For More Information
You can read Michael Protzel’s article setting forth the conceptual foundation of Uprighting/Weight Commitment work
Restore Your Innate Uprighting Ability
Learn To Sit And Stand
Without Stress, Strain & Chronic Pain
The Uprighting community is dedicated to educating people about the early childhood social conditioning that causes us to lose touch with the power of our body weight and the central role it plays in how we sit, stand and move
Michael Protzel’s work demonstrates how to regain awareness and control of our body weight, allowing us to sit and stand effortlessly and powerfully, with sustainability—without relying on posture tech or so-called 'ergonomic' aids
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Uprightness is One of the Defining Characteristics of Our Species
We are all born with a highly evolved ability to lift ourselves into verticality easily and efficiently.
As infants, we all display this amazing lifting ability. In the first year of life, we teach ourselves to sit beautifully... without instruction.
We do this by allowing gravity to take our body mass straight down to earth, capturing its power at ground contact under the sit-bones, legs and feet.
Through our toddler years, we revel in our bodies and move as the physical dynamos we are.
Yet, from birth, we see everyone around us sitting back into chairs, sofas, car seats… all the time... everywhere.
As young children, we have no choice but to follow the crowd.
The Development Of The
"Classic Slump"
By 3 or 4, when we’ve developed the muscles that allow us to lower ourselves gradually back into a chair support and yank ourselves off it, we begin doing it with staggering repetition. Without our knowing, we are turning the power of our body weight into a self-destructive force.
By 5 years old, we’ve trashed our innate sitting ability entirely. Every time we sit, even on a stool or on the floor, we drop the pelvis and lower spine backwards and bend the upper spine forwards, rounding the shoulders … the classic slump.
Yet, at this early age, we are incredibly supple.
We don’t feel the muscular strain or skeletal distortion. We are oblivious to it all. We accept without question the utter normalcy of sitting back in chairs. Gone and forgotten is the buoyant sitting ability we displayed as infants and toddlers.
This is a culture-wide problem. We all undergo the same conditioning.
Our collective kinesthetic disconnect has left society with rampant slouching, an ever-increasing number of hip and knee replacements, and a high incidence of low back and neck pain .... with no understanding of the source of it all.
"Posture" is a Faulty Concept
Maintaining a posture (holding a particular position intentionally) is rarely what we're doing as we go about our daily routine ... we do it when we pose for a photo or sit up straight for appearances.
Outside of those moments, what we are doing the vast majority of our time is lifting ourselves ... getting our head into position to see what it is we want to see.
Lifting is an action not a position. Even in those moments when we do posture, we are still lifting. Without an act of lifting, we’d have no upright position at all. We’d just be a pile of flesh and bones on the ground. Any particular position we might find ourselves in is but the consequence of how we are lifting. Unfortunately, all of our habitual ways of lifting are problematic.
So-called bad posture (slumping/slouching or leaning against an external object for 'support') is clearly inefficient lifting.
Even so-called good posture is inefficient lifting. Having anchored ourselves back in chairs since early childhood, we must employ substantial muscular effort to pull ourselves into "good posture" and hold it ... effort that cannot be sustained. This is why nobody can sit up straight for very long. See below for how we've all come to do it.
What makes for the efficient or inefficient lifting of the spine?
The answer is simple: How well or how poorly we wield the power of our own body weight.
Committing body weight backwards, as in normal sitting, aborts innate uprighting. By regaining sensory awareness of our body weight and recognizing its moment-by-moment impact on the quality of our lifting, we can recover our highly evolved, innate ability to sit, stand and move easily and efficiently.
Is Uprighting for You?
- Yes, if you want to learn to sit and stand with ease and efficiency, and a beautifully lengthened spine.
- Yes, if you want to mindfully connect with your body and use it to its full power.
- Yes, if you are sick of expensive products and therapies that only provide short term relief.