I heard a lecture in Los Angeles this week by Australian rabbi Laibl Wolf.
The son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, Dr. Wolf grew up down under. He got a law degree, rabbinic ordination, a PhD in psychology and raised six children with his wife.
He’s an impressive soft-spoken man.
He said that when a patient comes to him suffering from low self-esteem, he spends the first session working entirely on posture. The way you carry yourself is going to have a profound effect on how you feel about yourself.
From my Alexander Technique point of view, posture is like happiness — it is only possible as a result of doing the right thing and is not attainable as an end in itself.
When you try to have good posture, you pull yourself up and tighten. Then you get tired and you go back to your habits of slumping.
In the Alexander Technique, you focus on process than ends. You free the neck, direct the head forward and up and tell your back to lengthen and widen. The end result of such work is good posture.
