PART II- Connecting Perception to Reality: the Magic of the StrongPosture Framework

“Posture is HOW you balance your body.”  The 2nd Posture Principle^⁠1 Stand Taller Live Longer (Dr. Steven Weiniger)

Posture is the beginning point for locomotion, and as bipeds the imperative, the MUST, is to stay vertical.

Except for special cases like swimming, crawling and bungee jumping, for just about anything we physically TRY to do in life, we MUST stay vertical, balancing head over feet, with the torso and pelvis pretty much in the middle.

Balance is the interface between our internal perception of the body in space, and our ability to control and maintain that vertical position.  If our perception is more accurate, and our control more true, we balance.  If there’s an error between what we perceive, and our control of what we do, balance is less stable.

When the error between sensed position and motor control is too great, we fall down.

Functionally speaking, balance is the connection between incoming (sensory aka afferent) neurons of body position and outgoing (motor aka efferent) neurons controlling muscle contraction.

The Question of Balance

Our personal sense of body, and our sense of balance in particular, is an emergent sense, a neurologic construct.

On the sensory side, it’s synthesized on a moment to moment basis from visual, vestibular and proprioceptive inputs. On the motor side, it’s the precise skeletal muscle motor control required to maintain mechanical alignment with a net vertical vector force of zero. There’s a split-second coordination of sensory input from 3 sources with the sub-cortical firing of skeletal muscle fibers to keep the afferent input within an acceptable range translates as “keeping your balance”.

The astounding miracle is we do it without thinking!

The trade-off between aligning our body mass, position and motion to reflexively stay vertical is a dance with three postural elements: Balance Alignment, and Motion (BAM).

“The test is the exercise, and the exercise is the test.”  Vladimir Janda

All exercise is not created equal. A recent study in the Clinical Journal of Pain looked at perception and chronic low back pain (CLBP) and concluded there’s “a growing body of evidence suggesting that disturbed self-perception is a feature of CLBP. It is plausible that altered self-perception is maladaptive and contributes to the maintenance of the problem and may represent a target of treatment for CLBP.”^⁠2

An implication of maladaptive altered self-perception: Exercise is good, but for chronic low back pain exercising may perpetuate and aggravate both pain as well as disability. Which is the promise of motor control exercises (MCE), training motion in a specific controlled pattern.

A recent MCE metastudy compared 16 other studies of motor control exercises and found “In patients with chronic and recurrent low back pain, MCE seem to be superior to several other treatments”^⁠3 …including general exercise and spinal manipulation.

Strong Posture, Must vs Try, & Perception vs Reality, Biofeedback

StrongPosture® exercise protocols systematically focus attention with “MUST” vs “TRY” cueing to identify and strengthen the weakest point in an individual’s unique kinetic chain.

StrongPosture® exercise protocols systematically work to correct sensori-motor errors with biofeedback by focusing attention on a single BAM element of posture (Balance, Alignment, Motion) and a single PostureZone® (Head, Torso, Pelvis, Lower Extremity) at a time, and then aligning subjective perception of body position with objective reality.  Each exercise is performed perfectly to an individual’s ability, within their pain-free functional range.

Compensations of other PostureZone components are minimized by strictly requiring exercises be performed while keeping input from other elements constant with exercises arranged in 3 tracks corresponding to the 3 Elements of Posture:

• Balance track, focusing on aligning vestibular input with reality

• Alignment track, focusing on connecting kinesthetic with visually observed alignment of the 4 PostureZones

• Motion track, using a ball for proprioceptive focus to objective reality while moving with balance and alignment

Assessing and addressing posture by focusing on one element at at time (Balance, Alignment and Motion) allows objective functional measurement along an continuum of strength and accuracy, and addressing improvement by focusing on strengthening and correcting to objective reality. And then by precisely defining exercises and requiring adherence to objective references, protocols train a systematic focus on one kinetic chain link at a time.  And when rehabilitative exercises are protocoled with clear imperatives such as “you MUST do this”, and then “TRY to do that”, changes in ability to perform the therapeutic activity also become an objective measure to track improvement in functional posture control.

An inability to perform a specific progression can be diagnostic of asymmetric impediments to free motion, and suggest a therapeutic intervention such as spinal manipulation, muscle therapy or fascial treatment.

An example: restoring the potential to full range segmental motion by removing deep mechanical restrictions and facilitating neurologic control- the unique contribution of the chiropractic adjustment.

The systematization of correcting perception of balance, alignment and motion (BAM) to reality and then training these three postural elements tightly, towards symmetry, and towards that reality, explains the effectiveness many CPEP® posture specialists and other posture professionals have seen with chronic low back pain patients, as well as those suffering other NMS conditions.

For Part 1, see Reality, Perceptions and the Human Brain>>> to learn more on how mental maps are a construct.

¹ Stand Taller Live Longer: An Anti- Aging Strategy, Steven Weiniger DC, BodyZone Press, 2008

² Mislocalization of sensory information in people with chronic low back pain: a preliminary investigation.Wand, Keeves , Bourgoin, George, Smith, O’Connell, Moseley,  Clin J Pain. 2013 Aug;29(8):737-43. doi: 10.1097/AJP.0b013e318274b320.

