Tai Chi Journal

On Posture, Breathing, and the Diaphragm

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Tai Chi is designed to (among all sorts of other things) correct our breathing.

I also mentioned that Brad, our weekly class instructor, says the right bodily posture is such that the shoulders are positioned right above the hips — thus relieving back strain.

Guess what I just discovered, by looking at myself in a full-length mirror while standing sideways to it? When I adopt a "correct" posture with my shoulders right over my hips, if I also bend my knees just slightly, I find that my diaphragm automatically "loosens up" and my breathing becomes a lot easier.

Not only that, but it also becomes quite easy for me to get a comfortable and correct-looking posture in terms of how my chest and throat area open up. My shoulder blades can be consciously pulled just slightly together (compared with how I normally carry them). That pushes my chest out a tad.

What's more, my head and neck are well-positioned and under less strain than usual. That effect comes from the fact that slightly bending my knees tilts the bottom of my spinal column forward and the top of my spinal column back an inch or two from where they would otherwise be.

By way of contrast, my normal — albeit incorrect — posture has me arcing — or arching, or tensing; whatever you want to call it — everything from the bump at the back of my skull down to my "tailbone." It's as if my "inner mother" is telling me to "stand up straight" all the time, and I interpret that as meaning I need to arc my back.

So it's easier to "hold my head up" when I stop "standing up straight" and make all the corrections I just described. Or, put more aptly, it's a different, and better, way of "standing up straight," as the mirror confirms.

Ergo, posture is a whole-body affair, and when it's right (a) there's much less strain, tension, fatigue, and so on and so forth in various parts of the body and (b) the diaphragm is relaxed enough to let the breathing be free and easy in both directions, in and out.

Point (b) about the diaphragm is a biggie, in my book. For years and years I have apparently been carrying about with me an awful lot of excess muscular tension. It expresses itself, as I say, as a tendency to arc my back with my legs ruler-straight, my knees locked, and my "tailbone" pointed too high. That "feels like" the proper way to stand. Even though I now see it's way off the mark, I always correct to it, automatically and without thinking.

One result is that my diaphragm ceases to be free and easy, and my breathing gets labored. That in turn seems to reduce the "chi" energy getting to my brain — or, in Western terms, the blood and its oxygen payload — which deficit I assume makes my brain "think" something's wrong; better tense the body even more. It accordingly becomes a vicious circle.

But when I stand sideways to the mirror, get my shoulders and hips duly lined up vertically, and have my knees slightly bent as well, all kinds of good things happen. My lower back eases up. It becomes easy to stick my chest out a wee bit and carry my head properly on my neck and shoulders. And my diaphragm relaxes and finds its "zone of comfort," making my breathing a much more regular and productive operation.

This makes me think Tai Chi is (among other good things) a "therapy" for tense people like me who bollix up their posture, their breathing, and their diaphragm's state of tension-vs.-relaxation as a matter of course, without exactly knowing what they're doing wrong.

So Tai Chi is a "therapy" meant to help us too-tense folks "reprogram" ourselves!

posted by eric @ 5:05 PM