Without thinking much about it go ahead and stand in the way that feels normal to you.

Now take a look at your feet. Where have you placed them? More or less parallel to each other? This is the most common way I see people place their feet when they are standing.

If you have been noticing that you stand with your hip joints pushed forward and you tend to stand with your feet parallel changing up the way you organize your feet in standing may be useful.

Standing with feet parallel provides you with stability right to left but not so much front to back.

Standing in a staggered stance, one foot slightly in front of the other and angled out a bit, provides you not only with stability right to left but also front to back.

To understand this more fully find a friend. First, stand with your feet parallel and ask your friend to place her hands on the front of your shoulders and try to push you over. Then stand in a staggered stance and ask your friend to try the same thing again. Switch roles so you have a chance to experience this from both roles. You will probably find that it is more difficult to push the other person over when they are in a staggered stance.

If you watch people engaged in martial arts practices you will notice that they very often use a staggered stance and one reason is that it is that much more stable.

Standing with feet parallel and hips pushed forward

Standing more balanced with feet slightly staggered

You can still push your hip joints forward in a staggered stance but if it is not your normal way of positioning your feet in standing it might help you to be a bit more aware of where your weight is. You can think of positioning your weight right between the front and back foot right down through your apple core.

Image of passengers standing on train by Free-Photos from Pixabay