were exposed to more than just academics, we spent a fair bit of time sitting still in lectures and discussion.

Despite this holistic, even progressive, approach to education, how we arranged our bodies throughout the day was given little emphasis. One of my only memories of being asked to pay attention to posture was the constant, tired refrain of ‘sit straight, children’, which we all ignored. The other was our yoga teacher correcting ‘bad’ posture during morning assembly by ramming her knee between children’s shoulder blades and yanking their shoulders back into ‘good’ posture by stretching out their spines. Her victims invariably bounced back to their prawn-like status quo as soon as she moved away. Meanwhile, most of the examples around us were adults with what I can only describe in retrospect as ‘soggy spines’. Beyond telling us what to do (or yanking us in and out of positions), our teachers did not emulate what they wanted from us – the good and the straight. There was little nuance in their approach to posture, and no inclination to lead by example. Who could blame them? Quite likely they were perpetuating the same order they had once been subject to.

Posture was placed on a rigid binary of good and bad, without any consideration of the in-betweens. We knew of only two possibilities – straight or slouched. There was also never any discussion of why we should sit straight, just that it was the correct and good thing to do. Perhaps at that point in my life I would not have cared about the why anyway. Still, the functionality of posture was rarely brought up. Posture was rather an indication of one’s moral character.[1] And although in my school we were encouraged to question everything and think freely for ourselves, there was no dialogue when it came to posture. While as a child I might have wanted to do good and follow instructions from my teachers, this authority-pleasing tendency shifted when I was a teenager. The rigidity associated with posture clashed with teenage rebellion. It became unacceptable among my peers to sit or stand upright. Upright at that stage of our lives meant uptight. I therefore made a choice to actively slouch, and moulded my spine so that overall compression became my daily default. This meant that I unwittingly proceeded through high school with a weak back and little agency over my own body.

Luckily for me, my extracurriculars gave me some way into functional posture. I played the piano regularly all through school. Both my teachers emphasised sitting upright with my feet on the ground before I was even allowed to contact the keys.[2] Similarly, I was asked to stand up without rounding my shoulders forward or dropping my chest down for the aural and singing parts. All this uprightness was not fixed – fluidity and motion were encouraged; they helped add dynamics to my music. I cannot remember ever playing the piano or singing with anything but an expansive spine. Slouching in these cases felt wrong, and I never did it. Even now, many years on, whenever I have returned to the piano, it has felt odd to sit and play any way but upright. In my ballet training and performances too, uprightness was inherent. And unlike with playing the piano and singing, this uprightness was not confined to sitting or standing. While doing ballet, I moved in all sorts of ways, all while ‘lifting up’ through my torso. The ballet aesthetic necessitated ‘up’ and ‘long’ in a big way. In piano, singing, and ballet, upright posture was unquestioned. It was inseparable from the practice. Unlike the ‘sit straight’ from school that I rejected, I welcomed poise in these cases. I was choosing to engage in these activities, so obeying my teachers did not impose on my perceived agency the way the instruction in school did.

During the years I played the piano regularly, I was in lessons for about two or three hours every week and practised on my own for an hour or two a day. Ballet classes and rehearsals took up more of my time, even up to twenty hours a week. But the posture I cultivated in all these endeavours lasted only as long as the classes did. What happened at the barre or at the keys remained there. My dynamic, upright posture for piano and ballet was entirely separate from the rest of my life. It is also possible, particularly in the case of ballet, that my exhaustion following practice caused me to collapse outside of it.

I never thought about expansive, balanced posture as a function of being alive. It was always attached to a specialised activity. Therefore, I had (and readily took) more opportunities to shrink my stature than to expand it. I carried this into my adult life and movement career. When it came to thinking about my body, there was a clear on switch (for dance, yoga, and body conditioning) and an even clearer off (for the rest of my life). Nobody reminded me to sit straight once I left school, and I did not take it on myself to do so. But the idea of there being either good or bad posture – upright or slouched – stayed with me in the back of my mind. I remember occasionally reflecting with others around me that my posture (and theirs) was bad, but we never did anything about it. I carried the slouching ‘identity’ through from my teenage years.[3]

