The importance of posture

Lower back pain is an extremely common consequence of poor posture.

How you stand and hold yourself, not only makes a difference to the way you look – but more importantly, the way your body feels.

Poor posture can lead to a wide variety of problems – such as chronic backache, headache and evenrepetitive strain injury (RSI).

Lower back pain is a common consequence of poor posture.

In fact, it's estimated that in the United Kingdom, up to 4 out of every 5 adults aged 16 or over will experience back pain at some point in their lifetime. Each year, backache accounts for seven million trips to a GP.

We look at different exercise regimes you can do that focus on improving posture, and we share some tips on how to keep your body in perfect alignment at your desk.

Pilates

Pilates helps strengthen the core abdominal muscles, improve posture and ease back problems.

Pilates is all about training people to use their core, specifically the muscles of the stomach, back and pelvic floor – so that they can hold themselves correctly.

Classes consist of a series of controlled movements and exercises that train the body to move more efficiently. This relieves pain caused by poor posture.

Years of slouching, hunching and rounding can leave us using weak or superficial muscles to hold ourselves up. As such, it’s often recommended to sufferers of lower back pain.

Pilates also reduces the stress we place on the legs, hips and feet from standing or moving incorrectly.

Good posture creates space in the body, taking pressure off the organs. It improves muscle function, range of motion in the joints and allows the shoulders to relax and the head to move more freely.

Yoga

Beginners to yoga should try to practise at least once or twice a week.

There are many different types of yoga, but all help to relieve tension from the body and restore flexibility to the muscles and joints.

Regular yoga practice develops body awareness, which allows you to break habits and patterns of bad posture.

All types of yoga involve poses that stretch the muscles and ease out tension.

Yoga classes also involve dedicated time for relaxation, which helps you to form a new tension-free body position.

Classical yoga postures, such as those found in Hatha yoga, are fantastic for addressing muscular imbalances and restoring balance and flexibility.

Iyengar yoga focuses on proper alignment – while dynamic yoga styles, like Ashtanga and Rasa Vinyasa, help to develop core, back and upper body strength.

Alexander technique

It re-teaches everyday movements, such as walking, to consciously change your bad posture habits.

The Alexander technique teaches us that we each create our own patterns of posture and movement.

Over time these postures and movements become so deeply ingrained, we often can't see that they cause us to move inefficiently.

Alexander technique sessions adopt a common sense approach to good posture and teach new ways of sitting, standing, breathing and moving.

Students learn how to perform daily activities, with greater ease and efficiency, and reduce the pressure they put on their bodies.

The technique is designed to free you of subconscious habits – so that you can use your body more effectively and see improvements in posture, breathing, performance and health.

The Technique is not a quick fix. The ‘retraining’ process takes some time. But with patience, you can learn new habits for life.

Feldenkrais

Feldenkrais teaches awareness of movement through gentle prompting and guided touch.

Through gentle prompting and guided touch, the Feldenkrais method helps you to develop an awareness of body positioning and movement, retraining yourself to move more flexibly and fluidly.

Students of Feldenkrais are taught that constantly adjusting body position, with hard work and effort, is not the most effective way to improve posture.

According to the Feldenkrais method: our muscles aren't meant to directly support our weight and hold our posture. But they should to align the skeleton to support the body.

Feldenkrais teaches that a relaxed, aware body will align itself easily and naturally – so that body mass balances lightly on the skeleton with a minimum of muscular effort.

Feldenkrais aims to take the hard work out of achieving proper posture, by using gentle movements to develop a self-awareness that in time allows you to regain the fluid movement and balance you were born with. This state is referred to as natural balance.

Flexibility is thought to improve after just one session, as well as increased levels of energy and vitality.

How to sit perfectly at your desk in 5 easy steps

1. Start standing. Place your thumbs on the bony protrusions of your hip bones and your forefingers on your pubic bone. Tilt your pelvis, so both bones are level.
2. Now sit down. Try to maintain this position, ensuring you keep a small curve at the base of the spine.
3. Next, place your feet flat on the floor, shoulder width apart, pointing directly forwards. Your hips and knees should be bent at 90 degrees.
4. Now, roll your shoulders back and down. Feel your chest broadening and your shoulder blades moving down your back.
5. Finally, ensure that your head can move freely and that there's a slight curve at the top of the spine, with the ears directly over the shoulders.