Aplomb: The Work of Noëlle Perez-Christiaens
Noëlle Perez-Christiaens (France, 1925–2019) devoted her life to studying and affirming the embodied intelligence in human beings, and its inherent efficiency, durability, and stability. Her work reads as an ode to evolutionary design: how living systems are honed over time to function in balance with the forces that shape them. At its core, it is a testament to our shared humanity.
Noëlle arrived at her discoveries about how the laws of physics govern and organise our bodies by observing people in non-industrialized societies who remained highly active into old age and experienced little back pain, alongside rigorous, sustained exploration in her own body and in those of her devoted students.
Her extensive research led her to a groundbreaking conclusion: upright posture is not a matter of effort, but of balance, achieved through the bone alignment the human body evolved to have.
Noëlle referred to this balance as Aplomb. Derived from à plomb, meaning “according to the plumb line,” the word describes a state of balance and stability that arises from true vertical alignment with gravity. When a person is d’aplomb, on the plumb line, they are upright without strain. When they are not, remaining upright requires excessive muscular effort and places strain on the joints.
Noëlle Perez-Christiaens
Photo shared with permission of the Fédération Internationale Aplomb
She embarked on her research path after years of mentorship by the yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar. Back in France, the contrast she observed between the relative ease of movement she had witnessed in India and the difficulties she encountered in her own practice and in those of her students propelled her deeper inquiry.
Iyengar’s suggestion to use props as a means of reducing strain opened a crucial line of questioning that would shape her life’s work. Most notably, supporting the pelvis in a forward tilt allowed tension to ease and relaxation to emerge.
Over the span of four decades, Noëlle, along with her students, undertook numerous research trips to study people who lived on the plumb line, including in Portugal, southern Italy, Sardinia, Burkina Faso, Morocco, and India. She examined their posture and movement closely, documenting their spines through X-rays and drawings, and observing and imitating their movements to better understand how the body organizes itself in balance with gravity.
It was at the port of Setúbal, Portugal, that Noëlle met her life partner and collaborator, José‑Miguel da Fonseca. A stevedore (dockworker) who loaded and unloaded fish, Miguel embodied life on the plumb line and introduced Noëlle to the age-old human practice of carrying weight on the head as a means of reinforcing natural alignment and supporting lifelong structural health. For Noëlle and her students, Miguel was a continual reference and source of inspiration for natural alignment in everyday life.
Aplomb teachings are often referred to as Yoga de la vie quotidienne - a yoga of everyday life - reflecting an approach to alignment that is cultivated not through formal poses (āsanas), but through how one inhabits daily life.
While many of Noëlle’s students sought her out because of their interest in yoga, they stayed because they recognized the deeper significance of her ideas. Through long-term, lived practice, they participated directly in the ongoing exploration and refinement of her work.
Noëlle’s work was published in numerous French-language books and culminated in a doctoral thesis in ethnophysiology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2008.
Books by Noëlle Perez-Christiaens.
Most of these titles are now out of print, with two republished. All were originally written in French. An English translation of Être d’Aplomb, completed by her former students, is now available. The copies shown here are my personal collection, gathered through Aplomb teachers.
Across these publications, Noëlle examined how people sit, stand, walk, bend, sleep, carry loads, and raise children. Her books are grounded in close observation of everyday gestures, cross-cultural study of traditional societies, and careful analysis of common modern ailments such as back pain, spinal curvature, and joint strain. Recurrent themes include upright balance, the role of the pelvis in human alignment, walking as a therapeutic act, the practice of carrying loads on the head, and the ways posture is learned, transmitted, or lost across generations. Taken together, these works form a coherent body of inquiry rooted in physics, anthropology, and lived human experience.
Noëlle’s legacy lives on through the Fédération Internationale Aplomb, the nonprofit association she established to ensure the transmission of her work.
I share this page because I believe in honoring academic and embodied lineages, especially the underrecognized ones.
In a world overflowing with quick fixes, endless treatments, and advice overload, Noëlle Perez-Christiaens’s work stands out for its commitment to understanding how the body actually works and to addressing pain and dysfunction at their source. From this understanding, both prevention and lasting change become possible.
I never met Noëlle, and I did not study with her directly. I do not claim to represent her work in any official capacity. My learning came through studying her original writings, in her unique voice, and through training with her direct students, as well as with teachers and other professionals influenced by her thinking.
I am deeply grateful to Noëlle for asking better questions about why it hurts, and for listening closely to what the body—and fellow human beings—revealed, as well as to all those who continue to carry her work forward.
Michal Tal,
January, 2026
To learn more about Noëlle Perez-Christiaens and Aplomb, visit:
https://www.federation-internationale-aplomb.org