THE FIVE-PART POSTURE CORRECTION!

Want to sit with better posture? Yes, good move, as this influences your body’s afferent nerve input (signals that go to the brain from the body), thereby affecting how you feel!

Here are the 5 corrective movements:

1. Tilt the pelvis forward

2. Use your upper abs to flex the back

3. Raise the sternum up

4. Use your neck flexors to tuck back

5. Shift your gaze forward

courtesy of SafetyPosture.com

Let me unpack these if you like the detail…

1. Anterior pelvic tilt. Sit with the feet flat, if on a firm chair, you may feel your ‘sitting bones’ on the surface. Tilt the pelvis which is the ilium and sacrum bones forward SLIGHTLY. This is to ‘create a bit of space or elongation at the lower back’ (not compression).

2. Upper ab activation- these muscles when contracting flex the upper lumbar / lower thoracic spine. Keeps the lower anterior ribs from ‘flaring out’. Every movement teacher’s nightmare. And for good reason, it is straying from neutrality, over compressing thoraco-lumbar vertebral joints, which then often leads to a chin up posture, disadvantages the deep neck flexors, and subsequently compressing the upper neck joints.

3. Simply raise the sternum, which provides extension of the mid thoracic vertebral joints. A good thing. The opposite of what happens when your head is in the screen. You don't want this...

- image courtesy of Tim Lahan

4. Neck flexors engage to flex the cervical spine, leading to a chin down direction. The deep neck flexors (DNF’s) subtly do this, which brings the chin down ½ an inch, thereby making space at the upper cervical spine joints. When doing this, think about the chin going down AND the head being pulled back and up, making you taller.

5. Finally, the cherry on top… look straight ahead (over that typical computer screen set up perhaps!) and breathe. Spinal extension does facilitate breathing in, so this may happen naturally! Imagine hinging ever so slightly from the occipital region joints.

Opposing Forces

You will notice that there is a beautiful? frustrating? opposition of forces at play here. ‘Tilt forward, then flex back, tuck back, then rise up’. Interesting. Consider Sthira and Sukha in yoga, also a symphony of steadiness and ease. Think of mountain pose, and the same factors needed there to achieve and exist in postural balance (raise the front body, in harmony with the grounding nature of the back body, right down to the heels). It’s beautiful to do and feel!

I observe that my clients have habituated to variations of the dreaded ‘C – curve’ posture, at a desk, or while on a couch. So, as I counsel my clients, just like we must ‘walk before we can run’ (effectively that is), we have to be able to sit and stand properly, before we can overlay movement, i.e. exercise well, in those positions.

Kung Fu and Yoga

Am I allowed to have bad posture? Can I slouch or is it bad for me? Now, an important distinction on the topic of posture that I must bring up, is posture vs. movement. We ARE meant to move in all directions / angles, after all, how else can we stretch muscles? (Flex forward to stretch the back body for example). No problem (Just don’t make the flexed forward position, or less commonly but still seen in clinic, the overly erect posture with difficulty curving the spine, the habitual posture).

I have very positive experiences with yoga and kung fu for these reasons. Mindful, novel, and exciting movements in these approaches to wellness (another topic right there), taking you through the 3 planes of movement and 10 directions of movement at a basic level, maintain your joint mobility (the loss of which is the primary issue and cause of symptoms with the majority of my clients).

Wait, so they have preventative effects on joint health?

Can they be remedial as well?! Try them! 😉

Proximal stability for distal mobility

An axiom so old I cannot remember when I learned this. Or am I so old that I cannot recall? 😉 … runs true and shows itself during biceps curls, to cycling, to the performance of downward dog, to the skipping roundhouse kick. It is essential.

Pro tip: apply this to your sitting and standing postures. What is the core? This mid-section including the pelvis. Yes, the glutes, abs, and lower back. And remember to breathe 😊

Let’s get into some more exercises in future blogs from THP, more things that you can try and perhaps add to your modus operandi.

Here’s to balance in all that you do,

Keith