Posture

If you’re trying to fix your hunched back, you’ve probably tried a few posture correction exercises. These usually consist of stretching tight muscles and strengthening weak ones that contribute to poor posture.

They sometimes also teach you to hold their body in an upright, “correct” position. Most people find this type of posture correction painful and exhausting.

And also, it doesn’t work.

Clients who come to my office with poor posture have usually worked with a personal trainer, maybe even a physical therapist, and yet they still struggle with poor posture.

Why is this? Computers. It must be because you’re sitting in front of a computer all day. Right?

While computers aren’t great for us for a number of reasons, they’re not solely to blame for the failure of posture correction exercises. There are a number of reasons these practices don’t get results.

Here are five reasons posture correction exercises don’t work:

1. They treat the symptom, not the problem.

When it comes to posture, it’s all about shoulders, shoulders, shoulders! (To be said like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, of course.)

But seriously, when it comes to fixing posture, pretty much everyone thinks it’s about getting your shoulders back.

Which is great and all….if the rib cage that they sit upon isn’t collapsed forward, yanked down by tight abdominals and hip flexor muscles.

Trying to correct your shoulder position without also addressing rib cage alignment is like putting a new roof on a house with a collapsing foundation. Sure, it looks pretty for a minute.

But it’s not going to take long for it to fall apart again.

The bottom line: when correcting posture, you HAVE to take a whole body approach, or you’re just going to be on the hamster wheel of posture correction exercises that only give temporary results.

2. They require ongoing conscious effort.

Do a quick YouTube search for “posture” and you’ll see a plethora of videos telling you how to hold your head and neck, ways to position your back and the “right” way to stand.

Cue posture professional’s disgusted grimace.

Sorry, but that stuff DOESN’T WORK.

Here’s why…

Putting your body into a position and holding it takes conscious muscular effort. You have to physically hold yourself in place.

Which sounds reasonable until you consider that you do NOT have to physically hold yourself upright when you sit, stand or walk. You simply do the activity and somehow you don’t collapse into a puddle on the floor.

Your body is self organizing. Parts of your brain that you do not consciously control are perpetually sensing your body’s position in relation to your environment and adjusting your movement as necessary.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. If you had to think about every little muscle that you had to contract in order to stand up and walk across a room, you’d never make it.

So the idea that you can somehow “mind” your body like an ever-present nanny is a bit ridiculous. Instead, what needs to happen is adjustments to the parts of your brain that coordinate your posture and movement in the first place…like a neural reset.

3. They do nothing to teach body awareness.

Wait, didn’t I just say that you can’t consciously mind your body 24/7 and hold it in place?

Yes, yes I did.

And also, you need SOME level of body awareness. I don’t mean the kind of awareness where you’re micromanaging every tiny movement and position of your body. We tend to get really hung up on that kind of stuff…like, is crossing my legs bad for my hips? What’s the best body position for sleeping?

That stuff is kind of irrelevant if you have body awareness. Because when something is uncomfortable, your body will tell you. It will tell you long before it becomes a problem.

Unfortunately, most people have been taught to ignore their body signals. As children, we underwent grueling training for how to sit in a chair and not move all day.

We were instructed on how to ignore our urges to stand, move, stretch, run, play, bounce, even to simply fidget.

And we carry those lessons into adulthood. But if you learn to listen again, you’ll find that your body is still talking, still telling you exactly what it needs in any moment.

All it takes is practice.

4. Posture is dynamic and individual.

If I never see another person lined up against a grid on a wall again, it will be too soon. How ridiculous are we believing that people can be measured in lines and squares?

We are organic creatures — organisms, for crying out loud! We are not rectangles.

Most exercises prescribe the same movements and body positions for all people regardless of height, body type and individual structure. Everybody’s body is different.

That statement is so cliche that you might just gloss right over it. But it’s cliche because it’s true.

