8 Ways Your Posture Shapes Your LIfe
Posture isn’t something you got from your mom, it is not something that just happens to you. Posture is your body’s response to the way you are using it, it reinforces and changes itself constantly to meet your needs. What are you REALLY asking your body to do? Most people ask it to sit a lot. Sitting 8 hours a day is just as bad as smoking! Here are 8 ways that Posture can improve your life.
- The Way People Perceive You
When your posture is good, people innately perceive you as confident and powerful. They don’t call it posturing for nothing! In research, people who had been power posing for 2 minutes were selected much more often by interviewers than people who did not.
2. The Way You Perceive Yourself
One of the reasons people perceive good posture as more powerful is because you feel more powerful. The same research I mentioned showed people had higher testosterone after power posing, women too (and that’s not a bad thing). In a powerful position, you will naturally be inspired to feel powerful. Poor posture can make you feel poor.
3. Reducing (or increasing) Stress on the Body
When your body is in an optimal position, your body moves with ease. That sounds simple enough, easy to disregard. Say your head is forward, causing it to weigh more. If there is even a small amount of additional stress on your neck at all times that you are not lying down, you are going to adapt to that position. A small compensation or stress over time can add up to become a serious imbalance or injury.
4. Preventing & Treating Pain
Maintaining good posture reduces stress on the body, leading us to the point that it can also relieve pain. Pain is a message from your body telling you that something is wrong. Musculoskeletal pain is a leading and growing cause for doctors visits in America, people are putting loads of money and effort into feeling better in this way when they could simply be managing their posture. In an optimal position and function you will not be in pain.
5. Spend Less Time & Money on Feeling Better
Pain management is a growing industry, billions of dollars a year are spent on preventable pain. With a small time investment, minutes a day, hours, day, thousands of dollars could be saved on seeking (often ineffective) medical care for pain. Alternative therapies are growing and becoming more available over time, I believe you should be able to manage it yourself and that is what I seek to provide in my services.
6. Improving Mobility
When your muscles are working optimally, and your posture is good, you will not have areas of locked tight muscles. These muscles are starving of blood and oxygen as they have adapted to a function that they were not intended for. Accessing positions optimally comes along with good posture, and when your body is good at working optimally those tough positions will seem effortless.
7. Maintaining Flow of Fluid in the Body etc
If you kink a hose you are going to impede the flow of liquid. This can be true for any flowing fluiding your body, blood, lymph, cerebrospinal, synovial, digestive. I actually like to think of the entire body as a fluid in some ways, the content is over 70% anyways. When you are in alignment, there is ease in your body functions.
8. Increasing longevity
There are valid ways your body gets old and loses function, but this can occur much later than you’re thinking. If you are managing your posture, many issues of getting old and wearing out your body will be stalved off or not occur at all. We all know old active people, chances are they have great posture. If I had 1$ for every time someone chalked up something to ‘being old’, I would be able to quit working and travel the world helping people for free.
Managing your posture is EASY. It’s like watering a plant, or mowing the lawn. It’s maintenance. Sure, if you’ve never mowed it’s going to be some work. That’s okay. Here are some ways I can help you.
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