Hey lovelies!
It’s an Info Monday post today and I thought of sharing the benefits of maintaining a good posture! Whilst sharing the downside of a bad posture.
Apart from just telling you benefits, I picked some simple exercises from the articles I read so you could help relieve some ache or pain you had from bad posture!
Do note that I got these information by just researching and reading articles. All references will be at the end of the post, if you’re interested, you can give them all a read. I merely picked out the ones that I feel are important and useful to know.
So let’s get started!
Previous Info Monday post: My Wavy Permed Hair Routine
1. Good posture makes you look younger and also affects your digestion in a good way (+ more)
When you begin to have a better posture, people will start to notice that you look more fluid, graceful and slimmer than you are.
“Why”, you ask?
Some poor posture positions makes it look like your belly sticks out, giving you a “beer belly” profile.
If you slouch or slump, it also makes you shorter than you actually are.
By standing or sitting up straight, you can thus correct these issues and improve your appearance.
Posture also affects your digestion – which if is good, will essentially give us better skin, prevent bloating as well as sleep better. Benefits don’t stop there. I’m sure better digestion wouldn’t come as a surprise but it also affects your immunity and metabolism!
We all know a high metabolism is usually great because it means that your body breaks down the energy from food at a faster rate, giving you more chances to eat without gaining much! (On hindsight, it means consuming more calories and spending more on food ????)
However, with our busy lives in school or at work, a high metabolism is never too bad since we do not have much time to exercise.
For working adults, especially. (Psst. Being well rested also aids in helping you to lose weight!)
Do you also know that there is a walking style that increases your metabolism???
By walking and taking the stride of half of your height at a speed of 90-110m / min, it efficiently helps in increasing the metabolism.
Cool, right?
2. Realising the need to change your posture
With advancements in technology, we have more jobs that don’t require us to manually do something as much as before.
Due to that, we deal with computers, phones, driving, sitting for longer periods of time. All these creates imbalance in our bodies and needs separate care on its own.
Aches and neck or back pains don’t usually just happen randomly. I believe it’s a built up of our lifestyle and bad habits that were formed. If you’ve always had great posture, good for you. If you haven’t and find this helpful, keep reading 🙂
Basically, when you have proper posture, your bones and spine can efficiently balance and support your body’s weight.
Improper posture will mean that your muscles, tendons and ligaments all have to constantly work in harmony to maintain and support that same weight. (Imagine leaning the right side of your body against a wall, the whole weight will be mostly on the right. Giving more pressure and effort needed to support your body to balance it out.)
Similarly to the external parts, the internal parts such as your lungs will need the space to expand in your chest. When you’re slouching, do you realise that your rib cage collapses a bit, thus leaving less room for your lungs to open?
This actually causes inefficient breathing!
Extra separate care is definitely needed for our body and that means proper posture for a better alignment of our body.
Have good posture can be a remedy for most of your aches and pains that stemmed from bad posture or habits (such as looking down on your phone for long periods of time).
3. For those who sit at the desk for long periods, listen!
By raising your computer screen to eye level for a start, it will discourage you from looking down and slumping while using the computer. You do need to be conscious too though.
Choosing a chair level (if adjustable) to just one that allows your feet to be flat on the ground (with knees on a lower level than hips), will also encourage you to find your neutral spine.
A neutral spine means that “your lower back will be slightly arched, your mid to upper back slightly rounded and your neck slightly arched. Feel the top of your head float up as your sitting bones reach down“.
However, if you’ve been slouching while sitting and standing for years, those muscles that you have to use for a neutral spine will feel tight and this makes it hard for a person to maintain that correct posture the whole day.
BUT! You may loosen those muscles by doing the following simple ‘exercises’. Don’t expect immediate results. This merely helps you to achieve good posture more easily!
Stand against a wall: Have your head, shoulder, back and butt against the wall and have your heel 15cm away from the wall. Standing in this position can do a lot to open up the muscles in your chest and shoulders.
Static back: Lie on the floor and place your legs on top of a bed, chair, or ottoman. Your knees should bend at a 90-degree angle. Get your hips as close to the chair (or whatever you’re using to rest your legs on) as possible. Lay your arms on the ground at your side. Just lie there like this for 5 to 10 minutes.
This position lines up your shoulders with your hips and helps relax the muscles in your lower back (an area that’s often tight due to bad posture). It also helps stretch your thoracic muscles.
Static wall: This is a more intense version of the static back stretch. Instead of resting your legs on the bed, you’re going to put your legs up on a wall. To perform this stretch, lie on the floor with a wall in front of you. Bring your legs up the wall and scoot your butt as close to the wall as possible. You should look like you’re sitting on the wall. Rest your arms out to your side. Hold this position for 5 minutes. You’ll get the same stretch as with the static back, it will just feel more intense.
I’d rate them from easy to hard in the same order.
4. Shoes and bags. High or low? Heavy or light?
Apart from sitting and standing, we will need proper movement in our feet to have the correct alignment.
Avoid shoes that make you grip down to hold onto it (especially if your shoe is loose or tends to hurt your back ankle – we tend to grip down naturally) as this won’t help in the long term.
Bags should not be too heavy as well. However, if you need to carry lots of things, such as laptops and books, you could try swapping with the other shoulder (non-dominant) to reduce strain on one side of your shoulder.
Backpacks are a great alternative to reducing strain on one shoulder too.
5. Extra bonus tips & info on posture!
- Sitting on the edge of your seat will activate your core muscles to keep you more upright.
- Which means incorporating a plank of any variation into your exercise will make it easier – core muscles are anatomically designed to support our spine.
- Research has shown that good posture enhances breathing (take in more oxygen) which improves your cognition – correlation between good posture and memory retention when learning something new.
- A study has also shown that “an upright posture makes people feel dominant and successful, which in turn improves their ability to relax and focus on problems”, which relates to an improvement of concentration and mental performance.
So have you learnt anything today? Will you start to slouch lesser?
Sometimes we just gotta take a look at the greenery and skies, away from our phones. Keep your head up 🙂
See you on my next post everyone!
References:
http://beautyandwellbeing.com/well-being/story/good-posture (post is no longer available)
https://www.kanebo-global.com/en/lifestyle/column_011/ (post is no longer available)
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/beauty/mind-body/a22663098/easy-ways-to-improve-posture
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-good-posture-matters
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-posture
With ????,
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Sitting at desks is the absolute worst! I am constantly trying to keep my posture good at my desk because I tend not to even realize that it’s bad until its too late and my lower back is so painful later that night. Sometimes when it’s really bad it even hurts my ribs! You would never think that poor posture would bother your breathing as much as it can!
Yesss haha I can the ache once I straighten up! I learnt how much it affects my body because of this post and I’m glad I did it. I just hope those aches can be relieved soon. ❤️