Straight Up Ergonomics

Do you instinctively remind someone to “sit up straight”? Or do others often tell you the same thing? Contrary to popular belief, sitting up straight doesn’t actually fix the real problem.

Our natural posture is an indication of our spinal health – so if sitting up straight feels unnatural, it points to a joint dysfunction in our bodies. It’s likely that your spine has already lost its healthy cervical curve. There could be a misalignment, our bones are moving too much or too little, something is restricting that movement, or there’s some kind of instability. To prevent further degeneration, our bodies adapt our resting postures to protect and preserve the spine.

So, when we then force ourselves to sit up straight, we’re prompting our muscles to do the work of holding our spine up. We then end up contracting our muscles to maintain a straight posture, but in a few minutes our muscles tire and we sink back into our resting state. Our muscles’ primary job is not to hold up the spine. Their function is to allow us to move our joints.

Here’s an analogy to help you understand the different functions of our spine and muscles. Think of your body as a building, where your spine serves as the beams. Beams provide structural support. Muscles, on the other hand, are walls. Walls provide some support, but while a hole in the wall won’t cause major structural damage, a fault in the beams can collapse the building.

“Solving postural issues requires looking into both the spine and its supporting muscles, especially how they’re working with each other.”

When the spine isn’t working as it should, our muscles have to take over the role of holding us upright - the more conditioned the muscles are, the longer they withstand the additional stress. When muscles fatigue, however, the bone breaks down in order to regenerate and provide stability to the body. While these fused bones may be stronger, they do not allow movement.

Remember that age is no barrier when it comes to spinal degeneration. A child as young as five years old can display symptoms of degeneration. If postural issues aren’t corrected when they first arise, it becomes difficult to “sit straight” because their bodies have already accommodated to the initial trauma.

What should you do if your spine needs some work?

Seek Help

It’s better to take a preventative approach when it comes to your spinal health. My first visit to a chiropractor was at the age of 21, when I was suffering from pain. Instead of waiting for a problem to arise, you should check in regularly with a doctor or chiropractor to correct minor issues before they snowball into larger injuries. Make sure that you do some due diligence when you’re choosing a chiropractor to work with. Some chiropractors are specially trained to work with certain spinal conditions such as scoliosis. Given that there are many techniques for chiropractic treatment, it’s in your best interest to do your research to find the right fit for you. Just as you wouldn’t hire the first person that you interviewed for a job, it doesn’t hurt to consult a few different chiropractors before choosing one. Ask questions based on your research to get a sense of their areas of expertise. If they’re unable to help you address your specific concerns, they’re likely to refer you to a colleague who can.

Other than visiting a healthcare practitioner, you can apply the principles of ergonomics to the various spheres of your life to support healthy movement. I’ll share more about this in the following chapters.

A healthy neck is naturally shaped like a backwards C. To support the proper alignment of your neck, prop your screen up so that you can look at it straight ahead. Use a stack of books or a stand to raise your monitor or laptop to meet your eye gaze and keep the healthy C curve in your neck. If you’re using a laptop, propping it up will raise the keyboard to an uncomfortable height for your wrists, elbows, and shoulders. For a quick fix, purchase a separate keyboard that you can place on the table.

Next, pay attention to your arms and shoulders. A nagging ache in your wrist? It’s likely that your arms aren’t properly supported, irritating the nerve that runs from your neck, through the shoulders, elbows and down to your hands. Do a quick check. Does your chair have an armrest? Is your armrest in line with your desk? When you’re typing, you should rest your elbows on your armrest and place your forearms on your desk. Without this support, you might experience a tingling sensation in your arms, or a loss of blood supply, especially if you haven’t moved for some time.

Be Intentional About Moving

One of the perils of a modern lifestyle is the lack of movement. Our ancestors used their bodies constantly - to hunt, build, and forage for food. They climbed, ran, and carried things. They used their muscles in various ways in their daily lives. On the contrary, the average working professional sits at a desk for the majority of their day, and works out at the gym afterwards. Weekend warriors are sedentary during the work week and work out aggressively on weekends. Both these habits aren’t healthy, and can even cause injuries. Movement has to be natural and balanced. Your body simply isn’t meant to sit idle for five days, and have a burst of activity for two.

“A better active lifestyle is to consciously move during your work day. Move every few minutes.”

Set a reminder if necessary. Every once in a while, stand up and take a short walk. Shift your weight around. Wearing heels adds pressure to your knees and lower back, so it’s crucial that you don’t add further stress by being inactive. If you have a home office or work from home, you have the liberty of setting up a few stations where you can work standing up, sitting down, or even lying down on your belly with your head propped up. The key is to constantly change the way your body is facing.

