Shoulders up. Back straight. Chin out.
That’s the premise behind Village of Roslyn resident Lorie Kiviat’s 2012 book, “Straighten Up: How the Powerful Effects of Posture Consciousness Can Be a Solution to Your Aches and Pains,” which teaches natural pain relief through the development of proper posture and body movement techniques.
The program is based on the work of Dr. Bess Mensendieck, whose renowned system of functional movements first published more than a century ago helped cure Kiviat’s personal struggles with kyphosis, a condition in which the spine is unnaturally curved.
“After a certain point, I realized I didn’t feel as good as I should feel,” said Kiviat. “I had more results in practicing this system than in 35 years of doing yoga.”
Kiviat’s program is designed to teach the mind the proper techniques involved in making movements as routine as bending over the sink to wash your face.
If practiced every day for nine weeks, Kiviat said, the program can help undo bad habits developed over the years and lead to better overall health and less joint and muscle pain.
“When you do the program, it’s like learning to play the piano,” Kiviat said. “Your fingers know where to go because you practiced telling the brain where to put your fingers. You are teaching your brain through these exercises which muscles to use in your daily movements.”
Kiviat teaches classes out of her home at the Chalet luxury apartment complex in either individual or group sessions. She also taught classes at the North Shore Towers in New Hyde Park for 14 years and given seminars at the Bryant Library and at each of the Roslyn public schools.
Though she has practiced and taught yoga for more than four decades, Kiviat said her posture therapy system has been “a mission for me” because of how even the most popular programs have improperly taught basic yoga positions that could be doing its practitioners more harm than good.
“It’s not just what you do, it’s how you do it,” Kiviat said. “If you do all these wonderful positions, that’s all fine, but you may really be hurting yourself and don’t even realize it.”
But Kiviat said she does not think of herself as a yoga instructor, rather a “movement specialist” whose job is to help teach good posture to people who may not have ever learned what good posture entails.
“You always hear, you know, ‘Stand up straight!’ But who ever told you what that actually means?” Kiviat said. “This is not another excessive system. This is a way of training the brain to know what muscles hold you in a standing position, a seated position – all functional movements we make in our daily lives.”
