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Episode 80: Posture Panic Pt. 3 with Author Dr. Beth Linker, PhD
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Welcome to Episode 80 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah are joined by Dr. Beth Linker, PhD. Beth Linker, a former physical therapist, is an author and professor of the history of science, disability, and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America, reveals the little-known and surprising origins of our fears and ideas about poor posture. In this episode you will learn:
- How Dr. Linker transitioned from physical therapist to professor and author, and (then also) yoga teacher
- Where her interest in posture first began
- The most surprising discovery she made while writing her book on the history of posture
- The origin of physical therapy
- That the modern postural yoga practice is not a centuries old practice
- How opinions about good and bad posture influence the judgment calls made on people’s competence and character
- The relationship between posture-shaming and disability discrimination.
- The difference between posture correction and posture modification
- The value of posture modification for different individuals
- What a positive shift might look like with regards to changing society’s attitudes toward posture
- inactivity.
Sign up here for our FREE Live Strength Class (and sample our Bone Density Course) on September 19th at 8:30am PT/11:30am ET with free replay!
Reference links:
Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America, by Beth Linker
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice
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Transcript
Introduction to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts.
Modern Tools for Movers and Teachers
00:00:22
Speaker
Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist, and I'm here with my co-host, Laurel Beaversdorf, yoga teacher and strength coach.
Q&A Preview for Lift for Longevity Course
00:00:43
Speaker
Hello. Laurel, what exciting thing is coming up for people on Tuesday, October 1st at 8.30 AM Pacific and 11.30 AM Eastern?
00:00:53
Speaker
It's our Q&A for bone density course, Lift for Longevity, which is launching. It is closing actually October 6th, and we start up on October 15th, I believe. But you are last chance on October 6th, so we're holding a Q&A to answer all of your burning questions.
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, if you haven't had your questions answered yet by the 10,000 pieces of emails you've received or the many social posts, hopefully, that you've seen, if you're still like, where do I get the equipment? How is this going to work? I've got this problem. Can I do this? What do you guys think about blah, blah, blah? Frankly, if you just want to come hang out with us and shoot the shiznets, we'll be happy for that too.
00:01:34
Speaker
So that's our free Q&A for you guys. And if you're interested in our course, our bone density course 2024, it's time now that you're listening to this. If you're like, do I do this? Do I bite the
Course Development Challenges
00:01:48
Speaker
bullet? The answer is yes, because you really don't have any other reason not to at this point, right? If you know that you want to improve your strength, if you know that you want to improve your balance, if you feel like
00:02:03
Speaker
You've been doing a lot of yoga, a lot of Pilates, a lot of resistant bands and pink dumbbells and cardio dance and all of these things. Or maybe you've been strength training, but you've never followed a program consistently. Or never lifted barbells consistently. Maybe you've been strength training with kettlebells, right? When we first made this course, there was a whole chunk of time where Laurel and I were trying to cram everything into it. Do you remember, Laurel? We were like... In the planning process, we wanted it to be everything to all people.
00:02:31
Speaker
We were like, we're going to put kettlebells and we're going to use a landmine and we're going to do this thing and we're going to do that thing. And then finally we realized there was no way to do that and not lose our minds. So we were like, you know what, barbells. The passion was initially barbells. I'm like, let's simplify the hell out of this.
00:02:46
Speaker
distill it to this really potent journey. And I'm so glad we did that. And I think the 90 trainees from last year are so glad we did that as well. 100%. In fact, so many of them are so glad they are actually joining us this year again.
Course Features and Improvements
00:03:00
Speaker
We just had another one sign up.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I'm glad they are because we've made some improvements. We are now teaching on 48 separate days instead of on 24 different days. So there's two days a week that you can take the live classes. And we have created plyometric music videos to your favorite 80s hits, which are beyond silly and joyful and just so much fun. It's going to be amazing again.
00:03:26
Speaker
It's going to be great. Yeah. We, we learned so much from that first time around. We've made some modifications. We took a lot of the feedback from the prior cohort.
00:03:35
Speaker
And we're here to like do it again, but even better. So if you are still on the fence, fence sitters, here's what you get. Is that a kind of dinosaur? Fence sitteritis. No, it's fence sitters. Your sitter of fences. You sit on the fence. Yes. Or if you have fence sitteritis, you get, as I said, 48 live class options. You get recordings of all of the workouts.
00:04:02
Speaker
You also get two bonus courses all about osteoporosis and strength training 101 which will give you a background of vocabulary and knowledge around how to strength train. There are strength exercise demo videos which reinforce what you'll be learning in the live classes.
00:04:20
Speaker
There are warm-up videos. There is just so much, but probably the most surprising bonus, I think, well, I was surprised, is the Facebook group. So you get to be a part of the Facebook group where you can get feedback on your form, even if you can't attend live or even if you can't attend live and you just want more feedback on your form. You can interact with all of the other participants in the course.
00:04:45
Speaker
and share how it's going and get support from the community. And you're always going to, after you purchase the course, own the content yourself. You will always have access to it. And you will always be welcome to our Facebook community. So you will continue to be able to interact and feel a part of this amazing group of people who are on a similar journey with you.
00:05:11
Speaker
So the value of this course is, of course I'm biased, but I have to say I have not seen anything out there yet to this day that comes with as much value
00:05:24
Speaker
in terms of what you will learn and what you will take away from it and what you will be able to continue to do with it after you purchase it one time. And then the community of people that you are going to encounter. You know, we are going to probably do the course again. We can't say exactly when it's going to be at least six months, six months from now. So you don't get to sign up for this any day of the week. We highly recommend that if you are interested and still sitting on the fence, that you jump off the fence and you jump into our course, head to the link in our show notes to sign up.
00:05:55
Speaker
Agreed. All right, so Laurel, we have a very, very special guest on the
Interview with Dr. Beth Linker
00:06:00
Speaker
pod today. We sure do. We were thrilled to nab her. It felt like a get. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? A get. It felt like a big get. Our guest today is Dr. Beth Linker. She is a former physical therapist, and she is an author and professor of the history of science, disability, and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book entitled Slouch, Posture Panic in Modern America,
00:06:23
Speaker
reveals the little-known and surprising origins of our fears and ideas about poor posture. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, Time, Psyche, the New England Journal of Medicine, and USA Today. We love this book. We read this book, each of us, and had various holy shit moments throughout the reading of this book.
00:06:45
Speaker
And we were so excited to be able to get Beth to come on and talk about the history of posture and how it relates to modern day yoga and Pilates as part of our three part series on posture panic. So this is part three posture panic with Dr. Beth Linker. It's all coming full circle. It's all coming around with the author herself. All right, here it is. Welcome, Beth. Thank you so much for coming on to talk to us. We're very excited to have you here.
00:07:13
Speaker
I'm excited to be here. Your book is, in my opinion, one of the most important books that has been written for the yoga and Pilates industry so far that I can think of as it pertains to especially the physical practice of yoga and this word alignment. And so I was super excited to hear about it when I read the New York Times and I saw your article in the Times and I was like, whoa, this Dr. Beth Linker is saying some stuff that I've been saying.