³ Motor control exercises reduces pain and disability in chronic and recurrent low back pain: a meta-analysis. Byström, Rasmussen-Barr, Grooten, Spine  2013 Mar 15;38(6):E350-8. doi: 10.1097/BRS.0b013e31828435fb

To integrate StrongPosture® in your practice get the Posture Rehab Exercise Program and take the latest online training.

PART I- Reality, Perceptions and the Human Brain

Confabulation (def.) “a disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.” Wikipedia

Humans don’t perceive reality accurately, or truly, or objectively. Nowhere near.  And memory is even less accurate.

People argue over who said what, “clearly remembering” different versions of a story. Police detectives know eyewitnesses often have starkly conflicting memories of a crime, often in direct conflict to video and other (more) objective evidence.

“True” reality is the realm of physicists studying quantum mechanics, who observe a reality where things can be in two places at one time…at least until that reality “knows” someone is watching.

Library Notes: For a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics from Einstein to some of the astounding implications of this past decades research, I recommend reading Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (2015, Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili

For a broader view from a physicist, read Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Carlo Rovelli Jan 2017

For more on how our brains predict the reality we perceive, I recommend Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, by neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett  November 17, 2020

But that quantum world is smaller than an atom, and is not the reality in which humans perceive, act and live. Humans are designed to perceive a reality scaled for the size and speed in which we live. And despite the errors and randomness, it generally works because we believe it’s true.

Our personal reality is one we construct from our perceptions, which in turn arise from a tiny fraction of the trillions of nerve impulses pouring into our brain, which are in turn colored by our existing accumulated memories to then build new perceptions in a constant swirl of perceived truths with very fuzzy edges.

Neuroscience, psychology and sociology study human brains and behavior.  Neuroscientists strive to understand how the brain deconstructs the chemistry and mechanics of how each individual constructs their reality today, in the here and now.  In this very moment the process of perception begins with the firing of a neuron. It might be from a spot of light hitting the retina, or a pressure receptor signaling movement of muscle, or a hair on the arm signaling touch, or an inner ear hair signaling acceleration of the head. The neuron might fire from a chemical receptor in the gut, or the blood, or the lungs.

And sometimes the neuron can momentarily join with the inputs of millions of other neurons in a “neural ensemble.” An ensemble firing together which can be the creation of a fleeting thought.

The thought dances on our neural hard-wiring, from the basic hardware of breathing and moving in the medulla and cerebellum, to our reptilian emotions in the amygdala, and very human prefrontal cortex of this moment.

Of those perceptions and thoughts, a nanoscopic fraction create enough of a change to be retrieved at a later time, melded with our accumulated memories to construct our perceived reality of the moment.

Perceived reality drives behavior, and is studied by psychologists who chart how our ego shifts our memories to position ourselves in a personal narrative, one with us as the star of the story.  Both neuroscientists and psychologists attempt to understand how new memories enter our accumulated perceptions and recalled memories, changing our memory of our perceptions.

Also, humans are social creatures, and sociologists study how culture colors those perceptions. Attitude and biases add to the mélange of our perceptions, which changes our perceptions by changing the sensitivity of the nerves to firing, and shifting the sensitivity of our outlook.

Changes in nerves change memory, and we construct our perceptions from nerve impulses from what we see and hear, taste and smell. But the “5 senses” taught in elementary school are a nanoscopic fraction of the nerve impulses pouring into our brain from our body.

Our perceptual reality is our personal construct, and most of the information coming into the brain never touches our consciousness.  We’re simply not wired to access most of our biological functions, no matter how much we try.

Unknown and unconscious to our awareness and percepts, nerves control the pituitary secretion of hormones, and coordinate digestion by smooth muscle (the kind we can’t control) and secretions from the liver, pancreas and intestines.  The network of nerves and ganglia around the intestine is considered by some to be a “gastric brain” that may even affect our thoughts, but is nearly completely reflexive and unconscious.

In fact, we’re unaware of most neural input that we do have the wiring to be conscious of. I can perceive my fingertip when I move my finger to type… if I pay attention (which I almost never do).  I just type. However, regardless of whether or not I am paying attention, the nerve impulses are there. I’ve received the biofeedback.

So what does this have to do with posture? All motion begins with the proprioceptive perception of posture. Find out why focusing attention on the sliver of neural input we can focus upon, and then blowing on that spark, is The Magic Behind StrongPosture®.

PART II – Connecting Perception to Reality: the Magic of the StrongPosture Model>>>

For more about StrongPosture® and to incorporate it in your practice get the Posture Rehab Exercise Program and take the latest training via online video seminar.

A recent paper in the Journal of Brain Structure and Function concluded:

“Results provide evidence of pathways linking upper cervical sensory afferents with CNS areas involved in autonomic and oromotor control, via the intermedius nucleus of the medulla. Disruption of these neuronal pathways could, therefore, explain the dysphagic and cardiorespiratory abnormalities which may accompany cervical dystonia and Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD).”

COROLLARY:  This may also provide a neuologic mechanism for some of the improvements observed by chiropractors and chiropractic patients who have seen a neck adjustment improve digestive problems.

Edwards, Lall, Paton, Yanagawa, Szabo, Deuchars (2014 Mar 5).  Neck muscle afferents influence oromotor and cardiorespiratory brainstem neural circuits.  J. Brain Struct Funct.  Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24595534