Michael Protzel is the founder of Uprighting, a practice dedicated to teaching individuals how to recover their natural upright posture. After struggling with chronic pain and injury throughout his childhood, Michael discovered the transformative power of the Alexander Technique and Tai Chi, which led to a groundbreaking realization about the importance of the downward movement of body mass. This insight became the foundation of his work, helping people address the underlying causes of chronic pain through conscious, efficient movement. Based in New York City and northern New Jersey, Michael also serves as President of Gann Law Books, Inc., a respected legal publisher. MysticMag offers our readers an exclusive interview.
Could you elaborate on the inception of Uprighting and the foundational principles that guided its development?
At the age of 30, I found myself drawn to the Alexander Technique, which became the foundation of my training. By that time, I had endured numerous injuries dating back to childhood. It began with a severely swollen knee at age 10, which gradually impacted my left knee, right hip, back, and neck. By my twenties, I was forced to give up sports altogether—my body simply couldn’t handle the pounding. By 30, even a regular day of office work became unbearable.
The Alexander Technique introduced me to the concept of addressing deep-seated motor habits that are ingrained early in life. These habits often operate below our awareness, making them difficult to identify, let alone change. The Alexander Technique is centered on bringing awareness to these patterns and retraining the body for improved alignment, balance, and coordination. I embraced it wholeheartedly, recognizing its transformative potential. The core idea resonated with me: we create our own body habits, and if we wish to change them, we must become conscious of them and take deliberate action.
However, my journey wasn’t without setbacks. In my mid-thirties, during my Alexander teacher training, my trainer encouraged me to join a softball league. Unfortunately, this decision led to a severe back injury that significantly hindered my progress. Still, I remained committed and continued my studies. By 1992, I had been practicing the Alexander Technique for 12 years and had made significant strides in recovery and understanding.
One pivotal moment occurred during a Tai Chi class. I noticed I was misdirecting my body weight—not sending it straight down through the talus (the top foot bone) as I should but instead leaning back onto my left heel. This realization was profound. In an instant, memories of all my past injuries flooded my mind, and I understood how this was the source of all my physical problems. This insight became the cornerstone of my work, leading me to develop what I now call Weight Commitment.
Weight commitment is the actual downward trajectory we impose on our body mass whether we are aware of this trajectory or not. Gravity takes us straight down to Earth. Through capturing the power of our body weight, humans have evolved over millions of years to achieve verticality, transitioning from quadrupedal movement to uprightness. Achieving vertical alignment, powered by our body weight, is an innate ability we all inherit. It’s not a position or a posture. We see this ability in infants, who naturally sit and move beautifully without any formal instruction. Yet, as young children, we begin to mimic the dominant weight commitment habit of everyone around us—leaning back into chairs, sofas, car seats, etc., the most normal of activities.
These habits are so pervasive and unconscious that we don’t even realize we’re doing them. When we lean back in a chair, our lower spine collapses and our upper spine compensates by bending forward so that we continue seeing the world out in front of us. This is the origin of our big C-curve slump. With the upper spine slumping forward, we need to tense large upper back muscles to hold up the upper spine and we need to engage powerful sterno-cleido-mastoid muscles to tilt the head up so we’re not looking down at the floor. This behavior becomes so normalized that it escapes our awareness, often for a lifetime.
When I presented my findings to the Alexander community, I encountered resistance. My work challenged long-held assumptions, and despite my efforts to share my insights through articles and discussions, the response was minimal. Eventually, I decided to present my discoveries directly to the general public, hoping to reach those who might resonate with this perspective.
The effects of improper weight commitment are measurable and testable. They explain many of the chronic tensions and postural issues many people experience today. Yet, the highly evolved innate ability to lift ourselves into verticality, efficiently, remains within us. It’s simply been overwhelmed by habits we’ve adopted subconsciously. My work is dedicated to helping people rediscover and reclaim this innate system, restoring their natural ability to lift themselves into verticality. It’s a journey of awareness, intention, and transformation, and I’m passionate about sharing it with others.
The term “Weight Commitment” is central to your methodology. Can you explain its significance and how it differentiates Uprighting from other posture improvement techniques?
