Avoid the one posture that will add ten years to your appearance!
Forward Head 
Rounded Shoulders
Be More Like A Giraffe & Less Like A Turtle!
Have you ever seen someone whose head arrives minutes before their body?
In an earlier blog (Live An Active Balanced Life: Make Your Life A Moving Meditation) I mentioned that I once had a client who desired to not look like her brother “the question mark.” To achieve that goal, I focused on stretches for pectoral muscles & strengthening of the mid back muscles. Success! Question mark posture be gone!
Check yourself before you wreck yourself!
A Personal Story:
This past June an MRI revealed an interstitial Supraspinatus tear (that’s a tear in one of the Rotator Cuff Muscles). Awful timing for someone who enjoys ocean swimming June through about November. Off to physical therapy I go! It’s always good to have another set of eyes on your movement patterns even when one is in the fitness industry.
The next day, while changing one of the reformer springs, I happen to glance in the mirror and my shoulders were rounded! Noooooo! So, with a little more mindfulness and an excellent physical therapist, I finally returned to swimming in six weeks and the shoulder is feeling better. However, I continually have to check it before I wreck it to properly reeducate my neuromuscular movement pattern.
Mindfulness improves your posture!
Steps to improving posture:
- Pick four times during the day, for example, 9, 12, 3 & 6. You can set an alarm as a reminder.
- At those times just notice, are you a question mark? Are you wearing your shoulders as earrings?
- Note how you feel, physically, emotionally?
- Take one minute to sit or stand tall, lengthen your neck, and think of gently holding a walnut between your shoulder blades (not squeezing as that creates too much tension.)
- Note how you feel. Perhaps longer, lighter, energized, more confident!
And Finally, The Fitness Fanatics Flashback
I thought of the original posture corrector!
Way back in the late 1980’s at a personal training facility on E. 49 Street, while wearing Adidas, (I just have to mention that to spell Adidas, I had to remember the mnemonic phrase All Day I Dream About Sex!) I had an idea. I could shadow my client for a week with a cattle prod in hand. Each time they slouched, yeah, zap! Of course I was joking but I bet they would be standing tall as a result! Lumo Lift, that’s how we thought before fitness wearables!
Posted in: Body Awareness, Mindfulness, Posture
