Over the break, my wife and I spent a glorious week on the Caribbean island of Nevis. We spent our time swimming, snorkeling, walking along the beach, and driving on the wrong side of the road.
After a few days, I started to notice something. When we were around both tourists (mostly American) and locals, the locals had much better body posture. As a whole, they stood up rather straight and had normal walking gaits. In contrast, it was not infrequent for the tourists to be slumping or hunched over. After I noticed this, I started paying more attention, and I found relatively few exceptions.
It made me wonder if the American (western?) lifestyle, complete with sedentary activity and high levels of stress, didn't manifest itself on our bodies. This certainly seems to be the case with peoples' weight, but I wonder if it's also the case with body posture.
I don't know if I stand up straighter now, after a week on Nevis, but it sure helped me get the real winter that we've had here for the past month.
1 comment:
What I'm about to write may be complete rubbish.
Maybe the locals out and about would be similar to the locals out and about everywhere - meaning they are the ones who are less sedentary and perhaps have better posture because they are more active. Perhaps many tourists, who tend to be older as well, tend to be the sedentary types with poorer postures due to inactivity.
Post a Comment