What is Healthy Posture?
Healthy posture is much more than sitting or standing tall. It consists of restoring the skeletal mobility that allows you to align your spine in the posture that maximizes load transfer through each spinal segment while providing maximum stability at each segment. For this reason, we refer to healthy posture as neutral spine alignment.
Healthy posture is much more than sitting or standing tall. It consists of restoring the skeletal mobility that allows you to align your spine in the posture that maximizes load transfer through each spinal segment while providing maximum stability at each segment. For this reason, we refer to healthy posture as neutral spine alignment.
Get Into Healthy Posture:
Getting into healthy posture is a little more complicated than pinching your shoulder blades together. Although there are differentbody types, what it takes to get into a more neutral spine alignment is uniform for all.
When you are in healthy posture, your skull, rib cage and pelvis are in alignment with each other. It all starts with “Stacking the UpperBack”. Stacking your upper back requires restoring mobility of your upper thoracic spine into extension in such a way that repositions your skull on top of the rib cage. This unlocks the low back and neck.
Aligning Your Skull, Rib Cage and Pelvis:
Step #1 Get into Chest Lift® Posture
You stack your upper back by sliding your shoulder blades down until your sternum lifts without your rib cageflaring. Your skull should reposition on top of your rib cage.
Step #2 Unload Your Neck with a Head Nod®
After you “stack your upper back” you can reposition your skull in its neutral position on C1 to pull yourself out of forward head posture. This restores symmetrical loading through the cervical spine.
Step #3 Unload the Low Back with a Pelvic Curl®
From a “stacked upper back” you can suspend your pelvis in its neutral position through a lower abdominal contraction to unload your low back (lumbar spine).
The Power of Inward Spiral:
Step #4 Restore neutral hip positioning via an Inward Spiral®
A collapsed pelvis impinges the pelvis on the hip joint. A pelvic curl® elevates the pelvis into its neutral position, repositioning the hip socketinto its neutral position. A subtle contraction of your hip internal rotators via an Inward Spiral® will reposition the femoral into the neutral positioning in the hip socket (acetabulum), restoring symmetrical loading through the hips and knees.
You cannot get into an Inward Spiral® until youare in a Pelvic Curl®. The key to healthy standing posture is conditioning yourself throughout the week tomaintain a Chest Lift and Head Nod when sitting, Pelvic Curl and Inward Spiral when standing and walking.
Any good posture restoration program must have 3 phases of conditioning.
- Functional mobility phase to restore your ability to get into neutral spine alignment.
- Lifestyle modification phase where you rearrange your workstation and home to support more upright posture.
- Neutral spine conditioning Phase to condition you to perform daily tasks without faulty loading.
- Functional conditioning phase that keeps you neutral spine fit for the rest of your life.
Restoring your ability to function fromhealthy posture is like a wellness saving account, it will improve the qualityof your life and reduce your healthcare costs.