00:07:44
Speaker
for a while, but I think she has a deeper background on the history of this. And I'm going to get this book. And I texted Sarah immediately. I was like, this is a book I am getting right now. And Sarah was like, we should do a posture series for our next season. I was like, let's do it. And then you heard about our podcast episode.
00:08:07
Speaker
And I couldn't find you on Instagram. But I was a little decoyed. But then one of your friends tagged you and movement logic. And I was like, ah, the author knows about the episode of like, she's gonna listen to it. And then, you know, we were like,
00:08:28
Speaker
I was like, Sarah, let's get her on. I was like, okay, let's do it. And I reached out to you and you agreed to come on. And I was like, this is just perfect. It was meant to be. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yes. So I'm blushing, blushing to the color of the cover of my book. That's awesome. I mean, one of the things that I thought was so fascinating in the book is, and I didn't really put it together.
00:08:58
Speaker
until I read your book, but the way that posture has
00:09:04
Speaker
not just suddenly out of the blue, which is what it felt like to me become some indicator for good health or wellness or all those sorts of things, but how the deep history of it and the religious history and the racial history and the eugenics and all of that mixed into it, into posture. I was like the very beginning of the book. I don't think it was even the book. I think it's like your foreword or something. I was just like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, just every sentence.
00:09:34
Speaker
I agree. I think it should be required reading for all yoga teachers and Pilates teachers. It should be in teacher trainings. I think it's for some probably a difficult thing to hear, but I think it's really valuable as well.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, thank you both for that. That's great praise. And it means a lot. You know, I wrote the book, I didn't necessarily, well, I wanted people, generalist body workers, generalist readers to read it and be able to find the story as interesting as I find it. But I wasn't certain it would reach people like you all.
00:10:13
Speaker
Oh, it did. It did. Yeah. To echo some of what Sarah was saying, it gave credence to a lot of what made me uncomfortable. When I was in the throes of being a posture corrector or an alignment based yoga teacher, and I was constantly correcting people's
00:10:31
Speaker
posture and I felt sort of stuck somehow, but I didn't, you know how when you're in a phase of your life and you're not exactly satisfied, you know you're doing it the right way, but something's very dissatisfying about just the thing you're doing, even though you're doing it the right way. I excelled as an alignment based teacher. I was promoted to teacher training. I was traveling all over the world. I mean, I was doing well, but I just felt
00:10:55
Speaker
kind of frustrated with it, because I was like, something in me was like, this isn't working. This isn't, this isn't something's missing. And then as I was getting out of that, and sort of opening myself up to the influence of other formats, there was this feeling of release, there was this feeling of, oh, okay, it's, this was sort of an idea I was kind of stuck in. And I've been let out of that, that cage.
00:11:19
Speaker
And then when I started speaking out against this idea that we need to be correcting people's posture, I still, I was like, there's something like kind of worse about this than what I'm saying. Like there's something sort of, you know, unfair or unkind about it. And I couldn't really voice any of that feeling because I had no history. I had no way to orient myself in this history of posture and posture correction. And I think of your book a little bit like a kind of a tool for a sort of
00:11:49
Speaker
cognitive proprioception where you're like, I suddenly can think about something that I couldn't think about before and therefore I can orient myself in these feelings that I was having and I kind of know where I am now. And it makes so much sense. You know, I didn't, I didn't know any of the eugenics stuff and I hadn't put together the racism and the sexism. And I mean, of course I had put together the capitalism part because I was making money off of posture correction. And I see that as very prominent, but all of the other kind of sociological issues with it,
00:12:19
Speaker
I was completely ignorant to and I found your book to just be very validating and also, okay, where do we go from here now that this has been put out into the world? So that's why I want as many people to read it as possible.
Yoga Works Teacher Training Insights
00:12:32
Speaker
Were you an Iyengar tradition? I was a yoga works teacher, which was heavily influenced, especially in New York City by the Iyengar method, but is a combination or
00:12:45
Speaker
It was marketed as this more. So I would say in the like early 2000s, and then they kind of shifted toward marketing themselves as a, as a sort of alignment based flow format, but it was marketed as a combination of Ashtanga, which has a lot of issues and Ayengar, which has a separate other set of problematic issues. I have to say, if I would pick one or the other, I would pick Ayengar every single time, but I was.
00:13:12
Speaker
an Iyengar student. I wouldn't say that I was a super dedicated one, but I would pop into the Iyengar Institute in New York City once a week for a while, sometimes fall off the wagon for a bit. But yeah, I did have some good teachers there that were not actually super Iyengar dogmatic though. So that's the thing about it too, right? Is like, you know, there are great teachers in every format that book, the status quo and
00:13:38
Speaker
Sure. They're, they're calling themselves this type of teacher, but they don't necessarily adhere to all of the dogma. But anyway, I just really, I just felt kind of, uh, so validated, I think in reading your book. So thank you for creating that wonderful resource. Yeah. Happy to do so. It only took 10 years. So we want to, we want to hear about this actually deeply, deeply interested. Um, you're our first.
00:14:07
Speaker
professor, I believe, right, Sarah? Is this our first scholar, I believe? For sure. Yeah. I mean, we interviewed one of my teachers from PT school way, way back. Technically he is a PhD. I don't know. But anyway, we're excited about you. Yeah. You've studied something very, very, very deeply and we want to hear about how that went for you. So first of all, let's start. Tell us about your journey.
00:14:36
Speaker
from becoming a physical therapist to a professor and author of this wonderful book, Slouch Posture Panic in Modern America, to a now also trained teacher. Tell us how this journey came about. Yeah, so I came from a family of healthcare providers. My maternal grandmother actually started a nursing home, which was like in this Victorian house, I think in the 1940s, 50s.
00:15:06
Speaker
Her husband had died and so she went off and you know went got nurses training And so then my mother became a nurse and my mom and dad took over that nursing home business so it was just kind of I It was like preordained that I was going to be in health care, but because I was a girl I wasn't going to be a doctor and
00:15:28
Speaker
Cause I grew up in Ohio in a fairly conservative region of Ohio. Um, so physical therapy, this was in the eighties, you know, was like really this, um, up and coming profession. It seemed like it also was very challenging to get into. This was before the days of DPTs and MPTs.
00:15:52
Speaker
And Ithaca College had a, if you applied, you got in as a freshman and as long as you maintained above a B minus GPA, you could finish in four years and you would be a physical therapist.
00:16:09
Speaker
And so I decided quite young to do that. I didn't want to be a nurse because I was afraid of bed pans and also. Who can blame you, frankly? And like giving out pills. And also I also I was just like bucking this like silly gender. Like I just was just really angry about it all. And so physical therapy seemed a little bit even though I think in my class there was like 10 percent men.
00:16:36
Speaker
And everybody thought they were doctors, right? Like they'd walk around in our clinicals and with their white coats and everybody called them, all the patients would call them doctor. And then they would call me nurse. So like the gender stuff just persists. But that was why I went to physical therapy. Were you going to say something, Sarah?
