Do You Have Good Posture?

Chiropractic Care Helps Create Good Posture

Most of our daily activities work against good posture. We spend large portions of our days sitting in an uncomfortable chair, peering at a computer terminal. Muscles tighten and joints get stiff as we make our way through our daily tasks and responsibilities. Neck muscles, lower back muscles, thigh muscles (quadriceps and hamstrings), and calf muscles shorten, lose their mobility, and become stiff and sore. Aches and pains add their burdens to chronically poor posture. Over time we become even less of the person we were meant to be. Chiropractic care helps you reverse these downward spirals. Chiropractic care helps you restore good posture by relieving mechanical stresses and strains and by causing your musculoskeletal system to become more flexible and resilient. The result is improved range of motion, reduced pain, and an enhanced sense of well-being.

Has your mother ever told you to "sit up straight and stop sloughing"? Well, mine did. I also remember long ago and far away, a fourth-grade teacher saying "stand up straight - you look like a pretzel". The unthinking adult only offered criticism. All I could do was snap to attention and try to unkink myself. 

Most of us think good posture involves sucking in the stomach, thrusting out the chest and pulling back the shoulders. Informing a person that he needs to improve his posture usually results in a sudden, robot-like increase in stature, the person stiffly incorporating most or all of these muscular stresses.

As a direct result of our weak relationship to sound concepts of what good posture actually is, most people have protruding stomachs, slumped shoulders, and necks that protrude far in front of their body's center (forward head carry). Aside from perpetually unattractive aesthetics, chronic inefficient posture places ongoing strain on back and neck muscles. Poor posture also interferes with normal functioning of your heart and lungs. Metabolic processes deteriorate owing to lack of normal oxygen supply. Poor posture not only leads to musculoskeletal problems like chronic back and neck pain and degenerative disc disease but also is implicated in gastrointestinal and endocrine diseases and many other disorders.

The welcome news is that achieving good posture is not that difficult. Work is required, of course, as well as consistent attention. But the work is not hard - it is merely new and different, for most of us. As we can guess, the key element in good posture is a properly curved spine. Importantly, that doesn’t mean straight or rigid. Normal spinal alignment is one of curves all stacked over each other.

The main consideration here is how to get your spine aligned without tightening all your muscles and holding your breath.¹ The solution requires a little imagination. Picture in your mind a string dangling from the sky down your body to the floor. The taught string goes from the sky, to your ear, to your shoulder, to your hip, to your ankle and to the floor.Your body if then aligned over itself is in "Good Posture"

Another piece to the posture puzzle is to allow your shoulder girdles to rest on your rib cage. You don’t have to press your shoulders down to do this - just don’t hold them up. Most of us unconsciously tighten our neck and shoulder girdle muscles all day long. By starting to be conscious of what’s going on, we can start letting go of tight shoulder girdle muscles. The shoulders will then gently descend and come to rest on top of the rib cage, where they belong.

By paying attention to these basic postural corrections, over time we can develop a posture that is fluid and efficient. We will appear taller, comfortably reaching our full height with grace and ease. Tension and anxiety begin to reduce and we sleep more restfully at night. Good posture is good health.^2,3

¹Movahed M, et al: Fatigue sensation, electromyographical and hemodynamic changes of low back muscles during repeated static contraction. Eur J Appl Physiol Sep 30, 2010 (Epub ahead of print)

²Edmondston SJ, et al: Postural neck pain: an investigation of habitual sitting posture, perception of 'good' posture and cervicothoracic kinaesthesia. Man Ther 12(4):363-371, 2007

³Prins Y, et al: A systematic review of posture and psychosocial factors as contributors to upper quadrant musculoskeletal pain in children and adolescents. Physiother Theory Pract 24(4):221-242, 2008

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