You will have heard the term “bad posture”…or you might have had someone say to you (or you’ve even said it yourself) “put your shoulders back” or “stand tall”. Posture denotes many things – health, confidence, attitude, success. Much of which has nothing to do with posture at all.
What is bad posture really?
Truth be told, there is not one particular posture that is best. Standing too tall, chest out with an erect spine can result in lower back tension and pain when done for too long. And when you are slouching, this can cause other issues with head, neck and shoulder pain. This leads into the CD region. This region is around the point where your cervical spine meets with your thoracic spine and can be quite problematic with office and desk workers who might stay in a slouched posture for a prolonged period of time. When this happens, individuals can get pain and a range of dysfunctions through their head, neck, shoulders, chest, jaw and any of the other surrounding regions. The good news is that your osteopath can help you with this.
And there are several things you can do to help address this for yourself:
– Hands-on treatment: seeing your osteopath for some hands-on manual therapy can help lessen the tension and/or pain in your head, neck, shoulders, chest, jaw and surrounding regions, help improve motion and mobility through these areas and reduce inflammation.
Exercises: doing the exercises that are prescribed for you will help take tension off these areas, improve range of motion and tension, address the slouching and ensuring the right cues are given to help improve posture through this region are things your osteopath can do to help your condition. Here are several exercises that may help your neck pain…
Advice and education: knowing exactly what might be causing the dysfunctions, why slouching for prolonged periods is a bad idea, how long it might take you to resolve the dysfunction, what can be done to best manage it and why the tightness or restriction through these areas may be causing any issue are all things your osteopath can provide to help best manage your condition.
