Table of Contents:
Sit Up Straight. How It Stacks Up:
- SUCCESS
- PERSONAL SECURITY
- ALERTNESS
- LONG-TERM HEALTH
Back in the one-room schoolhouse days, teachers would rap your knuckles with a stick if you slouched. Women wore corsets. Men polished their shoes. People really knew how to pay attention to their posture – or else.
Well, here we are in the or else.
Posture these days seems to be based on doing what’s cool with your social set – everybody wants James Dean’s slouch? But even James Dean had better posture than most of us these days.
So who cares?
Oh, let me count the ways it matters. And I’ll explain each one.
SLOUCHING vs. STRAIGHT-BACKED: How It Stacks Up
SUCCESS
We are all attracted to confident people. If you are not confident, you can still fake the posture – and, guess what? Faking good posture actually changes your body chemistry, so if you keep doing it, you’ll become it.Here’s an example you can probably feel in your own body if you pay attention as you read this.
Let’s imagine you bump into someone and say, “I’m sorry.” What does your posture do? You hunch your shoulders like an underdog. You’re apologetic. Many sages tell us not to apologize too often, and this is why. If you apologize for something that you don’t really need to apologize for, it makes you into the underdog, and your posture follows your words.
Now imagine that you bump into someone accidentally, and you say, kindly, “please excuse me.” What happens to your shoulders? They move back. It’s more of a command than a plea, but it’s not a bad one. You are acknowledging that you inconvenienced them, but your posture and your words convey that you are an honourable person who did not do it on purpose. You respect them, and you are respectable. They will respect you for that.
Standing straight sends subtle signals to others that you are the kind of person who will apologize if needed, who will be mannerly and respectful and caring, but who will also lead.
Wait. Are you saying that faking a take-charge posture can change my success at work and in social situations?
Yes, I am.
Whether you are a man or a woman, it is worth paying attention to your posture. Many women spend hours and hours each week invested in cosmetic procedures. If they only spent a little time paying attention to the integrity of their spine and the set of their shoulders, they might have a great deal more success.
(Caveat: I need to mention the flip side: people who are so insecure that they never apologize are not living any better, and choosing not to apologize when you really should does not make you more confident. Inappropriate arrogant behaviour just erodes your self-worth and your relationships.)
PERSONAL SECURITY
Did you know that most muggers choose only victims who keep their heads down? People who walk around with their shoulders hunched and their focus inwards make easy targets, because their attackers know that those victims will not be able to identify them. Hunched shoulders also signal “victim” – a person who will be an easy target that won’t fight very hard.If you walk with your shoulders back and your eyes scanning your surroundings, chances are much, much smaller that anyone will take the time to attack you. This goes for men and women. I have travelled many dodgy places as a young, blonde, solo female traveller – even back alleys in Asia and the Middle East – and never had any serious trouble. That’s because my ranch-girl posture spelled “don’t mess with me.”
(Caveat: I did what I’d learned working with university security – keep your head up and your senses alert, and the muggers won’t bother with you, they’ll move on to the next, weaker-looking victim. Of course, being situationally aware that way also meant that I did choose to trust my intuition to stay away from people or places that felt wrong. Good choices are also a key to success.)
You’ve all seen the youtube video of the cat chasing the bear. Well, be that cat. It’s not your size, it’s your attitude. And the way we humans show a fearless, don’t-mess-with-me attitude is by keeping our shoulders back, heart forward, chin up.
ALERTNESS
Your brain cares.Do you have a hard time staying awake at your work? Chances are excellent that you’re slumping.
It is a well-known yoga principle that any poses or postures that fold your body forward will calm you. That’s useful to reduce an anxiety attack, but if you’re trying to stay awake while you’re hunched over your computer, it’s working against you.
To wake up, pull your shoulders back! Like, all the way until you feel the muscles on the front of your shoulder bones stretch. Lean all the way back over your chair (supposing that it’s sturdy enough to handle that). Put your arms behind you and your neck back and push your heart and sternum up and out to get an arch in your back. Stay that way for a few breaths.
Give your spine some extra circulation by sitting up extra-tall, and then more extra-tall. Now slowly twist to the right, bring your left hand to your right thigh, and look over your right shoulder. With every long, deep breath in, sit taller. With every breath out, twist a little more. Don’t rush it. Just feel your body open into it and wake up. Give yourself this whole minute to feel.
Now rotate back to centre, then twist to look over your left shoulder with a straight spine, in the same slow, easy, way.
If you spend a few minutes focussed on lengthening, back-arching, and waking up your spine instead of slumped forwards, it should wake you up enough to keep on working for a while. Repeat as needed.
If you’re a far-gone case of slumping and slouching who has been doing this for years, you’ll need some strategies to help you keep this up. As your spine straightens, you’ll be able to stay more alert. Keep reading below for more fix-it strategies.
LONG-TERM HEALTH
Your heart cares.Heart disease studies at yoga institutes in India have found that many heart problems are more easily healed when patients lay down on their backs on a wooden arch each day simply to bend their spine backwards and give more space to the front of their thoracic cavity.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? When you slump forward, your heart has less room to move. You’re squashing all your tissues up. Lifting your sternum and bringing your shoulders back gives your chest more room to move: your lungs more space to breathe with, and your heart more space to beat. Of course your circulation and self-healing will be better when you open that up.
