I get this question ALOT. "Tanya, just tell me what to do. Give me the exercises." 

I understand the frustration. You've been through physio. Chiro. Yoga. Stretching programs. Strengthening programs. Online courses. You did the work. It didn't hold. 

So you want someone to just give you the answer.

Here's the truth. The exercises were never the problem. You were given the wrong target.

Every approach you've tried was talking to your muscles. Your muscles don't decide your posture.

Your brain does.

Your brain runs a model of your body called the body schema, and that model generates your posture about a million times a day.

You never chose your posture. It was computed for you 

So the real question isn't "what exercises do I do." It's "how do I restore the sensory map that's generating my posture."...which will then ease pain patterns.

Because here's what nobody told you. Your brain's map of your body isn't equal. Your hands have high-definition resolution. Your mid-back is practically invisible. 

Try it right now. Point to your thumb. Instant. Now point to the vertebra behind your heart. Not as fast or even at all.

That's the problem. The regions you most want to change (reduce pain, improve posture) are the regions your brain has the least resolution on. And a blurry map generates a blurry prediction. 

That prediction is your posture. And for many of you, that prediction is your pain.

I do not have a diagnosed scoliosis, but I know that I do not have perfect posture with perfect alignment - and when your car is not perfectly aligned you feel the wobble and go to a mechanic - when your body feels a wobble, your body adjusts - perhaps even faster than you identifying the mis-aligned area - and if it's just a little wobble, you may discount it (it's a whisper) and you move on in life, until now the whisper is a scream and the wobble, now a big wobble, has your attention.

When you have wobbles!!! - let's imagine your spine with a little or big alignment issues, the curve is the prediction your nervous system generated with degraded sensory input. and let's just keep it at that today. Your nervous system computes the shape based on the inputs it was receiving. Your eyes looking down. Your breathing stuck in the upper chest. Your autonomic state running in threat mode. The thoracic spine rounded perhaps in this case because the model said "round." 

If you have chronic back pain that won't go away, your tissue probably healed months ago. But the map of that region stayed blurry. And a brain that can't confirm a region is safe will keep generating pain as a protective output. Not because something is wrong. Because it can't tell that nothing is wrong. 

Different diagnoses. Same mechanism. The sensory map degraded. The prediction followed.

So here's where to focus. 

The big picture: restore the map by feeding the body evidence. 

This is the principle that changes everything. Your body schema does not update through instruction. It updates through evidence. You cannot tell your nervous system to change. You cannot think your way to a new posture. You have to give the system sensory evidence that its current prediction is wrong. Evidence it can feel. Evidence it can measure. Evidence that arrives through the body, not through the mind.

Every input below is a form of evidence.

1. Your eyes. One of the loudest inputs to the model. If you spend your day looking down and close, your brain computes a forward-and-down posture to match. Start your day with two minutes of looking at the farthest point you can see. Before you touch your phone. Let peripheral vision wake up. That's visual evidence that the world is far and level. The model recomputes to match.

2. Your jaw. The trigeminal nerve is the largest cranial nerve in your body. Feeds directly into the brainstem. If your jaw is clenched, your brainstem reads threat and generates a defensive posture. Check right now. Nasal, diaphragmatic breathing. Lips together. Teeth apart. Tongue resting on the roof of your mouth. That's neutral. That's evidence of safety arriving through the jaw. Most people are clenching without knowing it.

3. Your breathing. Not just in and out. 360-degree diaphragmatic breathing. The diaphragm is a dome that should expand in every direction. Front, sides, and back. Most people breathe into the front of the chest only. That tells the nervous system you're under threat and it leaves the entire posterior map in the dark. Breathe through your nose. Let the belly, the sides, and the lower back expand. That's the diaphragm doing its job. It pressurizes the entire canister and sends sensory evidence to regions of your map that have been silent for years. Every breath that reaches your back is evidence that wakes up the map.

4. Your feet. Your feet send gravitational data to the brainstem constantly. Flat shoes on flat floors send almost nothing. Walk barefoot when you can. Stand on varied surfaces. Give the system gravitational evidence for where "down" is.

5. Your movement variety. The map sharpens through novel input. Same position, same movement, same routine means the sensors adapt and go quiet. Walk on uneven ground. Get on the floor. Move in rotation, not just forward and back. The map needs variety, not volume. Every new position is new evidence.

6. Your thoughts and words. Harder to hear but it's real. "My back is broken." "My spine is degenerating." "I'll never fix this." Those are inputs. The model reads them. Your beliefs about your body feed the prediction that generates your posture and your pain (read Bruce Lipton, Joe Dispenza). The neuroscience on this is clear. Thoughts change autonomic state. Autonomic state changes the sensory environment. The sensory environment changes the prediction. The words you use about your body are evidence too. Choose them carefully. 

These are the free inputs. The ones you can change today. Each one is a piece of evidence arriving at the model. Start with the six inputs above. Feed the model better evidence today. See what shifts.

But here's the honest part. 

There's an order of operations. The body schema updates in a specific hierarchy. Safety first. Sensation second. Movement third. Always in that order. Feeding evidence randomly gives random results. A breathing exercise while your nervous system is in a threat state means the breath never reaches the posterior map. A floor exercise while your jaw is clenched means the brainstem is overriding every signal with defense. The evidence has to arrive in the right order for the system to receive it.

This is what we are doing in May! 

It's not exercises. It's an evidence protocol for the model that generates your posture. The more I learn, the better I am at teaching you to peel the layer of your onion - to access deeper levels and it'sa thrill to be on this journey with you.

Your posture is not broken. it was correctly responding to blurry information. 

Your posture is still generating itself. Let's improve our inputs.

Helpful posts to read:

https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/blog/what-is-pandiculation

https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/blog/should-we-stop-stretching

https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/blog/how-the-nervous-system-learns-pain

https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/blog/adrugfreewaytorelievepainandwhatis-itis

https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/blog/this-is-why-your-posture-won-t-change

https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/blog/tell-me-exactly-what-to-do-to-get-out-of-pain

Join The Vibrant Living Academy where I go deeper into this work and more https://vibrant-living-with-tanya.mykajabi.com/vibrant-living-studio 

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