It was only a chronic stiff neck and resulting pain in my mid-twenties that alerted me to the fact that I needed to start thinking about posture beyond formal practice in dance and yoga, to integrate it into my life more generally. But coming to terms with this took time. I could not believe my dancer body was giving me trouble because of the mundane choices I was making, such as curling up in bed to use my laptop rather than sitting at a desk. I thought that surely my muscles were more resilient than that. Still, an opportunity presented itself and I decided to enrol in an Alexander Technique continuous learning programme to see if it would help me get rid of my stiff neck problem. I did not go into it thinking about my daily posture in particular. But a few weeks into the programme showed me that the moments I needed to look at more closely – and bring conscious awareness to – were the ones outside of focused physical activities. Things like how I sat to eat dinner, where and how I chose to work at my laptop, and what the weight distribution was between my legs and through my feet as I stood in a queue.

My Alexander Technique teachers Robin and Béatrice Simmons demonstrated exactly what they seemed to want from me: uprightness. I do not remember ever seeing them slump or look anything other than ‘up’. They seemed like good examples to emulate, and the Alexander Technique was something I was choosing to learn. So from actively inhabiting a slouch, I proceeded swiftly to the other end of the binary: ramrod straight at all times. I decided then that ‘up’ was the only way, and that slouching, confirmed by my teachers, was undesirable. I told myself that I had been carrying myself wrong for so long and that upright or straight was what I needed to be henceforth. I copied what my teachers did: sit on a firm seat, with hands resting on the tops of my thighs and palms facing up, feet planted on the ground, head aiming up and spine following, most often without support from the chair-back. Unlike for my teachers, who had decades of careful practice of the Alexander Technique, such expansive posture did not come easily to me. I rather pulled myself up with my big dance muscles and made the shape that my schoolteachers probably wanted of me all those years ago. This was difficult and tiring, but I persisted. My posture and my attitude towards it became rigid in the opposite way. I also privately judged people around me who did not arrange themselves in this new, stiff way I had adopted.

Over time, I found more ease in the upright posture, but I continued to think of it as the only way to be. Then, at the Alexander Technique Congress in Berlin, which I attended in my fourth year of training, I was shocked to see teachers and trainees around me not sitting how I thought Alexander people should. I saw attendees slouching, crossing their legs, and adopting asymmetrical arrangements that I then considered as wrong. I wondered if they were really practising the Technique, as I believed I was. But on later reflecting on my observation during a lesson with senior Alexander Technique teacher Marta Hunter, and the shock I had felt on seeing that people were not behaving like the ‘Alexandroid’ that I was at the time, she suggested that even sitting too straight (which she helped me discover I was doing then), with my sternum raised, was also a form of slumping. She showed me that slouching was not just about making a croissant-like shape with my spine, but referred to throwing my framework out of balance in some way. In the too-straight version, this meant shortening in my lower and middle back while overcompensating with what felt like length in the front. In both cases, some muscles had to overwork to keep my body in balance.

For the first time, I was faced with the possibility that posture did not exist on a binary. It also did not signify a shape (or two). From my school and early training in the Alexander Technique, I had picked up that there were two options – good/straight and bad/slouched. Over the years, I swung from one side to the other, and strongly identified with my posture. I did not consider that there was a middle ground or that posture could be context dependent. I also failed to acknowledge that while the shape of good posture I was asked to embody in school was just that, it meant much more in the case of the Alexander Technique. The upright shape that my Alexander Technique teachers frequently made was an outward manifestation of the inhibition and direction that they were continuously and consciously cultivating for themselves. Such practice often resulted in good posture, but good posture was not necessarily the goal.

From this point on, I began to acknowledge posture as a means of working on the self, a container of habits, and a crucial site of potential change and endless possibility.

