[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: A former dancer, Mary
studied structural integration with Ida Rolf. She has taught movement in
bodywork classes since 1994 and was chair of the
movement faculty of the Rolf Institute of
Structural Integration in Boulder, Colorado. The new rules of
posture is the second of three books Mary
has published along with numerous articles in
magazines including "Massage," "Shape," "Men's Fitness,"
"Somatics Journal," and "Massage and Body Work." Her newest book,
"Your Body Mandela, Posture as a Path to
Presence," is coming out at the end of the year. You can look for it on
her website or on Amazon. She has videos, a blog, and
much more on her web site, which is
www.healyourposture.com. Ladies and gentlemen, Mary Bond. [APPLAUSE] MARY BOND: Thank you
all so much for coming. I know we had an
eclipse, and there were other exciting things
going on today and here you are. So sitting, standing, and
moving in the modern world is not always comfortable. But we get used to it. A lot of times, we don't
notice our discomfort until it becomes
full blown pain. So you folks are Google. You're known for innovation. And what I hope to do
today is to inspire you to help redesign the
way the world works so it could be more body friendly. So because I want
you to feel what I'm talking about
in your bodies, I'm going to ask you to stand
up and do things every so often. So now is one of those times. If you would just stand
up, it would be great. OK so bring your arms way high. Make fists. Tighten your elbows. Tighten your knees. Push down in the floor. Stretch your spine
as high as possible. And then go side to
side just a little. So notice you are
stretching, but you're contracting at the same time. That's important. Really stretch, really reach. OK, now open your hands. Scrunch up your eyes. Open your mouth
like you're yawning. Ah, more stretch! More, more-- OK, now
you could let go. And feel your body right now. Something-- a little
something, a little energy moving through it. Yeah? So what you just did
is pandiculation. And most mammals do
this many times a day, sometimes up to 50 times. But humans feel a little
sheepish doing it in public. Nonetheless, you felt there
was an effect I think. Nod your head, yeah? There was an effect. So what might be new is
that that effect matters. It's important. So we'll talk a little
more about pandiculation as we go forward. This is cover art for the
book you just picked up. And the gist of that book is
that posture isn't a position. It's not what you do
with your shoulders or your head or your gut. Posture is your
response to this moment and the next moment
and the next. Every succeeding moment
requires you to respond. We're not aware of it, and
we get habits about doing it. But basically, posture is
how you feel stable and safe in a pretty unstable world. And so changing,
transforming your posture amounts to creating different
strategies for how you feel safe inside to meet the world. So it involves body
awareness, self awareness. It's not a quick fix. So this book is not
something you're going to benefit from tomorrow. Takes a little patience. So how do we sit,
stand, and move in this crazy modern world? In a world that increasingly
ignores what the body is made to do, which is to move. All organisms move
in order to survive. We know that. There's a Doctor Scholls
add on television right now. It says, born to move. So we have this in
our consciousness, and yet we don't really
embody it in our being. So how many of you
have standing desks? Do you stand at them? It's helpful? Sometimes you do, sometimes-- yeah. So standing desks and ergonomic
chairs are good ideas, but they're external
fixes to the problem of our ancient bodies
in this modern world. So I want to dig a little deeper
into the nature of your bodies. I want to talk about
what you're made of, the ground substance
of your body, and how to take care of that. I want to talk about the
architectural principle that holds you together,
and about perception, and what perception
has to do with posture. And then I'll give you
some advice about sitting, since you insist on doing that And we'll talk about, in the
end, exercise and movement and the future of
the human body. So that's my plan
for this little talk. And I wanted to share with
you a little about where I'm coming from. This is my teacher. Her name was Ida Rolf. And she was a biochemist. But her passionate interest
was in human structures. So she developed
a manual therapy she called structural
integration. And so her students and her
clients nicknamed it Rolfing. She didn't much like
that, but now most of you have heard of Rolfing, yes? So this therapy looks at the
body as living architecture which has been
distorted and diminished by accidents, and
compensations, and poor use, like sitting all
day without moving. She viewed pain as the
product, mostly the product of imbalance structure. She had two revolutionary
ideas for the 60s. This expresses one of them. It's her logo. She thought that the body-- she taught that the body
is organized by gravity just like this building
is organized by gravity. So if the body
could be balanced, then gravity wouldn't
tear the body down but would in fact actually
contribute to health. So that was her first idea. Her second idea is that the
