Having Lower Back Pain? Here Are 7 Ways to Check If You Have Good Posture When Sitting

There are a number of myths surrounding the concept of “good posture” and it’s especially important to recognize these myths when sitting.

For example, “good posture” doesn’t mean being planted in your work chair in a fixed, upright position, holding in your abdomen and pulling your shoulders down and back. 

Good or healthy posture means sitting in a way that allows freedom of movement of your entire body in any direction, as needed. 

Try this.

Without changing anything about your posture, observe whether you can:

1. Turn your head to the right and left? 

2. Turn your head and torso (shoulders and ribcage) to the right and left?

3. Can you breath freely into both your chest and abdomen? 

If you’re engaging your abdominal muscles, you cannot breathe easily. In fact, when your abdomen is engaged, your diaphragm is drawn in and up, and your entire ribcage and back will be rigid and not able to move freely.

Your skeleton, and not your muscles, should do the primary work of holding you upright.

In order to see if you’re using your skeleton to support you in sitting, check:

1. Are both of your feet flat on the floor? 

2. Are you sitting evenly on both sides of your bottom? 

Sitting asymmetrically on one side can cause strain. (Some men already know this and remove their wallets from their back pocket when sitting!) When the weight of the body is distributed evenly over both sitting bones, your back doesn't have to work as hard.

3. Is your lower back rounded or slightly arched? 

A slightly arched lower back offers better support and reduces pressure on the discs.

4. Are you leaning back in your chair or sitting forward in your seat?

Most people slump and round onto the back of their pelvis when leaning back. This causes muscular stiffness and strain. If you must lean back, place a pillow behind the small of your back so that a healthy arch is maintained.

For more information about sitting dynamically on your pelvis to prevent back, shoulder and neck pain, see my blog post called “Here's the Right Way to Sit in a Chair to Relieve Lower Back Pain”

If you’d like to experience more mobility in your pelvis so that you your back, neck and shoulder muscles are no longer responsible for holding you up in gravity, check out this recording of “Sit Like a Pro,” a recording of a short workshop that teaches you the tools that will give you comfort and ease when sitting.

Here's the Right Way to Sit in a Chair to Relieve Lower Back Pain

Two of the most common activities so many of us do for hours each day are sitting at work and driving. 

As a Feldenkrais practitioner and massage therapist, I’ve found that most people who come to me with concerns about discomfort in sitting have the idea that if they could just find the “right” chair and the “right” way to sit in that chair, they would be able to engage in sedentary activities for hours without moving.

I’ve had clients who beat themselves up because they feel they’ve been told that if they only held in their abdominal muscles all day, they’d somehow protect their backs. Or if they only held their shoulders down and back, their posture would be improved, and they’d avoid back, shoulder and neck pain while sitting. (Here are 7 quick check-ins with your body to learn whether you’re sitting the most efficiently.)

The human body is not well adapted for long hours spent sitting in a restrictive or constrained posture.

As a graphic artist for 20 years, I’d spend hours each day at my drawing table (I’m aging myself!!) and computer, doing detail work and barely coming up for air. I accepted the pain I often felt in my lower back and along the side of my right leg, and got my work done. 

I tried to make up for the 8+ hours of sitting still with a few hours of yoga, stretching and running each week. And although working out was healthy, and I felt better after yoga and stretching, it didn’t change or fix the daily discomfort I lived with.

Now, many years later, after years of training and practice as a movement expert, I have found the main key to comfortable sitting.

Your pelvis is the foundation of your entire body when you sit.

For most of us, when we’re sitting all day at work or in the car for long periods of time, it’s typical to sit or roll back onto the back of the pelvis.

We get stuck in our chairs—meaning we sit statically and barely move, and this teaches us that we need to use our muscles to deal with sitting instead of our bones.

What I mean by this is that we think we need to keep something “engaged” to protect ourselves or keep ourselves upright (like “engaging our core” or back, or jaw or neck or shoulder muscles).

But if we were to learn to use our skeleton to support us, our entire musculature would be free of tension.

The key to this skeletal support is at the foundation when you sit—your pelvis!

