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WHAT DOES FORM TELL US? All living things relay important information about their health status via their form/position/structure. Take a common houseplant, for example. Imagine a plant that's getting plenty of sunlight, just the right amount of water, and has the perfect balance of nutrients in its soil. What would that plant look like? Now, take that same plant and stop giving it water and move it out of the sunlight and into the shade. How might the health and appearance of that plant change as a result of its new environment? An even more vivid example comes from our experience with animals in captivity. Imagine going to a marine park, like SeaWorld. You're excited to get your first look at one of nature's biggest, most beautiful, and most intelligent mammals—the killer whale. When you finally come upon the whales, would it strike you as odd that the dorsal fins on many of the orcas are flopped over, hanging limply to the side? It would just look wrong, wouldn't it? Well, it should, because this small change in the orca's posture offers a wealth of information regarding the animal's body and its health status, as well as a valuable window into its living conditions and environment. A killer whale's dorsal fin is made up of dense connective tissue. When the orcas do what they do in the wild—swim across vast distances of open ocean—that tissue is strengthened and molded by the enormous pressure of the deep ocean. When there is no deep diving, no swimming across long distances, and most of the animal's time is spent at the surface in a small pool, the tissues of the dorsal fin weaken, atrophy, and fall over. Experts in the field estimate that less than 1 percent of wild orcas have "fin collapse." And yet, in captivity, nearly all orcas display some level of fin collapse. 1 The regular occurrence of fin collapse in captivity has been attributed to limited space, time spent at the surface, pattern swimming, warmer water, dehydration, and lack of exercise. Among wild orcas, there was a documented case in 1989 where the fins of two male killer whales spontaneously collapsed after being exposed to oil from the Exxon Valdez spill. Fin collapse is thought to be a sign of poor health, as both whales died soon after the fin collapse was documented. 2 These and other physical changes in posture also offer us an invaluable source of direct feedback from the organism as to whether a given therapy is moving it back toward health or further away from it. Take the wilting plant from our earlier example. What would happen if we gave it some water and moved it out of the shade and back into the sunlight? Its posture would let us know, within a relatively short time frame, that we had pushed the organism away from dysfunction and back toward health. We wouldn't be forced to guess what result we'd had or ask the plant how it felt. We would see it, and in recognizing what we see, we would have certainty. Wouldn't it be great to have that same kind of certainty with our clients? POSTURE PROVIDES CLUES ABOUT FUNCTION The good news is that these same types of changes in physical form occur in humans, too, and they can be used in a multitude of ways. These postural windows offer bodyworkers an amazing opportunity to view our clients' health status, as well as create customized treatment approaches for each of them. These windows can also be used as a compass of sorts to let us know when we're heading in the right direction. Take forward-head posture (FHP), for example. Recently, this condition has gained a lot of media attention as "text neck." It is now being called an epidemic, and nearly 60 percent of Americans are at risk of developing this problem. 3 In fact, FHP has become so common that for many—including those of us in the health-care profession—it doesn't even register as abnormal when we see it. But it makes sense, doesn't it? If the only killer whales you had ever seen were in captivity and they all had fin collapse, you would naturally assume all killer whales looked like that. It's not until you view the organism in its natural state that you truly get a sense for what "normal" looks like. 50 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k s e p t e m b e r / o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 How is it that the postural window can convey so much important information?