“We are all sculptures and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
Most of us are guilty of misusing our body machinery due to habit. And like any other habit, our postural tendencies seem to be almost impossible to change. Your posture does indeed emerge from your interaction with the world around you. Our bodies are inherently unstable, because they are made to be mobile. If you hold an office job, you’re limiting your body movement. Through sitting all day in an office chair, you’re repeating the same stabilized positioning over and over again, building unhealthy postural habits that could be very difficult to break out of. Our posture can also be impacted by simple activities/movements like ironing or lifting. Improper movement can cause stress on the whole body if the head is not balanced easily on top of the spine.
Moreover, if you’re constantly dealing with stressful situations like dealing with a difficult boss, you are holding your body still to control your behavior to avoid confrontation. Holding your body still also means that you’re holding tension in your jaw, abdominal area, shoulders, throat or even feet (to keep you from storming out of the room). These tensions become chronic over time, which means we hold tension in our body without even knowing it. Our mobile bodies become closed and solidified by our constant stabilization habits.
Posture is an outward expression of how you feel inside
- Poor posture can cause neck and back problems leaving you exhausted at the end of the day. Physiotherapy and medication give only short-term improvement.
- Bad postural habits can introduce patterns of thought and physical misperceptions that result in causing tension and using excessive effort, potentially hurting performance in public speaking.
Perhaps you’re in your twenties or thirties and not giving much thought to the effects of aging. However, as you get older, bad postural habits can intensify, making you prone to chronic pain, stiffness and increased strain on your muscles and joints, which can lead to long term discomfort and mobility issues.
The following tips will help you improve your posture, boost your productivity, and increase your energy levels throughout the day:
1. Exercise Regularly
If your only exercise is clicking the buttons on your TV remote control, your body posture will develop into a sedentary habit, leading to poor alignment, stiffness and discomfort over time. Your spine may adopt unhealthy positions, affecting overall posture and wellbeing. Regular exercise is critical in strengthening your back muscles and helping improve your posture. However, a lot of people resort to strenuous exercise to make up for extended periods of inactivity due to working at an office desk. It’s important to note that goal-oriented exercises can overstrain your body, causing even more tension. Make sure you are in balance and you are mindful of the way you use your body when exercising.
2. Interrupt Prolonged Sitting
Do you work at a desk in an office for long hours or spend extended amount of time in a car? At first, you may experience occasional backaches that can be relieved with a massage. However, if your posture remains poor over time, these discomforts can worsen, leading to chronic pain, stiffness, and long-term strain on your muscles and joints. Regular breaks can help prevent these issues from escalating and becoming chronic.
- Set a timer for a break and aim for a 5-10 minute break every hour
- Stretch and move around
- Practice deep breathing
- Change your position
- Hydrate and snack
- Follow the 20-20-20 rule to take an eye break: Every 20 minutes, look at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds
3. Do Stretch or Yoga
Yoga and stretch are both excellent for improving posture by promoting flexibility, strengthening muscles, and increasing body awareness. They target tight muscles especially in areas that often contribute to poor posture, such as the back, shoulders and hips. Certain yoga poses like Cobra pose and upward-facing dog promote spinal flexibility and health allowing the spine to move through its full range of motion: absolutely critical to a maintaining a balanced posture.
Again, be mindful of how you go about these activities: if it’s done with too much tension, we can hurt ourselves and cause injury.
4. Optimize Your Office Chair for Better Posture and Comfort
Back pain has become increasingly common with the extended number of hours we spend seated. Long hours bent over a desk can be one of the major causes of poor posture. Bad posture and prolonged sitting can also affect optimal breathing and overall wellbeing. If possible, get yourself an ergonomic chair, or if you have a normal office chair, adjust the seat back or lumbar cushion downward until it properly supports the natural curve of your lower back, promoting a more comfortable and upright posture.
Raising the computer screen can also encourage an upright posture. These adjustments can help reduce strain on your spine and encourage healthier sitting habits throughout the day.
5. Practice a Relaxed, Upright and Graceful Posture
Good posture promotes free movement, and physical and mental endurance. It reduces fatigue and helps project poise, confidence, integrity and dignity. However, it is important to note that good posture is not about forcing yourself to sit up straight, pull your shoulders back and arch your back. In fact, these techniques can often add more tension to your muscular system, leading to back pain without helping reinforce proper postural patterns. Practicing good posture is rather about finding your natural poise: the graceful posture you held as a child:
- Become aware of all postural habits that cause or enhance a lack of coordination and a general misuse of your muscles.
- Release the unwanted tension accumulated over many years of standing, moving or sitting in an uncoordinated manner. When we reduce the amount of tension in the overworked muscles, the postural muscles will automatically start to work as they were designed to.
- Learn new ways of sitting, moving or standing that put less stress on your body. This includes the position of your limbs and body as a whole. When the relationship of one or more parts of your body to the rest is free, good posture happens naturally.
6. Reduce Stress
When we are stressed, our posture changes dramatically. These changes can become permanent if we are stressed on a regular basis. Becoming aware of our current stress levels and learning new ways of reacting mentally, physically and emotionally to external triggers are the first steps in alleviating stress and improving your posture.
7. Bend Your Knees Instead of Your Back
Have you noticed that when bending down, children naturally bend their hip, knee and ankle joints and keep their back aligned? As we grow older, we bend our backs instead to do the same activity.
When the back is bent to do normal activities like vacuuming or raking, the lower back muscles have to support the whole-body weight, so they come under tremendous strain.
8. Give Yourself More Time in Everything You Do
We are taught, implicitly or explicitly, that doing things quickly is far better that doing them well. The truth is that doing things quickly takes the enjoyment out of the work. As a result, many people stop enjoying what they do. This becomes a vicious cycle because without the joy, we want to do things even more quickly. This negative goal-oriented mindset triggered by living a life dominated by speed, can be detrimental to our posture. Have a look inside an office: You will see workers rushing to get to their destination, shoulders hunched up and forward, head pulled back and down onto the spine and backs arched…These postural deformities become habits and fixed within the body over time.
Notice how you feel when you are in a rush. Notice the position of your head and neck. A critical step in improving posture is to give yourself more time as you go about our daily activities. Try slowing down for a day and you’ll find that this not only helps improve your posture but also revolutionizes the way you live.
Healing your posture cannot be a quick fix; it requires consistent effort and time to retrain your muscles, improve your alignment, and build strength. Poor posture often develops over years, so correcting it involves gradually integrating new habits, stretches and exercises into your daily routine. Patience and consistency are key and over time you’ll notice significant improvements in your posture and how you feel.