When discussing posture and weight commitment, it’s crucial to consider how we in fact, create the positions/posture we find ourselves in. Gravity pulls us straight down toward the earth, and were it not for our weight miscommitment habits, our innate ability would naturally have us capturing the full force of our body mass at ideal skeletal, ground-contact points – the sit bones, inside of the heels, and balls of the big toes – and transfer this energy to empower our deep extensor muscles running ground to crown to lift us with optimal efficiency. However, when we throw our center of body mass backward—we turn the power of our body weight into a self destructive force. This makes the act of lifting ourselves much more difficult, imposing needless muscular strain and skeletal distortion.
There’s no skeletal support behind the sit bones. So when we start to move in that direction, we have no choice but to rely on muscular support, to keep us safe, especially when sitting without back support. To do this, we employ powerful ilio-psoas muscles connecting legs with the lumbar spine. Every time we send our weight backwards, the ilio-psoas muscles tug on the lumbar spine. Over time, this can lead to lower back pain and injury.
When we allow gravity to take us straight down, the torso naturally tips forward. This puts us in our evolutionary wheelhouse. Right where we want to be. Millions of years of evolution have prepared us very well for this moment. We are expert at lifting front body mass up and back. It’s easy to lift ourselves up and back from this slightly forward orientation. When we reach the vertical, we tip forward again. Innate uprighting is an ongoing flexing and extending cycle – always moving, never still.
Now, posture has been a widely discussed concept for centuries. We’ve all seen those illustrations of what good posture should look like: tall, elongated, and balanced. However, despite this long standing awareness, no one has been able to explain why we sit so poorly or how to consistently achieve good posture. When we view posture solely as a static position, we miss the point. Innate uprighting isn’t a posture/position we assume—it’s an ability, a dynamic and vibrant process of lifting ourselves into verticality.
Our backwards weight commitment starts early in life. By the time we’re five years old, it has already become a default setting, without our knowing anything about it. Whether we’re leaning back against a chair support or slumping independently, we’re committing our body weight backwards. This explains why no one can maintain vertical alignment (demonstrate good posture) for more than a brief period. It requires too much muscular effort to put ourselves into verticality.
The effort required to “sit up straight” becomes so taxing because, even as we attempt to pull ourselves upright, our weight is still committed backwards. This creates a kind of internal leaning, which demands constant muscular effort to counteract. It’s like trying to fight against your own weight’s natural pull. This is why many people find it exhausting to sit with good posture for extended periods—it’s not sustainable when the foundational weight commitment is off. This makes it impossible to maintain proper “posture”.
Your website discusses the cultural conditioning leading to the “classic slump” in posture. How does Uprighting address and reverse these deeply ingrained habits?
The very first step in this process is bringing awareness to what happens when we commit body weight backwards. Because we have been conditioned to miscommit our weight for so long, our habit is deeply ingrained and automatic, which is why it’s so difficult to address without the proper tools and guidance. My work focuses on bridging that gap, helping people bring subconscious movement patterns into conscious awareness so they can create meaningful change in how they move, sit, and engage with their bodies.
One of the tools I use in my courses is a profile camera. I instruct participants to set up a webcam in profile view, allowing them to see themselves from the side—a view of ourselves we rarely get. This perspective immediately reveals how our body weight is actually moving backwards rather than straight down. We can clearly see how when the lower spine tilts backwards the upper spine compensates by bending forwards, putting us into a slump. Gaining kinesthetic awareness of what’s happening is essential.
The process of uprighting well isn’t as complicated as it may seem. At its core, poor uprighting comes down to a backwards weight commitment and as a result, the tension in the iliopsoas and supporting muscles to hold our bodies up. However, the normalization of leaning back into chairs and unequal weight distribution as we stand, as well as a prevailing belief that sitting is, in and of itself, bad, prevents many from taking the steps to live in their bodies with greater comfort and ease. From a very young age, we tune out the sensations of our bodies and fall into a backwards weight commitment without even realizing it. Unlike habits like smoking or drinking, which we know we’re doing and can actively address, this subconscious habit is harder to identify—but not impossible to change.
With focused attention, it’s entirely possible to unlearn these patterns and develop healthier habits. I speak from personal experience. At the age of 30, my body was in terrible shape—damaged and dysfunctional. Yet, by learning to use the power of my body weight to my advantage, I was able to heal. Even someone with a body as damaged as mine can find relief and improvement when they stop placing unnecessary strain on their system. It’s a process of awareness, intention, and consistent practice that brings meaningful change.
