Hello, I'm Jamila Musayeva. An international social etiquette consultant and the author of the book Etiquette: The Least You Need to Know. A lot of my video subscribers have been asking me to do a video on how to walk, how to stand, and how to have a good posture. So, I decided to make a video that I call the deportment video. This is going to be a series of videos dedicated to exactly that. The first part of the deportment video is dedicated on a good posture and how to walk properly. The second part will be dedicated on how to have a good stance, how to sit properly, and how to pick dropped items elegantly. So make sure you like, comment, and subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out the new videos that I'll be uploading. Let's begin with the most important aspect when it comes to everything, to how you sit, to how you stand, to how you walk. That's a good posture. A good posture is the key to mastering your presence. Your overall demeanor, the way you carry yourself. So that is what essentially what department is. You make that first impression when people see you and 99 percent of that is a good posture. What are the elements of a good posture? Let's break it down and look at the each aspect separately. Let's start with our heads. So essentially, our chin and and how we position our head. Number one, make sure that you keep your head high. By high, I don't mean that you raise your neck. I mean, you just keep your head high, your chin parallel to the ground. What happens is that this is a visualization technique that I have been using and teaching my students. And I think, it helps a lot when you try to imagine where your head position should be. It's like you are a little marionette doll that's pulled with a string up. Sort of there's an invisible, the both string, that goes from your backbone, all away, all along the way your head. So on, in a way, a balloon that keeps your head up. So there's a string attached that keeps your head all the way up to the sky. This visualization techniques make sure that you can position your head in a way that's high, but not above. So exposing too much of your neck because when you have your head in a position like this, it makes you give a more arrogant look which is very different from a confident look. We don't want to go for that look and keeping your head obviously down gives you more shy and more timid look. We are aiming for something where the chin is parallel and your head is high. Imagine yourself like a marionette doll. Number two, make sure you choose. tuck your belly in. So in a way, tuck it in. I know high-waisted jeans come handy when doing that. So that's why I love high-waisted jeans. But If you don't have them, you just have to visualize that you keep your belly in. At the time when you walk, you stand or you sit. So there's an old saying that says a man's chest should enter the room before his belly. An exception to this rule are pregnant, ladies, of course. But the rest of us have to remember that we have to tuck our bellies in. That way, it will help support our back and also give us a more elongated straight posture. The third and the most important element of a good posture is making sure that you roll your shoulders backwards and drop them down. The most essential part in this is having them down. A lot of us know that we have to roll our shoulders back. And often times, when we roll them back, which is keep them like that. So almost up closer to our ears, which is a wrong way to do it because when your shoulders are up. It gives you a more tense and more stressed look. which is something you're not aiming for. In order to make sure you don't have that, you have to roll them back and drop them down. That is especially important when you are walking and especially when you are standing. Of course, you have to bear in mind that you would continue having a good posture, when you sit down, but that can change when you are seated down or having dinner. So a good exercise to make sure that you have your shoulders backwards and down is doing a very dramatic exercise rolling your shoulders backwards couple of times and doing a very dramatic drop down that will give you that feeling where your shoulder should stand. To check if you have a good posture, try this wall test at home. Anywhere everywhere that you go, you have a wall that you can always use to test if your posture is good or not. So first, stand with your back towards the wall. Number two, make sure that the back of your head, your shoulder blades, and your buttock touch the wall. Number three, place the heels of your feet 5 to 10 cm. You can use your fingers to measure the distance away from the wall. Now use your flat hand to test. If you are standing correctly, your flat hand should be able to slide just enough between your lower back and the wall. If there's not enough space, then slightly arch your lower back away from the wall to let your hand slide in. If there's too much space between your lower back and the wall, then gently tuck in your belly so that your lower back gets closer to the wall. Now you have a good posture walk away from the wall, but keep that posture. Anytime you feel like you lost that posture, go back to the wall. As I mentioned earlier, a good posture is very important to anything. You do the way you walk, the way you stand, the way you sit. Actually, a good posture is built from early childhood on. So, if you're young adult watching this video and you don't have a good posture, make sure you start practicing now. Physical activity will help you in that. If you're a parent, I urge you to keep a close eye on to your child's posture. Make sure that you have him or her stand straight at all times. Physical training, ballet, ballroom dancing will come very handy when you try to make sure that your child has a good posture. So the earlier you start, the better off you're going to be. Now, let's talk about a good walk in early 20th century. In finishing schools, girls were taught on how to walk. Finishing schools are something we refer to today as etiquette schools, but they were really more than just etiquette schools. They prepared young ladies for