Posturegenics

Your posture tells your Story. Posture is your response to your environment, physical, mental even emotional attitudes are revealed by your posture. Physically, acute or chronic pain will reveal itself by motion to avoid putting pressure on the painful region. We are all familiar with people limping, but even the smallest discomfort creates a ‘tell’.
Conversely, when you feel great, alive and full of joy – it shows! Your step is lighter, your head is higher and you smile brighter.

When we are in pain whether it’s physical pain in a weight bearing joint like an ankle, knee, back or hip there’ll be a ‘hitch in the get-along’ where you are limping or modifying movement from one side to the other to protect a sore, tender, or painful area. It’s like having a tack in your shoe; your motion will be pain avoidance ‘posture’ to minimize pain. It could be as bad as needing a cane or crutches – hopefully for a temporary, acute problem to rest the injured inflamed part – until the body has some health restoration and you can put the crutches or cane aside.
It doesn’t even have to be painful - yet. the slightest imbalance will start the building of stress and strain which will eventually lead to pain if uncorrected.

After pain goes away there is still the neurological component of remembered posture. Many times I have seen patients continue to move in their remembered pain posture even after the pain has subsided. They still walk with that guarded, protected movement pattern. These old motion patterns create its secondary problems by creating more stress in other areas.
Standing, moving, walking, sitting are designed to absorb pressures throughout the body and distribute pressure as equally as possible to promote integrity for the entire frame. Once you start shifting the posture of your body to avoid pain in one area you are amplifying stress and strain to other areas. This compensated posture sets up a downward spiral of more pain and less function.
Learned, slouched postures create their own pressures and stress while trying to remove pain from one area there is increased pain and decreased function in others.
Mental stress creates a world-weary feeling and effect throughout the entire body that is expressed physically. As instead of just feeling bad, you look bad, extra force makes for physical fatigue and now you have created a positive feedback loop of feeling bad, looking bad and experiencing fatigue. We’ve all seen people who carry themselves in a ‘defeated’ posture – slumped shoulders, head forward, eyes cast downward, collapsed rib cage, belly pushed forward, shuffling gait, empty hearted position.
Gravity doesn’t change its vertical orientation just because we had a bad day (week month year). Apply the appropriate time frame. We have to pay attention to the constant vertical of Gravity.
Protecting your position to gravity is the most universally constant healthy beneficial thing you can do for yourself, physically, mentally and emotionally and it’s free! It is very high on my personal list of top ten “Superfoods”.

That doesn’t mean you deny the mental fatigue, emotional stress, physical pain but you work to bring yourself back into balance as quickly and smoothly as you can. And that has repairing repercussions to build your health, lighten mental fatigue and lessen emotional stress. Try it! You’ll see!