Neutral Pelvis is the most important part my teaching and personal practice.  That is the first, and pretty much only alignment instruction that I teach, because I believe that from neutral pelvis everything else will align itself naturally up or down the line.  Granted, if your posture has not been good for the last X number of years, neutral pelvis will be difficult to find, its application mysterious, until one day it clicks and you become like me - on a constant quest for the perfect neutral pelvis.  Here I am putting the rundown of what makes neutral pelvis. 

- Begin standing.  Observe your usual posture.  Do you have a lumbar curve?  Or maybe too much of it?  Do you slouch and is your head forward?  Or do you instead thrust your chest forward, flattening your upper back?  How about tension in the neck, upper and lower back?  Where do you feel the weight of your body in your feet?  Towards the big toe mound?  Or towards the outer heels?  Also observe your breathing.  Do you feel the breath move your lower ribs?  Where?  Front of the body, back of the body?  Or maybe your lower ribs don't move at all, just the upper chest a little bit?  Make mental notes.

- First one needs to unlock the knees when standing.  When we lock our knees, it is more difficult to control the pelvic tilt as it becomes locked into either flat back or sway back.

- Once the knees are unlocked and the legs are straight, you can begin to reach the tailbone towards the pubic bone and the pubic bone towards the tail bone.  Begin by actually moving the pelvis, tilting forward as you reach the pubic bone back and arching the low back, and tilting back as you reach the tailbone toward the pubic bone, rounding the low back. See which one of these movements seems more ingrained, easier in your body.  Reach these two bones towards each other with equal amount of effort.  Whatever was the harder bone to move, focus on moving that one.  Stop moving your pelvis when you feel the perineum floor between the two bones naturally lift and tone, and your lowest abdominal muscles also naturally firm up.  You are probably close enough to neutral.  Also, you will feel the weight of your body shift in your feet towards the back slope of the arch of the foot - the spot where your shin bones are pointing.  Make sure your legs are straight, but you are not locking your knees!

- To finish, reach the hip points in front of the pelvis towards each other, pulling the lower belly in and up slightly, and at the same time reach the top of the sacrum in towards the belly, again - with equal amount of effort.  As you pull the belly in, do not flatten the low back, do the opposite - create a bit of a lumbar curve (but not too much!).  Stop when you see your navel and pubis line up plum to each other.  You should be in neutral.  It should feel as if you have a ball of energy in your belly, rotating up the front of the body and down the back, rooting you through the tailbone without flattening your lumber curve.  You have the most naturally occurring low belly tone in this position.  Every step you make in neutral pelvis works to strengthen your core, whereas every step you make NOT in neutral pelvis weakens it instead.

Once you create neutral pelvis see how it echoes through the rest of your body.  If you generally stand with your pelvis tilted back and the lumbar curve flattened, you will need to shift the shoulders back to set them over the hips, otherwise it will feel as if you are falling forward.  If you are the opposite, and your exaggerated lumbar curve has now become normal and neutral again, you will need to adjust the shoulders too, to avoid falling back.  Shoulders naturally want to be over the hips, so if you habitually tilt the pelvis back and lock your knees, your shoulders probably respond by shifting forward for balance, rounding your upper back, giving you slouchy posture and head forward look.  If you sag in the low back too much, your shoulders can go either way - too far back, thus flattening your upper back (thoracic curve), or too far forward, exaggerating that upper back curve (kyphosis).  Neutral pelvis corrects the shoulders almost automatically.

Now, when your shoulders have aligned with your hips notice if that changes the quality of your your breath.  Now you have equal amount of space around the entire circumference of your lower ribs, and you can begin to engage the diaphragm for breath, allowing the lower ribs to expand equally in all directions, including your back body.  The chest should feel open, yet soft.  The weight of the body should shift into the bones, so that the very outer muscles can relax, while the innermost muscles, closest to the core, can now be activated.  It gives you a sense of lightness and relaxation, standing like this becomes effortless.