Not only do we come in different heights and widths, we also have different joint shapes, bone lengths…even the orientation of your hip joint can be unique!

So, to assume that there is one “right” posture is misguided at best. The right posture for you is the one that simultaneously gives you the greatest ease while also allowing the most potential for movement.

And that’s going to be unique to you.

5. Posture runs deeper than body position.

Finally, no article on the failure of posture correction exercises would be complete without at least a mention of the neuro-psychological aspects of body position.

You might actually call it body language. Other synonyms for posture include “attitude,” “stance,” and “comportment.”

All words that connote not just physical alignment, but also cognitive orientation.

How much of a person’s communication do you read through their gestures and expressions? Quite a lot, actually. 55% of meaning in communication can be gleaned from a person’s body language.

We tend to think of these things as overlays on a neutral posture — like shrugging your shoulders or crossing your arms. Those specific gestures have meaning, sure.

But everyone’s baseline body position — i.e. your posture — is as unique to them as a fingerprint. Your posture is the sum neurological total of your lived experience.

You have learned and mimicked movement patterns of your parents and caregivers, friends, community and greater culture at large. You have learned cultural mandates that form the walls of your movement repertoire, such as “good girls don’t swing their hips when they walk” or “shoulders back, suck in your gut.”

You have been told — overtly and covertly — what should move and what shouldn’t. And those beliefs both shape and constrain your movement.

Posture correction exercises simply overlay a new pattern, a new set of alignment “rules” on top of all the ones you’ve learned before — like donning a Gucci suit over the top of jeans and a sweatshirt.

It just doesn’t work.

Finally, Posture Correction Exercises That Work

I hope you’re getting a pretty good idea of a) what shapes your posture in the first place, and b) what’s required in order to get lasting posture and movement changes.

In sum…

You’ve got to dissolve all the layers of neural patterning and conditioning that are constraining your body now while simultaneously developing a broader range of more efficient neural patterns that will serve you better as you go forward in life.

Sound complicated? It’s really not. But it does take some effort.

And the good news is that it works. It works even if other stuff you’ve tried hasn’t. It works if you’re seventeen or seventy. It works if you’ve been in auto accidents or just have bad habits from years of ignoring your body.

Your brain and body are plastic, meaning they can change at any time.

If this is something you’re keen to explore, I’d like to invite you to check out my **free** Pain Free At Any Age video series that will help you start the process of dissolving those pesky neural habits that are causing you so much pain.

Click the banner below to create your free account and start your journey to living with less pain today.

Note: this post contains affiliate links.

TLDR: The best office chair is one that keeps your core muscles active and engaged so you don’t slouch. We recommend the Kore Stool.

If you work at a computer, you may be wondering: what’s the best office chair for long hours?

Sitting is terrible for us. According to research, prolonged sitting increases your risk for 34 chronic conditions, among them cancer, diabetes, obesity, and, of course, cardiovascular disease.

Ack. That’s no good. But you can’t exactly quit your job and run away into the woods, never to be seen again, can you?

So what’s a person who has to sit at a computer supposed to do? What’s the best office chair for combating these sitting-related diseases?

Related:

• Computer Posture: How to Work At A Desk All Day Without Destroying Your Back
• The Ten Commandments of Sitting In Front of a Computer (Follow These If You Don’t Want to Wind Up With a Petrified Spine)
• If You Must Sit At A Computer, At Least Do This…

From stability ball chairs to standing and even treadmill desks, employees are seeking ways to insert more movement into their work days.

Move over, ergonomic desk chairs! There’s a new player in town…

Active seating is a novel approach to workplace ergonomics that inserts movement into an otherwise sedentary day. Whether you sit or stand, incorporating active seating into your workday can help you to improve your posture, activate core muscles and maximize focus.

The Best Office Chair Might Be A Little Shaky

Active, or dynamic, seating just means that whatever you’re sitting on is designed to keep your muscles more engaged. After a lifetime of perching on static chairs and walking around on flat, stable land, most people have atrophied postural muscles and compromised balance.

