12 Reinvigorating Your legs - Learning to Control Your Legs 

Clearly it is not practical to list every single direction every single time you want to make an adjustment or coordinate a gesture. Here are a few things to consider: What is the situation? Are you practicing by yourself or are you out and about in your day? When you’re by yourself, especially if you’re recording yourself or keeping track of yourself with a mirror, you could list a full ten plus directions before making an adjustment. If you’re out and about, you might give yourself half as many directions and quickly make an adjustment. Adjustments should last. After you make an adjustment, you want to let go of the force you used to get there without allowing yourself to collapse from where you’ve gotten. That is why the adjustments are done on a 1-2-3 count. The adjustment ends. While you do want to remember your preventative directions to keep yourself from falling right back into habit, you are not doing the adjustment over and over. Sometimes you will want to do an adjustment another time to do it better, but once you’ve made an adjustment, it should last for some period of time. If you’re very new to this, adjustments won’t last very long at all, but you’ll get better in time. You will also get better at giving yourself directions with speed in real time. As you reach out for something, your can quickly think of how you want to direct your elbow as you move it through space. You can also consider what’s happening to your torso as you do that. Our minds are capable of thinking quickly like this. All of these directions and concepts are also helping us form a mental model of how we want to stand, walk, sit, and gesture. What you think of as standing will have a huge affect on how you stand. Simply understanding that letting your pelvis spill forward is a problem means that when you stand you have the opportunity to prevent that problem from occurring. Your baseline idea of what standing up straight will be much more accurate than the average person, who has no conception at all and just follows their feeling sense. Having this accurate mental model makes a huge difference, but it too takes time to see the pay off of this. I can say, I often find myself the only one in a room who is sitting without leaning back or slumping into my chair. This is because my model of what sitting is is different from the average person. These directions do become almost habitual. I say almost because they are not out of our control. We are not slaves to them, we can decide to otherwise whenever we please. But eventually your first instinct will not be to, say, pull the elbow back. You will instead “automatically” know you want to keep the elbow forward, out, and down. And you will also have the tools to investigate that “automatic” response whenever you want, and make sure you’re still coordinating it the way you want to in accordance with what you understand to be desirable.

I appreciate your input! I’ll put that on my list of topics to make videos about. I would say that centrally the ideas in this series about an external rotation at the back of the thigh and an internal rotation of the head of the fibula and ankle are keys to getting extension of the leg and preventing a problem like knock knees. Most people in the modern world struggle with maintaining due tension in their legs. When the legs are habitually flexed and bent, you will end up with knock knees or other problems depending on your habits of movement.

Yes, curved legs are essentially bent legs. The legs are bent by the habitual movements that are applied to them. If you change your movements, the legs will extend and will no longer be bent. It will take time; the stronger and older the habit, the more difficult it is to overcome, but it can certainly done.

It’s well understood that facial symmetry and health are two of the most significant factors when it comes to beauty. The system I put forward increases symmetry across the entire body, including the face. Health, in my view, is mostly built on diet and posture. So yes, I believe that correcting your posture will make you more beautiful. I can certainly say that my face, in particular my jaw, have changed significantly by correcting my posture. I had many years of orthodontic work as a child that did damage to my face and jaw, so it’s not a surprise that I could make some decent progress there. Whether you can become stunning from correcting your posture, I’m not sure of that yet. But I’m sure most anyone, regardless of their beauty or ugliness, looks meaningfully better with good posture. You mentioning forward growth of the facial structure makes me think you’re perhaps referencing the Mews? Forward facial growth is not the way I would think about it. The problems are well beyond the face, and often things that seem to make sense when you’re zoomed tightly in on them, can be revealed to be not quite right when you take a step back and see the whole problem. But yes, problems in the head, neck, and jaw are extremely common, and they are addressed by the Initial Alexander Technique.