life after school. So what was the exercise about the exercise was called a book on the head. This exercise was not meant to teach the girls how to have a good posture but rather it was meant for you to feel your body as more weight with applied on your head with a book. The idea behind the sickening was if you place a book on your head and you walk practicing with the book on your head. Once the book was taken off, you would be almost gliding, floating because there would be less weight or no weight applied to you. In order for you to experience this feeling, I always bring an example of working out with weights. So imagine you are working in out with weights in your hands. It feels like your have to do a lot of exercise. But once you drop them down, you feel like your hands are floating. Almost they're weightless almost. My advice for everyone watching this video. Don't just listen to it theoretically. Do some practice. The more you practice at home, the better off you're going to be when you're out and without the book on your head. As they say, if you sweat more in practice, you bleed less in the battle. So be prepared. Let's practice walking. So essentially, now that we have remembered that, we have to keep a good posture. Making sure our back is straight. Our shoulders are rolled backwards and down. Our head is straight, chin parallel to the ground. Now, we have to walk. What do we do with our hands? Often times, people don't know what to do with their hands so they place them in their pocket or they just put them backwards. If you want to go for a very confident walk, you have to keep your hands at both sides of your thighs. And when you walk, make sure you move your hands equally backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. This is a natural walk for everyone, for men and women. Of course, men would take a larger strides. let's so to say, but women will keep their hands closer and do a smaller one. So it should be very proportional to your body size. Additionally, if you keep your hands to straight like that when you walk, it will give you a stiff, rigid, maybe anxious look that you're not aiming for. So keep to keep that confident walk, make sure your hands are moving forward and backward as you walk. When you're moving your hands backwards and forwards as you walk, it also helps your body to keep the balance as you're walking. So this is not just for the look, but it's also for security. So for men, this would mean that they would have to take even and longer strides than a woman would and just making sure that while you walk, you keep your hands moving. And meanwhile, making sure that you take even and confident strides as you walk. For women, there are different ways of walking when they're walking on that and when they're walking on heels. So let's look at both. Let's first look at how we walk on heels. So generally speaking, walk in heels not only makes you look taller but also makes you look more slender. This is because when you're on heels, you naturally, tuck your belly in more and archer back a bit more. When you are walking, this gives you an overall slimmer look. Of course, there are some disadvantages to wearing heels as well. So you have to make sure that your health condition and what you're comfortable with is working for you. So if walking on heels is not your thing, please don't feel like I'm urging you to walk on heels. It's good to practice walking on them once in a while. If you're a health condition allows you to. But otherwise, if you enjoy doing good, feel free to do it because it definitely makes you to have a more elegant and more slender look, if that's what you're going for. If you are walking on heels, imagine there's a straight line on the floor, almost feel like a model. So, a straight line that you cannot go over. So you have to take a step and then your second step should be inside the other steps. So forward and in, forward and in. Sort of making sure that you are walking in a straight line, feels like almost like a cat or a tiger walking so you would keep one straightforward and another one forward. Another one forward, another one forward and that's how you would walk. Let's now put all the elements together that we have learned. Remember the good posture, shoulders rolled backwards and down, head straight, chin parallel to the ground. Your hands on both sides, moving forward and backward. And if you're on heels, then your strides would be small and inward like that. So now let's practice this all together. I switched to flat to show you how a good walk would look on flats. Everything else still applies a good posture, chin parallel to the ground, hands on your both sides, moving forward and backward. This time, your walk would be different. So instead of walking in one straight line, with steps inwards, you would think that there are two lines on the floor. And so, you'd make sure you place even strides on the floor as you walk. Now, let me show you how this is going to look like. And the final element when it comes to having a good walk is making sure that not just your head is straight but also your gaze is open and you're actually looking at everyone, this is important because if you put your head down and you're looking at your feet, a you can stumble, you can hit someone, you can actually hit the wall, just not a great thing to do. So when you have your head up and your gaze is open towards everyone, it ensures that you'll make sure that you will be able to see someone that you know, that you'll be able to greet but also you will might be able to meet the love of your life. So make sure that you look straight, that you don't look down when you walk and give yourself that good posture when you walk. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope that you liked it. Please make sure that you leave comments if you have you here any questions and I hope that you actually practice the tips that I've been given you. So the wall test or the book on your head and please make sure that you write to me, what are some topics that you would like to hear more about and I'll be more than happy to film new videos. See you in the next video. Bye!
