3.7 Mewing and Full Body Posture
Esther Gokhale’s One Mistake
This is Chapter 3.7 of the JawHacks ebook. See the full Table of Contents here.
Primal Posture
In 2010, I began my posture correction journey in an attempt to correct my chronic migraine problem. At the time, I surveyed all available literature to learn proper posture.
That’s when I discovered Esther Gokhale’s book “8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back” which teaches Primal Posture.
The book’s title can be a turn-off as many of us don’t actually struggle with back pain. But I can assure you, its content is pure gold.
It is essentially a picture-book that documents how people in traditional cultures (where back pain is non-existent) carry their bodies.
Whether it’s Aboriginal Australians, Haitians, or Mongolian wrestlers, all of these pain-free people sit, stand and walk the same.
And the photos are striking. Immediately upon viewing them, the eye recognizes that there is something noble and strong about their upright posture.
On the left you can see a Burkina woman carrying her baby. Notice how her shoulders are positioned down and back relative to her torso, her neck is elongated without significant curvature and her chin angles downwards.
She positions her baby behind the middle of her body, close to her spine, and uses her forearm, rather than her hand, to support most of the baby’s weight. The baby is in a period of rapid growth and benefits from being carried like this, since this position stretches his back muscles.