Your posture says a lot about your health. Your neck pain, headaches, back twinges and persistent tiredness all point to one thing – poor posture.
What is good posture? Basically, it is just keeping your spine happy, keeping it in balance no matter what you are doing and putting as little stress on it as possible to during your daily activities.
We have a number of curves built into our spines (it looks like an S-shape when viewed from the side). This helps us stand upright with our weight balanced over our feet. But a look around you shows how little we think of our backs. Heads dropped forward, rounded shoulders, bent knee walk – signs of the strain caused by long hours of sitting. The heavy handbags and the high heels are just spine abuse!
Yet many of us keep making the same postural mistakes over and over. We let our backs go out of alignment by sitting in one position too long. We don’t notice how our heads are sagging forward as we stare at computer screens for hours on end. We lean onto one leg if we need to stand for long. We walk as little as we can and generally put continuous stress on our spines, hips and knees. We slouch, pressing together the small bones in our backs. We get potbellied when our spines finally give in to the stress and sway forward. We let our shoulders get rounded, limiting our chest expansion and so breathing less oxygen.
The hunched spines also mean all kinds of muscles have to be pressed into action to keep us balanced. Needless to say, we get tired and achy by the time we get home. We flop into a big squashy chair, exposing our tailbones to even greater pressure. In bed, we pile up the pillows, kinking our neck muscles. Naturally, we wake up with stiff necks and shoulders; not to mention the twisted backs from sleeping on soft mattresses on our sides or stomachs. Little wonder we are such an unenergetic lot!
Do you relate to any of this? Then you need to start being kind to yourself. Call us, your local physiotherapists. We are committed to helping you. We’ll show you how to achieve a strain-free posture at home and at work, as well as in your car! We can tell if you are stressing your body by poor alignment. We help you to get back into efficiency mode. We can even soothe away cramps and knots.
And the best part is, your body will thank you by working far more easily. You’ll start looking great, what with your erect confident stance and your aura of vigor and strength. Your aches and pains will fade away as the basic bone and muscle abnormalities are corrected. You will start enjoying life again without nagging pains and persistent tiredness.