The best office chair might not actually be a chair at all…

Stools that wobble, such as the Kore Stool, use instability to “wake up” your brain’s balance and coordination center. It’s far more effective as a tool to activate postural muscles than simply instructing a person to hold their body in a certain position because it works with the body’s inherent need to stay upright.

If your body senses that you are off balance, it will work to find a way to stabilize you. Therefore, instability increases the engagement of little micro-muscles in your core and spine that are difficult to consciously contract.

Wobble Stools vs. Stability Balls: Which Is Better?

If you’ve decided that the best office chair for you is one that incorporates active seating, you might be wondering: are stability balls or wobble stools better?

As a posture and movement therapist, I’m frequently asked about the difference between the Kore Stools (which I have and use in my office) and a yoga or stability ball. Stability balls are cheaper and more readily available, so naturally people want to know if they’re an adequate substitute for the wobble stool.

I recommend against sitting on a stability ball for work.

Not only are they often too small and short for most people, they’re also very soft. Soft surfaces cause your pelvis to rock backwards positioning your weight over your sacrum rather than on your much more stable pelvis.

This forces your spine into a c-curvature (think: banana), which overloads the discs and fatigues your muscles, resulting in spinal degeneration and pain.

All in all, this is not an ideal sitting posture.

A Kore Stool, on the other hand, combines support with instability in the perfect ratio. The stool itself is firm (although the seat is padded, so you’re not sitting on a wooden plank), but the bottom is rounded so that the stool moves when you do.

This gives you both the support your pelvis needs as well as the ability to move, which keeps your legs and core active while you sit.

How to Introduce Active Seating Into Your Workday

The first time you sit on a wobble stool, you might feel a little…well, unbalanced!

While that’s kind of the point, it’s natural to be a bit disconcerted by all the movement at first. I have two Kore Stools in my office, and typically the first time someone sits on one, they think it’s broken.

Usually, people are so accustomed to sitting on flat, immobile furniture that they have no idea how to properly keep their bodies active on a wobble stool. Fortunately, with a few quick tips, you’ll be ready to go and enjoy the benefits of active seating.

Here are five keys to getting the most out of your Kore Stool:

1. Perch, don’t “plop.”

When you sit on fixed furniture, it’s easy to collapse your body into the chair and let your muscles go slack. This is what makes sitting so deadly. After just a few minutes of sitting, enzymes that dissolve fats in your bloodstream virtually disappear as electrical activity in your muscles drops to practically zero.

This is where the Kore Stool comes in. Your wobble stool keeps these muscles engaged and at least somewhat active while you sit, but the instability factor means you can’t rely on the stool alone to hold you up.

Rather than “plop” down onto the stool and let your body go slack, think about “perching” your pelvis on the chair to support some of your weight.

This also works with standing desks. Most people find that standing in place all day can fatigue their feet and back, especially if they’re not used to it. Perching on a Kore Stool that has been extended to standing desk height is a great way to work toward standing for longer periods while still giving your feet some relief.

2. Keep the seat higher than your knees.

Just like sitting on a too-soft surface, having your chair — or stool — seat lower than the height of your knees will cause your pelvis to rock backwards, placing undue pressure on your sacrum and spine (and ultimately straining your neck and shoulders while also causing lower back pain).

Simply raising your stool until the seat places your hips a few inches above your knees allows you to sit more forward on the two pointy bones at the base of your pelvis — often referred to as your “sitting bones.” You can then more easily stack your shoulders over your hips without straining or hyperextending your lower back.

3. Lift your chest.

You probably know that your shoulders are rounded too far forward, but try as you might, they just don’t seem to want to stay back where they belong. This is because your shoulders actually rest on your rib cage, which determines their alignment.

