99% of All Posture Correction Solutions Actually Make Things Worse
Posted by admin on May 3, 2009
One of the most painful things I hear people say is, “My bad posture is hereditary. My parents had bad posture, so did their parents, and so I have bad posture too. I guess I’m just stuck with it”.
To me these words sound like fingers scraping on a blackboard as they represent unnecessary hopeless that is all too common these days. This theory of inheriting bad posture is completely untrue, so why do so many back pain sufferers believe in it?
The answer is simply that doctors are failing to help people with postural problems. So much trust is put into our doctors, that when they can’t help us, we often give up all hope. What most people don’t realise is that doctors aren’t really experts on posture. At the time of writing a report has just been released that says, “Doctors are failing to treat four in five Australians who suffer from back pain.”
What back pain sufferers have to realise is that posture correction is the Achilles heel of the medical profession.
So if doctors aren’t qualified to help with poor posture, who are?
Answer: Teachers of the Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique is the best way to improve posture…. period. This statement was recently supported in a British Medical Journal Study.
To Have a Perfect Posture Do I Need A Perfect Chair?
Posted by admin on Mar 11, 2009
In the quest for a perfect posture, most people commonly assume they need the perfect chair to make their dream become a reality. Consequently, ergonomically designed seating is big business; for example the Herman Miller “Aeron” chair costs over £800. However, it turns out that they may not be as important as most people think. One teacher of the Alexander Technique puts it like this:-
“It is certainly true that some chairs are a lot more comfortable than others, and that some chairs make it easier to have a healthier upright posture. But even if you could find the perfect chair, you could hardly carry it around with you all day long. Sooner or later, you would be confronted with a choice between standing or sitting in a less than desirable chair.”
http://ezinearticles.com/?Chairs,-Posture-and-the-Alexander-Technique&id=257720
Posture Corrector Braces Are No Match For Alexander Technique
Posted by admin on Jan 14, 2009
Yesterday, a friend was telling me she’s thinking of buying some sort of posture corrector to straighten out her back. As she’s grown older she’s been getting more concerned about her posture and didn’t want to end up with a badly hunched back like her mother. She was telling me that she needed a lightweight posture brace that could be worn all day without being uncomfortable.
I just had to stop her mid sentence to tell her about the Alexander Technique and how it can really help with posture. In a nutshell, it’s a really simple method for improving posture and body movement, and speaking from experience, it blows any other posture corrector product out of the water.
Posture corrector braces might seem like a good idea, but they are no match for the Alexander Technique which gives such a wonderful sense of ease of movement. People have said that it makes you feel 40 years younger – and in my experience that is true.
Posture Correction Can Only Happen Once Designers Wake Up To The Actual Way People Sit
Posted by admin on Dec 14, 2008
One of my favourite books on posture correction is “The seated man (Homo Sedans)” by Dr A.C. Mandel.
In this book Dr A.C. Mandel pointed out that common misconceptions about good posture and sitting. This title is a great reference, but unfortunately is a little tricky to find these days since it was first published around 1977.
However, I was looking for it on Google and stumbled across an interesting book:-
“Increasing Productivity and Profit in the Workplace”, By M. Glynn Shumake
I was reading this preview and found some interesting information halfway down on page 53.
Shumake says that designers have for over 100 years misunderstood how people sit in chairs. It has been assumed that the hip joint rotates 90 degrees in order to sit on a regular chair. Apparently, the trouble with this is that in reality the hamstring muscle makes this impossible for normal people to achieve.
This means that chair designs don’t take into consideration the way the body works. This would explain why everyone slumps and hunches when they sit down at their desks.
In my opinion posture correction for the masses can only happen once designers start to fully understand the way that people sit. An excellent example is the Bambach chair:-
http://www.bambach.co.uk/
These chairs have one problem; they are too expensive for the average person (around £500). This has everything to do with the scales of production. In order to get the price down the volumes must reach many tens of thousands.
I would say that the demand at present is nowhere near that kind of level, largely because the market is uneducated when it comes to posture correction.
That Beeping Leotard
Posted by admin on Dec 2, 2008
With so many different posture correction products on the market you’d be forgiven for thinking that every conceivable solution has been thought of. However, 57 year old inventor Chris McGlone has come up with a novel solution to posture correction that let’s you know when you have adopted a ‘bad posture’.
The garment has been specially designed to monitor the posture of the wearer, using lots of small sensors. If the user slumps at her desk for too long, then the leotard will make a beep sound to say, “OI! That ain’t good for you!”.
McGlone came up with the idea having suffered from rounded shoulders most of his life. He thought to himself, that if he had been reminded not to round his shoulders when ever he did so, he would not have ended up with his bad habit.
Whether this posture correction gadget will cure the millions of back pain sufferers remains to be seen. The product named, “Posture Perfect”, needs financial backing before it can be made available to offer posture correction to the masses.