newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ANDREA BUCCINO

COMMENTARY

“If one's posture is upright, one has no need to fear a crooked shadow."

- Chinese proverb

We’ve all been victim to it: the poor posture plague. Memories of your mother telling you to sit straight are conjured up. The idea of walking across a room balancing a dictionary on your head seems impractical. You are far too busy hunched over your laptop, or buried in your cell phone sending yet another urgent text to fix your stance. You surely don’t have time to sit straight as your wired body sits ready to explode while sitting out rush hour on the Garden State Parking Lot.

Posture can be one of your bad habits, if you let it. How we sit and stand is ingrained into our muscles. More often than not, the deterioration of perfect posture sets in as teenagers. As adolescents, whether we slouched at our desks at school or walked with our shorter friends down the hall, that forward carriage of your head and rounding of the shoulders set precedence for adulthood.

If you were to evaluate your own posture right now, how would you fair? Are your shoulders elevated near your ears? Is your head leaning forward ahead of your chest? Is your back straight? Are your shoulder blades further apart than they are together? You don’t need a mirror to answer these questions.

Poor posture and tight muscles go hand in hand. In order to correct one, you must address the other. Chronically tight muscles lead to shortened fibers which cause a decreased range of motion. They often contribute to pain, like headaches, neck aches and muscle aches, to name a few pains. When muscles are scrunched like a tight spring that can’t uncoil, trigger points of pain may develop. Trigger points are areas within the muscle that are sensitive, tender, and taut. Pressing on these trigger points may cause localized pain, or refer pain to nearby parts of the body.

Simple stretches may help decrease the tightness in your upper back, chest and neck. Your computer screen with at least one yellow Post-it bearing your handwritten reminder to sit upright can go a long way to change a bad habit.

When you sit and stand with proper posture, you are able to take deeper breaths because your chest has a better ability to expand fully. Besides, you look more confident and it is a healthier lifestyle.

A simple start is to sit up straight and hold in your belly while you are seated at your desk. Attempt to bring your head back so that your ears are in line with your shoulders. Squeeze your shoulder blades together as if you could hold a pen between them. Depress your shoulders down to the floor. Take five deep breaths. The more often you do this, the easier it gets. Taking a mini-break for your posture a few minutes each hour is a great start to improving your posture.