If your sternum — or breastbone — is sunken due to a collapsed core, your shoulders will hunch forward no matter how hard you try to pin them in place. But, magically, if you lift your chest up and forward, your shoulders will naturally relax into place without much effort.

You’ll also find that it becomes easier to balance on your Kore Stool with a lifted chest that “stacks” your shoulders over your hips.

4. Place feet on the floor, one in front of the other.

Keeping your feet on the floor is a good way to support your lower back. While a lot of sitting advice centers around bracing your core muscles, I’m not a fan of this approach.

A braced core doesn’t allow your spine to bend and twist, which it needs to do in order to absorb your body’s motion. If your core is too tight, then you’re setting yourself up for back problems down the road.

Of course, some core engagement is good. You don’t want your abdominal muscles to be asleep at the wheel. But they can’t do all the work, either. Keeping your feet on the floor assists your core muscles in supporting your body and makes maintaining upright posture easier.

For bonus points, place one foot about six inches in front of the other. This “rocker stance” supports your weight as you lean forward and backward, which is ideal for working at a computer.

5. Lean with your whole body.

Static chairs force your body to bend at the waist when you lean or reach for a pen. But the Kore Stool moves with your body, which simultaneously keeps your muscles more active while also taking the burden off of your back.

When you reach or lean, allow the stool to rock forward and your weight to shift into your feet (which should be on the floor, per number four, above). This holds your body in better alignment while keeping the large muscles of your legs awake and online.

The Bottom Line On The Best Office Chair

If you’re looking for the best office chair for long hours spent sitting, I highly recommend you give wobble stools — and the tips above — a try.

While adapting to using active seating in your workplace can take some time, following these five tips should have you enjoying active seating and your new Kore Stool in no time.

Pain Free At Any Age

Want more great ways to stay pain-free whether you work in an office or on a mountain top? Click below to get access to my **free** Pain Free At Any Age video series that will help you heal your body in no time.

Want to know my magic formula for ditching all your aches and pains while you sleep?

Just kidding, there isn’t one…sorry. That opening line just sounded sexier than the reality.

And the reality is, there IS no easy solution — although a lot of people are trying to sell you one.

But while the solution isn’t necessarily easy, it is pretty SIMPLE. I’ll tell you more about that in a second, and also why you only have 7 days left to access my Posture Rehab program.

But first…a quick story…

18 years ago (eegads, has it really been that long?!) I was rowing on the crew team in college and working out like a madwoman.

But no matter what I did, my body felt like crap.

It was an all out war against tight hamstrings, SI joint pain, tendonitis, digestive issues, and weight gain even though I trained hard six days a week.

And on top of all the physical stuff, I battled body image issues, chronic anxiety and emotional eating.

Related:

• Kettlebells and Soft Tissue Health
• Want Health? Move Your Body!
• Super Sore Muscle Soother!

The more I did, the worse I felt.

The solution as I saw it?

Just work harder. Train more. Stretch more. Beat my body into submission. FORCE it to behave.

But none of that really helped. And so I figured I just got a lemon of a body — terrible genetics or something.

As luck would have it, I stumbled into the office of a posture and movement therapist who changed everything for me.

My muscles lengthened. Joints felt lubricated. I gained an inch in height.

But what blew me away was how I felt on the inside — calm, centered, at peace. 

My emotional eating dwindled. Anxiety dissolved. I started to feel happier, bubbling with joy and creativity.

And that’s where my life took a hard left turn out of corporate life and into a healing practice…

As my body changed and I felt more like myself, I started to notice the tension and pain that everyone around me was carrying.

I could see it in their movement. I heard it in their words.

“I’m getting older.”

“This aging thing isn’t for wimps.”

“I’m not as young as I used to be.”

And it drove. me. nuts!

Listen, here’s the thing…

Life is meant to be lived. You shouldn’t have to spend it feeling like crap.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my life to be limited by what my body can’t do. I don’t want to sit things out because of aches and pains.

