Exercise every day, stand up straight, think happy thoughts …

I don’t buy it.

The more I do this work, the more I’m a little taken aback by how much we tend to have “gotta do this better” imbedded into our always-running mental scripts.

Of course exercising every day and good posture and all that stuff is great, but how long can we hold onto that image of changing our posture through pure will? Maybe someone has an amazing story that she has, but I sure haven’t heard it. What I do hear, and see, is that we can pay attention to these things for maybe five minutes, then old habits—what in many ways are totally natural compensations for the body given its conditioning—take over.

So … what do we do? In my experience, the act of bringing awareness to what actually is going on in the body is a great place to start. It’s less “gotta stand up straight” and more “wow … I can feel how this slouching forward, rolling my shoulders in and all that, really inhibits my breathing …”

If we’re really looking to change the sources of dis-ease, that could be a good place to start.