Thank you for your elaborate answer. To expand on the things you mentioned, I'm curious to know your opinion on these matters: 1) Nutrition: what entails a proper diet for the human body? 2) What's your view on the posture of the tongue? Especially considering the back-third per the Mews as you mentioned. Forget about it and focus on the torso (in addition to the arms and legs) and it will correct itself with time, holistically? 3) Is there ways to cause growth or shifting after the sutures in the body has sealed? For instance improving upon a narrow nasal passage that causes discomfort in life. 4) Considering the proper arm posture according to Alexander, how would you swing your arms when walking to generate momentum and save energy? I'm intrigued by this system, as it goes against all other advice given, especially the arm posture. Thank you for your time.

@@kon-tiki-77 2) I’ll get into the specifics of the tongue in a future video, but I can say that Alexander and Masoero would advise that the tongue lay flat in the mouth with the tip at the back of the lower teeth. It’s for you to determine if you find you’re getting value from the Mews concepts concerning mouth posture, but I would advise you ignore their advice about general body posture. I know I’ve heard Mike Mew admit he doesn’t know about body posture and only advises the mainstream advice (like McKenzie chin tucks) because he knows nothing else. I think he even acknowledged that that’s dangerous knowing how mainstream advice about orthodontics is totally untrustworthy. 3) Most people suffer from breathing problems because they are the inevitable result of having essentially a drooping posture and retracted upper torso/head. These poor postural habits directly narrow the airway and are part of why people make irrational muscular actions with their facial muscles to suck air in and blow air out in order to breathe. To correct your posture, your head will have to be moved to a new place, and that will greatly affect the airway and nasal cavity. I would not get to caught up in the idea that you need “growth.” Problems like these are largely the result of the subconscious movements that we are habitually making. People don’t “have” a narrowed airway, they are constantly making movements that narrow the airway. If you make different movements, you change the relationship and relative position of the bones, fascia, and muscle. It's a bit stunning how much people can move bodily structures that seem fixed when they're given the correct directions. 4) Do you have to swing your arms a significant amount to walk at a casual pace? The problems in walking go very deep. What you’ll find is that most people feel that they need to sway their hips towards their supporting leg to walk (for a variety of reasons), so they end up twisting their spine back and forth and leaning in order to walk. Once you are able to walk while lengthening, instead of shortening to walk, you may find that a lot of the swinging that we do with our arms when walking casually is actually misdirected energy (and does not save energy). What I say goes against most advice given for sure, but I recommend holding both sides to account with the same questions. What is the evidence for what you’re claiming? And where is your evidence that a person can change with your system and get somewhere worth going? In my experience and in my observation the common methods take people in circles and produce undesirable change. And when you ask the people selling these methods to explain anything they believe, you get the same kind of poor answers that are used to defend mainstream orthodontics. 1) I’m not knowledgeable about nutrition in the way that I am about posture, so I think answering this question would only be a distraction. If you’d like my personal opinion on diet, feel free to e-mail me.

​@@delsartealexandermasoeroyo9147 Again, thank you for the elaborate response. I'd like to share my results from just looking through what you have here so far the last few days: 1) After straightening my torso (it was tilted back, chest up), I have experienced an increase in breathing volume and voice projection. Less dizziness and fatigue. 2) An increase in stability following a 'tucking' of the pelvis (iliac straight forward, not tilted down), this both for sitting as well as standing. Improved balance. 3) Less tension and aches in my neck and upper back as I roll my shoulders forward, tilting my elbows out. This one is the hardest to maintain, as so many modern activities are suited for elbowtucking. 4) My forward head posture has diminished. I suppose as a result of the prior 3 corrections. 5) Jaw opens smoother. Have had TMJ issues for years. 6) Less protruding stomach I've found the corrections hard to maintain as new habits form. Especially when I've over-corrected (chest now too caved in, pelvis tucked too far), but I'm starting to find the balance. I'm going to book an appointment with you in the future when my situation is different, to get a proper assessment. Thank you for your work.

@@kon-tiki-77 Not sure why you're comment was hidden, so I didn't see this earlier. But I'm glad to hear you've had positive results! The change in the quality of the voice is a good sign of improvement in one's posture, so it sounds like you must be doing something right.