Monday, November 23, 2009

Posturing

Not sure what happened here...went to fix a typo and Blogger ate the post...GAH!

I'll fix later today and repost, but in the meantime we're discussing good posture and how to achieve it. Carry on!



Update I: I've restored the entertainment portion of today's post.

No, this wasn't irony in 1963, this was conventional wisdom.

Update II: Let's try this again, shall we?

While the video above is rather, well anachronistic, (*cough*sexist*cough* ) Hayley had a point about posture. Poor posture puts us at greater risk for injuries and joint damage, while good posture not only makes us look better in our clothing, but conveys an air of confidence.

My own mother tried to get us to care about our posture (and yes, our "femininity") enough to want to spend a few minutes each day walking up and down the hall with the A and B volumes of our Encyclopedia Brittanica balanced atop our heads, but alas the seeds of good posture practices fell upon fallow soil. Une femme's lifelong tendency to hunch shoulders, slouch, and walk with a forward tilt a la Groucho Marx requires a concerted effort to correct at this point.

Lately I've been reminding myself to stand up straight, pull those shoulders d-o-w-n and back. I've been thinking that some Pilates or yoga might help me to correct some of my poor posture habits.

What steps or exercises to you do to develop and maintain good posture? Did your mother make you walk with books on your head?
~
Posted by at 5:00 AM
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29 comments:

  1. Poor posture is so common! We take care with our clothing and then forget about the 'frame'.

    Yoga is fantastic for posture, because you become improve your alignment, strengthen your rhomboids and spinal erectors but also core. (Posture is not solely about your shoulders, it's the entire body. even your feet.) T'ai chi, dance, or movement modalities like Alexander Technique or Feldenkrais will also be effective.

    Posture begins with body and movement awareness. Some people have a natural sense of how they hold their bodies, the rest of us can learn- at any age!
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  2. Good posture is so often overlooked. I agree with Duchesse it begins with movement. I just read a post about this the other day at www.beckywilliamson.com. She has great exercise advice for us "baby boomers" including these 4 for better posture.
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  3. For me:

    Chiropractic adjustments once or twice a month.

    A sticky note on my computer screen that says "POSTURE!"

    But very most importantly:

    Weight training at the gym for 45 minutes twice a week. I collapse into myself without strong stomach and back muscles to hold me up. Weightlifting also keeps my spine supple so that I can maintain good posture without any kinks or pains in my back. A strong core is essential for good posture. Frankly, without weightlifting or yoga, I feel like HELL (and probably look like it, too).

    (My word verification for today is "dinglyho." Isn't that a riot?)
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  4. Part of my comment is missing: "Yoga is fantastic for posture because you become aware of your body in space..."

    Yoga builds strength by using your own body weight rather than free weights or machines. Both weight training and yoga are great posture aids but yoga has the 'plus' of developing kinesthetic awareness.
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  5. Ach, I try to. And some recent back pain makes me think I should try harder!
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  6. Love/hate the video, thanks!

    As someone who wishes she had a few more vertical inches, I make an effort to stand or sit up straight.

    But a few years of watching a physical therapist work with her clients made me realize that we tend to hold our bodies in numerous small but unaligned ways, sigh. So I do what I can and exercise to try to undo what I can't seem to manage to do!

    Oh--when walking I use that old "imagine a string pulling your head up" imagery to assist my efforts. And I also try to follow through on that OTHER old advice..."shoulders back, [bosom] out!" For some reason, it helps to imagine it barked at me, ha.
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  7. I am a sloucher from childhood, no matter how many times my parents told me to stand up straight. My posture never really improved until I started doing pilates in the mid 1980s. Now, with sitting in front of a computer all day I can practically feel my abdominal muscles atrophy and my posture decline.
    I joined a gym about a month ago...but I always come up with an excuse to not go. Maybe I should just forget the gym and do pilates and yoga.
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  8. Out of all that post, what I really got was -- You can see your shadow??!!! I vaguely remember my shadow, but she's very, very sodden right now, and will only be a shadow of her former shadowy self if she is ever found again. Still raining here, obviously.
    But yes, I think about my posture thanks to Pilates which, as Duchesse says of Yoga, has kept me aware of my body operating in space. I'm not great at it, but the awareness helps me work to keep my shoulders away from my ears, my waistband contracted (navel to spine) etc., etc., and the twice-a-week workouts help me remember what my body is meant to operate like.
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  9. pDuchesse is right--yoga is the best practice for realigning your body, building a strong core and opening up the pectoral muscles, and stretching out the lower back where the muscles start to foreshorten and cause your pelvis to spill forward , giving a "sway"back. Its also great for the complexion( all the deep breathing) and you can do it till you are in the grave.It also changes you from the inside out-- after a good class, you feel, as a scots friend of mine said "Like ye had a guid cry!" very serene and relaxed, which lasts longer the more often you do it. There's a really good yoga DVD called Yoga For the Rest of Us, for late bloomers, where some of the practitioners are in their eighties. But its more enjoyable to take a livebeginners class, so you can moan in chorus with others. Try it twice a week for a month and you'll see.
    My chiro gave me a good little exercise to strengthen the upper chest and back muscles any where there's a door way arch--stand about about 6 to ten inches before you are under the arch and place your hands on either side of it along thedoor frame at shoulder height, fingers pointing up as in a vertical push-up position, feet together. Keeping your body straight hips aligned, gently tilt forward through the doorway as far you can,so you feel a nice gentle stretch in the pecs and shoulders then contract them in a vertical push up till you are back to your upright position.Feels good! You can also turn around hook you hands around the door frame and do it the other way to access those rowing muscles between your shoulder blades.A couple of sets of those at the office really helps computer slump.( Obviously the further away from the door frame you place your feet, the bigger the stretch on your shoulders and the more body weight you bear in the forward position, so find the distance that is right for you.)
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  10. P.S. Thankyou , Ms Pseu, for the scary little vignette on todays blog-- it reminds me how far we have come in the last fifty (GASP!) years... long may it last.
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  11. Actually, the previous post was me. Had a brain cloud at my desk....
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  12. I do a lot of situps. Under the assumption that if the stomach is able the rest will follow.
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  13. MBT shoes (which you can buy at a discount from www.walkerswearhouse.com). Fantastically ugly, but truly have redesigned my posture in ways that not even years and years of yoga did.
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  14. Stand up straight, non? That's what my mother always told me.
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  15. I really can use this kind of reminder, no matter what decade it comes from.
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  16. I was working at a local community centre this morning, where a lovely group of Vietnamese seniors has been doing Tai Chi every morning for at least twenty years (I'm sure some of the original members have passed on or are no longer able to attend, and others have retired and became available to join the happy crew). The were celebrating something this morning. There are at least two non-Vietnamese in the group (en l'occurrence "white people", though if they were black or brown people that would have been the same). This has really become a neighbourhood tradition. These people (mostly ladies, but some gentlemen) are wonderfully supple and have beautiful posture.

