Posture!

As the temperature drops, we start wearing heavier layers, sturdier shoes, as well as lifting rakes and shovels and scrapers. So it seems like the right time to remind ourselves about the importance of holding our bodies in healthy, balanced ways. A few months ago, Christina Morris, founder and co-owner of Element Natural Healing Arts, had the good fortune to be interviewed by Beth Greenfield from Yahoo Health about ways to achieve better posture, and therefore better health.

Health is made up of many aspects in a person’s life, including daily habits such as diet, sleep, exercise, emotions, stressors, and overall balance to name a few. As a practitioner and an educator, Christina re-visits these excellent questions about the role of different hands on practices in helping people strive to improve posture and alignment, crucial components to overall health, structural soundness, and feeling good. Proper posture and holding patterns can help eliminate sports-related injuries, chronic muscle and joint pain, and general physical fatigue throughout the day.

•Why might a person who is struggling with poor posture choose one of these alternative hands-on practices for help, rather than just trying to focus, all on their own, on standing up straight?

Being properly educated on about good posture is key. Everyone has holding patterns and habits that contribute to poor posture. Hands-on practices allow the person to actually feel where the body “should” be in space and where it currently is. Breaking poor holding patterns and bad habits is not easy but can be made easier with practices such as structural integration, Alexander technique, feldenkrais, etc which offer body awareness practices to retrain how the body holds itself.•What do these therapies have in common (I’m also including Trager and CBP chiropractic), if anything, regarding their approach to correcting posture?

Could be just the fact that there is another person helping you, or touching you.
These therapies allow a structural specialist to guide individuals to the correct postural alignment. Having a specialist with the proper knowledge ensures the corrections are right.

•Why is it important, health-wise, to address poor posture?

Correcting poor posture properly distributes pressure put on joints. This helps increase range of motion and circulation while decreasing pain and inflammation. The sooner corrections are made, the easier it is on the body as a whole. Proper posture can prevent future muscle, joint, and fascia issues.•How common is it that Element clients cite “poor posture” as something they want treated?

While many people may not come in with poor posture as their main concern, when asked about their posture about 75% will mention they have bad posture and over 80% of the patients and clients who come in with pain concerns have improper holding patterns that either contributed to the pain or is creating the pain. Proper posture is a key element in maintaining a pain free body.