Hi there, My name is Alex Gurba. I’m a registered physiotherapist and the owner of Gemini Health Group in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Today, I want to talk to you about my three rules for maintaining good posture.
Rule #1: Posture Is a Habit
Let’s stop thinking of good posture as a static or permanent position. Let’s think of it as a habit of moving consistently to reduce the time we spend in one position.
Rule #2: Chin Behind Chest
Let’s stop breaking posture down into isolated movements rather than thinking about pulling our chin to reduce forward head posture or retracting my shoulder blades to reduce slumping shoulders. Let’s think of a global movement. Let’s say keeping the chin behind the chest. If I keep my chin behind my chest, that actually retracts my head for me and pulls my shoulder blades back for me. Doing this consistently is much more beneficial than just being in one position for a long time.
I call it to straighten out and then slum back down. If we can continuously move, it’s actually going to reduce the amount of tension in our muscles and reduce the pain that we’re in. Studies now show that people who sit in prolonged good postures report the same levels of neck and back pain as people who slump a lot.
Rule #3: Set Up Environment.
Let’s try to set up our environment so that it’s conducive to good posture. I mentioned this in a previous post, but we need to make sure that our environment helps sustain good postures. If the environment that we’re in encourages us to slouch and slump or to look down, it’s going to take that much more effort on our part to resist that.
Hopefully, these are some tips that you can use in your life, and if you have any more questions about it, call us here at Gemini, and we’ll see if we can help. Thanks and take care. Bye.