Your pelvis actually has the ability to move in a variety of directions.  tilt forwards so that you have a slight arch in your lower back, backwards so that you round your spine, to the left and right so that you side bend, and around in a circle. But for most of the day, we sit statically on the surface of our chair.

The more your pelvis is able to move in all these directions, the more you can control any discomfort in your back when you’re sitting. The muscles no longer need to be 100% responsible for keeping you upright in gravity because you’re sitting dynamically on your base — your pelvis.

Click here to learn how to set up your work space specifically for your body.

If you’d like to experience more mobility in your pelvis so that you your back, neck and shoulder muscles are no longer responsible for holding you up in gravity, check out this recording of “Sit Like a Pro,” a short workshop that teaches you the tools that will give you comfort and ease when sitting.

The Myth About Core Strengthening and Why It Might Not Help Lower Back Pain

80% of adults experience low back pain sometime in their lives.

According to physical therapist, Dr. Tim Sobie, the most common treatments include prescription medicines, chiropractic treatments, or physical therapy with a focus on what is called “core stabilization.” 

The “theory” behind core stabilization is that if you focus on strengthening your deep trunk muscles, you will be able to utilize your “core” more, and put less strain on your back. 

But Dr. Sobie says that more often than not, these exercises don’t work because they are “one size fits all.” Each person’s history and reason for low back pain come from a unique set of variables.

He explains that these “core stabilization” exercises are designed to assume a “specific correction” for an assumed “specific cause.”

He goes on to say that “statistics have shown that 9 out of ten people who experience back pain never find out the primary cause of their back pain, despite going to from doctor to doctor, and getting varied opinions, while also getting various treatments. Among these opinions, the idea of ‘deficient core strength’ remains most common.”

But, strengthening the core muscles does not mean you can use them efficiently. 

In fact, over strengthening the muscles of the abdomen can actually have negative consequences if the muscles don’t “know” how to coordinate with the rest of a persons’ body.

I experienced this myself as a 6-day/week vigorous yoga practitioner with a 6-pack that was basically useless in terms of functionality.

It’s the relationship of all of the muscles together that allows us to function efficiently and without pain, not the strength of one muscle or muscle group. 

Muscles need to move and bend, and be flexible, and this can’t happen when one muscle group is in a tense and contracted state.

When we get into the habit of over-contracting in one area like the abdomen, it interferes with our true, coordinated strength.

Simply strengthening abdominal muscles will not improve motor skills. 

The Brain is the control center of muscular tension

The brain will always find a way for a person to be functional. 

If someone has had an injury, then the brain goes to work to create homeostasis throughout the entire person, including the musculoskeletal system. We adapt to these compensation patterns and they feel “normal” to us. As time goes on, these compensation patterns begin to cause discomfort. 

What is needed at this point — when there’s discomfort in the form of chronic muscle tension or pain — is a way to reorganize from unhealthy unconscious muscle contraction patterns to new, healthier muscular patterns. 

Feldenkrais is a method to reorganize neuromuscular patterns— or release the unconsciously held muscular contractions that the brain has put in place to stabilize an entire person when it perceived instability.

“If you’re looking for a viable alternative to core stabilization, a recent clinical study by my research facility has shed light on perhaps a more effective option: The Feldenkrais Method®,” writes Dr. Sobie.

“Our study’s results revealed that a novel eight-week Feldenkrais Method-based treatment approach demonstrated greater effectiveness across all relevant outcome measures for:

1. decreasing pain,

2. decreasing perceived disability,

3. increasing function, and

4. increasing endurance”

In conclusion, the accepted common treatments for back pain include strengthening the core. We, as a society, seem to blindly accept this view. But upon looking more closely, a “strong core” may not deserve as much merit as it’s been given across the board. Muscle tension and pain is a symptom of overall imbalance in the system and the brain — the controller of the entire body — is the link to the source of this tension.

If you’d like to experience for yourself how it feels to release muscle tension and improve flexibility in your spine effortlessly, gently, and quickly, I invite you to try this audio lesson. All you need is a chair with a firm surface, and minimal distractions. You’ll be twisting and turning effortlessly, without using your muscles, in 15 minutes or less.

Source: https://www.feldenkraisguild.com/article_content.asp?edition=&section=&article=478&page=2#comments