Posture as a means, not an end

In her article ‘Working on Yourself’, Ruth Rootberg delineates the many ways that practitioners of the Alexander Technique work on themselves and understand such work.[4] There are formal and informal approaches, and several methods of guiding one’s attention. Work on the self can be considered an ongoing listening and awareness practice, with the body–mind at the centre. It is an unending pursuit. Similarly, my teacher Robin Simmons often reminded us that gravity never takes a holiday, and neither should our self-observation. Posture is but one indication of such work. Unlike what I had understood during my initial training years – and judged when I did not see it around me at the Berlin Congress – this work does not need to look one way. It means being open to adopting different arrangements depending on the situation. Along these lines, Walter Carrington distinguishes between restful and active sitting:

‘Active’ sitting is the attitude you adopt when you’re going to do anything like play the piano, use a word-processor, ride a horse or, indeed, have an Alexander lesson. ‘Restful’ sitting, on the other hand, is how you sit when reading, watching the television and so on. It’s sensible to take advantage of the support of the chair and in that way breathing, circulation and digestion – your general functioning – is able to tick over without interference and your neuro-muscular system doesn’t have to work overtime to keep you in balance.[5]

Carrington summarises the various situations we might encounter, and how to deal with the bodily framework in them. Uprightness, avoiding support from a chair-back, or a particular way of sitting is not the goal. With this more spacious outlook, posture becomes more than moral policing or even just a constant practice towards expansion or uprightness. It might be about accepting what is going on in our systems and our external environment, not fighting ourselves to inhabit an ideal, and giving ourselves permission to exist in more ways than one.

Habitual tendencies and inviting change

Habits play a big part in determining posture. They manifest differently for different people – some tend towards asymmetry, others towards stiffening, and still others towards collapsing. Whatever form our habitual postures take, we adapt to and learn them quickly. These conditions can get hardwired into our systems – they can slowly become inevitable, automatic, and feel normal. If we are not careful, over time, we may stop registering when we throw our frameworks out of balance and overwork certain muscles; we might not notice the point at which we lose agency over ourselves. In many cases it is only pain or injury – as a result of deeply ingrained habits, as I experienced myself – that wakes us up and prompts us to make changes. We may even find out from photos or videos that our body language does not match our mental conception of it: ‘That is not how I thought I looked!’ Or we might receive personal or professional feedback about how we carry ourselves. Regardless of the reason for wanting to work on posture, change is possible. But it may not be pleasant – breaking a habit is always more challenging than forming one.

Shifts of any kind in our daily carriage can be confronting. I have had clients show me how they sit to work: with their weight on one hip, legs off to one side and feet slipped under the chair, and spine and head making an S-shape to compensate for the uneven distribution of weight. Of course, this position is doing little for them – they are actively compressing, and their breathing is compromised. But it feels comfortable. This position is integral to their conception of sitting – it is the way to sit. It is therefore difficult for them to detach from this habit. And in the absence of any major problem, they might strongly question or reject an invitation to change. Even a small adjustment to what looks like a physical arrangement has complex implications. Reorganising the distribution of muscular tension can impact identity, emotions, and mental state. This can be disorienting and at times be accompanied by discomfort. Consciously choosing something other than a personal status quo takes courage.

Importantly, lasting change occurs not through hard work (as in the widespread ‘no pain, no gain’ approach), but rather through careful observation and conscious choices to increase support and ease:

Poise, however, is not acquired like physical strength…through the violent performance of exercises and sports, but through restful study and observation. Poise is a body state achieved only by steady and care-free education of the body for balance and the maintenance of balance.[6]

Towards this, it can be useful to adopt formal, balanced positions such as semi-supine, semi-flexion, and sitting so that both feet touch the floor, sitz bones are well in contact with a firm seat, and the back is not touching the chair-back. These arrangements are not ideals or places of perfection, but tools for observation. They highlight asymmetries that arise because of our habits – this hip is heavier, that ankle is more tense, this point on the sitz bones feels too far forward. Since we experience life in relation to our habits, such positions become mirrors. Inhabiting them consciously opens up the space between the familiar (habitual) and the unknown (everything else). This space is a fertile ground for choice and change.