00:16:54
Speaker
No, I just think it's wild that that you got called nurse and they got called doctor. But I think as well, the numbers, it's maybe not that extreme still. But like in my class, it was at least two thirds, three quarters women taking becoming physical therapists. I think it still persists that, you know, if you're going to get some sort of clinical job and you don't want to be a nurse and you don't want to go to med school, that's kind of like
00:17:21
Speaker
an easy place for people to settle in and I think for women in particular to settle in. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that that's true. I also am an Ithaca College alum. The stars are aligning. I know, this is amazing. I graduated in 2003 with a BFA in acting and I got my prereqs just a couple of years ago to attend physical therapy school and I got in.
00:17:50
Speaker
to one in New York City, but I actually decided not to go because I had just had my daughter. And I was like, ah, this isn't going to work. Yeah. So yes, I was taking prereqs while very pregnant and I was still forward. Let's do this. And then I actually had the baby and I was like, no, let's not do this. Let's not do this. So Beth, so then what happened with your journey? So you went to school? Yeah, so yeah, I went to PT.
00:18:20
Speaker
When I was in that program, there was very little room for electives, but I did take a history course and I called my parents again in rural Ohio and I was like, okay, so I'm going to become a history major. And they're like, yeah, what are you going to do with that? I don't think so. And we're not paying for this
00:18:38
Speaker
fancy private school which then was probably like laughable how much it costs compared to today's but we're not gonna pay for this fancy private school you're gonna come back to Ohio go to a you know public school if you want to do history so you can just be a history teacher in high school was basically the talk so I stuck with physical therapy um and then I worked for about seven years after once I got out but along the way I got a master's degree in bioethics I was working at Michigan State University
00:19:08
Speaker
and took advantage of their tuition credits if you actually work there. And then I fell in love with history while doing that master's degree and then got into Yale and they have a history of science and medicine program.
00:19:26
Speaker
And so when I got to Yale, I was in a research seminar, and I didn't know if I should out myself as a physical therapist or not, because it was still very gendered and I wanted to be taken seriously, you know, like I'm a scholar.
00:19:43
Speaker
I remember this class and they're like, okay, you got to do original research. I'm like, well, I kind of like want to figure out how did I end up here? Like I think in the clinic, I would always ask these questions of like, how did we end up here? Like that was always my question. And I think that's why I ended up with history rather than going off and getting a PhD in anatomy.
00:20:04
Speaker
and furthering my specialty, at least clinical specialty. May I cut in and ask you what kind of scenarios were happening that led you to be of the mind of what got us here? Was it the treatment choices? Was it the way that being a PT was as a job? Yeah, that's a good question. The final place I worked was
00:20:28
Speaker
This at Michigan State was this chronic pain facility, but we also treated traumatic brain injury. And it was the height of managed care. So this was in the 1990s. And there was always this concern about how much physical therapy could a person get. You know, it was the very beginning of taking a lot of time to do paperwork.
00:20:51
Speaker
not as much time treating patients. I did find a clinic I always and I remember like looking for because I moved around a lot and I found this clinic and really liked it because they had old-school equipment and like really prized hands-on therapy and you know there were plenty of other places with more cutting-edge equipment where you could like shake and bake patients you know like just
00:21:21
Speaker
put them on like ultrasound, he'd do this machine, that machine, and not actually have to physically, manually treat patients. So this place, this interdisciplinary, we had a psychologist, we had an OT, a speech therapist, a vocational therapist, we had doctor of osteopathy, and we had alliopathic medicine people.
00:21:44
Speaker
So it was great, but it was very gendered as well. And so I think I was really mad that even those doctors were telling me what to do. But I also think managed care. I was like, why? Why are all these people telling me what I can and can't do? How much time I can spend on this thing or that thing?
00:22:08
Speaker
And then also why I was in this interdisciplinary group with a psychologist and he would always come to me, he's like, I think the patients talk to you more than they do to me. Can you tell me blah, blah, blah? And I'm like, I think I'm probably making a third of what you're making and yet I'm doing all this work. So I think I was really frustrated by the fact that there was no upward mobility that I could see.
00:22:31
Speaker
except go into private practice, which seemed really risky with managed care. And the only way to do it is like orthopedics. And what if I didn't want to do orthopedics? And so I just felt like there was no growth.
00:22:48
Speaker
And I felt already at this young age, so I was like 28 because I had finished, you know, like I went through four years, I practiced. I was 28 and I was already feeling stuck in this profession. And also knowing that with chronic pain, it is so like, I think that's when I first kind of felt, but I probably couldn't articulate
00:23:13
Speaker
It is structural problems more than the physical ones. Like the success in chronic pain patients is very difficult. You know, like you don't get a lot of success. Yeah, it's hard. And so all of those reasons, I was like, why am I doing this? Why am I here? How did we get here? What are physical therapists supposed to be doing? Why are they so poorly paid?
00:23:39
Speaker
Why are they not respected? And why do I feel like I'm doing all of this work in this clinical setting on par with all these other people who are more respected and make more money?
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right. That's why I work at a private clinic. So then from there, so then I got a PhD. So I, my first research project, I was like, okay, I guess I'll do the history of physical therapy. I'll like try to figure out what this is. And so I went to the American Physical Therapy Association.
00:24:11
Speaker
down in Alexandria, their boxes, what they had for archives were in a large closet, unprocessed boxes of stuff. And by then it was only like what we call in my profession, internalist history. So history is written by the grand doms of physical therapy and it's very like celebratory and like, look at us and look at what we did.
00:24:39
Speaker
You know, so I had to kind of cut against that and try to figure out how to cut against that. But that project ultimately led me to the posture project because physical therapy started in the First World War. It was a concerted effort of the United States. A lot of progressive reformers in Washington were worried that a lot of disabled soldiers were going to cost a lot of money in pension payments.
00:25:08
Speaker
because that's what Civil War soldiers had, just payouts if you got disabled from war. And so they were like, okay, we'll do rehabilitation medicine, we'll cure, air quotes, we'll cure disability and they'll become wage earners again. And therefore we won't have to pay anything for these
00:25:35
Speaker
at the time men who became disabled because of the war. So it was a policy decision and physical therapists end up being mostly nurses or physical educators. So almost entirely women. And it was a time when orthopedic surgeons, there was a whole group of orthopedic surgeons who were against actually doing surgery, what they would call wet surgery.
00:26:01
Speaker
They were more interested in dry surgery, which is what we think of today as like rehabilitative exercises. So the men were doing this, the orthopedic surgeons, but I think they quickly thought like, well, we're not going to spend this much time. We're not going to spend 50 minutes to an hour with these patients. So we'll get women to do this. And so they started training these women. You know, they were like six month training to become a physical therapist.
00:26:31
Speaker
And so that's how it started. But I was in the archives in Washington, DC, in the National Archives. And so I was looking at the rehabilitation records from World War I. And I opened this box, and just a ton of tracing paper of feet, feet tracings. And I'm like, what is this? They weren't smelly, right? Because they were so old. I mean, I guess it smelled because it's old paper. But all these foot tracings, and it's like,
00:27:01
Speaker
you know, this is this seems really scientific. That's what I love about the history of science, what I do, because it's kind of like, okay, this seems really scientific. And then so then I opened another box and they're like, they had these flat foot boot camps, which is kind of a funny, flat foot boot camps for these soldiers who were
00:27:27
Speaker
designated um to have flat feet and there was just this all of this like
00:27:35
Speaker
ink spilled on how they can cure flat feet, how they can manage flat feet among soldiers. They were really worried that, I mean, it ended up being a war that there wasn't much movement. They were stuck in trenches and they actually had trench foot, which was like all the water and their feet are stuck in water and not moving. But it somehow, like, it was like they created it into this disability.