The mind soon follows with a feeling of joy, optimism, and peace, while you look confident, full of positive energy, at least an inch taller.  Now, who wouldn't want to have that all the time?  Find that golden middle in your body.

There is more, however.  Without full diaphragmatic breath in neutral pelvis, there are areas in your body that do not receive adequate amount of circulation and oxygenation.  Poor posture restricts breathing, which often becomes confined to the shallow areas of the upper chest.  The muscles in the upper chest are not meant to do your breathing for you (the diaphragm is a large muscle designed for that task).  Shallow rapid breaths in the upper chest fatigue the muscles of the upper back, adding to the tension in the neck.  Poor posture has us push forward our head and round our shoulders, compressing the back of the neck.  The muscles in the upper back work to hold the bones together, and over time become weak and prone to injury (rotator cuff anyone?  How about frozen shoulder?)  Shallow breaths contribute to this problem and make it worse.  Tension in the upper back and neck restricts blood flow to the head, causing migraines and suffocating important glands at the base of the scull - pineal, pituitary and hypothalamus.  These glands regulate many important functions in the body, and poor posture affects them in a negative way.  Watch my video on neck alignment (Jalandhara Bandha) on my Youtube channel for more detail on this.

Shallow rapid breathing also make the blood too rich in oxygen and thus too acidic.  Acid flowing through your veins make every little painful sensation magnified.  You are irritated, on a a short fuse.  By slowing and deepening the breath, you allow carbon dioxide to build up in the blood, making the blood more alkaline.  Like a tonic, it soothes the nerves and the bathes the organs and tissues of the body.  The mood becomes relaxed, your are better equipped at handling stress and pain.

Down below, without full diaphragmatic breath and without the movement of the diaphragm down on the inhale and up on the exhale, the organs there begin to stagnate as well.  Liver, kidneys and adrenals are all affected by the movement of the breath nearby.  Poor posture creates stress and tension in the low back - the most common complaint of my Yoga clients and students.  Tension in the low back is greatly helped by better posture and better breathing.  It has an almost immediate effect!

The breath creates a massaging action on the belly and the small intestine, which need this stimulation in order to secrete the right amount of digestive juices and enzymes.  If there is no movement of the diaphragm, the digestive process slows down (the body is thinking you are stressed and need your energy for fight or flight response).  You can eat the best organic food in the world, but without a properly functioning digestive system you cannot extract all the nutrients from it, instead it just sits in your gut, literally rotting.  The toxins released by the undigested food that lines the intestines begin to leak into the surrounding tissues through the intestinal wall.  The body begins to pack the area with fat and water to protect itself from these toxins.  That is partly the reason for that stubborn belly fat and why it is so hard to get rid of it.

These toxins slowly poison your body from the inside, accumulating in the areas that are weakest.  Ayurveda explains it as dosha accumulation - certain areas of the body are especially vulnerable to certain toxins, and our constitution and digestive system make it favorable for certain type of harmful bacteria in the gut to thrive when we are out of balance and eat food that is incorrect for our dosha.  Each bacteria produces its own type of toxin.  Some of these toxins affect joints, while others go into the blood, or lymph, or other organs.  Full diaphragmatic breath, coupled with regular Yoga asana practice that includes twists, forward folds and backbends stimulate the elimination of these toxins from the body by directly affecting the digestive process and metabolism.  So, if your gut is functioning well, you can eat pretty much anything and your body will process it and eliminate any waste.  Not that you should eat unhealthy food, but still...  Sometimes at a birthday party it is hard to say no. 

So, if after changing your diet and starting a regular exercise program you are still carrying that stubborn abdominal fat, ask yourself if you are breathing as well - with full diaphragmatic breath.

And last but not least, with proper posture in neutral pelvis, the joints in your body are better aligned and wear out a lot less.  You can work hard and play hard and walk away from accidents that would otherwise devastate a body that is poorly aligned.  Like a well oiled machine, the body hums with luminous energy in a good posture.

Need more information?  Watch a video I made about Neutral Vs. Imprinted Spine.

Namaste.