The other day I had come in from running our 7 month old puppy, Lola, who has energy to spare lol. After drying her off and seeing her settle onto her bed to rest, I sat down at my computer just to see what’s going on in the world. The first thing I noticed was my posture. I was slumped forward in a relaxed sort of way.
Right away I shifted my posture, not to correct it, but to choose something different. With awareness comes choice. You can choose to do something about it or not. The why doesn’t really matter in the moment. I might choose to shift in order to “correct my posture” or I may choose to shift my body in order to take a deeper breath. Still I may choose to shift in order to “lighten” my mood.
There are many reasons why we can shift our posture once we’ve become aware of it, but ultimately it comes down to choosing something different than the status quo.
What if I didn’t choose to shift after becoming aware of my posture? Wait, let’s ask a better question: What if I didn’t choose to shift my body after becoming aware of tension and pressure points in my body from gravity pulling me down?
Maybe at first nothing would be different. But if I chose to stay slumped, eventually, the tension and pressure points would get louder. Maybe I would notice that I’m not breathing into my body very deeply.
So if I was feeling the tension and pressure points and lack of openness and breath, why would I choose to stay in that? This can be a result of Neuro-Adaptive Syndrome (NAS). NAS prevents us from paying attention and becoming aware.
And if we don’t realize that we’re slumped over the computer, then we will stay in that position until the tension and pain signals get loud enough for us to have to stop and listen.
If your body and nervous system are optimized, you will more likely feel the tension and pressure and choose to shift to something that’s more comfortable or open or energized. And when we can shift, we have the power to choose, not only what our posture will be like; We have the power to choose how we will engage with life: the quality of our thoughts, our energy levels, our outlook, our level of satisfaction with life.