00:28:04
Speaker
And the flat feet testing was part of the posture testing. And so that's when I had the idea. I mean, I had to finish the dissertation and write my first book before I could go on to write a book about posture, but I had a kind of epiphany around that time. Like, I'm going to write a book about slouch. That's titled Slouch. It's going to be a history of posture. Yeah. So that's the long story.
00:28:28
Speaker
It's very cool. I just, while you were talking, there were like a few things popping into my mind. First of all, when you were talking about wet surgery versus dry surgery, I'm assuming wet surgery means like there's body fluids involved, like blood. That's why it's called wet. So interesting that they're like dry surgery is, you know, do some squats or I'm going to move your leg around and it's still surgery, right?
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, or bracing. They would do a lot of bracing. Bracing, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It would be dry surgery or casting even would be. Yeah, it's so interesting. Imagine how much more money we'd be making if we were called dry surgeons.
Understanding 'Dry Surgery' in Physical Therapy
00:29:05
Speaker
I'm literally sitting here thinking like, I need to make an Instagram post about how I'm a dry surgeon. Yeah. I know. You are a surgeon. You can also do dry surgery. I know. Dry surgeons. Dry surgeon.
00:29:17
Speaker
I think we need to rebrand. Yeah, we need to rename the entire industry as dry surgery. But so interesting as well that something that became, and this is one of those things that we get from your book as well, like something that became like a diagnosis, like flat feet, and still to this day, I feel like, or at least maybe the Vietnam War at least, you could get
00:29:41
Speaker
Um, you know, is it discharge or you just wouldn't even have to serve. Yeah. If you, if you have, uh, and whereas we know nowadays it's like not an issue, it's not a thing. It's a, one of many various totally normal foot positions for a standing foot to have. And it's also fascinating to me. It's fascinating that there's this diagnosis that we're now realizing is not a diagnosis. It's fascinating to me that physical therapy came about because.
00:30:08
Speaker
The government didn't want to pay social security, basically. Yeah. Yeah. It's fiscal conservatives. Yeah. It's wild thinking about what were the drivers behind so many of these things. Yeah.
00:30:22
Speaker
Follow the money, man. Follow the money. Yes. So is the story. Yeah. We just did an episode on DEXA scans that went a little bit like that too. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit how you got interested in yoga and what was happening in your life at that time when you started practicing yoga? And then what made you want to do a yoga teacher training?
00:30:41
Speaker
I've done all kinds of fitness things. I mean, before I went to physical therapy school, I was doing Jane Fonda. I don't even think they're VHS. They were like weird, big thing. I don't remember what they're called, but basically VHS is if any listeners know what that is. So video tapes of Jane Fonda, you know,
00:31:00
Speaker
And then aerobics to yazz during college. And then step aerobics ever. Did you ever do step aerobics? Of course. Step aerobics to yazz, of course. And so I've been in the fitness game for a long, long time. I've seen all the trends and I probably did yoga on and off throughout that.
00:31:22
Speaker
When I was in my forties, I'm in my fifties now. When I was in my forties, that's when I really got into kettlebells, boxing, and I did judo. And when I chipped a tooth in judo, I was like, all right, I'm too old to be doing this nonsense. So that's when I stopped doing judo. And I would do yoga, and I'd be like, ugh, so slow. I'm not getting an adrenaline. I'm like, I'll save that for my fifties. When I have to slow down, I'll do yoga.
00:31:51
Speaker
And I, I've always liked stretching, so I didn't feel like I needed, um, yoga to do that. And I was, I don't know, I was in a, you know, kind of more of like an adrenaline junkie. So then I had a traumatic brain injury in 2018. I fell off a cliff while hiking in Hawaii. Oh God.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, I am recovered. Thankfully, unless you guys think I have a frontal lobe issue you know maybe based on your book I'd say you're fully recovered. If you're not fully recovered you're hiding it very very well. I'm high functioning.
00:32:30
Speaker
So 2018 and like that was a bizarre experience. I think I had started before that doing meditation because like totally stressed out being on a tenure track at a high powered university.
00:32:46
Speaker
So I started doing meditation to try to control stress. So 2018, I had the head injury. I could not read for six months. I had intractable headaches. Another story, another episode. But I went to Kripalu Yoga and I did a five day restorative yoga retreat with a fantastic practitioner called Jess Fry.
00:33:14
Speaker
And I felt like I recovered more in those five days than I had in like the six months prior. And it wasn't about alignment. I mean, restorative yoga, as you know, it's very gentle. It's like mostly meditation, just in different positions. Unless you do a Jengar-styled restore. Yeah, no, it was not that. It was not that. Clearly not. Yeah.
00:33:41
Speaker
Um, and I started to be able to read, tolerate reading after that. So that was before the pandemic. So during the pandemic, you know, I'd always thought like, Oh, I should become a yoga instructor, but only Kripalu. Like they're not very rigid. Like I remember going to the first class there too. And like,
00:33:58
Speaker
whoa, they let you just do whatever you want. Like, usually at the beginning of classes, they're like, do a like a simple pose. And they're like, okay, now just move the bot your body. However, it feels like it wants to move. And I'm like, what? You're supposed to instruct everything you're supposed to be going around telling people like what they're doing wrong and right and they weren't doing it. And that felt very right. And it felt free. And so the beauty of the pandemic was that Crapalo offered online yoga training.
00:34:27
Speaker
instead of having to go up there because I had at the time still two kids at home and like how am I and then this full-time job how am I ever going to go up to Massachusetts and just spend whatever a month and I didn't really want to be in the dorm room either to do this like yoga training so I did it online and that worked I mean it's not ideal because
00:34:49
Speaker
I felt badly for those people who weren't ever bodied workers before, you know, training online entirely. But yeah, it was good and it was enlightening and it was, you know, problematic as all yoga instruction is, especially when they get into the history and everybody thinks they're participating in this like, you know, centuries old practice. And I'm like, dudes, you are not.
00:35:23
Speaker
One of the most common things we hear from women is that barbells are intimidating and they don't think they can use them. At the same time, this same group of people is nervous about balance, falling, losing strength and an osteoporosis diagnosis.
00:35:36
Speaker
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Barbell Training for Bone Density
00:35:54
Speaker
on your practice to ensure your technique is on point and you're selecting the correct weight to lift. Implement impact training, scale to your ability for even more bone building.
00:36:03
Speaker
Ask your questions and join a community of women who are determined to get strong AF. Click the link in our show notes to sign up. We start October 15th and we won't run this course again this year. Everybody thinks they're participating in this like, you know, centuries old practice. And I'm like, dudes, you are not.
00:36:28
Speaker
This is a modern construction. Stop billing it that way. But the instructors didn't really want to, one of them didn't want to hear that. Did you chime in at any point? I did. I was like, everybody's like, oh God, here comes Beth again. We know what she's going to be talking about.