I want to sleep peacefully, wake up refreshed and feel confident that I can handle whatever the day throws my way.

And if that’s you, too, then you’re in good company.

Over the past fifteen years, I’ve worked one on one with nearly a thousand clients, helping them to heal their bodies, ditch the aches and pains and defy their age (despite old injuries, surgeries or being told they’re just “getting old”).

I know a lot of people don’t want to take pain pills or face invasive surgery so they choose to just deal with it, but I don’t believe you should have to just live with pain.

So back to the beginning of this email and that SIMPLE solution I mentioned…

Most of the information out there about fixing your posture focuses 100% on what you are DOING.

How to sit. How to hold your body. What stretches to perform. Which muscles to strengthen.

Basically, how to control your body with your conscious mind.

But you already know this doesn’t work. Because it’s exhausting. And as soon as your attention shifts to something else, you forget to “mind” your body and your old pattern takes over.

And you get down on yourself for slouching. You think you just need to stretch more, or maybe do yoga.

No. Stop it. You don’t.

Well, here’s where that SIMPLE solution comes in…

You probably haven’t considered this, but your body is smart. It knows how to do things without being told by your conscious mind how to get them done — breathing, digestion, even walking.

You don’t have to tell your legs, “Contract right quad, now bend knee, lift foot, swing forward…”

Your body does it all on its own accord.

Why?

Because your body has learned over the many years of your life how to move. It has done this so well that your posture and movement are now subconscious habits.

That means that to change your posture and movement, we have to re-pattern your nervous system at the subconscious level.

This is a SIMPLE concept — teach your body how to move differently.

But as you know, changing any habit is not necessarily EASY. It takes time. And practice.

Here’s what I can tell you for certain, though:

There are a lot of things that DON’T work to change your neural habits. Mindless yoga in front of the television. Five minutes of stretching in the morning that you forget about for the rest of the day. Piece-meal routines that “fix” your posture one body part at a time (hello, you are a whole person and those parts are connected to one another).

To actually change your posture in a way that lasts, you have to get your brain AND body in the game.

When I first set out to create the Posture Rehab program, this was my goal: to provide practices that went underneath all the neural habits you ever learned to hit the reset button on your brain and body.

Not to add more things to do. (You really don’t need more to do everyday.)

But to give you a whole new way to be. A new way to move through life.

And now after fifteen years of practice I’m even more convinced than ever that this is the best, most effective solution for healing your body, moving better and feeling like a kid again.

And not just for feeling better now, but feeling better ten years from now, too.

So it may surprise you that I’m closing down my Posture Rehab program. I mean, I’d love to get this work into the hands (and bodies) of as many people as possible.

But I’ve come to the realization that I have so much more to share. The deeper I’ve delved into this work, the more questions have arisen, pushing me into further study of epigenetics, neurobiology, and quantum physics.

And so I’m pulling Posture Rehab off the market because I want to uplevel everything I’m working on and that includes this signature program!

*If you’re already enrolled in Posture Rehab, nothing will change for you. You’ll continue to have access to all videos and course materials without interruption.

But if you haven’t yet become a member of Posture Rehab, I didn’t want to pull it off the market without warning. So, you can still purchase the program for the next 7 days at the current price.

When I do re-launch the program, the price will be going up. Enrolled students will have access to not only the current program but also all future updated materials at no additional cost.

If you’ve ever thought about joining or you’re struggling with aches and pains that don’t seem to go away with other alternative therapies, this is the last time you can get in before I close access on the site and raise the price.

And really, the $295 investment is a great value considering I charge the same for only 90 minutes of in-person time with new clients. This course gives you access to over thirty videos that are like a direct download from my brain to yours — you get all my expertise to watch again and again.

Click here to check out the program and get all the enrollment details >>

In fact, don’t tell my clients I said so, but sometimes I think this course is BETTER than seeing me in person!

I hope to see you inside Posture Rehab! Remember, you only have 7 days 🙂