Audrey Hepburn - Proof That Posture is Key

When I think of Audrey Hepburn, the image that comes to mind is a picture of poise, youthful beauty, and a graceful, small figure. She’s one of my favorite actresses of all time, and, now that my profession is in holistic fascia care, I have looked at her again from that perspective - and I’ve learned a lot!

"Your Biography makes your Biology!"

That's one of my favorite sayings. For a while, I simply pinned Hepburn’s good looks on genetics. And, while I’m sure that’s a significant contributing factor, I don’t believe beauty is just a mix of genetics and luck. I think a big part of Audrey Hepburn’s beauty is in her poise and her posture. With good posture, you look more confident, stronger, and stable. Good posture also keeps the body’s tissues healthy, and in my opinion, beauty follows health!

So where did Hepburn get her impeccable posture? With a little digging, I discovered that before she debuted as an actor, she was a ballet dancer! She studied for several years as a child and through her teens, and during WWII she even used her talents to earn money and keep her family afloat. But besides the career opportunity, it also did her a lot of good physically! Ballet, at its core, is not just about expression through dance. It’s extremely technically oriented, so all good ballerinas are trained to have impeccable control over their posture at all times.

Benefits of Ballet

One of the things ballet does best is exercise the core in a way that lengthens and stretches the spine, rather than crunching and compressing it. This long and strong core is one of the most important elements of a healthy posture - it creates space for a good, full breath, protects the spine, and allows for healthy organ function. Also, when your core is trained to stay open, you never feel the need to slouch over when you sit or stand! You can sit up straight without looking like you’re even trying - because you’re not!

The purpose of the core muscles is to keep the spine stable while the rest of the limbs do their thing. But no matter how strong your core is, if your limbs aren’t flexible, anything they do is going to pull the core with it. So you’ve gotta be at least fairly flexible to have good posture, and ballerinas have definitely got that covered! The constant stretching that they do is also therapeutic for the fascia - it keeps the tissues soft and supple. Also, with more space in the joints, oxygen and nutrients better flow to the extremities and head.

Now, looking again at our subject, Audrey Hepburn, you can see that she’s got both of these covered! She sits with natural, relaxed poise in both her core and neck (she has a lovely elongated neck, another key feature of good posture), and you can tell that her limbs and joints are healthy and free of compression. 

Downsides of Ballet

Now, that doesn’t mean that ballet is guaranteed to get you the healthiest body on the face of the planet. It can be extremely stressful on the body, and in some ways, downright damaging over time!

The most obvious challenge is pointe toe dancing. It looks great, and it allows dancers much more freedom than flat shoes (the original ballet shoe) did, but it is not nice on your feet! Many dancers experience issues with their feet and toes, and this is guaranteed to affect things up the chain. Ballet also pushes the body into many extreme positions, like externally rotating the feet dramatically and frequently arching the lower back, which is stressful for the spine. But the strength of the core and general health of the joints and tissues, along with the good habits ballet trains, help to compensate for these extremes.

But we can’t all be Ballerinas!

Unfortunately, not all of us are in a position to drop everything and transform our bodies ballerina-style. Even if we could, Audrey Hepburn started as a child, and just that in itself makes a big difference. Additionally, we live in a world very different from the 1950s, with deeper set issues ingrained in our bodies that need more efficient and targeted solutions. 

Stretching is a great place to start. But even better is releasing the whole fascia tissue all the way down to the bone, where it has adhered with a force that stretching can’t easily hope to fight against! Releasing these adhesions is just what Block Therapy specializes in, and it is like resetting the scaffolding that has held us incorrectly all these years, and restoring it to its natural resting place.

So just know - no matter where we’re starting from, if we know how to work with the body in a gentle and holistic way, we can slowly but surely encourage it back towards a more happy, youthful state. Knowing this, I like to tell myself that while I might never look like Audrey Hepburn, I can learn from her and aim for becoming the most healthy Leah I can be, and my own unique natural beauty will follow!