00:36:52
Speaker
I can relate so hard to you right now. I'm kind of that student sometimes too. Did they know your credentials to be speaking about them? Yeah, they did. It's that thing. I mean, as you've experienced Laurel, as I've experienced as a teacher of a training, when somebody is piping up and you don't have enough information to be able to speak to their topic in an intelligent, meaningful way,
00:37:22
Speaker
the sort of easiest, fastest is just to be like, we don't have time to get into that in this training. But I also am familiar with that feeling of being the teacher and being like, Oh God, somebody knows something I don't. What's going to happen? I'm going to lose control of this room. Everyone's going to like mutiny and riot. So I'm just going to shut it down. And I've done that before and I'm not proud of it, but it's like, I'm going to shut it down so that I can keep this thing, keep this train rolling. Right. Yeah. So it's always hard to.
00:37:51
Speaker
in the middle of a training, be able to absorb a concept that
Historical Misconceptions about Posture
00:37:55
Speaker
is so counter to literally the foundations of what you're claiming.
00:38:00
Speaker
Right. But I think that's still just, I mean, you know, ever since, what was the book, Yoga Body, the book that came out probably about 10 years ago, it seemed like, and that's the book where that explained like the physical practice of yoga has a lot more to do with early 20th century practices, physical practices brought in. Yes, there are ancient meditation and all that kind of practices and the hatha yoga perdipica and things like that. But the physical practice that we think of as yoga today in the Western, in Western society, Western countries is not
00:38:31
Speaker
It's thousands of years old. And so I remember the time that book came out, a bunch of people kind of went, whoa, wow. And then everyone just pretended like it didn't happen. Yeah. And it's so nice to hear even that you know that book because when I was in yoga training, I'm like, why is this book also not being assigned?
00:38:51
Speaker
And I think yoga has, I mean, I know from history and any kind of profession who wants its history told, it's usually because they want to have legitimacy. And that's fine. I don't disparage that. But I think the yoga people want to
00:39:10
Speaker
continue to have the claim that they have somehow tapped into this thousand year. And also the consumers want it too. They feel like they want something that's not modern. They want something to escape the modern world. And so to tell them that this is actually quite modern, like somehow cheapens the experience. Right. You probably don't get as many people in your training. I was a teacher trainer for Yoga Works and they actually were very hands off with us.
00:39:40
Speaker
And so we followed some of the curriculum and then some of the curriculum we just didn't. And I had read Yoga Body and read some other books that were very kind of lifting the veil on our perception of what we were actually doing and then what we were actually doing, right? And I would try to bring in some of that and challenge some ideas that the trainees would arrive with or assumptions that they would arrive with. But there was the thing about
00:40:10
Speaker
when you're leading someone else's curriculum. And the curriculum you're leading does come from a company that has stakes in having this legitimacy, which is tied to their bottom line, is that you can't just completely scrap everything and go off on your own. I mean, I didn't feel like that was the right thing to do either. But as I went further into being a teacher training, kind of became a little disenchanted with the style that I was teaching for a number of reasons.
00:40:37
Speaker
I kind of did go rogue on a few topics. And one of those was alignment. So I started directly contradicting what was in the manual and saying like, look, this might be really black and white in the manual. And there might be some value to that in that when you're a beginner, sometimes it's helpful to just be told what to do and what not to do. But I'm here to tell you that if you continue to study this craft and if you continue to learn about the body, you're going to realize that this binary just doesn't hold up when it comes to human movement or human bodies.
00:41:07
Speaker
And I think that that created some, some softening for me too, when I would have occasionally trainees would challenge me on certain things because they had more knowledge than I did, frankly, because I, because I was like, well, the whole curriculum we're standing on right now is built on sand. So tell me what you think, you know, and I kind of tried to foster this, this sense of like, we're all kind of learning from each other in a way that didn't then also disempower. I hope it didn't disempower my position as the teacher, right? And make it sort of feel like, well, what do we even pay for?
00:41:38
Speaker
And I don't think that that's what happened, but I recognize the more and more I needed in my heart of hearts to change the curriculum that I really needed to stop teaching this particular curriculum. It wasn't a match anymore. I see in the yoga world a lot of this sort of, for want of a better way to describe it, good person, bad person,
00:42:03
Speaker
associations with good posture or, you know, doing yoga practices, yoga positions correctly versus in, you know, quote unquote incorrectly. Uh, and also we see in the Pilates world, a very strict, at least in its, in its original form, a very strict adherence to this is right. This is wrong. And they both have an aspirational quality, right? You want to be the person who's good at Pilates. You want to be the person who's good at yoga.
00:42:32
Speaker
How do you see the connection between that kind of aspirational presentation with where we know from your book that our sense of good posture equals a good person? How do you see those two things relating to each other? So in a yoga class or even any kind of body practitioner, why do certain parents tell their kids to stand up or sit up straight? I think underneath that,
00:43:01
Speaker
mandate is a boatload of cultural baggage, real fears, because in any society where there is a lot of disability discrimination, you don't want your child
00:43:22
Speaker
to have to face that, right? I think you guys were talking about the Dowager last last I listened to the last episode. All of these words in our language are already associated with you don't want that to live that fate. So if you're slumped over, there's a lot of concern that it's not only that you're going to have back pain,
00:43:46
Speaker
or that you might be injuring your spine in some way, but somehow you're also look slothful, you look not energized, you look not aware, you look
00:44:01
Speaker
not smart you look you know just all of those things get wrapped up into it and you know there's a long long history of assuming one's interior and intellectual ability based on appearance.
00:44:20
Speaker
It just persists. And this is just one aspect of that larger phenomenon. But I think it's really, it's hard to break because I think everybody wants to believe that somehow their sitting or standing posture means something health-wise. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how willing people are to, I mean, I have had readers, you know, some email saying, but it just looks better.
00:44:50
Speaker
to sit or stand straight. And I kind of want to say, okay, if you want to say that about aesthetics, maybe in art, maybe you want to say that, but what about all the people who can't for no fault of their own?
00:45:09
Speaker
What kind of idea is that perpetuating? Why do we have all of this talk about fat shaming and body positivity? It's just all slouch shaming. Or when people are criticized for the sound of their voice, criticized for the sound of their voice, or this vocal fry situation that
00:45:33
Speaker
overwhelmingly women are accused of having vocal fry. Like different tenors of people's voices are just, I can't stand the sound of her voice or his voice. And these are just subtle forms of cruelty because they speak to aspects of people that they can't change a lot of the time as you point out. I have another question for you. What was the most surprising thing you learned from writing your book?
00:46:01
Speaker
Let me think about that. The most surprising. Well, off the top of my head, I didn't quite know that the male corset industry was as robust as it was in the 1920s and 30s.
