Finding Postural Ease: Why Your Weight Is Your Support

If you’ve ever been to an Alexander Technique lesson, you’ve likely heard your teacher use the word “support.” Or maybe you've read about it. We often talk about “allowing your head to release forward and up on top of your spine,” or “letting your shoulders widen.” Underpinning all these directions is a fundamental idea: your body is evolved to be effortlessly supported.

But what is this “support” we’re talking about? Most of us have a subconscious belief that support is something we have to do, to tense our muscles, pull ourselves up, and hold our weight against the relentless pull of gravity. We think of our weight as a burden, a load we must constantly carry.

What if I told you that this perception is not just unhelpful, but fundamentally backwards? Every organism, every animal, has evolved to take advantage of it's environment. What if your weight is itself the support?

Let’s get into a little physics to reframe this. I'll do my best to keep this simple.

We often use “mass” and “weight” interchangeably, but in physics, they are distinct. Your mass is the amount of "stuff" you’re made of, and it’s constant. Your weight, however, is a "force", and therefore a relationship. It’s defined by the equation:

Weight (and Force) = Mass × Acceleration 

And on Earth, that acceleration is the acceleration due to gravity (9.8 m/s², meters per second squared). So, your weight is literally the force your mass experiences as it’s accelerated upward by gravity. Yes, upwards! But here’s the twist that changes everything: a force only exists as part of an interaction. For you to experience the force of your weight, there must be an equal and opposite force pushing back. You can't actually feel gravity itself directly. There is no "pull" of gravity that you can feel. When you're in freefall, you are weightless. No less so when you jump up in the air than the astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS). Where, interestingly, they're not in zero gravity, but they are in freefall. You can tell because they're in orbit. The gravity at the height of the ISS is only 10% less than here on Earth.

This is where the ground, and Einstein, come in.

Before Einstein, gravity was thought of as a mysterious, pulling force. Newton's laws described and predicted what we see, but gave no explanation as to why, and he knew that. But with Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, he gave us a better understanding: gravity is not a pull, but a warping of spacetime (space and time are inseparable). A massive object like the Earth curves the spacetime around it, and following the path of that curvature is what we experience as "falling."

When you are standing still, you are not resisting gravity. You are, in a sense, in a state of continuous, supported free-fall (yes, that's an oxymoron, but it's a helpful thought). The ground is what interrupts that fall. It is constantly pushing up against you (at 9.8m/s²) with a force exactly equal to your weight. This is Newton’s Third Law in action. Basically, atoms don't like to be crushed, so the atoms of the earth resist being crushed by the gravity well by pushing back.

So, your experience of weight isn't the sensation of being pulled down. It is the sensation of being pushed up. The solid, reliable feeling of the floor beneath your feet is the upward thrust that defines your weight. Without that upward force from the ground, your weight would be zero (as astronauts in orbit experience, despite gravity being only 10% less on earths surface).

If reading all this makes your head spin let me remind you of a personal lived experience you've had many times. You know that momentary feeling of being heavier when a lift (elevator) first starts to ascend? Well, you physically are heavier because you're experiencing the additional acceleration of the lift as it gets moving on top of the acceleration of the Earth coming up underneath you. Conversely, you feel momentarily lighter as it first starts to descend as the downwards acceleration of the lift is subtracted from the upwards acceleration of the Earth. You'll also commonly experience this as a lurch in your stomach. The sensation is only momentary as the acceleration only lasts as long as it takes to get the lift to the required steady speed.

This isn’t just a neat physics lesson; it’s a profound shift in awareness that lies at the centre of the primary observation in the Alexander Technique. The classic instruction to "let your neck be free, to let your head go forward and up" is entirely predicated on this reality. The atlanto-occipital joint, where the spine meets the base of the skull, is slightly to the rear of the skull. The head is tipped forwards as well as being pushed up. 

• Your Weight is Not the Enemy: When you stop thinking of your weight as a heavy sack you must carry and start recognizing it as the very thing that connects you to the support of the earth, everything changes. The feeling of "heaviness" can transform into a feeling of "groundedness."
• Support is a Given, Not a Goal: You don’t need to create support. The support is already there, 100% of the time, via the upward thrust of the ground. Your job is not to hold yourself up, but to stop interfering with your natural balancing act i.e. micro movements. This is the principle of "non-doing." Good posture is simply not falling over with the least effort.
• The Role of Your Musculature: Your muscles are not primary supporters; they are balancers and movers. When you tense your neck, lock your knees, or stiffen your back in a misguided attempt to "hold yourself up," you are actually fighting the support that is already being provided. You are creating inward pressure into the support, which leads to compression, fatigue, and pain. The Alexander Technique teaches you to release this excess tension, allowing your skeleton to transmit the upward thrust efficiently, letting your muscles be free for easy, graceful movement.

We are unstable as an evolutionary benefit. The greater the stability, the less the mobility. Our mobility allows us to re-find the support from the ground and channel it through our skeletal structure in every moment. Posture is a movement, and movement is less effort than locking yourself into a position. Trying to position yourself interferes with the balancing act making you more unbalanced. This is why those who have experienced a nasty fall, especially the elderly, are prone to fall more frequently as their understandable fear falling causes them to stiffen up.

Try this: Stand and notice your feet on the floor. Instead of thinking, "I am standing on the ground," try the Einsteinian thought: "The ground is standing up under me."

Feel the solid, unwavering push coming up through the soles of your feet, through your ankles, knees, and hips. Notice if you are tensing any part of yourself to "help." Can you allow your body to be poised on this ever-present wave of support? When you do, you might feel a lightness and ease you didn’t know was possible. 

Now, as you go to sit or squat, instead of thinking of going downwards, think of folding your legs up underneath you as you continue to be sent upwards along the spine.

Your weight is not a burden to be endured. It is the measure of a magnificent, continuous dialogue between you and the environment, a dialogue of perfect support. You can't improve your functioning by going inwards and trying to improve the positions of body parts. Functioning is a relationship with your environment. Just try swimming without water. or standing without an upwards accelerating surface. Our work in the Alexander Technique is to listen to that dialogue and finally get out of its way.

Interested in experiencing this supported ease for yourself? Book a lesson to explore how you can stop "doing" and start "allowing."