Improving Our Posture

Written by - Emi Komatsuzaki

Improving Our Posture

In this internet era, we tend to sit down on the chair for a long time and our sitting down time has gotten longer and longer. We scroll down social media and websites, play the games, and watch movies or YouTube on the chair or the bed all the time. Moreover, the pandemic has added more time to it. The longer we sit and engage with those activities, our postures become more hunch over. Our body slowly but surely adapt the poor posture, and consequently that causes the round shoulder syndrome, tight chest muscles, shoulder and neck pain, and even leads to back pain.

In the book "Overcoming Poor Posture," the author, Steven Low and Jarlo Ilano, explain that improving posture provides us so many benefits beyond what we expect.
First, good posture makes us feel more powerful and confident. In fact, when we lift our chest and head, we feel tall and open.
Second, good posture opens up the space for the lungs and makes us breathe properly. It facilitates a more efficient breathing pattern. Moreover the authors say that "good posture can boost testosterone, decrease risk of developing illnesses, and increase pain tolerance. Neck angle can even affect cognitive processes in older adults."

Improving posture is not one day job, but possible to have good posture by recognizing the bad habit and exercising and strengthening and stretching the chest and back muscles.

Let's step back from the desk and try to move often, and you might feel much better afterwards

- Emi Komatsuzaki