00:46:21
Speaker
Amazing. You know, so that was there. That's one little tidbit. It was used obviously to slim the waist, but it was like somehow to make the chest look like more of a barrel chest in sort of contrast to the waist or what was the whole goal there? You know, I think, I mean, they wouldn't have called them corsets, but I'm calling them corsets because the difference between a corset and a surgical brace or a back brace
00:46:50
Speaker
say in the 1920s and 30s was pretty minimal, as it might be today too, right? Like they're using the same materials and the same design techniques. So they were called back braces for men. But what I loved about that story was that I love
00:47:13
Speaker
showing, you know, a lot of people think like, oh, the past is so backward, you know, and but that was like a perfect example of how if you say corset, you're going to think women's wear history of women's, you know, it's going to be very like one sex kind of ideas. But these manufacturers, I mean, they were these men were asking for
00:47:41
Speaker
They call them belts, but they're corsets. They're wearing male corsets. We see that sort of when you said like, oh, this idea that they were so backwards at the time, but we still see on somebody delivering furniture, he's got a back brace on, right? Like somebody doing heavy powerlifting. They've got an entire suit on their body. Like this idea of bracing versus corseting, right? It's more masculine somehow. It's like the choice of the word.
00:48:08
Speaker
but it also has a more medical association so then we can take it more seriously versus a corset is about your vanity and wanting to appear a certain way and that it all, these qualities that are assigned to women after the fact when they're just doing what the only thing they know how to do to get any sort of anything in the world. I think it says something too that back pain, like people are gonna always have pain and they're gonna be looking for ways to try to control the pain.
00:48:38
Speaker
and bracing and back braces was one way to do it. It was also about appearance. I mean, it was one of these things where it like made your clothes lay more, you know, attractively. If you wore them, men cared about that too. It could be a support and it could hide like, say for like scoliosis and depending on what era in history you're talking about and if it would be detected or not,
00:49:05
Speaker
Um, there could be that too. Like maybe I could kind of hide that and not for people to not detect that. I always find it interesting. Like it's hard in history to get at what the average everyday person is doing and thinking, but you can get at it occasionally. And I find.
00:49:25
Speaker
like the tinkering that people do with their own braces or clothing or like the passing that they're, meaning passing as able-bodied, so like straight and good posture. Like, you know, people had all these workarounds, but it is true that appearance mattered a lot. And I would, I don't, it's hard to say more, but it did, it did matter more. I mean, you could be discriminated against so much more easily.
00:49:51
Speaker
in the past based on your appearance or looks than you can now. At least there's a legal system behind you that if you feel like you're being discriminated because of that, you can hire a lawyer and sue somebody. You couldn't until like the 1970s about that.
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah. So that's one of the surprising things. I guess the other surprising thing is just how many posture photos there were in this country. I have a question for you because when I went to PT school first semester, probably third week, we all were told, come in next time in shorts on a sports bra. Cause we're going to take pictures of your posture. And we all stood up on this table at the front of the room.
00:50:32
Speaker
and had a picture taken forward, sideways, backwards. And then there was some amount of comparing pictures and different people's, this was 19, not 19, excuse me. I'm not that old. This was 2015. So it's still going on. I was gonna ask you if you had to do that in your PT. No, and I was in 19. I got my degree in 1992. I am that old. And no, we didn't. You just had to do this in 2015? Yep.
00:51:02
Speaker
Because that way we could learn how to look for posture faults, right? Because the training is still based on this idea that like posture equals pain or like, if you're not in pain now, you will be soon. So let's identify the faults. Like it's this very, like something's wrong. Let's fix it approach, which is pretty standard. I think in a lot of PT schools.
00:51:22
Speaker
And you'll see it in a yoga teacher training as well, right? What's wrong with this shape? Oh, she needs to move her knee over here. Her arm is in the wrong place or whatever, right? This idea we have to keep correcting. The alignment. Yeah. And I think people have a real mix in their head of not understanding that alignment might be just for a specific
00:51:42
Speaker
activity or a specific aesthetic and not doesn't have to be their whole life or like posture being something that they're good at or bad at. I mean, in the clinic just yesterday, somebody came in and they're like, I really want to, I have bad posture. I want to fix it.
00:51:54
Speaker
And it's always hard because then I'm like, okay, how far down the rabbit hole can I take this person? Just give them my book. Yes, there we go. We'll just, I'll get a kickback. Every time I sell one of your books, we'll have the scheme. Yeah, I'll be super rich.
00:52:15
Speaker
Rolling in the dough. I'll be really, really, really rolling in the dough. Beth, what do you see? So if we look at other current posture literature that's sort of floating around, how do you see it fitting in with what you write in your book about posture? I mean, is it just like apples and oranges at this point? What do you see? Well, I'm preparing a talk. I'm giving some talks this fall based on the book.
00:52:44
Speaker
looking again at the NIH page where it clearly says you have to be concerned about your posture. This is the National Institutes of Health, right? Harvard Medical School has a page about how important your posture is in preventing future pain. And it's just more of this historical trend of
00:53:04
Speaker
this message being put out there without real scientific evidence behind it. And there have been the few studies throughout history that have been done. I could probably count on one hand. I mean, today there are more.
00:53:20
Speaker
But, you know, probably from 1900 to 1980s, I can think of about five studies that did demonstrate that there wasn't really any kind of, that posture alignment was not a good predictive factor in back pain.
00:53:40
Speaker
And these studies just go unnoticed. First, they're hard to do because no one wants to do so. Like there was one study in the 1960s or 70s, I want to say, where they studied untreated scoliosis. That's really hard to find untreated scoliosis, right? Yeah.
00:54:00
Speaker
You're supposed to have early detection and then you're supposed to intervene and you know and but they did a study on untreated scoliosis and found that the natural history of scoliosis that in this population there was no.
00:54:15
Speaker
real difference between the controlled population, the non-scholiotics, and then the people with scoliosis in terms of future back pain. And that just isn't a message that sells much of anything.
00:54:30
Speaker
And so in a kind of free market, commercial marketplace, like what do you do with that information? And then also it doesn't sell on the side of getting research money. And universities have to get grants. I don't think that's going to really kind of bring in the research dollars. Yeah. First rule of marketing is you've got to name the problem.
00:54:58
Speaker
And is it maybe true to say also like first rule of funding research is you've got to have a
Critique on Posture Correction Evidence
00:55:04
Speaker
problem. You've got to name the problem. And if the results of your study find that the problem is not actually a problem. Problem. They're not going to come to the medical center. They're not going to. Yeah. And then also what is further research then? Right. Right. A problem is supposed to open up all these kinds of other research.
00:55:24
Speaker
avenues. I see it as this real need and want to have, first of all, very clear cut magic bullet. Like if I do this, then this won't happen. And so it's just very, there's nothing complex or murky about it. And I think people like to walk around with these like health do's and don'ts. Protocols. Yes, protocols, exactly.
00:55:53
Speaker
And that seems like an easy one, and it's easy to point out other people, like, oh, you should be sitting up straight. And then just so easy and so simple. Yeah. And if you're a teacher, it gives you something to teach. It gives you something to speak to.
00:56:07
Speaker
And it gives discipline. It's discipline. It's control against a future of uncertainty. And our futures are all uncertain. We're all going to die. We're all going to have pain. Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear, if you stand up straight, you're going to have longevity and not pain. Right. Yes. They want something to do about it. Yeah. But the irony is that oftentimes in problematizing posture, you actually
00:56:34
Speaker
make pain worse. You make fear avoidance of exercise or just fear avoidance of postures that you have deemed dangerous. It exacerbates your issue, which might be something like you're just a little too sedentary.
