Posture and Gravity
Gravity is a very attractive force, and everybody is constantly exposed to its influence. The pull of this force makes us all stay on the ground. It even tries to pull us under the ground. But fortunately there is another force in yoga poses us which does not permit that. That is energy. (Charlotte Selver, Gravity, Energy and the Support of the Ground, 2009)
Rodin’s The Thinker (figure 13.1), will serve as an example to describe for you how to analyze the architecture of a posture which is comprised of three main subgroups:
1. A basic posture, constituted principally by all of the parts of the body that transmit the weight of the organism to the surface that carries the body, which is called the support surface.
2. A posture of auto-contact, principally constituted by all of the parts of the body that touch each other.
3. A surface posture, constituted by the parts of the body that are not used by the first two levels.
In The Thinker, all of the segments of the body are in yoga poses either basic posture or auto-contact posture. There is consequently no other parts of the body to interact with the objects and the persons that surround The Thinker.
