What is good alignment?
Nobody is perfect, but if I asked you to stand up, relax, and not think about your posture, then I would look to see if your ankles, knees, hips, spine, shoulders and head were stacked symmetrically on top of one another, from the front and side views. The closer you are to this alignment, the stronger, the more stable, and the more efficient your body will function.
What affects your alignment?
Your muscles keep your body in alignment and need a variety of work to stay functional, balanced and healthy. Our modern-day lifestyles rarely allow the diversity and frequency of movement that maintains this balance. Even from a young age, we spend so much time sitting at a desk at school, and many of us have desk jobs. All of this combined with injuries and other stressors can lead to misalignments in your posture.
What are the effects of misalignments?
You might feel unhappy with how you look or be in pain. Certain muscles might be compensating making them more prone to injury. Joints might function less efficiently leading to wear and tear, impingement and pain. Often, the ‘unexplained’ source of many health conditions is that your body is out of alignment.
What’s the solution?
If you want to stop a leak, you can’t just keep putting buckets down to collect the dripping water; eventually you have to fix the pipe! Unfortunately modern day healthcare tends to only focus on treating the symptoms, rather than tackling the root cause of those symptoms, often leading to costly, ineffective, and extreme treatments being offered, which may not help at all, might help temporarily or might even make things worse!
A better long-term approach is to tackle the root cause of your problem, which in many cases is poor body alignment. As a Posture Specialist, I give my clients posture correction exercises to do daily. These exercises stretch and strengthen certain parts of their body and get them into better alignment without them even having to think about it. It’s not a quick fix and it does take time and effort, but it could help you to end your current pain (if you have any), feel more confident about the way you look, and reduce your risk of future pain and injuries.