In my case, I yo-yoed between being expansive during formal practice, and too collapsed otherwise. When I came into the Alexander Technique, I recognised that the choice I thought I was making to slouch most of the time had become something I was no longer choosing, although it may have been a choice when I first started doing it in school. Eventually it became the only possibility for me; I had lost agency over myself. I then moved to the other end – more stiffness – in my initial Alexander training years. But I soon learnt that good posture, if it is the only posture, is nothing more than a habit. This led me to explore the middle of the posture spectrum. In doing so, I had to temporarily let go of identities that I had made for myself, and that sometimes came with feelings of confusion and dissonance. But although there were difficult moments, I started to discover more buoyancy and ease in my body.

Embracing fluidity

After the Berlin Congress, my tendency to check myself for whether I was sitting upright, to challenge myself to not take advantage of a chair-back, or to force myself to persist in an ‘ideal’ position through tension and tiredness shifted. I became interested in giving myself more possibilities in sitting, standing, and moving around – more ways of being – even if they did not match up with my previous notions of ‘good’ or ‘upright’. In explorations of these possibilities, I could better understand each arrangement and what it did to or for me. I also began to ask myself open-ended questions:

- What kind of external support (for instance, a chair or the floor) do I have?

- How am I arranging myself in relation to my support (am I collapsing onto it, holding myself off it, or resting on it in an expansive way)?

- How am I breathing?

These days, rather than wondering whether I have good or bad posture, and criticising myself, I find it is more useful to ask what I need for each situation. And regardless of what arrangement I choose for one scenario, can I let go of it and renew myself for when the context changes? It is no longer just the good and the straight shape that I am after – or equally the casual slump – but rather curiosity about how my framework, in relation to my environment, can be supported and best support me in every moment.

People who have encountered me since 2018, when I started training in the Alexander Technique, have often commented that I have great posture. If they have known me long, they have even said, ‘Oh, you’re a dancer, so of course you do.’ But I can hardly credit being a dancer – or having attended a progressive school or playing the piano – as the source of my good posture. It is not even just an outcome of my training in the Alexander Technique. Most recently, it has been a freeing up of my conception of posture itself. I am not confined to being an upright ballet dancer or pianist, a collapsed teenager, or an Alexandroid. I am rather alive and in motion, and my posture can be a reflection of such being.

In 2024, I gave a workshop on posture through the lens of the Alexander Technique. One of the participants shared at the end that she would take away the idea that posture is not fixed – it is dynamic and constantly changing. Until she said this, I had briefly forgotten about my previous, rigid conceptions. My psychophysical coordination and approach had changed so much, even since the Berlin Congress a couple years prior. My ideals surrounding posture no longer had a tight grip on me. This participant reminded me of my long journey to that moment, where posture could not be anything but fluid.

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[1] Historically, a ‘universal standard’ of upright posture has been used to marginalise and discriminate against various groups. Posture tests have been employed as measures of health, fitness, ability, criminality, and racial supremacy. Although sold as preventative of back pain, stress, and other issues, good posture has been reduced to something rather simplistic: a shape. See Beth Linker, ‘In Defence of Slouching: The Bad Science Behind Food Posture,’ Psyche, 19 November 2024, accessed 31 May 2025 <https://psyche.co/ideas/in-defence-of-slouching-the-bad-science-behind-good-posture>.

[2] A friend of mine has recounted a similar approach to calligraphy that she learnt as a teenager while on an exchange programme in Japan. She was instructed first how to sit, then how to hold the brush, and then how to make simple strokes. All this came before the more complex lettering.

[3] ‘Our movement reflects our identity.’ See Shawn Copeland, ‘Re-mapping Our Nervous System,’ ExChange, Winter (2023), accessed 31 May 2025 <https://www.alexandertechniqueinternational.org/assets/docs/The-ExChange/ATI_ExChange_Winter2023_Final.pdf>.

[4] Ruth Rootberg, ‘Working on Yourself,’ Poise 2 (2024): 1–18 <https://mouritz.org/system/files/libitemfiles/2024/poise_2024_rrootberg_working_on_the_self_v1a.pdf>.

[5] Walter Carrington, Personally Speaking (Mouritz, 2001), 101–102.

[6] Raymond Dart, ‘The Attainment of Poise,’ South African Medical Journal 21 (1946): 78.