Finding great posture!
Poor posture is just bad habits
Many of us spend much of our time hunched over a desk or a phone or the steering wheel of a car, and so our bodies develop an habitual, rather squashed posture, that remains even when we are standing, moving around and even lying in bed.
Our shoulders become rounded and forward, our neck is squashed back with our chin jutting forwards, our upper back is stiff and low back compressed, and our pelvis is tipped forwards.
This results in tight back muscles, long abdominal muscles, tight hip flexors and tight gluteals and hamstrings. This is because you are using the wrong muscles to control your posture!
Power muscles vs. Postural muscles
These big, (often sore!) outer muscles of your body are your ’power’ muscles. These muscles are designed to generate lots of force through large ranges of motion for short periods of time - basically for movement.
The muscles that are designed to stabilise your body and posture are the smaller ’postural’ muscles. They lie deeper in your body, surrounding the joints of your spine (and all your other joints). They are designed to work for long periods of time at low power and through very small ranges of motion - they are for stability.
Activating your postural muscles
Luckily the solution is actually quite easy - we simply need to re-stack the bones of our spine!
Notice I said re-stack the bones. For this exercise, I want you to ignore your muscles and just concentrate on your bones. This will automatically result in those big, tight, outer muscles relaxing and releasing, and your deep postural muscles will quietly go to work.
To achieve great posture, simply pulling your head or shoulder back, isn’t enough.
You need to reduce the curves in both your thoracic and lumbar spine, bringing your overall alignment back to a neutral position.
Once your spine is elongated and the curves are corrected, your pelvis will naturally settle into a level position.
Releasing your shoulders
Let’s start with your shoulders. Your arms are quite heavy and long and, if they are allowed to hang too far forward, they put a lot of extra, unnecessary weight on your upper body and neck. Many of us allow our shoulder blades to lie on the side of our ribcage (like a dog or a horse!), but humans are designed to have our shoulder blades on the back of our ribcage. So let’s put them there!
(1) Shrug up each shoulder in turn up towards your ears, then roll it backwards so that your shoulder blade lies on your back. Try not to force it. Just pick it up, put it back and let it lie.
This will automatically release your collar bones. Before they were squashed and rolled forward. Now they are lying like a yoke across your shoulders. And yokes are designed for carrying! So now your arms are being easily carried by your collar bones.
Great! Now we need to release your spine.
Remember, don’t try to do these movements, allow them to happen.
This is the most difficult part! We are so used to using our power muscles to do things.
Now we need to
allow our postural muscles to take gentle care of our stability.
Releasing your spine & pelvis
Luckily you have several small muscles that connect your head to the top of your neck. These muscles are vital for communication between your brain and your spine - they also help to align our eyes and our ears, which are an important aspect of balance, coordination and therefore posture.
Unfortunately our habitual squashed neck and jutting chin posture impairs the ability of these little muscles to communicate, and they sit there compressed and unhappy!
To release these little muscles and allow your whole spine to lengthen and de-compress, imagine you are hanging from a string coming out of the top of your head, like a puppet.
(2) Try this: with your hand, pull gently on some hair directly above your ears. As you do, you'll notice your face aligning perpendicularly to the ground, your chin gently tucking in, the front of your neck softening, and the back of your neck stretching slightly. Be mindful of the direction: if you pull hair too far forward, your chin will stick out, and the back of your neck will feel compressed. If you pull hair too far back, your chin will push into your neck, squashing your throat. Adjust the pull until you find the balanced, aligned position.
(3) Put your fingers on either side of the top of your neck, in the space between the joint of your jaw and the front of your ears - this is in line with the uppermost joint of your neck, the occipito-atlantal joint. This joint is a flat hinge joint - it allows your skull to roll forwards and backwards on the top of your spine.
Feel that action now: gently roll your head just a couple of millimetres forward and back. Let the rest of your neck stay relaxed - see if your can move just that very top joint.
(4) Allow your whole head to float upwards from this point that you have discovered on your scalp, as you allow your head to softly nod forwards on your occipito-atlantal joint. Notice how your shoulders softly relax downwards, your upper back lengthens and your low back releases. Your sacrum releases down and under, and your pelvis rolls lightly under you while your tummy muscles gently activate to support you.
Sitting Posture
Practising these postural releases when sitting is actually easier. When we are sitting, on an upright, firm chair or stool, our hip muscles are much less active, so when you release your head and neck, you will find that your low back and pelvis release more easily.
Sitting for long periods on a stool or on a soft chair is not so easy, your postural muscles simply get tired - after all you haven’t used them properly for many years! So you need to use cushions to help support you.
Despite the myths perpetuated in many ergonomic guidelines regarding an “ideal” sitting position or posture, the ideal sitting position is actually one that constantly changes, thus preventing any single tissue (muscle, ligament or disc) from accumulating too much strain.
- the ideal sitting position is one that continually changes [Callaghan & McGill, 2001 (b)].
Posture in movement
Ok, so there you are standing in perfect posture, but how do you move!
The key is to gently and repeatedly allow you head to float up whilst keeping your face perpendicular to the ground.
Tai chi is arguably the most powerful exercise to support your new found great posture in movement - it teaches you to find your centre of mass, and therefore of power, and to move with balance and grace.
It can be very helpful to assist this rehabilitation process with activities such as tai chi, yoga, pilates, Alexander Technique, Somatics, Feldenkrais or with rehabilitation exercises that target particularly weak or unbalanced muscles.
Unfortunately because we have been using the inappropriate muscles to control our posture for so long, this results in muscle imbalances through the body.
Some will be very strong, others will be weak.
Simply constantly gently realigning our shoulders and head will go a long way to helping these muscles rebalance.