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You might not realize this, but having good posture is vital to your overall health. Good posture doesn’t just mean a more aesthetically pleasing stance, but a body that functions with good posture uses less energy, creates less pain, allows you to breathe better and operates more efficiently. Put simply, good posture is one of the indicators of a properly balanced and healthy body!

Professional osteopaths have known this for years, but the impact of posture on overall wellbeing is one of those things that is only relatively recently being emphasized in fitness and health circles.

That being said, here are a few of our tips to make you more aware of your posture and improve it in your daily life.

Get Professional Help

Before you attempt to remedy posture issues, it is first vital that you educate yourself on the subject as a whole. This means learning what bad posture looks like; what good posture looks like; the common causes of poor posture; and the particularities of your body type or lifestyle in regards to your posture issues.

The most efficient way to achieve this is to consult with a professional. An experienced osteopath will provide an objective analysis that is particular to you and create an action plan that may involve treatment, biofeedback exercises, education and little tips for work and home.

Poor posture is too important an ailment to simply attempt to self-treat without proper guidance.

Exercise

Once you’ve consulted with a professional, you can also look into incorporating beneficial exercises into your lifestyle.

This can include yoga, stretching, rehabilitation, pilates etc. Aside from the obvious cardiovascular benefits to regular physical exercise, developing this habit can also improve breathing, flexibility, muscle conditioning, and can also reduce fatigue in your core, lower back, and shoulders (all of which can have a direct impact on your posture).

Develop Self-Awareness

Curiously, this might be one of the more challenging aspects of improving posture— developing an enhanced sense of self-awareness. Simply put, you’ll need to start paying constant attention to how you carry yourself, as well as how your body moves and functions in regards to common daily activities.

This means, you’ll need to be aware of your posture during:

  • Driving
  • Sitting at your office desk
  • Exercising
  • Walking
  • Standing
  • Picking up your children
  • General lifting

The list goes on, but as you can see, developing constant self-awareness like this can be its own challenge. The benefit though, will be that as this habit develops, you’ll be able to notice when your posture slips and self-correct on the fly.

Posture isn’t something that you can simply “fix” overnight, which is why, as we outline above, we recommend first consulting with a professional. The long-term benefits to your health are immense, but proper osteopathic guidance and treatment will allow you to approach posture issues from an informed perspective.

Our Melbourne osteopathy team are dedicated to ensuring our patients all receive quality posture solutions, so contact us right away to arrange for a consultation and treatment plan.