Product Description
A manual for understanding the anatomical and emotional components of posture in order to heal chronic pain • Contains self-help exercises and ergonomics information to help correct unhealthy movement patterns • Teaches how to adopt suitable posture in the modern sedentary world Many people cause their own back and body pain through their everyday bad postural and movement habits. Many sense that their poor posture is probably the root of the problem, but they are unable to change long-standing habits. In The New Rules of Posture, Mary Bond approaches postural changes from the inside out. She explains that healthy posture comes from a new sense we can learn to feel, not by training our muscles into an ideal shape. Drawing from 35 years of helping people improve their bodies, she shows how habitual movement patterns and emotional factors lead to unhealthy posture. She contends that posture is the physical action we take to orient ourselves in relation to situations, emotions, and people; in order to improve our posture, we need to examine both our physical postural traits and the self-expression that underlies the way we sit, stand, and move. The way we walk, she says, is our body’s signature. Bond identifies the key anatomical features that impact alignment, particularly in light of our modern sedentary lives, and proposes six zones that help create postural changes: the pelvic floor, the breathing muscles, the abdomen, the hands, the feet, and the head. She offers self-help exercises that enable healthy function in each zone as well as information on basic ergonomics and case histories to inspire us to think about our own habitual movements. This book is a resource for Pilates, yoga, and dance instructors as well as healthcare professionals in educating people about postural self-care so they can relieve chronic pain and enjoy all life activities with greater ease.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 26 reviews)

Bad title, Brilliant Book by Lucky (Los Angeles)

5 Stars
October 21, 2009
From the first page, I realized I never "really" knew my own body.This was shocking after years of tai chi, chi gung, etc.It is so much more than "new rules of posture", it is a "new innerview of one's body" Buy it and buy copies for you friends. Peace...

Vague and unhelpful by G. Steinberg

1 Stars
August 31, 2009
I don't know how or why so many people have given this book a high rating. It has elaborate descriptions of exercises to do, but without photos, the descriptions are pretty useless. Trying to do the exercises based on the descriptions is sometimes okay but usually ridiculous. The description of the "Seated Sphinx" is impossible to follow, for example: based on this book's description, I have no idea what the exercise ought to look like or how to do it. For many of the exercises, the instructions are less about precisely what you're supposed to do than about how you ought to feel as you do the exercise, but the descriptions of how you ought to feel are often vague. And though often vague, the descriptions are incredibly long (often several pages), a fact that makes the described exercises hard to do (because how can you keep all that info in your head as you try to do the exercise?). For many exercises, you're supposed to be able to do the exercise just by "visualizing" it?!? But given that there aren't many illustrations in the book, I can't visualize anything (and I'm not sure that I believe that just visualizing something is going to make my body do it right automatically). Maybe these exercises work if you have a person who is giving you face-to-face, individual instruction as you do them, but reading from a book with hardly any photos doesn't work very well. A picture is worth a thousand words or, in this case, an entire book. There are a lot more helpful books out there with great descriptions and photos of exercises that really make a tremendous difference for your posture if you just do the exercise as instructed and shown (not with all sorts of pressure to feel the right sensations to get the exercise right). I recommend Anthony B. Carey's Pain-Free Program or Paul D'Arezzo's Posture Alignment or Janice Novak's Posture, Get It Straight! or even Perry Bonomo and Daniel Seidler's Why Does Working @ My Computer Hurt So Much? They're much, much, much, much better books than this one.

Seems very good, I recommend it. by Melissa AMP (Kansas)

5 Stars
April 06, 2009
I like this idea of gentle exercises you can do to improve your body awareness.

Everyday Awareness for Everyone by Anita Boser (Issaquah, WA)

5 Stars
March 02, 2009
I've been a Mary Bond fan ever since I read Balancing Your Body: A Self-Help Approach to Rolfing Movement. The New Rules of Posture is even better. I can relate to the people in this book and see my posture habits in theirs. In addition, I can incorporate the suggestions and exercises into my everyday life. When I start to feel tension in my shoulders, I do "Handprints on the Wall," and recommend this to everyone I know who has weak or tight shoulders. The suggestions for bending forward are invaluable, as is the concept of the inner corset. Everyone can benefit from this book; it should be part of our general physical edication. --Anita Boser, author of Relieve Stiffness and Feel Young Again with Undulation

Easy examples anyone can do by bodyworker (Ballston, NY)

5 Stars
February 19, 2009
I am a chiropractor who does craniosacral therapy so I am constantly searching for ways to explain anatomy and it's correlation to pain and dysfunction felt by my patients. I loved this book- bought it as a fluke to get my free shipping and it was the best buy. I am able to show patients some small change in how they hold themselves that profoundly affect their body.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Posture, Get It Straight! Look Ten Years Younger, Ten Pounds Thinner and Feel Better Than Ever by Janice Novak (Author) It's true - improving your posture can make important differences in the way you look and feel. Like many people, though, you may think that your posture is hopeless, especially after years of slouching, slumping, or working in positions that have strained your muscles and stressed your body This fully illustrated guide shows you how to beat bad posture habits and demonstrates easy strengthening exercises that start working right away. Make yourself a promise to learn these simple...
	Relieve Stiffness and Feel Young Again with Undulation by Anita Boser (Author), Roger Golten (Introduction), Mary Bond (Introduction) Whether you're 16, 36 or 65, an athlete or a couch potato, coordinated or a klutz, Relieve Stiffness and Feel Young Again with Undulation shows how just 10 minutes a day can make a difference in how you feel. Anita Boser provides easy-to-follow guidelines and photographs for 52 simple exercises that will allow you to move more comfortably. Try a different exercise every week and in 12 months, you're sure to feel better. Wherever you ache, undulation will provide relief—naturally, without...
	Balancing Your Body: A Self-Help Approach to Rolfing Movement by Mary Bond (Author) Rolfing Movement goes beyond good posture and movement efficiency. It combines touch and verbal messages to help you become more responsive to your body's inner cues. By responding appropriately to these internal messages, you create new freedom in your physical expression, which leads to a noticeable increase in health and vitality. The author makes us aware of our own movement patterns and gently guides us through a practical series exercises designed to induce significant...
	Posture, Get It Straight! Two Disc Set Starring: Janice Novak Directed By: Janice Novak
	Anatomy of Breathing by Blandine Calais-Germain (Author) My hope is that [this book] will contribute to a more enlightened practice of breathing. I also hope that you, the reader, will have a better understanding of how breathing changes spontaneously from moment to moment. My other wish is that you will discover how to consciously choose a specific breathing technique for certain purposes or circumstances. -- Author s Preface Everyone breathes, yet few of us understand how to consciously control breathing to improve our well-being and the...