body's connective tissue is plastic. It's able to change. So through
manipulation, she found that she could restore
balance to structures that had become distorted and twisted. She was the first to
recognize the importance of connective tissue,
what we now call fascia. She died in 1979. But the first
research conference about fascia, the
fascia congress, wasn't held until 2006. It happened at Harvard,
which was exciting for us body workers. But it was also attended
by many researchers from around the world
who had become interested in this aspect of the body
that had mostly been ignored. So this is a simple
metaphor to share with you how fascia pervades your body. The rind of the orange is like
an all over body suit just under your skin. If we peeled off all the skin,
we would see a fascia layer. It's literally a body suit. It contains everything else. And underneath that are
the segments of the orange, represent the various organs and
muscles and larger structures that each have a containing
membrane, as well as blood vessels, and nerves, and bones,
all have a wrapping of fascia around them. And all of this
fascia is continuous. And the little orange
bits inside the segments, you know how your fingers get
sticky when you eat an orange-- so those little bits
represent cells. So each cell in your body
has its own fascial membrane. So it's been suggested
that if you took out everything else from the
body except the fascia, you'd still have a
recognizable human shape. This is an 18th century
painting of a dissection. It hangs in the Wellcome
Library in London. So until recently, anatomists
stripped away the fascia and discarded it so they could
look at the interesting things, the liver and the brain and the
circulatory system and so on. And that was good. We needed that. But what it did was
perpetuate the idea that your body is made up
of an assemblage of parts, rather than that it develops
out of wholeness, which I'll talk about a little more later. This photo is an endoscopic
image of living fascia. It's magnified 130
times, and it's the work of a man named
Jean-Claude Guiberteau. He's a French microsurgeon. He uses endoscopy in his work. So this means putting
little cameras and lights and microscopes inside
the living tissue. So he has been so awed by what
he saw that he's developed a collection of these images. And I can give you his
web site after the talk. Appreciate these
geometric forms. The immune system--
sorry, the fascia system is now being
studied the same way that the immune system and
the circulatory system and all the other systems
are being studied. So there are three main
constituents of fascia. One is collagen. It's
like protein fibers which, when they're woven
tightly together, have the strength of steel. There are also elastic
fibers that you could stretch to 100%
of their capacity, and then they could relax back
without deforming their shape. And the third constituent
is a watery matrix, something like egg white,
kind of mucousy stuff. And they're swimming
in their cells like immune cells, and fat
cells, and nerve cells. So this was very interesting
to us in the body work world, that there were nerve
cells in fascia. We knew from doing
Dr. Rolf's work that there was some
kind of communication through the fascia. But we had all kinds of other
ideas about what was doing it. And there are actually sensory
nerve fibers in the fascia. In fact, estimated six times
as many nerve fibers in fascia as in muscle. So when you think you're moving
through your neuromuscular system, it's actually
the fascial system that is allowing that to
come into full expression. A lot of these nerve
sensors in the fascia are called interoceptors. That means they tell you what's
going on inside your body. So when you feel bloated, or
you have a tickle or an itch, or you have sexual
arousal, or air hunger, all of these kinds of
sensations in your body are because of the
interoceptors in your fascia. So you might think
that interoception is the way you know
that you have a body. A lot of different
textures fascia can assume. It can have the
transparency of glass, so your corneas are fascia. Your breasts are fascia,
full of lots of fat cells. When you have a scar, that's the
collagen fibers woven tightly together to protect the wound. It's also very fluid,
gelatin like, slidey-- slippy-slidey. So when we watch our most
beautiful athletes and dancers, what we're seeing is not just
their superb neuromuscular system, but also the health
of their fascial system. Note the last point. Stress and immobility
dehydrates your fascia. It makes it stiff. It makes you stiff. So stress and immobility
are the characteristics of the modern workplace. The powerful leaping
of a kangaroo is due not just to its
powerful leg muscles, but to the high percentage
of fascia in its body. So when those elastic fibers
stretch through movement, it stores kinetic energy
which is then released and the kangaroo rebounds. Interesting thing here is
that our bodies, human bodies, have the same high percentage of
fascia in them as the kangaroo. So if you think about
that, it's clear that we're made for leaping and
running, and not for sitting. This is a video, one of
Jean Guimberteau's videos of living fascia. You'll see the yellow fat
cells along the bottom, tendonous material, the college
