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Improving Your Posture

USING PRINCIPLES OF MINDFULNESS AND NEUROMECHANICS

Holistic Wellness 5 Minute Read

For postural specialist Amy Buck, movement is meditation. Her approach to aligning the body focuses on re-training the nervous system through a unique blend of clinical somatics, neuromechanics, Pilates, and fascia release. Buck will be in residence at COMO Shambhala Parrot Cay until January 16th 2025, and in this COMO Conversation, she explains the science behind the ALIGN Method and why staying focused is key to improving your posture. 

On posture and the nervous system

AMY BUCK

Amy Buck is a Pilates instructor, yoga teacher and postural specialist. She is the founder of ALIGN Holistic Fitness and the creator of the ALIGN Approach, which she teaches in luxury resorts from Bali to the Caribbean. Having worked with COMO Shambhala for more than a decade, Buck’s passion for teaching movement and belief in the life-changing power of mindfulness drives her passion to help others on their own path to physical wellbeing.

TELL US MORE ABOUT THE ALIGN APPROACH AND WHAT MAKES IT SO UNIQUE.

I started with teaching Pilates, and that’s kind of my baseline and first love. During my classes, I realised that people were interested in learning to be present. To me, movement is meditation. We’re completely focused and aware of each exercise and how it feels in the moment without letting the mind wander. So I decided to dive deeper into how we can apply movement and that sense of being present on the mat into our lives. 

I devised the ALIGN approach, which offers a new perspective on improving posture while achieving a deeper level of consciousness. It’s a unique combination of Pilates, clinical somatics, neuromechanics, and fascia release. The Pilates aspect focuses on the attributes of concentration and control. Clinical somatics helps to re-train the nervous system to help people let go of chronic tension. And neuromechanics enhances the brain-body communication and balance. The session ends with fascia release, which helps to rehydrate the connective tissue system and releases the trapped tensions in the body from our daily habits and patterns. A major focus of the ALIGN approach is on the nervous system and helping it come back into homeostasis. We can do that through movement and relaxation to encourage people to let go, which should really be a key focus in our lives in the next year. We’re always trying to do something, achieve something, when what the body needs is to just let go. 

Mindful awareness is at the heart of the ALIGN approach. When people are on a wellness journey, one of their main goals is to integrate more present-moment awareness into their days. It’s the most precious state that we can live our lives in. And to do that, we have to settle down and focus on our bodies. 

HOW DOES A BODY FEEL WHEN IT’S NOT IN ALIGNMENT?

One of the biggest things is neck and shoulder pain. Because of this rounded, forward posture that we have from looking at screens and devices all day, the head is tilted forward. And the average human head weighs almost five kilograms! So when it is not sitting squarely on its supports, it immediately puts strain on the spinal alignment and restricts the fascia flow. To realign the body, I like to do a flowerpot sequence — you first find your sitting bones to ground yourself, which is like the pot. The stem is like your spine, so pull it nice and tall, the leaves are the shoulders, which are open, and the head is the flower which shines out. 

Pilates really helps with these aspects because it targets the inner core and the stabilising muscles that surround our joints. The source of any kind of aches and pains that we have is usually attributed to a misalignment in the body and poor posture patterns. And the rounded posture also impedes energy and digestion, because it compresses the organs. 

COULD YOU WALK US THROUGH THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE THREE ASPECTS OF THE ALIGN APPROACH?

We’ll start with the fascia. It’s a 3D, fluid-filled web that covers every muscle and bone and weaves in and out of the organs — it is what literally creates our shape. The fluid in the fascia is a gel-like substance made of water, elastin, and collagen. It flows through our body, and also carries nutrients, lymph, hormones, and helps to detoxify the body. It is everywhere — kind of like the white webbing in a peeled orange. In our daily lives, we have these habitual patterns of being on our computer or on the phone, which makes it almost impossible to have good posture. The fascia is supposed to slide and glide when hydrated, but our patterns of tension create sticky adhesions within the fascia that pull our bodies out of alignment. What the ALIGN method does is to stimulate the connective tissue and move it so that the fluid hydrates the fascia. What’s interesting is that the fascia was one of the most under-researched aspects of the body until the past twenty years — and researchers now consider it the largest organ in the body, not the skin! 

