Having good posture is about more than only preventing back, neck and shoulder pain. Although these are motivating reasons, according to Chinese medicine, proper posture also sets the stage for the flow of your life-force energy (called "chi") to flow freely throughout your system. Many people don't realise the intimate connection between their body, chi, emotions and mind. For example, a bad postural alignment can block your energy channels where chi flows and cause a negative emotion to surface.

Posture exercises begin with learning general body alignments. Once your body memory sets in and can maintain these basic alignments, you progress to learning ever-more refined biomechanical alignments. Notice it's "body memory" and not just "memory." You can think about proper posture and you can even know what it looks like, but until you can feel it in your body and hold your body comfortably--with the least amount of gravitational resistance--it doesn't do you much good.

Back problems and neck and shoulder pain are a legion in the West, so I often write about posture and body alignments to help people avoid a whole lot of unnecessary pain and discomfort. For those who want to advance their qigong and tai chi exercise or Bagua Circle Walking Meditation practice, proper biomechanical body alignments are a must.

Read more about posture, body alignments and balancing your body by clicking here.