Choose the Right Swiss Balls

Why are people increasingly swapping their office chairs out for Swiss balls? The imbalance that you feel when you are sitting on a Swiss ball causes your pelvis to move and thus activates the muscles around your core. As a result, your core is engaged and is strengthening even when you’re not working hard. While choosing a Swiss ball may sound like the healthy thing to do, I can’t emphasise enough on the importance of choosing the right sized ball to protect your spine. Getting the wrong sized Swiss ball does more harm than good.

There are some key things to look out for when you are choosing the right Swiss ball. First, always remember to keep your ball fully inflated. It should never dip when you sit on it. Second, your legs should form a 90-120 degree angle when you’re seated on it with your hips centred at the top of the ball and feet flat on the floor. If the Swiss ball is too high, you’ll feel unstable; if it’s too low, you’ll strain your lumbar spine. Another concern about sitting on a Swiss ball is that there’s no arm support, which could then affect your wrists, shoulders and elbows.

Phones and Books

If your job or lifestyle requires you to spend a lot of time on your phone then you'll likely encounter some strain on your neck and shoulders. Where possible, try to use your mobile devices sparingly. Choose a phone call or an audio message over a text. Use Whatsapp web instead of the mobile app.

Do you find yourself scrolling through Facebook on your commute? Don’t worry, you don’t have to give that up too. Help your body by placing one arm across your waist, and using it to support the elbow of your arm holding the phone. While your device won’t be at eye level, it’s still a lot less harmful to your neck than if you stood bent over your phone, facing the ground. Need to jot off a quick email? Stick your elbows into your stomach, raise your hands with your phone closer to your head and start typing.

Catching up on your summer reads by the beach shouldn’t put a strain on your spine. Ideally, you could read while lying on your belly and propping your body up with your elbows. This keeps your eye gaze straight ahead. If you’re on your back, anchor your elbows on your stomach and keep your shoulders planted. Don’t hold your book or phone up without supporting your elbows. With time, your upper trapezius muscles, biceps and triceps will start to tense up, causing tightness and discomfort.

These are small actions that can go a long way in improving your muscles' and spine's well-being. Take these good practices with you wherever you go.

The most ideal way that a human being can sleep is on their back. Unfortunately, this position feels unnatural or uncomfortable for most of us because our spines, pelvises and shoulders are rarely in balance. Do a quick scan in the mirror. It’s likely that each of your knees, eyes, or shoulders is not perfectly horizontally aligned with the other.

Over the course of your life, you’ve experienced micro traumas (falling down as a child, or carrying your bag on the same side) and even macro traumas (sports injuries, or being in a car accident) that rotated your body out of alignment and you’re now subconsciously trained not to sleep on your back. When you do try to sleep on your back, there’s a good chance that you’ll feel the urge to turn over in a few minutes. Your shoulders might tense up, your head may tilt one way, or your belly might feel compressed.

To train yourself to sleep on your back, start by lying down on your back even for just a minute before you fall asleep. As your body gets used to that position, extend to five minutes, then ten, and so on. Don’t be too caught up about forcing yourself to sleep on your back, though. Worrying unduly about not sleeping on your back will only add more stress to your body. You will wake up not feeling as rested as you should. When you’re sleeping, your body is healing itself from the stresses that it endures throughout the day. By shifting positions, your body is trying to find a position of rest that is comfortable. So just slowly implement this practice without stressing out about it.

The Towel Roll Method

A lot of us have already lost that healthy C curve in the neck thanks to our lifestyles and habits. The towel roll will help to realign your neck to its natural curve. Simply roll up a small or medium sized towel that fits snugly between your neck and your bed. Do not use the towel to support the back of your head. The roll functions to solely support the neck, allowing your head to drop backwards as you sleep, restoring that C shape to your neck. Use a soft, slim pillow that doesn’t prop your head up. Start by sleeping on your back with a towel roll for a few minutes each night. As your body gets used to this position, you can leave the towel roll in for longer. Being consistent to build this new habit is what’s most important.

Other Sleeping Aids

Side sleeping is best for people who have neck pain and have trouble with sleeping on a rolled towel. Make sure you’re concurrently working with a chiropractor to adjust your neck alignment, as it will help you to sleep on your side more comfortably. A soft mattress that conforms to the curves of your body would also help your body if you’re a side sleeper.

Have you noticed that when you are standing upright, your knees are naturally positioned apart from each other, with a space in between them? Of course, this depends on your figure, genetics, and fat percentage, but the space between our knees keeps our pelvis in alignment. Sleeping on your side means that your knees will be compressed together, twisting the pelvis and as a result, your spine. To counteract this, simply place a pillow between your knees when you sleep on your side to support the alignment of your pelvis.

If you sleep on your tummy, a hard mattress is your best bet for optimal lower back support. With a soft mattress, you run the risk of an excessive curve in the lower back that will cause strain.

