administratorMaintaining good posture prevents back and neck pain, keeps your spine properly aligned, and helps you look more put together. A physical therapist can help you improve your posture through targeted exercises and ergonomic guidance.
Tight, shortened muscles are often the cause of poor posture. Simple physiotherapy exercises and stretching can help loosen and strengthen your posture muscles.
La Clinica offers top therapy for posture and pain relief, enhancing wellness through six effective methods.
1. Self-awareness
A self-aware person has the ability to understand their own thoughts and feelings, as well as the beliefs, convictions, values and standards they hold themselves to. They use this understanding to consciously guide their behavior.
Bad posture is a big problem because it puts stress on the muscles and ligaments that support your spine. Over time, this causes pain and stiffness throughout the body.
Fortunately, there are several things you can do to become more self-aware, including practicing mindfulness and maintaining balanced work-life structures. For example, a study found that postural training using biofeedback facilitated a virtuous cycle of new health behaviors. (Chojnacka-Szawlowska et al., 2019).
2. Coping skills
Coping skills are techniques that help people deal with a variety of situations and emotions, such as pain, fear, anxiety and trauma. They are designed to be used in a variety of settings and conditions, including during times of low stress.
However, they do not work well all of the time or in all situations, and some strategies are more effective than others (see chart below). It is important to practice coping skills when they are not needed, so that you can become comfortable using them in high-stress environments. Also, it is helpful to have different coping skills that can be used at different times of day or with different symptoms.
3. Self-expression
It’s important to keep in mind that good posture is not just about looking healthy and fit; it also helps us feel healthy and free. Maintaining a balanced work-life structure can help prevent extended periods of poor posture, so make sure to prioritize breaks, physical activity, and relaxation.
Quantitative studies have shown that mind-body practices can improve postural awareness. However, the underlying mechanism is unclear. For example, qualitative interviews conducted in a 12-week qigong treatment showed that upright qigong postures helped breast cancer survivors reconnect their minds and bodies, as well as reduce their pain.
Joe Walsh is a PhD student at the Centre for Pain Research, University of Bath. His research explores how people communicate pain through body posture and individual factors that influence this process.
4. Communication skills
Communication is the ability to convey your ideas, feelings and thoughts clearly and effectively. This can be done verbally through speech, or non-verbally through body language.
Posture is often framed as either ‘good upright posture’ or ‘bad slouched posture’, however, these ingrained concepts are unsupported by research evidence. Rather than an idealised ‘good’ and ‘bad’, therapists should consider patients’ histories and beliefs along with their clinical examination before giving specific postural advice.
This can help avoid misunderstandings, misreading of non-verbal signals and knee-jerk reactions under stress or emotional overload. This in turn can improve patient retention of information and help them adhere to their treatment plan.
5. Self-confidence
We know good posture is important for optimal function of the spine and limbs, as well as preventing long-term pain and injury. However, recent research suggests that our posture can also impact our mood and self-perception.
In one study, participants who sat in the slouched position reported less confidence in thoughts they generated than when sitting upright. This supports the theory that body posture can influence how confident we feel about our own thoughts and ideas.
Another study found that a 12-week mind-body program of upright qigong postures helped breast cancer survivors emotionally distance themselves from burdensome cognitions by regaining awareness of their body’s posture.
6. Flexibility
When it comes to overall body health, flexibility is often overlooked. This important component of fitness, which involves the movement of muscles and joints through a normal range of motion, is essential to performance, posture, promotes efficient movement, prevents incorrect body alignment and balance and decreases injury risk.
Flexibility differs from other more general or systemic fitness components, such as muscular endurance or cardiovascular endurance, because it is highly specific to a joint’s movement pattern. This has made it challenging to establish an association between a single flexibility test and health outcomes such as back pain, risk of injury or posture problems. This can be improved by adding stretching sessions to exercise routines.