00:56:48
Speaker
most of other reasons. Yeah. So there is, there is this disjunct between what a lot of popular understanding and then backed by NIH and Harvard Medical School telling people that posture matters. And like, are they getting kickbacks from the ergonomic chair people? Like I just, or is it just, I mean, Harvard does have a long history of that. They had like one of the first institutes, the mercantile, the Harvard Medical Mercantile Department.
00:57:18
Speaker
where they teamed up with industry to build chairs and do all of that. So that isn't unthinkable that there would be industry reasons and kickbacks for the message to persist. But I think it's probably also just, it just seems like a truism that is obvious. Well, obviously. Right. Posture matters, of course. Bad posture is bad and good posture is good.
00:57:45
Speaker
A red apple is red. There you go. Sometimes they're golden. Delicious. Yeah. So what do you see is the difference? You touched on this a little bit in your book and actually you touched on it briefly in that New York Times article at the very end. I know that was a very short article, but I mean, it was good. It got me to read your book, but you touch on the difference between posture correction and posture modification. Can you tell us what do you see is the difference between posture correction
00:58:15
Speaker
versus posture modification. And this kind of gives away what I feel your stance is on this. But can you also just tell us what value you feel posture modification could have for people?
00:58:29
Speaker
So I guess in those two terms, what I hear the difference being, so my book is primarily about the predictive value of alignment and posture, which is a preventative, right? That's a preventative notion. If someone comes in, say to the clinic or in a yoga studio and they're like, I have this pain. I have this back pain.
00:58:51
Speaker
My former PT brain and yoga brain would be like, okay, you know, I'd be like looking the person up and down and looking for alignment and looking for those kinds of things, of course, because they can be indicators and how they're holding themselves. And are they overusing one muscle group and not another?
00:59:11
Speaker
And that's what I would call a posture modification. And I think what I say also, there are certain schools of postural treatments that I'm not really opposed to. If you're one-on-one with a person,
00:59:30
Speaker
getting treatment. But I think when I use the term posture, and I don't think everybody thinks of it this way, right? Like, I'm thinking of a really, and you guys are too, I'm sure, like, I'm thinking down to the muscle groups, I'm thinking, okay, like, is this one muscle group really overactive?
00:59:47
Speaker
and this other muscle group kind of not as active. And that is there, is that creating some of the mischief? But if someone has like asymmetries and they're pain-free, like why would I?
01:00:01
Speaker
Why would I meddle with that? And I think people don't understand that physical therapists, by and large, don't see those people in the clinic, obviously. If people aren't in pain, they're not coming to a clinic. But you might find them in a yoga studio. They might just be exercising. And so why would I correct somebody
01:00:22
Speaker
If it's not like, I think similar to, weren't you talking about the Olympian who had like bow legs or like knock knees or something? Yes. Marathon runner. Yeah. Sharon Leketi. Yeah. I think it was Sharon Leketi. Or like flat feet. That's what I'd always say about flat feet. I'm sorry. If it's a star athlete, I don't think the flat feet is really a problem until
01:00:43
Speaker
if they start having pain and then you investigate it, right? I don't know. Do you guys agree with that? What do you think, Sarah? Yeah. I mean, it's true. I think in the years that I've been a PT, I've had maybe two people come in who didn't have pain.
01:01:00
Speaker
but knew that they just wanted to have someone help them with their exercise programming, what they were doing. They wanted a professional eye kind of a thing. But yeah, most people come into the clinic and have pain. That's a different starting point to what you just said. If somebody has pain, my primary directive in that moment is figure out how to get the pain to go down and whether I can get it to go down that day or in three weeks or two months or whatever it is.
01:01:30
Speaker
When pain is your directive, I'm opening up my toolbox and considering everything in there. So in that instance, there might be some postural consideration because if I look at the person standing and they're standing with one hip rotated forward and their opposite low back is bothering them, I'm like, okay, we're going to put this in the box of possibilities, right?
01:01:49
Speaker
But that also includes things like their stress level, their emotional state, their other things going on in their life, right? It's still part of the biopsychosocial approach. But if somebody doesn't have pain and they're like, I want to have better posture.
01:02:06
Speaker
A lot of the time, I'll just be saying something like, well, let's just make you strong. That's my way of getting around the whole like, well, good posture, bad posture. Why do you think it's good? Who said it's good? Where the patriarchy, racism, you know, instead of like most people don't want to hear that, right? They just want to hear that they can have better posture. So I'll sort of counter it by saying, Hey, let's just make you really strong and then your strong muscles will hold you up. And they go, okay. And that's sort of, and then, you know,
01:02:36
Speaker
We'll go do that, which is, which, and then you can decide with that, you know, like you'll be able to figure out what are the muscle groups. I mean, there are certain ones that are always, you're going to want stronger. Um, but yeah, I mean, that's yes. So that's what I think the difference is between, as a yoga teacher and strength coach, I have definitely corrected people's posture to a more painful position.
01:02:59
Speaker
That is certainly happened. And then now, having broken free of this idea that there is such a thing as a universally correct posture for everyone to be in, like a cookie cutter for all the cookies to go into and come out of. I understand posture modification as a way to make someone have a higher tolerance for a pattern of movement. So if I'm teaching someone a conventional deadlift,
01:03:28
Speaker
where the feet are about hips width apart and the toes are pointing forward. And they are experiencing some back pain. And I work them into, say, if, you know, like five years ago or 10 years ago, I would have tried to work them into the most perfect ideal posture. And then I would have been super confused when, oh gosh, they still have pain. And then I would have just said, you know what? Let's just not do deadlifts at all. Nowadays, with a lot more tools in my toolboxes, I think when we break free from the binary of
01:03:58
Speaker
correction, incorrect and correct. We understand that there's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of creativity. There's a lot of critical thinking that can go into actually making a deadlift, a tolerable movement for someone just by modifying. For example, the sumo deadlift is wider than hips with the part feet turned out. The bar is closer to your hips and therefore it reduces maybe some of the load on your lower back and it additionally reduces the bar path.
01:04:27
Speaker
And suddenly I've had this happen a number of times. Someone who couldn't do a conventional deadlift is like, Oh wow, I can, I can do this one. This one doesn't hurt my back. And that's great because now they can get strong in all the, pretty much the same muscle groups and they feel empowered and they don't feel like they're doing it wrong. They just understand that that wasn't the right variation for them during that time. And I've also seen it happen a lot of times where they do the sumo for a while. And then we go back and try the conventional and like, actually it feels a lot better now.
01:04:57
Speaker
Right? Because they got stronger and in a way that was tolerant to them. And now their window of tolerance for the conventionals has opened up. So I think posture modification is phenomenally helpful. And this is why when the pendulum swings wide, right? When you've been, you've been kind of working from this really dogmatic mindset of right and wrong, you realize that you're right, that you used to hold onto, you know, and be very attached to is wrong.
01:05:22
Speaker
Then you swing to the other side and you're like, oh, this other thing now is right. And all of what I was doing before is wrong. And you're equally dogmatic on the other end of the spectrum. I recognize that having posture modification makes it so that you can really break free from this dogma, this way of thinking.