across the middle of the slide. And a blood cell,
the blood vessel you might be able to see moving. So where that's
happening is just below your elbow
on your forearm. So find that place on yourself. I'm going to play
the video again. But if you make
just a pinch of skin with your finger pads,
just a gentle pinch of skin and pull up on it, and
when the video starts you could slowly let
down on the pinch and then draw up again
as the video goes up. Now it's coming down, you're
letting go of your pinch. And you're pulling up. These images are so amazing. So that kind of shape
shifting is going on inside your body with every
movement that you make-- while you're
breathing, while you're brushing your teeth, while
you're rolling over in bed. This is another one of
Jean Guimberteau's videos. And it takes place
in the same place, but it's a little different. It's magnified 10 times. The other one was
magnified 20 times. And this one is also a
deeper place in the forearm. So take the palm of one
hand and press it lightly against the skin just
below your elbow, as if those two layers of skin
were adhered to each other. And then what you do is
just a gentle pulling down of this skin toward your wrist. And you might be able to
feel that you're not just pulling on skin, but other
layers are moving underneath. And then draw up toward your
elbow with that same thing. So that's what's going on here. The bubbles that you see are
because of the difference in pressure between
what's going on inside the incision and the air
outside, pressure differential. Notice the changing direction
of these microfibers, how they keep
re-orienting themselves, changing their polarities. It's like a crystalline
kaleidoscope inside you. So you keep your fascia
healthy by moving. And the important thing is
movement in many directions, so multi-directional movement,
not forward movement that's repetitive. So if you had a choice
between going to a dance jam, or working out on an Exercycle,
for the benefit of your fascia you need to go dancing-- probably for other reasons, too. Whole body stretches
are good for the fascia, so that pandiculation
that we did before. As long as it's a whole
body stretch and not just this kind of stretch
of isolated muscles that people do. That's a different thing. Gentle bouncy movements, so
if you went folk dancing that would be good for your fascia. Not big leaps, but
just gentle bouncing. Micromovements-- we'll be
doing some micromovements in a few minutes. These are small movements that
you can barely, barely see. Certainly you can feel them. Massage can help. All of these suggestions
don't cover strength training or aerobic training. You need that too, of course. This is fascia specific. This image of an embryo
is at development about four to five weeks. But fascia emerges in
embryonic development earlier than this, at about two weeks. So fascia researchers
suggest that muscles, bones, organs, in fact
all other living tissue, may in fact be specializations
within the unified medium of fascia. So that's a very
different way of thinking about how we evolved
than the idea that we're just a bunch
of parts stuck together. Everything in the fascial system
is interconnected and fluid, and you can feel this
when you breathe. So let's try. So if you would
just be comfortable, and if you feel like
closing your eyes sometimes that helps you feel
your body more readily. Just go inside and feel the
sort of swelling and settling of your chest as you
inhale and exhale. Just a little expansion,
and then diminishment. And you could feel it, probably
also in your belly a little, puffing up and letting go. And then turn your attention
to your shoulder blades, and see if you can feel
them sliding maybe apart from each other, maybe up
a little bit as you inhale and resting down. Shoulder blades move apart
so the rib cage can expand. And then drop your awareness
down into your forearms. There are two bones in your
forearms, in each forearm. And there is a
membrane in between. So imagine that membrane
swelling and settling as you breathe in and out. And then come down
into your lower legs. See if you can go that far
down and feel your fascia moving as you breathe, in
between the lower leg bones. It's interesting
that the place where you feel a sensation
in your brain, is the same place that
you imagine a sensation, the sensory cortex. So it doesn't matter if you
think you're only imagining it. It's good enough. Drop down into your soles. See if you can feel
that when you inhale, there's the slightest
pressure down into your shoes. And let yourself imagine
that tensile matrix that we saw earlier. Imagine it throughout
your whole body, all those little fibers
changing their orientation. Thank you, you can
open your eyes. Could you feel a bit? Imagine you felt? But it will be a while
before our culture learns to see the body as
continuous and connected. We think of the body
in bits and pieces. When we have a pain, we
blame it on an isolated part. We exercise isolated,
separate muscles. We do lap pulls and ab crunches. And when we want to
portray images of power, we just add more
and stiffer parts. This model suggests
a way of conceiving how the body is held together. So it is, you're seeing
struts held in place by a network of tension. In terms of the body,
