Breathe and be less grumpy ;)
atmosphear commented on an entry by grumpymonster titled "stand (and sit) up straight" regarding have better posture:
These are contradicting each others:
- “[affects] how you breathe (easier!)”
- “In the long run, standing tall will slim your waist”
If you really wanted to breathe efficiently, you would be using lower parts of your lungs. If you concentrate too much on having a slim waist, you will end up breathing with more difficulties.
What practising karate for 15 years, meditation and some time of yoga has been teaching has been to aid breathe with your waist muscles to fill the lungs with air. Keeping the stomach flat prevents this.
Western idea of beauty was planned to make breathing difficult: using corsets to slim down the waist was causing women to faint and we (or they, since I’m not female) haven’t learned even with that. Against this background we also have to be more critical to the advice of Mr. Baldwin: he is reflecting his advices with ethnocentric (* idea of beauty, which is important to bear in mind.
What I want to emphasize is that good posture is not equal to slim waist, but forcing the waist slim is definetly against breating easier. So, if you really want to reduce muscle pain, concentrate on providing them enough of oxygen.
My yoga teacher is always emphasizing on bringing the shoulder blades down to give space between the shoulders and neck.
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*) Where egocentrism is well-known, people concentrate way too little on seeing the reasons of their actions related to their cultural backgrounds, which limits (or gives borders, depending how you want to put it) our thinking.