If you think of posture as a position, you will hold it. Probably too tightly and tensely. Like the second picture of the woman: standing up straight, sure, but wow it looks like hard work.
Understanding how to have better posture starts with this simple shift in thinking: posture isn’t really staying in a static position: it’s a dynamic feedback loop with brain and body. Your brain uses proprioception, vision, vestibular information to choose to which muscles need to work more or less moment by moment.
The trouble is most of us override this process by holding positions with extra muscle tension.
- This is effort we do not need that tires us.
- It’s tightness that can wind up pain.
- It’s a tension that feeds to into feelings of stress.
If you think of posture as your brain’s job rather than something you need to work to do it all gets a helluva lot easier.
Modern advice on posture
The advice on posture has changed. Instead of forcing yourself into a “correct” position, the focus is now on “the next posture is best posture” Changing it up regularly, fidgeting, movement breaks, or relaxing in a posture. I strongly recommend these approaches too.
Even so, many people still ask me how to manage pain they have with postures. It’s all very well to say keep changing position until you have to sit at a desk all day, or stand for surgery for hours, or you’re driving with no choice about your breaks. What are you supposed to do then?
And relaxing in a posture – what does that mean? When people show me “relaxing” it’s a collapse, not a strategic letting go of what’s not needed. They complain that they still need to stand or sit up, and this relaxing business doesn’t help. It just means a yo-yoing from too tense to too slumped.
How to have better posture in the real world
The aim is easy posture.
Not easy as in collapsed or slumped (although its totally ok to be like that some of the time), but easy as in not bracing and holding.
The key thing to know is that if you stop bracing you won’t be completely still, Tiny micromovements happen if you let the brain recruit just what muscle work is needed dynamically.
Experiencing this for yourself is the best way to understand how this works – give it go along with me below. You can trust your brain to do this for you – really! – it just takes some patient retraining.
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