Hey guys, thanks for being here. And we're back with another section in the healthy workstation. Now that we've established the basics of the course, uncovered some parameters of health, we're going to dive into the exciting topic of posture. And posture is quite exciting because we can improve the alignment of our bodies at our workstations to significantly reduce or potentially even eliminate pain. Health healthy workstation starts with an understanding of posture, and it's a well aligned body around which we construct the ideal workstation setup and environment. It's been said that posture reflects our attitude towards life, but it also significant relates to our comfort.

In fact, it practically dictates how we are going To feel through the day. For example, a reasonably reasonably anatomically correct posture of the head, neck and shoulders, it can be quite comfortable for hours, but a forward and rounded posture can become uncomfortable in just minutes. As functional human beings, we exist and move in three dimensions or planes, we have a frontal plane and which side to side movement or positioning can occur. We also have a sagittal plane when viewed from the side we see forward and backward relationships. And finally, we have a transverse plane in which we rotate. Now you don't have to memorize those terms at all.

Just appreciate that as we go through the day. Our bodies utilize all three planes, usually simultaneously to some degree. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to idolize posture around a midpoint or actually a neutral zone that is relatively symmetrical in all three of those planes. The neutral postural position is the point at which we have the greatest structural integrity, and the least amount of mechanical stress in our bodies. You can appreciate ideal alignment practically everywhere, such as in a building or skyscraper, a tree, even a stack of books. good alignment provides optimal stability and durability to a structure.

Those examples are linear or straight. Now let's take a moment to consider the human spine. As you'll notice, the human spine is a curved rod and it's that way for a reason to dissipate force, but it requires some degree of normalcy in those curves. Too much curvature or in some cases even too little deviates from the natural design and causes sub optimal alignment and usually increase compression, tension or shear forces. Here's an example. I think you can create If I assume a forward bent posture, and I do the same thing with the spine model, you can notice how compression has been increased in the front and elongation in the back.

The body can tolerate these positions just fine if they're only used briefly, but if maintained for prolonged periods, they can be quite detrimental. What happens when we go through the day without ideal alignment is that we get mechanical loading. That's excessive, poor positioning significantly magnifies the effect of gravitational loads on our body. As you know, from our discussion of health, this mechanical overload becomes an over stressor, creating an increased metabolism and a buildup of waste products, a decreased circulation, and that low oxygen condition we know as hypoxia. All of this results in strain tissue breakdown, injury and pain. The good news is that it's easy to prevent, and it doesn't require elaborate exercises or extensive amounts of therapeutic intervention.

We're going to take a look at four common postural problems that can occur in the workplace and some simple tips to correct these issues. performing these adjustments will increase both your comfort and your durability, and help you to remain pain free as you go through your workday. A very important point that I'd also like to mention is that ideal posture is essentially a point in space around which we hover, and it's not a rigid, fixed position that we maintain indefinitely. Good posture is really a variable position that actually encourages subtle alterations throughout the day. That concept represents the overlay of mobility upon stability, and we should examine that for a moment, we can define stability as the ability to maintain good posture of position, as well as proficiency at moving the body through space with optimal efficiency, control and safety. Mobility is the ability to move in all three planes as required, without risking striction these two factors work together seamlessly when your body is functioning at its best.

Here are three examples. And I want you to laugh at or with me as you see fit. The first one is stability without adequate mobility. So that would be this example. And you sort of notice the robotic nature there. Next is mobility without enough stability.

So this is kind of like those wacky inflatable tube characters, you see it many car dealerships. And then finally what we want to get to is mobility with stability in appropriate amounts. And that's like an athlete, a dancer, a ninja, and this is human existence in space that's graceful and poetic, is artistic, pleasant to view, except maybe in my case, and produces very little wear and tear on the body. I teach these principles to every athlete, client, patient, or audience with which I work. It's a universal principle of peak human performance. So these four areas that we're going to examine with you To common postural flaws are the head and neck, the upper back and shoulders, the lower back and pelvis and the legs or lower extremities.

And yes, the legs actually do have posture, they are our foundation. Keep in mind that there are many other problems that can occur, particularly with respect to medial lateral or rotational issues. But many times the corrections we'll go over are helpful in addressing those aberrations as well. Okay, the first of the four areas of postural correction that we're going to examine is the head and neck and typically what happens for most of us in a workstation situation is that our forward and downward focus can sometimes pull us into what we call a forward head posture and that's really where the neck itself begins or flex downward. And then in order for us to see we will tilt the head back and this can cause all sorts of problems. But particularly headache and neck pain.

While the correction couldn't be simpler, we simply tuck the chin. And by tucking the chin, we restore that natural position of the head on the neck. And we take the neck head relationship out of compression or elongation and restore that normal, ideal alignment. It's amazingly easy and effective, and can really help with a lot of the head and neck problems that we see. Now next is the upper back and shoulders and chest area. And in order to apply a correction, we want to appreciate what typically happens to us it's sort of the same type of thing where our work tasks or our focus can begin to have a collapse or begin to allow us to collapse in our tourists.

And also will sometimes see a rounding forward of the shoulders, which is relatively undesirable. So how do we address that this is a very easy thing. We take our chest bone or sternum and when we're in that position, we simply think about lifting the sternum and that drives the correction because it restores the normal anatomical relationship in the body. The other thing that we want to do is we want to slightly as we have the sternum elevated, turn the palms out, and by turning the palms out really what we're doing is we're externally rotating our arms and retracting our shoulder girdles, but that simple cue of turning the palms out can be easily applied. Now when we move into the lower back, we actually have to appreciate the difference between standing and sitting. So when we're standing and gravity is acting through our legs into our body, the spine tends to want to do this and this is what we call a backward bent or an extended lumbar spine.