The fascia and connective tissue also have the most sensory neurons within the body, which is why working with the nervous system is so important. The role of the nervous system is to protect us and make us feel safe. But in a modern world where stress is everywhere, the body ends up holding on to patterns of tension, which results in tight and tense muscles. In clinical somatics, we go deeper into the body to communicate with the nervous system to get it to release the tension. This is done through overriding the stretch reflex — an innate survival mechanism in the body that, over time, gets tighter and tighter. There is a sensory-movement feedback loop that communicates with the brain, so the movement in somatics takes you to the end of the range where the muscle is really tight, and we hold, before slowly releasing. The body is able to recognise that hey, we were able to let go, and over a few repetitions, we slowly start to lengthen that baseline attention to get more mobility. It’s very gentle and slow, and it’s where that meditative aspect comes in because it needs so much mental focus and control and concentration to hold the contraction and release it in tiny increments. Clinical somatics has helped with chronic back pain, tense shoulders, and other mobility issues — it was the missing puzzle piece as to why my clients weren’t improving on chronic pain, flexibility, or mobility, because we weren’t addressing the source at all. 

Neuromechanics is the study of how the nervous system interacts with the body’s mechanics and movement. When we approach exercise through a neuroscience lens, it helps us sharpen our fine motor skills and enhances the vestibular system — which is what maintains your sense of balance and spatial awareness. When you give it something to focus on, it can respond with an increased range of motion. For example, we can isolate the connective tissue around cranial nerve 11 (which is responsible for the stiffness in your traps) using a gliding motion, which untraps that nerve and provides relief. And I realised that this really complements clinical somatics, using Pilates and fascia release to centre the body with precision and release.

WHAT DOES A SESSION AT PARROT CAY LOOK LIKE?

It begins with a Digital Postural Analysis, which uses four images to scan the body for areas of misalignment. Then I have them lay on a mat to feel the differences in the scan — is one shoulder more elevated than the other? Is one side of the pelvis heavier than the other? We start to stimulate the neural core with a foam roller and some gentle rocking. And this helps them to tap into the parasympathetic nervous system of rest, digest, and reset with breathwork. After that, they get on the mat again to see what has changed — I call this a rebalance sequence. And then, we target the specific areas for fascia release so that the fluid moves out of those sticky adhesions. The ALIGN sessions also empower my clients beyond our time together. I typically give them a set of corrective exercises to strengthen the alignment and brain-body connection. They also get a set of routines to take home — so in the morning, they have a routine to kickstart the day and bring the nervous system online, as well as daily integration tools to help bring them back to centre. And they also have a wind down routine before bed. 


 

YOU ALSO OFFER ANTI-GRAVITY FITNESS SESSIONS. WHAT IS IT, AND HOW DOES IT BENEFIT THE BODY?

We use a silk hammock to suspend the client in the air and create a sense of weightlessness. It helps people to decompress the joints and rehydrate the fascia, because the fabric against the skin helps to move the fluid around. Most importantly, it helps people let go. I guide them into an inversion, with the fabric wrapped securely around their body. The spine naturally decompresses and creates more space within the joints — and it’s very freeing!  The Lotus Womb position, for example, helps the spine to round and decompress, while supported securely for a sense of true weightlessness. Clients get to open up the chest, and loosen the shoulders and abdominals. During the process, they also push the boundaries of what they are comfortable doing, and feeling success in doing these different things.

Amy Buck will be in residence at COMO Shambhala Parrot Cay from December 27th 2024 to January 16th 2024. To book a session with her, click here. 

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