01:05:42
Speaker
and use posture for good. And I've actually had to reeducate myself, unprogram myself from thinking that alignment is bad. So I kind of swung all the way to the other side. I was like, alignment doesn't matter at all. Stop teaching alignment completely. And then I started thinking on that. I was like, no, actually, alignment can be extremely valuable and helpful. And it does all of these things. It just doesn't do this one big thing that we think it does. Which is there's no universally safe or correct alignment that's going to keep everyone pain free.
01:06:11
Speaker
No, because there's anatomical variety, that's the thing. And so like biomechanics, I think is more important than say, like a posture ideal. Because when you're talking about the dead lips, I myself personally, I do get weird low back SI, I've tried Sumo, I've tried, you know, different grips.
01:06:36
Speaker
I've tried the hex bar, I've tried it all, and I've had twinge injuries, I would call them, time and time again. I do kettlebells.
01:06:46
Speaker
Because the load, the force is right there. There's no lever arm. It's better for me. Don't ask me why. You guys can figure out why that is. Because I'm out of that biz now. I only read history. But I'm sure there's an explanation. I just know enough to say, OK, I'm reducing the lever arm. The weight is more contained. Yes, you are. And so that changes.
01:07:12
Speaker
the dynamics of what I'm trying to do, but I can still work on my posterior chain, I can still do all of those things that deadlifts are good for. But there are so many other ways to make that happen to even
01:07:28
Speaker
without a traditional deadlift. Exactly. And I think that that requires a kind of expertise, right? That, as we were talking before we got on the air, is just not renumerated.
01:07:47
Speaker
And I think like a lot of these catch all trendy posture matters stand up straight. It doesn't require much nuance or advanced education. And you're also not having to put a lot of time or thought into something to say something like that. So the next book hopefully will be on what's going to be called slow medicine. And it's going to be looking at how
01:08:16
Speaker
the American healthcare system is failing miserably in paying all this money for high tech care and does not pay attention enough to body work and body workers and paying them to do their jobs.
Future of Posture in Society
01:08:38
Speaker
Amen. Cool. I'll be first in line to get a copy of that.
01:08:44
Speaker
We support that message. Beth, we have one last question. Thank you for staying on with us a little bit longer. If we think about the future and the way that we see in the general population, what are common attitudes about posture, how would you like to see that shift and how do you think it could shift?
01:09:09
Speaker
I'd love it if I didn't hear or see on the NIH or Harvard that you got to sit up straight in order to.
01:09:17
Speaker
prevent health care. I think it puts a lot of personal blame on people. So if somebody then ends up with back pain, like, oh, you didn't sit up straight. You were told to, but you didn't. And so it's just so much blame on an individual when it's more structural societal issues. Does that person have steady employment? Does that person have housing? Does that person have good food? Does that person have an education?
01:09:45
Speaker
So I would love it if we talked about, in my field, what we call social determinants of health, rather than having these very simple edicts that were supposed to follow. And so for me, and since I wrote this book, it's the, okay, stop telling people to stand up straight or to sit up straight. Or if you are doing that to somebody in your life, ask yourself, why?
01:10:13
Speaker
Cause Harvard told me to. Why are you saying that? And then, and then the other one is like, how long do you want them to hold that position? Like, I mean, come on people. The spine is dynamic. We're dynamic. The worst thing is if we stay like, I always think of this thought experiment. If you put somebody in perfect posture and they hold it for four hours, that's not good either. Right. Right. Like it's such a static backward.
01:10:40
Speaker
kind of thinking about human anatomy and movement and then also human diversity because we can't even all agree on what good posture is. And good posture for whom? Is it for a 70 year old? Is it for a 10 year old?
01:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll just keep going on this rant if you let me go. You're among friends. Yes. We love a good rant. Yes. Now, my husband listens to every episode and he'll be disappointed if I don't mention this yet another coincidence, which is that he also went to Michigan State.
01:11:19
Speaker
Okay, I just had to say that. Spartans, Spartans. He'll listen and he'll get like halfway through and be like, why didn't you say that I also went to Michigan State? And they're all like, you gotta listen to the rest of the episode. What did he go? What did he go? So he was piano pedagogy. And he started off as physics, then changed to piano pedagogy, and then education. He was in school for a long time. And now he's a professor of English education at Alabama A&M.
01:11:48
Speaker
He went to Columbia Teachers College for his master's. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, so I just had to say that before we ended. And finally, also to just thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing in this conversation around posture and enriching it so much more by being a guest on our podcast, but by writing that book. So listeners, you got to go into the show notes and click that link.
01:12:19
Speaker
and get this book ASAP. It is a game changer. If ever there has been a book that will change the game, I think in our industry as yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, physical therapists, and also strength coaches. This is a book you have to read. It's gonna change probably the way, and I know I already was kind of on board with a lot of what was in the book, but it just reinforced a lot around why I think it's important to understand this history
01:12:48
Speaker
And the implications of the sociological implications of posture correction and posture policing and this notion of good and bad and how deep that idea of good and bad really goes, reaches into humanity and creates power imbalances and is discriminatory. And it's amazing how when you pull on that thread where it takes you and you helped us
01:13:17
Speaker
understand that. And I just hope everyone reads your book. Well, it was a pleasure being on here. You guys are doing great work yourselves. And I'm glad we're connected now. Thank you. We are too. We are too.
01:13:32
Speaker
We're going to, we have a few people that we like to name drop. So we're going to add you to the list. Like, well, you know, when we were talking to Dr. Beth Linker, our good friend, Beth, she's best to us. Thank you so, so much. All right. Thank you. Thank you both.
01:13:57
Speaker
That was phenomenal. Amazing. I could have talked to her for hours and hours and hours. I loved it when she was like, keep letting me rant. I'll go on and on and on. I was like, oh yeah, we could totally do this all day. We hope you also enjoyed this episode and we hope you're headed right now to buy Dr. Beth Linker's book, which will be linked in the show notes. We said it and we'll say it again. We think it should be required reading in every yoga Pilates. I'm going to go personal trainer.
01:14:22
Speaker
physical therapist, chiropractor, acupuncture, training. Anyone who's dealing with bodies and has ever said the word posture as part of their work should have to read this book. Please check out our show notes for all the links to all the references we mentioned in our podcast. For once, I saw a review before Laurel did.
01:14:42
Speaker
You did. I'm so impressed. I beat her to it. And so I got to take a screenshot and send it to her this time. But we got a review recently. We're very happy. It just gives us a little dopamine surge. And also, it helps other people find us. It really does mean a lot if you leave us a review.
01:14:59
Speaker
So if you have time, please subscribe, rate, and review either on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Show up, sign up for the Q and A, which is going to be Tuesday, October 1st at 8.30 AM Pacific, 11.30 AM Eastern. If you have more questions about our course or you just want to like hang out with us and get a sense of like, do I like these people enough to spend six months with them? No, really.
01:15:25
Speaker
If you are interested in purchasing the full course, one thing that you need to know is that the cart is closed. And we mean closed on Sunday, October 6th. Yeah. Because we want to give the actual course starts about 10 or 9 to 10 days after that. We want to give people time who have enrolled to go through all of the pre-recorded material. There's a lot so that you're ready for when class actually starts. So delay no more, get yourself in the course,
01:15:53
Speaker
And Laurel, when will we see everybody again? See you next week!