the elastic lines are your soft tissues and
the struts are your bones. Ideally, your bones are floating
in a network of soft tissue. This architectural principle
is called tensional integrity, or as Buckminster Fuller
called it, tensegrity. And you can see
that if you change the tension in just
one of those strings, the whole structure
would change its shape, change its orientation
a little bit. And that's true inside us. That's how we work, too. Even the vertebrae, the
individual vertebrae in your spine, can
float and respond inside this network of tension. But we don't think
of it that way. We talk about the
spine as a column. On the right, you see
a tensegrity tower. It's a sculpture by a man
named Kenneth Snelson, in the Washington National
Mall in Washington. And you can see that it's more
similar in quality to the spine than the Washington Monument is. So how do we learn to behave
more like biotensegrities and less like stacks of bricks? Well, it's helpful to
think or imagine back to prehistoric times,
how the body might have functioned in those days. So our prehistoric ancestors had
to move their bodies in order to survive. So you could imagine
what kind of movements they might have had to do
to kill their breakfast or herd their cattle. So they'd be crouching,
or throwing, or digging, or lifting, carrying
stuff, and none of that would be predictable
or repetitive. So constantly changing
movement, large body movements. Also, they would be traveling
in bare feet, or skins, on uneven terrain which had
pebbles and thorns in it. So their feet had
to be extremely mobile to navigate the ground. And that mobility in
the feet would play up through the whole
fascial system, so every joint in
the body would have to respond to the
movements of the feet. So that's an example of
micromovement in a sense. And these movements,
large and small, must have kept their
fascia healthy. I like to think that, anyway. And they had to have a panoramic
view of their surroundings. They had to have
360 degree awareness through all their senses-- through hearing, sight,
olfactory, feeling sense. And it's as if they had eyes
in the backs of their heads. But with us, we're
always looking forward-- this way, this way, forward. So let's practice something. I want to see if you can feel
the benefit of having a more broad peripheral awareness. So you need to stand up again. So you could pandiculate. It's a good idea. There are certain noises
that go with pandiculation. Yeah, it could be louder. OK, so find a detail somewhere
around you-- not a person, but something you could look at. Could be the screen, or it could
be exit sign, or a thermostat, some detail that you could
gaze at with a lot of intensity of vision that you have to
write a report about this thing, and it's due tomorrow and
your job depends on it. So really look. Look hard. Keep that. Keep that intensity. And notice your breathing. Notice where it's
located in your body. Notice the relationship between
your torso and your neck and jaw and head. Notice the sensation
in your eyes. Notice where your
weight is on your feet, and how big you feel in general. OK, so relax that. Just shake it out. We want to neutralize ourselves
so we can do something else. Thank you. So now, put your
fingers out like this. Wiggle your fingers. And you can see, peripherally,
still looking at me, you can still see what's
beyond your fingers. You could put your
hands down now. And just keep
looking so that you have a sense of the
periphery of the room. And you also notice something
about what's above your head. You can feel it. And because you walked in here,
you know what's behind you. You have a kinesthetic
memory of what's behind you. So you have a broad
perceptual awareness. So I want you to see if
you can keep that, and then turn and look at
your same object that you looked at before. And I'd like to suggest some
things that may or may not be different. They're different when I teach
this to different people. So I think it's
possible that you're breathing lower in your
rib cage, not so high in your upper chest. I think your eyes feel
softer, and that you feel less merged with that object. There's more of a
sense of you being here and it being over there. Also, it's possible that you
see the object in its context, so your report is going
to be more interesting. So great, thank you very much. I like to think of this as
tensegrity of perception. So what I mean by that is, by
having these little feelers out in all directions, you
establish a virtual network in the space, a virtual
network of potential directions of movement through
the space that actually helps support your body. I think you've felt that you had
better posture the second time, yes? You were bigger. Yeah, and so this awareness
of our surroundings helps our bodies
open up on the inside as well as on the outside. So we have better posture. We actually have
more strength, which if you stay for the little class
afterwards I can show you that. So picture the movements you
make to get to work, to get up, get your breakfast, go to work. And the movements that you
make while you're at work. It might be different at
Google than it is other places, but generally in offices
your movements are curtailed. You don't have a
lot of movement. Most of it is in
the forward plane. And your perceptions