Tuck a soft body pillow or bolster at your side to keep your chest slightly raised and your body rotated. When you’re sleeping on your tummy, the tendency is to turn the neck one way or the other. You’re likely to favour one side. Over the course of months and years, your body will settle into that alignment. Having a bolster will counter some of that harmful neck rotation.

As our bodies naturally move in three dimensions, our workouts should facilitate movements in all directions. For example, take the muscles of the leg. Our adductor and abductor muscles help us to move our legs in and out, while our quadriceps and hamstrings help us to move forwards and backwards. These muscles wrap around the legs, attaching our knees to our pelvis, which connects to the spine. Be mindful about how your exercises are affecting your body in all dimensions.

With workouts, never take a one-size-fits-all approach. An exercise that has benefited someone else may actually be quite harmful to your spine. I encourage you to consult with your doctor on specific exercises that are safe for you, as well as what you should be avoiding. Let me illustrate with a few examples.

Take a person with hyperlordosis, which means that their lower back is curved more than it should be, their butt sticks out and back perks up. With their spine already in an extended state, exercises that involve bending backwards or any other extension would likely be detrimental to their joints.

Another key example is yoga. It’s a common view that yoga helps to stretch out the body, and to build balance and stability. Unless your spine is quite balanced and strong, you need to be mindful about whether your practice is worsening your spinal condition. Be specific. There are multiple types of scoliosis, so zooming in on the type of scoliosis you suffer from will help you understand what poses are right for you.

Be wary that while your yoga instructor may be well trained, they may not have the know-how to address your specific condition. I once had a yoga instructor who herself suffered from scoliosis, so we sat down together to discuss which poses she should avoid in order to not make her curve worse. She was then able to teach these to her students as well.

Similarly, pregnant women need to choose workouts that stabilise and balance the pelvis, sacrum and the muscles and ligaments around them. These ligaments attach to the uterus, allowing it to grow balanced so that the baby can turn and move as needed. Choosing the right fitness regime will enable a smooth progression to labour and prepare your baby for the birthing process.

Take control. Check in with trained professionals to ensure that your workouts are protecting and strengthening your spine instead of causing trauma.

Foam Rollers

Foam rollers are pieces of equipment that are specifically designed to assist with various spinal concerns. There are various types of foam rollers; some are designed for particular conditions such as scoliosis, so finding the right roller for you is important. Consult with your chiropractor or health practitioner to find a roller that is best geared towards the issue you are facing. Something as simple as choosing the foam roller of the correct size is critical. If you’re targeting your neck, for instance, you’d have to choose a roller that’s around 8 cm in size as opposed to 15-20 cm.

Rolling your spine with a foam roller mobilises the joints in your spine that don’t usually get much movement. It also can help release tension from hypertonic muscles - muscles that are overworked and thus too tight - such as the ITB (Iliotibial Band) or the TFL (Tensor Fascia Lata).

Additionally, foam rollers can help re-train your body to move in ways that cause less damage to your joints. Take a simple exercise like the squat, for example. To teach yourself how to squat correctly, simply place your foam roller against the wall and lean against it. The idea is to allow the roller to track up from your lower back to your shoulders as you bend your knees. Keep your knees in line with your toes and your weight back against the wall. As you push your butt back and squat up and down with a foam roller, you engage the muscles in your back. The pressure is kept off the knees, which in turn helps with balancing and straightening. This simple squat with a foam roller is fun and rehabilitative for people of all ages - from children to people in their eighties!

When it comes to posture, building good habits is vital. The little changes that you make to your lifestyle can work wonders in re-training your body to move correctly. Be consistent and intentional about caring for your spine, and you will surely feel the difference.

1. Set a Reminder to Move

Use your phone to set a reminder to move every 20 minutes. You don’t have to take a five-minute break each time. Just stand up, shift your weight around, walk a few steps – this should take you merely ten or fifteen seconds. Your body was designed to move, so let it!

2. Use a Towel Roll

Use the towel roll method in chapter three to reverse the damage on your neck from the way you’re using your gadgets. Make the towel roll a part of your bedtime routine. I’d recommend leaving a towel by your nightstand where it is clearly visible as you prepare to sleep.

3. Do a Doorway Stretch

Stand in the middle of a doorframe. Now stretch your arms out on both sides, leaning forward with your elbows bent at 90 degrees. Your elbows, forearms, and hands should be supported by the doorframe. As you let your body lean forward, your body weight will naturally and passively pull back your shoulders and open up your chest. Then, change the angle of your arms by shifting your elbows higher and lower on the doorframe to reach different muscle fibers across your chest. You can do this simple exercise in the middle of your busy day to open your chest to create balance with the back.