CBS Story: Posture & Smart Phones

It's encouraging to see "posture" making mainstream news.  

This CBS story is just a reminder, bringing awareness to what position you are putting your skeleton, organs, muscles, joints in (not just your neck as the Orthopedic Surgeon focuses on) when using a smartphone repeatedly.

The surgeon in the video (inset within the article) makes bad posture (forward head) sound irreversible, and we know that is not true because it is reversible.  

And he makes it sound like telling yourself to sit up straight will make it happen but we know that won't work.  If the muscles have not been specifically educated to do anything different than what they habitually do, they will become very rigid and lock bones in detrimental positions and the spine in a "C" shape, with tailbone tucked under, butt muscles disengaged, friction and compressions will result.  

It's just a waste of time trying to "sit up straight" because the muscle memory will simply not allow that because the muscles are locked into a pattern of being too tight or too loose- the muscle balance to hold the person correctly is gone.  "Trying" changes very little.

Muscles will only do what they have been habitually doing and keep doing until they are strategically made to function differently-- what we have not made them do.  This has nothing to do with the gym, or yoga or pilates or pool exercises even physical therapy.  It is Biomechanics reconditioning of all joints and associated muscles in a specific way.

Sit on the front edge of your chair, tilt your pelvis down in the front creating a lumbar curve, this will move your head backward more over your shoulders and you will be more vertical. 

If you can't create an arch in your lower back by tilting your pelvis down in front, or to create a lumbar arch you are lifting your sternum and leaning backward in substitution .....your muscles need to go back to school.  

This surgeon may specialize in the neck but he is missing one important FACT.  The body only works as a UNIT.  He did not mention the lower back or pelvis or knees/legs etc.  (And maybe the TV program didn't have time for all that.....ya right.)   You can not separate what your neck is doing from ANY OTHER PART OF YOUR BODY---what position your spine is in or what position your legs and hips are in or knees or ankles, feet etc.  

Although the media is talking more and more about the importance of proper body alignment and maintaining the original design positioning of the body, Orthopedics, "modern" and even "alternative" medicine is still missing the boat by treating the body as a pile of separate distinct parts not as a UNIT.  

The next thing we'll be seeing are TV advertisements for a prescription pharmaceutical drug to correct your forward head position and how it is considered a disease that requires a "cure" by popping some pills.  

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