are narrowed. So I think it's
important for us humans to acknowledge that the
amazing conveniences that we're living with in this
time may actually be diminishing our body's
natural capacity for movement and perception. So we want to change
that, I think. What can we do about sitting
and standing and moving in the workplace now? So an expensive ergonomic
chair is not the answer, because it doesn't
guarantee that you're going to sit in it in a balanced way. This chair, like many, has a dip
towards the back of the seat. So that dip tends to roll
the pelvis back and invite your spine to lean
against the backrest. Most modern chairs
are like this. You slide back. Car seats are the worst. Those bucket seats are
designed to prevent movement. If human spines don't need back
support when we're standing up, why would we need them
when we're seated? Well, we don't, as long
as the pelvis is sitting at the right inclination. So that inclination involves
having a 45 degree-- a greater than 45 degree angle
between the hip and the thigh. So this is Charles. And you can see that
he's sitting more upright on the left and his
weight, some of his weight is being born through
his feet and his legs. About maybe 40% of his weight
is born through legs and feet. And so he has a
broader base of support when his thighs are
slanting down hill that way. And that forward
inclination of the pelvis creates an automatic
lift through the spine. In the other picture, where he's
sitting in a lower chair, that invites his pelvis to roll
back like I was describing modern chairs are inviting
you to do, in these chairs right here. And so he's sitting
on his tailbone, on his buttocks flesh. His whole torso is compressed. He looks duller. His head is poking forward. So let's practice this. So unfortunately, these
chairs don't raise and lower. But we can make do. I think you can feel
something if you don't mind sitting more forward on them. So imagine it's a bench or a
stool, not a chair with a back. Yeah, already that's better. See? You can do it. All right, so on purpose,
I'd like you to roll back. Just roll this part
of your anatomy back, like Charles is doing
in the right hand picture. And notice what happened
to your spine and torso. You compress. You stay there. I want you to really feel it. So you're sitting on
your buttocks flesh, maybe on your tailbone. Take a nice full easy breath. Yeah, so it's like really
not easy to do that. But we get used to this. And we drink a lot of
coffee because we're not getting enough oxygen. All right, stay there. One more time. One more thing I'd like you
to notice how creative you feel in that position. And then just from there,
roll your pelvis forward. So you can think of
it different ways. You can think of
having your pubic bone farther from your bellybutton. You can think of having your
tail moving more and back behind you. And you're sitting now on
the flesh of your thighs, rather than the flesh
of your buttocks. Does that make sense? And you feel there's
more weight on your feet. So you have more support, yeah. So I'd like to take this
a little bit farther. If you don't mind, reaching
underneath yourself find your left sit bone-- it's just in front of
the gluteal flesh-- and your right sit bone. And while you're back
there, find your coccyx. Just touch it so you really
really know where it is. OK, so now stay
seated on your thighs and look down Inside yourself. You'll see that those three
points make a triangle. Does that makes sense? Can you feel that? Nod your head. These lights are
glary, I can't see. All right, so that triangle is
called the posterior triangle of your pelvic floor,
or the anal triangle of the pelvic floor. And notice now if you
roll back and sit more towards the buttocks,
that that anal triangle got smaller, more compressed. So that area is at the
bottom of your gut tube. It connects all the
way up to your throat. So how well you can digest
your lunch when you're in that compressed position? Let's roll forward
now, once more. And I'm going to take this
still a little bit farther. This is a female pelvic
floor, but the anatomy of the muscular apparatus
is pretty much the same for all genders. And you notice that triangle
I outlined, the anal triangle. And notice at the bottom,
the anal coccygeal ligament. That's a little
tiny slip of fascia between your anal
sphincter and your coccyx. So we're going to experiment
with a micromovement of that. So you need to be
sitting comfortably upright on your thighs, not
leaning back on the backrest. And see if you can draw your
coccyx just a few millimeters closer to your anal
sphincter, without disturbing anything else. That's good. You're doing it. All right, so let's undo it. So go back the other way. See if you can just imagine
that ligament lengthening, your coccyx lengthening back. OK, so I wish you
could see yourselves, because there's this-- you're all sitting
with nice posture, but there's this diminishing. Maybe you could feel it inside
yourself, deep inside your-- anybody? Let's do it again. You might feel it. So be open and big and on
your thighs, on your feet. Just move the coccyx forward
towards the anal sphincter. And there is just a slight
shriveling up inside. And then reverse it. Go the other way. So there's a difference in
