How Massage Can Correct Your Poor Posture
Being a Massage Therapist in a very busy city like Calgary for the past 11 years, I have spent many hours deep into the tissues of thousands of clients. Over 15 000 sessions have led to many realizations and understandings about how the body carries tension, how it becomes posturally distorted, and what tends to keep the musculoskeletal system from finding a state of balance that allows for movement free of pain and restriction.
There are so many reasons we can find ourselves in pain and discomfort. One of the leading factors, that everyone does well to manage, is stress. We all have stress. We try to adapt to it, deal with it, and usually simply avoid it! Whether it is physical or psychological, stress bombards our daily lives. Stress is the great compound factor. All other contributors to postural imbalance, are compounded and made worse by stress.
The greatest factor affecting peoples predominant posture, which impacts how we move, feel, and cope with everything, is completely tied to habitual postures. Sounds vague? Let me narrow it down to the three habitual patterns which affect your postural reality the most.
Everything you do each day is done sitting, standing, or sleeping!
How you do all three of these things will have the greatest impact on what your postural reality is. Not even the bumps and bruises you receive along the way, the falls and accidents you might have, nor your genetic makeup has as great an impact as the three things you spend the most time doing. There’s barely an hour of the day not spent doing one of those three things! How do you sit? How do you stand? What position do you tend to maintain most while trying to get those 6-8 hours of sleep every night?
So many of my clients have office occupations that have them holding seated positions for 4-8 hours per day! That may not seem so dramatic until you do some basic projections. This may equate to 20-40 hours a week. That’s 80-160 hour a month, or close to 2000 hours a year…just at work! Then add in the hours in the car, on the couch, at the dinner table, coffee shops, restaurants, and don’t forget the throne! Certainly we could double the hours seated at work, and realize the staggering amount of time spent in this posture changing position!
When you sit, there are two major muscle groups that are held in a shortened position. The Psoas and Rectus Femoris are primary hip flexors. They are shortened significantly in the seated position. The Psoas attaches to front of your lumbar vertebrae, and run inferior to the femur (thigh bone). After many hours in a seated and shortened position, the Psoas is not so anxious to lengthen when you stand. Thus, it tends to pull the lumbar region towards its’ insertion on the femur, in its’ attempt to maintain the shortened length. This presents one of the most common reasons so many people experience back pain.
Our hamstrings are shortened significantly too. Having the knees at a 90 degree angle for all those hours certainly doesn’t enhance our ability to forward bend while standing! So many people also suffer in the neck and shoulder regions due to long periods of sitting.
Massage therapy is often used to address the muscular imbalances developed from having your hands on a mouse or keyboard. Your head progressively leans forward to get a closer look at your monitor throughout the day. Throw in a few variables such as the tendency to lean on one butt cheek more than the other, not using a head set, and always mousing with the same hand, and it becomes clear the very act of sitting creates many of the postural distortions which massage therapy address every day.
The second habitual posture we all have our own variation of, is how we stand. It is something rarely given much attention, but all of us have a habitual standing posture. Simply bringing your awareness to your body while standing at any given moment can reveal interesting things about how your muscles have their way with your skeletal structure.
Bring your attention to your feet. How do the look? How are they pointing? Do they seem to be heading in the same direction? Don’t be surprised to find one heading north and the other east! Interestingly, you may notice this as a reoccurring theme every time you quickly glance down and check in with yourself. Often one foot will consistently be in front of the other. You may notice that you shift your weight consistently to one side. These little things reveal big things about your muscles, and how they are maintaining your limbs in consistent postures, or habitual patterns. Massage therapists’ help you to reveal these patterns and focus your treatment on restoring balance in you muscular system to reduce restrictions in your movements and strain to muscles and joints that are being held in weak and vulnerable positions.
Our musculature is a perfect design. Every muscle works in concert with it’s opposite, to grant us fluid, painless, dynamic movement and function. While one muscle is extending, its opposite is flexing. Our bodies are functioning optimally when our muscles are balanced in strength, length, and flexibility.
Massage therapy practitioners help reveal postural distortions and the habitual patterns contributing to these distortions and introduce opposition to the habitual posture. Once you discover the habitual postures and their opposites, it becomes easier to find the balance. It is here where freedom from postural strain can be discovered. Contrary to assumptions, sleep is not always an escape to postural strain.
Sleep is a very habitual act as well. Do you tend to sleep on the same side of the bed every night? Would you or your partner be keen to switch side of the bed? Likely not. Why? Because we are habitual beings. We do things quite habitually, and we move in habitual ways. Even our sleep is done in a very habitual way. Some people sleep on their tummy side every night. Their habit, has them rotating their neck to one side more than the other while being laterally bent to rest on a pillow, for many hours a night.
So you may think side sleeping is better. Maybe. If you tend to be predominately on one side, the shoulder against the mattress is definitely being held differently than the other. What position are your legs in? Is one relatively straight, while the other is bent at the hip and knee? Did I mention 6-8 hours is a typical sleep? How will your long held, habitual sleeping position, affect your proper anatomical standing position? Our body adopts its own sense, of normal standing posture, under great influence of what the body wants to do. Invariably, the body wants to move into the position it spends the most time in. Your every instinct, understanding, and programmed sense of what normal standing is, is challenged by the postures that we hold for longer periods than any other. The result is postural strain.
Your Massage Therapist will focus intently on those muscles that are strongly pulling you out of balance. Once these muscle have tension released, your body will begin to experience the fluidity of your new range of motion. You will be taught to move daily into ranges and stretches which oppose your habitual patterns, and encourage an ongoing state of balance. With a little assistance form your Massage Therapist, you will begin to discover how your habitual postures affect all of your postures. Through massage therapy you will encounter new ways to help bring conscious awareness and balance to your body.
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