Kathleen Porter - Natural posture for pain-free living: the practice of mindful alignment

To Milo, Fiona, Ellery, Tabor, Jay, Talia,

and all children everywhere

The miracle is not to walk on water.

The miracle is to walk on the earth in peace.

THICH NHAT HANH

NATURAL POSTURE
for Pain-Free Living

Never before in the world of fitness has there been a more readable, ground-breaking, or seminal book than Natural Posture for Pain-Free Living. Through this revolutionary book, Kathleen Porter is about to rock your world!

JEAN COUCH, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF THE BALANCE CENTER AND COAUTHOR OF THE RUNNERS YOGA BOOK

As a family physician treating my share of patients with back pain, neck pain, osteoporosis, and dysfunctional labor, I find this book instructive. Kathleen Porters observation of peoples around the world who retain their natural alignment, movement, and relaxation is a clear window into the healing of the chronic pain syndromes of our culture. More than that, her work has been personally transformative.

LEAH MORTON, M.D., FAMILY PRACTITIONER

In Natural Posture for Pain-Free Living, Kathleen Porter powerfully portrays the extensive damage we do to our bodies when we lose connection to natural principles of body alignment. Rather than looking to surgery, medication, and infinite exercise technologies to find freedom from discomfort and pain, we need only learn to stand, sit, walk, and move the way we did as young children when we learned organically to let our bones support us. Porter offers an abundance of useful tools for returning to our natural wisdom and greater body fluidity.

INGRID BACCI, PH.D., AUTHOR OF THE ART OF EFFORTLESS LIVING AND EFFORTLESS PAIN RELIEF

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

After traveling the solitary and sometimes lonely road of self-publishing this book, it was pure joy to have the assistance and dedication of an entire talented team working together to bring this new revised edition to life. My agent, Deanna Leah, started this wonderful ball rolling, and Jon Graham at Inner Traditions, along with Jeanie Levitan, Jamaica Burns Griffin, Elizabeth Wilson, Manzanita Carpenter, Peri Ann Swan, Virginia Scott Bowman, and support staff shepherded it across the finish line. Throughout this process, I have been in their highly capable hands, for which I, and the reader, can be grateful!

Evan Ing worked alongside me for hours on end, offering his multiple talents in upgrading and organizing the photographs and illustrations. He managed to save the day, yet again.

For a healthy number of decades now, I have been the beneficiary of the wisdom and guidance of many brilliant teachers who have held my hand, pointed the way, and even given a not-so-gentle kick down this road. I especially want to single out Jean Couch, who has given generously and worked single-mindedly all these years to empower people with the resources for knowing how to heal their own pain. Noelle Perez laid a foundation so large and solid that Jean and many others, myself included, have been able to add an ever-evolving structure that is destined to change our understanding of how the body is designed to work.

I am blessed by friendships, family ties and professional associations that, woven together, sustain me with continuous acceptance, encouragement, and support. I thank my lucky stars that I have been brought together in this life with Thea Beckett, Irene McNeely, Patra Conley, Kathryn Grout, Patricia Salmon, Wendell Ing, Kenneth Lahti, Jan Cooper, Carter Beckett, Jacob Trubin, Elaine Lee, Cindy Berry, Sally Mermel, Jeffrey Mermel, Anne Marie Claire, Rhona Klein, Jill Schatten, Rebecca Erickson, Betty Lee, Tabor Bergh, Stacey Tripeny, Sally Ho, Ira Ono, Sandra Pickard, Anne Kokubun, Russell Kokubun, Linda Haynes, Wendy Thomas-Miyamoto, Moline Whitson, Norman Skinner, Kristin Porter, Jack Nguyen, Diane McChesney Parfitt, Nancy Morgan, Barb Isham, Cindy Debus, Patti Chikasuye, Colleen Ziroli, Diane Li, Marianne Kuipers Tilanus, Hettie Schofield, Ho Sheng Chi, Milo Jarvis, Karen Umehara, Sherry Genauer, Gabe Genauer, Lorna Larson-Jeyte, Cynee Wenner, Marilyn Nicholson, Kathleen Golden, Peter Golden, Dianne Horwitz, Dawn Pung, Tanya Paltin, Sam Paltin, Maria Jaramillo, Barbara Heintz, Billy Sammons, Joanne Hunter, Carol Cohan, Mary Copenhaver, Daralynn Higgins, Sharon Kaneshiro Mols, Kaila Kukla, Susan Buswell, Avigail Roberg, Arline Krieger, and elementary school teachers extraordinaire, Kaholo Daguman, Kathy Wines, and Jeff Rood.

My beautiful family continues to grace my life with their love, patience, and unending goodwill. I love you Meredith Ing, Kendra Ing, Evan Ing, Wendell Ing, Evan Bissell, Weston Willard, Israel Sims, and Milo Heuluokaha'i Willard.

FOREWORD

This is what I know. I know that natural balance is the alignment of the internal skeletal support each human is designed to have. Natural balance yields enormous health benefits to anyone who has the insight to begin. I also know that Kathleen Porters continuing courage and determination to get this information out to the public is an enormous service.

You may begin this book by looking at the pictures. Just notice the overall shapes of people in balance and out of balance. Ask yourself simple questionswho looks weak, who looks strong? Who is straight, who is curved? When a person is curved what does that do to their natural height. When a person is curved, what might that be doing to the shape of the discs in their spine? Your common sense can guide you to obvious answers that can motivate you to begin. The pictures alone may give you the insight to put you on a new path to health.

All of this, and I havent even mentioned pain. There are so many benefits of natural balance: moment-to-moment awareness, recovering your natural strength, regaining your natural height, looking like a million dollars, and then there is the relief. The guidelines in this book are enormously powerful, and the first sensations most likely to be perceived are those of relief, feeling better. As you reposition yourself according to the guidelines, you will find that suddenly your muscles can stop holding you up and the tension you are carrying around night and day begins to dissolve. As the bones support you more and more, they are naturally doing the weight lifting that makes them strong. And the great thing is, you dont even have to get this absolutely right, you just have to be in the ballpark.

The book says it all so well. It can give you such a great start; jump in with both feet. Take the plunge.

I would like to again acknowledge with gratitude the brilliance of Noelle Perez, who did all of the original research that has inspired so many of us to take up the torch for each person on the planet to have the option to live in natural balance, and to congratulate Kathleen for clarifying, yet again, why and how to live in natural balance.

JEAN COUCH

Jean Couch is the founder and director of the Balance Center, where she has developed methods for teaching concrete guidelines for pain-free posture based on original research by Noelle Perez of Paris, France. More than two decades ago Balance helped Couch eliminate sciatica, back pains, pronounced kyphosis, and a dowagers hump. She has since devoted herself to spreading spinal health and back relief through Balance. The author of