what happens inside your body when there is tension
around this area. Most of us have
fallen on our coccyx, or had some kind of injury
to the pelvic floor some time in our life. And yet we don't speak of it,
except jokes on late night TV. It's important to
think about it. The interoceptors
in your fascia help you feel that subtle
change in your posture that happens because
of your tail space. So I can't resist
talking about this. It's in the news, right? This thing. I've been teaching
sitting for a long time, and I've wondered why it
is that it's harder for men to comfortably be seated
upright in the pelvis-- harder for men than women. So I've been asking around,
and what people have told me is that there can be
an uncomfortable friction between the skin of the scrotum,
the underwear, and the jeans. So all of that kind of rubs
together like layers of fascia. So in order to sit
upright, it would require a manual
adjustment you're not going to make in public, right? So men have also told
me that underwear that supports the genitals
in a more forward position makes it easier to sit
upright in the pelvis. So I'm not going to tell you
what kind of underwear to wear, guys-- really not. But I will tell you that the
orientation of your pelvis makes a huge difference to the
decompression of your spine and to your posture
going forward. So take a look at old men
walking down the street, and notice they
have no tail space. I promise you, they don't. OK so, here if you
can see there's a blue cushion that Melanie
is about to sit down on. It's a disk about this big. And you blow it up with
the air, but not very much. So it's not bouncy, it's more
like sitting on a waterbed. So when she sits on it, there
can be a subtle reverberation. You might see a subtle
reverberation up her spine as her pelvis just sort
of floats on that cushion. So that's actually
helping to pump fluids into those microfibers. That qualifies as
a micromovement. And micromovements are
good for your fascia. There are new articles every
day about the kind of exercise that you can do to maintain
your heart health, your brain health, your longevity. I'm talking about
your fascial health. And sitting is particularly
detrimental for fascia. The hip joint is a ball and
socket joint, like this. And that's great for movement. It's terrible for stability. So when you sit with
your legs at that angle for a long, long hours
without much movement, the fascia around
your hip and down through your legs and thighs
gets tighter and matted and more uncomfortable. So it would be great if, when
you take a little break-- you know, it's recommended
that people who sit go five minutes
every hour, moving. Have you heard that? Every hour you're supposed
to get up and move for five minutes. I think it's
probably hard to do. But if you did it, it would be
better to do this, to do this than to just walk
around, because it's non-directional movement. It's innovative movement. So think about, what if
people did this around Google? It would be just like
taking a coffee break. It's not shameful
to move your body. It's not embarrassing to
do what your body needs. You just simply
have to recognize that your body needs it. And I think you need to
take perception breaks, because looking at a focused
object for a long time induces a sort of
a hypnotic trance. And you know that. You work and work and you think,
well, just one more thing, and then I'll get up. Just have to keep going. So you need to purposefully
break the trance every so often. One way is to put attention
into the soles of your feet. So you could do that right now. Just drop your
attention down there. Feel the skin of your
feet inside your shoes. You could even feel your feet
breathing, like you did before. You could feel a little
cleavages in between your toes. Feel your toenails. But you're still
listening to me, right? But you're also present in
the lower part of your body. I think what happens with
computers and technology so, so often is that
the energy of the being gets drawn up into
this part of your body. I also recommend using
urgency as a trigger to widen your perceptual field. So you know how you develop that
broad perceptual field earlier? OK, so let's try something. If you just take out
your phone right now. Just reach down
and get your phone. OK, so notice your
state the minute you have the phone in your hand. Can you feel what
I'm talking about? It's like, you go there. It's like, you disappear
into the phone. So the phone could be a cue. A device could be a cue. So keep the phone in your
hand, but take a moment to widen your perceptual field. So however you do
that, especially think of the space behind your body. That really helps. And keep that space
and then check Twitter. You can do it. It might slow you
down a nanosecond. I don't think that's bad. But it's a way of being
present with your device, rather than present
inside your device. So when you're not at work,
or maybe even when you are, because you're here,
you could sit on the floor. And the benefit of that is, it
opens up those hip joints that have been compressed
and restricted by sitting on too many chairs. You could have lunch
sitting on the floor. You could watch a movie. And unless you
override the impulse, you pandiculate every
morning when you wake up. It primes your body. It primes your fascia
