Your posture is ridiculously important. At any given time we should expect our future selves to travel back in time just to tell us to stop slouching. And it’s not just because incorrect posture doesn’t look so hot. If you are crooked now, then later you’ll be even more crooked unless you do something. So what do you do?
First, let’s talk about what posture is. It’s the way your body is organized, whether you’re sitting, standing bending over or doing a dead lift. Posture exists when you are sprinting or walking. It’s not a rigid picture of a spine in perfect alignment, or a guy walking so strait up and down that it looks like he’s go a pole up his back. In this context here, posture is how the body is organized, whether it’s being dynamic or static.
If there weren’t any furniture, laptops or iPhones around, we probably wouldn’t need to talk about posture at all. Now let’s talk about what correct posture is: Correct posture is how the body is organized to work the longest and most effectively in the field of gravity. Unless you’re in space, your body is constantly dealing with the earth’s downward pull. And that’s okay, we’ve evolved along time to deal with it. But we haven’t evolved to deal with stooping to look at smart phones or craning forward to look at computer screens (dramatic pause), yet. And until we have iPosture, we’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. My necks feeling a little twinge right now from writing this.
There’s a way humans are designed to stand, squat, jump and walk. And if you aren’t doing it, it’s like driving a car with wobbly tires. Something’s going to eventually give. That could like anything from from medial knee pain, to lower back pain to plantar fasciitis. One of the possible causes of these issues are postural faults. Your body has become disorganized in the field of gravity. And after awhile that imbalance will rear it’s ugly painful head.
So next time you end up at the doctor because your knee hurts, don’t forget to ask why. The knee pain is likely a symptom of a larger more hidden problem. The knee pain could be a symptom of a postural issue. Only addressing the point of pain is like giving someone with the bubonic plague a cough suppressant. You need to get to the root of what ails you, because if you stay on the surface another problem will surface, and another and another until you’re pretty much a cyborg. And for the sake of the metaphor, let’s all pretend you don’t want to be a cyborg.
It’s very possible to correct these postural faults through structural bodywork. But the important thing to know is this: No matter who you go to for help, ask them to help you correct your postural issues. Your restricted hips, hamstrings or whatever it is that’s making you crooked. Because if you do, it’s a lot easier for everything else to fall in place.
Stay tuned, there’s more to come.