Postural adaptability

Scientific basis

Postural control depends on the task and the environment: for the same person, the body's organization changes depending on whether they are reading, writing, looking at a screen or leaning forward. It relies on the integration of visual, vestibular and somatosensory information, and includes both anticipatory adjustments and responses to perturbations.

Research on movement variability shows that systems capable of adapting display variability that is neither too low nor excessive: adaptability cannot be reduced to the amount of movement.

Blue Portance / SBNFA™ reading

Postural adaptability is the expression of the principle of adaptability at the level of body organization. It is neither rigid nor unstable: adjustments must remain controllable, tolerated and compatible with the task. The body regulates and the hips are the regulator, within a continuous balance space, with no imposed zero point.

It differs from adaptive potential: postural adaptability describes a functional capacity; adaptive potential describes the adjustment possibilities actually accessible in a given situation.

Contribution to the analysis of sitting

Seating analysis observes how the person maintains, modifies and redistributes their points of support over time: changes of position, micro-adjustments, weight shifts, pelvic mobility. High variability is not good in itself: the analysis distinguishes useful variation, restlessness, instability and painful compensation, depending on the task and the duration.

Not to be confused with

Adaptive potential, the adjustment possibilities actually accessible in a given situation; adaptability, the general principle linking postural and tissue adjustments; tissue adaptability, its expression at the tissue level; micro-movements, continuous postural regulation and cone of balance, related notions that are not synonyms; ideal posture: postural adaptability does not aim for a single posture.

Related terms

Adaptability · Tissue adaptability · Postural compensation · Cone of balance · Postural control · Postural balance · Micro-movements · Hip mobility · Pelvic mobility · Natural postures · Adaptive potential · Continuous postural regulation · Posterior pelvic tilt · Postural variability

Sources and scope

• Horak (2006): postural orientation and equilibrium, the neural control of balance (Age and Ageing)
• Massion (1994): the postural control system (Current Opinion in Neurobiology)
• Stergiou and Decker (2011): human movement variability, nonlinear dynamics and pathology (Human Movement Science)