for the day ahead. So it's good. Don't override it. If we're going to persist
doing sedentary work, we need to become less
self-conscious about our need to move. So here, see if you can see
the way the movement translates through her legs and
hips, up into her spine. All of them. The burdens on their heads
help decompress the spine so spinal movement
is more accessible. But notice the harmony in
the rhythm of these people. I think we need to create
a culture, environments and designs, that are
kinder to the human body than the hard flat
surfaces and square rooms that we've boxed ourselves into. Google is known for innovation. So I'd like to leave
you with a challenge. I hope you can use your designed
thinking, your engineering, to help redesign the
way the world works so that people might have
to move more in order to do their work. I don't know how
this could happen. But I think you do. And if you move more,
two things will happen. It generates creative ideas,
and it improves your posture. So the last screen is just some
websites for more information. You can learn about
fascial fitness. I just briefly glossed over it. The man's name, Robert
Schleip, is one of-- he's a Rolfer in Germany. He's also one of the
foremost fascia researchers. So he's developed a program. Then there's Jean Claude
Guimberteau's website, in case you're interested
in those images. The International Association
of Structural Integrators lists about 17
different schools which teach the legacy of Ida Rolf, so
you can learn more about that. And my website will tell you
when my new book is happening. And I have a newsletter,
but I don't send it out very often so you don't get
inundated by stuff by me. Thank you so much. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Oh, there's a question. That's great. AUDIENCE: Just a
question So you know, when you said sit
forward, I did that. And I feel good and it's up. But I get tired, and
then when I lean back I feel like I'm resting again. So how do I not feel like
I'm using all my muscles or something to sit forward? MARY BOND: Well, you
will be using muscles that you don't use because
you're leaning back habitually. And I don't know how long
you've been leaning back. AUDIENCE: Many decades. MARY BOND: But a
decade or two, right? And so you need to work
through that, little by little. I think of titration,
when you just go drop by drop
to make a change, rather than expecting yourself
to sit upright all the time. But it really will help to
open up that tail space, and to get a broad support. AUDIENCE: So in
practice, I should just practice a little bit? MARY BOND: Just do it a
little bit, and sit back. Maybe you could
associate sitting upright with certain tasks, and leaning
back with other kinds of tasks. AUDIENCE: OK, and
then try and bias myself more towards sitting up. MARY BOND: Yes, of course. And exercise. Go dancing. AUDIENCE: Can I have a
prescription for that? MARY BOND: Mm-hm. Yeah. I'm glad you felt it. And it does take a little
bit of a sincere desire to make that change. And also, in movie theaters
you have to just lean back, because otherwise no
one can see around you. Yeah, there's one. AUDIENCE: I'm one trend behind. I still use the ball. I was just curious what
you think about that. MARY BOND: Sitting on a ball? Yeah, well that cushion I
showed you, the cushion-- that's available. You search for it,
you'll find it. So that was my solution,
because the problem with sitting on a ball is
it makes you sit like this. So I think it's better
for the hip joints not to be stuck in
that wide position. And also the ball tends to
roll back a little too much. So I really like that
cushion idea, because it's almost like sitting on a ball. AUDIENCE: What's
the cushion called? MARY BOND: It's
called disk o sit. And it's on Amazon. Disk o sit, yeah. It's a desk on which you sit. AUDIENCE: You were talking
about having peripheral vision, and as a glasses
wearer, I wonder if you have any thoughts
or insights on contacts versus glasses being-- like, I definitely find
my awareness is much more, like when this is all blurry. So I wonder if you
had feelings on that. MARY BOND: For sure. I wear glasses, too. But I notice that--
and this thing that I taught you is one of the
most important things I ever teach anybody, is this
awareness of the space, especially the space behind you. There's something
magical about that, that makes you feel supported. And I don't think it matters
whether you wear glasses or not. I mean, the glasses
do focus our attention towards that forward gaze. But that doesn't mean
we can't be aware. And you felt the effect, right? AUDIENCE: Yeah. MARY BOND: Yeah? There's an effect. That's what matters. AUDIENCE: OK, yeah. MARY BOND: Yeah. Oh my gosh, lots of questions. I'm going to go over here first. AUDIENCE: So I've heard over
the years sort of two competing notions of posture. And you touched on
one very nicely, which is this tensegrity
idea, that the body is a dynamic system supported by
elasticity and by structure. And then a second one that talks
about this kind of rootedness, where you're-- MARY BOND: Stacks of blocks. AUDIENCE: Stacking
your bones and trying to make sure that
you're well supported through your skeleton. Are those actually
contradictory? Or is there some underlying
