Your Posture is Critical to Accessing Your Natural Number.
We have all been told to sit up straight, and many of us bemoan our poor posture. Everywhere you turn, there are resources for properly aligning your body. It turns out that the proper alignment of the body helps the health of the physical body. It also helps the flow of nonphysical energy and the vibrancy of the Natural Numbers in your body.
If you know your Natural Number, you learned about the physical position in which your body was most strong. It turns out that people tend to lead with the region of the body associated with their Natural Energy Center. When being used for movement and balance it is not uncommon to see the movement area further forward than other parts of the body, for example, Natural Number 5, the movement region is the back of the head and you will see Natural number 5s put their head down and stretch the back of the neck when trying to balance their body. The Natural Number region leads your movement and also balances your body. Over time, we develop unconscious body habits to either project or protect our Natural Number. This means there is either a collapse around the region or the Natural Number region is projected outward. Both tendencies lead to postural shifts that block or change the flow of energy in the body.
Practice Your Posture
Being aware of and practicing your posture is one aspect of developing a way of being that is strong and balanced, where the balance, power, and energy flows related to your Natural Number are optimal. This first place to start is to bring awareness to and consciously practice using your Natural Energy Center to bring your body into alignment.
Proper alignment is: head upright aligned equally between the shoulders, straight up and down, shoulders in line with the hips, hips in-line with the feet.
An Exercise
To Feel where your movement center is in the body you can do this exercise. First, align your body as described above, feet shoulder-width apart, hips over feet, shoulders over hips, and head straight up from the spine. Take a breath, and as you breathe out allow your body to collapse, bending forward, relaxing all the muscle that would normally hold you from the hips up. Take a breath in this relaxed position. Then take a much deeper breath allowing your breath to fill and lift your body. Once you are again fully upright, notice what part of your body is naturally lifted, or where did the lift initiate from? Your body unconsciously lifted and expanded using your movement center. Notice the impact on how you are feeling after you use your Natural Energy region to align your body.
As you learn about the other eight Natural Numbers you can practice using those centers to lift, expand, and align your body. Each center helps to bring the body into better alignment. This results in a more balanced body posture and ease in movement.
Alex Honnold, Natural Number 3 (NN3), is a great example of how a person uses their natural postural strength to their advantage. Alex has a great upright posture that is lifted up from his upper sternum, at the manubrium ( a small bone at the top of the sternum). He naturally lifts and balances from this part of his body. NN3s have tremendous upper body strength using the triangular balance of the arms extended straight drawing balance and power from the clavicle and sternum. When he is climbing you see his arms are often very straight – this is because he has maximum power and control when using his body in this way. Other climbers who are not activated in the upper body in the way that NN3s are, will use different movement styles to accomplish the same climbs.
Learning where your active region is located and how to activate it through postural adjustments to the body is part of the Natural Number Identification process.
