Posturally! Your Online Creative Body Therapist

Here’s a posture how to – It’s about discovering the power the shoulder blades have to release neck strain.

The strategy is to find the action of the shoulder blades, to take the pressure off the neck muscles.

Posture How To Instructions

So first, touch them. Just wrap your arm around yourself so that your hand touches the flat triangular bone in the back. Through the medium of touch, notice things about it – the size shape, where the boarders are, etc. There’s a tip at the bottom, and from there you can move over to the side, which is next to the spine. Then reach over and touch the outside. There’s a boarder on top, too, although that’s not actually the technical top of the shoulder blade. Just the same it’s important, so touch that area of the bone, too.

Repeat on other side.

Now lift both arms up so they are in front of you, perpendicular to your body. Don’t lock your elbows. Keep them straight with a bit of bend.

The first shoulder blade movement we’ll do is called protraction/retraction. Bring those blades forward and then squeeze them in back. Repeat a few times. Apply awareness to this simple movement. Notice what your arms do when you concentrate on the action of your shoulder blades in back. This is a basic therapeutic movement for the upper back.

By squeezing in back you build up the rhomboids. This helps keep the upper back straight, tall and pain free. It addresses (more…)

I spend a fair amount of time in the area shared between art and science.  I like the combination.  Apparently Michaelagelo and others in his time did too.

Renaissance artists were medical illustrators in their own right.  Along with cutting the trees down to make their canvases, grinding their own pigments and who knows what else, they also dissected cadavers and drew what they saw for practice.  Michaelangelo’s David is thought to be very accurate anatomically for this reason, as an example.

But not all Michaelangelo’s works portray such accuracy.  A neurosurgeon and a modern day medical illustrator from Johns Hopkins Medical School recently found that in a figure of God in a fresco called “Dividing Light from Darkenss” the neck contains a form that looks much like the brainstem (from an obsure angle). And there’s two line like shapes painted down the front of the figure, which looks a lot like the spinal cord.

In reality, the brainstem is located at the back of the brain (approximately the center of the head, not the neck).  It controls many basic functions such as sleep and wakefulness, movement coordination and much more.  The spinal cord runs down the center of the of the spinal column.  They are both a part of the central nervous system.

Leg Length Differences

Leg length differences can cause back pain and other body problems.

Seeing movement therapy clients is a source of fascination for me. For one thing, I get to observe the attitudes people harbor in relationship to their condition. And how vastly different these attitudes can be between people – for the very same body problem.

Let’s take leg length difference as an example. A leg length difference, called leg length discrepancy in the clinical realm, occurs when one leg is shorter than the other. Uneven leg length problems come in two types.

(more…)

Muscles contract. That’s the basis of strength training, toning, working your abs, and the like. A muscle contraction happens in just the muscle. It’s an increase in tension when muscles go to work. There are a number of terms that are related to muscle contraction, but mean something slightly different.

For example, the term contracture describes a response that muscles, their tendons, and other nearby soft tissues can have to stimuli. (Stimuli can take many forms. An injury such as a muscle tear, comes to mind.) Contracture may be one of the things affecting your posture.
(more…)

Many clients and potential clients come to me with a worried look in their eye asking me to show them how to straighten their posture or spine.

One school of thought, which comes from Somatics, says that people generally take one of two forms in their spine and posture. Either their posture is “green light” or “red light”. Green light is when your posture is over energized and your spine is arched. Red light is when your posture is slumped, even if it’s just a little. In red light, your spine is bent, or flexed.

Somatics people say these basic postures are due to reflexes. Red light posture is a withdrawal reaction to stress and green light is an on alert type reaction.

But I’m not going to get that deep. All I’m trying to point out is that straightening your posture or spine depends on where you’re starting from.

(more…)

Do you remember gym class when you partnered up with someone who held your feet down while you cranked out as many sit ups as you could in one minute? Those were the days. (The days without knowledge of how the core posture muscles work, that is!)

(more…)

Lately I’ve been reading blog posts by people who’ve had good luck standing while working at the computer. Today, I tried this. It worked great for a few minutes and then I felt myself getting pulled into my screen by my need to deeply focus. My brain automatically wanted me to sit down and get serious with a few mini-projects that were on my desk.

I forced myself to stay up longer, if for nothing else, to begin training my mind-body to coordinate productive work with an active body stance.

(more…)

Scoliosis is an abnormal side to side curve in the spine.

Scoliosis is a side-to-side curve in the spine. When you look at the back, you can see evidence of an S shape, or a C shape. (There are different types.) The giveaways are: One shoulder or hip higher than the other and/or one rib that looks like a hump.

