ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by exploring some of the cultural history of posture and movement, focusing on those things that affected people's beliefs about 'normal' postural 'attitude', including eugenic ideas about people's fitness, psychological interest in attention, problems caused by scoliosis and flat feet. It looks at physiotherapy's historical relationship with remedial exercise and the profession's move away from 'passive' treatment. This brief introduction to the general history posture and movement allows physiotherapists to identify four key principles that can be used to better understand physiotherapy today. The chapter explores physiotherapy's approach to normal posture and movement, measurement and testing, and the ways physiotherapists are taught to 'read' the body. It focuses on the ways posture and movement have shaped the physiotherapy profession, through its interest in 'purposeful' movement; the body-as-moving-machine, asking why physiotherapy has taken such a narrow view of the subject and what might be possible if it embraced a broader perspective.
