Sit up straight, Paul

[ciphergoth]

How long do I have to sit up straight rather than slouching at my desk before it stops being horribly painful and uncomfortable? ruis? Anyone?

Comments

[tals.livejournal.com]

*sigh* If you're lucky, a while. If you're not, like me, never (Full of good news, me)...

[ruis.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't be horribly painful but uncomfortable is normal.

How long have you been slouching? It can often take a month for every year of damage to fix things.

It does depends on your muscle tone or lack thereof, genetics and how good your new posture is. It is very likely that you are over correcting, get someone who knows how a body should be aligned to tell you what your doing wrong.

If you want to speed up the process get lots of massage and do some exercise to improve your posture. If it is really bad see and osteopath or chiropractor to put everything back into alignment to give you a better starting point.

How did you know I would answer this ;-)

[mhw.livejournal.com]

"sitting up straight" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as "good posture".

Estella, my AT teacher, has to work hard on me to get me to NOT "sit up straight".

Trying to make a naturally curved structure, like a spine, straighten out isn't actually very good for it.

getting the back in whack

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Taking up a Pilates program(me) will probably quickly help reduce your discomfort. It strengthens the lower back muscles and also teaches you what kind of positions your back can have, including what constitutes a natural curve. (I could insert some jokes here about the strange machines they use to assist some of the exercises - like "the Reformer" - but a mat class would take care of everything you need and much more affordably.)

You may also want to try alternating normal chair slouching and sitting on a big rubber ball, which is supposed to force correct posture. I find sitting on them exhausting, though, but who needs to sit correctly all of the time? Slouching can be very relaxing.

[satsumagirl]

Hello. Excuse me for butting in! I added you to my friends list a while ago, as your journal looks interesting. Is your back really bad? You should perhaps visit an osteopath to check there is no underlying problem. I have had back problems for a while due to nursing, and because my spine has no natural curve. Do you have thoracic or lumbar pain. An ostepath can give you stretching exercises to help strengthen the muscles. Good luck :)

[evil-c.livejournal.com]

Want me to bring you a corset over?
Massage oils too? :)

Put your back up against the wall and bend your legs as though you are sat in a chair.
Push your back against the wall for a while. It often helps with pain associated with sitting in chairs all day. Horse riding can help too. Asher sits a lot better at his desk since taking up horse riding because it becomes second nature as you have to sit up properly and have good posture on a horse.

C.

[barakta]

When i went for physio last year (for shoulders) they looked at my whole posture. It seems I have a very deep curve of the lower spine,(curving from back to the front) which they were concerned about. It seems I have a natually deep curve, but nothing actually medically wrong - it just took them a while to realise I'm just weird :)

They say they get as many people with overcompensating posture problems as they got with slouching problems. There is this misperception about good posture being a ramrod straight spine or whatever, wheras they suspect everyone's correct posture is different depending upon skeletal structure etc.

With me they said it is about acheiving balance between shoulders, spine trunk, apparently one should be able to stand against a wall and roll ones hips thus straightening one's spine, I can't quite do this, but learning some pelvic loosening exercises have really helped and they do ease some of the general posture stuff.

Another thought is to get one of those inflatable gym ball things (if you can get one big enough for your height - I cannot remember how tall you are) and do various of the published exercises on that. I have one (too small) and it is very comfy, it does make me sit in a better position.

I would have to add the thought that seeing an osteopath or chiropractor would probably be wise as it is hard to know what is right and what is wrong. My physios found that once I knew what was wrong with my posture I corrected it very quickly - Even if I do slip occaionally I know how to untense it all quite well.

I would say if it was horribly painful it is wrong for you, it used to be horribly painful for me but since physio my correction in posture is at worst occasioanally achey from unused muscles having to do work.

I hope that helps in some way.

Natalya

[hieroglyphe.livejournal.com]

Try adjusting the height of your chair and desk. Or an ergonomic chair with lower lumbar support might help.

[ex-pipistre.livejournal.com]

My yoga-tastic suggestions for easing back pain at work:

1. Chair height- I think most people choose chairs which are too tall. I was told this by some health and safety trained person at Edinburgh, when doing microscope work- you should feel slightly stretched, which encourages you to sit up straighter.

2. Stomach muscles- if you use your stomach muscles it makes it easier to sit up straight with comfort. Apparently you should visualise your stomach and spine touching, and that pulls everything up.

3. Try stretching a wee bit between sitting still for a while. You can easily do some stretches and that helps me a lot.

4. Or try yoga at home; that cured my back pain pretty effectively, because of the stretching.

5. Don't bother and coerce someone into giving you a massage every time your back hurts [this is also quite a nice strategy, though would be nicer without the pain, obviously].

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

OK, I've been learning a lot about this lately thanks to a pretty bad case of RSI.

First good news is that sitting up straight isn't necessarily a good thing for you. According to the research at Cornell University best practise tying posture is actually leaning slightly back, very relaxed. They say this "virtually eliminates the primary risk factors for RSI".

I've been trying this for a couple of days, and it's had a noticable positive effect on my RSI already. Highly recommended.

Getting a massage is a good idea, but you need the right kind. What you're looking for is a deep tissue massage - not all osteopaths will do them, you may be best looking for a private physio.

Basically, you get RSI because you're tensing muscles for long periods of time. Proper posture should help correct this. However, what is traditionally considered to be proper posture can make things worse, by forcing you to tense up.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

IOU one back massage :) Love you xx