Most scoliosis is idiopathic, meaning they don’t know what causes it. The other 2 types are neuromuscular (caused by a disease such as polio) and congenital (you were born with it). You can see congenital scoliosis earlier than the idiopathic type. If your baby has congenital scoliosis, a new technique called scoliosis stapling may be worth looking into. But it’s reserved for very young children.

Scoliosis curves can range from mild (about 10-12 degrees), to so severe that it interrupts the lungs and heart. If a child’s curve grows rapidly or if the curve is over 50 degrees, it may be time for surgery. Of course, a licensed MD specializing in spine will be the best person to help you decide, as they have in depth knowledge on these things. I wouldn’t trust my child’s scoliosis to a chiropractor. Don’t get me wrong, chiropractors have their place – I go to one, and I couldn’t be happier with the results, but with a severe scoliosis, chiropractic treatment just hasn’t proven itself.

Most people who have scoliosis have the mild type. I have the mild type. I’ve had really good luck with exercises. Other than the Scroth Method, I am not aware of anything in the clinical realm that has the potential to actually reverse the curve and help the spine approach straight. But when the spine deforms like it does with a scoliosis, it often creates a situation where muscles on one side get super tight, and muscles on the other side get overstretched and weak. So for me, doing specialized exercises that target the curves has really helped to establish balance through my body. More specifics in future posts.

Source:
Scoliosis Research Foundation. Scoliosis Media Guide. Accessed Feb 2010. http://sites.google.com/site/wwwscoliosisorgawareness/scoliosis-media-community-guide

I am pleased to hear that Michelle Obama is taking on childhood obesity as an initiative. I was a heavy kid. As an adult, this is an ongoing challenge.

Recently, I learned (in my dance class) that carrying weight alters body posture in a way that shuts down my desire to be active. It also de-shapes the hip and backside area – an effect I do not need. The extra weight, especially in my belly, has me leaning forward.

Ideal alignment is about balancing through the bones. In a well-aligned body, weight is transferred from top to bottom through the center of the joints. (It’s a gravity thing.) This engages posture muscles such as the hamstrings (back of leg). I feel ready for action, and movement is delicious.

But by leaning forward, I am no longer balancing my weight through the bones. Instead I arch my back (which tightens the muscles) and my hips tighten up. I get stuck at the pelvis, but its not fun. No, this is movement stoppage! Sadly, I lose track of the feeling of my body, and I begin to identify with being overweight.

I found that key is to gently lean back. At first it feels weird because habit has me used to the forward position. But the idea is to get to a place where the pelvis drops down easily, releasing unnecessary muscle tension as it does. I practice this every day now, and it’s freeing.

If you are going to be proactive about getting and staying comfortable, you most likely need an expert to help you. A workplace study, published in the October 2009 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and involving about 1500 people, found that just buying an ergonomic desk set up isn’t enough to address the posture related pain due to work positions.

Non-Neutral Work Positions can Cause Muscle Tension and Pain.

Work related pain often comes from holding yourself in what ergonomists call non-neutral positions. These positions are ones in which the joints are not centered, i.e., the two bones that make up a joint are not aligned with one another. The fit just isn’t right. This reduces how much support you can get for the position you are in. Non-neutral positions create a tremendous amount of tension (and pain!) in the body, because the muscles become like bones in order to scaffold the joint’s position.

After 18 months, improvement was seen in those who not only received new desks and chairs, but also received the benefit of professional help in setting them up. These workers had less muscuolskeletal pain and less eyestrain than the comparison group. Results from this study apply only to workers who began the study with pain. Those who started pain free didn’t seem to benefit from the ergonomic perks provided by the study.

“Just providing new office furniture and written instructions is not sufficient to achieve proper accommodation,” the authors conclude. “Good office equipment is a poor substitute for good working positions.”

Sources:
Laestadius, Jasminka Goldoni; Ye, Jian; Cai, Xiaodong; Ross, Sandra; Dimberg, Lennart; Klekner, Meg.
The Proactive Approach-Is It Worthwhile? A Prospective Controlled Ergonomic Intervention Study in Office Workers. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 51(10):1116-1124, October 2009. Date Accessed. Jan 12 10. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0b013e3181bae19d.

Newswise. Press Release. The Proactive Approach-Is It Worthwhile? A Prospective Controlled Ergonomic Intervention Study in Office Workers. Oct 21 09. Date Accessed. Jan 12 10. http://newswise.com/articles/proactive-approach-to-ergonomics-reduces-pain-in-office-workers.