Many of us spend too much time sitting these days – often in front of a computer as I am doing now! Have you thought about what this is doing to your posture?
- the curve at the bottom of your spine called the ‘lordosis’ becomes flattened out
- your diaphragm gets compressed anteriorly
- your head goes forward
- the muscles at the base of your skull contract
What should my spine look like?
A baby’s spine has one single primary curve (think fetal position). As a baby starts to hold it’s head up and survey the world around, it develops a secondary curve in the opposite direction (called a lordosis) in the neck. Later as we learn to sit up and walk we develop another secondary curve in the low back. These curves enable us to hold the head up and walk upright. We don’t want to loose these curves as this affects our ability to walk upright!
Effect of sitting for too long
If we sit a lot and are not conscious of how we are sitting our body will literally adapt and stiffen into our sitting posture. The posture described above will make you higher risk of injury and low back pain, neck pain and headaches and restricted breathing capacity. Ligaments in the low back will become overstretched and weak and won’t support your back as well leaving you more prone to injury. A loss of balance in your curves means in engineering terms that your back will loose some strength and resilience. Headaches become more likely as the tissues at the base of your skull become compressed and tight.
What can I do about it?
The answer is very simple. Just do the opposite. If you have to sit at a desk/on the sofa make sure you build some time into your day where you are consciously reversing the changes to stop the tissues stiffening into this posture.
1. Reversing change in the low back
To get back the secondary curve take your back into extension. You can lie on the floor and come up onto your elbows and let your back relax in this posture for several minutes taking it further if you can by coming up onto your hands.
2. Reversing forward head carriage
Heads tend to end up going forward. To reverse this bring you chin back to stretch out the back of your neck). You can always lean against a wall and push the back of your head gently against the wall whilst keeping your shoulders against the wall and you should feel a nice stretch.
The principle of doing the opposite relates to balance – we want to bring as much balance into our life as possible and if part of our life means being sedentary and sat in front of a computer then just remember to balance this with other activities which bring both your body and your mind into a balanced state.