Posture: The Performance Edge
In business, excellent posture is a universal sign of confidence. It is also a universal sign of power. Yet few of us realize the importance of posture toward health and our performance. To most of us, good posture simply means sitting and standing up straight, but quite frankly that is a myth. And honestly, a costly one.
Of the 680 muscles in your body only a few are specifically designed to hold your body upright and relaxed. Most of use tense dozens of muscles, sometime hundreds of the wrong muscles when we sit, stand, and move. Over the course of a typical work day this results in an enormous waste of personal energy. With poor posture, just as with dehydration or shallow breathing, your body adapts to the imbalances. Poor posture distorts the alignment of bones. It chronically tenses muscles and contributes to stressful conditions such as loss of vital lung capacity by as much as 30% or more, increase fatigue, reduced blood and oxygen to your brain and senses, limited range-of-motion, stiffness of your joints, pain syndromes such as headaches, jaw pain, and muscular aches. It reduces mental alertness and work productivity. It produces premature signs of aging of body tissues, faculty digestion and constipation. In addition, poor posture can diminish blood flow to the brain causing impairments in thinking and emotional control. It can slow your reaction time, magnify feelings of panic and helplessness and may even cause depression.
With optimum posture there is no tension or stiffness at all. You may even have an exhilarating sense of ease while moving buoyantly, fluidly, and comfortably in space.
• The chest is open and floats upward.
• The head is up with the neck long and chin slightly in.
• Jaw and Tongue relaxed
• Shoulders broad and loose
• Pelvic and Hips are level
• Back comfortably straight
• Abdomen free of tension
You are quite frankly resting in motion with the feeling of an imaginary sky hook lifting your whole spinal column from a central point from the top of the head.
“Posture is not solely the manifestation of physical balance,” writes occupational medicine specialist Dr. David Emery, “it’s also an expression of mental balance.”
Think of the way you stand when you are depressed or tired. You stand with shoulders rounded and dropping. Your body represents your emotions giving up the fight against gravity; shagging just as low as you are feeling. It’s also notable that the term well-balanced is used to use to describe someone who just won’t go over the edge and whose emotions are on an even keel.
A recent series of studies report that compared with subjects in a good postural position subjects with a slumped posture had a greater tendency toward feelings of frustration during work task and perceive themselves to be under greater stress. Other researchers have reported that poor posture decreases mental alertness and increases work errors. Posture can be seen as a metaphor for your response to business and personal challenges. With balanced posture, physical activity is more pleasurable, emotions are calmer. Thinking becomes clearer and problems seem even more manageable. No matter how you view it, good posture is an essential part of the performance edge.
To quote Dr. Roger Sperry from his 1981 Nobel Prize winning paper all about this subject “the more mechanically distorted a person is, the less energy is available for thinking, metabolism, and healing.” Sperry also said, “that 90% of our nervous system energy is utilized to maintain your posture in relationship to gravity.”
Good posture is to be unlocked, not forced. When you do so, you also free up hidden capacity. With a bit of practice, upright, relaxed posture can produce energy every hour of the day. We’re not born knowing how to do it right. No reflex system sets up good posture. We have to learn it. Excellent, natural posture relies on five key muscles to almost effortlessly hold your chest, shoulders, neck and head in balanced alignment.
The Five Keys to Balanced Posture:
1. Hold Your Head High
2. Align Your Neck
3. Level Your Shoulders and Open Your Chest
4. Tone Your Lower Abdomen and Flatten Your Back
5. Neutralize Tension Spots
The truth is…poor posture and shallow breathing are epidemic. Forward displaced skulls and the way we carry our heads are epidemic. And posture, we must remember, is a by-product of our nervous system program.
Dr. Matt