And that's on an anteriorly tilted pelvis. Small amounts of that are acceptable, but you can tell what happens if this is extreme, we get a significant amount of compression and loading, which can ultimately become painful. So we, in standing we want to be aware that excessive, backward bending, anterior tilt, extended spine posture can happen. But with sitting it's, it's somewhat different. When we wait bear on the pelvis, we tend to see the opposite happen. And we get a flexed spine or forward bent or rounded and this creates a significant amount of tension on our tissues, which can also be pain provoking.

So the solution in all cases is to normalize the relationship between the pelvis and the back by leveling the pelvis and that's easily seen from a side view where if I allow myself to be forward, bent and extended, you'll notice, you know, that's really not how I'd like to be for a long period of time. And then if I were sitting, and I got a lot of that rounding, again, not desirable, so by simply finding that point, somewhere in the middle of motion, and training the body to gently hold that position, we can have extensive increases in comfort in the lower back. And finally, we want to think about those legs. And they really are not passive but active components of how we hold our bodies in ideal alignment. What commonly happens in the legs is we can have our, our legs and particularly our feet become a bit sleepy or lazy and they can collapse inward at the arches.

And that tends to Drive if I can demonstrate this, a straightening of the legs, and a bone on bone loading through the limbs, which can then drive the pelvis, and the rest of the body into those undesirable postures that we just examined. However, if we simply jack up the arches slightly and so if I demonstrate that again, when I check up my arches slightly, I create an unlocking of the leg joints. So that softens the body, I don't lose vertical height, just a small amount there of unlocking and I actively engage my arches to then support the body, dynamically and comfortably. And we don't really need to do this excessively. So to feel like your weight bearing on the sides of your feet or looking like you just got off a mechanical bowl. Really just that small amount of activation, or jacking up the of the arches can be incredibly effective.

These four areas represent the most common problems we typically see with posture and they're easy to address. In fact, the corrections we reviewed are also very helpful in addressing, as I mentioned before most of those associated issues, which can result from poor ergonomic habits. Usually, postural correction does not require elaborate exercise or manual treatment, as I also as I mentioned, but however, it will actually be going over some specific exercises in the movement section of the course, that you can use if needed. For the sake of clarity, I'd like to provide just a bit more depth on a postural related problem. Let's use me for an example and say that I've been letting my workstation pull me into a forward head and rounded shoulder position. Over time that's led to pain at the base of my neck and shoulder blades.

And this is very common. We recognize that restoring proper alignment will remove the aggravating overload and treat the true cause of my problem. But let's say that I've been experiencing a significant significant amount of discomfort in my body and I'm having difficulty making the corrections. Just can't get there. So the pain is just too annoying and it's finding, I'm finding myself seemingly unable to get back into normal alignment. This might be the case because the postural deviations may have been present for a long time and my body's developed, some impairments are sort of sunk or settled into those positions.

And that's undesirable. In this situation, I might need just a bit more firepower to enable my success in doing with this condition. So first of all, there's absolutely nothing with treating symptoms when we need to, using such things as heat, ice massage or electrical modalities, to calm down the irritation and make movement more comfortable is often helpful. In fact, in a case like this one, simply lying down in my back flat on the floor can be incredibly useful. This will take me out of the uncomfortable alignment, remove the force of gravity on my angry tissues, and potentially restore my normal spinal curvature to a degree. But ultimately, I'm going to need to treat The causal factors that are keeping me in that pain provoking posture, which is the real problem.

This might sound simple and obvious, in fact, I hope it does. But I only need to look at two things. The first is whether there's a restriction in mobility in effect, tight tissues, preventing me from getting back into a better position. And this is often the case when, for in this case neck or chest muscles or fascia have shortened or stiffened. In this situation, they're blocking my ability to realign the body and I may need to stretch and mobilize these areas to allow a return to proper alignment. The second possible limitation, and this often goes hand in hand with the the mobility restriction is what we typically typically call a motor control problem, which is just a fancy way of saying, I have an inability to establish adequate stability in my system.

This problem can be due to outright weakness as in a lack of strength or endurance to get into and maintain a position or even a deficit in the recruitment or coordinator. On my muscles, I might not be, I might be capable of doing what I need to do by my body might not really know how to do what's necessary. Either way, exercises that improve fatigue resistance in which reinforce that proper movement or motor program or position will be useful. We'll be going over some simple stretching and strengthening exercises in the movement section of the course, that will address each of the postural areas we just described. So they'll add to the corrections. They're easy, fun, painless, don't require much time or elaborate equipment.

You'll have a great set of tools for not just postural correction, but for health and fitness as well. So let's do a quick review. posture is a key to comfort and it's all about restoring and maintaining the natural alignment of our bodies. There are four main areas we want to emphasize. These are the head neck, the shoulders, chest and upper back, the lower back and pelvis and the legs or lower extremities at the head and neck As we talked about tucking the chin is just a great place to start in restoring alignment. Lifting the sternum and turning the palms out can help to realign the upper torso.

Leveling the pelvis is essential for the lower backs comfort and jacking up the arches just a little bit can restore the foundational properties of our legs. The value of good posture is immense. And we'll be incorporating a postural focus into each of the upcoming lessons in the healthy Workstation. Thanks again for joining me, and I'm certain you'll find postural enhancement to be an incredibly effective way to increase your comfort and produce productivity at work and life.