Relying on mirrors crutches your senses.

INSIGHT

It’s not about good posture, it’s about relational curvature.

We tend to over-emphasize the idea of posture.

Though important, it’s a static concept that has been popularized from our increasingly sedentary lifestyles producing poor postures — but that doesn’t mean it boils down to the simplicity of standing upright. Our bodies are constantly moving and in need of a flexible, adaptable spine, joints and connecting systems that can adapt loads accordingly without overcompensation elsewhere.

As an integrated tensile system reliant on the ability to resort to load shifting if one part is over-extended, the body was designed with intelligent curvature to allow for the very need to put ourselves in many different positions (or postures) for survival activity. The reduction of those movements in modern urban environments has locked-in our bodies to limited ranges of motion and prolonged compromised positions, hence our obsession with good posture.

Our focus should switch to good curvature.

The natural curves in our spines and arches are indicative of healthy load-bearing structures that can withstand not only our weight against gravity but anything we might need to carry over distances (whether it’s water from the river or our laptops across town).

Our entire structure is indeed shaped by our movement within our environments; and our curvatures develop as we grow. Children may be born with flat feet and convex cervical spines but as tendons strengthen and motion increases, these curves change to suit our movement (and environmental) needs. They also disappear if we don’t use them, and then we believe myths like “I was born with flat feet” as a death sentence, not as universal physicalities like having baby teeth that get switched out for an adult set.

Our body shapes, for the most part on terms of height and build are relatively unchanging, but how we use our parts in the system to shape our structure is entirely up to our daily movement design.

INSPIRATION

Upright

Get immediate postural feedback with this reusable adhesive that’s connected to your iOS device via a training app that alerts you whenever you slouch. Vibration sensitivity can be adjusted on the app to help lightly nudge you into better habit building to prevent backache and muscular pain, train muscles to alleviate fatigue, and improve posture in both sitting and standing positions.

• Change your whole appearance – just by being upright.

• Build confidence naturally by stimulating your biochemistry.

• Show the best side of yourself, and maximize your opportunities in life.

INNOVATION

“Natural Curves”

A flexible fabric spinal curve reader that senses your natural S-curve when standing, walking and sitting to train your intuition for better structure, not just posture. Can sense when compression in vertebrae could be alleviated to train better movement mechanics that gets hardwired with practice through biofeedback learning and signaling.

• Athletic tape the width of your spine and peripheral muscles that you stick (and restick) to the length of your spine after a shower to train movement.

• Initially calibrated by reading every vertebrae in standing position (first your natural stance) and then optimal S-curve stance for your body.

• Calibrated for standing/walking/sitting, it trains your awareness to better manage an optimal spinal position so you can create new everyday movement patterns that sustain. Tracks the relational distances of your optimal structure to train good posture with dynamic movements.

• Recommended for 30-60 mins a day while you go about your regular business. It buzzes when out of position range, but only after 3 seconds, accounting for random movements (i.e. picking things off the floor).