Only genuine good posture helps a bad back
- Bad posture is bad for your back
- But “good posture” is usually even worse
- Only genuine good posture helps
To understand genuine good posture, you first need to get away from the idea of posture as still and unmoving — like a snapshot.
Posture isn’t a snapshot
When you see a snapshot of somebody, all you’re seeing is an instant from that person’s movement. From that snapshot, you might guess whether their movement was easy and fluent — or stiff and clumsy. But it’s only a guess: to be sure, you need to see the whole movement.
So, thinking about your “posture”, you need to consider much more than a snapshot of your movement: you must consider the whole movement.
Then you can see…
Why bad posture is bad for your back
Since posture is movement, bad posture is not just a fixed slump. Bad posture is slumpy movement.
But what is slumpy movement? Rather than expanding into movement, you pull your body down into a tight ball. Your slump isn’t laziness, it comes from a misunderstanding of how your body is meant to work.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that pulling yourself into a tight ball is going to be a strain on all your muscles. It strains the muscles that are doing the pulling. Then, because your body is no longer stacked up properly, you also strain other muscles. Those other muscles have to work to stop your spine from collapsing completely — like a broken wall collapsing into a heap of rubble.
No wonder people with bad posture put enormous strains on their back muscles. No wonder they end up with painful bad backs. The surprising thing is that people with “good posture” often suffer from even more painful backs.
Why “good posture” is even worse
Surprising, that is, until you realise why normal “good posture” is even worse than bad posture.
Normal “good posture” is only a pretence, a sham — a fake. People assume that good posture is something you can choose. Something you can adopt if you just make the effort. They assume that you have a choice.
Make no effort, they think, and you’ll be slumping about everywhere. Or make the effort and reap the benefits. They assume that effort is all it takes to be straight, strong, efficient and good-looking.
It’s a natural assumption but they couldn’t be more wrong.
The reason for this assumption is that almost nobody has genuine good posture. Since nobody has it, nobody is able to recognise the difference between the genuine article and a fake.
The “good posture” you get by making an effort to stand or sit straight is a fake. How can I be so sure nobody has genuine good posture? I know what I’m looking for and I hardly ever see anyone with genuine good posture.
Almost all I ever see is bad posture — or fake “good posture”.
The problem with fake “good posture”
This fake “good posture” is no more that a forced attempt to be straight. This forced straightness comes at an enormous cost. Whatever stiffness and tension people have in their habitual slumpy bad posture, they add at least as much extra tension in their back muscles to pull themselves out of that habitual slump.
The result is that you become far stiffer whenever you assume “good posture” than you are in your habitual slump. If, believing you are doing what you should, you make that extra effort often, you will be stressing your back far more than the person who doesn’t bother.
No wonder your back hurts. Fake “good posture” simply makes your back even stiffer, tighter and more painful than bad posture does. Much stiffer, much tighter and much more painful.
It’s time to forget fake “good posture”. You really need genuine good posture. So let’s get started then.
Get started improving your posture and your back
Here’s your first step towards improving your own posture and healing your own bad back. Download “The Hows & Whys of Semi-Supine” (it’s free).
Then start doing what it says. You’ll never make the mistake of believing in fake “good posture” again.
Next Step
Don’t forget to check out that picture with the vital information about where your head/neck joint is and how it works.
For those who want to know more first
If you’re happy to get started now, then ignore the rest of this page. But, if you’d prefer to read more about genuine good posture first, then what follows is for you:-
Discover what genuine good posture is
Genuine good posture is the result of effortless, effective movement. It’s what you get when you make no attempt to be right: no attempt to move correctly.
If that doesn’t help you very much it’s because I need more space to explain it. You can’t compress a whole book into it’s first page. However, pretty much all you need is in this web-site. The best place to start understanding genuine good posture is with this series of four articles on posture.
Then discover how to get genuine good posture
This web-site also teaches you how to get genuine good posture for yourself. The best place to start that is with these two articles:–-
- This is what spoils your posture: The Problem of Unreliable Kinaesthesia
- How the Alexander Technique Makes Sense of Idiopathic Scoliosis. (It doesn’t matter that your bad posture is not scoliosis, the principle is the same for every kind of bad posture).
Now get down to business
When you’ve done that, it’s time to get to work and begin improving your posture. Download “The Hows & Whys of Semi-Supine”.
And start doing what it says.
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