principle behind them both? MARY BOND: I don't-- I like to think
that they both work. But if you could have
a stack of blocks that was floating in
a tensegral apparatus, wouldn't that be better
than just compression, block upon block upon block? So I think Ida Rolf's
idea was stacks of blocks. You saw it in her logo. And she also talked a lot
about Buckminster Fuller and tensegrity. So she had both things
happening when she taught us. And I think she just
had it both ways and hadn't integrated them. And I think that's still true. And I know that there are times
when I'm a stack of blocks and I can't help it. But if you just move more
towards the conception that you're a tensegrity,
I think already that makes a change in
how you embody this flesh. And maybe I'm being too poetic. AUDIENCE: I think
this is hard, and I've wrestled with it myself. MARY BOND: Yeah, so both
and, is what I'd say. But go towards the tensegrity
side as much as you can. And did you
understand what I said about the awareness of space
being a way of perceiving tensegrally? Does that make sense to you? I can't see you very well. Are you nodding your head? OK, great. Thanks. AUDIENCE: So you've made
me feel a little hostile towards my desk chair. MARY BOND: Good. AUDIENCE: Is just adding
a cushion sufficient if it's tipped back like that? Or what else should I get? MARY BOND: Well, I
like those cushions. It doesn't work for everybody. But I've tried every kind of
little chair thing you could find, because I write books. And I've found that having that
cushion that moves a little bit is beneficial. There are chairs that move. They're very expensive. They are like a spring,
and you can find them. What else you should do is,
bring your headphones and jam for five minutes once an hour. I'm serious. AUDIENCE: But like, look
for a chair that's flat? MARY BOND: Well, the chair
should be at a height, if I can pantomime
this, that your hips are higher than your knees. And the more high, the better. So the more you perch
rather than sit, the better, because
that invites your pelvis to roll forward which gives
you a lift through your lumbar spine and on up through
the rest of you. You could email me. Send me a picture of your
chair, and I answer email so if you're struggling and you
say, should I buy this chair? AUDIENCE: Thanks. MARY BOND: Yeah. AUDIENCE: So is just
standing all day at your desk healthier than sitting at your
desk all day, with no motion? MARY BOND: You're going to
move more if you're standing, I think. Maybe not. What I have at my kitchen sink,
which is the place where I stand the most if I'm-- and also I have a platform for
my computer that's on a shelf. So it's like a standing desk. And both of those places I've
put a pebble back doormat. Have you seen those? Doormat made of pebbles. So that allows your feet a
little sensory experience, gives you a little movement. There are more and
more things coming through the internet
of standing desks with different kinds
of wobble boards. And there's one that
looks like a skateboard, so you're going like this. I don't know how it would be. You have to tell me. AUDIENCE: Having
stood extensively as well as using many
chairs, the chair is keeping you from your
normal fidgeting effectively. And I think that's
why standing works so well, because so many of
us tend to shift from one leg to another, lean one
way and then the other. And the chair largely
prevents that movement, while standing allows it. Just standing, otherwise-- MARY BOND: Yeah, you can fidget. Yeah, so fidget away. Thank you, that's really
true about fidgeting. AUDIENCE: About those last
two videos you showed? MARY BOND: Yeah. AUDIENCE: What I observed most
distinctively between them is, the earlier video,
the developing world video with the women carrying
things on their head, besides the fact that they
may have been functioning more efficiently just
because they had to, because of the weights
on their heads, they were walking in what
you might call, you know, Caribbean time. They were walking
at the rate that was comfortable for
their body, so their body resonated naturally. The people in the urban video
were rushing, but not jogging. So they were accelerating
a normal walk beyond the natural speed of
a normal walk, at which point the body's resonant frequency
doesn't match it anymore. We are embarrassed to jog,
because people get upset. They will think that
something is wrong. Yet we feel the need to
get somewhere faster, because we're on the clock. That is what I feel like
is what drives that. Some of the people clearly
had health problems that made it difficult. MARY BOND: Well, sure. Sure, but I've showed
the difference, just so you see that. Quality of experience,
your mirror neurons pick up on the
movement that you look at. So first, about
the first video, I have a hunch that it was
slowed down slightly. It was a little
bit in slow motion. So it wasn't quite accurate. And the other one, if any
of those people jogged they would be jogging
on hard surfaces. So there's no rebound,
no give from the earth. So it would be jarring to
the spine and the whole body. So I'm all for it, for more
of us running to do things. But we've paved paradise. So I don't know the answer but
I'm suggesting that you do, collectively. Yeah. Thank you so much
for those questions. That was great. [APPLAUSE]