    Indeed working hours and hours at the computer is very bad for the posture, the abs and all that. I always fear the moment I can't ride my bicycle any more, with ice and snow. I'm not really a yoga type, but must find something more congenial in the wintertime.
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  17. Oh yes, my mothers a l w a y s complained about my posture when I was in my teens. Actually she always complained about me; my hair ( too thick and too messy ), my weight ( she was sure I was gaining weight, although my BMI then was below 19 ). What I now know is, that good posture comes from your inside; a certain amount of healthy self-esteem enables you to carry your body in a beautiful way, it makes you beautiful, it makes you stand out from the crowd. Oh, how I wish I had known this years ago, wish I would have had someone tell me this ages ago.
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  18. Yoga is definitely great for improving posture. There's a reason why a good yoga teacher will spend a lot of time teaching "Mountain" pose, which is basically standing up. But it makes you think about your feet, your leg muscles, your pelvic and tailbone alignment, rib cage, shoulder blades... you get the idea.

    And then, as Duchesse mentions, there is the strength training yoga provides, which helps too.
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  19. Felt myself sitting up straight and lowering shoulders just reading this!! Wish I could remember to practice this everyday though!
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  20. I do reasonably well when standing and walking; it's when I sit that I really slump. Need a sticky note to remind myself. In Helen Gurley Brown's Having It All she talks about walking around with a broom stick through one's elbows behind the back. Doing this (without the broomstick) does highlight to me not only that the muscles in the back and shoulders atrophy, but the chest muscles really get contracted. Yoga classes sound better and better.
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  21. I've been doing Alexander technique for the last couple of years which has improved my posture a great deal, although I still get the slouchies when sat in front of the computer, but I'm working on it.
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  22. Yes, my mother scolded me about this and bought me any number of "posture braces," but I don't think they did much.

    A few years back I learned something I've since found very helpful. Keeping your arms straight down by your sides, rotate your arms outward until your palms are as close to squarely facing outward as possible. It's very difficult to slouch in this position. Then you can relax your arms and keep the shoulders where this little stretch put them. Voilá!
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  23. Yoga! And pilates. And you stay balanced that way. Duchesse is right on. I really learned where my body was in space by standing on one leg.

    My mother went to nursing school back in the 50s and had to wear a starched bib (more like cardboard) that chafed her arms if she slouched. She credited her superb posture to the four years of standing upright because of that bib.
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  24. The best way to correct posture and strengthen back muscles? Get yourself a gym ball. I use mine every day (you need to build up slowly as it can get very tiring), it is my chair at my desk and when watching TV. Even 10 minutes sitting on it a day, with pelvic floor pulled in, will soon create a real difference. If you do that you won't need Pilates (which I have always found really tedious and outrageously expensive!). Bon courage!
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  25. @greying pixie: Could you elaborate, or post a link, to what you mean by "pelvic floor pulled in"? I'm a complete exercise ignoramus, and googling that phrase is leading to porn city!
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  26. The pelvic floor muscles are the muscles you almost lose control of after childbirth and then spend the next 50 - 60 years of your life trying to get them back! They are the muscles you call into play when you're miles from the bathroom having drunk a litre of water - and with less effect as the years go by! And they are the same muscles that tighten during orgasm, thereby tightening the vagina - so I'm not surprised you accidentally wandered into pornoland during your searches!

    Pilates is based on the toning of these muscles, but I've always found it a bit slow. The gym ball was recommended to me by a retired professional dancer. By sitting on the ball, shoulders back, stomach in and pelvic floor pulled upwards, with your feet on the ground and knees bent at 90 degrees you make little rolling movements on the ball and in this way all the deep core muscles around the pelvis become toned. You can imagine twirling a hula hoop around your waist? Those sort of movements, but not quite so exaggerated.

    I think advanced yoga also has movements specifically for these muscles.

    Hope this clarifies things.

    I'd be interested to know what you call 'pelvic floor muscles' in the US.
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  27. I don't have it, even though I was frequently chastised for not having it as a kid.

    I think large breasts are what killed it for me.

    Having seen a chiropractor for some years now, I have found my posture is better than it was.
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  28. Thanks everyone, for your comments and suggestions. I'm going to look into finding a beginning yoga class. I'm also going to check out those balance balls.
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  29. I straightened up while reading this...for a second.
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