Are you a slumper, a sloucher, maybe a leaner? We all have ways of holding our bodies. Most of us, not perfectly.
Auckland physiotherapist Stacey Law says even cavemen didn’t have great posture.
Photo: 123rf
“It’s quite hard for you to hold your spine in place vertically because there’s lots of challenges that come on it, gravity being one of them, but also everything being in front of us is the other.”
But bad posture doesn’t necessarily equal pain, she says.
“It sort of depends on what the issue is around it.
“Sometimes we can think we’re lucky when we’re in our 20s and 30s but we get a little bit older and these things start to play out a little bit more or it can just be that if something’s working for you then maybe it’s alright, but it might just be around what postural stresses are around you…”
Defining good posture isn’t very simple, although surprisingly Morgan Freeman said something great once about posture, says Law. “Your best posture is your next posture,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be static, it doesn’t have to be this one rigid position that you stay in all of the time.”
Essentially, good posture is your body doing what you’re asking it to do, she says.
And alignment is important if you’re standing, Law says there are some ways to think about this.
“If you’re wanting to deal with some issues and maybe think posture is causing you some issues then one of the cues I like to give people is that if you imagine your rib cage is one cylinder, and your pelvis as another cylinder, that you’re trying to get those two cylinders to sit on top of each other. They want to be aligned, that allows you to access your core system quite nicely, it allows you good access to your diaphragm, your abdominal and back muscles and your pelvic floor which all go in towards the core.
“The challenge for our spine is that we want to be really strong and stable for us but we want it to be really supple and mobile so we want to try and strike a balance between those two.”
If you want to improve your posture, the best thing to do is to move often, and move in lots of different ways, she says.
So, what about when you’re sleeping?
Physios usually recommend you don’t sleep on your stomach, it can cause a kink in your neck, she says.
A good pillow is key, one that provides you good support whether you’re on your back or your side.
But it’s best to talk to someone about your specific problems before you just buy something off the internet.
Law says if you’ve got a rounded back, hunched posture, you might be limiting the diaphragm. Practicing a really good diaphragmatic breath is important – expanding through your ribs and into your belly, in through the nose and out through your mouth.
Lying flat on the floor may help you to do this, she says.
“What we see often is that people don’t let their tummy go when they breathe, they really hold a lot of tension through their tummy, so I think they want it to be tight all the time, it doesn’t need to be tight all the time.”
While you might think putting your shoulders back is good posture, it’s not really addressing the problems and may put stress on other areas, she says.
There’s a lot of options you can add into your lifestyle to help, try to choose one that you enjoy – if yoga isn’t for you, that’s OK, she says.
Remember that your posture is dynamic, says Law, you’re not trying to hold one rigid perfect position, lots of variable movement is key.