What teaching methods and resources does Uprighting employ to help individuals restore their innate ability to sit and stand without stress or chronic pain?
I teach Uprighting lessons through in-person private and group lessons, and through online courses. The in-person lessons are done in studios in New York and New Jersey where students develop sensitivity to their body weight and are guided through the practice of restoring their innate uprighting ability. One of the key tools I use both in private and online lessons, is the profile camera. By using a webcam that captures the profile view of one sitting and standing, students are made aware of how they are misdirecting their weight and from this awareness, we can begin the practice of sitting and standing as we have evolved to do – with our body weight falling straight down. The profile view is incredibly revealing and helps bring subconscious patterns to light.
We offer two online courses: Habitual Explorations and Innate Explorations.
Both include employing video demonstrations and guiding audio recordings, with students watching themselves on the profile camera while following my movement instructions. I instruct students to do their habits on purpose, to pay close attention, and to observe what’s actually happening in their bodies.
The Habitual Explorations are all about bringing consciousness to one’s habitual ways of sitting and standing – to finally witness what’s been happening in our bodies, without our awareness, since we were young children. Students are guided through their routine activities, discovering the unseen and unfelt mismanagement of their weight.
The Innate Explorations offer step-by-step practices that rebuild the sensory awareness and motor skills students need to sit and move efficiently, using the highly evolved uprighting ability we were born with.
In this phase of learning, students ‘say goodbye’ to committing body weight backwards. Instead of dropping the pelvis and lower spine backwards, they practice dropping the pelvis and lower spine straight down. This creates an unusual skeletal configuration. With the existence of a big C-curve they’ve spent a lifetime unwittingly developing, the upper spine now hangs far forward, over the knees. This is where the recovery of innate uprighting necessarily begins.
My methodology is not a quick fix – like any practice that seeks to address the root of a problem, it requires attention and a mindset of holistic healing. My methodology is designed to extract kinesthetic information that’s buried in the subconscious and make it conscious. Once this information becomes conscious, everything changes. It’s no longer about blindly repeating old patterns—it becomes a whole new ball game.
Since I’ve been through this process myself, I understand what it’s like to start from zero awareness. At 43 years old, I knew nothing about this. I had no idea that how my body weight interacted with the ground had any impact on me. Despite having studied the Alexander Technique for 12 years at that point, I was completely unaware of how my weight commitment was influencing my functioning. I was completely out of touch with it. I was in the same boat as everyone else. But after recognizing this and studying it for the past 30 years, I’ve developed a deep understanding of how to help people.
Who can benefit most from Uprighting’s programs, and how do you ensure that your courses are accessible to a diverse range of individuals seeking somatic wellness?
The people who benefit the most from this work are those who are motivated to learn. Motivation and a willingness to look—and keep looking until you truly see—are the only real requirements for success. That curiosity, combined with patience and attention, opens the door to transformative change.
Since I’ve been through this journey myself, I know how to guide others in learning to see themselves in a new way. I teach them to observe how their bodies function and to understand the process of lifting. Let me be clear: the common idea of “posture” is a complete misconception. Uprighting is not about forcing yourself into a certain position—it’s about recovering a natural ability.
Good posture isn’t a static pose you maintain; it’s the result of efficient lifting. Lifting is an act, a dynamic process, and a skill that we humans learned as we evolved from four-legged movement to standing upright.
The process takes time and practice. Most people need about six months of consistent effort just to begin recognizing their habits with any consistency—those deeply ingrained patterns that have often been present since childhood. But even within those first six months, the benefits start to become clear. Awareness grows, and as it does, motivation strengthens. People begin to notice the positive changes: a shift in their consciousness, a sense of ease in their movements, and greater harmony in their bodies.
From there, it becomes easier and more rewarding to continue. Over time, as their awareness deepens, they uncover more subtle layers of these habits and learn to replace them with constructive patterns. The old, ingrained ways of working against gravity—turning their own body weight into a self-destructive force—are replaced with a natural, efficient use of their bodies that supports them effortlessly.
This is why I’m so passionate about this work. It’s not just about helping people stand or sit better—it’s about transforming how they live in their bodies. When we stop fighting gravity and start working with it, everything changes.
If you would like to find out more about Uprighting, please visit https://www.uprighting.com/pages/uprighting-home