Good news is, this remedy is easy and relaxing to duplicate (see below), and it’s good for all of your body parts, not just your heart.
Your stomach cares.
Hunching forward also scrunches up your belly. Sitting up straight can be part of the solution to cure ulcers and other digestion issues. And of course, strengthening your abdominal muscles is a key part to having your back strong and long and tall.
Your neck cares.
Most people sit with their necks too far forward, which can lead to headaches and other issues. Of course, the neck bone’s connected to the back bone. The back bone’s connected to the… yep. Pull those shoulders back and get your spine in line. It matters to your whole entire body.
And if you stay sitting hunched with your shoulders and neck forward for years or decades, you will end up as one of those little old ladies or men with a hunched back. Isn’t it worth a little time now to avoid that? Just take the time to think about it and remind yourself to pull your neck back so your spine is in a straight line instead of head-forward.
FIX IT! Strategies for Success
- Sit on a ball.
(Note: I say “part of the day” because if your abs are in bad shape, like most of us these days, you won’t be able to stay on the ball for long before you get tired. That’s okay. Do it for five minutes an hour, or do it for ten minutes one day, then twelve, then thirteen… just do it a little every day. And eventually you’ll forget that you’re sitting on the ball, because you’ll be stronger, taller, and more successful.)
Yes, you can take the ball with you when you move from the cubicle to the executive suite.
1. Wear a Corset
Corsets aren’t just fun, they also straighten your back. For a long time, doctors prescribed corsets for people who slouched. Prescribe yourself one and see how much better you feel.
Note that lingerie store corsets are more decoration than functional corset. What you want are proper strong steel-boned corsets that can be laced up so they actually fit your figure, not the mass-produced things with hooks that you find in the mall stores. You could also find a medical corset maker to make a custom one.
(I get my corsets from online steampunk provider http://www.zoltangal.com. I’m sure you can find them other places, that just happens to be the reputable seller of great stuff who I know, so I’m sharing.)
What is the benefit of a corset? It trains your body to sit up straight. No need to lace it too tight to get the straightening effect, just nice and snug. Also, if the reason that you’re hunching your shoulders is partly because you feel insecure, the corset will give you a nice comfy hug all day long, which will also make you emit more “I feel secure” vibes.
A corset will also make you look good, which will improve your confidence too.
[Total digression on back-straightening shoulder-backening braces: I got lucky in grade four when a friend’s horse got gored by a rogue cow with horns. My cousins and I had ridden several miles to go riding with the friend, so she came up with me on my horse while the vet attended to her horse. Then her dog came barking and nipping the heels of my horse and we got bucked off. She got a concussion, I broke my collarbone. Funny how well you remember some days of your life.
Don’t worry. The horse was okay eventually. Anyway. The lucky thing is that I broke my collarbone, and I was prescribed a shoulder brace to wear until it healed. So during that crucial childhood time when people used to have schoolteachers rapping their knuckles if they didn’t sit up straight, I had a shoulder brace (I suppose the horseback riding would have helped too) so I grew into a confident kid, even if I was a girl in science/math.
2. Do Plank Pose
Does your boss look like he can do fifty pushups without cracking a sweat? He probably can. Good old-fashioned muscles sure do make a suit look good.
Like sitting on a ball, doing a few minutes of plank pose a day will tone up your abs and your spine and get your shoulders back where they should be to give you that superhero posture. You don’t even need to do painful pushups. Just do plank pose. A beautiful, long, strong, tight plank is a wonderful-feeling break. Do it for 30 seconds or a minute several times a day (many cubicles are just the right size for a yoga mat if you push the desk chair aside, though you really don’t need a mat for plank pose. Just get down on the floor and do it).
Feel free to do some side planks, too, and mix it up with a little downward dog.
And if all of that is beyond you at the moment, start anyway. Get down on the floor on all fours and lift one leg at a time, and hold it out for ten seconds. Then do one arm at a time. And keep at it. And eventually you will get there.
Don’t believe you can do it? This guy did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9FSZJu448
If he can get to where he did, trust me, chances are you can too. I’ve been down and come back up with yoga, too.
3. Rest over pillows or a bolster in a back arch.
If you have a yoga bolster, lay it down underneath your bra strap (or where that would be if you wore a bra) at 90 degrees to your spine. If your head does not touch the floor or bed that you are laying on, put a thin pillow or folded towel under it so that you are comfortably resting and not using any muscle power to hold your head up.
Step Two: relax for 5 to 10 minutes.
If you do not have a yoga bolster, make one with some rolled up blankets or towels. They’re generally sort of cylinders about 8 inches in diameter and 20 to 30 inches long.
Do this every day. It’s easy, it’s relaxing, all you need to do is make time. This will definitely help to open up your front body so that you can sit, stand, and walk straight, strong, and confident.
(Warning: opening up the front body by laying in a back arch position will open up your emotions, as well. If you are fairly unacquainted with your emotions, you might find yourself unfamiliar with the wild joy that attacks you, or perhaps spontaneous tears about a long-forgotten memories of sadness. Whatever the emotions are, just let them well up and wash through you. Resisting them will only keep you stiff and slow down your progress.)
Learning to walk, sit, and stand with your shoulders back in a strong assertive posture may take you some effort in the beginning.
Keep at it. Every ten seconds that you spend thinking of the integrity of your spine is ten seconds well invested in the bank for your success, health, and happiness.
If you do keep at it, your success is pretty much guaranteed.
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